Tanks/Modern Armor versus artillery

[RDV-1992]

I know its probably been beat to death already, but could someone rehash the effectiveness of tanks/modern armor with barrage upgrades versus artillery with the same upgrades?

Thanks!

 

[CCRunner]

In 3.17, barrage doesn't do anything for tanks and MA without solver's patch so don't use it unless you have it installed. I usually go for CR tanks anyway and give artillery barrage I and accuracy, if I even use them at all.

 

[DanF5771]

I had created a spreadsheet to calculate the amount of damage that units of variable strengths can inflict on each other collaterally for 3.13 when there was a hot discussion in the "Is Barrage broken" thread. I have extended this little tool for the new formula under 3.17 with Solver's unofficial patch v0.19.

Just put in the respective numbers for the defender's and attacker's strength as well as the attacker's native collateral damage and its collateral damage limit (blue cells).
The green cells give the number of hitpoints a defender would lose during collateral combat. Another output value is iMaxDamage, this is the variable cap of the maximal damage depending on the strength ratio. This value is now considerably lower than in 3.13. I have started a thread about this issue here, because I think it should be fixed.

The tool is completely flexible and should thus allow an easy comparison of Tanks vs Artillery in their effectiveness when splashing defenders of variable strengths. Please tell me if you find any errors.

The current example shows Cannon vs Infantry.

 

[TigerBotHesh]

There's not a prettier sight than a CR3 Modern Armor. Use artillery units as fire-and-forget suicide units, and use CR tanks to steamroll your opponents' weakened CG units.

Once airpower gets going, I find its easier to use bombers and fighters to bombard cities than lug around a lot of artillery, though.

 

[a4phantom]

Once airpower gets going, I find its easier to use bombers and fighters to bombard cities than lug around a lot of artillery, though.

Against a weak (low tech military) enemy that's definitely true. Once the enemy starts fielding fighters and strong AA units, then every air strike comes with a potential cost. Then the ability of artillery to bombard defenses down without the risk of being intercepted becomes valuable, leaving the bombers free to attack the defenders directly. Also, if the enemy has a large army to counterattack with then it's handy to have the artillery available to bombard defenses so that the air force can concentrate on attacking ground units.

 

[thadian]

i agree, that artillery is useless - until your enemies start building planes. at that moment, artillery can be your best friend.

and...

YOU MEAN THAT barrage does not work with tanks that i promote to barrage and i have to get an UNOFFICIAL patch to fix it? that makes me nervous. if i get it, and they release another update, will this unofficial patch be a pain in my rear?

 

[Wolfshanze]

YOU MEAN THAT barrage does not work with tanks that i promote to barrage and i have to get an UNOFFICIAL patch to fix it? that makes me nervous. if i get it, and they release another update, will this unofficial patch be a pain in my rear?

The unofficial patches are almost always better then the official ones... folks that refuse to use them because they aren't "official" are missing-out.

Also, I seriously doubt you'll ever see another update for Civ4 from Firaxis... I'd bet a lot of money v3.17 is the LAST official update to Civ4.

 

[Polobo]

I thought Solver got rid of the barrage promotion altogether for tanks; although he did make the barrage promotion work when given to non-native barragers (so that mods work as expected). 3.17/Solver tanks cannot barrage ever.

 

[Willem]

I thought Solver got rid of the barrage promotion altogether for tanks; although he did make the barrage promotion work when given to non-native barragers (so that mods work as expected). 3.17/Solver tanks cannot barrage ever.

He's done both. If you want Tanks to be able to use Barrage, you simply don't use the CIV4PromotionInfos.xml file he provides. That's what eliminates the promotion for Tanks. The dll file itself fixes the bug that came about with 3.17.

 

[Hellman109]

If they enemy only has fighters (and not AT or MG or MechInf units that can intercept more then once) then send in fighters first, then your more valuable bombers also works well, their fighter intercepts are sapped by the fighters, and the bombers then get it easy and do more damage.

A great point in the game is if you can get fighters and they only have baloons, in that case you should be able to station fighters close enough to the fight that they cover your ground units, and you can also use some offensivly. It is a great force multiplier as their baloons do very little, and your fighters dominate the sky (and therfore bombardmend).

 

[DAKH]

Artillery is priceless against any opponent except the really technologicaly impaired ones, because you can bombard without fear of interception, easily cripple enemy SoDs, and you don't have to rely on a nearby city or fort with enough space to base them. Besides, any SoD has a mix of offensive and defensive units, not just MAs, since they recieve no defensive bonuses and are thus quickly turned into yoghurt if attacked.