Siege weapons are too unreallistic

[Dedelph]

I know it's a game but siege weapons act very differently from real world.

In reality this kind of weapons are used to fire (or throw boulders) staying out of reach of enemy fire/action. They are too slow and to weak in combat strength to survive direct confrontation.

So it disturbs me to see my catapults (or canons or artillery) fighting like better cavalry, inflicting lots of damage and withdrawing or even conquering cities.

To make it more realistic I would suggest to give them defense only and to prevent them from withdrawing and conquering cities ..

The real weapon of those units is the projectile witch cannot be intercepted like aircraft happen to be. So you must give them the ability to bombard at "long" range, that is out of reach of arrows and infantry weapons, but still close enough to be attacked by fast units (mounted units, tanks, gunships)or enemy artillery

I would suggest a range of 2 grid cases for catapults and canons 3 or 4 for artillery. To take account of the different tech levels catapults should be strong enough to take a warrior, canons should be able to resist chariots and mounted archers, and artillery should be able to stand an attack by cavalry or cossacks.

In addition siege weapons should be able to target defenses AND units AND infrastructure.

What is your opinion on this topic and is there an easy way to modify this?

PS: Some complementary questions:

- why should it be impossible to target an enemy ship in coastal water?

- why should aircraft be unable to attack ships?

 

[AKauhanen]

Have to agree. The siege weapon system in Civ4 sucks. Hope someone could mod the Civ3 siege weapon bombardment to Civ4. In my opinion the range should be 1 for early siege weapons and cannons and 2 for artillery and battleships.

 

[Ranos]

This topic has been discussed many times in many different threads.

YES, siege weapons are unrealistic, BUT they function this way in the game for balance. In Civ 3, siege weapons functioned as they do in real life, but they were overpowered. Take a stack of siege units to a city (2-3 per defender) and you could take a city without losing a single unit. This combined with unlimited rail movement and no collateral damage allowed an attacker to wipe out a civ in a single turn.

Can you imagine taking a few catapults to a city, bombarding city defenses to zero, then bombing the defenders, and having a completely defensless city that a single offensive unit could easily take? Can you say, "Way to easy?"

While unrealistic, the current system is the best to keep the game balanced.

 

[patweb]

Seige weapons are protected by the troops they are stacked with. Your map scale has to be miles per square. Siege weapons on that scale would be virtually worthless for anything but battering down defenses, clearing firelanes and suppressing troop movements.

If anything, they are overpowerful in Civ 4, such as the catapults ability to damage every unit in a square (I would liken to suppression fire). Even modern artillery has limits.

A catapult firing at over 5 miles? A cannon? I think not. A modern 155MM howitzer, however, does have a maximum range of ~24 Miles. Maybe.....

As for aircraft attacking ships, they didn't put dive bombers or torpedo's in the technology tree.

 

[Aegis]

Can you imagine taking a few catapults to a city, bombarding city defenses to zero, then bombing the defenders, and having a completely defensless city that a single offensive unit could easily take? Can you say, "Way to easy?"

While unrealistic, the current system is the best to keep the game balanced.

I offer a nice solution: Allow siege weapons to bombard city defenses, however only allow them to bombard units and ships so long as they are not in a city.

I would be perfectly ok with this and I feel that it is more realistic.

 

[Thalassicus]

Seige weapons are used for:

1) Weakening fortifications
2) Shelling city defenders
3) Shelling armies in the field

The exact mechanics may vary, but the purposes are the same as in real life

 

[Duuk]

Seige weapons are used for:

1) Weakening fortifications
2) Shelling city defenders
3) Shelling armies in the field

The exact mechanics may vary, but the purposes are the same as in real life

Yes, but Civ4 only allows you to do #1 without using siege weapons as suicide banzai-charging units. I'd be fine with that if they were cheaper, but they're expensive. I rarely build them until mid-to-late game, when I usually just build frigates and/or destroyers to batter down coastal cities. Then I pour on units until I bleed a city into conquest. Cheaper in the long run.

 

[AKauhanen]

YES, siege weapons are unrealistic, BUT ... While unrealistic, the current system is the best to keep the game balanced.

I disagree. All this change makes is that you have to build a lot more artillery and the importance of strategic positions is diminished because the artillery can't bombard enemies from strategic positions anymore. Civ3 artillery had collateral damage and you couldn't rush a enemy civ with artillery in one turn. Now to win a war you have to.

Don't get me wrong, I understand how the new artillery system works and I do oblivirate enemy armies coming inside my territory with my artillery rushes, but I just think the new system ruins the game.

 

[Thalassicus]

Yes, but Civ4 only allows you to do #1 without using siege weapons as suicide banzai-charging units. I'd be fine with that if they were cheaper, but they're expensive.

Artillery are really, really good at evening odds against a technologically superior opponent in the field.

It's a matter of cost ratios. When you have an advanced army of the AI in your territory, softening them up with one or two artillery strikes can produce a massive advantage in your favor. There's no way I could beat an army of knights+macemen without war elephants or some catapults to shell their forces. (Going up against a lot of knights seems to happen very often on the emperor handicap; the AI loves knights!) Just one or two bombings of a 5-6 unit stack of knights and other assorted units can allow you to take it out with Macemen, Pikemen, and minimal losses.

