artillery exploit

[Senator]

The king's artillery has 4 power and +150% bonus against settlements. Better to keep that thing away from your colonies then. In this game, I had this very small coastline and I managed to occupy every tactical landing location with a nice stack of troops. The king's army died trying to land because of the amphibious landing penalty.

Next thing I know, the AI drops the idea of attacking my coastline and instead attacks my main colony directly from the sea. Now after a few turns, these untouchable MoW's nullify the fortress defense bonus, and the king attacks with his artillery from the sea.

4 power points, +150% attack against settlements, -50% from the amphibious landing against my artillery, which has 3 points +50% from settlement defense and some rebel bonusses. This is a very much unbalanced fight and the king's artillery won every time (23 times in a row, against elite soldiers, cavalery and cannons alike).

When I realized what was happening, I abandoned the colony and waited in the next tile with my cannons. Then the king took the colony and landed his troops there. Then I attacked the city and this time I got the +100% attack against settlements bonus using my cannons and I annihilated the king's forces.

It just plain ridiculous that these attack vs. settlements bonusses outweigh the settlement defense bonusses, especially after naval bombardment.
It makes a defensive position into a disadvantage for the defender, which is completely unrealistic and ridiculous from tactical perspective.
It makes settlements into death traps. As it is now you're far better off having your troops exposed in an open field (what happened to the "artillery in the open" penalty anyway?).

I guess you could even exploit this and give the enemy open passage into your colonies and, once they're in, pound them with your artillery.
I generally like the troop upgrades in civ4/colonization, but in this case they really screwed up the balancing.

[player1]

If you check Civilopedia, you'll see that all king forces have good bonuses against cities.

That was done on purpose, to discourage "trenching".

Proper way is letting them land and taking them out on open (or when they take a city), since king forces have no defensive bonuses.

[Senator]

Yeah I understand that something has to be done against "trenching", but these bonusses make the inside of a fortress the worst defensive position in the game, it just seems wrong.

It feels a lot like an exploit when you offer your nice, huge fortress to the enemy, because you know his forces are much easier to kill inside. I mean, it's a fortress, it's supposed to protect what's inside :s

[snoopy369]

Sounds like it's doing what it was intended to do, then...

[Ijuin]

Don't Dragoons get a bonus against artillery?

[Dale]

I believe this would be fixable by allowing counter-battery fire.

This would also solve the complaint of not being able to retaliate against bombarding MoW's.

[Jeje2]

(Don't have the game yet...)

After reading this thread and a couple of others I have to ask that is it still the best strategy to have only one coastal city?
(In Col I - the king sent all his troops to attack only that city. Thus making defense simple)

So what do you think - is it a good strategy to have only one coastal city? (Or do you loose the game immediately when you're only port city is captured even temporarily?)

[Dale]

The King beaches and comes at your inland cities too now. So your coastal cities can't be made into a funnel for the King now.

[Aerion]

The whole point of a fortress is to protect a city from attack. Yes, artillery can eventually destroy a fortress, but then most of the time a fortress is firing back so it is a little bit more complicated than that. Artillery in a fortress has no need to be mobile and is usually much, much large that a field artillery piece. You can't tell me that an huge artillery gun, mounted behind 4 feet of stone is going to be bested by a shorter ranged, unprotected field artillery piece.

Artillery against a settlement with less than a fortress, yes a bonus is appropriate. But a fortress should be a good defense against infantry, cavalry and artillery. Otherwise, what is the point in building a fortress or even having them in the game? You might as well take them out!

Seriously, some of the "design elements" you guys are defending make no sense. They threw out the baby with the bath water (custom house) and in the process added senseless micromanagement. It's become impractical to buy more than a few warships or soldiers due to rapid cost ramp ups. Educating is even less practical than the original game. You should be able to win the game with a large standing army but certainly there should be disadvantages to that approach. But it should at least be a viable choice.

In an effort to increase the challenge, they've created a game with a single scripted, boring path to victory. *yawn*

I agree with whoever said that this game is great until you get to the end game. It's a game I might play a lot but probably never finish a game in it's present condition.

[AdamWright]

Agreed with Aerion. Some of the design descisions are eminently...well, at the best, "Not well thought through".

How the heck does it make any sense that I'm better off abandoning my colonies to sit in fields, because if I leave armies in a fortress, they're less useful than when they're having a picnic. Then, when the king's walked through the door, I can turn around and say "Hah! Sucker! Didn't you know this is an *anti-fortress*, whereby you're now actually weaker than you were before!".

How's it make sense that you're best off entirely avoiding the key portion of the game (founding fathers and liberty) until the endgame, when suddenly, you're previous sedate populous all get a political bent overnight and turn into statesmen, recruiting two dozen founding fathers in 30 turns? Why even have cultural borders in the game - if your borders are expanding, then you're on the path to a loss.

How's it make sense that the king constantly asks for huge sums of money, but there's no penalty for refusing him? Seriously, that just smacks of an unfinished feature.

How's it make sense that, rather than improving over time, your universities actually become worthless?

I can understand some of these things in the name of "balance". But it seems that, under this guise, decisions have been made that are not only odd, they're downright baffling. It renders the game a sequence of "gotchas" and secret clandestine forum gathered knowledge, rather than strategy.

I hope this can be fixed in a patch, I really do

[Ijuin]

I think that the simplest thing to do on Artillery would be to reduce the bonus against settlements from 150% to 100%, so that the King's artillery is getting the same bonus as your own cannons.

[Aerion]

Originally posted by Ijuin
I think that the simplest thing to do on Artillery would be to reduce the bonus against settlements from 150% to 100%, so that the King's artillery is getting the same bonus as your own cannons.

Or have a fortress provide a bonus against artillery equal to whatever bonus artillery gets against a settlement. In effect, a fortress nullifies any bonus to attacking armies.

[player1]

Well, the thing is that fortifications provide nothing to Kings army, since all his troops are incapable of receiving defensive bonuses.

That's why attacking with Cannon to take them back looks like overkill.


But, I do understand why it was done. The big problem in original colonization was that in case you lose city with big fortification it was pretty much impossible to take it back.

[Ijuin]

Do defending cannons in a settlement get the Rebel Sentiment bonus or not?

[Dinner]

Originally posted by Senator
Yeah I understand that something has to be done against "trenching", but these bonusses make the inside of a fortress the worst defensive position in the game, it just seems wrong.

It feels a lot like an exploit when you offer your nice, huge fortress to the enemy, because you know his forces are much easier to kill inside. I mean, it's a fortress, it's supposed to protect what's inside :s

I have to agree that the attack city bonus is to high. A fortress simply shouldn't be the worst defensive position in the game. Maybe if they toned down the attack city bonus it wouldn't feel so much like an exploit.