Balancing the siege engine?

[SerriaFox]

anyone else find balance the siege engine hard?

I add a distance attack to my siege engine and now I think there way to powerful.

I tried adding a base retreat to the catapult like 15% and that seem almost too powerful. But the way they did siege combat in beyond the sword seem almost too weak?

Then I was thinking back over the entire series of civ from 1 to 4 plus call to power(which ain't really worthy of the name civilization), and it seemed to me that the seige engine is the only thing they keep missing at.

 

[Refar]

The way they did siege in BTS is allreay to powerful. So beefing it up again does not help

The trouble with siege - imho - is not it beeing too weak. It's the ridiculous notion, of siege engines actually having to "attack" rather than just bombard.

However, if you make them have ranged bombardment, they become invulnerable... My opinion on that matters is:
1) Siege should have range Bombard. Perhaps making it just use ranged animation is good enought.
2) The damage limit from bombardment should be pretty low - perhaps only taking away 15% to 25% before becoming unable to do more damage.
3) Sould be a little bit more expensive to build.
4) Perhaps a low chance of "breaking down" while bombarding - not more than ~15% perhaps.
5) Get flanking damage from Mounted. (Is already in BTS)

A possible way to implement this might be, using the same mechanic as now - attack with odds of retreating, giving only that mentioned low chance of breaking down - but use ranged animation to prevent it from looking ridiculous. (There is a "Use Ranged Animation" -tag within the ArtDefines... Did someone tried it on Siege ?).
The retreat odds can then be increased, and the damage limit reduced via XML.

 

[Dom Pedro II]

The way they did siege in BTS is allreay to powerful. So beefing it up again does not help

Well, I actually thought siege weapons were made more useless in BtS... They essentially just became suicide weapons. I would have to build tons of them because I would have to just hurl them at the enemy's fortifications with virtually no chance of retreat.

The trouble with siege - imho - is not it beeing too weak. It's the ridiculous notion, of siege engines actually having to "attack" rather than just bombard.

However, if you make them have ranged bombardment, they become invulnerable... My opinion on that matters is:
1) Siege should have range Bombard. Perhaps making it just use ranged animation is good enought.
2) The damage limit from bombardment should be pretty low - perhaps only taking away 15% to 25% before becoming unable to do more damage.
3) Sould be a little bit more expensive to build.
4) Perhaps a low chance of "breaking down" while bombarding - not more than ~15% perhaps.
5) Get flanking damage from Mounted. (Is already in BTS)

A possible way to implement this might be, using the same mechanic as now - attack with odds of retreating, giving only that mentioned low chance of breaking down - but use ranged animation to prevent it from looking ridiculous. (There is a "Use Ranged Animation" -tag within the ArtDefines... Did someone tried it on Siege ?).
The retreat odds can then be increased, and the damage limit reduced via XML.

In my upcoming modcomp, I've looked to rebalance siege weapons in a few ways. Here's some of the things I've added:

1) Vulnerable to capture by the enemy.
2) Limited to routes or flatland clear of forests/jungles (a la Civ3)
3) Unloading restrictions from transporting units.
4) Retaliatory bombardment - bombarding a city with siege weapons in them or buildings with the retaliation feature, will fire back and do damage to the siege weapons.
5) Extra bombard strength from hills (so obviously those will have to be roaded/railroaded hills).

And I think that a bombardment limitation like exists with airstrikes would be good to limit the amount of damage they can do. And this makes good sense... Artillery could only do so much damage before it became rather ineffective against entrenched enemies.

I think these changes will help make artillery more balanced. They won't be invincible, but they also won't be suicide units or be ineffective in softening up city defenders for your attack units.

 

[SerriaFox]

The way they did siege in BTS is allreay to powerful. So beefing it up again does not help

The trouble with siege - imho - is not it beeing too weak. It's the ridiculous notion, of siege engines actually having to "attack" rather than just bombard.

However, if you make them have ranged bombardment, they become invulnerable... My opinion on that matters is:
1) Siege should have range Bombard. Perhaps making it just use ranged animation is good enought.
2) The damage limit from bombardment should be pretty low - perhaps only taking away 15% to 25% before becoming unable to do more damage.
3) Sould be a little bit more expensive to build.
4) Perhaps a low chance of "breaking down" while bombarding - not more than ~15% perhaps.
5) Get flanking damage from Mounted. (Is already in BTS)

A possible way to implement this might be, using the same mechanic as now - attack with odds of retreating, giving only that mentioned low chance of breaking down - but use ranged animation to prevent it from looking ridiculous. (There is a "Use Ranged Animation" -tag within the ArtDefines... Did someone tried it on Siege ?).
The retreat odds can then be increased, and the damage limit reduced via XML.

The actually graphic used in game work fine, just give the cat or any siege engine an air att of x and a air range of y it looks fine. The standard graphics look fine, as they are already rangish looking.

But your right without a counter bombard function they are to invulnerable, especially late game where counter bombard tech knowlege would exist.

maybe this would work:
catapult:
retreat chance on attack 50% Because a siege engine should not move forward to attack it should not be a suicide attack. The problem with this is the way the game handle retreat means the unit does not retreat till near death making useless for follow turns.
attack power 2: because it should take a lot of attacks to where down defenders
attack damage max 25-45, it needs to be high enough to give your ax men or swordsmen a chance to attack a fortified city on a hill
range attack power 1:
range attack max 10: