Siege weapon promotions

[popejubal]

I tend to build two different sets of catapults and cannons and use them for differentiated roles.

My first set generally gets City Attack + Accuracy. Getting that defense bonus down in culture protected cities is important.

You need either City Attack or Barrage to get to Accuracy and I'd rather have City Attack for the increased chance of a single unit kill (and therefore a surviving Siege unit) because my focus with these units is to take down a city's defense bonus and only attack with the siege units if an appropriate attack of opportunity presents itself _AFTER_ the city's defense rating has been knocked down. Again, these siege units only actually attack a city if I'm desperate or if some easy kill appears and I don't feel like using up the movement point of another unit on the kill. I want these workhorse units to survive.


A second set of Siege units is set up with as much Barrage as I can stuff in it. I'll only use one of these per city (two if there are a ton and a half of units in the city) but the idea for these 1-2 units is that I increase the survivability of my army as a whole by reducing the health of my opponents army slightly. These units are not expected to survive and I count 1-2 siege units per conquored city as a cheap price to pay to ensure the survival of my remaining units. I use these in a similar way to how I used Cruise Missiles in Civ3. Having full health city defenders in the city is well worth the expense of a catapult/cannon or two.

I rarely build Barrage Artillary because I'd rather have the Tank's movement rate with the Barrage if I'm going to have something in a role like that.

[Yosho]

If you're sacrifice attacking catapults into much more powerful units, then flanking isn't bad. There's nothing better then going in, hurting the whole stack of units, and then retreating. I'm not sure if it's better then barrage, though...

[uberfish]

I generally give my cats barrage, and sacrifice them to let my swords or maces get the city raider promotions and XP. If they survive, they get accuracy, which makes them useful for bombardment duty long after they'd otherwise be obsolete.

Cannons go straight city raider, unless I'm on the defensive when I'll build one or two barrage ones to soften up big enemy stacks.

And I prefer to build bombers instead of artillery since artillery doesn't keep up with tanks, and give almost all my tanks barrage. City defence reduction before my air force comes online gets done by the old cannons (or catapults!!) with an infantry escort.

[MasterDave]

Originally posted by Yosho
If you're sacrifice attacking catapults into much more powerful units, then flanking isn't bad. There's nothing better then going in, hurting the whole stack of units, and then retreating. I'm not sure if it's better then barrage, though...

I do not think that flanking is an option for siege weapons, unless there is some prereq for it (such as combat 1)

[Yosho]

Originally posted by MasterDave


I do not think that flanking is an option for siege weapons, unless there is some prereq for it (such as combat 1)

Huh. The manual says you're right. Ok, never mind then.

[kittenOFchaos]

Collateral damage everytime unless I'm in a pickle and catapults are the best unit I can build (2 civ choke at MP for instance).

Artillery has two purposes to my mind:

1. Remove that defensive bonus.

2. Soften up defenders to allow my other units to clear up.

So, I want plenty of artillery, the main job is to suicide attack the defenders to a managable level and make good the losses by losing few other units in the attack and killing the rest of the defenders cheaply.

[Crossfire]

Yeah, I am pretty much of the same mind as kittenOFchaos. I am surprised at how many different approaches there are to the use of cats.

And thanks for the tip on skipping arty and just getting tanks instead. I like that idea a lot.

[Mace]

I do exactly what kittenOFchaos says, above. And for the reasons posted too.

There are some interesting ideas in this thread though. I'll have to try the City Raider II cannon. That sounds wicked. By that time, I usually use Combat II Cav's to provide punch...CR2 cannon might be as effective.

[Velociryx]

I too, am finding this thread fascinating, because for me, Arty are indespensible (same ballpark as Infantry, but with the devastating collateral damage....I can't live without 'em....especially given that they're natural to get to if you're wanting to jumpstart the space race (arty --> rocketry). Nice.

-=Vel=-

[Martin the Dane]

One thing I miss in the game is bombarders and real artilery.

I was sorely disapointed when I discovered that my catapults and canons could not bombard units, only walls.

Modern artilery is an area denial weapond, not a city smacher, ok it's ok for that as well, but its far easier to survive an artilery strike in a city than in the open. And you will most likely never see the gun fiering the shells, so unless you have som artilery of you own you are not likely to be able to hit back. On the other hand a few footsoldiers can fairly easily take out artilery if they get close. But that's irl and from this thread it seems there are uses for those units after all.

