Cruise missiles and nuclear subs

[CWatkins]

As I sat facing the Incans across 8 tiles of ocean I realized one thing. I miss cruise missiles!

Over the course of the game, the AI tends to stack tons of units on its major cities which leads to an all-out zerg of any invasion force I land. Short of nukes, some cruise missiles (loadable on subs and destroyers) would be a great tool to help.

A national wonder like 'Rocket Program' (fancy name, I know) that unlocks after the rocketry tech and is required before building cruise missiles would be a nice touch.

I also lament the fact that the only sub is one of the leaky tubs used in WWII. I'd like to see a faster sneakier nuclear sub unit with the power to carry nuclear and non-nuclear payloads.

[Saldrin]

Its also why I miss naval bombardment, and artillery bombardment. Why thoses were all taken out is beyond me. But as soon as the SDK rolls in, those abilities are coming back.

Pigeonholding artillery (and navies) into a role of "reducing city defenses" only is....boring? Yeah I think that is a good word for it. Nothing has a range attack in this game except aircraft. Completely wipes out the stratigy of having a diversified army.

There is no stratigy in combat other than to just stack your units up and fight off units with barrage ability. Its not a battle of tatics, its a battle of who has better upgrades. We have access to units like marines that ignore building defenses, or city raider upgrades, so you technically don't even need artillery ( or a navy). Navy blockage: Why? There are airports and open borders.

Why waste the hammers building them....

Sorry, slight rant.

[TheDarkside]

I find the siege weapons to be quite adaquate actually. Everytime you attack with your siege weapon you do collateral damage with weakens the defense rating of other units. Once you weakened them with your siege units, move in with your assault troops (cavalry, tank... whatever)

In my current game I was using artillery alot to weaken unit sina city before invading with my ground forces. And it was so easy capturing cities. I can't imagine how easy the game would be to have artillery that do bombardment like Civ 3, or cruise missiles to just wipe out defensive units completely. Besides I mean really... cruise missiles to complete destroy an entire division of infantry? That's beyond unreasonable...

I do however totally support cruise missiles for sinking ships- THAT would be a very useful and not overly imbalancing.

Anyway that's only my opinion, and the great thing is we can mod our games however we like

[Saldrin]

True, but you can only use the bombard feature against a city, which is what I find dissapointing and limiting.

They are not true atrillery units, they are just city siege weapons. The old stratigy of using artillery to weaken attacking forces is gone. The stratigy of using artillery to destroy supplylines and stratigic resources is gone. Using naval units to support armies is gone. Combat is one dimentional now, its just roll one stack of an army against another and pray you have better combat upgrades.

[sgrig]

You can "attack" with artillery which gives collateral damage. This kind of models artillery bombardment of units, but it makes artillery into single-use weapons.

So now you need to have even more artillery than in Civ3 - just use them in suicide missions to bring down the defenders' health, and then attack with other weapons (of course, first use artillery in the "bombard" mode to bring down city defense to 0). So I think a stack of 10 artillery units and 10 infantry units should be enough to take out most AI cities.

[MW2]

I've played around a bit trying to add cruise missiles, and the main problem I have hit is the only way for them to move across both land and sea is to give a unit a NO_DOMAIN as the domain type. This however gives a error when the game is starting up, but it does then allow the unit to move freely.

As for the way I've added a kind of cruise missile is to create a new unit type called "Attack drone" which is basically a copy of the gunship data, but which costs less and has more movement and has the no domain.

Then I've added some code to the onBeginPlayerTurn function which checks to see if each player (human and AI) has any units of the type "Attack drone", and if they do checks that they are in a city (I think it could be added so it also allows them to be on ships or submarines). If they haven't started the turn (ended the last turn) in a city then they are destroyed.

I've also added to the onCombatResult , which is called when a unit has been in combat , this will automaticaly destroy the attack drone if it has been in combat. I think if it was wanted, that this could also be used to inflict damage on other units in the plot that it attacked.

The reason I haven't uploaded it as a mod is because of that error it gives when starting up.

[ggalindo001]

I have been on the fence regarding artillery as well, but I do think the way it is implemented in the game is probably the right way from a balancing standpoint.

