Why early siege weapons suck (kind of)

[Mango201]

When I think of siege weapon viability, I tend to think of how many hits the best siege unit of its era takes to take down a typical city's walls when defended by a competent player (this doesn't apply to the AI - which is kind of stupid), and how many hits it can take in return.

For example, a typical Classical Era city's walls can destroy one Catapult in 3 turns [1].

Similarly, a Catapult will take 3 attacks to take down this city's walls [2].

A typical Medieval Era city will take 3-4 turns to destroy a Trebuchet [3].

While a Trebuchet will take 5-6 turns to take down this city's walls [4].

A typical Renaissance Era city will take 6-7 turns to destroy a Bombard Corps [5].

While a Bombard Corps will take 9-10 turns to take down this city's walls [6].

Obviously this metric is a gross oversimplification of viability and it omits dozens of factors e.g. you'll usually show up with more than one siege unit, cities are defended by units as well as walls, cities heal etc.

This is just a proxy for viability, but the picture it paints is that siege units become significantly less effective with each era. Walls don't only grow harder destroy, but they grow more lethal relative to the siege units firing at them.

My takeaway from this is that:

1. Bombards kind of suck at their job.
2. Trebuchet's are far and away the inferior choice to Siege Towers, both because they have to deal more damage (a combined 300 city + Medieval Wall health vs 100 city health for Siege Towers), but also because they have a large penalty attacking land units defending the city.
3. Catapults are kind of viable, but as covered above their upgrades aren't that attractive. They also suffer from the penalty to land units. A battering ram comes an era earlier and is probably the better pick.

Starting with observation balloons in the modern era, siege weapons can hit cities without retaliation (and possibly without LOS) which materially changes the dynamic. From this point onwards siege weapons become viable IMHO.

[1] Walls CS of 25 against defending CS of 25 = ~30 damage on the first shot with every subsequent shot dealing more due to the city being damaged. At this damage rate 3 shots are needed to go through 100 unit health.

[2] Bombard strength of 35 against city CS of 30 (Swordsman CS 35 -10 + 3 for Ancient Walls + 2 for a district) = ~37 damage on the first shot with every subsequent shot dealing more due to the city being damaged. At this damage rate 3 shots are needed to go through 100 Ancient Wall health.

[3] Wall CS of 40 against defending CS of 42 (Trebuchet CS of 35 + 7 for Crew Weapons) = ~28 damage on the first shot with every subsequent shot dealing more due to the city being damaged. At this damage rate 3-4 shots are needed to go through 100 unit health.

[4] Bombard strength of 45 against city CS of 50 (Knight CS 50 -10 + 6 for Medieval Walls + 4 for two districts) = 25 damage on the first shot with every subsequent shot dealing more due to the city being damaged. At this damage rate 6-7 shots are needed to go through 200 Medieval Wall health.

[5] Wall CS of 40 against defending CS of 62 (Bombard Corps base CS of 55 + 7 for Crew Weapons) = ~12 damage on the first shot with every subsequent shot dealing more due to the city being damaged. At this damage rate 6-7 shots are needed to go through 100 unit health.

[6] Bombard strength of 65 against city CS of 70 (Musketman Corps CS 65 -10 + 9 for Medieval Walls + 6 for three districts) = 25 damage on the first shot with every subsequent shot dealing more due to the city being damaged. At this damage rate 9-10 shots are needed to go through 300 Renaissance Wall health.

Note 1: The calculation above assumes that the city is garrison by a ranged unit. The viability of siege units comes under even greater doubt if you swap out this assumption for a melee garrison which would increase the strength of all cities in these calculations by 10.

Note 2: The calculations above also assume that the attacker and the defender are in the same era, but a domination player will likely find themselves attacking more advanced militaries against SV defenders, or ones boosted by more Civics Tree bonuses (Oligarchy, War of Religions, Corps, diplomatic visibility combat bonuses etc.) against CV defenders.

Note 3: This also omits all kinds of modifiers but most unique modifiers favor the defender (Bastions, Redoubt, Embrasure, Defender of the Faith etc.).

 

[reddishrecue]

I like siege weapons of all eras. Bring plenty and well taken care of and you will be capturing cities with fun. In earlier eras bring plenty of catapults. In later eras you can even use air balloons or the drones which increase range. Just take care of them, promote them and upgrade them and you'll take better cities.

 

[UWHabs]

I think that by Bombards, there's enough avenues to hit first with the siege unit that they become valuable. You have a better chance at a great general, you're getting close to baloons, and you have more time to plan things, so that at that point, you can much better figure things out. By that time, you also are able to plan your wars, so you're less likely to be surprised.

