Suicide Artillery = broken concept

[ironpawn]

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.

Great idea, maybe they'll add that in the future expansion. Right now I hate the Civ 4 version of Arty, makes it pretty much a pointless unit, other then city bombardment- in civ3 it was always handy to have 2 or 3 sitting in your border citys- now its a waste of time. :suicide:

Only other solution I can think of is for them to make the arty units so cheap, that you can produce them in a turn in about any town. Then you can toss them repeatingly at the hordes outside your walls.

And as far as Civ3 not being programed to use arty and bombers correctly I'm a little lost, on why thats a good reason to cripple my bombardment units. Heck, they spent alot of time on the eye candy, I'm sure it wouldn't have been a stretch to correctly program the use of Artillery and Bombers, with out massivly crippling them

 

[neriana]

I'm never able to successfully bombard with artillery anyway in Civ 3. Like, one out of 20 times, at most, I'll take an HP off a defending unit. The RNG gods love my bombers and hate my artillery and ships. I'm glad Civ 4 is back to Civ 2's way of doing this, because cannons etc. are always much more useful to me in Civ 2 than in Civ 3 -- meaning they're useful at all.

 

[zeeter]

I guess I'm on both sides of the fence here. On the one side, I can't see catapults actively engaged in combat when attacking a city. On the other side, I don't think that stacks of artillery are very strategic. If you do the same thing in every combat: send 40 arty protected by four MI and redline a city's defense, that's not strategy. Strategy is adapting your attacks depending on what the defender is doing. Otherwise it's just a script. How can that be any fun?

Maybe a solution to the problem is to make artillery very cheap. Then I wouldn't feel so bad about spending seven turns creating an Arty only to send it to it's death.

Or, maybe there could be Civ3 type arty, but limit the stacks to one or two arty per space. Maybe give them a penalty if theres more than one.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The solution, IMO, is to give siege weapons these abilities:

1) Reduce defenses-as currently exists.

2) 'Stack Defense'/'Stack Attack'. If you have a siege weapon in a stack-and that stack attacks or is attacked-then the siege weapons get ONE free attack EACH before the main combat begins-with collateral damage too.

How would (2) work? Well, lets say you have a cavalry, 2 riflemen and 2 cannons, and you attack a stack containing 3 cavalry, 2 musketmen and 1 cannon. Before any other combat occurs, the 2 cannons in your stack each get a single hit against one target in the opposing stack. If successful, then they can also do collateral damage. Then, the cannon in the opposing stack ALSO gets a single attack against your stack in much the same way. Then, combat proceeds as normal-with your best attacker attacking his best defender until one side wins the day. Obviously, the winning side will in most cases take out the opposing siege weapon last, though said weapon will still get its collateral damage effects in the final battle.

Hope that makes sense.

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[daengle]

The artillery combat system in CIV 4 is much better than CIV 3 (IMHO).

However, if you really want to return to having artillery take no damage when attacking just mod all the artillery units to start with 100% withdrawl.
Your artillery may take damage but it wont be destroyed. And a few turns of healing between shots will nicely simulate ammunition resupply.

 

[zeeter]

Here's an idea. Remove artillery as an individual unit. Make it a promotion. Say, after two stars they can choose Artillery. That way you can get a bonus towards breaking down city defenses when attacking, plus the unit gets an attack bonus. No kitty-cat (to use a different phrase) holding fifty arty's behind the lines and then taking it out. The "arty" doesn't get a direct attack, but they get to serve their purpose.

 

[sturmtrupp]

I agree with the sentiment of this post. I do like how Artillary can now do collateral damage. However, I am afraid that its really an act of balancing. For instance how long does one expect the enemies inside the town will be able to hold out just ONE catapult of cannon?

I bring an SoD, to support artillary, and in three turns I have lost no infantry, artillary, or anything, and I killed everything in the city. Taken cities becomes trivial.

My own personal ideas, is to implement the unbalanced system, since the defense has the option to do the same. Have no collateral damage on artillary units. And have things that can be built in the city which greatly reduce the effect of artillary.

In reality, artillary should not be to effective. While artillary certainly plays a role in the pitched battles, it was largely been over estimated leading many infantry to their death.

 

[MRM]

I use Artillery only to weaken the city defense - for coleteral damage I use tanks with the promotion colleteral damage - o.k. - don't work for earlier units - but if artillery is around, tanks are not so far away anymore

 

[Lord_all_Mighty]

What I think should be done is to eliminate an artillery unit altogether. Instead, why not create a unit promotion titled something like Artillery support that provides it with a few benefits that artillery gets now? Personally, I find the idea of an entire unit to be rediculous. Up until modern times, heavy artillery was generally few in numbers and its use was limited to assualting cities/fortifications.

