Artillery

[Chazcon]

I'm scratching my head as to the way artillery is handled in Civ IV. This would apply to cannon and artillery units. We have the option to 'bombard' a city or 'attack' an enemy unit. Both of these are handled in an odd fashion:

Bombarding a city can reduce the city's defense modifier, and produce collateral damage to units in the city. This is realistic. However, you can only bombard cities and not units in the field. One of the primary uses of artillery is to 'soften-up' dug-in or fortified enemy units in the field. In fact since the passing of true siege warfae in the 18th century, cannon and modern artillery are rarely used as a 'siege' weapon, but rather are one of the cornerstones of field operations. I think that artillery units should be able to bombard ANY tile, but with a limit on collateral damage to units similiar to the way air units work when conducting airstrikes - for artillery alone should not be able to completely destroy an enemy unit.

Attacking an enemy unit directly with artillery is far too unrealistic in Civ IV. While artillery is often used (in real life) to open an attack, the firing units are in or behind friendly lines and are not subject to attack or destruction from the units they are attacking, for the most part. I would remove the ability for artillery to attack enemy units at all. As in real life, if a stack of units is wiped out in the game, the artillery could be 'killed' as well (simulating a rout or the destruction of an entire army). But the artillery should not be able to attack, destroy enemy units by iteself, and take ground or cities.

Thoughts?

 

[drkodos]

Attacking an enemy unit directly with artillery is far too unrealistic in Civ IV.

Agreed. It is one of the sillier implementations of combat in the game.

While artillery is often used (in real life) to open an attack, the firing units are in or behind friendly lines and are not subject to attack or destruction from the units they are attacking, for the most part. I would remove the ability for artillery to attack enemy units at all. As in real life, if a stack of units is wiped out in the game, the artillery could be 'killed' as well (simulating a rout or the destruction of an entire army). But the artillery should not be able to attack, destroy enemy units by iteself, and take ground or cities.

Thoughts?

I believe it was like this in previous Civ incarnations. For a long time I did not even realize that artillery could directly attack other unit because it made little sense to me and it wasn't able to before.

Absolutely artillery should be able to bombard several tiles removed from its location. Increasing distance decreases successful bombardments.

Because of these attacking capabilities I think artillery is an overpowering advantage when used aggressively in the game.

 

[StarWorms]

Artillery should be able to fire from at least one square further back. Artillery don't go into close combat as Civ IV suggests.

 

[Chazcon]

Regarding firing from two tiles away - that would be unrealistic as well, due to the scale of the game. Terrain features and units are representations, and not pictures of actual items.

A tank unit is not just a few tanks; rather it is a representation of an armored unit that may be a divsion or even corps level in size that is equipped with not only tanks as it's primary weapon, but with intrinsic supporting arms such as infantry and artillery, etc.

 

[gunkulator]

Attacking an enemy unit directly with artillery is far too unrealistic in Civ IV.

While I agree with this statement, the reason artillery is made to attack directly is because they would otherwise be too powerful and unbalancing. In CivIII, all you had to do was drag around a big stack of artillery and you could whoop the AI far too easily.

While bombers can cause damage at a distance, they are still subject to being intercepted by fighters, SAM infantry and mech infantry. Also the Bunker improvement greatly reduces their impact. With ground siege units, there is no corresponding counter so the game designers forced them to risk destruction by attacking directly.

 

[cf_nz]

I agree. I really don't like the way artillery works in Civ4. I've incorporated Dales Ranged field bombardment into my game so it works like Civ 3.

gunkulator is right though, artillery needs to be countered. At the moment it's limitation is that in order to damage units it must attack, which is usually suicidal.

What counters artillery in real life?

 

[Syagrius]

What counters artillery in real life?

Other artillery. Counter-battery fire it is called.

 

[drkodos]

What counters artillery in real life?

Counter-battery fire is good, but costly. Air power is best.

 

[Chazcon]

Counter-battery fire, artillery attempting to damage or destroy enemy artillery. Not very effective, traditionally, although recently the use of devices that can detect the exact location of the firing battery by tracking it's outgoing shells hold more promise for this. I doubt that we'll ever see counter-battery fire as anything more than harrassment fire.

How do you destroy artillery? 20th century - get troops in the enemy's rear area and tear 'em up. In the 19th century cavalry was effective at taking out cannon, often the supporting infantry would melt away before a charge and leave the cumbersome guns to their own fate! A good commander with stout troops would form square around the guns if threatened so. A good example of this is the British squares at La Belle Alliance when charged by Cuirassiers.

