Bombard, Collateral Damage, and Magic

[Fafnir13]

I feel that catapults and their kin are mostly useless in the game. This has been an opinion I've only recently cemented. Here's why.

Bombard
I used to think this was a must. All these big cities with their big percentages just demanded that I try to take them down. Problem was that it's a slow process made slower by the movement speed of the siege units. Leaves the whole stack vulnerable to counter-attack and gives the city more time to reinforce. Not good. At least siege unit do have a secondary feature.

Collateral Damage
Never used this that much until I tried a vanilla game. It's a great effect, certainly nice for softening up your opposition, but it requires you to risk the siege weapon. Either it ends up wounded or dead, both limiting its continued functionality on the battlefield. The only recourse is to have a large number of them at the beginning of the fight and to have a continuous, vulnerable train of them coming in. Waiting for more units to arrive or for them to build slows everything down, and there are much faster ways to cause collateral damage.

Magic
This is the number one reason why I don't build siege: magic does it all and better. Need to bombard? A stack of mages with fireballs can do it several tiles out. Need to dish out some collateral damage? Just whip out maelstrom, typhoon, or ring of flames. All are fairly easy to get and don't even require you to risk the unit in direct conflict. As if all that weren't enough, magic users can also easily get mobility promotions, either straight out of the gate or via picking of a weakened unit.

Possible Fixes
This isn't another thread asking for magic to get nerfed. I like how it works. I'm just thinking that siege needs to be strengthened. For instance, combine bombard and collateral into one effect. There's really no reason why siege should have to risk itself to fling rocks and fire shells at a distant city. Also, allow siege units to actually kill enemy units when they do attack, just not move in to occupy the space immediately. It is possible to saturate an area with enough shells to wipe out a regiment of troops. It's just not easy. Keeping the siege units a the same strength they are now would mean they would mostly be left with picking off wounded units like casters and priests do. Would also allow the siege units to gather xp faster and stay useful on the battlefield.
These were just some thoughts I had. I may be completely crazy and missing out on how to use them effectively and efficiently. Still, I'd wager it can be done better and faster with magic. Let me know if I'm right or not.

 

[Demus]

i like the effects, but i would limit them to the dwarven siege UU's.

 

[Fafnir13]

That would certainly make sense. Khazad don't even get mages, so they would need it most. I forget how much magery the luchuirp can do...
I'd still want some boost to the other civilization's siege equipment. Just make the dwarves to it better.

 

[Mortenart]

The Warhammer mod allows catapults and some archer units to target an adjacent square without having to launch a physical attack. At first I thought this was fantastic, and what I`d love to see in FFH, but after a few seiges I realised that they are just as useless in this scenario. I had 5 catapults and 3 Shadow warriors (archers who can target) pelting an enemy city for turn after turn, but the defenders only lost a small % of their strength each turn, and kept on healing in their own. The importance and power of archers and seige artillery REALLY needs to be looked at I think. I would also like to see bonuses for attacking from a height (ie hilltop) for archers, as this could have devastating effects on an enemy. The current mechanics seem to be missing the point, IMHO.

 

[kumquatelvis]

Frankly I think a partial fix would be to remove the mobility promotion. Or at least prevent mages, priests, and melee units from having it. Then mages aren't faster anymore, the catapults don't slow you down (everyone is slow), and recon and horsemen units are more special. Also, you should be able to haste catapults and cannons. They don't push themselves you know (well, maybe the Luchuirp ones do).

 

[bluedevil99]

Used to have similar thoughts, but I think magic and siege units are actually balanced quite nicely now. Catapults are attainable earlier than mages and the construction tech and siege workshops also provide chariots (with trade), which are extemely powerful if you have bronze/iron. I do like the idea of a later game 2-3 move siege unit and/or hastable cats.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

In my version I'm letting Archers, Siege units (excluding rams), and the most advances ships attack at range. Only marksmen can actually kill at range though, and only Khazad Siege UUs have a range of more than 1. Siege units have had their base strength greatly lowered, lost their large withdrawal chance, and been made more expensive.

The reason your units were causing so much damage is that units probably have Air Combat damage limits. You can set this to whatever you want. A value of 100 will make the ranged attacks lethal.


I also allowed RoK Soldiers of Kilmorph and Paramanders carry siege units as cargo. Considering that RoK civs can give Dwarven or Divine units a promotion that lets them cross through peaks in addition to being able to get mobility promotions siege will be much more mobile.





I proposed allowing units to bombard defenses during attacks instead of as a separate ability a month or two ago. I've been meaning to look into how to do it, but haven't gotten around to it yet. It would almost certainly require SDK changes.

 

[DuckAndCower]

Why not allow Siege units a version of Mobility at Engineering? I think the real problem with them is that they're just far too slow compared to mages. Sure, they can take walls down faster once they're there, but mages (and their fireballs) just get started so much sooner, since they reach the target city so much faster.

