Siege units seem useless

[Umbral Reaver]

The ranger line makes a better city garrison. Especially in Purity for the +50% in cities and Supremacy for the +1 range and extra shot.

 

[The_Reckoning]

That's true. :<

 

[Question]

Give missle rovers indirect fire, problem solved.

 

[Promethian]

I find I really only use the siege unit when playing as Harmony and only after I am deep harmony and they are upgraded. They are supposed to be good for attacking cities but gunners do plenty of damage without the need for set up.

Now since I dislike complaining without solutions here is how I would solve a few problems with combat:

Increase city HP baseline, power seems to scale decently now, they just fall too fast.

Give gunners a penalty to attacking cities so you want the siege for that non-melee damage trade.

Rebalance the affinity 4 units. They are too strong for when we get them. They should definitely be stronger than soldiers at every step but not by this much. Give them two upgrades instead of just the one and make them weaker at affinity 4.

 

[bkwrm79]

In my last game I tried using them in an early war and, despite having a ton of them and moving in to surround the target city with melee first, saw them wiped out by a numerically weaker enemy army. Fell back, built some Rangers and tried again... won easily, even though numbers were much closer.

So yeah, something is wrong with the early artillery, at least.

 

[Jinavajra]

I think you can get the Harmony T3 Artillery to ignore obstacles AND have a range of 3, but I could be mistaken.

That makes them much more effective than their predecessors and it's basically a Rocket Artillery (Civ5) comeback.

 

[Promethian]

Actually I think both Harmony and Sup get range 3 built in (purity is stronger base but can perk for +1 range). Harmony can get movement speed and no set up making them effectively just better than gunners at that point. Though I get the speed and unit scatter because it is just fun.

 

[Alkaid]

I don't tend to use them hardly at all either. Early game gunners feel better at taking and defending cities, as well as being range support against units. In the late game gunners still seem a bit better all around out of the two.

For supremacy and harmony the main use I have for them is in the late game by having a couple tag along with the army to take out enemy satellites to clear orbital space for my teleport or combat boost satellites. However if you're purity I'd say the LEV tank completely removes the need for artillery to be brought along at all.

Also it hasn't been mentioned but for the unique set up units I'd say the LEV Destroyer's the work case of set up. It's overly hard to make use of it with it's limited range and move further hampered by the set up. SABRs at least make for strong defenders or strong artillery support with their full 4 range if you satellite teleport them nearby to help with a particularly sturdy city.

 

[Japper007]

I don't have any real problem with siege units, but they sure could use some sort of buff. The setup requirement makes them too slow to keep up with Beyond Earths fast moving wars (well, faster than civ V's wars at least). Only reason I use them occasionally is because they unlock at Computing which I usually get earlier than Physics.

 

[Ryoga]

(well, faster than civ V's wars at least)

Strange, I have the complete opposite impression. It's like Civ BE is permanently stuck at the ancient-renaissance level of combat speed, while Civ V reaches a point where you can steamroll everything and conquer the whole map in a few turns.

In Civ BE you are bound to units that have 2 movement per turn max or even 1 (!!!). That makes things considerably slower compared to the 5 movement speed of Civ V tanks supported by decidedly more powerful and less limited air units.

 

[Burck]

I would agree that basic Missile Rover's are crap. By the time you get to computing, you've likely already upgraded your Rangers into Gunners.

However, the tier 2 units were quite handy for me when my AI opponents fortified their capitals with defensive buildings. Their city strengths were about 66 to my armor (18), marines (14), gunners (14), and even my CNDRs (38).

With the total vs city bonus of +40%, the tier 2 missile rovers were dealing a sturdy 28 range strength. I had to produce 3 of them for any siege, however.

I didn't have many strategic resources this game (I had 3 firaxite), so (upgraded) Missile Rovers made a decent replacement for carpets of high melee-strength affinity-UU.

 

[AriochIV]

I'm not seeing the purpose of the "siege" units, the ones that you need to set up like catapults etc from Civ 5. They barely do any more damage than the regular ranged unit and are far slower to attack & are more vulnerable. Am I doing something wrong here? Is there a way to have effective siege units?

The siege units are best used as city attack specialists. Take the +city attack perks, and they become quite dangerous in this role.

Other ranged units are better suited to dealing with enemy units.

 

[Question]

There is no need whatsoever to take + city attack perks because cities take sufficient damage from normal ranged units.

 

[AriochIV]

Early in the game, a city with a Rocket Battery is a tough nut for Gunners to crack.

 

[Mysticforce]

The problem with siege units is their specialty - city bombardment - is useless because normal ranged units do too much damage to cities.

Firaxis either has to nerf ranged vs cities (maybe 30-40% of current damage taken by cities vs ranged), or give siege units a 3 tile AoE or something.

Can't give siege units 1 extra range - that's way too powerful for early game since the city can't fight back at all without units.

 

[omniclast]

I find the biggest issue with T1 rocket artillery is that T2 infantry/T1 combat rovers/cities all one-shot them, just like rangers. And since they need a turn to set up, they usually die before they get a shot off. They should have more melee defense strength, so they can tank a bit more than rangers/gunners, and that would actually make it a real choice to take them instead of rangers.

The other issue, with the entire artillery class, is their upgrades always come so late, they're usually much weaker than anything you/your opponent has in the field. By the time you get to T2 artillery at A4, T1 affinity units are already out. Artillery needs a base buff so that at every tier, they are only moderately weaker than other unit classes that are 1 tier higher, rather than much weaker and pointless to build.

 

[vahouth]

The prize for the most useless siege unit has to go to the Ambassador IMHO.
For a tier 4 missile unit, it is pretty weak with only 36 ranged strength.
As for the SABR, I really cannot see why it should be slower than a foot soldier. If only it's movement was 2...

 

[ahawk]

On Mercury, I found siege units almost completely unnecessary as I usually develop a tech advantage pretty quickly.

On higher difficulties, I've seen siege units get more useful as I no longer can spam a single-unit army to take things over.

The problem with siege-units, though, is: either make them have to set-up, or make them unable to fire over terrain, but not both. I mean, half the time there's forest or hills or mountains blocking every other city. I'm just thankful the engine allowed canyons to not count as mountains, otherwise a lot of cities and units would be able to be hit by, at best, one siege unit per turn.

Right now, even mid-game siege units often have to

a) Set-up
b) Be clear of hills/forest/mountains
c) Be in range of the target city's retaliation

Those 3 things are just a bit much when some siege units have incredibly low hitpoints, and, on top of it, the siege units often don't do enough damage against cities.

But the worst, and I mean worst, is the Supremacy unit that has 1mp, has to set-up to attack, and has pretty low health/strength when defending. I mean, yeah, whatever this unit is called does great ranged damage, but it has 1mp and has to set-up, meaning it can't fire for two whole turns after moving into the tile it wants to fire from. This would all be balanced off by the extra range the unit has (3 rather than 2), but it can't fire over terrain, meaning the extra range is often a waste as at least one forest or hill will be in the way of the target across the longer distance. Just miserable.

 

[AriochIV]

I do agree that siege units should have indirect fire. I think this would help balance them against ranged units and make up for the fact that they have to set up to fire.

And that's kind of the whole point of artillery: to fire on a target that someone else has eyes on.