Cannons > Artillary are a big jump (I think)

[digitCruncher]

Does anyone find the jump from cannons to artillery is a little nuts? I am able to one-shot cities (albiet, late-medieval cities with no defenses), but cannons have always taken 3-4 shots to damage a city that much. Furthermore, +1 range AND indirect fire means that they are infinitely more useful than cannons in city attacking in hilly and foresty areas. This means it seems perfectly viable to unlock cannons, and then jump straight to artillery, simply because muskets + knights + artillery > rifles + cavalry + cannon.

Is it just me, or do cities normally get a huge boost in defense between cannons and artillery, and the reason it seems so OP is because I am playing WELL above my difficulty level (because I wanted to try out religions without needing to min-max everything, and because I wanted the warlord difficulty achievement, and conquest, which I usually find boring and difficult.)

To put it another way, how many artillery strikes can your opponents cities withstand? Hopefully more than one

 

[Esperr]

Does anyone find the jump from cannons to artillery is a little nuts? I am able to one-shot cities (albiet, late-medieval cities with no defenses), but cannons have always taken 3-4 shots to damage a city that much. Furthermore, +1 range AND indirect fire means that they are infinitely more useful than cannons in city attacking in hilly and foresty areas. This means it seems perfectly viable to unlock cannons, and then jump straight to artillery, simply because muskets + knights + artillery > rifles + cavalry + cannon.

Is it just me, or do cities normally get a huge boost in defense between cannons and artillery, and the reason it seems so OP is because I am playing WELL above my difficulty level (because I wanted to try out religions without needing to min-max everything, and because I wanted the warlord difficulty achievement, and conquest, which I usually find boring and difficult.)

To put it another way, how many artillery strikes can your opponents cities withstand? Hopefully more than one

The whole tree has always been OP, with artillary and rockets being insane, but by that point in the game youv always got sweepers like tanks and bombers, so it all evens out.

 

[Zenstrive]

on Kings, roughly four artillery shot before my riflemen come and take the city

 

[qyll]

Of course. Dynamite has always been a key military tech in every version of CiV. Having +1 range means you can strike at cities from outside its bombardment range, so the defenders are forced to either counterattack or watch their city's health drop to 0.

 

[MaximusK]

I am actually finding the Great War Bomber quite useful for city attacks. I am using artillery less at that stage of the game.

 

[TravisATWA]

Artillery wins wars. Its one of my favorite techs. Just look at my avatar

 

[Harv72b]

There's a reason that artillery is still called "The King of Battle."

Usually by the time I get to modern era warfare I'm much more reliant on bombers to soften up cities than artillery; the arty comes in handy for the first city or two in a war, but then the rest of my units outpace it pretty quickly. I haven't had a G&K game last through stealth bombers yet, but in vanilla if you had a decent tech advantage over the AI you could drop a city to 1 HP with a single stealth. I suppose rocket artillery could do that as well, but I generally thought the aluminum was better spent on stealth bombers & modern armor.

 

[digitCruncher]

Weren't wars in that era slow bloodbaths though (I am talking about pre-tank wars, based around the early-industrial / late Renaissance)

Ideally, cannon come between muskets and rifles, artillery at GW infantry, and bombers come into power with tanks (for additional movement and blitz tactics). That is what I think the ideal should be, so artillery shouldn't be that powerful because 'they were that powerful in RL'. Ultimately, this isn't a thing about GW Bombers being the better modern era siege unit ... we are talking about the industrial era here (and, technically, if your nation is otherwise Renaissance except for artillery, I would classify this as Renaissance era warfare)

Surely muskets+art shouldn't be always better than rifles+cannon?

 

[Harv72b]

Surely muskets+art shouldn't be always better than rifles+cannon?

In nearly all cases, the advantage in any engagement goes to the side which can accurately fire first. Artillery out-ranges musket, cannon, or rifle...in the game as well as IRL.

Until the advent of tanks & effective air power, artillery truly did rule the battlefield. While cannon were almost as dominant in their day, the shorter range left them far more exposed to counterattack than artillery ever was (at least until radar-controlled counter-battery fire & air-launched smart weapons came along).

