Artillery Charge - Does it make sense?

[polypheus]

In Civ 4, they made it so that to cause damage to units (not to defensive improvements) you have to "charge" the unit and possibly cause it to die. Now the payoff of that is that the unit can cause collateral damage and wound many units in the stack. It serves as a great stack of doom (SoD) equalizer. But from a "making sense" POV, I just don't get it.

I've heard of cavalry charges but catapult, cannon "charges??? It doesn't make any sense.

I know it was put into the game for balance otherwise artillery would just be too powerful (if it could still cause collateral damage without suffering damage itself). But the concept itself seems nonsense. Personally I think there are better ways to implement "collateral damage" concept yet still maintain balance.

Would do people think about the "articllery charge" implementation?

[spy14]

Weird,but personally I still prefer the Call to Power type system, where your units charge together, infantry at the front, arty at the rear, and fast units flanking.

[vmxa1]

A bit over powered. Once you get modern armour yo can skip the artie charges as you can crank up the collateral on the MA.

Bring 5 MA, 3 arties to most cities with 5 or less units and just bomb the city defenses down and use the CD from your MA's.

I used barracks and civic's to get 3 CD promotions for my MA's and it is nasty.

[xxFlukexx]

Well, you can think of it like this: In order for a catapult to get in range to be accurate enough to hit troops, that it is within range of archers and therefore will get off a few shots, but will be cut down really quick.

Or you can just think of them as ancient age missiles/bombs/battering rams, that's what I do, hehe.

[meel]

I think it kind of stinks how they did arty. It doens't make much real-world sense, since siege engines normally outdistance other units of the same era. If you had to wheel catapults into arrow distance, they'd be pretty worthless and no one would have used them. And how to explain your catapults getting owned by pikemen? Your other units just sit and watch the pikemen come out of the city and dismantle your catapults? Its a lame concept, imo.

And worse than just being lame, this is the real combat slowdown in the game, you *need* arty to conquer cities, but each time you do so, you lose most of them, and so you have to create and then transport replacements which takes too long for any real sustainable conflict. The only time I can really stomach going to war is if the enemy is really close by so it doesn't take too long to resupply the artillery units. Otherwise, its not worth going to war, and you end up playing Sim Country till you get bored.

[MattPilot]

I actually like the way the Arty was done.

Sure it sucks losing all those units, and is often unrealistic (catapult vs pikeman), but hey, i can live with it.

In my last game i built 20 siege weapons and conquered about 8 cities.

2-3 do the trick to soften up the defenders and to kick some arse.

The problem with that is, it was to easy. I had the same stack of regular units (bout 5-8) that were rarely in any danger of being defeated. The strategy is built lots of Arty, have a force to protect them and then later to mop up the city.


Personally, the one BIG change i'd make the the arty system is give them a higher retreat chance - much higher. That oughta make them a lot more survivable and you won't spend so much time building them.

[polypheus]

I totally agree with meel. While I can understand the balance issue, I also feel that it could have been done in a much better way. For example, the collateral damage could be limited and capped. Another possibility is to have artillery that auto-counterattacked on defense. That would definitely balance things. I just think that artillery could have been implemented in a more thoughtful way and sensible way while still maintaining balance.

Right now, artillery is basically modelled as shock troops that "charge" the enemy and then suffers a lot of damage as a result. This makes no sense whatsover.

[KoBushi]

No, a catapult's range is greater than that of a typical medieval archer's range. Especially with any accuracy.

Instead I think the balance should have ben to give siege weapons "bombard" command with collateral damage; but given them 0 defense, and make them conver to the enemy when taken (like workers)

That would better approximate siege engine war strategy.

[MattPilot]

Originally posted by KoBushi
No, a catapult's range is greater than that of a typical medieval archer's range. Especially with any accuracy.

Instead I think the balance should have ben to give siege weapons "bombard" command with collateral damage; but given them 0 defense, and make them conver to the enemy when taken (like workers)

That would better approximate siege engine war strategy.

The problem with that is, in game terms, is balance.

If we do it as you suggest with a bombard feature, then the #1 strategy is the same as in civ3 - bombard the units down to the minimum and then attack.

The arty units will always be covered by good defenders so it will be nearly impossible to take down an enemy stack full of artys.