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by Velociryx
I too, am finding this thread fascinating, because for me, Arty are indespensible (same ballpark as Infantry, but with the devastating collateral damage....I can't live without 'em....especially given that they're natural to get to if you're wanting to jumpstart the space race (arty --> rocketry).

Artillery really isn't in the same ballpark as Infantry. You can reach Infantry much sooner than Artillery, and Assembly Line gives +75% production to your high-production cities, and you get things like Corporation and Economics (for +2 trade routes) and Representation along the way. In contrast, Artillery gives you nothing economic, and the waypoints are technologies that do nothing themselves like Scientific Method and Physics.

I just experimented with a game (on Monarch) where I started beelining for Artillery once I got Liberalism. It was odd, because everything insists on defending before letting artillery defend, even Macemen, even though the Artillery is much stronger than anything in your stack. If you have Artillery before Infantry, it makes more sense to leave everything else behind.

If you've researched Assembly Line and you haven't researched Artillery, researching Artillery isn't attractive because you can get Tanks almost as fast. Every time I've gone that route AFTER getting infantry, I've only had time to build a couple of Artillery before getting tanks.

As for "jump starting" the Space Race, why bother? The main bottleneck for the Space Race is usually researching the expensive end techs like Fusion and Genetics, not building the Apollo Program or building the cheap parts that Rocketry unlocks.

- Gus

[Shaka II]

Originally posted by kittenOFchaos
Collateral damage everytime unless I'm in a pickle and catapults are the best unit I can build (2 civ choke at MP for instance).

Artillery has two purposes to my mind:

1. Remove that defensive bonus.

2. Soften up defenders to allow my other units to clear up.

So, I want plenty of artillery, the main job is to suicide attack the defenders to a managable level and make good the losses by losing few other units in the attack and killing the rest of the defenders cheaply.

This is what I do also. Cats are pretty much throw away units. Take down city defenses, and weaken the stack to make easy work for the axemen, swordsmen, spears.

So I usually go for collateral (barrage) upgrades on the cats, figuring that they're not likely to survive, but can do an awful lot of collateral damage, and the 25% withdrawal is nice.

I generally give Cannons collateral damage upgrade too for the same reasons. Riflemen and grenadiers are usually my city attackers, while cats or cannons soften up the cities.

[unamablebuiler]

Also bring a few longbows or archersor GPunits with gurellia +medic promotions, a couple of of meele units with woodsman promo so that if there is a forrest or hill next to the city you can fortify and have somewhere protected for your stack to acccumulate. when i have enough mass to overwhelm the defenders and the walls are gone i use cats/cannon/arty with city raider and barrage promos to hurt defenders maximally. City Raider increases the dammage on the unit you attack, bombard gets them to half strength sooner. Also bring enough other units to finish the job.
Use cavalry or horse archers and knights to attack and weaken hopefully kill reinforcments.
this should do a very good job at claiming the city as yours

[gus_smedstad]

Originally posted by Shaka II
I generally give Cannons collateral damage upgrade too for the same reasons. Riflemen and grenadiers are usually my city attackers, while cats or cannons soften up the cities.

But the thing is, Cannons are better at city attacking than Riflemen unless the rifles are upgraded Swordsmen or Macemen, simply because they can take the City Raider promotion. Whether Grenadiers are better depends on whether the defenders are Riflemen, since that +50% bonus is a big deal.

- Gus

[Brael]

Slightly off topic but does the Grenadier bonus get applied towards Redcoats since they're a replacement for Riflemen or not? Besides that, in most cases you're correct a City Raider 3 cannon beats anything else in the era except potentially Grenadiers, for an agressive civ however they start with Combat 1 which makes a difference, using Combat for Riflemen and City Raider for Cannons:
Non Agessive:
0 promotions - Cannon 12 Rifleman 14
1 promotions - Cannon 14.4 Rifleman 15.4
2 promotions - Cannon 17.4 Rifleman 16.8
3 promotions - Cannon 21 Rifleman 18.2
Agressive
0 promotions - Cannon 12 Rifleman 15.4
1 promotions - Cannon 14.4 Rifleman 16.8
2 promotions - Cannon 17.4 Rifleman 18.2
3 promotions - Cannon 21 Rifleman 19.6

As you can see, if you're Agressive unless your units start out with 3 available promotions a Rifleman makes a better attacker, and if you're Non Agressive you need 2 available promotions.