 

[cf_nz]

How can that be incorporated in Cvi4 though.

Counter battery fire: give artillery bonus against artillery.

Air power: good, but easily countered by stacking in SAM units.

Calvary and other troops: easily countered again by stacking appropriate units.

It's a tough one to balance.

 

[Quagga]

What I don't miss from CivIII regarding artillery is all the missing, failure to do damage. Also the destroying improvements one at a time: As if I really wanted to destroy the library, etc. T-E-D-I-O-U-S.

Although CivIV is unrealistic in terms of the way artillery works, I see it as a big improvement over the way it worked in the prior game.

 

[Jvlivs Parvvs]

I found Artillery's behavior unfortunately unrealistic too. Artillery stays behind and doesn't attempt to hit the ennemy with shells by taking them there personally, they send it by air mail -- I mean, where's the dignity if you have to go there yourself? That would be just a vulgar brawl. Artillery is something you do with binoculars, maps, slide ruler, trigonometric calculator, laptop, etc.

It could have something like airplanes, only with a more restricted range, like two squares. Cannons shouldn't need to move from their square to attack either, although they could have only an adjacent square capability.

Another use of artillery, besides softening up defenses, is softening up large concentrations of ennemy units.

I think it can hold a city, although the millenary foot soldier has the traditional role in that, as it's much cheaper and gets anywhere in a city.

The usual way to down artillery is by airplane, foot (infantry assault -- artillery garrisons are vulnerable to hand grenades), or "artillery duels" (including missiles and mortars, oh man, mortars are so convenient). I see no problem in artillery being a little harder to get at; that would happen only for some time (eventually faster than you'd like) much like a part having gunpowder units and the other not. Life isn't fair Anyway, the AIs can have artillery too.

Chazcon mentions cavalry, and that means tanks too, of course. Mobility makes them hard targets for artillery.

The other thing about artillery I found very weird was it's inability to hit naval units near the shore. Coastal artillery is at least as old as the 16th century (if not before?) and cannons in caravels. Battleships aren't that definitive.

 

[Slaughter]

I think that Alpha Centauri handled this well. Artillery could fire from two squares ahead. And if a artillery unit atacked another artillery unit or a ship, they would duel (My ships were always humilated by artillery). I just think that artilerry were underpowered.

 

[eric_]

kodos, love both your avatar and sig. We must share artistic tastes

I'm OK with how artillery works. It is most effective when used to open an attack on a stack of units, so that's pretty on point. The inability to bombard enemy units directly is compensated for by collateral damage, imo. The almost guaranteed loss of attacking artillery is perhaps unrealistic, but it's probably necessary. Changing them over to bombardment only and retaining collateral damage (which is definitely realistic, imo) would make them too powerful, imo. Given how tough it can be to take a well-defended city, I think the balance works in the end.

It would, however, be nice if you could get a 'garrison' promotion for artillery that allowed it to bombard enemy units from within a city it is defending.

 

[LlamaCat]

"Bombarding a city can reduce the city's defense modifier, and produce collateral damage to units in the city."

No, bombarding does not cause collateral damage to units, it only reduces defenses. This is an important point because it means if you want to cause collateral damage to a stack of units, you are sending the artillery into the fight and can lose the unit to the fight. The bombarding action means your unit is completely safe and will not die.

edit: in BTS they did add a limit to collateral damage caused by these types of units.

 

[Breunor]

I think posters here have to look at artillery in the total game context, not by itself.

First, by artillery, are people including ancient artillery and cannon? Its true that MODERN artillery (probably can be defined by the French artillery innovations inthe late 19th century) would be accurately depicted by shooting at a distance out of harm's way because of its range and howitzers and morers's abiltiy to fire using high trajectories. However, it is not true for earlier artillery unless they had a huge tactical advantage (height advantage). For instance, in combat, cannon used to be put in the front often to avoid hitting the sides own troops. For isntance, see the cannon deployemnt in the US Civil War, at Waterloo, by Gustavus during the 30 Years' War. Saying that cannon fired from a long distance out of harm's way is just inaccurate, although it did happen occasionally.

Artillery older than cannon rarely had a large impact on field battles, they pretty much only impacted seige warfare. The Romans occasionally used long distance artilelry, but for most purposes, it was a very minor thing. the Byzantines probably are the one power that used artillery well in battle.

So, artillery bombarding troops at a distance is realistic only really for modern artillery. Of course, in game terms, its hard to say how far 'distances' are.

