[Bug report] gunpowder weapons not ignoring walls

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger


I don't think so. WWI is what happens when you have gunpowder units on both sides.

No, WWI is what happens when you have modern weapons like machine guns and artillery but no effective armor or air support. I was talking about the changes in the dynamics of battle when gunpowder weapons start being used (several hundred years before WWI).

And WWI did not have long sieges of cities.

You're talking about gunpowder units against warriors if you're talking about the colonial period. AFAIK, even the Bristish Red Coats lost to the Zulus at least once. So warriors could win, even without fortifications.

Not once did I discuss gunpowder weapons vs. more primitive weapons. I'm not talking about colonial warfare, I'm talking about combat like in the 30 Years War, US Revolutionary War, US Civil War, Crimean War, etc., where both sides have gunpowder weapons and how fortifications become less important in those situations. If the game didn't make a distinction between gunpowder weapons and non-gunpowder weapons in attacks against fortified positions, then a 3-strength archer would have the same odds defending against 3-strength attackers as a 9 strength musketman would have defending against 9-strength gunpowder weapon attackers, as in both cases the power of the attackers and defenders is equal. This is not the case in reality, and luckily this is not the case in the game, either.

Note that cannon is a separate unit in Civ 4. Gunpowder units in the game do not include indirect fire weapons as an organic part as far as I can tell.

Combat is made very abstract in Civ4. A unit of musketmen is not 3 guys with muskets. It represents hundreds or thousands of musketmen, with everything those musketmen need to travel into enemy territory (i.e. supply train, camp followers), and probably a small amount of cannon. Likewise, a cannon unit does not represent two guys with cannons, it probably represents many cannon with some infantry support (otherwise they would have no chance at all defending). Indirect fire is represented by the fact that siege weapons can attack a cities defenses without exposing themselves to attack (while attacking directly with the siege weapons is the weapons using closer-range direct fire attacks against troops ala Napoleon, while the infantry I assume are there to support them move in).

Try dodging an arrow. It's a bit easier than dodging a bullet but then there is also a hailstorm of it on the battlefield. Probably even more than bullets simply because there are more bowman.

You really need to brush up on your military history. One of the advantages of early gunpowder weapons was that you could put a lot more of them on the field - you can train a soldier to fire a musket a lot quicker than you can train them to be effective with a bow, which is why the English longbowmen were so effective - they had an entire class of society that trained with bows for years, nobody else could field bowmen in such large numbers and still the longbowmen were the minority of English forces at the Battle of Hastings. When armies first started using gunpowder weapons in large numbers, they were inferior to longbows in range, accuracy, and rate of fire. Their only advantages were armor penetration and numbers, the numbers being the more important factor.

Before gunpowder weapons, archers usually made up a minority of the soldiers in armies, most being light infantry. In my hypothetical medieval Mexicans vs. medieval Texians at the Alamo, there would be very few arrows coming at the fort compared to the number of musket balls in later eras.

I don't think you can make such an assertion.

I'm obviously better equipped to speculate about it than you, based on your various misconceptions about the history of warfare.

[Badtz Maru]

Double Post

[Capt Dizle]

Did someone say that fortifications were less important in, for example, the Civil War???? I don't quite follow that.

Fortifications were pretty darn important in the Civil War.

[Badtz Maru]

They were important, but not as important as in earlier wars. It was not uncommon for sieges to last many months or even years before gunpowder became widely used in warfare, because even with a vast numerical advantage the attackers would be slaughtered. So they wouldn't attack the city or fort itself, they would simply cut off it's supplies and wait for them to give up, or become so weakened that an assault might succeed.

The most significant 'siege' of the Civil War was when McClellan attacked Yorktown, and that siege lasted less than two months before the Confederates abandoned the city - and this was a situation where the attackers did NOT have overwhelming numerical superiority, there were extensive fortifications, and the weather favored the defenders.