Artillery: Civ3 vs Civ4

[TheDarkPhantom]

Sorry if this has already been done, but given the discussion about the comparative merits of artillery in Civ 3 and Civ 4, I thought it might be an idea to have a poll on it. I'm posting it here, because if a lot of people support the Civ3 system, then it might be a good motive for some modders to alter the current way bombardment works.

P.S. As I think most people have no problem with the idea of artillery units bombarding city defences, and as this is totally compatible with (indeed closer to) the Civ3 style of artillery bombardment, I ask you to leave it out of the question. The poll is asking whether you prefer the Civ 3 system, where units have a special bombard attack, which simply hurts other units and does not expose the artillery to harm, but where artilery units cannot engage in normal combat, or the Civ 4 system, in which artillery engage in combat like every other unit, and thus can be killed by bombarding, but deal collateral damage, or a synthesis of the two, similar to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, in which units have a seperate bombard attack, and thus cannot engage in normal combat, as in Civ 3, but also deal collateral damage like in Civ 4.

Thanks.

 

[Reveilled]

I think it should work as in SMAC, but with an added ability called "Anti-Artillery defence" (a bit like a special fortify command) which would give an artillery unit a free counter-strike against any artillery bombarding the stack, thus making bombardment a risky business, especially if the enemy's stack has a lot of artillery in it.

 

[dh_epic]

Of COURSE people want their units to be as powerful as possible. If you did a poll "should X be more powerful?" you will always get support for it.

The truth is, though, that SMAC style would be way too powerful for Civ 4. Even the Civ 3 system resulted in 'invincible artillery stacks'.

This resulted in two unrealistic factors. One was having a stack of catapults so powerful that it could take down a city of riflemen. Two was that the ideal army was composed of one or two standing units, but a dozen siege units!

I think Civ 4 found the right game balance. I'd argue that siege units might even still be just a touch too powerful.

 

[n003lb]

I think it should work as in SMAC, but with an added ability called "Anti-Artillery defence" (a bit like a special fortify command) which would give an artillery unit a free counter-strike against any artillery bombarding the stack, thus making bombardment a risky business, especially if the enemy's stack has a lot of artillery in it.

I came up with an idea here that I like the sound of. Sort of a modified version of Civ 3's system for defending artilley.

Fortified artillery would always take free shots at enemy units that moved nearby. How many shots are taken would be detirmined by the following formulae:

Each stack of artillery would get 1 shot at every enemy stack in an adjacent tile, for each tile that an enemy moves into, up to a maximum number of shots detirmined by the number of artillery peices in the stack.

Now that's a pretty hard to follow description, but I can't figure out an easier one at the moment. An example:

Russia has 3 canons in a tile. Arabia moves a stack of infantry units into an adjacent tile. The Russian cannons get 1 shot for each adjacent tile that the Arabians move into. Meaning they get a shot when the Arabians move into an adjacent tile, then they get another shot if the Arabians move into another adjacent tile. They get 3 total shots, beacause there is 3 cannons. All of this happens on the same turn. The Russians get 3 shots per turn in this scenario.

Also, when defending, artillery gets up to 6 shots against attacking troops. If there are less than 6 guns (or catapults) in the tile, then they only get however many shots they have. If there is 3 guns, they get 3 shots. This happens when a stack of artillery is attacked by infantry or cavalry.

When artillery is bombarded, the defending artillery gets a shot back for every artillery unit in the tile, with no limit, except for the maximum number of units that are allowed in a single tile (something I support).

Also, all of what I described above will only apply to artillery after it has been fortified for at least a turn. I would redefine "fortification" to be "deployment" or "implacement" instead.

Lastly, to help balance out the fear of a all killing stack of seige weapons, I would reduce the effectivness of the artillery bombardment, and make it so they can only reduce a unit to half strength, as aircraft do in the vanilla Civ IV. This needs to be different against ships IMO, but then again, how often does land based artillery attack naval vessels? Solve this by not allowing arty to bombard ships.