I realize this might take away some of the flavor of siege weapons, but I think it's a lot better to have slightly less flavor than to be nearly pointless.

 

[loki1232]

Actually the Luchuirp and teh Khazad already have uber siege engines because of their repair spell. (echantment lvl 1 + dwaren). Basically you have your stack of catapults attack the city and do damage, and then your 5 adepts can heal all of your catapults (80% of them will survive) back to full in preparation for next turn.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Khazad especially (Chirp have fireballs and Golems, which is vastly more effective).

What I think actually make the most sense as a 'good' fix for siege, is to allow them to bombard defenses from further away. Not attack them, but just let them be able to bombard further. Catapults would get two square range, and Cannons would get 3. Give you a reason to build them as support, and would let them 'keep up' with the other units you have.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Khazad especially (Chirp have fireballs and Golems, which is vastly more effective).

What I think actually make the most sense as a 'good' fix for siege, is to allow them to bombard defenses from further away. Not attack them, but just let them be able to bombard further. Catapults would get two square range, and Cannons would get 3. Give you a reason to build them as support, and would let them 'keep up' with the other units you have.

The easiest way to do this would be to give them the bombing ability rather than (or,as I prefer, in addition to) air combat. Of course, that would also mean that they could destroy improvements from a distance, but that could be a good thing.

 

[Ahriman]

In the warhammer mod, catapults can barrage and injure up to 4 units, but only to a maximum of 20% damage. They're a well designed support unit; they can knock a stack down by 20% (actually much more, since promotion bonuses are based off the current strength, not the total, so reducing by 20% also reduces all promotion and defensive bonuses by 20%) but you still need to use regular units to actually do the killing.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

That sounds like simple AirCombat ranged attacks with combat limits plus collateral to me.

 

[rocklikeafool]

So, maybe make it so the seige weapons can cause both a minimum and maxium of 20% damage. I say minimum and maxium cause that guarentees, in the XML code, that it will cause 20% damage. But also make it so that the seige units cannot kill any units. However, the stipulation is if the units bein attacked are in a city, the city must have less than 50% defense left. That way no one will complain too much bout it bein overpowered.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

There is currently no way to make a unit deal a "minimum damage" in xml. I don't think that it would be very easy to add either, nor do I like the idea.

I'm pretty sure that the units' comparative strength is used to determine how much damage in dealt in several combat rounds, much like land combat. A combat limit means that the the cannot continue to hurt an enemy more than a certain amount. A combat limit doesn't limit the amount of damage dealt, it means that combat will be cut short before the unit deals more than that percent of its strength. A combat limit of 100 is required in order for a unit to ever kill its rival. A limit of 20 would mean that the targets would always kee[ at least 80% of its strength.

Collateral damage may be handed a little differently. It can be either ranged or direct.

 

[rocklikeafool]

There is currently no way to make a unit deal a "minimum damage" in xml. I don't think that it would be very easy to add either, nor do I like the idea.

WAT?! You make your own tags. It can't be too hard. And, btw, I believe there are a few units in the Warhammer mod that have minimum damage. I may be wrong; if so, pardon me. But if I remember correctly, there are in that mod.

Jus so ya know, the entire purpose is to make absolutely sure that the bombardment causes 20% damage.

 

[Psychic_Llamas]

The Warhammer mod allows catapults and some archer units to target an adjacent square without having to launch a physical attack. At first I thought this was fantastic, and what I`d love to see in FFH, but after a few seiges I realised that they are just as useless in this scenario. I had 5 catapults and 3 Shadow warriors (archers who can target) pelting an enemy city for turn after turn, but the defenders only lost a small % of their strength each turn, and kept on healing in their own. The importance and power of archers and seige artillery REALLY needs to be looked at I think. I would also like to see bonuses for attacking from a height (ie hilltop) for archers, as this could have devastating effects on an enemy. The current mechanics seem to be missing the point, IMHO.

Hehe you should really post this kind of feedback in the Warhammer forum too this is really helpful. thanks

 

[rocklikeafool]

Hehe you should really post this kind of feedback in the Warhammer forum too this is really helpful. thanks

Well, your mod doesn't seem to have a problem with this particular thing. Frankly, I like most of wat you guys do. If I have a problem, I'll post on it. But I'll try to give better feedback in any case.

 

[Uberness]

An idea to make casters less spammable compared to catapults which need to heal after dealing damage, give a % chance to become fatiqued from using certain strong spells, such as ring of flame, fireball, tsunami and the like, once fatiqued, they can't use the spell until they recover.

Could also make it so high priests and archmages and heroes with those spells won't become fatiqued while using them.

For making siege better, bombarding from a couple tiles sounds like it could be useful and unique, if it did much reduced damage and couldn't move after.

And the idea of adding mobility to siege at engineering sounds good too, but only if engineering is toned down abit.

 

[smusebaer]

And it would ne realy cool, if you need to set up a siege unit. so it need a full round to be able to move after Bombartment.