Suicide Artillery = broken concept

[insydr]

Artillery should be allowed to cause collateral damage by bombarding instead of attacking. Using them for attack has got to be one of the dumbest ideas ever, especially since they are usually too weak to defeat any units in direct combat without dying (a.k.a. being sacrificed).

For instance, how realistic is this scenario: you have a huge army outside an enemy city (or stack), and a bunch of artillery along for support. You bombard the city to reduce its defenses (so far so good). But then, in order to soften up the actual enemy forces inside, you send the artillery to attack AHEAD of your army?

Why should an artillery piece (or catapult or whatever) that is capable of hurling deadly projectiles into a city while safely behind your army's front lines be forced to enter the city all by itself and engage the defenders in direct combat? This doesn't make any sense. Can you imagine a general sending his artillery units in before the tanks?

Instead, the artillery should first bombard defense down to 0, and then cause collateral damage through bombardment, NOT through attacking. In fact, they shouldn't be attackers at all (a la Civ3). This fixes a number of issues.

1) The attacking army no longer has to sacrifice its artillery in order to take a city. Artillery groups should be used for field support throughout an entire campaign and not be completely blown away at the first stop.
2) The defender has to be more proactive in defending cities. They no longer have the luxury of camping with fortified city garrison units that are untouchable by ranged artillery and will tear up any attacking units.
3) Stacks of Doom will now REALLY be vulnerable, since an artillery unit doesn't just cause one-time collateral damage and die. It can damage the stack again on the next turn, and on the turn after that, and the turn after that, etc. until the person using the stack gets smart.

If you think the attacker now has an unfair advantage, remember that the defender will now be able to use their artillery in the exact same manner, causing collateral damage to an attacking army/stack without sacrificing the unit.

What do you people think?

 

[Inflammatory]

I agree that the Civ3 style non-combat artillery was a lot more realistic. Since artillery is protected by other units at all times I don't see how they should be subject to attack or, even more stupid, why they would attack themselves (as in not attack each other before any smart-*** gets funny...). Finally, I also don't get why they get to retreat. Ever heard of fast-moving artillery?

 

[Zakharov]

I always felt that civ 3 style artillery was a borderline exploit. Take a stack of 50 to war and your army was unstoppable.

Personally I am not bothered that realism has been sacrificed, as I will always prefer balanced gameplay over realism. (Hmm... I've said that on a number of occasions during my time at CFC. I think I'll put it in my sig).

 

[strider3700]

Yep this is my biggest complaint by far from the first game I played. Artillery was a huge pain to produce and get to the front lines. There is no way I wanted to sacrifice them to make a city capture easier. If you don't sacrifice them though it's hell to take a city.

 

[jkp1187]

You guys should chill. The change was needed to eliminate an unbalancing exploit. Better to make this change and give the AI a fighting chance against a human player than to eliminate nearly all elements of chance from war.

 

[Lucky4s]

There was balance in civ 3 arty. Couple of options:

Build arty in your city, and shell the arty shelling your city.
Use aircraft to weaken the arty then send troops after it.
Use sneak attack forces and target the artillery.
Use naval units if in range to attack the arty.
Harrass the units before they reach your city, they had a movement of 1.

Now arty is pigeonholed into one role: city siege only. So we went from using multiple stratiges to almost no stratigy. Huge step in the wrong direction. This whole balance view a lot of you people sharing makes the game dull and boring. God forbid you have to use stratigy once in awhile....

 

[Zakharov]

This whole balance view a lot of you people sharing makes the game dull and boring. God forbid you have to use stratigy once in awhile....

There was no strategy with artillery in civ 3. Every game followed a three step plan:

1) Roll a stack of artillery up next to a city/SoD.
2) Redline all units.
3) Mop up with your regular combat units.

Btw, I never once saw the cpu come at me with a stack of artillery. Multiplayer may well be a different story though as I never played it.

