Apolyton Civ4 PREVIEW (By Solver) - Part 1 online

[GeoModder]

I think you misunderstood here Maniac. Solver said a siege unit attacking a stack directly, not bombarding it so to speak.

[Solver]

Yes, siege units DON'T bombard stacks. Once again:

1. They bombard city defenses, which decreases the city defensive bonus from culture, walls and other stuff.

2. They attack as any regular unit, but cause collateral damage, too.

[Kataphraktoi]

so like a catapult in civ2 but then collateral damage instead of killing all the stack.seems pretty strong...

edit; solver dont you have any thoughts on what i said about ICS on post 147?

[Solver]

Strong, yes. Overpowered, no. On offense, siege weapons are support units anyway - you're not going to take cities with those guys. The truth is, most of the time, you will absolutely require those siege weapons anyway - cities are going to have defensive bonuses, and in most cases getting them down will be critical to succesfully taking the city.

[Kataphraktoi]

overpowered no, dosnt sound like it. can you use them to defend as good in as in civ2? i found that with a road network,they could take any attack vs AI since they would kill soft attack units easy

[Maniac]

Ah thanks I understand now.

Still, while it makes sense for catapults that they can only bombard cities and attack units directly in the field, for Napoleon and WWI-style artillery and beyond it would be nice to be able to bombard units in the field the SMAC-way, instead of engaging in a direct attack.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

So, let me get this 100% straight in my head-'cause now I am confused?!?!

Can siege weapons (catapults, cannons etc) be used to 'soften up' units, outside of a city situation, prior to the main attack?
Is their anything along the lines of 'counterbattery fire', if two stacks engaged in combat have siege weapons?
For the purpose of the game, are industrial and modern age artillery considered 'Siege Weapons', or do they work differently?
Is it safe to say, then, that if you attack a stack with siege weapons in it, that you will almost certainly never get attacked by those weapon-at least until last?
I take it that all siege weapons are now incapable of damaging city improvements (beyond defensive structures) or killing people?
Sorry for all these questions, but my head is in a spin now. Perhaps if you gave a specific in-game example it might help me out!
Oh, btw, I have heard the next part of your preview will be out on the 17th, but I was wondering if you could bring it back by 1 day? Its just that otherwise I will have to read it at work-which means I can't read it at a leisurely pace AND I risk getting into trouble . Thanks again though for all your time-you and Mark-you guys are absolute champions!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

[korn469]

Aussie_Lurker

From what I understand, when a seige weapon attacks a stack every unit loses some hit points similar to a normal bombard like in Civ3 or SMAC. However, unlike in those games where there is no direct retaliation the seige unit then engages in combat with the strongest defender just as if it was a normal offensive unit. Seige units also apparently have low relative strengths to other units in their era, so I'm not exactly sure how the combat engine calculates how much collateral damage a seige unit inflicts. From the screen shots, and from the preview it sounds like cities have a high inate defense that seige units override. So when they attack cities they seem very useful, but in the field it seems like they have less of a use. I'll have to try it out, but I think I may prefer SMAC style bombard units the best, at least when it comes to in the field.

[Wittlich]

Excellent review Solver! I appreciate the time and effort you have placed into your review and look forward with "baited-breath" for your next review release!

KUDOS!

[Imran Siddiqui]

Brilliant preview!

I'm excited about the new maintainance, where every city will add to the maintaince costs of the established cities, in your national treasury! Maybe us builders will have a chance .

[DrSpike]

I really hope the new city building model works.

However, I'm going to have to wait for the game to pass judgement on that. The majority of players (and most of the Firaxis team) don't really understand the balance between internal/external expansion balance, as proved by the Civ3 experience.

I'm probably going to get flamed for that, so I'll explain.

I should also add (for those new) that I am a huge fan of all 3 Civ games.

My concern is the influence of artifical limits on strategic diversity. You see, ICS was not really a balance problem in Civ1 and Civ2 for the best players. Take a look at the old early landing records for Civ2 - all are with a few highly developed cities (internal rather than external expansion), apart from large maps. On large maps an ICS approach and a internal expansion approach were beatifully balanced if you could play the much more difficult internal expansion strategy.

