Artillery, uh, is there a hidden button?

Well I guess this question is answered - another documentation error: hot.

Is there any way for "free colonists" to be promoted to full veterans, or does that simply never happen?
 
Lord Shadow said:
I'm no tester, I didn't mean to imply I was. Here are my reasons to strongly believe the Artillery unit was never meant to be in colonial hands:

- It's coded as part of the King's forces and solidly integrated to the REF and related screens by default.
- It's stronger than the Cannon in the same way Regulars are stronger than both normal and veteran colonial soldiers, reflecting the concept that the King's forces are supposedly better trained than yours.
- The game doesn't have a Civ4-like concept of upgrading units except maybe in the ships' case, but even then every vessel has its individual purpose. On land, better variants of normal units are handled by professions.
- It costs exactly the same as the Cannon, which puts in evidence the fact half the tooltip's a big mistake. If it were supposed to be buildable by the player, it'd be more expensive.
- Both the unit's icon and model show a royal regular manning the gun, instead of the veteran soldier seen in the Cannon's graphics. This is perhaps the strongest indication of the Artillery's nature.
Click to expand...

Your last point makes no sense to me, if you're going by the uniform then the artillery soldiers uniform is actually like a colonial and the cannon is like a veteran. Oh wait, I have yet to see the REF, do you mean the dude in the artillery pic is like the REF, well that's pure speculation, to me it looks like a colonial I have yet to see the REF. I finished one game already but unfortunately it was a time victory.

I'm just about to call independance in my next game but man, that damn king eddy keeps adding REF every turn he has 44,28,22 plus 14 warships. I have 1/2 that much but with weapons/horse in storage in my towns can probably pull out another 30 or more infantry/dragoons. I think I have played this wrong, Civ4 Colonization is great, it's taking me some time still to master it.

I'm not to upset that there is no artillery; if i was to be upset about anything it would be about the sloppiness of the pedia files. Tis trivial though, just thought I'd ask you guys what you think.

I'll take your word on it Lord Shadow, I don't know code and if it's not coded in then it's more than likely not going to be later.

Johnman
 
JOHNMAN said:
I'm just about to call independance in my next game but man, that damn king eddy keeps adding REF every turn he has 44,28,22 plus 14 warships. I have 1/2 that much but with weapons/horse in storage in my towns can probably pull out another 30 or more infantry/dragoons. I think I have played this wrong, Civ4 Colonization is great, it's taking me some time still to master it.
Click to expand...
If you have half the kings army but also have additional guns and horses stored then you most likely will be able to win a WoI against the king.

The king sends his troops in waves so you dont actually have to fight them all at the same time giving you time to heal your troops in your cities.

Just remember to absolutely NOT sit in your settlements and defend. Use dragoons to kill the troops before they reach your settlements and if they get into a position where they can actually attack a settlement then simply abandon it and attack it from the outside with cannons once the king has taken it(cannons get a massive bonus when attacking settlements).
 
Fabien said:
Is it actually possible that the King can build artillery if they manage to grab a settlement?
Click to expand...

It's possible, actually (same with Man O War), but I don't think the AI will do it as it stands, since making weapons, etc, is the LAST thing that AI seems to do in the New World.
 
TFVanguard said:
It's possible, actually (same with Man O War), but I don't think the AI will do it as it stands, since making weapons, etc, is the LAST thing that AI seems to do in the New World.
Click to expand...

Yes and it is basically useless; the WoI won't be lasting that long and the colonies he'll take will not have enough population anyway, but that could still be the reason why this tooltip shows up? I don't think the player should be able to build Artillery by definition (it would probably make the game way too easy as well).

Edit: The Man O War doesn't show up at the shipyard afaik, you're sure that they can build it (since they don't actually replace something, right)? That would certainly speak against the artillery tooltip...
 
The Artillery, you mean. Yes, they're unique units of the Dutch/English/French/Spanish Empires which are the off-map factions ruled by the different kings. Same goes for the Man-o-War and Regular. The playable New World factions are Dutch/English/French/Spanish Colonies.

It's not a typo in the Civilopedia itself, but rather lazy XML editing: tooltips are automatically generated from the values set in the XML files. As I said, the Artillery unit is most likely a copy-pasted Cannon with altered values. The programmer forgot to remove some other irrelevant (from the gameplay standpoint) ones, forgetting also the fact they'd add confusing information to the Civilopedia entry if left on the XML.

The Civilopedia does say Artillery replaces Cannon and Man-o-War replaces Ship of the Line, pretty much in the sense an American SEAL replaces the Marine in Civ4. If Artillery and MoWs were designed as upgrades, both Cannons and SOLs would say "Upgrades to X" in their own Civilopedia entry. If Colonization had upgrades in the same way as Civ4, which it doesn't.
 
You can build Artillery, if you are playing one of the King factions. In order to do so, however, you would still need an armory.

The building is labeled correctly - you just don't understand the notion of unique units. Yes, the tool-tip should take into account the faction currently being controlled but it doesn't and that is why both are listed.
 
Lord Shadow said:
You can't play any of the King's factions. :undecide:
Click to expand...

Its not that you can't it's that the current XML configuration dis-allows it. You could change it to make them playable though I am guessing it wouldn't work that well :dunno:

Plus, once the King does land on the shores and wins (likely to occur for the AI) I would assume they would build some stuff. Regardless, either they need a different Unique Building that can only build their Unique Unit or any dynamic description generating code needs to determine who is currently playing which is not how the current code works.