I think much of why it was implemented in this fashion was because of the obvious abuse from Civ 3 where you would have a stack of cannons/artillery with one good defensive unit and sit there and pound away the defense to nothing. Quite unrealistic.

What I think should be implemented is this; you can only use artillery against fortifications (such as now) in a ranged concept, or can only attack with another unit (not by itself). As it stands now, I use artillery as kamikaze units to significantly soften the defenses (and the beautiful collateral damage), and then mop up against the weakened units. I think if you were forced to use them with another unit in attack (which is realistic), I think it become more tense in terms of making the attack city rush decision, and also more realistically reflects the actual use of cannon/artillery.

Also, I think that strategic airstrikes with bombers and fighters should have a "temporary" effect on damaging improvements. Only land pillaging (or sea pillaging) should have a permanent effect on improvements.

[gdijedi7]

I miss cruise missiles, civ3 artillery and bombardment, and ye olde nulcear subs. sigh. DOGGONE IT! I WANT THEM BACK! Who wants to attack with artillery? Artillery are for bombarding, not attacking! And cruise missiles shouldn't be able to upe out a whole infantry regiment, Darkside. They would be a single use artillery bombardment from a zillion miles away. Although, they would sink ships, but so should aircraft.

[MilkmanDan]

I'd like to see some form of ranged combat for naval units AND some sort of capture for naval units (at least earlier ones). Maybe such that melee, archer, gunpowder units can try to board enemy ships (with penalty for no amphibious promotion). Give defender ship any first strikes before combat takes place. This would also allow piracy again, better than any of the previous civs (except maybe colonization).

[Tufturk]

Ah... Colonizaztion. You hit the Spanish Caravel with your Privateer, captured 100 horses and 100 guns, while sending his ship to the repair yard (or to the bottom). Then you sold the horses and the guns to the Indians he was trying to subjugate for about 2000 gold, and when the Spanish envoy complained about piracy, you simply answered: "We have NEVER conducted piracy!"

Was gaming ever sweeter?

[Crazy_Ivan80]

the problemis that if you attack with your artillery it usually ends up being destroyed, so you need massive numbers for it if you're fighting long wars and/or strong enemies.

Maybe an option would be to find a way to make an order that allows the artillery unit to always withdraw (so never be destroyed) at te cost of halving it's attack value (which should result in less units destroyed and less experience gained, but a real -if reduced- amount to collateral damage done)

[Unimatrix11]

I also like to see a reappearence of cruise missiles and tactical nukes.
And also i think that the use of artillery as kamikaze units is as irrealistic as it can be. What was wrong with the way artillery worked in civ3 ? Maybe only that none of them should have a bombardment range of 2. I must admit tho, that i never used them really in civ3, but now with colletral damage and the ability to wear down city defences i might...

[Rhianni]

Not sure why people dont think collateral damage works. 2 artillery sacraficed to a large invading stack quickly changes the odds. You may loose the artillery but if most or all of the attackers die while attacking the city the trade off is worth it.

[Jabutron]

*Jeez, it's been a month, should I even reply?*

What if artillery was changed to only bombard an adjacent square, and never attack? Then it could soften up cities or field armies, and need to be protected by other units because of a lowered defense value? I mean, the point of artillery is to sit in the back and lob lead, not get in the enemy's face.

[axi]

IMO, the civ2 use of a cruise missile is way too overstreched, so we shouldn't be trying to implement this. Can you remember the AI unloading stacks of cruise missiles into an AEGIS/carrier stack? Or how most human players seldom built them, in favor of howitzers? Why? Because they cost much and are single use, that's why.

I would like to see a missile unit that has multiple attacks. A significant amount of the cost of missile batteries today is the platform and communications used for their launch. These do not self destruct each turn.

This could be done with an air unit that loses a set fraction of hitpoints each time it performs an airstrike, bombing run or interception. The unit cannot be healed so we know that it will die after being used n times. Perhaps you can add a % chance to completely wipe out a ship or a building for each attack.

OR you can build a unit that will lose hitpoints in a similar fashion but that can be upgraded (with cash) to ITSELF, making it regain full health. I don't know if this would work though, I'm not into modding myself.

That's a good way to implement ammunition b.t.w.