Land Artillery

[Civinator]

We all know, that the AI with the use of land artillery is seriously spoiled.

At present I set land-arty to the following settings in SOE:

Offensive flag, stealth attack, 2 MV-points, high attack value, defense 1, bombard range 0, Bombard value the same as attack value, wheeled and no ignore movement costs flags.

Movement costs for all kinds of terrain are set to the value of mountains, mountains are impassable for wheeled units. There are only roads (which are renamed to railroads).

Now the following happens: The arty mostly tries to stealth attack the strongest attacker in the stack. This often is another arty. The defense animation of the attacked arty unit is counter battery fire, which isn´t bad in my eyes. If the arty attacks tanks or other units with two or more MV-points, it has a good chance to destroy them, if the attack value of the arty is higher as the defense value of these units.

Against units with 1 MV point and higher defense values (infantry) the arty with these settings has a good chance of softening this unit down and to retreat before the arty is destroyed, as it has two MV-points. This symbolizes the wear of the gun-barrels and therefore in my eyes this is tolerable, too.

When a stack containing an artillery unit is attacked, the defending artillery fires back with its zero range bombardement. Here it works like land arty always should work.

In normal terrain without roads (=railroads), the arty mostly can only move 1 tile, so it has two MV-points. It is the same effect as for every unit in a standard Civ 3 game,with two or more MV-points, that moves on a mountain without a road on it. Normally this unit can move on the mountain, but then it has to stop because all MV-points are used. In terrain with roads (=railroads) the arty now is as fast as lot of tanks. In my eyes this isn´t bad too, as all these units here only have this speed because they are on trains (or trucks if you use the road normally).

So the artillery with these settings now attacks and here it has a good chance to take out strong attackers and to retreat from strong defenders after softening them down. In defense it works like it always should work. It only has bad cards against strong defenders with two or more movement points.

Here you can read a short summary about stealth attack: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6091574&postcount=12

 

[general-jcl]

I think those settings are very interesting for artillery units, Civinator
In my Barbarossa mod i used the flag "zone of control" for this kind of gun . I think it is rather realistic.
I also used the flags "create craters" and "collateral damage" depending on the caliber of the gun of the artillery.

Do you consider antitank guns as artillery unit?

 

[Civinator]

AT-units are something special in my eyes, as there are at least three categories of AT-units: AT-guns, AT-tanks and AT-infantry.

At present basically I have set all three categories to defensive-flag, ZOC and defensive bombardement. Some have the invisible flag. Most are autoproduced or can only be produced in special cities. But some mighty AT-tanks as the Jagdpanther are set to offensive and stealth attack (the same settings as land-arty, but without their movement handicap), no blitz.

Craters and collateral damage are some mighty flags in the editor. At present in SOE craters are reserved for strategic bombers, very heavy ships (battleships, some heavy cruisers) and extreme heavy artillery (Dora, Thor, Leopold). The use of the crater-flag in my eyes depends on the scale of the scenario. Of course the arty does craters and such a setting is well, if you recreate a single battle or the arty unit in a scenario with a bigger scale is a complete arty-corps. On the other side, I think each unit used in a scenario should have its own "raison d´être" (= each own reason to be there).

Collateral damage works best, if you have to destroy a terrain-improvement on a defended tile. In the moment I use this flag mostly for tactical bombers.

 

[WilliamOfOrange]

This is very interesting Civinator. In a mod I am working on, I have given units all three tags: offense, defense and artillery as well. Not all of them have stealth attack (not many units at all), but I after reading your post here, I realize that the AI does like to use the artillery aspect to soften up the enemy units. In fact, they use it quite a bit....even the none stealth units. Even units with blitz will use it, but I would have to double check that.