Proposed Editor Changes to bombardment

[Roland Johansen]

Bombardment in a turnbased strategygame is a very strong concept. It allows you to attack the enemy without a chance for the enemy to counter your attacks. You can weaken the enemy to such an extent that your attacking units will almost always win against the severly weakened (1 hp) defenders. The enemy will have to wait until his turn to counter your moves and then it will be to late.

With regular combat (without bombardment) both sides can win.

Because the AI is not very good at strategic unit placement, it will never be very good at using bombardment units. So bombardment is always in favor of the human player.

Therefore I would like a way in the editor to weaken the effects of bombardment. Now (non-lethal) bombardment can weaken units until they have 1 hp left.

My proposed addition to the editor would be the ablity to set the minimum amount of hp's of a unit after bombardment. I would like to play a game where I set this minimum at 2. Then the weakened defenders will still have a chance against the attackers.

A comparable option would be to limit the effect of bombardment to halving the hp's of the defender. This would still give you the ability to reduce the hp's of conscript defenders to 1, which is maybe better.

The option to reduce the strength of bombardment of the bombardment units is not very good because it would only force you to use more bombardment units but your attacking units will after bombardment still smash the 1 hp defenders.

What do you think about these editor options and do you have other, better ideas for limiting the strength of bombardment?

 

[wotan321]

Bombard strength in this game is already so shockingly impotent that you have to build dozens of stealth bombers to wear down a city or metropolis for attack, or risk losing expensive ground units. Catapults.... its absurd to use them unless you have a huge advantage. To be effectively used, over half your military has to be bombard units, and that is very unrealistic. I say triple the firepower, and double the cost of bombard units.

As for the turn based disadvantage of those being attacked, many units have a "zone of control" that fires back at attackers.

Having to bombard with dozens of bombers or artillery per turn is boring and annoying and unrealistic, so instead of limiting their powers, I advocate strengthening them.

 

[Roland Johansen]

We have a different opinion about the strength of bombardment but I was asking for editor options. So you're missing the point of this thread.

If you want to strengthen bombardment by increasing the rate of fire or bombardment strength of units then you can do that with the editor. What I propose can't be done with the editor.

About Zone of Control: it only works if your unit walks from a place adjacent to a unit with zone of control to another place adjacent to this unit. Why would you do such a thing when you're attacking them after bombardment?

If I could mod the game so that units would have a minimum of 2 hps after bombardment, I might mod bombardment rates and strengths a bit higher. I just don't like the fact that units have an almost automatic victory over completely bombarded units. It makes battles a bit to easy and not very costly to win.

 

[wotan321]

Thanks for clarifying your points so I can better understand your meaning. I agree with you, that option would be valuable.

 

[yoshi]

Limiting the strength of bombardment is a valid point but really, the problem with bombardment is that it tends to fail way too often. An integer caption for chances of successful Bombardment in the Editor's General Rules window should do the trick. Although Bombardment strenght can be set in the Editor's Unit window, the integer has to be much higher or lower in order to have a visible effect --this is due to the unit health HP bar, system used in Civ3 (i.e. no health points, just red/yellow/green per HP). I have commented on this elsewhere, but players don't seem to mind Civ3's unit health system so I won't go into it.

Personally, I never liked the fact that if you bombard a unit 'into the red' without destroying it, the defending unit can no longer be bombarded thus must be attacked by a ground unit. I understand why this is so. Designers figure that this will force players that would otherwise bombard their way to victory to risk attacking the enemy. Nevertheless, it would be nice to have a setting in the Editor that when selected, would allow units to be bombarded regardless of health/HPs).

 

[Roland Johansen]

Yoshi, I don't understand your post.

About bombardment failure:

Say an artillery (bombardment strength 12, rate of fire 2) attacks an infantry with a defence bonus of 50 % (effective defence 15). Then each of the two attacks of the artillery (rate of fire 2) has a chance of 12/(12+15)=12/27~44% of damaging the infantry. So there's a chance of 0.56*0.56=0.31~31% of totaly missing the infantry. Then you don't damage the unit and you get the message bombardment failed. If the infantry is in a city, then there is only a 1/3 chance of actually attacking the infantry and a 1/3 chance of attacking the population and a 1/3 chance of attacking the buildings in the city. So the chance of damaging the infantry is a lot less when it is inside a city.

Units have hps: conscript 2 hps, regular 3 hps. verteran 4 hps, elite 5 hps in the normal unmodded game (the longer the hp-bar, the more hps)

But you probably know all this and I just don't understand what you're talking about.