It isn't broken nor is it easily fixed (or worth fixing), just a natural byproduct of the system design.
 
Well, of course it's possible through modding, but it's no simple task. The King doesn't exist past a diplomatic screen till the Royal Expeditionary Force comes, and even then, I doubt he can use the buildings and colonists in your settlements to make Artillery, Regulars and MoWs.

Well, if you think about it, perhaps he has the option, but his programming might prevent him from building anything in the New World. Can anyone confirm this? Can the King bolster his numbers during the WoI, using settlements captured from the colonial powers?
 
Is it possible to blockade your port city and force a sea war before the REF lands? Thus, stratagy is to build a massive navy instead of army ???
 
A naval-oriented strategy would need you to focus on produce as many liberty bells as you can so to maximize the combat bonus received from rebel sentiment. I don't think it's possible to win the WoI with ships only, before the royals hit the shore: with an intensive liberty bell production comes a large REF, which means lots of Man-o-Wars. Even if you are on even grounds with them, thanks to 'inspired' SOLs, you'd need an impossibly overwhelming force to prevent a minority of the royal warships from reaching the shore and unloading their troops.
 
player1 fanatic said:
Pedia entry for Cannons plainly notes that these are unique units from spanish, english, dutch and french king forces.
Click to expand...

That's irrelevant...it also states it's replaced by cannon. There is no logic there. Ultimately they just need to smarten up with the pedia files, they're confusing.

It would be nice to build artillery, I don't think it's in anyway unrealistic for the colonies to gain that technology either.
 
JOHNMAN:

"It would be nice to build...", and "I don't think it's in anyway unrealistc..." are irrelevant...the fact that the colonies get cannon while the Kings get artillery is a GAME MECHANIC, not a treatise on real life.

Many things appear illogical to the uninformed; and I agree that clarity is the responsibility of the designer. That said, the fact that artillery IS a cannon - just a unique version - is relevant and the way the pre-requisite identifier system works the fact that an armory (or whatever, don't feel like looking) correctly shows enabling the building of both cannon and artillery. It is designed to be flexible and it cannot determine what civ is currently being played so it cannot omit artillery just because you cannot build it when you are not playing one of the Kings. The only alternative was to either redesign the system OR add yet another building to enable the cannon that wouldn't enabled the artillery - basically requiring that each civ group have its own buildings. While not a unreasonable choice it wasn't the one made since the extra effort wouldn't really gain much (I doubt those looking at the 'pedia were confused to see both units and thus it wouldn't appear to them, or most other experienced/beta players, as being an issue). I admit I was confused at first as well but figured out, correctly, that cannon==artillery - especially since there is not real concept of military upgrades in the game. I digress but the fact that you get free upgrades for attaching a great general to a unit seems to be buggy but I guess upgrades could be added later (or in mods) and thus keeping that feature, while misleading in the core release, didn't really do any harm either.

It was a design choice and while you are free to disagree I would submit that the choice, while not one you agree with, is both logical and the results are as intended and not a bug.
 
Polobo said:
JOHNMAN:

"It would be nice to build...", and "I don't think it's in anyway unrealistc..." are irrelevant...the fact that the colonies get cannon while the Kings get artillery is a GAME MECHANIC, not a treatise on real life.

Many things appear illogical to the uninformed; and I agree that clarity is the responsibility of the designer. That said, the fact that artillery IS a cannon - just a unique version - is relevant and the way the pre-requisite identifier system works the fact that an armory (or whatever, don't feel like looking) correctly shows enabling the building of both cannon and artillery. It is designed to be flexible and it cannot determine what civ is currently being played so it cannot omit artillery just because you cannot build it when you are not playing one of the Kings. The only alternative was to either redesign the system OR add yet another building to enable the cannon that wouldn't enabled the artillery - basically requiring that each civ group have its own buildings. While not a unreasonable choice it wasn't the one made since the extra effort wouldn't really gain much (I doubt those looking at the 'pedia were confused to see both units and thus it wouldn't appear to them, or most other experienced/beta players, as being an issue). I admit I was confused at first as well but figured out, correctly, that cannon==artillery - especially since there is not real concept of military upgrades in the game. I digress but the fact that you get free upgrades for attaching a great general to a unit seems to be buggy but I guess upgrades could be added later (or in mods) and thus keeping that feature, while misleading in the core release, didn't really do any harm either.

It was a design choice and while you are free to disagree I would submit that the choice, while not one you agree with, is both logical and the results are as intended and not a bug.
Click to expand...

You never understood or read the post or thread...

I was talking about the pedia files, the ["It would be nice to build...",] statement was just a thought and wasn't to do with the topic. So uh, great you responded or decided to argue with my after thought off topic
 
Lord Shadow said:
Are they? With full rebel sentiment bonuses (+50%), Ships of the Line are equal to Man o' Wars, at 12 vs. 12. And if you're playing below Explorer level (which I guess is Col's Noble), you'll have an extra bonus, which will actually make your SOLs superior to the King's warships.

And if you're using Bolívar, besides difficulty bonuses, your Ships of the Line should be clearly superior to MoWs, at 16 strength, thanks to the +100% rebel sentiment bonus.
Click to expand...

How do you get full rebel sentiment when your army ounts as 100% loyalist? Unless you have no army at all, or just cannons?
 
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