Of course, this idea needs a little refining, as I really just came up with it while typing this. All I really would like to see is a return to Civ 3's artillery with the added collateral damage.


Sorry about that lengthy post. I just can't seem to shut up when I start describing one of my ideas

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[Ranbir]

I really like 3. It gave them uses offensively AND defensively.

Zone of control, so they auto bombard anyone that tries to pass their position.
Bombard when fortified in city. This is great, as it weakens the attacking unit.
Treated as hardware, so it can be captured. Thus further making them important as they can be used against you.

Add this with collateral damage, we got a really good artillery system

 

[Exavier]

Personally I don't really care about land based artillary because I find them useful as they are now. Though I still miss my cruise missles badly.

What i would like to see though is the Civ 3 bombard ability brought back for Naval units at the very least. Right now there is absolutly no interaction between a Naval fleet and land exept for reducing city defence and landing ground troops. I preferr playing on island maps and there really is no reason to have a large naval force exept to defend your sea based improvments and your transports. Other then that the large numbers of naval units i use to play with in Civ 3 are absolutly useless in civ 4.

 

[Exel]

Civ3 artillery reinforced with Civ4's collateral damage to units (tweaked down for balance, of course) -> SMAC.

 

[Ranbir]

Ah yes, Coastal Bombard of any part of the coast is a must too.

 

[n003lb]

Personally I don't really care about land based artillary because I find them useful as they are now. Though I still miss my cruise missles badly.

What i would like to see though is the Civ 3 bombard ability brought back for Naval units at the very least. Right now there is absolutly no interaction between a Naval fleet and land exept for reducing city defence and landing ground troops. I preferr playing on island maps and there really is no reason to have a large naval force exept to defend your sea based improvments and your transports. Other then that the large numbers of naval units i use to play with in Civ 3 are absolutly useless in civ 4.

I agree completly with this. I, too, used to play almost exclusivly on islands, and the navy was a huge part of it; that's why I liked the islands. In Civ IV, the navy really doesn't have much of a use, except as a means of transporting units around, and trying, unsuccessfully, to prevent your enemies from landing troops. I lost a 2-star upgraded battleship to a lone transport once, and I can't count how many DDs I've lost to transports.

I did mod my subs so they are at least some use now. In the vanilla, subs are like the weakest of all modern naval units, and as such, only seemed to be usefull for recon and nothing more. I added attack bonuses to them and boosted their power so now they can at least sink a ship now and then.

 

[Exavier]

lmfao I did the same thing... Actually i added both the Nuclear Sub and Aegis Cruiser into my version for Civ 4

Nuclear Sub - More powerful then normal sub, Carries 5 ICBMs (yea i modded those to be movable, good for hiding them from spys)
Aegis Cruiser - Can see Subs (ability removed from Destroyers), better chance at hitting aircraft, strong enough to be a threat to battleships.

Granted the AIs turned arround and kicked me for the changes too
Because untill I get the techs for my aegis the only thing that can see subs are other subs... and the AI is definatly using that to take out every workboat I have

Thats what i get for screwing with game files

 

[Kushan]

I really like 3. It gave them uses offensively AND defensively.

Zone of control, so they auto bombard anyone that tries to pass their position.
Bombard when fortified in city. This is great, as it weakens the attacking unit.
Treated as hardware, so it can be captured. Thus further making them important as they can be used against you.

Add this with collateral damage, we got a really good artillery system

I agree.

Nuclear Sub - More powerful then normal sub, Carries 5 ICBMs (yea i modded those to be movable, good for hiding them from spys)
Aegis Cruiser - Can see Subs (ability removed from Destroyers), better chance at hitting aircraft, strong enough to be a threat to battleships.

