Counter-bombard

[Michael York]

I advance an idea:
Bombard units have the ability to counter bombard. Artillery only get a free shot if there isn't artillery in real life, so there is a 1/3 or so chance of a counter bombard from any artillery/archers/whatever stationed in a city. Including battleships (a la Jean Bart). Naval fortifications in cities would become more powerfull for they would be able to fire at every ship attacking in a given turn (with bb's also having the ability to fire if the fort doesn't fire). Naval bombardment rates would then be improved. Artillery would not be able to deliver supression fire/counter battery fire to aircraft (aa's and fighters already do so)

 

[Zeekater]

I like it, bombard isn't actually very good for turnbased games, cause you can't do anything about it. This might help solve that.

 

[Roland Johansen]

This is a good idea, IMHO. This would partially solve the problem of the unbalanced strength of artillery type units (ability to damage while the enemy can't do anything about it).

In the present game artillery type units can't damage or destroy other artillery type units. It would be very important to add that functionality and give artillery type units a big chance to target other artillery type units. Otherwise the counterbombard will be useless.

Another way to balance the artillery units is to only let them fight together with other units in a group like in Master of Magic or Civilization Call to Power. It is of course very important that the AI understands this group combat better than in those games.

In Call to Power, you would get a new window when combat took place. In this window the various units (say cavalry, infantry and artillery) would be fighting eachother all at once and the artillery could of course also be destroyed. Call to Power had a number of bad ideas, but this idea could be used for Civ4.

 

[Der PH]

Originally posted by Roland Johansen
In Call to Power, you would get a new window when combat took place. In this window the various units (say cavalry, infantry and artillery) would be fighting eachother all at once and the artillery could of course also be destroyed. Call to Power had a number of bad ideas, but this idea could be used for Civ4.

You can say a lot of bad things about CTP (and even more about CTP2), but the stacked combat system was great.

EDIT: And BTW, the idea of counter bombardment was used in a fan made CTP-mod. IIRC it was WesW's Medieval Mod. Made CTP really playable.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Bombard is really powerful and sometimes unbalancing. Espically with the addition of leathal land and sea bombard, the destruction of a whole army and all the enemy can do is watch.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Sry multipost.

 

[CIVPhilzilla]

Sry multipost.

 

[The Last Conformist]

SMAC had something like this. If you tried an bombard an enemy bombard unit, the the units fought an "artillery duel" instead. IIRC, it worked as normal combat except 1) both units used their attack strength (which meant you always rather attacked enemy ships with your own rather than bombarded them) and 2) a victorious attack did not move to the loser's tile (logical enough, since of of the units might be a ship and the other landbased arty, or you could have two land batteris blasting one another 'cross a sea channel).

 

[Jaybe]

YES! Counter-battery fire is a great idea,
but will never make it into civ.
The concept is too complex for the average player to understand or for the AI to implement.

Personally, I would love just being able to manually fire on opposing artillery (especially if the AI would also do it).

 

[ComradeDavo]

Yeh, counter bombard is a good idea

 

[Zeekater]

I'd personnaly love to see the battlesystem from CTP incorporated in Civ!

 

[TheRockit]

I just think that bombarding units should be able to fight any other unit which attacks their square within range. If you bombard my square and I have bombarders in range of your attacker, I get to bombard back if I survive the attack. Add an option to bombard before normal attacks or after normal attacks also. Then If you attack before bombardment, my bombarders don't have the range to fire first... but if you bombard I can do so in return. The option to bombard after normal attacks would also allow you to destroy an enemy unit without moving into that square more effectively. Something I dislike in Civ is the mandatory move after destroying all defenders in a square.