So basically, when you upgrade from Frigate to battleship, they say Frigate doesn't deal full damage to city defenses but Battleship does, but in fact, both units still get affected by 50% wall resistance? So the extra line in the description that Battleship and Missile Cruiser have is a lie? Or does it describe something different?
Let’s start with archers. Go attack a city with an archer. You will see -17 vs fortifications in the preview. This applies to both city health (green bar) and wall health (blue bar.) However, walls have hidden resistances to damage- namely 85% from any melee type attack, and 50% from ranged attacks.
now consider a siege unit. Siege units have Bombard type attacks. Not only do siege units not get any penalty vs fortifications, but they also bypass wall resistances.
Okay. So, naval ranged units (quads/frigates/BB/missile cruiser) are stated in game to be a special hybrid of ranged and bombard. “The best of both worlds” is I believe what the civilopedia says. This class of ships does not get the -17 vs fortifications. However, they
are affected by hidden wall resist to ranged attacks. I can’t recall if the last time this came up, it was considered a bug or not.
But you can easily check yourself- go start a quick settler game in the renaissance era, build a bombard and frigate, and see how much damage they are expected to do vs a city. You will see despite both say 55 strength, the bombard does twice as much vs walls. (They do the same amount to the green bar though.)
So naval ranged units are a good bit worse than artillery units at dealing with walls. However, ships are mobile, go on water, and don’t have a penalty vs land units like siege does. You can easily get a handful of frigates or BBs in range of a city in one turn and start shelling, where a bombard can’t do that.
