Slow, slow, sllloowwww artillery

[Khshayarsha]

Seems like everybody praises Artillery as the greatest help in conquering. They're a pain to move into position, though. Only one tile per turn. You can't fire them on the same turn when you moved them. You can't move them on the same turn after firing. You need lots of defensive units just to chaperone the artillery on its slow crawl across the map. By the time you can build Artillery, the enemy has usually culture-expanded enough that their nearest city is 3 or 4 tiles inside the border, and that means 3 or 4 turns before you can actually use the Artillery. Let's say you succeed in taking the city. You can't move the ones that have fired, and you're stuck with leaving enough defensive units in the field to prevent capture of the Artillery, instead of sending them onward to further conquest.

The fast offensive units zip onward other enemy cities and it takes another 4 or 5 turns for your artillery to catch up. What are your fast offensive units supposed to do while waiting? Stand there and pick their noses? I don't like general, unfocused pillaging, because I plan to take that land and use it for myself. I only pillage to deny the enemy strategic resources or luxuries.

I don't even bother to build Catapult or Cannon, because of the low effectiveness. Yes, Artillery is effective in conquest, but that squeaky wheel noise! It only reinforces how slow they are.

I prefer Bombers for the purpose of artillery, because they take only one turn to position, and they reach over the border, and they are as effective as Artillery. Of course, they also have a greater likelihood of being taken out by the enemy when you use them. But at least the enemy canoot capture them, so if they're shot down, big deal, you just build some more. For these reasons, Bombers are better than Artillery.

Someone once had a bright idea about speeding up the slow crawl of Artillery. Send in a Settler to build a new city on your border. That should push the enemy's borders inward, allowing you to use Roads or Railroads now within your borders to hurry the Artillery along that much faster. OK, but founding a new city on the border does not always move the border in your favor. Sometimes you get only 6 out of 9 tiles when your new city fails to budge the borders. I often find this when trying to plant a city near a rival's resource or lux, and I'm hoping to culture-expand the border to get at it.

 

[silver 2039]

Generally I dont use artilllery either. I only use them defensively in my territory or I might use them to shell an enemy city across the border but not for going deep in enemy territory. Bombers are much better but by the time you have bombers you have tanks also.

 

[wilbill]

Khshayarsha, you've identified all the negative aspects of artillery. And you're right.
But there are some positives. Even compared to bombers. You identified one - "they also have a greater likelihood of being taken out by the enemy when you use them" - all that wasted production. And sure, the artillery slows down your faster units, but it lets those faster units survive so much longer by attacking mostly red-lined defenders. Again, production is saved.
Like most aspects of Civ3, artillery has both positive and negative aspects. The trick is learning when the balance is to your benefit. If you're attacking cities defended by Riflemen/Infantry with your Cavalry, it's definitely worth waiting for the artillery to catch up. If you're attacking Pikemen/Spearmen, it might be better to turn the cavalry loose.

 

[Krayzeenbk]

Artillery has a higher bombard rating than a bomber. Artillery's positive aspects far outweigh its negative aspects. I don't even see what you're complaining about. If you'd like a godly unit, go to your editor and make yourself 1000/1000/10 artillery with 1000 bombard and huge RoF that treats all terrain as roads and play with that.
What you do with your offensive units when they're waiting for your artillery to get in range is you counterattack. If there is nothing to counterattack, perhaps you need to play on higher difficulty.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Khshayarsha
Seems like everybody praises Artillery as the greatest help in conquering. They're a pain to move into position, though. Only one tile per turn. You can't fire them on the same turn when you moved them. You can't move them on the same turn after firing. You need lots of defensive units just to chaperone the artillery on its slow crawl across the map. By the time you can build Artillery, the enemy has usually culture-expanded enough that their nearest city is 3 or 4 tiles inside the border, and that means 3 or 4 turns before you can actually use the Artillery. Let's say you succeed in taking the city. You can't move the ones that have fired, and you're stuck with leaving enough defensive units in the field to prevent capture of the Artillery, instead of sending them onward to further conquest.

Not true!!! You have underestimated the power of artillery. Have you read this thread yet?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=25078&pagenumber=1

 

[zerksees]

I back Moonsinger 100% on this one. Artillery may be slow to you but it is powerful. You can take out tanks, mech inf and modern armoer with artillery and cavalry if you need to. Playing from behind would be virtually impossible without it.

I think there are other parts of the game that are much slower than artillery - like building all those tile improvements.
But I do them anyway for the satisfaction of beating the game. I suppose you could go without artillery if you have enough of a production advantage, but I wouldn't.

 

[Gogf]

@Krayzeenbk, I believe stealth bombers do have the same bombard as radar artillery, and lethal bombard.

I like artillery, but I like planes more now, because they have lethal bombard, along with great range. If you use stealth bombers, they almost never get shot down. You can take out units in a city across a fair sized ocean with stealth bombers, in your cities! But, atillery are still good, just not as good (in my opinion), as the new, lethal bombard planes.

