How to use artillery effectively...

[zerksees]

Originally posted by a4phantom
Yes my friend/Goddess but did the other team have to sit still?

Everyone has an opinion so here is mine:

This is a game. Civ III is a game. Games have rules that are different than real life. Any correlation between the game and real life is not really relevant to winning the game.


I think this is a great strategy. And even if I have cannons I can use this to shorten the time to get them close to the enemy cities.

 

[a4phantom]

And if I ever play Diety I will probably have to resort to it too. But on multiplayer at least it seems like cheating.

Has someone made a mechanized artillery unit? Something with the same stats, but more expensive and two moves? They were being used by 1939 if not earlier, and would be able to keep up with thanks and stay close enough to cavalry and modern armor.

 

[jshelr]

Originally posted by a4phantom
And if I ever play Diety I will probably have to resort to it too. But on multiplayer at least it seems like cheating.

Has someone made a mechanized artillery unit? Something with the same stats, but more expensive and two moves? They were being used by 1939 if not earlier, and would be able to keep up with thanks and stay close enough to cavalry and modern armor.

Mechanized arty = tank. If we want realism, let tanks bombard along the lines of ships' behavior. I'm not recommending that, of course, because it would not work well within the game context.

 

[a4phantom]

Mechanized arty = an artillery gun on a tank chassis.

 

[anarres]

Originally posted by a4phantom
And if I ever play Diety I will probably have to resort to it too. But on multiplayer at least it seems like cheating.

Why on earth would this be unfair against a human?

If anything the other human is much more able than the AI to counter this (because the AI can't do it), so if anything it is unfair in SP and fair in MP games...

 

[a4phantom]

Really? What would you do to counter it?

 

[jshelr]

Originally posted by a4phantom
Really? What would you do to counter it?

This is an interesting question. I think the answer starts with a new concept of defense in depth for human games. But there is no doubt that the "gunslinger" issue raised here -- it's smart to shoot first -- is very applicable to late-game strategy.

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by a4phantom
Really? What would you do to counter it?

This has probably already been said in this thread somewhere but here goes:

Build my own big stack of arty and offensive units. Any attempt to move a settler near border is met with just enough units to take out the settler. Use cultural expansion to move borders so enemy can't build a city outside your territory and move the borders close enough to hit.

If this fails and you lose a city, use your arty stack and units to take it back the next turn. After retaking city, use remaining arty and units to capture enemies arty stack. Use enemy arty stack and your arty stack to reverse the offensive against enemy. Make sure you have enough units to defend your stack.

You could also consider having lots of friends who will declare war on the human instigator, forcing him to redirect units or take losses in other areas.

Or just nuke their arty stack....

Or ... the possibilities!

Multiplayer brings a whole new dimension of fun doesn't it?

 

[a4phantom]

==Build my own big stack of arty and offensive units. Any attempt to move a settler near border is met with just enough units to take out the settler. Use cultural expansion to move borders so enemy can't build a city outside your territory and move the borders close enough to hit. ==

The problem of course being that the point of the strategy is to defeat you before you have any opportunity to use artillery or offensive units. With railroads, your opponent's "attempt to move a settler near border" will occur during a single turn of his, as will the founding of a city, the bringing up of another settler, the abandonment of the city, the founding of another . . . all without you being able to respond. By the time you're allowed to respond, your core cities could all be razed and your offensive units destroyed playing defense. He'll have your artillery of course. If your SOD is hidden and does not get destroyed, you may be able to counter attack but your main cities will have been destroyed. Cultural expansion will only increase by one the number of settlers he needs to execute the strategy.

 

[Aggie]

@a4panthom: you are now talking about "settler creep', which is often banned in multiplayer. MP games I played always started with a discussion on what were legal tactics. Settler creep was almost always seen as invalled.

Using artillery in large quantities is another story. The way to counter it is: have a large stack yourself and have A LOT of defense units in bordercities. AI tens to have a max of 4 units in cities. Humans often have 20+ at crucial spots.

 

[zerksees]

Originally posted by a4phantom
With railroads, your opponent's "attempt to move a settler near border" will occur during a single turn of his, as will the founding of a city, the bringing up of another settler, the abandonment of the city, the founding of another . . . all without you being able to respond.

