Civ3 style artillery - possible?

[Exel]

Is it possible to mod in Civ3 style artillery units that could not engage in melee combat (captured if attacked directly) but would still have the bombardment capability? Is it at all possible to separate combat and bombardment strenghts and/or can melee combat be prevented with other unit features?

I ask because I don't like the new artillery system and frankly don't understand why Civ4 had to change that aspect of the game from Civ3 - after all it was one of greatest innovations of Civ3 combat-wise and it was a very playable and balanced system.

 

[Gungalley]

Didn't play Civ 3. Dun know what its like. But i don't like the current arty system either. I don't like suicide arty. Arty should have been like planes in civ 4. And let plane intercept = counter battery fire.

 

[Exel]

Didn't play Civ 3. Dun know what its like. But i don't like the current arty system either. I don't like suicide arty. Arty should have been like planes in civ 4. And let plane intercept = counter battery fire.

In Civ3 artillery had 0 attack and defence (that is strenght in Civ4 terms) but had a separate bombardment factor. Thus, artillery units could not attack or defend in melee combat, and if they were attacked, they were captured by the enemy. They could attack the enemy with ranged attacks 1-2 tiles away though. They also had "first strike" and "zone of control", meaning that they would automatically fire on the enemy if its stack was attacked or an enemy unit moved adjacent to its location. Naval ships had the same system, but they also had normal attack and defense factors too, allowing them to engage in regular combat as well.

 

[lionheart]

I agree with you, Exel.. The artillery used in CivIV is hardly worth building anymore.. You can't use it to bombard city defenses and it's practically useless.. I prefer to use ships to bombard enemy cities and in the modern age, whenever there's a war, I bombard the defenses with planes and bombers..

Seeing as how the ships have a certain amount of bombard value, I don't think it'll be too hard to modify the artillery.. Unfortunately I don't understand a thing about how to mod this game (CivIII was a lot easier in that respect..), so I'll have to wait till someone comes up with a way to do it for us..

 

[Chieftess]

I build them - catapults atleast. It should be as simple as editing a few XML files to make them bombard like bombers do (with limited range, of course).

 

[Crossbowman]

Civ 3 artilleries had advantages, an civ 4 ones too. What I think is that they should be mainly like in civ 3, but they should get some weak defense. The defense could be strange, like they can only attack with first strikes.

 

[McBierle]

i really miss the possibility to to bombard units near the cost with ships

 

[Dom Pedro II]

I agree with you, Exel.. The artillery used in CivIV is hardly worth building anymore.. You can't use it to bombard city defenses and it's practically useless.. I prefer to use ships to bombard enemy cities and in the modern age, whenever there's a war, I bombard the defenses with planes and bombers..

Uhhh... check again... you can definitely use artillery and other siege weapons to bombard city defenses and reduce them. They work exactly like the ships do.

I would hardly say that Civ4 siege weapons are useless... really, they're ridiculously overpowered. They're tough on attack against cities with their promotions and they reduce a city's "defense" as well. I've sent ONLY artillery against cities and captured and held them.. this is just plain stupid frankly.

Siege weapons are support and should have no ability to act as a primary attack weapon like in Civ2 and now in Civ4.

 

[McBierle]

You could weaken the aris in the aspect of collateral, as it is now, they damage up to 8 units in the stack upto 70%....

 

[tdb]

I agree with this. Artilleries being long range weapons, it's just ridiculous that when it attacks, the enemy hits it back. However, I do like the collateral damage - It makes capturing cities a lot easier as you don't have to win a dozen defenders against 1:2 odds. My suggestion would be to give them a serious defense reduction, but make them able to team with other units. It might also be nice if other units could do this too - like two warriors combined having a strength of 4. Maybe add some kind of damping factor with each additional unit, like the second one contributes 80% of its strength, third one only 60% and so on until more than five wouldn't have any additional effect. This would much more closely reflect real life. If you and your enemy both have one troop of equal strength, you both have an equal chance if winning. However, if the enemy has one troop and you have ten troops of half that strength, it's likely that you won't completely lose anything. With the current Civ4 rules, you'd probably lose 2 or 3 troops before downing the enemy.

