Artillery mod ideas

[insydr]

I posted this in the suicide artillery discussion in GD, and I thought I'd put it up here as well to see what modders think. So here are my ideas for what would make artillery useful in Civ4.

insydr's artillery mod ideas

• Issue 1: Suicide artillery is unrealistic and makes for unsatisfying gameplay.

Fix: Give artillery the "defend only" flag. That way they can't be captured and can defend when under attack, but they won't be unrealistically used on the offensive.

• Issue 2: If artillery is now unable to attack, how can it cause collateral damage?

Fix: Make the artillery unit's bombard command also cause collateral damage.

• Issue 3: OK, now artillery can cause collateral damage without entering battle, so they're overpowered!

Fix: Cap collateral damage based on the defense bonus of the unit under attack. For instance, units fully fortified on a hill could not be reduced to below 50% health by artillery bombardment. Units running around in an open flatland could be killed by collateral damage. And units fortified in a city with +125% defense suffer NO collateral damage on that turn. This means that artillery collateral damage scales with how hard it would be to attack that unit directly.

• Issue 4: But now artillery can't cause collateral damage to units in heavily fortified cities! Wasn't that the point?

Keep in mind: The artillery unit is also causing damage to city defenses every turn it bombards. So, for the first few rounds the artillery won't damage the units inside, but when the city defenses have been reduced enough, the units inside will start to suffer damage. The longer the siege, the more damage artillery will be able to inflict. This goes both ways, as the defender can use his own artillery to weaken the incoming army.


In my mind this system takes advantage of the inherent defensive bonuses in the game to make artillery a balanced bombardment unit. It strikes a balance between the current system of sacrificing an artillery unit to get results and the Civ3 system of bombarding with impunity.

I don't have anywhere near the technical expertise to make this happen, if it's even possible. But if people think this is a worthy solution, I'd be more than willing to help work on it. What do you think?

 

[sgrig]

Interesting ideas, but I'm not sure if the AI would know how to use artillery in these new ways.

 

[Featauril]

I wish artillery could behave like bombers/fighters : they could bombard without any risk except for other artillery firing back on them.

Archers should behave this way too imo. Except no col. damage for them.

Horse archers could come in, do some damage, then run back.

Yeah, it's not that much a good idea..

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Personally, I though the Civ3 artillery was perfect since I thought the Civ2 artillery was ridiculous. You could wage war with nothing but catapults/cannons/artillery... and guess what.... those days are back! I've been in wars recently where infantry were sent in after the city had already been captured (sometimes I didn't bother with infantry at all if the enemy was weak enough).

In the Civ3 days, I would invade with infantry and cavalry and bring along artillery pieces to soften up the defenses before i attacked. That was how it should've been because that is how it really WORKS.

I think this "city defense" thing... this abstract number that siege weapons reduce to make the enemy easier to take out... is complete and total GARBAGE.

In Civ3, the artillery was used to reduce the hitpoints to increase your infantry's chance of winning against heavily fortified defenders... what was so bad about that system????

There's an old saying... if it ain't broke... don't fix it.

 

[Gogf]

I'd have to agree with Dom Pedro. I think the Civ3 arty system was vastly superior.

However, some would argue that Civ3 arty was overpowered...

 

[Featauril]

Well, you need a way for artillery to be damaged. In real life, after all, artillery could be damaged by defending artillery in sieges.

If artillery behaved like fighters, being able to bombard and intercept, they'd be much more realistic.

 

[Vael]

However, some would argue that Civ3 arty was overpowered...

There were many who advocate just that, and for good reason. The AI was horrible at using Civ 3 artillery as well, that's probably why they took it out for Civ 4.

 

[Alyph]

i have an idea that the artillery could grant the ability of making collateral damage to other units in his tile but not himself, and it also can't attack. Then artilleries act as a support unit like it in the real world. Though this still has some balance issue and may be difficult to realize, since first of all we must be able to make one unit grant special skill to other unit. This method is useful actually. For example, the egineering battalion gives other units bonus during attack across the river, also the great leader(if have) arise the morale of other soldiers.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

Siege weapons were definitely not overpowered in Civ3... Catapults were actually more of a hindrance than anything else, and I was usually able to take down enemy cities without them.

