Suicide Artillery = broken concept

[Commander Bello]

I've read this now for three times and I completely don't get your point.

 

[Smidlee]

I've read this now for three times and I completely don't get your point.

I used Medieval as an example since that game deals with both on the strategic level (turn-based map) and on the tactical level (real time battles). I had artillery armies on the strategy map which only had 2-4 artillery pieces with the rest made up of infantry and knights. This was my artillery attack force uses to attack castles. If in the battle I lost too many troops during the attack my men would retreat leaving the artillery behind. So I lost my artillery not because they were destroyed directly but because my infantry and knights were defeated and retreated leaving the artillery.
Thus in Civ 4 units are presented on the strategy level just like the turn base part of Medieval so artillery units supposed to represent armies with artillery not a huge pile of artillery.So Civ 4 is more correct on a strategic level than Civ3.

 

[darkdude]

Civ4 cats/cannons serve to soften up the defenders of a city so the other units in a stack can mob up. You even may have to sacrifice a couple of cats. But you can replace them so no big deal. Gameplay wise this works perfectly!
No, it doesn't simulate real life. So? IT'S A GAME. My civ leader lives for 6000 years, that's not really realistic either, is it? What do you want? Have a new leader every turn? Boring!!!! If you can't deal with the game mechanics, get a life and move on. There are many ways you can mod your desired behavior in anyway.

 

[Harrier]

If you are into simple modding of the game - all you need do is change the percentage chance of an artillery unit retreating, if you are using it to attack units in order to inflict collatteral damage. I think it is set to 25%. So just increase it to 50% etc.

You need to find out how yourselves - I do not have the game yet.

 

[snowmelk]

Again Civ4 units are suppose to be on the strategic level not tactical level [...] Since Civ 4 is suppose to be on the strategic level then a artillery unit represents an army with artillery not a pile of artillery [...]

That doesn't make sense either, as there was at no time in history something like an artillery army or division or korps or something like that. Artillery was and still is an support unit, attached to fighting units to give more firepower. Thus, on a strategic level, there shouldn't even be an artillery unit. Only that no artillery would be even more boring as the crappy artillery as it is now.

 

[MeteorPunch]

You know what else doesn't make sense? Units attacking a city one at a time. The whole game is unrealistic, but it's all we have.

 

[Smidlee]

That doesn't make sense either, as there was at no time in history something like an artillery army or division or korps or something like that.

Gee I used the term "Artillery army" to refer to my castle attack groups in Medieval

Artillery was and still is an support unit, attached to fighting units to give more firepower. Thus, on a strategic level, there shouldn't even be an artillery unit. Only that no artillery would be even more boring as the crappy artillery as it is now.

Bingo, artillery itself is a support unit that has to be backed by infantry when trying to engaged another army. I totally agree an unit that's nothing but a pile of artillery shouldn't be on used on a strategic level like it was in Civ3. Artillery on a strategy level should represent infantry with artillery support like it is in Civ 4. Artillery can still act alone by destroying the cities walls but used as support when engaging the enemies' forces. As with Medieval game, artillery itself doesn't have to be destroyed to become useless (out of play).

 

[AKauhanen]

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....

Couldn't have said it any better.

Artillery can still act alone by destroying the cities walls but used as support when engaging the enemies' forces. As with Medieval game, artillery itself doesn't have to be destroyed to become useless (out of play).

But you didn't have to move your artillery inside the city. If the infantry died in the city you would still have your artillery. Now you lose the artillery even if you still have infantry units outside the city.

 

[Kazz]

The mere fact that artillery units even HAVE Strength ratings should show that they most realistically represent small troop divisions with attached artillery brigades. In Civ3, if you walked onto a catapult, it was your catapult. In this game, the catapult fights back.

You have to stop thinking of a catapult as just a meandering wooden thing that lobs boulders. In Civ4, it is a new unit type which has the ability to cause collateral damage and bombard city defenses, just like the Spearman has the bonus against mounted units or the Spy is invisible. Yeah, I miss indirect fire too, but any SMAC player can tell you that it wasn't very balanced to begin with. If you liked the way it used to work better, play the old game, or just mod it into this one.

 

[snepp]

Yeah, I miss indirect fire too, but any SMAC player can tell you that it wasn't very balanced to begin with.