 

[Commander Bello]

[...]

In reality, artillary should not be to effective. While artillary certainly plays a role in the pitched battles, it was largely been over estimated leading many infantry to their death.

Ever heard or read of the town of Verdun?

 

[Khaim]

I like the 100% withdrawal chance. Since it only works when attacking, the defender has the option to kill off the .1 strength artillery after an attack. It would be similar to the current model, except the defender has to actually do something.

 

[The Duff Man]

I don't have a problem with the system now but a fix would be:

1. Your artillery doesn't die, but there is a maximum number of damage it can do and it is spread amongst the defenders. Let's say it can do 10 hit points of damage. If there are 2 guys they each take 5 points. If there are 10 guys they each take 1. This is a lot more realistic than if there are 20 defenders and they ALL take 10 points of damage.

2. If the artillery didn't die you wouldn't be able to just roll a stack of 40 of them up to a city. The reason is that the city would have it's own artillery and decimate your stack before you had a chance to fire. So what happens? The game comes down to who has the biggest stack of artillery....not much fun. They could use other means to ensure it doesn't come to that, artillery misfire, bonuses for certain units against them, maybe even immunity to artillery fire, spies that sabotage your artillery stack ammunition so NONE of them can fire (OUCH), and make sure the damage that artillery does is less than what other units do so you limit their usage to a reasonable level.

 

[microbe]

Agreed it's not realistic to let artillery attack, but it's needed to balance the game, otherwise artillery would be too overpowered (as in CIV3).

Now you'd have to lose some artillery when you use it (other than bombarding the city defense), so no longer "send a giganic stack of artillery to the enemy and capture cities one by one". On the other hand it gets more power to do collateral damage to counter huge stacks. It might not be a brilliant idea, but I can't find a better solution myself.

If you read some CIV4 game reports (like Sullla's Walkthrough), you'd find artillery is still used almost the same way as in CIV3: build a lot of them and use them to capture cities. In the end, the same strategy still works.

 

[Double Barrel]

I like the promotion idea. Get rid of the unit, and just integrate the current concept into other units' promotions.

 

[zeeter]

I like the promotion idea. Get rid of the unit, and just integrate the current concept into other units' promotions.

It would be like attaching a catapult brigade to a swordsman unit. Certainly within the realm of realism, as modern armies do this all of the time. Engineering brigades, MP brigades, AA brigades, etc...

 

[ongwin]

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?

Fast moving artillery? Well the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) just revealed their new Pegasus mobile artillery, which can shoot up to 30km and weighs only 5 tonnes, light enough to be carried by a chinook.

Furthermore it has a engine of its own so its mobile and doesn't have to be towed by a truck, but its speed is only 12km/h!. I have absolutely no idea how you can retreat at such a crawling speed... but hey, it something new though.

 

[zeeter]

The more I think about this brigade idea, the more I like it. Imagine this - in the modern age the only active units that can be made are marines, infantry, and armor. No more artillery or SAM Infantry. The player may then build a very expensive brigade and attach it to the unit. I can see things like Military Police that add to quelling resistance after capturing a city, Anti-Air to cover stacks. Anti-Tank, Artillery, etc...

Yes, I've been playing a lot of Hearts of Iron II lately.

 

[Venger]

I am not sure I like this idea - but it has been implemented successfully in games like HoI.

I don't know if it's spite that keeps them from incorporating it, but a Civ game has yet to match the CTP games for simple combat...

Venger

 

[Phyr_Negator]

CivIV artillery concest is total crap -_-. Now they look like CivIII Cruise missile, cuz they are used only once because there are 90% that it'll be smashed/blasted/destroyed and desecrated. Great solution, if forgot the point that artillery was one of the most guarded and cared part of military.

 

[Guagle]

The solution, IMO, is to give siege weapons these abilities:

1) Reduce defenses-as currently exists.

2) 'Stack Defense'/'Stack Attack'. If you have a siege weapon in a stack-and that stack attacks or is attacked-then the siege weapons get ONE free attack EACH before the main combat begins-with collateral damage too.

Excellent idea! To further ensure that artillery is not overpowered (ie. in your system if one side brings 50 arty with its stack then every one of them gets a free shot right?) there could be a cap to the maximum damage that can be inflicted.

For example: catapults wouldn't bring a unit's hp below 85% of its maximum, no matter how many catapults are firing, while a cannon would top at say 75%, something like that.