Using Artillery?

[ac196nataku]

I'm moving up to Regent and after reading many posts here praising the abilities of artillery I have to ask why? My previous attempts at using them have been drastically disappointing. Is there something I am missing? Also while I am making this topic and slightly related to it anyway, how big of an army do many of you find to be effective? Since I have only played on honestly lame difficulties before, I am spoiled with getting by with small armies. In my first Regent game I declared on my pitiful neighbour only to have about 20-30 units come out of no where and start to dent my forces which were lacking defensive units. Chieftain was a bad place to learn.

 

[History_Buff]

If you can pile up a huge amount of artillery, and just enough Infantry to defend the huge stack, you can pretty much move about the map, with a few workers accompanying to build railroads to reinforce, and just walk up to a town, bombard the units in the city to 1 health, then walk all over them with just a few infantry.

 

[ac196nataku]

I forgot to put this in the topic originally:
When do you start building them? Cannons? Or early as Trebs? Catapults seem way too weak to be useful.

 

[Smart]

Сatapults could be upgraded I usually use combined arms like catapults/swords or trebs/MDI.

Btw, this topic should be moved to "Civ3 - Strategy & Tips" section

 

[Son_Of_Dido]

Well, on Regent, sometimes I don't bother with catapults unless i've got a non-barracked but reasonably non-corrupt city that isn't otherwise useful as a worker pump. After getting engineering though, I'll start making some trebuchets (not too many, actually, i should be building more than I do). They (catapults) can be upgraded reasonably cheaply to Trebuchets even without Leo's Workshop. They haven't been all that effective for me, but then I usually don't have too many of them either, and that's probably what makes the difference. Artillery is defintely at its best in a large stack.

Trebuchets are pretty useful, actually. On Regent, at least for me, you'll notice your artillery really turn the corner once you upgrade them to Cannons. It seems to me, at least, that the accuracy improves. It could also just be that I've got a lot more of those units by that point. (The Treb to Cannon upgrade is pretty cheap as well).

Basically, with artillery, at any technological level, quantity is its own quality. Since it's a random "hit and injure or miss" type of effect, the more you've got, the better off you'll be. Just don't forget to protect them with the relevant defensive unit (spears, pikes, muskets). At Regent I've usually been able to get away with not relying on it so much and not using/making very many until I get to Cannons, when my military is just so big that I just gotta use it on somebody (plus I have several cities that can crank them out quickly and in fact have bugger all else to build). That's when I step up my production in this department. Once I get magnetism I'll try and build some Frigates too, to supplement the stack some additional bombardment from the sea on a city I'm aiming to take when applicable (which isn't as often as I'd like. Oh well. One more reason to crank out the land based artillery ). But really, as soon as you've got a city that can crank them out at a reasonable rate, crank out catapults. Even if you don't need 'em/use 'em yet, think of 'em as tomorrow's cheap Trebs./Cannons.

Redlining the enemy beforehand (especially when trying to take a city) will save your horsemen/swordsmen's lives, and they will thank you for it, sometimes even in the form of living to make elite rank, and then pop a few military leaders/armies. And once you've got THEM, of course, it's a jailbreak for your military

 

[tupaclives]

Artillery is useful but not great at regent because you can still outproduce the ai by a massive amount with ridiculous ease. Artillery become priceless at emperor and above where the ai has a noticeable build advantage over you and you need to find a way to win battles of attrition. When you are being outproduced use artillery to make sure you kill more than you use. Also never attack with any less then 10 as its effects will vary to much. A stack of 40-50 arty will enable you to cut through fortified Mech Inf on a hill in a metropolis with Tanks, marines, even cavalry. Just make sure you always protect your artillery.

 

[Bartleby]

I tend to use artillery in stacks of 3-4 dozen. In C3C, Armies make excellent artillery escorts, if you don't find that too exploitative. Also in C3C, if the game lasts long enough you can switch over to bombers--the ne plus ultra in bombardment.

edit: just to add that I agree with the others who have mentioned that at regent level and below, you can probably manage without bombardment.

 

[jb1964]

I play a lot of regent games on my own just to kill time and go for stupid early victories.

Bombardment is not needed because I can out research the AI to Chivalry and Mil Tradition every time and then out produce them as well. You can have knights vs spears/swords or Cavalry vs. Pikes every time.

 

[Smart]

Artillery is needed only on high levels, because AI will get more and better units than you. You might fight even Cavlary vs Infantry using stacks of artillery, which will redline all defenders in the city.

 

[zerksees]

Artillery is also good at any level when you are behind. You can take down mech infantry with artillery and cavalry if you need to.

Any bombard unit prior to artillery will slow your advance as you have to move them into position, though I still use them. But with rails, artillery and proper management of combat settlers you can still move fairly quickly with artillery.

Small quantities of artillery are good to defend cities and take hit points off invaders. When you are the invader, you will probably want 20 or more to make a consistent difference.

I used them quite effectively in the game documented in my "recovering from last place after expansion phase" war academy article. Check my sig for the link.

 

[DBear]

In the late industrial on, the prefered tactic is to use artillery to redline the enemy, then send in the bombers to finish them off.

 

[jb1964]

...I used them quite effectively in the game documented in my "recovering from last place after expansion phase" war academy article. Check my sig for the link.

This was one of the first articles I read when I started getting into the game.

Hello Wadsworth...
I have not been up there for a good number of years. Was selling software at the time.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

I have found that I often build cats steadily through the game and upgrade them as I go, while taking them from the AI. As long as you protect them, they *don't* die.

And they are invaluable for leader farming, because your attackers die less often. The way the AI uses them (1 per city on defense) is (as the things the AI typically does) very inefficient.

 

[GeoffB]

Artillery is great on defense in higher levels. When a stronger enemy comes into your territory with a huge stack of units, artillery can really save your butt because it takes enough points off them to make them retreat, even if it doesn't kill them. And if they don't make it back to their own territory in time, you can bombard them again the next turn until they're weak enough to kill with no risk.

The AI is so stupid on the attack it will go for your least defended city or weakest unit wherever it is, so by moving your units around you can make the AI go back and forth without ever getting anywhere, and meanwhile you keep bombarding them every turn and picking off the weakened units.

Once you've killed off a good fraction of their units, they'll accept peace terms.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

Or, once you've killed off their first wave, go on the attack and take a couple of their cities.

Basically, the AI creates a huge garrison force, then creates an attack force. So, that huge army that your military advisor is so scared of in the modern age is 3-4 riflemen/infantry in his cities and 20 or so units in his offensive stack - cavalry, riflemen/infantry, Knights Templar, Longbowmen....

The important thing (and what gets me all the time) is that you need to make sure you have enough defensive units that you can cover your own cav until you can bombard his defensive units enough to kill them. It's fun to kill Sipahi with cav - it's less fun to have his reinforcements slaughter *your* cav in turn...