Paris Gun / Pariser Kanone(n) / Grosse Bertha

[Naokaukodem]

This was a huge artillery piece built by the German during the WWI. It could only been moved by railroads (like the first version of the true "Grosse Bertha", an earlier and smaller canon that could break 3 meters fortification walls) and set up there. Its range is 3 times the range of other artillery of the era. (so 6 tiles range )

In term of gameplay, you could not take a city with it, not to mention it is useless against units (not precise enough). However, as it was intended to be used as a psychological weapon against Paris by the German, it could use some kind of Morale in Civ7 or a Civ6 mod introducing Morale. (When destroying a Paris church, the French considered to retreat)

Goddamit, I want my railroads only artillery !

Actually, I want Civ8 mechanics designed entirely around this concept.

The Paris Gun produced such a big sound that Germans had to "hide it" with other artillery when firing, to not be discovered by the french SRS. (sound recognition something) So we could implement other pieces around it graphically, firing when the PG fires. Obviously, it would have to set up, on a railroad.

The Paris Gun pack should also go with a bait, that you could set up x tiles around it. (false canon and false railroad) That way, if the enemy sees the bait from the sky, it would appear graphically lile being the Paris Gun. It could work with any unit (WWII disembarkation preparation in England), at some cost, but which ? Production ? Civic card ? (or both) Time ? (move around the map from a city and set up) People ? (basically a unit able to "contruct" such bait on the map) Of course the incentive would have to be made on spying, particularly air spying. So : the frontier of your country when conquering would follow you, to not let the enemy see what you do in his past territory. Air scouting should be back.

Also, ground spying should be common. To the point you wouldn't even have to build spies, they would be automatic in major cities of every foreign civ. But then, how to explain the (apparent) success of WWII bait ? Probably measures could be taken in times of war : you need a specific card that unlocks city projects that kicks out every enemy spy of that city. (chances of fail with high experience spies, like double agents or perfect accent ones ? (sounds like good spies promotions to me))

Morale, especially cities one : it might be represented by city Health. If city health falls to zero, it surrenders, no matter what. If there is multiple enemies in the area, the city can make surrender proposals to every enemy, and pick the best according to them. (the attacker has the choice to comply or not afterwards, influencing his reputation)

It seems that the Paris Gun should attack Health, bypassing fortifications based on Civ6. However, the city might recover some health every turn like it is now in Civ6. So after a long time of no bombarding, it should be ok.

Historically, the PG didn't do much. First, it was discovered and attacked. (with no success) Second, it didn't fire for "large" periods for some reason. Last, the Allied progressed before it could continue its task. The Germans managed to take it away with them, to not let the Allied take it.

You can find more information about it in those Wikipedia pages, in French or in English :

https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pariser_Kanonen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Gun

Here is a picture of the set up of it :

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

This one should be heroic unit or scenario specific ones (Two World Wars, Steampunk or Dieselpunk themed). AFAIK This one doesn't seems to have Mod Potentials except that it is made for GS and not anything before that. (There were extremely few of these exists, very few survived the wars these superguns were made for, none of these survivors saw any real uses beyond that.

Personally, distinctions between Ranged and Siege ends in Modern Era. Like validity of separate Melee and Anticavalry footsloggers ends in Renaissance Era. New combined classes should emerge to replace them ('Gunpowder'/Firepower/Infantry as combined Melee and Anticavalry.
@Boris Gudenuf doesn't really like this proposals much, because historically these supergun performances were well below anticipations beyond that these were psycho weapons while heavy bombers (Particularly American Flying Fortress Family) inflicted more strategic damage and 'outranged' these super guns and yet much cheaper to make and operate. While he didn't say that validity of Ranged and Siege class ended in Modern era. he seemed to imply that.

I have to find where he wrote these. but i've saw it before.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

It's not that Ranged and Siege end in the Modern Era, it's that Siege becomes part of the Ranged class of units from the beginning of the 20th century (late Industrial - early Modern Era?) when virtually all artillery got the ability to shoot at targets they could not see, and so could pulverize any fortification either quickly or slowly with or without the additional of air bombardment. The Germans famously used the Karl and Dora superguns at Sevastopol in 1942, but the Red Army took fortified Königsberg in 1945 using using almost entirely (masses of) ordinary "field artillery" from 76mm to 203mm in size. And as far as can be told from the accounts, the only 'extra' capability the superguns exhibited was the ability to knock out the 100 meter-deep buried forts of the Maxim Gorky 305mm battery at Sevastopol - a feat which ordinary dive bombers or level bombers dropping 500 kg armor-piercing bombs (which both the Japanese and US naval aviation already had) could accomplish without requiring a 4500 man crew and a specially-built railroad for a single gun!