Cannon also helped but were far from necessary.

Artillery were useful for a brief period after the advent of Infantry and before the discovery of Bombers.

Not to mention the fact that artillery could not be moved alone, they could not be used to defend cities at all. True, the AI didn't know how to handle them, but that could've been remedied I'm sure... not completely changing the system.

I remember somebody mentioned something about Civ4 making "catapults useful again" which implies that siege weapons by and large were considered underpowered in Civ3. But if anything, they're highly overpowered NOW. I have no need for other kinds of units when attacking cities. I bring a couple of infantry units and otherwise just artillery piece after artillery piece and I melt through the enemy's defenses like butter.

What made the Civ3 artillery balanced was the fact that they could weaken defenses, but you still needed infantry to attack and defend... now you don't need infantry and cavalry anymore to do that.

Suggestion: Make siege weapons unable to capture cities like with helicopters. That's what I'm doing in my mod.

And my favorite aspect of artillery? YOU COULD CAPTURE THEM! 3/4 of my artillery in the closing days of a war were made up of captured pieces. And that's how it should be! Peoples throughout the ages have been using an enemy's own artillery against them...

I would like to see it possible to capture artillery in a future mod. Maybe it would only have a 60% chance of success and the other 40% of the time it would be destroyed instead of captured.

 

[Mr. Will]

You could probably program that flag intot the game through Python. I've already described an Indian Wars scenario that would need that. Must look into learning Python.

 

[Catsy]

Anyone remember ArtilleryMod for Civ3? Yes, it had a lot of changes that had nothing to do with artillery (most of which I liked a lot), but most of all... it made artillery and sea bombardment as lethal as they should be. It turned Battleships, which were a joke in Civ3, into something appropriately fearsome, able to devastate coastal cities and units.

I love most of the changes in Civ4, but the artillery and sea units are a huge, HUGE step backwards for the series. The person who manages to produce a good mod that makes Civ4's artillery behave like the ArtilleryMod (or at least like Civ3) will have my undying adoration.

 

[Master Kodama]

You could probably program that flag intot the game through Python. I've already described an Indian Wars scenario that would need that. Must look into learning Python.

I think that capturing units is possible, I believe I read mention of it in the description of the "Lost Units" mod... if I'm not mistaken.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

There is already a tag in the XML for this... I believe it's called <Capture> and the value one enters is the kind of unit one gets from capturing said unit... Most of them are blank with the exception of the Worker and Settler units. I see no reason why it couldn't be applied to the artillery units as well.

 

[LittleRedPoint]

Its simple to make artillery effective, just rise the retreat chance 100% and make the sthrenght low

Now it weakens not kills, because the strenght is low

 

[Featauril]

Its simple to make artillery effective, just rise the retreat chance 100% and make the sthrenght low

Now it weakens not kills, because the strenght is low

But it also takes 13 turns to be able to attack a town again...

 

[WildWeazel]

Personally, I though the Civ3 artillery was perfect since I thought the Civ2 artillery was ridiculous. You could wage war with nothing but catapults/cannons/artillery... and guess what.... those days are back! I've been in wars recently where infantry were sent in after the city had already been captured (sometimes I didn't bother with infantry at all if the enemy was weak enough).

In the Civ3 days, I would invade with infantry and cavalry and bring along artillery pieces to soften up the defenses before i attacked. That was how it should've been because that is how it really WORKS.

I think this "city defense" thing... this abstract number that siege weapons reduce to make the enemy easier to take out... is complete and total GARBAGE.

In Civ3, the artillery was used to reduce the hitpoints to increase your infantry's chance of winning against heavily fortified defenders... what was so bad about that system????

There's an old saying... if it ain't broke... don't fix it.

I agree. The new system is vastly overpowered. The only thing wrong with the Civ3 system is that the AI was clueless. Now with collateral damage being effective, the huge artillery SODs won't be as effective, making it even better.