Bombardment in civ4 is ridiculous

[Arnaldur]

Ok, I am an expirienced civ player. I have playd the game for about 11 years.

I've created many scenarios in this game, for civ2 I made for example the vietnam war and in civ3 I made many thing, for instance wwII in great details where you could chose to play as one of many civs, finns, nazis, bulgary, jugoslavia. I also made afghanistan war (war on terror )were you could either play as america or the talibans and many more. To win as america you would have to capture Osama, Mullah Omar and Ayman in 50 turns. (taliban influence lies deep into Pakistan).

I just want to say that there are many great new things about civ4, like religion and great people. The game is very good and I've been waiting for it for a very long time.

But there are also some things that I am deeply disapointed with.

Bombardment in civ4 is ridiculous. Why can't artillary bombard roads, mines and city improvements like in civ3. The only thing you can bombard is the city defence. This failure makes artillery useless. You should be able to protect your coastline from enemy ships with artillery bombardment. You should be able to bombard enemy cities to ruble if you feel like to. You should be able to capture enemy artillery and use it your self.

There is this same failure with the ships, they can just bombard city defences. They can’t even bombard other ships, ridiculous.
Bombers and other flight units can just bombard cities defences and so lower their defence bonus. When the defence bonus is zero they can’t bombard the city even if there are still units in it. It is essential for the game to be able to destroy cities improvements.

If you think about this defence bonus in the cities that you are lowering with bombardment you will have to think about what this defence bonus is. Defence bonus is nothing else than city improvements and the bigger the city is or the more improvements it got the higer the bonus should be. Thats why it is just absurd not to be able to destroy the improvements.

There are other things at well.
What happened to tactical nukes and guerillas for instance. Civil war is something that almost every naition has been through, so to leave it out of civ4 is just heartbreaking.

I could go one for many pages but I will leave it here for now.

Moderator Action: I merged your 3 threads into one. Please don't post the same post in multiple forums. -- Thunderfall

 

[Arthurianite]

I was also a bit dissapointed and surprized that you could'nt bomb other tiles and such.

 

[warpstorm]

Why are you cross posting?

 

[carlosMM]

me no care why he is crossposting - he's right! it IS absurd!

How come I cannot BOMBARD people, buildings, etc - except for the part that gives defence boni?
wierd...... I must imagine the cannonballs fly curves around civilians, avoid buildings, especially city walls and run down the road after.... after what, really?

 

[dh_epic]

Artillery can still attack, and so can ships, so that's what happened to the Civ 3 bombard. You can no longer bombard from a distance where you're basically invincible. You have to get in range where they can fight back. They probably did it because invincibility was messing with game balance.

This is a contraversial choice, but artillery is far from useless. I'd say that artillery might even be overpowered.

1. Taking down city defences
2. Collatoral damage
... are both absolutely vital to soften things up for your major force. If you don't use either of these, you're setting yourself up for huge losses.

 

[MrCynical]

I believe the changes to bombardment were made to balance the game, since in Civ 3 bombardment was ludicrously overpowered. A few attacking units and a load of artillery could easily destroy a civ, and even when the random number generator gave you a bad streak, it wouldn't matter much.

I think that bombardment in Civ 4 is probably more balanced in terms of the overall game, but it has to be said that it feels wrong. It makes no logical sense to send in suicide artillery at the start of a battle. I'd have thought it would be better to keep the civ 3 system, but maybe make them able to do less damage. Say for instance no unit could be bombarded below half health, artillery would still be useful, but you'd still need a decent force to finish the enemy off.

 

[Dunedein]

Uh, well bombers can still attack units in cities using the "air strike mode". This bombards the units in the city to having one unit left.

Next time, actually check before you critique the game.

 

[Paalikles]

agreed with dh_epic. Though it may seem silly to not be able to bombard anything but cities (I was very frustrated when I tried to have my cannons bombard the British frigates in the American Revolution.)

But it makes warfare more tricky now - the bonus system means that combo forces + combo bonuses are better than just sending 50 artillery to destroy almost all resistance. I had a game (featured in SOTD) where I used artillery to the fullest, thanks to interesting reads in civ3 strategy forum. After a while, repeating the same way of waging warfare is boring.
This new way creates greater variation IMO - making room for more replayability than such games as AOE, or RON even eek: )...

 

[THARN]

Was thinking this very thing- perhaps not for catapults- but artillery should be able to destroy roads and barrage unit stacks.

 

[AER]

But there are also some things that I am deeply disapointed with.

Bombardment in civ4 is ridiculous. Why can't artillary bombard roads, mines and city improvements like in civ3. The only thing you can bombard is the city defence. This failure makes artillery useless.

Artillery is not totally useless - they can still reduce the defense of a city, which is very useful. But, I definitely agree that it was more fun when artillery could bombard everything, and they should bring that back!

You should be able to protect your coastline from enemy ships with artillery bombardment.

Agreed - but is there historical precedent for this?

You should be able to bombard enemy cities to ruble if you feel like to. You should be able to capture enemy artillery and use it your self.

There is this same failure with the ships, they can just bombard city defences. They can’t even bombard other ships, ridiculous.

Well, I don't think ships should really be able to bombard other ships. Why not just attack? Why should you be able to get around the combat system?

Bombers and other flight units can just bombard cities defences and so lower their defence bonus. When the defence bonus is zero they can’t bombard the city even if there are still units in it. It is essential for the game to be able to destroy cities improvements.