The Monster Guns from WWI and WWII should be, if anybody absolutely has to include them in-game, Unique or very special units - maybe only built by the Ruhr Valley wonder, for instance. To make them useful at all, I suggest that an "Emperor Gun" (The German nickname for the WWI weapon was the 'Kaiser Wilhelm Kanone') have a range of, say, 4 tiles and reduce Loyalty in any city it hits as well as doing physical damage to Districts (representing the loss of morale among civilians affected by this early "Terror Weapon")

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ And these guns require engineers to lay tracks for it (Tag class: Rail only, Psycho).

 

[Naokaukodem]

Yeah, looking at the records, I have to admit that the importance of weapons like Paris Guns was very limited and almost invisible in warfare History.

At least they teach me a design lesson : technics in real life are not predetermined, and can eventually move in several directions depending on which direction a former pebble will fall. I guess there can be a scenario when we see "the fantastic Paris Gun winning the war for the German", in the same way the Atomic bomb won the war for the American later, or completely different siege weapons in the medieval, if there can be others, but can it ? Surely the great minds of each epoch weren't totally, universally and absolutely exhaustive, were they ? After all, there was limited time and limited people. You can still argue that people are not AIs, that they build with their intuition and science and not empirically, so they can know by advance which tech is the best to use. But still. History invalidates such a perfectness in intuition : many modern planes "didn't work", what stays today is the family of what practically worked. There's a form of selection. But selection by who ? Surely not the builders. Others. Could have they miss something, some opportunity ? Was the total sum of the basis of their "work" exhaustive ? Unperfect intuition, limited people = No. Add to this circumtances, and you get a wider idea.

So yeah, I get your proposal for a scenario, that would be Civ but not really. Civ is historical. Its basis is historical in such a way it gives an impression of familiarity for doctors, of discovering of our real world for noobs like me. But i don't think it is the thing imagined by Sid Meieir ultimately. If he had tons of imagination, tons of time, infinite development time, I'm sure Sid Meier would have made Civilization I more in the way it has been designed for : alternate History with your familiar History. (hence the absolute need to have every civ represented, past and present, abandonning "uniques" except names including city names) Thing is, I think that Firaxis, with nowaday tools, can achieve this. Heck, we even have Internet for the imagination (problem is : imagination can't respect reality all alone, it needs experts, and even sometimes real life experiments, as some have already been made). Unfortunately, recreating the Paris Guns for a video game design sounds like an overkill... and financially impossible doesn't it ? So scrap the too costy and fantasy recreations and keep the cheapest, fastests ones, and the experts. I say it can be done. After decades of "tweaking", we are ready for this. Make Civ9 the true Civ2 or Civ3 or Civ4. Well, that's an option. Not an easy one. A bold one. And, hopefully, exciting to create and play.

Strategy took a too big place in 4X. Because people wanted to be challenged. Civ2 optimal strategy was too obvious. (not for me, because that time around, I found it myself with no help ! - i don't mean i was the only one here) And yet. Not that obvious as I noticed it somewhere else in this forum. (good luck !) Better settle big cities or a miryad of small ones ? (ICS = infinite city sprawl) I happened to doubt ICS was the optimal way as it was commonly admitted. How could you proove the difference ? Well, point is that you couldn't. Was just an intuition from me. One day, I played a multiplayer game with good Civ3 players, if not the bests. They started on coast more or less, while i was in the middle of the pangaea with no limit to expand in a circle around my capital, and even two circles i would say. (corruption, it is to say wasted prod and gold, was increasing with distance from capital) The dudes started their little ICS and their little stacks or horsemen, and the time they got to me, I was just building defensive units (attack and defense was ruled by two different numbers), and their stacks crushed into them. (in optimistic tries, which was hilarious because I was kinda optimistic too) They abandonned far before the end (and far before they could even league all against me) and was declared the winner by "dumb game". Thing is : I'm not a top player, far from it. But in that case, my playstyle made me virtually impossible to beat with the tools the game proposed. (I don't even remember if tech trade was a thing - which, by the way isn't in 6 and toned down in 5 in the form of research agreements, because their automatization wasn't done in 4 and was a real pain in the butt in solo)

Yeah, because a good Civ game should be equally enjoyable in solo and multiplayer. Easier said than done. The player is alone, all powerful in solo with his tricks, but confront the same tricks in multiplayer. Hard balance. Civ4 was made "because of" Civ3 multiplayer. Civ5 and Civ6 was made because of Civ4 solo. I must say that Civ5 and 6 work pretty well in solo, with tough decisions to make even for the best players. But in multiplayer, they are disasters. (the multiplayer UIs and communities say it all) Actually, the only Civ game that was not a disaster in multiplayer was Civ4. But it was a disaster in solo. (dumb stacks of doom, tech trading, territory cultural influence, etc.) By a magic, I would even say that all the other Civs were good at solo, but terrible at multiplayer. (except for Civ1, and personnally Civ2, that i couldn't experiment that way - I will never know) That, to be enlighted by a fact : the past story of Civ designs has been a ping pong between solo and multiplayer. And no, I'm not considering that the first three iterations are too easy. Granted, when I first realized the mean of snowballing - settler, settler, farms everywhere -, and that i hit that part of my experience with Civ2, I had to double-check that I was truly on "Deity" difficulty mode but... Creation and experience. That game was easy (after some reasonnable time to play it and thinking about it), however the developers created it nonetheless. Was it a bad experience ? NO ! It was wonderful ! Not only I could play with History, the History of my country and its neighbours (bring back "culturally linked starting locations" as an option please), but become eager to know more about it, as it was all messed up and so familiar-unfamiliar ; I started to ask myself how this really happened ? The only thing I couldn't change was that the French didn't exterminate the English in reality ! Isn't that hilarious ? It puts perspectives on History and on our affects, to the point I can now envisage to incarnate the English (except with uniques that are for most of the civs - unattractive to me, even mine !) and we suddenly become... less dumb.

