artillery exploit

[CWRice]

The REF is mostly regular army and most of their soldiers start with promotions.

Unless you've had some indian wars, most of the colonials will just be dudes with guns.

Also, there's absolutely no answer for the REF Man o' Wars, which means they can sweep your ships from the sea and bombard your fortifications to dust.

So the REF has plenty of advantages.

These are countered by not receiving defense bonuses, which was described one of the designers in a recent polycast as being because they don't know the land.

So they have better equipment (especially naval power) but you have a "home turf" advantage.

To my mind, there's certainly plenty of subtlety in having to abandon your cities, fan out, stick to the woods and the hills, and try to outfight a superior force.

As always, YMMV.

[alh_p]

If that is so, I have to ask: What is the point of building anything more than a stockade if it offers you no real protection from the REF?

Obviously inter-colony and Indian wars might call for a fort, but if your port settlements are just going to be bombarded to smithereens -where's the advantage in fortification? -you are surely only delaying the inevitable by 1 or 2 turns...

[CWRice]

Originally posted by alh_p
If that is so, I have to ask: What is the point of building anything more than a stockade if it offers you no real protection from the REF?

Obviously inter-colony and Indian wars might call for a fort, but if your port settlements are just going to be bombarded to smithereens -where's the advantage in fortification? -you are surely only delaying the inevitable by 1 or 2 turns...

That's true. Stockades are really only useful in defending against indians and other colonies.

In fact, I never bother building them myself. One of the Founding Fathers I always go for (Cortez?) gives you a stockade in every colony. I usually nab him if I can.

But against the REF, cities are death traps. The game mechanics force you to fight like the colonists actually did, taking to the hills and forests and fighting a guerilla war.

This means your colonies (reduced to the minimum 1 population) will likely change hands several times. One strategy that worked really well for me was to retreat one square away from a colony, to a forested hill with a +75% defense.

If you can nab Ethan Allen (free Mountaineer and Ranger promotions) so much the better. Also, there's a founding father who gives you the Formation promotion automatically for all troops. He's way handy.

The REF will take the town (I've never seen them destroy a colony) and often throw some troops at you.

Then, since the REF doesn't get Defense bonuses from terrain, and reduced the fortifications of the town they just took to rubble, they're pretty much sitting ducks for your counterattack, which should have a high degree of success between Dragoons and Cannons.

Basically, you're fighting a guerilla war. If you stand and fight in the cities, you're dead, so you retreat into the mountains like Castro and Che Gueverra, before you counterattack.

[peege]

Originally posted by Zealot
If I got my math right, 4*100%=16 while 4*150%=24.

I think that a 100% bonus on 4 would be 4 more. 100% + the original 100%, totaling 8.

150% bonus on 4 would be 10.


I can see why the REF doesn't get defensive bonuses to a certain extent, not knowing the land. But fortress walls are fortress walls. They aren't made of pudding and should be difficult to get past no matter who is attacking.

Since when isn't a hill a defensive position to take? Armies well trained have heard of taking the high ground. When the colonists come to the New Land, they seem to get defensive bonuses on terrain against the Natives.

I think that the combat in this game leaves a lot to be desired. The navy seems pretty worthless, and a huge expense at that. And fortifications being worthless is a huge downer.

[player1]

Actually, those bonuses are calculated differently.

+100% vs something else bonus is not added to attacker strenght but deducted from defender bonuses.

In case of defender bonuses get below 0% due to this, like -100% if defender has no other bonuses but is attacked by cannon while being in city, then defender value is divided by (1+penalty%/100).



P.S.
Anyway, due the way how Kings infantry gets no defensive bonuses (and Dragoons and Atrillery don't get those anyway), his Soliders are the weakest part of his forces. The only good thing about them is that some of the Soilders have promotions usually unavailable to Artillery or Dragoons.

[wmartyn]

If you want to consider historical accuracy, the idea of "fortification" for a city at this point is a historical anomaly. None of the U.S. cities had meaningful fortifications at the time of the Revolutionary War and, as a result, once the Continentals lost the battle outside the city, the British just walked in. There's even a real-life analog to the problem that the King's forces have in C4C. The only traditional siege of a city was the Continental siege of Boston, which the US won by stationing cannon on Dorchester Heights. The British left without firing a shot.

If I remember my South American history correctly, there were a few fortified cities -- Cartagena comes to mind -- but generally military matters were decided in field engagements rather than traditional assaults on fortifications.

So, the idea that cities are not focal points for military defense seems to be historically accurate. That it requires a style of play different from Civilization is just one of several reasons why Colonization is a different game.

[Ijuin]

The bigger worry from a gameplay issue is that the REF will bombard your colony defenses to rubble AND take your colony on the same turn that they land (e.g. by amphibious assault), which gives you zero chance to stop them except via your static defenses. You should have one chance to attack before your colony is taken.

[Bidouleroux]

In reality, fortresses needed sieges to be ousted successfully unless you brought overwhelming force (and by that I mean at least 2- or 3-to-1 on the initial assault) and firepower. And once captured, they were as useful to the enemy as to yourself (if repaired). Also, cannons couldn't by themselves kill much troops.

Of course, this is a game and the battle mechanics of the Civilization games being what they are we must make do. But I think having cannons behave as in civ4 proper would be much more balanced.
On another note, cannons shouldn't be able to attack amphibiously. This is just ridiculous. If a Man-O-War cannot kill troops from the sea, why the hell can a cannon do it? (Naggers are gonna say that technically you don't attack from the sea in an amphibious assault, but for example Wolfe only brought 2 cannons to the Battle of the Plains of Abraham with his 4000 soldiers because he had to climb a cliff to get there: either don't let cannons attack amphibiously, or don't let them be as lethal as other troops while doing it, or let us attack man-o-wars from the coast or something!).

As for the Fortress, maybe it should simply cost more resources to build or even be manned to function fully (and be better than they are now of course). Even then, it wouldn't do much good against an amphibious assault, which is fine. But inland they should be near impregnable, especially if you could have civ4 style cannons inside thinning the besiegers. If not, maybe the cannons could give a defense boost to other non-cannon defending units when cannons are in a settlement with a fortress?