Defensive artillery in city

[da3dalus]

How do you keep the AI from attempting to load an immobile unit onto a ship?

When you're editing the immobile unit's stats, you just have to uncheck "Load" under unit abilities, that way it's not able to be loaded onto a ship/army.

 

[Steph]

Or you make give it a transport capacity, so it cannot load in anything, and you make it "transport foot only" and "transport missile only", so it can in fact transport nothing.

 

[nick0515]

Or you make give it a transport capacity, so it cannot load in anything, and you make it "transport foot only" and "transport missile only", so it can in fact transport nothing.

What is the benefit of doing it this more complicated way? Does removing the 'load' option affect how the AI handles the unit?

 

[Steph]

Actually, I did this for the aicraft... But I don't remember why . I need to check why I did that. It may be to prevent them from rebasing on aircraft carrier.

I'll tell you this evening

 

[Virote_Considon]

For artillery units, you can just uncheck load. For offensive/defensive units, you'll need to go down Steph's route.

 

[Steph]

Yes, that's right, you cannot check the Offensive/defensive AI strategy if the load is unchecked.

That's why I did it that way.

 

[nick0515]

I see

 

[da3dalus]

Yes, that's right, you cannot check the Offensive/defensive AI strategy if the load is unchecked.

Ahhh, I see. Yet another Firaxis idiosyncrasy.

Good to know, thanks guys.

 

[Steph]

Actually, my editor doesn't have this limitation... But I don't know if it works in game. So if someone wants to test it in game, go ahead.

 

[tom2050]

Doing it the way Steph described I suppose gives the Immobile unit the ability to fortify (for the AI).... whereas otherwise the AI cannot fortify by unchecking the load option... so I would guess that giving it a transport ability may be better overall. (If I read into that correctly)

Tom

 

[Diviner]

Actually, my editor doesn't have this limitation... But I don't know if it works in game. So if someone wants to test it in game, go ahead.

I've just checked and the AI is most likely tricked I can tell you I tried the offensive/defensive flag with the swordsman/spearman with the load box unchecked. The building of the AI was not so much different from the normal. It even used the not-loadable spearmen for defensive roles such as escorting a settler unit. I didn't dig too deep though so I do not know the AI is really tricked or just surprisingly adaptive. One thing is sure it had other offensive units to choose from such as the Archer and the Warrior and those were ignored.

What really surprises me that I just know realized that units without the load option could still be transported if they sacrifice one turn to board the ship outside the city or from any coastal tile by moving! For all these years I thought load option could enable/disable if any naval transport is possible for the unit. For the immobile artilleries of course this is not a scenario, but it really surprised me. You can't have an untransportable landbased unit unless you play with the foot unit / missile unit flags. Not that I couldn't live with this limitation (I have plenty more which I am needed to so this is just an icing on the cake), but well...

 

[The Guardian]

Most of the worker/peasant units converted by steph from cossacks and the other games he converted units from have attack animation. I have used several in my games. You are all correct on this subject about giving workers attack capabilities and I will explain why from a stategic point of view. The AI does indeed for reasons I can not fathom, prefers to attack/capture enemy workers. By doing so the AI is using up his attack capability on non combat units. This slows down his attack, and delays the advance. By using attack and minimal defense capabilities with your workers, you avoid loosing your worker to the enemy and slow down his advance at the same time. Workers are cheap fodder and can be replaced by large cities rather quickly with little population loss which is normal regained by the next turn. I once gave my workers pillage capabilities while playing as the russians in a napoleonic scenario, with a scorched earth defense against the invading French to see how it worked. I retreated to my eastern cities and history replayed itself. The french had nowhere to go to rejuvinate there wounded and lucky for them there was no winter. Also the AI seems to use workers primarily to build roads to speed his advance and little else. Most of the workers/peasants from Cossacks can be used quite well in almost any senario.

 

[elenar]

The AI aren't great at using artillery full stop really. I'm not at all sure that the AI would use an immobile unit to actively bombard enemy units.

I've noticed AI uses immobile artilery units outside the city to bombard. Maybe it will use them if they are inside city too, then ? Maybe immobile flag does the trick ?

It might look a bit strange - but some of the unit creators might be able to provide workers with a reasonable attack animation. I think that a few of Plotinus' workers might already have that in fact. Otherwise you could maybe use the boiling oil unit anim as the worker's bombard anim (for the ancient and medievil ages) and use one of Wrymshadow's modern worker unit anim's for the modern age. They should look just fine.

I love idea of workers having defensive bombardment/boiling oil animation. This is great for medieval scenarios where workers retreat to cities and help defending.
One problem would be worker in stack outside of city, animation (and bombardment)wouldn't make sense.

