I have a question about bombarding units. When I have a catapult, I figured out how to bombard a city.. the command appears in the command box when you have it parked next to the enemy city... My question is that I thought you were supposed to be able to bombard stacks of units as well. The bombard command is not available however, unless I am next to an enemy city.
Bombarding stacks of units
- Thread starter Dusty909
- Start date
quarthinos
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2005
- Messages
- 26
I haven't found a stack outside a city to attack with my catapults yet (cannon are coming soon!), but my understanding is that some percentage (10%? 15%?.. probably varies by unit) of the damage you do to whichever unit stepped forward to defend is also applied to the other units in the stack. Some of the promotions will increase this damage. A single catapult by itself isn't going to obliterate and entire stack, but making all the units in it take 10% damage is nothing to sneeze at. And if if do it often enough (or have barracks, theology and hereditary rule), you can stack up the promotions and make the number much bigger (+30%?).
edit: 2kgames has posted the tech poster which includes the promotions. Three promotions to a siege unit gives +50% bombardment damage (or is it 100%? not sure if the promotion percentages stack), and also +10% combat strength vs melee and gunpowder units.
edit: 2kgames has posted the tech poster which includes the promotions. Three promotions to a siege unit gives +50% bombardment damage (or is it 100%? not sure if the promotion percentages stack), and also +10% combat strength vs melee and gunpowder units.
Yeah I thought I read somewhere that you can use siege weapons defensively to weaken stacks of invading forces! What happened to this? Was it never in the game and the people mentioning this were confused or was it taken out in the late stages of the game for some reason?
The stack of doom thing is still the only way to take out a city
The stack of doom thing is still the only way to take out a city
Lorteungen
Warlord
I haven't tried, but I assume you simply attack with the catapult like you would with any other unit and the collateral damage will then be inflicted on other units in the stack. Sort of a mix between the way bombardment units worked in civ1 and civ3.
Lorteungen said:
Yeah that looks like what you have to do! Attack with siege weapon and it will do collateral damage, then hopefully you have movement pts. remaining to retreat your siege gun back into safety of town- assuming the enemy wasn't right outside your town
warpstorm
Yumbo? Yumbo!
Most arty only has one move.
Lord Shadow
General
What about ships? I've tried to bombard towns with frigates and then destroyers, but I can't find a way to do it. Just "attacking" the city doesn't work. 
KrikkitTwo
Immortal
- Joined
- Apr 3, 2004
- Messages
- 12,418
Seige weapon facts
Most Siege weapons can
1. bombard a city...result: siege weapon takes no(0) damage, +city defenses are decreased (some ships can also do this)
2. attack...result: seige weapon will take damage, possibly get killed, however most siege weapons have a high retreat chance, the attacked unit will take damage (possibly get killed) and units stacked with it will take collateral damage.
so a siege can't move back to the town if it successfully attacks a stack, but it likely only attacked the top unit and retreated...leaving a lot of the stack weaker.
Most Siege weapons can
1. bombard a city...result: siege weapon takes no(0) damage, +city defenses are decreased (some ships can also do this)
2. attack...result: seige weapon will take damage, possibly get killed, however most siege weapons have a high retreat chance, the attacked unit will take damage (possibly get killed) and units stacked with it will take collateral damage.
so a siege can't move back to the town if it successfully attacks a stack, but it likely only attacked the top unit and retreated...leaving a lot of the stack weaker.
SygmaZero
Chieftain
You guys should check out Part 4 of Sulla's Review... he goes into good example of using Catapults to attack city fortifications.
ttraider82
Chieftain
- Joined
- Oct 28, 2005
- Messages
- 14
MirvShag said:
I can confirm that you are wrong. I used them extensively to support and elephant and swordman army. When I ATTACKED with the catapult it caused significant collateral damage on the other defending units in a city. This was in a city. Maybe it doesn't happen out in the field?
Anyway, I used to catapults and reduced the defenders strength enough to get the city easily.
You cause collateral damage by attacking like you would with any other unit, move them onto the square where the enemy stack is. You usually lose the catapult by doing this, but not always, they do have retreat ability. Reading the previews I didn't think I would use them much because it seemed like throwning a unit away if it was usually going to be killed in battle. But it only took seeing one that I built by accident in action to change my mind. It is a very effective tactic to soften up a stack with a catapult or two before sending in your Elephants to obliterate it.