Moving around the map with 100 arty and knocking every single enemy down to 1 HP before easily finishing them off and suffering zero casualties wasn't balanced? Could have fooled me.

If you liked the way it used to work better, play the old game, or just mod it into this one.

That concept is so insanely crazy, it just...might...work...

 

[Mannu]

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.

I like this idea at first glance.

 

[Mannu]

And how many did the french loose? as many if not more. And artillery was very usefull in ww1 about 80% of casualties were caused by it.

Yeah, but the Civ shells are filled with mustard gas...

On a not completely unrelated note, I miss the SMAC atrocities penalty for when you razed a city or used nuclear weapons.

 

[Inflammatory]

I'd say you could have the option to decide how much money that goes into the army. Different levels of belligerence could unlock higher levels of economic mobilisation, and it'd be up to you if you could spend it. If you couldn't your artillery would lose in performance along with all your other troops.

this would be very hard to implement. My sugestion would take about 5 minutes to implement, just modify a single parametre, and not add a whole new game consept.

How hard can it be? Three levels; level 1 costs 1 gold/unit and gives 50% performance, level 2 costs 2 gold/unit and gives 75% etc. All you have to do is ensure it is balanced and it is simple enough.

 

[snowmelk]

Artillery on a strategy level should represent infantry with artillery support like it is in Civ 4.

But then, all units should represent a bunch of different arms. I.e., a tank should represent a group of tanks, together with some reconaissance units, supply units, engineers etc. And again, that way, artillery would be already present in these units and a stand-alone artillery unit would be not needed (and a couple of other units as well. How do you explain a machine gunner unit on a strategic level?).
However, if there for some reason is an artillery unit, I simply want it to have the characteristic features of artillery, as is the ability to attack other units from behind the front line, meaning not entering direct combat.

 

[Mr. Blonde]

Imo the civ4 artillery concept is concerning gameplay far superior to civ3. It may not feel intuitive but some of the changes suggested like 100% withdrawal chance would be, regarding the current prize to build it, imbalancing.
Move with 2 or 3 to a city, bombard its defenses to zero and attack with actual combat units. Btw, tanks can get the collateral damage upgrade if you want to damage a stack without losing a unit.

To put it short: gameplaywise they are fine, that matters for me. In civ3 the working of artillery was maybe more realistic, but I have problems to find one single army throughout history that was composed of 2/3 artillery units...

If you take the whole army picture civ4 with its emphasis on combined arms is the most realistic civ so far (bought with the artillery suicide attack to keep unit balance in check). Overall Firaxis

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The more I think about it, the more I realise that you have to be a bit 'creative' when envisaging siege weapons in combat. Basically, we are not talking about a pure 'artillery' unit, or even a single 1 on 1 battle-what we actually see is just one component of a number of pitched battles over several years-and the damage the artillery unit is suffering is a combination of logistic and morale attrition and units outflanking to attack the siege weapons and their attached 'infantry' units directly. Oh, and yes I DO believe that a tank unit in fact represents an armoured division, consisting of tanks, armoured vehicles and infantry (and light artillery). As I said, we have to look at this at a divisional/strategic level in order for the artillery system to make sense from a realism point of view!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

 

[VoxDei]

I haven't read the whole thread, so sorry if someone's made this point, but it seems to me that the reason real armies don't run about with vast stacks of essentially undefended artillery is that an undefended artillery piece is a sitting duck. You just walk up and shoot the crew - they'll generally be vastly outnumbered by a close combat unit.

So think of the numbers involved in an arty SoD. You've got 50 arty units and four defenders. If you took that stack into battle (and bombarding an enemy position counts), what should happen is that the defending units will lose a few to bombardment, but fast mobile units like cavalry can brush past the pitifully overstretched defenders to capture or destroy the artillery.

In terms of game mechanics what it should mean is this. If you bombard an enemy army with cats/arty/whatever, your arty has a chance to be destroyed or captured. The modifier on this is the ratio of enemy fast mobile units (cavalry etc) against the number of regular combat units you have (representing units defending your arty). Any army without many more combat units than arty (as happens in real life) should just lose the attacking arty piece without significantly damaging the defending stack. Conversely, if you've got a lot of regular troops with the arty, then the counterattacking enemy force can't get through to the arty, which can continue its bombardment uninterrupted and presumably do significant damage without threat to itself. Balance the required ratio of arty to fast defenders to units defending the artillery as needed to make people use combined arms armies.