 

[Lucky4s]

There was no strategy with artillery in civ 3. Every game followed a three step plan:

1) Roll a stack of artillery up next to a city/SoD.
2) Redline all units.
3) Mop up with your regular combat units.

Btw, I never once saw the cpu come at me with a stack of artillery. Multiplayer may well be a different story though as I never played it.

That's not a combat stratigy? Hmmm.... There wasn't a stratigy of placing your arty? Defending your arty? Using arty to destroy infrastructure and resources trade routes?

And becasue of lack AI game programming in civ 3, now we all need to suffer in civ 4? How utilitarian of you, thanks!

 

[Ravinhood]

He's right in one sense, it's turned from an attackers game with artillery to a defenders game with a city stacked with artillery, blowing the hell out of stacks, heh, put those 50 artillery in a city now and just some attacker try to take it.

Artillery should go back to being just an attacking/defending unit like in CIV I. When you give all this range and collateral damage stuff you just complicate the "game" and cause frustrations and "exploits" on whichever side the design favors from one game to the next.

Taking away my naval bombardments wahhhhhhh, I could tear up some infrastructure with my battleships in CIV II-CIV III. Knock out that one railhead to uraninum that the AI had, keep it under bombardment and that AI never gets NUKES, but, I DO and Crush him. lol Not 100% sure this was stopped, but, I do recall reading they took away something from the bombardment of navies, might have been city dmg instead.

 

[VeniceBeach]

I have to agree with the OP. I liked the system in Civ3. Artillery never charges into battle like a normal unit, nor can it fight close quarters. On the other hand, I can see the imbalance argument too. I think the problem in Civ3 was that cannon were either too strong or too cheap. Prior to mass production technologies, large and complex weapons like catapults and cannon were extremely expensive to field. These units should be more precious and therefore cost 2-3x as much. Conversely, you could keep the current price and reduce effectiveness as each unit would represent fewer individuals. It should be theoretically possible to build so many cannon that you just mow down armies and cities, but it should also be priced accordingly. I would keep the collateral damage and allow city structures/pop to be killed after defences are reduced to zero.

As for naval bombardment of terrain, that was a little unrealisitic that a destroyer could wipe out like 100 square miles of farms or ten miles of railroad in a row.

 

[Tactician Zhao]

There was balance in civ 3 arty.

not even close, I'm sorry to say

That's not a combat stratigy? Hmmm.... There wasn't a stratigy of placing your arty? Defending your arty? Using arty to destroy infrastructure and resources trade routes?

perhaps "strategy" has been confused with "overpowered cheapness".. in Civilization 4 it is much better.. they are still crucial to taking a city down, yet not overpowered either.. anyone who thinks laying siege to a city was ever something to be taken lightly needs to read up.. even Suntzu declared it a last resort.. though in civilization 4 it is pretty much required.. but still quite workable with a combination of units and artillery

I give the new system a big thumbs up ^_^

 

[Zhahz]

Siege (and bombers) are insanely powerful in Civ IV due to their dual nature (reducing city defenses and collateral damage that is often the difference between taking a city or having no chance) so I think there should be a cost - you shouldn't just be able to freely terrorize and conquer.

Instead of looking at it as losing your units, look at it more as a logistical kind of thing. If you were going to shell a city day and night for ages to reduce it tremendously you'd need a LOT of ammo - so you could consider the destruction and "resupply" of your siege weapons to be the ammo. Yeah, sometimes your siege live to fight another day - but in that case it'll be serious luck or weak enemies (that wouldn't require as much ammo).

Early on catapults don't require much production to make. Later on your other siege units are easy to make too. It's really not that big of a deal.

 

[GenocideBringer]

That is covered in unit upkeep, just like how you don't have to pay for food for your archers.


