Artillery

[ggganz]

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?

You are a little wrong about that. Bombard only reduces defensive modifiers. Attacking damages the unit that you attack like normal, only units in the same square get hurt slightly also.

 

[RERomine]

Whether we are talking about catapults, trebuchets, cannons or artillery, there should be a chance to damage units when you bombard defenses. The logical reason there is defenders usually are in the defenses being bombarded. Real people are going to react the same way in either case. They are going to find the best cover possible and not try to figure out if someone is shooting at them or the bunker they are in.

I would like it if modern artillery had a range greater than one. Cannons would be nice if they had a modifier when defending against certain types of units to take into account the canister aspect. There are just some things that could have been done differently in the game.

Be that as it may, I will use the units the best way I can and can live with the way they work. I don't like sacrificing a unit just to do collateral damage to a stack, but I will do it if necessary.

 

[ggganz]

Whether we are talking about catapults, trebuchets, cannons or artillery, there should be a chance to damage units when you bombard defenses. The logical reason there is defenders usually are in the defenses being bombarded. Real people are going to react the same way in either case. They are going to find the best cover possible and not try to figure out if someone is shooting at them or the bunker they are in.

I would like it if modern artillery had a range greater than one. Cannons would be nice if they had a modifier when defending against certain types of units to take into account the canister aspect. There are just some things that could have been done differently in the game.

Be that as it may, I will use the units the best way I can and can live with the way they work. I don't like sacrificing a unit just to do collateral damage to a stack, but I will do it if necessary.

Ya! There should be. But... there's not.

 

[MangoMan]

i think a part of the problem is the old Civ combat style of having a maximum of one single attacking unit, always versus the BEST counter unit on the defending stack. (IRL you can have a huge battle that includes artillary, cavalry, and infantry all at once.)

this makes it so a defending stack can always have an effective defensive counter (and you can have a "perfect" stack that can defensively counter everything), but its possible to NOT be able to attack with a counter.