What makes bombardment fail?

[RedWolf]

Hi everyone. I'm an old time civII player (civI before that) and I just finally broke down and purchased civIII (vanilla) for $10.

I've mostly fallen into it pretty well but every once in a while some of the new concepts have been tripping me up so I was hoping someone here could help.

I was recently at war with the English and was trying to bombard one of their coastal cities with my frigate. Every time though it told me "Artillery bombardment failed" or something to that effect. I tried probably 10 times before giving up.

So my question is... what makes it fail? Maybe I'm blind but I can't seem to find it in the manual.

Thanks in advance!

 

[ronanp]

It's just a product of the combat random number generator. Some bombardments will fail. Though I think this gets less as you upgrade to artillary from cannons or trebs

 

[TheOverseer714]

I think the probability of a hit is the bombardment strength vs the defending unit and all its' bonuses. What I know for sure is all bombardment is a crapshoot, and it was worse in vanilla. Even with artillery, you still fail....alot. It can be very frustrating.

 

[RedWolf]

Thanks for the information... glad to know I'm not the only frustrated person.

 

[PaperBeetle]

I'm not aware that anyone has studied the mechanics of bombardment in enough detail to be sure how exactly it is resolved. In Vanilla and PtW the basics are: when you fire a bombard shot at a town, the game first randomly chooses whether your shot is directed at (a) the defending units, (b) the citizens, or (c) the buildings. Then it resolves whether your shot hits or not, by making a normal combat roll of your bombard strength versus the target's defense. If you win the combat roll, then the defending unit loses a hp, or the defending citizens lose 1 pop, or 1 randomly chosen building is destroyed, as appropriate to the target chosen in the first step.
But there are two unanswered questions here, which might provide reasons why so many shots go astray.
(1) What happens if the game chooses a category that is not present? e.g. you bomb a town with no buildings; can the game chose buildings as the target, and then your shot automatically misses? I suspect so.
(2) What is the Def of citizens and buildings? They could use the Def of the topmost defender, but I seem to recall reading that they had their own standard Def, and it was rather high (12 or 16 or something).

For sure in C3C, they changed the way town bombardment works, so that instead of randomly choosing the target to begin with, units are always targetted while they still have hp left to lose. Only when the defenders are all down to 1hp do citizens and buildings become possible targets.

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

I started with CivII myself. Its been to long to remember the difference, but in vanilla bombardment is only effective with significant numbers, 20 to 40 units. In my experience artillery and bombers are the only ones worth their price. I've never tried to get enough ships in position to see if they are better or worse at getting hits.

 

[capnvonbaron]

PaperBeetle pretty well answered everything. I can add that buildings (if I remember correctly) have a defense value of 16, so your chances of destroying one is about as likely as damaging a fortified infantry. So, good chances with arty/bombers/destroyers/battleships, much less so with cannons/trebs/cats/frigs/clads. I don't remember what the defense value of citizens is, but if I were to guess I'd say its a lot lower since it seems I tend to kill pop off more quickly than buildings.

As far as the choosing of a non-present category, I would say no... I can say with fair certainty that once I reduce the city pop to 1 and destroy all the improvements, usually the defending units' health will go a lot quicker. This is vanilla I'm talking about, though. I wouldn't see why it would change between versions.

Regarding tile improvements, bombardment will always target units first, and only the mine/irrigation/roads/rails once any units are reduced to 1HP. I'm not sure what "defense value" improvements have, but my guess is fairly low since arty seems to wipe it out on 75% or more of the shots. Fortresses cannot be destroyed by bombardment. Type of terrain increases the improvement's defense rating just as it does a unit, so destroying mountain roads will be tougher than, say, plains roads.

I also feel it appropriate to add that "rate of fire" makes a big difference. Anything with a 2-rate has twice as much opportunity to incur damage or destroy improvements (although the weak ones still only tend to incur damage once). 3-rate can really clobber, with the possibility to turn a full health-vet into a 1-health vet. I'd say range makes a difference too, since I'll occasionally take arty on offensive even with cavalry and tanks about, but I leave cannons at home because you have to be right against the city to use them. I'd rather not give the AI all those extra turns preparing defenses that the cannons prolly won't hurt anyways.