With the current system, the arty will have to expose itself. The problem with that though is, we 'waste' to many artillary units. A better solution, IMHO, is to increase the retreat % from 25 (current) to somewhere between 50-75%.

So if they 'lose' the battle, they are most likely still alive, and will need somewhere around 5-10 turns to regain health, depending on modifiers.

[KoBushi]

I don't see how that throws game "balance" off at all...

All they do now is give the advantage more squarely to the defender... in my suggestion the stronger military will still win.

You just need good offensive troops as well, and can't be a namby-pamby defence-only sort

But it still works the way it is now, I don't have any problems with catapults reciving damage when attacking. Just take more with you and have them heal in cycles.

[gmsh1964]

Matt Question

Hello Matt,

I am a new guy. Can you dumb-down your "20 arty attack stack" strategy? I am very weak in grasping what arty does other then reduce the city defenses.

So are you saying that you: (a) use as much Arty as needed to reduce city defense to 0%; then (b) with the remaining arty, you battle it out with defender's in the city, and just keep a protection force of rifleman or something stacked with the arty to the protect arty?

Sorry, I am weak in understanding the arty area.

Thanks,

Glenn

[Skanky Burns]

Thats pretty much the tactic. As even losing arty attacks do collateral damage to other units in the same stack, the next attack is more likely to succeed. By the time you get to the last defender in a city, even a warrior could take them out.

[MattPilot]

Re: Matt Question

Originally posted by gmsh1964
Hello Matt,

I am a new guy. Can you dumb-down your "20 arty attack stack" strategy? I am very weak in grasping what arty does other then reduce the city defenses.

So are you saying that you: (a) use as much Arty as needed to reduce city defense to 0%; then (b) with the remaining arty, you battle it out with defender's in the city, and just keep a protection force of rifleman or something stacked with the arty to the protect arty?

Sorry, I am weak in understanding the arty area.

Thanks,

Glenn

The "arty stack" tactic was used in Civ3. You build lots of artillery, some good defenders for the stack and a few offensive types. What you do is bombard every defender to 1 HP and then use the few offensive units to take them all down (they are, afterall, only 1 HP).


In Civ4, my tactic is to Build about 3-5 arty's (depending on # of defenders) per attack, first bomb down defenses to 0, then send in "suicide artys" - if they survive, great, if they don't, doesn't matter. End result is that due to collateral damage, the remaining defenders are weak and can easily slaughtered.

What i ment with the "20" artys was that thats how many i used up (or wasted) total in my last game where i conquered about 8 cities.


Personally, i prefer Civ4's style, as Civ3 was easy-mode. The defender can also easily protect himself against siege weapons. You can give defenders bonus' versus siege units. Add in a few first strikes and you will most likely win all engagements.



Now there is one thing i'm not sure about. I wonder if arty does collateral damage only if at least one successful hit has been made, or if it does it regardless if a successful strike has been made or not. I will test this and get back to this thread in a few minutes.

[MattPilot]

As it turns out, Artillery does collateral damage no matter if it has a successfull round or not. As soon as you engage in direct combat, a few defenders are randomly selected and Strength is reduced anywhere from 5% to 20% (no clue what governs this). But i alwasy got a minimum of 5%.


So basically, if you have a city with only a few defenders (say 3), all you need to bring is anywhere from 10-20 artys to bring the city's defenders down to a pile of worthless strengh 0.2 units.

I don't like the fact that collateral damage is delt regardless if whether a successful hit was made or not.

[Mao]

One way to explain away all the arty dying all the time (this is totally a cop-out, but at least it makes sense to me): If you actually think of the artillery as munitions, and after every attack you expend those munitions and sometimes you run out (the arty piece dying), so you need resupply. Artillery's supposed to be one the hardest things to keep supplied, isn't it? Considering how long the supply train has to be for it's munitions? Just a thought about the "realism" of it. Of course, artillery this is just an attempt to explain it away.

How about actually having munitions? I remember Civ2 scenarios where arty was essentially carriers on land, carrying missiles (the ordnance) and the ordnance would be like cruise missles and bombard the enemy. The arty pieces themselves would have relatively weak stats. Would that make it a bit better in terms of realism/balance?