Artillery?

[RocknOats]

Here's another of my rookie mistakes(possibly). I NEVER use any artillery type unit. Any time I capture some I immediately disband them. Are they really worth the cost? I've read that people stack them with their offensive units but I never bother, seeing that I like to save a little cash here and there. I think I do ok, even tho I hate seeing my off. guys picked on. Some people here rave about their use, what's the opinion out there?

 

[Renata]

They're wonderful, imo. 50 artillery, used right, can be worth 100 tanks.

Renata

 

[billindenver]

Originally posted by RocknOats
Here's another of my rookie mistakes(possibly). I NEVER use any artillery type unit. Any time I capture some I immediately disband them. Are they really worth the cost? I've read that people stack them with their offensive units but I never bother, seeing that I like to save a little cash here and there. I think I do ok, even tho I hate seeing my off. guys picked on. Some people here rave about their use, what's the opinion out there?

It really depends. You might be far enough ahead in tech that you don't need them. In my games though, I never am. I might have cavalry, but they have riflemen, or I might have tanks, but they have infantry. If you have tanks against rifles, OK, or if you have modern armor against infantry, OK, skip the artillery. However, if you have tanks facing infantry in a size 20 city, you're going to lose a lot of tanks before the city falls unless you reduce the city size down and reduce the hp's of the defending units.

Check out the combat odds calculator.
http://www.civfanatics.com/civ3combatcalc.html

A veteran tank against a veteran infantry fortified in a metropolis will lose 70% of the time. If you bombard the city down to size 6, and knock every defender down to 1hp, you will win 95% of the battles. That means more tanks survive to attack twice on the same turn, meaning more elites. It also means much less chance of losing an elite unit, thus a better chance for Great Leaders.

I never used to use arty either, til I was stuck in a game where I had no oil and the enemy had infantry. With arty, I was able to pound away at his cities, and finish off the weakened defenders with infantry or cavalry. Just using cavalry with no bombardment would have been impossible. I would have had to have hundreds of cavalry attack on the same turn, losing 95% of them, then having to rebuilt my whole army before tackling the next city.

 

[Zcylen]

a wise general knows the importance of artillery
in my current game, Im in ahead in the score but opnly because of the culture points in fact my army sucks.
I had to declare war on the chinese (they have coal) so I sent an army, 40 cavalry 20 rifleman and 25 artillery.

by the moment the last artillery was done, every military unit inside the enemy city had their health bar in red
I took 4 cities and only lost 5 units

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by RocknOats
I NEVER use any artillery type unit. Any time I capture some I immediately disband them.

Nowadays, I disband them immediately after I capture them. However, there was a time that like to have at least 200 artilleries in every game. They are my favorite weapon in civ3; for more information about them, read this article.

 

[Kaiser_Berger]

I like to use them when I get the oppurtunity. Theres just something oddly amusing about moving a profusely large stack of artillery around with an infantry army or two guarding it, just slowly carving your way through your opposition.

 

[Greyhawk1]

I find war is an exercise in who can keep their units in the field the longest. If you can tip the attrition rate for your enemy over the attrition rate you have you will always win in the end. Artillery is the key to this since it wont move out of its square like a dumb idiot whenever it wins a battle and exposing itself to an immediate counterattack - one of the dumbest things in the game in my view.

I never use 1 movement units to attack, even offensive units like Longbowmen (which I rarely build) as they just wander off into the wild blue yonder whenever they win a battle

I'm also pretty mystified why people dont rate Ships much in this game. A stack of Destroyers pounding enemy cities will turn them into rubble safely offshore until they develop an effective defence. Always useful if you basically want to march your guys downtown without much trouble from enemy units.

I generally have 2 defensive units and an Artillery unit in a stack. Stacking mobile units seperately.

Oh yeah - Artillery sounds greeeaaat with a subwoofer too

 

[RocknOats]

Next game I start I will give them a run. It can't hurt. this game amazes me with how much I've missed and still had a great time doing it. Not many games like that. Also I wanna hear my sub-woofer!

 

[Redvane the Fox]

I'd say keep them - the captured ones even if you don't build ones of your own - and put them in your frontier cities in case you're attacked. The free shot arty gets at an attacker has saved my bottom on more than one occasion.

They are slow to move around as part of an invasion but I always use them in later eras to wear down infantry defenders before sending in the tanks - your invasion force creeps like a slow blanket of death across the lands of your rival civ but you're pretty much unstoppable. However as Greyhawk mentions for costal cities parking a couple of destroyers and an aircraft carrier off the coast and bombarding the hell out of a city for a couple turns whilst your army arrives works just as well and your navy is a bit more manoeuvreable :flamedevi

 

[RocknOats]

Moonsinger, I read your article, and I think I will definitely implement them in a tough spot. They would give me an edge when I have to really pound out a victory, rather than starting the meat grinder.

 

[ststeven11]

It really depends on your playing style, I guess. Personally, I like them. They are great for both offense and defense.