More important, in game terms, you can't 'fix' artillery until you fix normal combat. Since defenders have the advantage in picking rocks-paper-scissors, something has to be done to give attackers a chance.

For instance, take two opposing stacks of two swordsmen, two axemen, two archers, two spearmen, and two horse archers. The attacker will get massacred even if the defender didn't get a defensive bonus, as they always get the advantageous defender. Although this isn't a realistic stack, you all know what I mean.

My view is that the artillery system restores attacking ability. However, it is done poorly. Why? For a few reasons. One, using artillery to solve problems especially in pre-cannon times is totally unrealistic. Second, it isn't even a good game mechanic. Take the example above. Now, give 2 or three artillery units, who suicide, and the attacker iand defender may be about even. But, of course, we take more than that. Take 5 or 6, and the attacker wins. Indeed, artillery is now way overpowered.

But I think it is better than 'bombardment', which is even more unrealistic (pre-modern times), and would make artillery even more overpowered. I think of CIV III largely as a game where I gave the computer huge bonuses while I built my tech up to get artillery and then could win battles with practically no casualties. Even for modern times this is crazy.

At least with suicide artillery, you have to PAY to keep buying the artillery units. With invincible stacks of long range killers, you build your artillery and then win the game, at least against the AI if it doesn't know how to use the artillery.

So, the key points are:

Saying artillery should bombard from long-distance is hard to justify on historical arguments before modern times.

You can't fix the artillery issue without resolving the balance of attackers vs. defenders.

Therefore, I think it is hard to justify using bombardment if it makes artillery even more overpowered.

Breunor

 

[JujuLautre]

I personnaly am ok with the system right now. For two main reasons:
- the first one is stated just before by breunor. I also think that "attacking at distance"-artillery would unbalance the game too much.
- the second one is about all this question of realism: do we still speak of this game where one unit is an undefined number of soldiers/machines? Where one tile is said to be dozens, if perhaps hundreds, of kilometers? Where one combat can last more than 10 years in the ancient time? And people still have tactical issues? Come on, all this chat about artillery attacking at distance, or, like I heard some other time, bonuses that should be given if two units attack a single units from two sides, are good for wargames; for tactical war games, but not for Civ as it is now; as far as I know, we do not speak about one fight between a gunner and an artillery, we speak of a war between one gunner company (or equivalent) and an artillery pack. If both fight one year or more, both will have casualties. And the system perfectly shows that.

Oh well, I know I should not have fed the troll, but it was one time too much

 

[Suspiria]

Did they change the suicidal siege weapons in BtS?

 

[The Flame]

Yes, I do agree that it is unrealistic. A part of the attacking process that is realistic is that it causes collateral damage, which, like you mentioned, softens up the enemy. But it is unrealistic that atillery attack directly.

However, if the system you talked about was used, then it would be unfair to the opposing army since the artillery unit (or units in most cases) is constantly bombarding and dwindling their troops and they can't do anything about it. That means that their army would end up very weak and unable to succesfully fight the enemy.

Even though the system is somewhat unrealistic, it works in Civ. If they could modify the damage rate of collateral damage, then it would work better.

 

[Quintillus]

I'm scratching my head as to the way artillery is handled in Civ IV. This would apply to cannon and artillery units. We have the option to 'bombard' a city or 'attack' an enemy unit. Both of these are handled in an odd fashion:

Bombarding a city can reduce the city's defense modifier, and produce collateral damage to units in the city. This is realistic. However, you can only bombard cities and not units in the field. One of the primary uses of artillery is to 'soften-up' dug-in or fortified enemy units in the field. In fact since the passing of true siege warfae in the 18th century, cannon and modern artillery are rarely used as a 'siege' weapon, but rather are one of the cornerstones of field operations. I think that artillery units should be able to bombard ANY tile, but with a limit on collateral damage to units similiar to the way air units work when conducting airstrikes - for artillery alone should not be able to completely destroy an enemy unit.

Attacking an enemy unit directly with artillery is far too unrealistic in Civ IV. While artillery is often used (in real life) to open an attack, the firing units are in or behind friendly lines and are not subject to attack or destruction from the units they are attacking, for the most part. I would remove the ability for artillery to attack enemy units at all. As in real life, if a stack of units is wiped out in the game, the artillery could be 'killed' as well (simulating a rout or the destruction of an entire army). But the artillery should not be able to attack, destroy enemy units by iteself, and take ground or cities.

Thoughts?

Agreed. That's one of my biggest problems with Civ4. I'd much prefer if artillery worked like it did in Civ3.

I've written too much about this to want to write more right now.