There is a setting in the editor that allows you to mod artillery into units that can actually kill by bombardment. It is called lethal bombardment and there are two kinds of it: lethal land bombardment and lethal sea bombardment (depending on the kinds of targets you want to destroy, land or sea).
If you want to know where to find it then I can tell you.
Cruise missiles have lethal land and sea bombardment.

I myself just wanted the opposite option in the editor: a minimum of two hps after bombardment for units. That option doesn't exist.

 

[yoshi]

I myself just wanted the opposite option in the editor: a minimum of two hps after bombardment for units. That option doesn't exist.

You want even more restrictions on bombardment? Well, that's you're opinion I guess. What happens if you bombard a unit with only one hit point (i.e. Conscript)?

There is a setting in the editor that allows you to mod artillery into units that can actually kill by bombardment.

You're referring to the unit flag, 'Lethal Land Bombardment.' The problem is that you cannot bombard a unit once it is in the red --lethal bombardment only applies if the bombarding unit can destroy the defending unit in one shot (i.e. past red).
I'm saying there should be a setting that when selected, allows you to bombard units that are in the red.


The 'Bombardment Failed' pop-up appears too often during combat outside cities, and is practically ineffective vs. cities (i.e. your shells should frequently hit something, be it an improvement, citizen or unit --this is not presently the case).

 

[Roland Johansen]

Originally posted by yoshi

You want even more restrictions on bombardment? Well, that's you're opinion I guess. What happens if you bombard a unit with only one hit point (i.e. Conscript)?

Conscripts have two hps not one.
My second option in my first post of the thread (bombard units can only ever halve the starting hps of a unit) is maybe a better option to add to the editor.

Originally posted by yoshi

You're referring to the unit flag, 'Lethal Land Bombardment.' The problem is that you cannot bombard a unit once it is in the red --lethal bombardment only applies if the bombarding unit can destroy the defending unit in one shot (i.e. past red).
I'm saying there should be a setting that when selected, allows you to bombard units that are in the red.

If lethal bombardment is selected you can target units that are "redlined" i.e. units that have 1 hp left. Try it with cruise missiles in a unmodded game.

Originally posted by yoshi

The 'Bombardment Failed' pop-up appears too often during combat outside cities, and is practically ineffective vs. cities (i.e. your shells should frequently hit something, be it an improvement, citizen or unit --this is not presently the case).

In the example I gave you in my previous post you saw that this happens with a chance of 31% (only true for that example of course). That is just the direct result of the comparison of the numbers (rate of fire, bombardment strength) of the artillery compared to the defence of the infantry. If I'd give the artillery the values rate of fire 10, bombard strength 15, then the chance of not hitting the infantry would decrease to 0.1%. You'd only get the message bombardment failed in one out of thousend attacks (on average). So you can change this in the editor if you wish to.

I want to decrease the amount of damage artillery can maximum do so that the follow up attack has a chance to go wrong. Now the chance to lose to a fully bombarded unit is very small. A veteran tank will lose to a redlined fortified infantry on grasland with a chance of less than 5%. So if one uses artillery well than you will lose virtually no units compared to the AI. What I want can't be done in the editor at the moment.

 

[Krayzeenbk]

This option is valuable, but it would also be very nice if the computer were intelligent enough to bombard the player back the next turn (with a hefty arty stack). What if you had 60 arty captured after their defenders were reduced to 1hp?! That would be a total catastrophe

 

[Roland Johansen]

You are right. It would be cool if the AI could use artillery the way a human can, but I think that will stay a dream. You'll have to play humans to get that kind of opposition.

A bit off topic: I don't really like the way artillery is capturable in the game. Sure there should be a chance that you capture enemy artillery, but the way it is implemented now is too easy. You have a 100% chance of capturing the unit and artillery units can't be destroyed by bombardment.

 

[Krayzeenbk]

Artillery units are destroyed if the civ capturing them doesn't have the tech that enables them, though.

 

[aeldrik]

lots of good Ideas in here....

Yes, Artillery shouldn't be automaticaly be captured, there should be a chance it is destroyed.

It is absolutely ridiculous that in the core game one can't sink a ship by bombarding it... come on.... there should be the possibility of sinking it with even one hit... but then, you can change it with the editor...

Yes, there should be more options in the Editor

Yes, it is unlogical that sometimes bombardement shows no effects, but in Cities, bombing a city should always have an effect, wether loosing pop or a building... you have to try very hard to bombard a city and not hit anything....

Making units mire effective, and more expensive.. well, we can make it using the editor....