Catapults

[Simak]

Are these units any good? So far I've been able to conquer cities without the use of catapults. How useful are they? Being that they need an escort, I'm too afraid of losing them and having the AI use them against me, since they don't make any themselves, I noticed. Also, for the few times that I used them, they don't seem to effective. How do you target the cities walls vs. the guard inside the city. If I could target the walls of opposing cities I was trying to conquer, catapults and bombarding would be much more useful.

 

[vmxa]

Cats are very important in many games. I doubt you could win an AWE or better without them. Straight up DG or better they are very important.

I mostly use them on defense and to weaken invaders. They are helpful in pinging ships, especially in those AW games where you are at the stage that you are not making ships.

I am not likely to take them along on my efforts to take out towns as I can not afford to have that many and they are needed. Mostly I would be playing AW and using armies to attack their towns. At least during the time that cats are available.

 

[CommandoBob]

How useful are they?

Well, it depends on how you use them.

First, they are best in stacks. When you take these puppies into battle they need to be grouped together. Their range is short, only 1 tile, so they have to be adjacent to whomever they are attacking. Which in turn means they will need an escort. Spears and Archers will do fine as escorts.

Second, you will need a lot of them. Use the ones you have, but keep making more. Since catapults and the other artillery-type units cannot be improved by barracks (no veteran catapults in the game), any city can build them. So if a city is remote or fairly corrupt, the safe unit to build is one of three: settler, worker or rock-thrower.

In attacking, catapults will first target healthy (non red-lined) units inside a city. Once all the units are in the red, the city itself becomes the target, and barracks, libraries and such can be destroyed by flying chunks of granite. Population can be reduced by a catapult also. However, population reduction or improvement elimination is up to the game. You cannot control that part.

The advantage of catapults is that when you attack a city, the first units that attack are the catapults. Their job is to reduce the health of the enemy units in a city. If the city has two defenders, both veteran, you would need at least six catapults to get them into the red zone. Since some rocks will miss, you should try to bring about 10 or so. Once the defenders have one-hit point of strength left, then it is time to let the Elite attackers try to generate leaders by killing the weaken defenders. Easy battles are what you are looking for.

The job of catapults is to reduce your unit losses in attacking cities and other annoying AI units that happen to wander by.

 

[Aabraxan]

The other thing that I like about catapults (and all other artillery) is that they help me count defenders. You can't investigate a city while at war. The game automatically puts the best defender on top. So if I knock a couple of HPs off the top defender, the next-best defender will pop up. Then I know the city has at least 2 defenders. Rinse and repeat.

 

[ZzarkLinux]

And to further confuse artillery usage:

I believe that artillery with lethal bombard can receive promotions. Just look at the AW Korea game in Succession Game forum, they were generating leaders off of H'wacha. And keeping track of elite artillery is nearly impossible.

** Remember, the above fact is meaningless in 99.99 % of games, if that many. **

But more on topic:

I find offensive artillery near useless, as they slow my Knights / Cavalry / Tanks. You only need them offensively if you have few armies, or the AI is ahead in tech too much.
If you make peace with a civ, use that time to mass your fast-move units next to their territory. Then you can win any war in the first two turns...

I find that defensively, though, artillery is vital at higher difficulties.

@ Simak's bombardment question
Civ 3 Conquests changed artillery to ALWAYS HIT UNITS first. So City walls, population, improvements are hit last. This is not true in previous versions.

 

[Othniel]

I find offensive artillery near useless, as they slow my Knights / Cavalry / Tanks. You only need them offensively if you have few armies, or the AI is ahead in tech too much.

True, but on those higher difficulties, offensive artillery is absolutely critical.

On most Deity, non-highly watered 'pelago maps (i.e. maps where the tech pace is high), the AI will usually get many, many techs ahead. In those cases, you're likely to be fighting rifles with knights, or infantry (or worse!) with cavalry. Unless you have a boatload of cavalry armies, the best way to deal with this cost-effectively is a giant stack or three of offensive artillery. Even trebs can do the job, although the actual "artillery" unit is far superior.

The "artillery" unit is especially effective when you have railroads in place. You can create a leapfrog system of razing an enemy city, moving in large stacks of workers as needed to throw down rail lines, and advance your 2-range artillery just outside the next city. Combine this with stacks of cavalry/cav armies and you can rapidly blitz through any AI, any era, period.

 

[Simak]

Othniel, the tips you are giving me are pure gold, I'm sure. But as a newbie that has only advanced up to the middleages, I don't quite understand you. Maybe when I read this a few months from now, it'll make sense.

I have more questions...

1) used defensively, how are they effective? If I have two spearmen in a town and two catapults, do the catapults get free attacks like archers do prior to combat?

2)And attacking passersby? Do they have to move past (away from) the artillery for it to attack, or is just moving into its range enough? Does the catapult have to be set to something like sentry or fortify, or does simply just sitting there cause it to attack?

Thanks.

 

[CommandoBob]

Like an Archer, a catapult will throw something if their city is attacked. Like an Archer, only one catapult will respond per attack. I don't know this: should the defending AI city have both an Archer and a catapult, do both engage in a defensive attack? I don't think so. I know I haven't seen it, if that helps any.