The result should be that while you can still build a stack of 50 artys if you want, if you don't have 200 regular units defending them then when they attack the enemy will just destroy or capture them - and the chance of a capture rather than just destruction should increase the more extreme the artyther unit ratio gets. If you do have adequate units able to defend the arty, then there should be little risk to the artillery when they bombard.

To complement this, if you have non-arty units in a stack with an arty that bombards, they lose all their moves as soon as the bombardment begins (they're defending the arty for that turn, and anyway they don't want to be attacking while the arty is shelling). If they use their moves before the bombardment begins, then they don't count as defenders for the arty. You can bombard an enemy with a SoD, but they're going to get a turn when you've finished to reinforce the target square because your combat units won't have moves left to attack.

Phew, turned into an essay. Sorry.

 

[Aks K]

Though I see valid points on both sides this new suicide concept is not accurate in my view either realistic or game play sound. The main fighting unit in civ4 is the artillery unit. When it has softened the opponent in risk of being killed the remaining of the opponent units are easy to kill of with the rest of your units. The result is the destruction or almost destruction of you own artillery and only slight damage to the combat units.

I would like to preserve my artillery in combat. No having them killed. My first priority is to keep my units alive the next is to damage the enemy. This new concept favours acting suicide opposed to playing safer. That is worrying for me.

@Aussie_Lurker: I like you initial concept. Linking you artillery to your combat unit is a very good idea. If you have a large stack of artillery you need at least an equal amount of combat units to make them effective. This should also apply to defending units.

I like the concept of artillery reducing defences. But I would also like to be able to soften the enemy in the process. But the artillery should only take of a few % per bombardment and should only be able to reduce the defending unit to 60-75% of their original strength. Ancient catapults should have an even smaller effect.

Aks K

 

[insydr]

Well it's obvious that I'm not the only one who has strong feelings about this issue. So here are my ideas for what would make artillery useful in Civ4.

insydr's artillery mod ideas

• Issue 1: Suicide artillery is unrealistic and makes for unsatisfying gameplay.

Fix: Give artillery the "defend only" flag. That way they can't be captured and can defend when under attack, but they won't be unrealistically used on the offensive.

• Issue 2: If artillery is now unable to attack, how can it cause collateral damage?

Fix: Make the artillery unit's bombard command also cause collateral damage.

• Issue 3: OK, now artillery can cause collateral damage without entering battle, so they're overpowered!

Fix: Cap collateral damage based on the defense bonus of the unit under attack. For instance, units fully fortified on a hill could not be reduced to below 50% health by artillery bombardment. Units running around in an open flatland could be killed by collateral damage. And units fortified in a city with +125% defense suffer NO collateral damage on that turn. This means that artillery collateral damage scales with how hard it would be to attack that unit directly.

• Issue 4: But now artillery can't cause collateral damage to units in heavily fortified cities! Wasn't that the point?

Keep in mind: The artillery unit is also causing damage to city defenses every turn it bombards. So, for the first few rounds the artillery won't damage the units inside, but when the city defenses have been reduced enough, the units inside will start to suffer damage. The longer the siege, the more damage artillery will be able to inflict. This goes both ways, as the defender can use his own artillery to weaken the incoming army.


In my mind this system takes advantage of the inherent defensive bonuses in the game to make artillery a balanced bombardment unit. It strikes a balance between the current system of sacrificing an artillery unit to get results and the Civ3 system of bombarding with impunity.

I don't have anywhere near the technical expertise to make this happen, if it's even possible. But if people think this is a worthy solution, I'd be more than willing to help work on it. What do you think?

 

[Chauliodus]

The core problems in every edition of Civ has been the static development of the AI. While theres been tweeks here and there, it's remains the same brawn over brains idiot, I was hoping they'd have changed it in 4 but my fears were right and they ignored putting any thought into and continued to stick to the higher difficulty, more overpowered AI view.

I only hope they put some thought into this when making 5, the fact is it doesn't matter one wit how good a single player oriented game like Civ is if it doesn't have a dynamic and engaging AI.