Also, shelling a city's defenders with just one artillery piece (or its equivilant) usually results in near-zero losses of my main assault force.

This is just my experience and play style, however; I'm not arguing for or against their uses, just saying I find them handy in all three situations. I have tried massing nothing but artillery, and nothing but units, but I find I lose fewer hammers of production with a well balanced army.

 

[calyth]

Collateral damage from seige weapons can only damage a unit, but not to kill it off ultimately. I don't see what all the big fuss is about. The old Civ 3 seige weapon system was more out of whack, and I find the Civ 4 version much more tolerable.

 

[lord_graywolfe]

they werent really trying for realism with the seige engines just trying to balance out the combat system. if they wanted it realistic then you wouldnt be able to drag your catapults around anyway. armies didnt haul them from battle to battle they built them when they reached an enemy stronghold they wanted to lay siege to. i dont really like using seige engines to attack the way they do id prefer to just use them to bombard cities or units coming up to my cities that im defending. thats the one that really bugs me, you can have seige engines in your city to soften up incoming forces.

oh and the planes can attack ships they just cant sink them, not sure how i feel about that one.

 

[Dedelph]

I agree with Lord Graywolfe's post.

Thats the reason why I find it akward to charge with kamikaze catapults to conquer a city.

And it is a matter of balance, catapults are overpowered. At the level I like to play (Noble) all you have to do is to build a stack of catapults and small force to accompany them and to mop up the remains of the defenders. After that your offensive rolls with 2 or 3 cities building catapults to replace the losses.

I know I should play at higher level ...

 

[Suspiria]

Suiciding siege units has balanced the game? How has it done this? Now instead of bombing a city unit ala Civ 3 to inflict harm, you now have to suicide charge your siege unit to do the same thing? Where the hell is the balance in this?

If anything the system is worse than Civ3. I know Civ 3 made siege weapon bombardment easy to conquer cities but Civ4's system hasnt really changed the system, its still easy but the only difference now is that you have to suicide a siege unit to achieve the same thing. Lame.

There has to be a more balanced way to deal with the gameplay issues. In reality siege weapons SHOULD NEVER charge into direct combat. It is just absolutely ridiculous beyond belief.

For Civ5 either they bring back the civ3 system with more balance or come up with a new idea entirely. Because this one is absolute rubbish and one of my major pet peeves with Civ4.

 

[troytheface]

the new system thru me for awhile but i have adapted and i see why they have it the way they do. Think they set it up to throttle Stacks of Doom- one can't easily have a stack o doom anymore as one or two cat/art hits
wreaks havoc on ur stack. When attacking cities i usually have to divide my attack into two or three stacks.

The only draw back i see is not being able to capture artillary.

They could change it a bit and make it so artillary has no defense - that may help a bit
that way at least u don't have an undefended artillary roll up and fire away at ur stack.

 

[Proteus]

In the official firaxis poll I made the suggestion to change the current artillery mechanics to:

Artillery can bombard units (like in Civ III) causing collateral damage. If any defending artillery is in the stack which is bombarded, an artillery duel is the result which lasts until one of the artillery units is dead and which causes collateral damage to units in both, attacking and defending stack.
(an option available only to true artillery units, not for tanks/MBTs which get the collateral damage promotion [here the old model should stay in place])

Maybe the firaxians find this suggestion worth implementing

(of course such a change would have to also result in higher costs for artillery units for balance purposes, as they will survive for a much longer time)

 

[777]

I also find assaulting artillery bit of goofy since who would do so, or better question would be how you even do it? But just accept it...like 3d graphics

- why should it be impossible to target an enemy ship in coastal water?

Land artillery never fires ships, or I haven't heard such things. Hit percent would be quite minimal. That is if you're talking about realism, I don't find this so bad issue in the game.

 

[troytheface]

land artillary were in forts that did indeed shoot at ships- (Spanish forts and those guns that shot and went down after each recoil. They had Coastal forts in civ3)
In so far as attacking artillary- it is a tactic used since napoleon days isn't it? And in WW2 A japanese commander on the Aluetian (sp) isles made an attack on the american artillary his main goal-
(he was going to turn them and use them against the americans-

 

[screwtype]

Catapults are ridiculously overpowered anyway. In reality sieges generally weren't very successful until the advent of cannon.

 

[Proteus]

Land artillery never fires ships, or I haven't heard such things. Hit percent would be quite minimal. That is if you're talking about realism, I don't find this so bad issue in the game.

We have at least one account of such a thing.
It was from the german-danish war (1864) where Prussia and Austria (successfully) fought against denmark over the possession of Schleswig-Holstein.

A danish ironclad approached the coast near the german (I think prussian) troops and was fired upon by german guns. They weren´t able to sink it, but at least they damaged it so much that it retreated after a while.
AFAIR you can read it in Theodor Fontanes book ("Der Schleswig-Holsteinische Krieg im Jahre 1864") about the german-danish war (he took part as a war correspondent)

 

[777]

Coastal artillery is for naval battle and land artillery is for land battle. Coastal fortress would be good idea in cIV, but it's pretty much same to me does artillery fire to sea or not in cIV.