ranged/seige unit targeting

[ghoultek]

Is there a way to reliably tell which tiles are within a ranged or siege unit's attack range? It gets a little frustrating to move a catapult or artillery to a position where there are 2 tiles between my unit and an enemy city/unit only to discover that the enemy can't be targeted, but the enemy can attack my units. I can understand if there are mountain tiles between the two parties and the attack can't be performed, but there is only grass land tiles between both parties.

 

[DaveMcW]

You need the Range promotion for cannons to bombard farther than 2 tiles.

You can always bombard over grassland.
You can bombard over hills or forest if you are on a hill.
You can never bombard over forested hills or mountains.

You can bombard over anything if you have Indirect Fire and a unit spotting for you.

 

[RD-BH]

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I have seen exceptions to DaveMcW's points, but they work almost all the time.

 

[odin_toelust]

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I have seen exceptions to DaveMcW's points, but they work almost all the time.

Care to elaborate? I don't think i have.

The only thing I would add is that a hill tile that is "half" covering your attack will not block you. For example if you are on a grass land tile with a hill on the adjacent NE tile and a grassland on the adjacent NW tile you will be able to fire into the square that is directly North of you (but not adjacent)

 

[RD-BH]

I have fired over mountains without spotters (siege in city),
and I have found tiles that could not be shot over with indirect/spotters.
My assumption is a glitch when the map is generated.

 

[ghoultek]

You need the Range promotion for cannons to bombard farther than 2 tiles.

There were only 2 empty grass tiles between my catapult and the enemy city. However, the red targeting range indicator did not have the enemy city within it. So I moved the catapult up 1 tile the next move, leaving just 1 grass tile between the catapult and the enemy city. Once I have the catapult 1 tile away it can attack the enemy city, but the enemy city can attack the catapult as well.

 

[vexing]

Once I have the catapult 1 tile away it can attack the enemy city, but the enemy city can attack the catapult as well.

that's typically referred to as two tiles away, and adjacent as one tile away.
cities and catapults/trebuchets have the same base range (of two). artillery has a range of three. so yes. the city can bombard your catapults. put other (melee) units between and they'll generally be bombarded instead.

 

[Deau]

You can catch a good discussion about it in the following thread :

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=423446&highlight=ranged

What DaveMcW threw out is pretty accurate although there are a couple buggy situations due to the hex shape as for which of the 2 tiles NE/NW or SE/SW will lock the view for a tile directly 2 tiles north or south. Anyway if you look at Vexing's SS for a modded 6-range unit and the following posts you'll notice it is definitely not clearly defined.

If you stick to Dave's basic rules, you should be fine in 99% of the cases. If you get range+1 or play with longbows, you might get a little extra frustration from it here and there.

 

[Deau]

Care to elaborate? I don't think i have.

The only thing I would add is that a hill tile that is "half" covering your attack will not block you. For example if you are on a grass land tile with a hill on the adjacent NE tile and a grassland on the adjacent NW tile you will be able to fire into the square that is directly North of you (but not adjacent)

You can see a whole lot of exceptions in the thread I listed above. Sometimes exceptions that are inconsistent with each other. Exceptions really mostly occur starting at range 3 though so it is not so much a worry for the vanilla game

 

[ghoultek]

thanks for the replies gents. I'm going to have to work on assaulting cities as I don't want my melee guys to die as I'm positioning and setting up the siege unit.

 

[wannabewarlord]

jqpdev,

it's kinda the point that in early stages there is a tit for tat situation. As soon as you can bombard a city with a catapult, the city can bombard you, else it would be too easy, no?

make sure there is melee between the enemy's melee and your siege or else your cats are toast. also, don't worry about the city bombard itself too much, it only kicks of a few hp on one of your units. so if you move in let's say 2-3 cats and 2-3 swords, you're fine.

you know, you've got to break some eggs to make an omelett, so taking some fire before you can dish out some is perfectly ok and in the sense of the game.

it gets fun once you have range 3 sieges though

 

[ghoultek]

jqpdev,

it's kinda the point that in early stages there is a tit for tat situation. As soon as you can bombard a city with a catapult, the city can bombard you, else it would be too easy, no?

make sure there is melee between the enemy's melee and your siege or else your cats are toast. also, don't worry about the city bombard itself too much, it only kicks of a few hp on one of your units. so if you move in let's say 2-3 cats and 2-3 swords, you're fine.

you know, you've got to break some eggs to make an omelett, so taking some fire before you can dish out some is perfectly ok and in the sense of the game.

it gets fun once you have range 3 sieges though

I suppose you are right in that untouchable catapults might make attacking cities too easy. However, I thought the early siege units, in the real world sense, were employed outside of city defenses... until canons were invented. Using archers or charging (melee/mounted) toward a walled, defended city would produce large casualties for the attacker because both units would have to come within range of a city's defenses to attack... so siege to punch holes in the city's defenses then send in archers/melee to be used effectively. My thinking could be flawed.