Tip for artillery bombardment

[culdeus]

You completely missed his point...

Did I? The whole nature of the game is fantasy brought out of reality. A grand what-if while making certain decisions as open ended and ordered as possible. Using his example if India hadn't got o\/\/ned by GB maybe they would had a better control on world trade/economy in the middle years. This something you can play out with the constraints.

How realistic are suicide cannon charges I ask you? In what way is this from reality AT ALL?!? The C3 model was much better in alot of ways than what this represents. I like the "bombard stacks lose points in all" for non city units. The way they carried it to city bombardment stinks. Cannons/arty should have one option, bombard. That's it. Knock down city %, then start picking off internal units or population.

I agree that a suicide cannon charge vs. cities shouldn't knock points off the whole city stack, and if it does the power should be marginalized somewhat.

 

[Footen]

I like how the new artillary works, it´s much more realistic and balanced. Civ combat is an abstraction and I bet quite a few catapults and cannons have been destroyed in warfare.

 

[ShadedNine]

Catapults (mangonels) were extremely innacurate and good for little short of lowering morale, destroying enemy siege equipment or damaging city walls. Burning pitch was occasionally used to attack infantry, but to little actual effect (short of the morale of seeing soldiers die a flaming death before even engaging in combat).

They were mostly destroyed by other siege equipment, or left on the field in order to pull back.

In Civ4, I agree with those who wish catapults would only remove the enemy's defensive bonuses (I also wouldn't mind it bringing the bonus to a negative as a sort of 'morale' effect).

Cannon's were used for much the same purpose, but the use of grapeshot would allow them to act as an excellent anti-personnel weapon. However, the shorter range of grapeshot meant the cannoneers were easily shot down in the process (so civ4's model is a little more accurate here).

Modern artillery just gets messy trying to implement it "realistically" in a game like this. But the same goes for bombers. You don't use either to try and bring down an army, you use them to strike tactical positions such as supplies or ammunition, to soften up defenses, or push an enemy out into the open. However, artillery would *never* take damage from...say, a rifleman. Only other artillery or bombers would be able to kill artillery before it had time to pack up and get far behind friendly lines.

 

[TigrisJK]

To note: I have seen stacks of enemies attack me with cannons attacking, then withdrawing, and then musketmen rushing forward while the cannons withdrew, in one fluid animation. I will, as someone did earlier, test this with the worldbuilder whenever I get the chance, or just load a savegame at some point.

However, there could be more truth to this than it first seems. As seen on the front page, a nuclear strike does more damage when it is a stack of nukes... and an artillery strike likewise with the bombards as a stack.

It appears artillery have a far more versatile role in Civ IV than Civ III... possibly the designers wishing that people would use them more often. I am not surprised, since I do not actually ever remember using artillery often in Civ III and getting along quite well.

The situation I think he describes is thus:
A stacked bunch of units, in a mixed group, may attack with cannons first, withdrawing and with other units rushing up in the same animation. I have seen this animation before, though I wasn't sure if the cannons took damage.

However, even with stacks I've usually seen units attack one by one. Except when playing in quick mode, but that's a different story.

I will have to test this. But first... sleep.