combat without artillery

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by Cerryl
whiney little priss up,

was that necessary???

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by TheNiceOne
As a general statement I would say that if you're not using artillery at all, then you will either lose most of the time, or you're playing on a too easy setting.

I would just have to say that this is absolutely not true.

I play on emporer level (would play deity, but the one cost factor of 6/10 for all AI things being applied to great wonders makes that just a bit too unfun most the time).

On emporer, there are cases when artillery may be beneficial but in general mobility is the number one concern when choosing which units I will need. When using artillery, it basically cuts your mobility in half since they cannot move one and shoot one in the same turn. 90% of the time when I do have artillery, I have to make the decision not to use fire on the enemy and use more of my stronger attack units instead just so I can move the artillery forward into the cities or better defensive positions.

The functioning of artillery units continues to be one of the poorest and most disappointing features of the land combat game in civ3 but that is anothre subject all together.

I have found that I can bypass the excessively strong defender points in many cases and just starve them out or come back and mop them up later. You can kill a city on a hill that is defended by hoplites by using two settlers much easier than you can kill it using two catapults and the same number of other units.

 

[MSGT John Drew]

Originally posted by cracker

I have found that I can bypass the excessively strong defender points in many cases and just starve them out or come back and mop them up later. You can kill a city on a hill that is defended by hoplites by using two settlers much easier than you can kill it using two catapults and the same number of other units.

comrade,

Now what's the settler got to do with it?! Was that just an expression? I absolutely cannot imagine how two settlers can outperform two absolutely well trained artillery divisions in the seige of a city. Maybe the best purpose I can think settlers can have on a seige is to gut them, cut them up, load them unto the catapult, and do what 'cow-tapults' do. Other than that I'm all ears.

 

[Daaraa]

If you attack using Modern armour, not across a river, and the unit is in a city with 6< pop you will never need artillery support. However, I have lost a vetern (full hp) Modern Armour (attacking a city pop 10 across a river on a hill) to an elite pikeman. I will use Artillery to soften up the first defender as it will be the best but that is about it.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

what cracker is talking about sounds like combat settlers - found towns in enemy territory to starve them out and make them go broke, maybe even CF to you

 

[Sanaz]

Originally posted by cracker
I have found that I can bypass the excessively strong defender points in many cases and just starve them out or come back and mop them up later. You can kill a city on a hill that is defended by hoplites by using two settlers much easier than you can kill it using two catapults and the same number of other units.

Good to point out that there's more strategy to an attack than just throwing units quickly at the city. One tactic is to draw the attackers away from the defended city, so they are not fortified and don't receive the same defense bonus. Another is to place a city close to the defended one, so that artillery can hit from inside your town, your attackers have a place to heal and defend from, and you have a road movement bonus that your enemy doesn't (it's hard to heal when you can't move fast, and heal slowly). An attack should be well planned out before the first attacker meets a defender, or else there will be much suffering.

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by MSGT John Drew


comrade,

... I absolutely cannot imagine how two settlers can outperform two absolutely well trained artillery divisions in the seige of a city. ...

MSGT, that statement reflects part of who you are more than how the game plays.

You still the think that a catapult is a weapon that kills people, while I know it is a pretty picture wrapped around a 4 bombard factor with 1 move OR 1 shot per turn. Citizens in the towns have a defensive resistance value of 16, so that means you only have a 20% chance of causing a death even when you score a direct hit.

The key issue here is that killing the town and cities with military may not be your wisest choice. Your real objective is to deprive the enemy of the ability to build things and grow and potentially do damage to you.

You are thinking tactically wrt using artillery to bombard the enemy into the stone age and then just waltz over the weakened defenders. Sound great to me; wish the game played that way.

Settlers can plop down towns that steal the terrain from the enemy town and cut it off from connection to its empire. Sometimes one settler will do it but its amaaaazing how quickly a pop 5 or 6 hill town will starve down to 2 or 3 if you disconnect their resources and steal any nearby food sources with your boudaries that surround the new towns. If your boundary pushes right up to the town, then you can sit in your town and run out and attack straight into the enemy town but he can't do the same to you.

I would personally use a warrior, a worker, or a settler to bait the enemy out of their hill town and then kill them in the open before I would waste 30 shields on a catapult that won't work over 80% of the time if if it can be slowly drug across the map to get near the objective.

The frontal assault is your tactic of last resort.

This is a strategy game first and tactical warfare second.

Note that since I have revised my strategies for playing the game, I usually disband captured cats and cannons and on Emporer level only have the games last beyond artillery about 50% of the time.