One of the biggest factors to me is that since the AI is usually very quick to crossbows, they can really surprise you, and catapults and Trebs simply cannot stand up to them. If they get unlucky in the first roll, they can easily be 2-shotted by city/crossbow, which is a real pain. Or even if they aren't, they can get redlined quickly which means you have to retreat and waste 3-4 turns healing up. Because if you go in at less than 100%, sometimes a magic crossbow shows up which combined with the city attack can kill the unit. And you're also less likely to have nearby roads, so you might even get a situation where you have to move to a spot that the city can peg you but you can't attack back, wasting a second turn before getting the hit in, so now if you actually want that shot at the city, it's a suicide unit right away.

 

[Mount Suribachi]

I think two reasons

1) Its kinda historical. Walled cities/castles were capable of withstanding prolonged sieges until gunpowder tipped the balance in favour of the attacker

2) It's a game mechanic designed to slow down the player. Without city walls, a human player can just ROFLstomp the AI.

 

[aieeegrunt]

I think two reasons

1) Its kinda historical. Walled cities/castles were capable of withstanding prolonged sieges until gunpowder tipped the balance in favour of the attacker

It’s kinda not. Walls bought you time but unless a relieving army showed up or other factors forced the besieging army to leave it was only a matter of time.

Once the Ram Has Touched The Wall it was basically game over, as the Romans proved literally hundreds of times between Scipio Africanus and Augustus Caesar.

The problem is the absurdity of the city strikes, which models nothing even remotely historical. Remove those and the mechanics actually work; if I allow a large enemy force with siege equipment to spend several turns adjacent to the walls I lose the city as I should.

2) It's a game mechanic designed to slow down the player. Without city walls, a human player can just ROFLstomp the AI.

You do not fix the brakes on a car by shooting out the tires. Yes I guess technically the car has no need for brakes but in reality you have a car with TWO broken elements.

And frankly this helps the human player more than the AI. Several border cities with walls and encampments placed to have overlapping fields of fire can often defeat an AI invasion all by themselves.

Meanwhile my Field Army can do other stuff.

It’s actually worse for the AI.

Fix
The
Original
Problem

 

[Evie]

It’s kinda not. Walls bought you time but unless a relieving army showed up or other factors forced the besieging army to leave it was only a matter of time.

Of course, you're kinda skimping over the fact that those 'other factors' - disease, starvation - were actually serious attition trouble that every siege had to contend with, not random flukes of history that might happen once in a blue moon. The besieged usually had time to stock up supplies for the siege within their wall ; the besieger, on the other hand (as was the way of armies of the time) would rarely be traveling with much supplies. If the besieged had time to burn or harvest their crops before moving into the castle, it was not unimaginable for the besieger to starve first. Likewise, the besieger camp is at least as unsanitary as the besieged castle, and the spread of disease just as much a threat.

The Romans who had an organization well ahead of what most everyone else managed for a long time either way, might have been better off, but they're no norm.

Once the Ram Has Touched The Wall it was basically game over, as the Romans proved literally hundreds of times between Scipio Africanus and Augustus Caesar.

The number of failed assaults across all of history would beg to differ with you. An assault is a dicey proposal any way you look at it.

Of course, I'd certainly believe the Romans would *say* that, because the Romans (and Mongols) both understood the sheer value of psychological warfare and *making* it seem impossible to resist a siege from them. Because, at the end of the day, like every battle the best way to win a siege is to not fight it. If you can get the enemy to surrender early on - by generous terms or a scary reputation or both - you've just saved yourselves time and men. But Civ doesn't really model that aspect of warfare very well.

 

[reddishrecue]

Scare them off with elephants.

 

[kaspergm]

It’s kinda not. Walls bought you time but unless a relieving army showed up or other factors forced the besieging army to leave it was only a matter of time.

Once the Ram Has Touched The Wall it was basically game over, as the Romans proved literally hundreds of times between Scipio Africanus and Augustus Caesar.

The problem is the absurdity of the city strikes, which models nothing even remotely historical. Remove those and the mechanics actually work; if I allow a large enemy force with siege equipment to spend several turns adjacent to the walls I lose the city as I should.

This has been discussed elsewhere also (cf. my rant here), but I have to repeat that I strongly agree with this.

I'm not going to throw myself into a discussion as what's more realistic from a historical perspective, because I'm not equipped to that, but from a gameplay perspective, I think the strong city range attack is one of the major issues of Civ6 (as it was of Civ5). It makes military units play far too little of a role in empire defense which in itself is a bad thing, and the fact that it probably also favors the human player over the AI (as mentioned above) only emphasizes the problem. I don't mind that siege weapons only do fairly limited damage to contemporary fortifications with each shot - that's probably both realistic and good for balance - but a city put fully under siege without any military support from outside should only do very limited damage in return to those siege units.

An army including several siege units should be able to slowly chip away the city defenses over a number of turns if not countered by military units from the defender, something that's currently only possible once your siege units are promoted and if you use shenanigans like Crusade or other ways to get "unusual" bonuses compared to the defender.