Granted the AIs turned arround and kicked me for the changes too
Because untill I get the techs for my aegis the only thing that can see subs are other subs... and the AI is definatly using that to take out every workboat I have

Thats what i get for screwing with game files

LOL

Kushan

 

[n003lb]

lmfao I did the same thing... Actually i added both the Nuclear Sub and Aegis Cruiser into my version for Civ 4

Nuclear Sub - More powerful then normal sub, Carries 5 ICBMs (yea i modded those to be movable, good for hiding them from spys)
Aegis Cruiser - Can see Subs (ability removed from Destroyers), better chance at hitting aircraft, strong enough to be a threat to battleships.

Granted the AIs turned arround and kicked me for the changes too
Because untill I get the techs for my aegis the only thing that can see subs are other subs... and the AI is definatly using that to take out every workboat I have

Thats what i get for screwing with game files

If I were you, I would let the DDs see subs again. Destroyers have pretty much always been the bane of submarines, at least during WWII. I haven't added CAs to my game yet, but what I did was give aircraft the ability to see subs. Since WWII, aircraft have been the main way of detecting subs, except sonar nets, which I don't know how you could add in to Civ. JMO

 

[Exavier]

ooo thats a nice idea... just give aircraft the Seeinvisible option like subs and destroyers originally had.

Actually the reason i made the Aegis the only surface ship that could see subs was because Subs lost alot of their usefulness by having such a common unit able to see them. In Civ 3 Destroyers couldn't see subs. You always had to bring another sub or an Aegis with your fleet battlegroups in order to see enemy subs. I was trying to recreate that.

BTW while yes during WW2 Destroyers were good for hunting subs it was mostly because the sub wasn't a deep submersable... they still had to come close to the surface to aim (usually visually) and thus were spotted

Besides I like the added challenge of playing cat and mouse... I just hadn't expected the AIs to use them that effectivly aginst me

 

[n003lb]

ooo thats a nice idea... just give aircraft the Seeinvisible option like subs and destroyers originally had.

Actually the reason i made the Aegis the only surface ship that could see subs was because Subs lost alot of their usefulness by having such a common unit able to see them. In Civ 3 Destroyers couldn't see subs. You always had to bring another sub or an Aegis with your fleet battlegroups in order to see enemy subs. I was trying to recreate that.

BTW while yes during WW2 Destroyers were good for hunting subs it was mostly because the sub wasn't a deep submersable... they still had to come close to the surface to aim (usually visually) and thus were spotted

Besides I like the added challenge of playing cat and mouse... I just hadn't expected the AIs to use them that effectivly aginst me

Good point, I guess the mass use of DDs does make the subs rather vulnerable.

As for the aircraft, I don't yet know if it worked or not. I added the SeeInvisible_Submarine to all of my planes, but I have as yet to see any enemy sub. However, I think that is just because no one else has built a sub yet. I have a game going inwhich the Germans are just about on par with me technologically, so maybe I'll see a sub from them in the near future. I may just have to go into WorldBuilder and place a forgien sub out there somewhere and see if my planes can spot it. Point of fact, I'll go do that right now.

[EDIT] I just checked it in WorldBuilder and my aircraft can indeed see subs when on recon. They may also see subs that move near the city, but I don't know there.

 

[Exavier]

Cool thatx for testing it... gona have to make that change now that i can see strait (no sleep for 48hrs is a bad thing... but I was too busy nuking Isabell)

 

[Clifford]

Civ3 was far superior concerning not only artillery but Zone of Control and especially the first strike ability of archers, guerillas and others. It made for great combined stacks with some supporting defenders. Just because the AI couldn´t handle artillery doesn´t mean it was a bad system in itself. There are several threads on the forum trying to develop civ3 arty, but it seems we have to wait for the SDK.

 

[TheDarkPhantom]

I agree with most of these sentiments, and yes, the old bombard systems (or indeed, any bombard system) is needed for naval units. Just in reply to the point about voting for better units - there's nothing about the new system which has to mean it would be more powerful - it's just a question of balancing. You could easily have the SMAC system or similar, and scale it down, making units less powerful, or limiting the number of units they deal collateral damage to, etc.