 

[Draskar]

Cannons in Civ 5 covers 400 hundred years of cannons.
A new unit between cannons and artyllery is difficoult to add with the current tech tree and era progression.
Maybe some promotions unlocked at a pair of techs for the cannons can do the trick.

PS musket + arty must be fixed imho...

 

[anandus]

Maybe cities should get an extended range with artillery (or a later tech)?

 

[smallfish]

To put it another way, how many artillery strikes can your opponents cities withstand? Hopefully more than one

You try going up against a 200+ def city with artillery alone and see how far that will get you.

 

[Vidszhite]

Does anyone find the jump from cannons to artillery is a little nuts? I am able to one-shot cities (albiet, late-medieval cities with no defenses), but cannons have always taken 3-4 shots to damage a city that much. Furthermore, +1 range AND indirect fire means that they are infinitely more useful than cannons in city attacking in hilly and foresty areas. This means it seems perfectly viable to unlock cannons, and then jump straight to artillery, simply because muskets + knights + artillery > rifles + cavalry + cannon.

Is it just me, or do cities normally get a huge boost in defense between cannons and artillery, and the reason it seems so OP is because I am playing WELL above my difficulty level (because I wanted to try out religions without needing to min-max everything, and because I wanted the warlord difficulty achievement, and conquest, which I usually find boring and difficult.)

To put it another way, how many artillery strikes can your opponents cities withstand? Hopefully more than one

In my latest game on Emperor, it would take 2 arty strikes to bring cities into red health, might take 3 to put it into "take with a warrior" range. Now, of course, Rome was behind me in tech, but he did have some 45-strength cities. Arty is pretty ridiculous, you barely even need rifleman. Can even use lancers or knights to take cities once you have Arty.

 

[smallfish]

Anyways, the big jump isn't that there is a large historical gap, its that artillery doesn't maul squishy Infantry units anymore.

They need to fix that.

 

[Vidszhite]

You try going up against a 200+ def city with artillery alone and see how far that will get you.

I have never seen cities with defense higher than 120, but then again, my games rarely drag on that long.

Anyways, the big jump isn't that there is a large historical gap, its that artillery doesn't maul squishy Infantry units anymore.

They need to fix that.

Artillery was kind of OP before, with how it could maul just about EVERYTHING that wasn't a tank that was out of its range. Now it's actually kind of balanced, since it demolishes cities, but you need to actually use your army to advance. Artillery is good for softening up a defending force before an attack, not so much killing every last soldier.

 

[smallfish]

I have never seen cities with defense higher than 120, but then again, my games rarely drag on that long.

I have, and given the crazy science rate higher difficulty AIs tend to out tech (Immortal/Deity), they come a lot sooner.

With Bomb Shelters.

e: Basically 40-60 def cities are late Renaissance/early Industrial stuff. The really modern/atomic stuff gets into the 100+ range. The Information era brings them to 200+

 

[Vidszhite]

Ah. See, I play Emperor, so I haven't experienced that yet.

 

[wobuffet]

Artillery was kind of OP before, with how it could maul just about EVERYTHING that wasn't a tank that was out of its range. Now it's actually kind of balanced, since it demolishes cities, but you need to actually use your army to advance. Artillery is good for softening up a defending force before an attack, not so much killing every last soldier.

 

[Ajuga]

I do think that it could be balanced better.

Give the cannon a range of 3 but do not give it indirect fire.
It's a bit more effective and the gap is smaller, yet without indirect fire you still have to get inside the bombardment range half the time.
Positioning becomes a lot more important, find some hills and shoot down to the city.

It makes sense both in gameplay and realism.

 

[CYZ]

I do think that it could be balanced better.

Give the cannon a range of 3 but do not give it indirect fire.
It's a bit more effective and the gap is smaller, yet without indirect fire you still have to get inside the bombardment range half the time.
Positioning becomes a lot more important, find some hills and shoot down to the city.

It makes sense both in gameplay and realism.

Doesn't make that much sense for realism. Let's be fair, trebuchets had a pretty big range. The rangegap between cannon-artillery is much larger than trebuchet-cannon.

Anyway, it makes sense for gameplay somewhat. But I think artillery is meant to be a gamechanger. It was in the real world. Just like the Ironclad for example.