Artillery: The Great Equalizer

[eyrei]

In my last game as the Japanese, a gigantic war spurred by intertwining MPP's broke out at the beginning of the industrial age. Soon everybody had infantry, but the best offensive unit was still the cavalry. The AI was having a hell of a time taken any cities because of the large differential between the infantry's 10 defence, and the cavalry's 6 offense. However, I had a lot (about 12) artillery. These followed my cavalry around protected by a couple veteren infantry units. I would park my invasion force one square inside the Persians borders which was within 2 squares of the closest Persian city. On the next turn, my artillery would reduce the population of the city to below 7 and damage all of the defenders down to 1 hp. Then my cavalry would charge, and after losing one or two (since they don't retreat if the defender is at one hp), I would take the city. My artillery and infantry would continue to advance, getting within range of the next city, and would begin bombardment again. After a couple of turns of this, the city is reduced smoldering ruins with a couple badly damaged defenders, and my cavalry were healed and reader to charge. I took over the entire sizeable Persian empire this way, and they could do nothing about it. I thoroughly enjoyed myself, and this reinforced my already healthy respect for artillery.

 

[Eliezar]

Artillery are great. I had over 50 in the current game of the month to allow my cavalry and then tanks to walk over all those fortified infantry in size 20 cities 8)

Eliezar

 

[Sam_Catchem]

Artillery RULES. Some people never use them..but they are great!

I love them for defense too. I love that they can hurt those charging units. It is rather sweet and cheap way to hurt an attacking unit.

 

[eyrei]

Another great use for artillery is to send those damn bugs(sorry ....ironclads) puffing back home when they come in a swarm to bombard your coast.

 

[yahoo]

right on! they're also great for defending your cities against an attack.

2 other civs allied themselves against me, and then surprise attacked - they had many more units than i did, but i was able to beat them back with my 15 or 20 artillery units, and just a few cavalry!
keep them based in a city for safety, and pound anyone who dares to comes close... even if you can't finish the attackers off after a bombardment, they'll retreat after being blasted down to 1 or 2 hitpoints!

you can defend against a much bigger army pretty well if you have a bunch of artillery

 

[Jaxom]

I also have found artillery to extremely useful so far. On offense it's great to pound enemy cities prior to an assualt to reduce unit strength and to reduce population which makes occupation easier. Also great for smashing improvements in surrounding terrain. This is great for longer sieges of larger cities.

Arty is very useful for defense as well. AI units get nailed automatically when they attack. Damn those pesky Cossacks!!!

I always try to make sure my border cities have at least one piece of Artillery stationed in them.

 

[57%]

Second that! [Edited: Er, third that.] A cavalry + artillery or cannon combination, in a fort or city, stops invaders in their tracks AND knocks a hit-point off, for free.

Considering the AI mostly sends 3 hp out, having them start at 66% strength is muy bueno!

Originally posted by yahoo
right on! they're also great for defending your cities against an attack.

2 other civs allied themselves against me, and then surprise attacked - they had many more units than i did, but i was able to beat them back with my 15 or 20 artillery units, and just a few cavalry!
keep them based in a city for safety, and pound anyone who dares to comes close... even if you can't finish the attackers off after a bombardment, they'll retreat after being blasted down to 1 or 2 hitpoints!

you can defend against a much bigger army pretty well if you have a bunch of artillery

 

[The_Clash]

I agree fully, art. is great!

 

[Maven]

Bombardment rocks.

If you can isolate a city from rubber, it can't produce infantry any more. Isolate it from all resources, and it will only be able to produce spearmen as defenders. You can count how many defenders there are in the city as you're bombarding it. Every time you hit one, any additional defenders will show up with full health. After you knock all the defenders down to one hit point, there's less of a chance to lose your elite attackers.

If you kill all the defenders but one, you can just wait until the city builds another defender. If you have animations turned on, you can see new defenders as they fortify themselves. Or, you can just bombard the defender at any time, to see if another one shows up with full health. At any rate, if you place a small stack of bombardment units, a defender, and an elite attacker right outside his city, you can pretty much get an elite win every time it produces another defender.

 

[Kulture]

A GL factory - that's gotta be a good thing!

 

[Divine Wind]

Arty rocks - period.

It's been mentioned above, but arty is a great tool if you are in a game where naval aspects are important. If you have arty, and have your cities connected w/railroads than you have an instantly mobile naval defense battery. Just wait until the enemy ships come in range and fire away.

In a recent game, I used arty to control a narrow straight that sat between me and china. It stretched easily for 15 tiles, and was never more than 2 tiles wide. Essentially, it was the Panama Canal because it connected the two big oceans in this game. I put my arty along the coast and reigned holy hell upon all ships trying to use it

I was also constantly getting invaded w/transports but my navy stunk. So I made sure my arty backed up my navy whenever an invading fleet came on over. Once again, my navy flat out stunk, but as long as I kept them close to my arty, they were able to mow down opposing fleets/transports. If a transport did land and unload, my arty pounded the invading units until my cav units mopped them up.

 

[tetley]

Small correction on the GL thing. If you isolate his rubber he produces RIFLEMEN. Which are even up vs. Cavalry. Also at that stage of the game you're probably a Democracy, so you might not have the time to waste like that, milking GL's.

 

[sleepage]

How do you make arty attack an attacker automatically if fortified? It works when I'm not fortified - great, but I can't be buggered pushing space bar to end all my arty's turns. Fortified arty doesn't seem to take advantage of the auto attack.

Anyone?

 

[Yasz]

Pre-patch, I would totally agree that Artillery rocks, but since I've added the patch, the success rate is now extremely low. I know that was one of the changes the patch made, but now it seems you're only successful with bombardment about 20% of the time. This makes it especially difficult when trying to takeover larger cities, as it is nearly impossible to defeat fortified units without taking them down a couple notches with bombardment.

 

[Hobbes]

I believe it was Joseph Stalin who said "God is on the side of those with the most artillery", how true he was.

 

[perryrutherford]

In my experience artilery fires on the attackers of a square per turn up to the number of artilery in the square being attacked. For example; if a square with 1 infantry and 2 artilery is charged thrice by cavalry the first two cavalry will be fired upon but not the third.