 

[Matches10]

I am currently thinking of a modification to seige units that would accomplish something similar. There is a post on it somewhere but essentially all seige units will in theory be given a "strike" capability similar to that of fighters. (Reduce strength of one unit in a stack). It's mostly for realism purpose because it seems kind of silly to have the seige units just be suicide machines.

Gameplay shift will be to instead of rushing seige units to sacrifice into heavily defended cities only to perish, rushing them to get ENOUGH of them on the battlefield to cause enough damage. The "barrage" method will still be available and I hope to somehow give them a penalty when defending.

 

[Ranbir]

I liked using the artillery as city defences. Or when an enemy army tries to go past my fort. What happens is the artillery would automatically bombard the enemy unit. Which really makes sense. If you tried to walk past a fort, most likely they'd make sure you do it under artillery fire.

If someone can make Civ 3 artillery, with auto bombard when attacked (in a city) it would be most appreciated.

 

[Colonel Kraken]

That's right. Defensive bombard. That is missing from Civ IV. :doh:

Wow, I find more and more "fun" elements that were not carried over from Civ III. Very unfortunate.

 

[WildWeazel]

Here's an idea: Give them the barrage ability, low strength, no attack, and a ridiculous bonus vs cities.

 

[Exel]

- Artillery (including ships) should be the only unit that can cause collateral damage
- Artillery should be able to target both city defenses and units with its ranged attack
- Artillery should excert ZOC and have the ability to defensive bombardment
- Artillery should not be able to attack directly or defend itself from attack
- Artillery should not be able to destroy units

A cookie for the one who manages to code this in.

 

[777]

Artillery in cIV is quite different that in Civ 3 but it's not useless like someone had stated in this thread.

Only fool will attack against +60% city defence, it's suicide even for as an example tank vs. musket unit (or what the heck was first gunpowder unit). And then if it's on hills and has +60% defense bonus, I'll say forget it.

Plus artillery has collateral damage so it's worthfull to send it even to suicide mission to weaken units inside city and then you an wipe 'em with beter units and with better changes

Ok, I'll get bit of off-topic but I think it would be quite hard task to mod civ 3 kind of artillery. The system just doesn't work with that way.

 

[shackleton]

Well, I'm very keen on making this change. I want to make a system very similar to the bomber/fighter system, but for artillery (and limited range of course).

I have to go out in a bit, but I've been poking around in the XML.

units\civ4unitinfos.xml

Making artillery a 1 range aircraft seems to be possible. Possible side effects:
1) Artillery intercepting aircraft. Thisi cna be tweaked so it becomes impossible, however it's kind of nice because it would allow artillery to "intercept" other artillery. Can tweak the numbers so that later on, catapults intercepting bombers get pummeled, but no obvious way to make it so that catapult can't intercept bombers at all. But kind of cool anti aircraft gun thing.. will have to see how that works out.
2) It might make it possible for artillery to rebase similar to bombers. Or it might not, since unit will still be land domain rather than air.

Will try it out when I get back home

A more elegant approach would be to set up a new fighter/bomber system for artillery.

units\civ4missioninfos

This XML suggests that this would be possible. However, this seems to be just the control of the button, and what actually occurs is described in another xml. I didn't find what xml this is. Here's the reference I think is appropriate though:

<EntityEventType>ENTEVENT_AIRPATROL</EntityEventType>

If someone finds where these entityevents are described, let me know

 

[shackleton]

By the way, if you did want artillery to be able to destroy improvements at a range (I don't personally), I bet it would be possible via those entity events + mission infos

 

[Exel]

Plus artillery has collateral damage so it's worthfull to send it even to suicide mission to weaken units inside city and then you an wipe 'em with beter units and with better changes

Worth while maybe, but that's not the way artillery is supposed to work. They are long-range support units. They are never in the front line and they certainly never charge the enemy. Kamikaze artillery is just plain stupid.

 

[NateDawgNY]

They are long-range support units. They are never in the front line and they certainly never charge the enemy. Kamikaze artillery is just plain stupid.

Agreed. I would love to see more of a Civ III style artillery with bombard capabilities.