Leave one row of tiles with no roads or railroads whatsoever at the border. That would stop "settler creep". If you need to keep a road open, make it through a mountain or heavily fortified. You will give up some of your efficiency on those tiles, but if you have a large empire those cities are probably higher on the corruption scale anyway.

Enemy would have to stop there at the unroaded border and wait one turn.

Good?

 

[a4phantom]

Yes, I suppose that would do it, although at an extremely high price (it would, for instance, be a real pain to clear pollution out of those intentionally roadless squares, aside from the drop in commerce). The whole premise still seems like an exploit of the turn system to me, but since we're rather unlikely to ever duel it doesn't really matter. Thanks for your advice.

 

[ShotgunDave]

Why even bother with the arty stack now? with my airbases and a metric buttload of stealth bombers I can take any city's defenders out without difficulty, create a new base if need be with the razed city's workers and rebase, perhaps not as fast as the arty stack but a whole lot more manageable(and realistic)

 

[alexman]

Originally posted by ShotgunDave
Why even bother with the arty stack now?

Because artillery is cheaper?
Because artillery cannot be shot down by AA?
Because artillery targets units before city improvements?
Because you get artillery much before stealth?

 

[ShotgunDave]

See now I prefer when the enemy fights back a bit, if artillery fire could be met with counter-battery fire then I'd agree and use it, but otherwise it just isn't much fun

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by ShotgunDave
See now I prefer when the enemy fights back a bit, if artillery fire could be met with counter-battery fire then I'd agree and use it, but otherwise it just isn't much fun

If your enemy doesn't fight back much, you should move up to the next level. It will be a lot of fun if you try it at the Deity level or above on a huge map. Your enemy may be stupid but they usually are 10 times stronger than you. Even with a stack of around 150 artilleries, you may be running out of ammo longer before they are running out of troops. Not to mention that they can rebuild their force much faster than you. Also, you probably are about 1/2 of the tech tree in behide too. By the time you get stealth bombers, they probably already launch their spaceship century ago.

 

[Ruchelli]

I use the same strategy however, I do not use the settlers. I find that once you take one of thier cities you can use it as your outpost. YOU DONT EVEN HAVE TO BUILD ARTILLARY!!! I was playing a game last night where the AI must have had a fetish with catapaults. I would take a city and capture the catapualts. Some cities had 5 other cities had 15+. I would then use their own weapons against them. They only had about 2-3 defenders. Once they were dead, HELLO catapaults it was like X-Mass. I would then upgrade them to artillary. I started with 0 and ended my campaign against the Zulus with 150 Artillary I never built a single one. Just upgraded them.


on the countering of such strategy: to counter such a strategy one should use air power. when the artillary are on their way bomb the units protecting them from the air. Then move in and capture their artillary and use as your own. I dont think that anything is unfair in MP because each human player has the "right" and capabilities of doing the same thing. I guess it comes down to whoever managed their cities better to build more units and so on.

 

[Moonsinger]

It seems to me that Firaxis had made artillery far much better in Civ III Conquests. I played a little bit on Sid last night and noticed that my artilleries were rarely missed and they often caused multiple damage points too! Basically, the citywall and the city defenders will be automatically treated as the primary target. So far, I haven't seen any collateral damage or any civilian casualty yet!!! Wow, each artillery cell in C3C is now carrying a smart onboard computer directing itself to only military target. Have any one seen artillery miss-fired and hit civilian target in C3C yet (assuming that not all city defenders were at 1HP)?

I'm not sure if I should be happy or sad, but it feels like an exploit using artillery in C3C.

PS: So far in my bloodiest game on Sid, I was just starting to take out the weakest AI and his cities were heavily defended by Rifflemans (no Rubber=no Infantryman). I'm going to move against Persia or Rusia soon they those guys have a lot of Infantryman defenders (and planes too). May be my artilleries will miss more often??? Not sure, but I will find out next week.

 

[anarres]

Yes Moonsinger, someone just reported to me that bombard units target units in a city before city improvements and pop points!

Not sure how wise this is, it makes all bombard units very powerful, and Arty are now even more devastating than before in even modest numbers...

 

[Aggie]

Bombers do hit other targets AND citiziens as well, but artillery indeed take out defense before everything else. First planes and ships, then land units. That's why I still like artillery more than bombers (despite their lethal bombardment). I'm surprised that both of you noticed this only recently.