What really surprises me that I just know realized that units without the load option could still be transported if they sacrifice one turn to board the ship outside the city or from any coastal tile by moving! For all these years I thought load option could enable/disable if any naval transport is possible for the unit. For the immobile artilleries of course this is not a scenario, but it really surprised me. You can't have an untransportable landbased unit unless you play with the foot unit / missile unit flags. Not that I couldn't live with this limitation (I have plenty more which I am needed to so this is just an icing on the cake), but well...

This is rather new. I wonder if AI takes adventage of this. Anyone noticed if AI actually picks up units from not-city tiles ?

 

[Ozymandias]

You can increase the defense of the city as a whole (with different values for different city size), but this bonus doesn't depend on the number of building.
Or you can modify the effect of building individually (like bonus for walls).
However, the defense against bombardment (IIRC) means the building will "disappear" when the city reaches size 7. Why is it not an option in the editor? Because Firaxis sucks at designing games.

Don't forget there's a Bombard defense (which causes the behavior Steph describes - with 1 caveat: it disappears whenever City Size=2, whatever Pop # you have that set at) as well as a "regular" defense (as in Civil Defense).

Best,

Oz

 

[Diviner]

This is rather new. I wonder if AI takes adventage of this. Anyone noticed if AI actually picks up units from not-city tiles ?

I must admit I have never ever seen this situation in my civilization history and I believe will never do so. It seems that if there is no load flag then there is no transport for AI too - which I think is gamebreaker.

 

[tom2050]

I've noticed AI uses immobile artilery units outside the city to bombard. Maybe it will use them if they are inside city too, then ? Maybe immobile flag does the trick ?

If a unit is immobile, many times you don't want them moving if on a preplaced map scenario, so the flags Load and Capture are removed so they can't board transports, etc. This also causes a unit to not be able to fortify (since you cannot tell the AI it is Offense or Defense unit). But by giving that same unit the ability to bombard, even though it is immobile, you can still set the artillery flag... thus the unit fortifies and will bombard also from it's destination. So all in all, very useful.

You could give that artillery piece 2 moves, with no blitz, letting it bombard once and then fortify to up it's defense each turn (solely to help the AI).

Tom

 

[Heretic_Cata]

Moderator Action: Discussion part moved from the request thread

I'm looking for ways to increase the defensiveness of early wars in my scenario because it was too easy to conquer another civ early on in the game, but I don't want to simply up the defense of early units (I did that too, but it's kind of mundane, I want something new ). So this was my idea, if you have an immobile cannon in the city it makes it very difficult to beseige because it will fire on you each time you attack the city, and it will fire on any units in the tiles immediately in front of the city during the enemy's turn.

This makes it pretty hard to assault a city, as it should be. However I am aware that it could get out of hand, so I'm experimenting with ways to limit the emplaced cannons to certain cities (IE Mother Country/Core cities) and making them expensive enough to make the player choose between spending shields on offense, expansion, OR defense. I'm thinking perhaps it's only possible to build emplaced cannons if your city has built a foundry, which is only possible with metallurgy...I don't know, any ideas on that front?

I got defensive towers in my mod. Immobile units with high bombard, high defense, high HP, high cost(shields & pop), labled as artillery units (so that the AI actually builds them but only in important cities). Not exactly what you were looking for i think ?

EDIT: didnt read the whole thread ....

 

[tom2050]

You could also have certain cities be able to build a building which auto-produces immobile sea units (which can be done in any city, coastal or non-coastal) and give them bombard. They will bombard the crud out of anything that comes within range (give them whatever graphic you wish). These can act as many things, castle archer towers, dug in artillery, etc... since the unit is a sea unit, land units won't need to fight each one, they can't be captured, but are simply destroyed when the city is taken (same as a ship)... so it may not make it overly powerful, but keep your bombard going in a city that is being besieged. And the AI always makes 100% use out of bombard capabilities of ships, whereas land artillery may/or may not bombard units within range.

Tom

 

[elenar]

You could also have certain cities be able to build a building which auto-produces immobile sea units (which can be done in any city, coastal or non-coastal) and give them bombard. They will bombard the crud out of anything that comes within range (give them whatever graphic you wish). These can act as many things, castle archer towers, dug in artillery, etc... since the unit is a sea unit, land units won't need to fight each one, they can't be captured, but are simply destroyed when the city is taken (same as a ship)... so it may not make it overly powerful, but keep your bombard going in a city that is being besieged. And the AI always makes 100% use out of bombard capabilities of ships, whereas land artillery may/or may not bombard units within range.

Tom

Great idea. I will use it in my mod, laser turrets or something.

 

[nick0515]

That's a very clever idea Tom. I never would have thought of autoproducing sea units in landlocked cities.