 

[shramj]

Speaking of Artillery, I used the Civ Editor and gave Leathal Bombardment to my Artillery units and also gave them 2 moves/attacks each turn. I used to hate using artillery, but now I love it. Plus if you want you can change the range of the artillery units in the editor.

 

[DaDoo]

I don't usually use artillary. I find them slowing down my war effort too much. I very much hate it when my knights/calvary/tanks have to slow down and wait for the cannon/artillary. So during combat on enemy territory, I send 2-3 stacks of 20 fast units against 1 city at a time. The only time I really find artillary useful is to stack them with infantry defensive units on a choke point. Once the AI's offensive unit is damaged, they'll beat a hasty retreat. Otherwise I don't have too many situation where I find artillary very critical.

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by shramj
Speaking of Artillery, I used the Civ Editor and gave Leathal Bombardment to my Artillery units and also gave them 2 moves/attacks each turn. I used to hate using artillery, but now I love it. ....

Shramj,

This is one of those things that actually is a terribly stupid gameplay idea. No, I'm not calling you stupid here, just trying to get you to look at what you are doing before you say "Hey, lookie lookie at what I've done."

I strongly recommend that you do not make modifications to the game until you figure out how to play the game at least a little bit more first. (witness your post today about the little white bars and why cities of 12 won't grow).

The changes you made to the artillery are bad because they have been tested in the game, and the AI players do not have the ability to understand and use the changes. Nothing could be worse in the game than giving abilities to the units that can only be used by one player without giving a counter ability to the other players. Doing this without grasping how the game plays just makes it so you can beat up on the ******** AI players while they can't fight back.

An even worse impact is what it does to your game play abilities. Its basically like asking you to run a 440 relay race and then having you say "sure, why can't I ride my bike like I do at home."

I agree that most of the artillery combat is screwed up a bit, but giving them all 2 moves, 2 shots, or blitz ability and extended range is really bad fo the game.

I think that lethal engagement should be engaged in the base game but the AI players need to know how to use it and the process needs to be fixed to be statistical (see other threads on this subject). Until then, engaging lethal bombardment is just a bone that has been thrown to us that will only work effectively when used by the human players.

 

[shramj]

Sorry, I was just given a suggestion and I only posted about the white bars because I didn't know what they represented. I may not be as knowledgable as most players and usually when I need an answer to something, I will post a message at the forum, isn't that why it is here. Thanks

 

[GI Josh]

Cracker - I've used the settler attack method, but I've given it up - it feels too much like an exploit. First, the ai doesn't know how to use it. Secondly, it unbalances the game play. Third, it's "unrealistic", in the sense that it doesn't model, even in a rough and abstracted way, any historical process. The instant city started in enemy territory, thus giving you instant control over the city radius, its resources, and its roads, seems plain . . . silly (or stupid). It's an end-run around the combat process. I think settlers should only be able to found cities on open tiles or within your own territory - never on land w/i the borders of someone else.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Well my answer to the original question is that you should look to have 3-1 superiority (not in numbers but by appropriate combat values) when attacking to keep a fairly consist winning frontal attack that can hold the position after the attack. You'll need to consider the units defending and any modifying factors plus an allowance in the defenders benefit if they are less than elites cause they may gain experience during the battles. As mentioned in the thread above, I believe terrain and city bonuses are additive which does follow with the effects in other areas like science and economy. [Sorry cracker, not to refute your tests but this is just how I calculate terrain and city modifiers.]

CB

 

[cracker]

Shramj,

Don't get defensive. You'll just get better answers and grow to be a better player if you won't let the bad recommendation to mod the game distract you too early. Unfortunately these pieces of advice that get posted, do not come with a warning label that tells you that the person giving you the advice does not know how to play the game. Its just the voice of experience here that is recommending you not mod basic things in the game while you are still having to ask basic game function questions. You will be creating more wierd stuff that you will not understand and that real players may not be able to help you with.

CB,

I understand the additive versus cummulative defensive bonus issues. I'll have some good results examples here in the next week, complete with graphics and tables. I am not saying one way is for certain versus the other. The battle we are first fighting is to get about 80% of the players to just recognize that multiple defensive bonuses can apply, because I can tell you that I am still seeing way too many cases where the less experienced players engage in attacks that should not take place. I just played a succession game with some very novice players, and one of the individuals lost 50% of our military by attacking bowmen in forests and hills accross rivers while I played the same turns and suffered almost zero casualties by just waiting for the units to move out in the open.

I think that if we focused on good tactical skills to get your enemies to attack or defend under conditions that are more favorable to the strengths of your units, then we would see alot less of this "damned spearman ..." type rants accompanied with the bad advice to mod the values and hit points out of balance.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Yikes! and those bowmen have a high rate of fire too!