And if you attack in a group with artillery AND soldiers, your artillery will not be harmed

 

[Louis XXIV]

I wouldn't mind some kind of balance between the two. Perhaps make it bombard like Civ3 artillery, but have a chance to effect every unit in a stack. To balance it out, you limit the amount of damage it can do, so it will be very rare that units are completely redlined from an artillery attack (just weakened to the point of being easier). You can make it so more artillery will cause more damage (giving reason to build more), but, after a point, there won't be any effect (limiting the point of significant stacks). It would also give them a point as defensive units as well as stack busters.

Also, they would destroy walls and defensive bonuses in general (maybe destroying bonuses caused by fortification and culture). Also, they could kill people and maybe bombard tile improvements.

Those are my thoughts (keep in mind I don't have Civ4 yet, so I could be off on stuff).

 

[Zakharov]

And becasue of lack AI game programming in civ 3, now we all need to suffer in civ 4? How utilitarian of you, thanks!

I'm not sure how we are all suffering when myself and likely many other people actually think the new system is a vast improvement. Also, I had nothing to do with the programming in either game. I'm just stating my opinion, as are you.

Suppose that it was made impossible to lose artillery when performing a collateral damage attack. You could just keep charging at a city until all its defenders are dead and your other units can just walk right in unopposed. You then roll them on to the next city, rinse and repeat. That sounds a lot like the civ 3 system to me, which I found to be an exploit.

If you want a realistic justification for this new system, how about imagining that the city defenders are sending out covert units to sabotage the artillery? Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail.

I'm not saying the civ 4 system is perfect, but I do think it is better than the civ 3 version. Personally I think artillery should adopt some of the features used in the SMAC model. For example, I liked how opposing artillery units would fight a duel with each other before attacking other units.

 

[Venger]

Civ4 overall on artillery seems a step back - especially since (I have not seen a way to) use siege weapons to bombard against an enemy stack in the open... seige weapons have been used against enemy formations throughout history, from onagers to ballistae to any number of weapons - there should be a mechanism that reflects their real role on the battlefield - softening the opposition up.

In a sense, the retreat ability is a poor mans compromise on this issue - a catapult can attack a stack, do collateral damage, and sometimes retreat with experience points.

To me, it's not a game ruiner, but I overall prefer the concept and execution in Civ3 (though it was far from perfect, capturing artillery occurred on the battlefield at times, but usually fleeing troops spiked their artillery rendering it useless, and it later times, it was useless to capture since it was most often chambered for munitions you don't possess... in Civ3, you'd constantly see artillery swap back and forth like an co-ed during pledge night)

Venger

 

[Scythe89]

Maybe make is like whenever an artillery shoots at a town/stack, an artillery in that town/stack can fire back and has a chance to destroy/damage it.

 

[Craterus22]

You guys should chill. The change was needed to eliminate an unbalancing exploit. Better to make this change and give the AI a fighting chance against a human player than to eliminate nearly all elements of chance from war.

It was only an exploit because the AI didn't use arty in civ3 productively...

I can understand the design decision - making arty expendable in battle to reduce total number of arty, but perhaps making them cost more could have limited them?

Or perhaps during bombard - arty would take 1hp damage (due to wear and tear, but not be detroyed UNLESS you try collateral with only 1hp left). It would reduce successive turns doing collateral damage and slow down thier usage... but would not necessarily reduce the total number of arty units.

 

[damxam]

It's not a bad change IMO, but arty should be able to reduce the bonuses
of defenders further. A bombardment shouldn't do damage to the enemy,
but should nullify most bonuses because the attacker can overcome height
etc while the defender is pinned by artillery. That way an army with sufficient
artillery support could take enemy cities without the sometimes slighly
ridicolous losses, if he has enough arty support.

 

[Clintimus]

Sacrificing Canons seems to be the best way in the end to take a city in Civ4, until you get tanks and bombers, and then i see no need for artillery period. To me there should be a use for attacking actual units, even if it doesn't do much dmg.

In Civ3, yes Artillery was strong, but only before you have bombers, and then it is merely good for defending because of its shot it gets to shoot at the beginning of a fight.