I haven't seen catapults attack units moving by them, either. The times I have been sniped at, I think the AI unit was fortified, but, again, my memory is foggy.

 

[vmxa]

A unit needs ZoC to attack units that pass by, cav and armies and others have this trait. Bombardment units do not.

The archer and cat will not both get in a counter attack, just one per attack. Having both is useful, if two units attack.

 

[Brohz]

Defense must not be done in your cities!! Use the offensive bombard to weaken the attacking units BEFORE they reach your cities and kill them off with archers or whatever offensive unit you have at the moment (fast units are great for hit and run tactics). Place your catapults on a hill/mountain/forest in the path of the enemy, protected by fortified defensive units. Usually the wounded enemy will retreat to heal itself, of you couldnt kill it.

 

[Sweetchuck]

I usually don't build them.

Early on in the game, I'd rather use my unit costs on other units and/or projects. Now, if I'm attacked early on and I'm in a compromising position, I'll build them because I need them.

I'll build a mess of artilliary, though - when the time comes. Just not catapults.

 

[NoCreaLaVerdad]

I tend to have a load of Catapults - generally about 1/3 of my invading armies are artillery, and I never start a war without Mathematics. Then I can upgrade them to trebuchets, cannons, artillery, and not have to worry about building them later. Probably not a great strategy, but it works for me.

 

[Othniel]

Othniel, the tips you are giving me are pure gold, I'm sure. But as a newbie that has only advanced up to the middleages, I don't quite understand you. Maybe when I read this a few months from now, it'll make sense.

I'm not exactly sure what part of my post above you didn't understand, but I'll try to clarify anyway.

The gorgeous thing about artillery is that when you use it, you are not at risk of losing a unit at that moment. You're just sitting back and chucking rocks, moldy cows, or whatever else they used to throw. You are damaging the enemy from a distance.

When you are damaging an enemy from a distance, you are weakening their ability to hurt your hand-to-hand combat troops when you finally send in the boys for the kill shot. Follow me so far?

On a high difficulty level in Civ, your opponents will likely be far beyond you in techs. That means, for instance, they might have Riflemen (defense value of 5) fortified in their cities. If you are far behind in techs, you might be fighting them with knights or Medieval Infantry (attack value of 4).

Now, in Civ, the defenders get some pretty significant combat modifiers or boosts. For instance, a defender who is fortified receives a +25% bonus to their defense rating when they are attacked. If you do not know much about combat modifiers in Civ, I encourage you to read up on them, either in the manual or in the threads here at CFC. (Sorry, I don't have a link to one at the moment).

What this all adds up to, is that in the example I gave--opponent has fortified Rifle, you have a knight--you WILL lose the large majority of the battles if you attack directly. The odds are stacked heavily against you. And when you are losing tons of units, you are being weakened and your attacks are not "cost-effective". In other words, you are getting slaughtered for not much gain. Not a good plan for world domination.

So, to even up your odds, roll up a large stack of artillery-type units and bomb the heck out of that Rifleman and the other six Rifle units the AI has in that city (the AI loves defensive units ). If you can, using artillery from a distance, "red-line" all the defenders i.e. reduce all the defenders to just one hit point apiece, you have just greatly increased your odds of winning. More importantly, you probably won't lose nearly as many units in doing so.

Once all the defenders are red-lined, or nearly so, send in the hand-to-hand combat troops, and take the city. Rinse and repeat across the map. The AI is very, very vulnerable to this tactic because they make a classic tactical mistake: they do not concentrate their forces onto a single target. They fight piecemeal instead, which is a great way to die. As the human, you can concentrate your forces, and that is a huge, game-breaking advantage.

Hope that helps. Let me know if I need to clarify further, or if I totally failed to answer your question at all.

 

[Rodrig0]

I only use cats when I'm going early against greece or carthage, or trebs against netherlands, in case we're even with techs. For all other games, I wait for arties. In the early ages I'd rather build mounted units, but once in the industrial, when I have more cities and the core ones are enough to build a decent army, I'd leave the middle/useless cities building arties. I've been tempted to go back to the easy days of attacking only with cavs, but the losses againt infantries are discouraging.

 

[Flak509]

I usually use catapults, mostly for defence but ill drive them out to take important cities too, they give you less losses and that helps to keep the war going.

 

[Theov]

They're too slow for land attacks.
They kick major butt when invading another continent. It is invaluable in blitzkriegs / short wars.

 

[darski]

As soon as I get Maths, I start my coastal cities on catapults. The AI will often turn their little galleys back without offloading if they have taken hit points.
I like my first build in a city to be a worker but when growth won't happen, I get a quick 'pult and then my worker can be built.

I like pults and on up to full arty. They have saved my bacon on several occasions.

 

[Snarkhunter]

I usually don't build too many of them, solely because I get to trebs too quickly & am not ready to war before then. but I do build them early & as often as I can; if my timetable is delayed, I'll willingly invade with a stack of them as city-reducers. In fact, I generally won't start a war without a stack of arty of some kind being handy.

kk