 

[Greg Loader]

Originally posted by GI Josh
Third, it's "unrealistic", in the sense that it doesn't model, even in a rough and abstracted way, any historical process. The instant city started in enemy territory, thus giving you instant control over the city radius, its resources, and its roads, seems plain . . . silly (or stupid). It's an end-run around the combat process

I never cease to be amazed by the creativity of CIV3 players. Using settlers to lay seige and blockade a land based city. How else would you keep the workers out of the fields to starve out your enemy. Sounds like a chapter right out of the middle ages, or even modern Israel.

In GOTMX tonight, I will use settlers to set up way stations a la pony express, so that I can more efficiently get to the English and Americans (whose wonders I covet, and whose technology I fear). My right of passage with the Russians won't last forever.

Greg

 

[cracker]

Originally posted by GI Josh
Cracker - I've used the settler attack method, but I've given it up - it feels too much like an exploit. First, the ai doesn't know how to use it. Secondly, it unbalances the game play. Third, it's "unrealistic", in the sense that it doesn't model, even in a rough and abstracted way, any historical process.

GI Josh,

We are drifting way off topic here but as an alterantive to military frontal attack, the settlement attack is a very valid and important strategy. I regularly wedge a bogus town in between AI towns for no purpose other than rushing culture improvements and flipping the enemy towns or creating what amounts to a military armed camp or a conduit into their heartland.

Historic examples include the European settlement process of the New World and Australia. We also see this actively in the sponsored settlement programs by governments in Israel (as loader notes), Russia, and numerous African nations. In many way the settlement assault has far more of an inevittable and permanent impact than straight military action that might fail or be reversed by a number of methods.

If you look at the European invasion of the new world, there were some notable military actions all the way up until the last of the Indian wars in the 1870s, but more than 250 Native American people were killed and or assimilated by settlement expansion and resource reappropriation compared to every 1 individual that died due to military events.

 

[GI Josh]

Cracker & Greg - I love culture-flipping. I've got no problem with starting cities next to another civ and battling the culture war. I've got no problem with razing an ai city and then plopping your own city there on the now unclaimed tile. My only problem is using settlers to start cities on tiles already claimed and part of another civ as a way of avoiding attacking the city. There is already a way to lay siege/starve an enemy city - place one of your units on the tiles in the enemy city's radius. It's a great technique.

Again, it's the instant city on tiles that aren't open that is an exploit in my view - you should have to make the tile open by destroying/capturing the city that exerts the control over the tile.

btw, this isn't off-topic - it's directly related to the artillery-less strategy - attacking city with settlers v. military units. Bypassing fortified strongpoints, like large cities, is a good tactic - it shouldn't be buttressed with instant cities in enemy territory.

 

[GI Josh]

While I agree with Cracker's criticisms of novices modding the game (like artillery mvmt rates) instead of learning the game as-is, there is one interesting mod that's on topic - make arty transportable by helicopter. In this way infantry and arty can be dropped behind the lines on hills/mountains and wreak havoc. Modding up arty mvmt rates, even just to 2, makes them unbalanced in the game. Making them helicopter-transportable, however, adds a lot of strategic depth to warfare in the modern age. The only drawback is the inability of the ai to use it properly.

 

[Catt]

Most everything in the game is additive (I would say everything but I haven't thought that through enough ).

Just one example: look in a city with a library and a university. Manually count the commerce icons from your worked tiles, adjust for corruption, and apply your science spending slider percentage to reach the beaker count that the city should be producing. With a library and a university, it will be generating 200% of the base commerce-to-science rate. If the bonuses were cumulative, one would expect 225% of the base rate.

Some time ago I did a 2500-independent-trials test of marines attacking fortified infantry in a metropolis built on grasslands in an effort to determine if marines attacking amphibiously ignore city defense bonuses (as I had seen asserted many times before - turns out that they do not). Using an additive approach (which is to say assuming an infantry total defense value of 23.5) the expected chance of a successful attack by the marine (8 attack) on each independent die roll (HP) is approximately 25.40%; my empirical test results produced a success rate of approximately 25.35%. If the defense bonuses were cumulative (i.e., total infantry defense value of 27.5), one would expect a marine attack to be successful only 22.53% of the time. I don't think I even took statistics in college (and if I did I can't remember it, but that wouldn't be so unusual . . .), but fellow posters assured me that 2500 independent trials would reduce the chances of empirical results deviating from expected results by more than 2.75 percentage points to a nullity.