For less skilled players, ICS was too powerful. That's all.

Then comes Civ3.......we'll nerf ICS through an improved corruption model! This of course removed the possibility of Civ2 style ICS. The counterpart internal expansion possibility (wlt*d) was also removed, and thus 'balance' was reached. But look at the expansion/pop management that remained after the strategic diversity had been smashed with a hammer (not a shield! ). Every game you's set up a similar settler farm with a granary, every game you'd take what land you could up to the point where artificial limits kicked in, and every game your cities would grow at the same rate. Civ3 had some great features, but the pop management was not one of them - it sucked (especially compared to Civ and Civ2) because strategic diversity was the baby that was thrown out along with the bathwater of Civ2 style ICS.

Now I have no way of knowing what will happen with the new model. My hopes are high that the designers will have learnt the mistakes of Civ3 and found a way to reinject strategic diversity into pop management whilst limiting the scope for 'easy' powerful strategies.

Fingers crossed.

Doc

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by The_Aussie_Lurker
So, let me get this 100% straight in my head-'cause now I am confused?!?!

Can siege weapons (catapults, cannons etc) be used to 'soften up' units, outside of a city situation, prior to the main attack?
Is their anything along the lines of 'counterbattery fire', if two stacks engaged in combat have siege weapons?
For the purpose of the game, are industrial and modern age artillery considered 'Siege Weapons', or do they work differently?
Is it safe to say, then, that if you attack a stack with siege weapons in it, that you will almost certainly never get attacked by those weapon-at least until last?
I take it that all siege weapons are now incapable of damaging city improvements (beyond defensive structures) or killing people?
Sorry for all these questions, but my head is in a spin now. Perhaps if you gave a specific in-game example it might help me out!
Oh, btw, I have heard the next part of your preview will be out on the 17th, but I was wondering if you could bring it back by 1 day? Its just that otherwise I will have to read it at work-which means I can't read it at a leisurely pace AND I risk getting into trouble . Thanks again though for all your time-you and Mark-you guys are absolute champions!!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Man, aussie, you need to chill.

[Freddz]

Originally posted by ajbera
Solver, are you going to discuss espionage in your preview, and if so, in the next installment?

They don't mention spying as it is one of those sensitive issues that can piss people off. Whether the choice is invisible or not(assuming they use units), there are people on both sides that gonna think it is a turn-off.
Personally, I hope they are made the CTP-way(invisible), so there is yet another dimension to the play there.
But there seems to be so many features that are good in Civ 4 that it won't be a major turn-off for me if they aren't invisible. It is a time issue of programming invisible units and implimenting them well with the AI.

[Solver]

Aussie:

You can attack stacks with siege weapons to soften them up with collateral damage. You can, just the same, attack cities with siege weapons and damage multiple defenders. All this, though, is likely to lead to the loss of the siege unit.



Look at Munich. You see there, near the religion icons, that it says +40%, that's my defensive bonus for Munich. Let's now have an example of how it all worked:

This turn, I put the units that can be seen around Munich into the city. During the AI turn, Montezuma moves his stack to where my Elephant was, the hill tile. Next turn, Munich completes a Catapult. I attack the Aztec stack with it, deal some damage to 3 or 4 units, but lose my Catapult. AI turn, Montezuma bombards Munich - the 40% defense bonus decreases, but the Catapult takes no damage, the rest of the units stay there.

Look at the composition of Montezuma's stack. You can see that the Catapult has the lowest strength. When you attack a stack, the best unit in this situation defends. On the screenshot, my War Elephant is selected. Thus, the Pikeman is seen as Montezuma's top defender, as it has a bonus vs. the Elephant. Had I attacked with my Crossbowman, then a War Elephant would defend for the Aztecs, and if I attacked with my obsolete swordsmen (two tiles S of Munich), Macemen would defend.

Given this combat system, it means that I could have gotten rid of the stack the same turn when the screen was taken, but I would take considerable losses. As I did it, Montezuma went on the hill next turn and was enjoying an extra defensive bonus. In the end, though, I got rid of the stack by sacrificing 3 Catapults and sending Musketmen in.

[DrSpike]

This part looks really good actually.