Well Argetnyx, for whatever knowledge I'm lacking in civ III, you're missing even MORE in civ IV...
When I say that it isn't essential, I'm saying that you don't need it, but it is very useful. My opinion of artillery in civ4 is that they want it to be useless, which it is in that game. I mean, I can't bombard units with them, for what reason did they get rid of that ability?
If someone like me were to tell this to another high level civ IV player, they'd think I was telling a joke. And I would be, too. Collateral damage is way, way too strong to be calling siege useless. In fights between large stacks (or even moderate stacks, like say 10 men to a side), siege collateral in civ IV does so much damage to multiple units that the attacker can get a 3:1 to 5:1 kill to death ratio at tech parity (depending on stack sizes facing off). With equal promotions. Siege initiative matters that much.
If you think the ability to attain a kill ratio for less
investment (or as you'd call them, shields) than any other option available is useless, I have nothing more to say here. I thought you were over-exaggerating, but it sadly turns out that you somehow have a weak enough understanding of civ IV siege to actually call it useless! How can you even talk about civ IV combat if you don't know it?!
The promotion 'flanking' in civ4 is not accurate at all (there should be no promotions anyway). Flanking, in real life, is attacking the sides (flanks) of an enemy formation, not withdrawing. It is the complete opposite.
Case in point. You're confusing a promotion with an ability this time. Although the promotion allowing withdrawals was poorly named, it does in fact have nothing to do with flanking damage available to mounted units.
Yes, I have, but I only play vanilla (i.e. regular). The only use that I can see for bombardment in civ4 is against cities. What happened to softening the blow by bombarding enemy SoD's from a distance? Research World War I just a little bit, and you'll se how important artillery really was.
Building on my argument that your understanding of civ IV battles is lacking, I'll just point out what others have already: siege was nerfed from vanilla to BTS because it was consider OVERpowering. Too strong. Too strong =/= useless...
As for world war I...well let's put it this way. Starting from when cannons went into mainstream use and continuing to today, siege has had an extremely important impact on battles. Prior to that...well...I don't think you'll read much history about how catapults and trebuchets dominated the field of battle, slaughtering many. They were bulky, difficult or impossible to move (therefore constructed where needed), and were really only good when the opposing army couldn't move. Quite good for attrition but hardly anything remotely comparable to say world war I (the world wars were perhaps the height of land-based arty making an impact though...air power and the range at which things can be launched these days...not to mention the kinds of wars fought...would probably tilt warfare away from them a bit again, if there ever is that kind of large-scale war again before even more breakthroughs).
True, but it encourages other types of units to be built.
Civ IV also does this, through siege being unable to attain defensive bonuses, through the flanking ability, and through the fact that siege units can't get kills (though that's true to both III and IV BTS), and some units resist or are immune to collateral.
Captured siege that's a lasercannon deathbeam in #'s isn't balanced, which is why I'm advocating mixing the two systems somewhat (but you kind of have to know something about civ IV to actually argue against its merits). At least have SOME of them destroyed, or make it so that siege is not unassailable on a tile until everything else is dead (because it won't be, since the siege shelled the roads/rails and the inbound stack).