Anyways, to also comment on RedWolf's plight, frigates and ironclads are near useless in all regards, but much moreso in bombardment. I mean... bombard strength of 2 and 4, respectively?? Come on! You might occasionally damage a spearman... or destroy a terrain improvement once in twenty shots. If I build them, its merely for token naval defense against raider galleys or as galleon escorts.

 

[Spoonwood]

As far as the choosing of a non-present category, I would say no... I can say with fair certainty that once I reduce the city pop to 0 and destroy all the improvements, usually the defending units' health will go a lot quicker.

You only need to shalack the city down to size 6. It has no defensive bonus at size sub-7. There exists no pop 0 btw.

 

[Jokeslayer]

Anyways, to also comment on RedWolf's plight, frigates and ironclads are near useless in all regards, but much moreso in bombardment. I mean... bombard strength of 2 and 4, respectively?? Come on!

Sure, they're fairly useless in land bombardment, but they do ok against other ships (I like redlining ships before I kill them to reduce the likelihood of having to haul my ships half way back around the world for repairs)

You only need to shalack the city down to size 6. It has no defensive bonus at size sub-7. There exists no pop 0 btw.

There is some point to bombarding a city down below six, in that it means you don't have to starve them down to reduce the flip risk.

 

[capnvonbaron]

You only need to shalack the city down to size 6. It has no defensive bonus at size sub-7. There exists no pop 0 btw.

What are you talking about? I never said pop 0, only a n00b would say that

@jokeslayer:

Agreed, but I'd like to add that you'd need only bombard down to 2 pop in that case... because when your units roll in, one citizen will die and you'll have your 1 pop ghost town. No starving needed

Also, the part about "token naval defense" was considering their ability to bombard other vessels. I don't generally do a lot of offensive overseas stuff until destroyers and transports come around anyways, most of the time... so that may just be me.

 

[Ringo Kid]

Hi Red Wolf, I am also an ancient, and was first hooked by CIV 1 , then 2 , then Smac , now 3 and I just got 4 for xmas. Although the copy of 4 is on dvd which my system doesnt have so I need to find a young one with the tech skills to add one of them newfangled dvd whatchamacallits to my computer. But thats another story.

Anyway the bombardment thing works in quantity. So if you have a dozen frigates or two dozen, you can do some damage. But one frigate will just frustrate you. So build yourself a fleet and have some fun.

 

[Spoonwood]

You edited your post capnvonbaron.

 

[Higher Game]

Save him some dignity.

 

[capnvonbaron]

You edited your post capnvonbaron.

*sigh*

Thanks Captain Obvious.

Its called humor. Try it sometime.

 

[RedWolf]

Hi everybody,

Another question about bombardment - I've been reading the forums and have seen snippets of answers to this but never a definitive answer:

In civ3 Vanilla which bombardment type units (if any) can destroy (as oppossed to just damage) another unit via bombardment? And if it is relevant which types of units can they destroy?

Cruise Missles?
Ships?
Artillery?
Bombers?
Fighters?

(I think thats all of them)

 

[TheOverseer714]

In un-modded Vanilla, I don't think anything had lethal bombardment.

 

[capnvonbaron]

the 1.29F patch allows cruise missiles to lethal bombard. Very useful for sinking annoying ships, kinda nice for taking out defenders in large cities. Nothing else is lethal, tho.

EDIT: Since you lose them when you lose them, I try and only contruct them in cities that produce right at 60 shields, or the more corrupt ones that don't do much good producing anything else. They're sometimes nice to have useless rax-less border towns build in lieu of anything else. I'd also like to add.. I don't oft use cruise missiles. If I get that far in the game, I'm usually concentrating on a space race victory.. haven't done a histograph or modern age conquest victory in ages (don't have the patience )

 

[Ringo Kid]

Dromons have lethal bombardment. But maybe not in vanilla.

I find the best bombardment strategy is to use the bombard units in order of strength strongest first - except that I save the lethal bombard for last since they are more likely to kill a unit that is already weakened.

So for example, I bombard with battleship, cruiser, artillery, destroyer - then bombers ( lethal). I think that is the correct order, would have to look it up. Not sure where the artillery is relative to the power of a cruiser.

 

[Spoonwood]

The Byzantines don't exist in Vanilla.

 

[ecuwins]

civIII (vanilla)

There is your problem. Arty sux in vanilla.