Catapults - City Raider or Barrage promotions?

[kommie]

Hey All,

I always give my suicide catapults barrage promotions, so their suicide attempt would cause more collateral damage. When they attack they usually have a 5% of success or so, but hey, they're suicide cats.

But a thought just occured to me, would giving them City Raider promotions be better for suicide cats? Does collateral damage depend on the strength of the catapult vs the defender? If lets say a cat has no promotions at all and you suicide him into a city, would this cat cause less collateral damage than a similar suicide cat with City Raider, or even a Combat1 promo?

And if strength does effect collateral damage magnitude, would the Barrage promotion still be more beneficial in that respect? Anyone done any testing on this? I'm at work now so cant test anything (although i DO have civ installed here, )

 

[warpstorm]

You should be giving them City Raider. They are much more likely to live through the attack and not be suicide cats. I usually have cats (and later upgrade them) with level 3 City Raider after a while.

 

[Artanis]

I'll give them Barrage until 4 survive to get Accuracy (4 Accuracy Cats = instant city defense value removal). After that, it's City Raider all the way.

 

[kommie]

Im not really concerned with them surviving. Basically i want to know if a CitiRaider cat (lets say 10% to win against longbowmen), or a Barrage cat (something like 1% to win against Longbowmen) would actually do more collateral damage? Anybody know?

 

[joasoze]

I have been asking myself this aswell. Anyone have the energy to actually test this?

I always take the collateral upgrade.

 

[GIO888]

I usually use collateral upgrade, although I also tend not to suicide as well. Get's you pretty hot cannon, and Smokin' artillery.

I'll try this suicide notion with ciyt raider and see what you mean. Nice.

 

[5cats]

Ever notice that sometimes Suicide Cats cause collateral damage, but fail to damage the unit they actually attacked? It is to wonder, and laugh!

 

[warpstorm]

Well, when your stack of cats kills things directly (not through collateral damage, but directly) and doesn't die, the City Raider bonuses do pay off (and make for an awesome cannon stack later).

 

[uncarved block]

Why not do both? I try to bring at least 3-4 catapults along if I'm warring seriously (which may be a problem, but I digress), and usually split it half-and-half between raiders and barragers. The ones with city raider tend to retreat more often, but it's not an overwhelming difference. The trick is remembering to use the raiders first . . .

 

[SPQR300]

I have read the "how combat works" article, where it was explained in details. So: if you give city attack you only give bonus damage against the unit you directly attack, collateral damage is based ONLY on the base attack of the catapult and barrage. Collateral damage only damages units you dont directly attack(4 at catapult, 5 at cannon, and 6 at artillery) So barrage is much better for suicide catapults.

 

[Longpot]

I agree - I always make my Cats Barrage III - to give them the 50% collateral bonus.

Then once I've taken defenses down to 0% I just suicide them and let them tear a new one for the defenders - then bring in my attacking units (swordsmen etc.) to finish off the job.

As for only bringing 4 catapults to a fight - hmmm I tend to go with 10-20+ but then I guess that's for a conquest where I'm planning on drilling a hole down the centre of the map wiping out everything in my path

In answer to the OP - I have not tested this yet - but I am of the opinion that Barrage III would cause more collateral damage than City raider III, regardless of winning the fight or not. Although I've not seen the maths to work out if an increase in attrack str would increase collateral dmg.

For me it is about doing as much collateral as possible, having the Cat win the fight is a secondary concern (and a bonus). By increasing City Raider you're only going to increase your chances of winning that particular bout and won't have any bearing on collateral dmg....(Although you may live to fight another round and inflict another bout of collateral....)

 

[Dark Helmet]

I'd take Barrage over City Raider any day. You are going to lose units no matter what when taking a city, and you might aswell make the most of that. Tough nuts to crack can get softened up quite nicely with a couple catapults with the barrage promotion. I will leave the city raiding to maceman and pikemen. Catapults are also pretty east o replace, in my opinion (with the exception of veteran catapults).

 

[alco75]

Barrage isn't so effective against a relatively small number of uber defenders. I take Raider promotions, me.

 

[Dueck]

I'll save the promotions until the turn of combat. If the odds are hopeless against the cat, barrage. If the cat has decent odds (>10%), city raider will give you more bang for your buck. There's nothing better than winning the combat AND causing collateral damage.

 

[Thyrwyn]

I'll give them Barrage until 4 survive to get Accuracy (4 Accuracy Cats = instant city defense value removal). After that, it's City Raider all the way.

The pre-req for Accuracy is Barrage I or City Raider I, so either would accomplish this goal. Giving them City Raider I does make them more likely to win

 

[Sidhe]

Build a stack ofcats that's larger than the units in the city in question by some way and tag on four or five units with them as well and the promotions are irrelevant

 

[Artanis]

The pre-req for Accuracy is Barrage I or City Raider I, so either would accomplish this goal. Giving them City Raider I does make them more likely to win

*checks* Huh, looks like it is. I woulda sworn I had tried getting Accuracy via CR and it hadn't worked...guess I was wrong

 

[automator]

It's not an issue if you're running Theocracy and have a barracks -- make a third of your cats city raider II, a third barrage II and the remaining third raider I and barrage I. Then when you attack the city, toss a barrage or two at the city as suicides to weaken the defenses, a half-and-half to kill a unit and damage the defense (gaining experience), then kill/damage some more with the raiders before moving in with your regular forces. Can give you some seriously powerfully experienced cats.

 

[A+ombomb]

I only use suicide catapults if they have a rediculous amount of defenders, so obviously barrage is the weapon of choice.

 

[DarkFyre99]

When attacking a well defended city, I usually send in a couple suicide barrage artillery first to soften them up, then send in the remaining artillery with city raider to soften them up some more without hopefully suiciding. With luck (a lot of luck) these non-suicidal artillery will eventually have City Raider III combined with barrage III.

That way I have an extremely competent core of artillery in my army, while my new artillery comes in to replace the suicidal ones.