 

[ShunNakamura]

For me, balance wise I think it would just be best if siege weapons gained a bonus to their strength when defending against district attacks equal to the strength penalty they take against land units(so 17 I think). Have the support siege units like the Battering Ram and Siege Tower confer a similar but lesser bonus to the unit they are sharing a tile with(and maybe tiles adjacent).

 

[Archon_Wing]

They should take a page from AoE2 and make siege weapons resistant to city defenses, while being very weak to military units.

As is, siege weapons are just pretty trash except the brief window of balloons but then you can build planes soon after that.

 

[AlexM29]

The key with seige units is that you need to merge them into corps and armies more so than any other unit. A single artillery or rocket artillery against a post industrial city is a sitting duck, but make an army out of one and it becomes the best unit in the game until the jet bomber. I am not going off any numbers of calculations just my feel for playing the game.

 

[PiR]

Accompanied by trash units that can withdraw. Make them armies. Bring them with balloons. Use Jet Bombers. Use GDR.

Otherwise they're trash units.

 

[The Highwayman]

I think Trebuchets are in a good spot. A GG is a must, but if you're on the war path that's a given and they're easy to get. 3-4 moving and shooting in the same turn and the walls will only get one shot off, and that's a maybe. Terracota's guarantees the +7 defense. Combined with support, any applicable terrain, and the aforementioned GG bonuses and they're durable enough.

 

[UWHabs]

They should take a page from AoE2 and make siege weapons resistant to city defenses, while being very weak to military units.

As is, siege weapons are just pretty trash except the brief window of balloons but then you can build planes soon after that.

It still seems slightly weird to me that there are basically 2 "types" of siege weapons: support and siege. I think a lot of things would get better balance (and likely better AI), if they were all support units. So basically early game, you can build battering rams and siege towers which impart units the ability to do damage to walls and cities. But if they made catapults/trebs/etc... the same thing, and maybe give them an ability more like "grants a melee unit on the tile a ranged attack that is good vs cities and weak vs units", then that satisfies both pieces. You need to defend it, or it can get auto-destroyed by another unit. But city shots can't really impact them at all. And you basically "build" them by assigning a melee unit to be the firing crew of the siege unit. It would also marginally help unit congestion, since then they could stack with other units.

 

[reddishrecue]

Not everyone builds up to defend. If you make about 10 catapults for one capital with a wall and in flat land with no trees or hills around, tsss.. You'll be looking at a city with lowered defenses in no time. Assuming that you have the necessary units to occupy of course.

 

[Victoria]

I just do not seem to have the issue others have

I typically do not take Catapults early because they are not cheap/easily discountable but when I do take them, they are normally with a mixed army including xbow. When I approach I know what the walls target and it is pretty easy to distract their shooting. Of course if I have a GG it is even easier.

Bombards are a case of get em early enough and they do well under the same premise of the above. later and they are useless beyone XP'ing them up to better art or for distracting fire.

The AI now pushes Renaissance walls more which is the real 'issue' and even then it is all about destroying army then whittling walls before you get bombers.

The bottom line is the AI is just capital S for stupid when it comes to fighting and Civ is not really the best game to play for war SP.
MP is a totally different shooting match and I think the OP's argument holds better ground in that arena although I feel IRL ancient walls fell victim far more easily than renaissance.
The rest of the argument is (as they said) oversimplification that seems not to hold up to gameplay.

 

[Alaindor]

Sun Tzu said, “…the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.”

I think the game reflects that quite well. But I also find promoted bombards, especially armies, to be quite effective if the AI has not discovered steel yet. Otherwise, wait for jet bombers.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Siege weapons are not bad. They're really good if you have crusade.

To use them, put them 3 tiers away from a city, place a GG besides them, move to 2 tiers and hit, one hit reduces the city defense by a large number. (The 1st hit is vital as usually siege weapons are killed after making 1 or 2 successful attacks.)

The problem for support units is that they're easily killed by human players-- It is common for both sides to lose units in PVP, and killing the unit that protects the support unit effectively kills the support unit.

 

[aieeegrunt]

The problem is the city strike mechanic. I can play as Gault, put walls, oppidum and encampments in my border cities and literally don’t need an army

 

[NukeAJS]

Bombards are the first siege unit I ever bother building simply because they don't get one-shotted by cities like catapults often do and trebuchets sometimes do.

As for 9-10 turns for them to take down walls, who is building renaissance walls? Tamar? Once you get ancient walls (and the ability to shoot back), the best way to "upgrade" walls is to build a unit that increases the strength of your cities, which is whatever unit has the highest melee strength. Anything beyond ancient walls is usually a waste of time because of the aforementioned reason but also because units are simply more versatile -- can't attack other with city walls.