Siege weapons question/bug

[HannibalBarka]

I some time cannot attack a city with siege weapon (had this with cannon and ram). I thought I must have a spy in the city to be able to attack it (for some reason, i thought the siege weapon needed a unit already in the city to be able to attack it ). It did work with a spy in the city. But later in the game it did some time work without and some time not. Is there some thing wrong I am doing? is this intended?

 

[Rakete4]

I remember I once had this problem, too, in Version 3.6.1.
I think it has to do with the "cannot explore new territory" restrictions that all siege units have got.

 

[LunarMongoose]

I think it has to do with the "cannot explore new territory" restrictions that all siege units have got.

Pretty much.

Sorry about that. I don't find it to be a big deal once you're used to the effect, though. It was an available vanilla mechanic that I decided to put to use a while back. It seemed to make a lot of sense, in that siege units are always in the back, following the main units in an army, and very weak on defense and on their own.

But admittedly it was kind of a substitute for having them only be able to move on Roads, which would've made more sense and been less confusing. Unfortunately, the problem with that is the big problem I have with a lot of great modding ideas: there's no way to teach AIs to use that ability half as well as a human player would.

If you want I could reduce their vision radius like I did with missiles, though. That would allow siege units to attack into cities with fog behind them.

 

[HannibalBarka]

I remember I once had this problem, too, in Version 3.6.1.
I think it has to do with the "cannot explore new territory" restrictions that all siege units have got.

I also supected it to be linked to the "cannot explore new territory" dis-ability.

How does is supposed to work ? Rams can't move into a tile that:
1. none of my other unit visited any time before? In that case wouldn't it be a good idea to go visit ALL may opponents cities in time of peace to "prepare" for potentiel future wars (but that would be kind of cheating because AI definetly will never think in doing so)
2. is in the fog for me? Can't be that because next to a city I am attacking with my rams, there are also other units, and since I am just next to the city, it can't be in the fog, right?
3. none of my units is standing there at that point, which brings the spy into the battelfield. But that again sounds like cheating to me since the AI won't think about it (well i suppose).

So basically my question is how does this works? and how am I suuposed to use it without cheating?

 

[LunarMongoose]

So basically my question is how does this works? and how am I suuposed to use it without cheating?

It has nothing to do with fog, which means explored-slash-revealed-but-currently-darkened tiles. Those are fine.

A unit with that stat cannot enter a tile where its vision radius (normally 1 tile, but higher from hills and out into water, and also higher with Sentry promotions) from there would cover one or more tiles that are solid black, meaning not-yet-explored-at-all.

I'm not sure about AIs with this. They usually do a pretty good job of scouting just in general, but you may be right about specific instances of city attacks for them. I'll check the code, but the best thing to do is probably what I suggested: reduce Siege unit vision radius to zero so they can move into any non-solid-black tile. They just won't, by themselves, provide active vision of any neighboring tiles any more.

There are other units in the mod with this stat too btw. I don't remember all of them off-hand, but they're mostly non-combat units which should still be okay I would think.