All this for what ? (Relative lack of) Strategy was not the cause of Civ désamour. It was its inconsequency to choose between solo and multiplayer. Either we do both good, either we choose one. (two different games ?) A new system with its own rules, as much simple as it is, is fun to crack, and by above all : without "help" (thinking instead of reading as real fun to have). That's a point. Another is that Civ is an experience. Like none before, and that lasted a long time. As competition seems to finally arrive, I think it would be good to renew, instead of messing up, this experience. Renew, it is to say push the experience further, to the point it looks like Civilization I back in time, but nowadays. With the same boldness. The same feeling of recreating History instead of reading forums for the next civ to add next. Go outside. Go away from one's comfort zone. Be free again.

YES WE CAN !

 

[Phrozen]

The rail guns are pretty much the definition of awesome but impractical.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

It's not that Ranged and Siege end in the Modern Era, it's that Siege becomes part of the Ranged class of units from the beginning of the 20th century (late Industrial - early Modern Era?) when virtually all artillery got the ability to shoot at targets they could not see, and so could pulverize any fortification either quickly or slowly with or without the additional of air bombardment. The Germans famously used the Karl and Dora superguns at Sevastopol in 1942, but the Red Army took fortified Königsberg in 1945 using using almost entirely (masses of) ordinary "field artillery" from 76mm to 203mm in size. And as far as can be told from the accounts, the only 'extra' capability the superguns exhibited was the ability to knock out the 100 meter-deep buried forts of the Maxim Gorky 305mm battery at Sevastopol - a feat which ordinary dive bombers or level bombers dropping 500 kg armor-piercing bombs (which both the Japanese and US naval aviation already had) could accomplish without requiring a 4500 man crew and a specially-built railroad for a single gun!

Is it logical to combine 'ranged' and 'siege' into 'artillery' tag class starting since Modern Era with 'Artillery' unit?
And which promotion tree should it uses? (Ranged, Siege, or invent 'Artillery' promo tree)

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Is it logical to combine 'ranged' and 'siege' into 'artillery' tag class starting since Modern Era with 'Artillery' unit?
And which promotion tree should it uses? (Ranged, Siege, or invent 'Artillery' promo tree)

To stay within the rough boundaries of Civ VI, the Siege Promotions would work best: after all, Shrapnel, Grapeshot, Forward Observers and Advanced Rangefinding were all gunpowder/modern artillery developments anyway.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ And is it also logical to have 'Antitank' units with Ranged promotion class in addition to ability to deals more damage to Tank class unit (A new tag and promo class to deny Antitank spear situation)?

and/or Ranged units upgraded to Antitank Crew (QF Gun with extra long barrel and (usually) bottleneck long cartridges type and not Bazooka team) ?

 

[Buktu]

^ And is it also logical to have 'Antitank' units with Ranged promotion class in addition to ability to deals more damage to Tank class unit (A new tag and promo class to deny Antitank spear situation)?

and/or Ranged units upgraded to Antitank Crew (QF Gun with extra long barrel and (usually) bottleneck long cartridges type and not Bazooka team) ?

I would like to make AA Guns a real unit (so "upgrade" them from support class) with good anti tank strength as well. As downside it cant attack all non air or cav units offensively or get a malus against those. Attacks against ground units count as melee attacks (so no range against tanks/infs but still AoE AA protection). It kind of makes sense to me since the Flak 88 was the best AA weapon for Germany in the early days of WWII.
Once upgraded to Mobile Sams (maybe change the name to ADATS to show their dual use case even though not alot of them were made?) they gain a range of 1 for ground attacks and +1 AA range as well.
The promotion tree could be better AA, better AT, better defence, better movement, more attacks and/or more range.

Since you can make corps/armies of this this might also help to reduce the dominnce of air in the late game.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ I don't really agree with AA being separate unit either as detacheable support or solo unit. They're permanently attached to Regiments since the inception just like MGs.
Actually both should be 'wargear' (think of Commander: The Great War 'upgrade' mechamism. that there are 'major' and 'minor' upgrades. Minor upgrades added some stats and abilities to existing units without changing graphic appearance while Major upgrades change graphics entirely.