This is not true! You can bombard ground units with air units. That is why there are two icons for bombardment on air units - one attacks city defenses, the other bombards ground units. The max damage is 1/2 of the ground unit stack's health.

If you think about this defence bonus in the cities that you are lowering with bombardment you will have to think about what this defence bonus is. Defence bonus is nothing else than city improvements and the bigger the city is or the more improvements it got the higer the bonus should be. Thats why it is just absurd not to be able to destroy the improvements.

Agreed.

There are other things at well.
What happened to tactical nukes and guerillas for instance. Civil war is something that almost every naition has been through, so to leave it out of civ4 is just heartbreaking.

How do tactical nukes and guerillas relate to civil war? I don't mind the omission of guerillas - they seemed like a pointless unit anyway, only added to give Warriors an upgrade path. Tactical nukes were nice though

With artillery, we traded these traits:

1) Ability to damage units
2) Ability to damage improvements
3) Vulnerability to capture by the enemy

For these:

1) Ability to participate in combat
2) Ability to cause collateral damage

It might actually be an even trade, if not for the fact that artillery units' combat values generally suck compared to other units of their era. What good is the collateral damage of a 5.0 strength Catapult vs. a stack of 15.0 strength cavalry? Does the reduction to 14.9 strength really affect their chances?

Collateral damage could be really good. It could be a great way to break up tough stacks. Maybe if they moved Canons down the tech tree (I would move them all the way to Gunpowder) and increased the attack values of artillery in general (by a small amount.)

 

[vodkamattvt]

Absolutely there was artillary on the coasts protecting the coastline from ships. All the way from when cannons were used all the way up to world war 2 and beyond. I remember visiting the artillery that protected San Franciso during WW2 a couple years ago. The Spanish built forts all over their important city coasts to bombard ships during the 1500-1800's.

 

[DrPep]

Collateral damage could be really good. It could be a great way to break up tough stacks.

Actually it's already excellent! I usually make a lot of bombarding units and stack them with big group of normal units. When I want to conquer a city, the odds are often very much in favor for enemy (like 8.0 against 17 or something). After bringing down citys defensive bonus, I "sacrifice" the bombarding units by attacking the city with them. Many may be lost, but defenders also lose a lot of strenght. It's pretty easy to take the city after that...

But the whole bombarding system is quite strange... I mean, I understand low-range (cats and cannons) siege weapons could be send front line, trying to cause as much damage as possible and getting killed by doing so. But modern era artillery? noway! They are lethal even when tens of miles away. But in the other hand, the game isn't just for realism. If it was, it would be kind of boring.

 

[Arkalius]

Artillery is awesome in this game... Aside from the bombardment of city defenses, the collateral damage alone it can do to a large stack of units (often found defending cities) is priceless and can turn the tide of a battle, even if you lose the artillery. I didn't get to use my artillery much in my last war I fought simply because I could use stealth bombers and ships to do the trick much more quidkly, but I did use them somewhat and they really did the trick. Collateral damage is the most important thing you need in a city siege IMO. Without it you will take significantly more losses unless you outpace your opponent technologically by a few eras.

 

[Mujadaddy]

Artillery is awesome in this game... Aside from the bombardment of city defenses, the collateral damage alone it can do to a large stack of units (often found defending cities) is priceless and can turn the tide of a battle, even if you lose the artillery. I didn't get to use my artillery much in my last war I fought simply because I could use stealth bombers and ships to do the trick much more quidkly, but I did use them somewhat and they really did the trick. Collateral damage is the most important thing you need in a city siege IMO. Without it you will take significantly more losses unless you outpace your opponent technologically by a few eras.

Agree completely. I try to take 2 cannons and 2 riflemen (example in early industrial era) PER DEFENDER in a city, and I NEVER have any problems.

 

[JadeDragon87]

Well, they should place some kind of limit to cannons then. Or there should be some maintenance costs on such units. e.g. tanks and modern machinery need constant maintenance works. That could limit the number of powerful units, or else the player will have to lower the money spend on techs,...
I also prefered the bombard method from civ3.

 

[beefsteak]

I think the system of Civ4 makes combat much more interesting and fair.

In Civ3 what good is any kind of city-defense when you get bombarded into oblivion? It means you are forced to counter-attack or die. The conclusion is defense doesn't work as a concept. How sad.

In Civ4 you can bombard away city defense. While this increases your chances, it does not do any immediate harm either. No risk - no reward.
Then you can go in with atillery-type units inflicting collateral damage. Big difference is, you can loose units now. You can't just sit there reducing enemy cities to rubble without risking anything at all.

Air strikes in Civ4 won't take more than half a target's strength off, as far as I have noticed. Again, you can't just sit there... turn after turn... and win without risk.

Now you can argue all day about these things not being realistic. I prefer solid gameplay and balance over realism anytime.

 

[civaddict098]

I totaly agree, i hope some will make an artilery mod.

 

[Janos]

Yeah... tell that to me when an enemy player trundles up to my capital with 10 catapults and a ton of axemen and then tell me artillery is underpowered .

 

[AAjus[LTU]]

I miss Civ3 style bombardment, when you could weaken enemy in a distance. That was realistic and added more strategy. But AI could not make good use of artilery in Civ3. So it was to easy to play in single pleyer

 

[AAjus[LTU]]

I wonder what is purpose of bombarding city defense, when gunpowder units dosen't get defense bonus from city walls anyway. Gunpowder units get defense bonus only from city culture, which I belive can't be bombarded