What is collateral damage?

[FirstLine]

Hello. What does this message mean? "Collateral damage (3 units)"
I'm confused. When the program allows me to bash an enemy city, I do so. But the list of what is inside that city doesn't decrease.That is the list on the left side of screen.
Thanks.

 

[Psyringe]

When you attack any stack of units, then the game chooses the unit that can defend best against you as the stack's defender. Usually, only the defender can be damaged in the following combat.

Collateral damage means that your unit *also* does damage to some more units in the same stack. Having units which do collateral damage is a good counter against an enemy who tends to put his army into huge stacks.

Collateral damage will never kill these other units, but you can see that their health has decreased when you mouse-over the stack.

 

[Sisiutil]

Hello. What does this message mean? "Collateral damage (3 units)"
I'm confused. When the program allows me to bash an enemy city, I do so. But the list of what is inside that city doesn't decrease.That is the list on the left side of screen.
Thanks.

Collateral damage is done by siege units (Catapults, Trebuchets, Cannon, Artillery) and a few other ones (Bombers, China's Cho-Ko-Nus, and so on). In addition to damaging the unit they attack directly, these units will also inflict some damage on other units that are on the same tile as the defender. In fact, often the collateral damage is worse than the damage to the unit that was directly attacked! The collateral damage will never be enough to kill another unit, but it will likely weaken them enough so that the remaining units you use to attack will have better odds of winning.

Collateral damage is, in fact, a key tactic to war in Civ IV. A typical attack on an enemy city occurs in 3 stages: (1) use siege, naval, and/or air units to remove the defense bonuses from culture and from improvements like walls and castles; (2) launch (mostly suicide) attacks with siege units (and, in the late game, with Bombers, which usually survive) to cause collateral damage and reduce the strength of the defending units; (3) attack the weakened defenders with other units, preferably those with City Raider promotions.

 

[FirstLine]

Thank You. That is very clear. There is a lot of learning to do.

 

[timbnyc44]

so collateral damage impacts only military units, and not civilians? I was afraid I was destroying a city that I would soon have to rebuild and repopulate.

 

[Sisiutil]

so collateral damage impacts only military units, and not civilians? I was afraid I was destroying a city that I would soon have to rebuild and repopulate.

The only time you have to rebuild a city is if you raze it. You will lose some population when you capture a city, IIRC, but not much, and not from collateral damage, which only affects military units, yes.

 

[Bushface]

Collateral damage can also be caused by "armoured" units (Tanks and Modern Armour) if they have the Barrage promotion(s). These units can give collateral damage to defending siege units, which in other threads have been stated to be immune to such damage. I cannot at the moment make further comment on this aspect, as at the present stage of my game I have neither siege units nor bombers available, but in a previous game air strikes did little damage to the main defender, because the defending city had a Bunker, but still did the usual, relatively slight, collateral damage to other units in the cities - but I don't remember if any of those were in the siege category.

 

[zyphyr]

The only time you have to rebuild a city is if you raze it.

That is the only time for a FULL rebuild. There is also the partial rebuilding required for just about every city conquered - some of the buildings are destroyed in the process of capturing the city and would have to be rebuilt if they are something you wish the city to possess.

All Culture buildings are destroyed.
All National Wonders are destroyed.
All strictly military buildings (Barracks, Stables..) are destroyed.
All World Wonders survive (but cease generating culture).
All other buildings have a 33% chance of being destroyed.