 

[Mr. Hyperbole]

I also agree w/Moonsinger. Until I checked out the "War Academy" I NEVER used artillery...now they are a standard part of my invasion strategy.
Indeed they may take some time to reach the front once you've conquered the border towns, but they take a lot of frustration out of seizing a size 12+ city w/a garrison of 20 infantry.
Using my former strategy I would count on losing numerous units...now I very seldom need to send in replacements!

P.S. I use them in conjuction w/bombers once I've researched Flight...just more bombs fallin', baby!

 

[Krayzeenbk]

Even after Flight, artillery is still very useful, especially in defense. You don't need to predict which city/airfield to base your artillery in, because you can use railroads to instantly move to any tile inside your borders and then bombard with a range of 2 from it.

@Gogf: ah yes they changed it in C3C, along with normal bombers. It actually has more bombard than radar artillery. I do think this is kind of absurd, seeing as Firaxis bases their unit strengths on wars between the US and third world nations, but whatever, that's off topic in this thread.

 

[Khshayarsha]

I guess I just prefer the Blitzkrieg style. I like to slam my stacks over the border and take a city in the same turn, or in two turns at most. By taking 4 turns to even begin the attack after declaring war, it gives the enemy times enough to mobilize a stronger defense. Although I can see how building up enough artillery power can compensate for its slowness. But I would have to adjust my playing style.

 

[silver 2039]

I tend to avoid wars during the infantary, cavalry, artillery period I wait for tanks.

 

[Gogf]

@Krayzeenbk: Well, despite their intentions, it makes stealth bombers stronger than artillery. If you have a city or aircraft carrier near the enemy (or not near with stealth bombers...), you can use your stealth bombers in that city, and not worry about slowing down, or losing them. You can even bomb units in cities to death with the bombers. That's what I like about the new stealth, and non-stealth bombers. Take out all one civs rubber and oil. Use the bombers to kill all modern units (i.e. those that require rubber and oil), and then wait for a flood of frigates, galleons, riflemen, and longbowmen. Of course, the lethal is so helpful in taking cities, my main attack force can be mech infantry (or plain old infantry), and only fight on defense when they are attack inside enemy territory. Kill all AI units in the city, and then move in with all the infantry/mech infantry. No worrying about protecting artillery, no possibility to lose units when attacking. I get more production to center on bombers, stealth bombers, and infantry or mech infantry. And, if I lose my defensive units before I take the city, I don't lose by bombard force. Of course, once you take a city, artillery is helpfull, on defense.

 

[Kaboth]

What I don't understand about artillery/radar artillery and bomber/stealth bomber is the chance to take out city improvements and citizens which I generally don't appreciate. Although getting rid of the citizens can be useful to lower war weariness and resistance. They seem to destroy these things more often than they hurt military units in a base. Are the bomber formulas different to artillery? Can either destroy enemy wonders?

Or is it a sight thing? If you can see the military units in a base, are they always damaged by bombers/artillery provided the bombard does not miss?

 

[Krayzeenbk]

@Gogf: Yes I obviously understand that, I just don't play C3C. I have used bombers in PTW and I do know how they work, thank you. You don't need to chew it out like that.

@Kaboth: It's not a sight thing. If you can't see a unit in an enemy city, it's either because of fog of war, in which case bombardment is treated the same as if you saw the city, or because there are no units in the city, in which case the artillery will either hit a building, population, or miss.

 

[Gogf]

Sorry for the way that post sounded, I was just getting a little excited.

 

[dozenlong]

I find that I can't really wage a war against a large opponent without artillery. I'm not always the biggest civ -- artillery tactics are the great equalizer that allow me to achieve loss ratios of 5-1, 10-1 or even 20-1 -- impossible to do when relying solely on normal offensive units. When I get real bad start positions I will sometimes crank out a stack of 15-20 catapults to wage my war -- usually enough to beat a spearman or pikeman down.

 

[Woody]

I am in the never build them camp on artillery of any kind. I build only fast attack units and just enough defenders to leave one in each captured city. I figure I can have close to twice as many fast units by not building stacks of artillery and the defending units to guard them. The only point in the game that this works againist me is the short time between infantry and tanks.

 

[Krayzeenbk]

I figure I will need 1/10 as many fast units if I build the same amount of artillery you are forgoing, so I go that way and end up with way too much firepower.

 

[Woody]

Originally posted by Krayzeenbk
I figure I will need 1/10 as many fast units if I build the same amount of artillery you are forgoing, so I go that way and end up with way too much firepower.

I dont see how you can figure this, I might loose a few more units but my wars are over by the time you move your slow units in postion to capture the second line of cities. My fast wars do two things, reduce my war werriness so I can stay in demoracy virtually the whole game and they kill the enemy before he has a chance to switch over to war production and replace lost units.


Until mech inf fast units will retreat more often than not so loses are not as high as you might think so I am able to easily replace them with full production of only fast units during war. I also benefit from short wars in that the enemy has fewer turns to reinforce his front lines so I have fewer units to defeat. Its very common for the AI to only have a couple of defenders in cites away from the border and many times I have been able to easily take these cites with a few fast unit after cracking the border towns. With slow artillery the AI will load cites with defenders by the time you get into postion.

 

[Krayzeenbk]

That is why you need to increase your difficulty level. What you say works when you have some kind of superiority over the enemy, it does not work at all when you don't.