Bombardment in civ4 is ridiculous

I've been on that field many a time. It is just a hill. Not exactly the best argument for being able to destroy at strategic range.

 

The problem is that you're thinking of Forts, NOT Cities.

Forts are built as defensive fortifications to protect armies and pose a strategic threat that deters attack. They're usually not very big. A stadium or arena is about the size of the largest forts.

Cities are too big to fortify with walls, towers, and gates. Instead, temporary fortifications are constructed, like trenches or ramparts, with emplacements for cannons.

So basically, defending a modern city is all about the garrison units, NOT any building. That's why it's accurate that the Walls and Castle city improvements are useless versus Gunpowder units, because by that time the city has outgrown those obsolete fortifications. And garrison units already "dig in" when they fortify. So when they're fortified, they've already constructed those temporarily fortifications, like I mentioned, so they don't need anything else.

Like I said, if a city has artillery units they can counter-battery, but if they don't, than no they can't.

 

That may be the best way to use it, but fact is you can't always do it. The enemy is not helpless, he can send out raiding parties, have agents in your army, or even enough cannon (even if he has no actual cannon unit) to damage your units. This game is abstract and so is its combat resolution.

 

So, do you always need 'big guns' rather than mobile (smaller) artillery to damage ships? I was talking about mobile artillery, like what is available in Civ IV, and you are talking about stationary artillery.

It seems like, for gameplay reasons, anything new that can damage ships would be bad for game balance. Ships are already useless enough once the opposing civ's navy has been depleted. Unless ships get the ability to bombard tiles/units, I see no reason to give cities the ability (either with stationary artillery or mobile artillery) to damage naval units.

So, ideally, I think that they should add the ability for ships to bombard improvements and units, similar to Civ III (if only to give them something to do), and also add coastal artillery as a stationary unit that can only be built on coastal cities. It would be a bit stronger than regular artillery, available at appropriate times, and capable of one counter-barrage each. You can build as many as you like, but they have -100% strength against land units, and can only bombard.

 

There is another thing that I miss in civ4, that is cruise missiles, I mean
what happened to them. Since you don not have bombardment it would be very nice to have missiels or are the civs in civ4 to brainless to make them or what.

They are essential for the game.

Look at america (in real life) they couldn´t live with out them or else they would have to stop pushing the world around.

 

I don't miss Cruise Missiles. The only one-shot weapons I liked were nukes.

I miss Radar Artillery though -- it was great because it had 2-Movement and had 2-Bombardment range (or was it 3?).

Related to Cruise Missiles, wouldn't it be great if there was like a "Cruise Missile" tech that once researched gave Destroyers and Battleships increased bombardment range by simulating refiting modern warships with cruise missiles. That would be awesome!

 

Artillery and battle ships only have a range of around a few dozen miles in real life. "Tiles" in Civ can be several hundred miles across depending on the size of your map. It would make no sense if a ship was hitting your farms from the coast because the farms could just as easily be fifty miles inland

 

Yes I agree, in civ3 i was pretty much bombarding things with great success and it was part of my style of play.

Now its ..well good for one thing and then its just a paper weight.

How could they nerf the artillery like that? I cant use artillery against my opponents out in the open unless I directly engage them. Huh? Thats absolutely rediculous.

Since when did artillery guys push their cannon across the battlefield and engage opponents in an old west style shootout?

I hope this gets fixed. The range of the rifles on a modern battleship are 20 miles btw. I studied at the greenhouse and they know all about that sort of thing.

Tiles - shmiles, its a game and that was the fun part.

 

I know how you feel. Modders please save us all!

 

That's a great strategy; simply but effective. Just outnumber the enemy 4 to 1 and you don't have any problems at all. This almost makes the game too easy really. ;p

 

Well, since you can't have 2 cities that close together without using the worldbuilder, I don't think that is a huge problem.

 

I am also slightly disappointed with bombardments. Also spy missions disappointed me a bit. I hope with a future expansion they will go more in depth in these features. The game is fine now, it's a great game, but not perfect.

 

Thougt just occured to me--old system of artillery was fine with one major change---SLOWER FIRE RATES---Bombard units should have a reload penalty of 1/2 turns depending on the unit-time period with the older units taking 2 turns to be reloaded and the modern ones 1 turn. I think battles for all intensive purposes are outside the time lines anyway.

 

I kind of like things the way they are. Artillery are crucial in this Civ as without bombarding city defenses your invasion will either fail or you'll take heavy casualities. I never used air units in the past, but now I do. The only thing that I want is for ships to be able to hurt units on the shore and in coastal cities (not destroy just hurt like air units do).

 

I agree that the bombardment model in Civ4 could be better but I also think it's an improvement over Civ3. It just wasn't realistic to be able to reduce the strength of the enemy to nearly zero and then march in with a few infantry units.

That's basically what you do now as well, but at least there's some attrition involved somewhere.

 

I see only one problem with having CivIII-like bombardment - you'd have to implement counter-battery fire as well if you want it balanced. Without that, I'd rather settle for the cIV model, since it's at least not hugely unbalanced.

edit: splellnig