Artillery question

[Melloj]

Hello,

Did a search on this, but didnt come up with an obvious thread, so I will post this question that's been bugging me for a while.

It concerns the use of artillery. You can bombard from 1 square away, but only to reduce city defences. You can injure units, but only if you 'attack' the city with your artillery.

Could someone explain the need for this distinction, or at least draw a real world comparison for me? It doesn't seem logical that an artillery barrage would only destroy city defences, and not touch: citizens, buildings, enemy units.

Second the 'attack' option with artillery also seems strange, why would an artillery unit face destruction from bombing down on enemy units vs enemy fortifications?? In the real world the 2 would be one and the same.

Now I can understand if this is done to balance the game, but it seems a very artificial balancing. Something else could have been contrived. The way it stands, artillery seems pointless with costal cities once tanks and modern armor appear. Only inland cities would make sense, and for those players playing on islands or archipelago, there is no need at all.

Am I missing something here? Maybe there is a secret 'bombard enemy units' button I havent seen yet??

[Proteus_MST]

Nope, there isn´t a secret "bombard enemy units"-Button

Such a thing is only available for aircraft.

As you already stated, this thing is "just" introduced for game balancing, most probably to get rid of stacks of doom where artillery units could bombard the defenders of a city without having to fear retribution (as the stack had enough strong defenders to repulse any counterattacks)

(Well my solution would have been to introduce counter bombardment, i.e. if the artillery bombards an enemy city [or stack] and the city [or stack] also has artillery units stationed there, an artillery duel would take place, where both artillery units would bombard each other, until only one unit remained [with the winning unit probably severely weakened]. This would add a stronger incentive for defenders to place artillery units within their cities. But I´m no developer of Firaxis )

[Melloj]

Yeah that would have been a good solution. In war using artillery is a 2-way street. Sure you can pound your enemy, but you also give away your position....Either make it as you suggest, ie. let the artillery inside a city engage an enemy artillery...or provide something like a city building - artillery emplacement- that would have a farther range than a mobile artillery piece or even severly reduce the chance of hitting an enemy in the city, since it would have been much harder than on the open field.

Just seems the way it is makes artillery much less dangerous than it is in the real world...any infantry account from WW2 would tell you that they hated snipers and artillery the most - the unseen, deadly enemy striking from a distance.

[Illuminatus]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST
(Well my solution would have been to introduce counter bombardment, i.e. if the artillery bombards an enemy city [or stack] and the city [or stack] also has artillery units stationed there, an artillery duel would take place, where both artillery units would bombard each other, until only one unit remained [with the winning unit probably severely weakened]. This would add a stronger incentive for defenders to place artillery units within their cities. But I´m no developer of Firaxis )

As it is implemented in SMAC.

[Henrik]

I think I've had my artillery withdraw from combat when facing a loss (experienced artillery units to be sure, but I don't think there was a withdrwa from combat upgrade available to them...).
Thus it was bombarding the units in the city but survived despite not killing them. This was with the most modern form of artillery however.

[Proteus_MST]

Artillery units get a 25% chance to withdraw from combat from the start on (and all of them, even primitive catapults ).
But of course this is different from having bombardment and counter bombardment (as this would require defending artillery to damage/kill the attacking artillery, not just a simple defending unit with a high enough strength)

[Josquius]

When bombarding city walls the enemy troops must keep their head down and stay hidden in the city.
To attack enemy units they have to give the enemy units a chance to show thmemselves and so potentially get into a dangerous position.

Maybe.



City walls are over rated in this game anyway, they still have a huge effect and take some time to destroy with modern artilery which is just daft...

[Saldrin]

Originally posted by Josquius

City walls are over rated in this game anyway, they still have a huge effect and take some time to destroy with modern artilery which is just daft...

Actually, reading through the game hints, a city's defences later on in game, is controlled by culture. Trying to piece that together in my head as to how an artillery round would remove culture from a city so its units are less defended is a tough twist for me to handle.

I guess later on, artillery has anti-culture shells. Or maybe the shells have little speakers that broadcast out Big Brother quotes on the way in

[Melloj]

@ Saldrin.....

[cpt.thc]

not bein able to bombard enemy troops that arent in a city is just dumb

[amicus curiae]

Artillery is already powerful enough without being able to bombard troops. I didn't mind how they were done in SMAC or Civ3. But those systems made artillery extremely powerful. I think the Civ4 developers wanted to make it so that there was no dominant unit at any point in the game. I think this was accomplished with the current artillery system. It is not realistic, but the best choice in my opinion. Bombarding a city makes it easier to invade and take over. Very simple but true to life.