Catapults et al: Bombarding Vs Collateral

[EternalSpark]

I'm curious...

When you have catapults / cannons / etc that have the bombard ability, do you use it? Do you improve their bombard ability?

Me, I'm finding that they are more effective at collateral damage techniques, and choose my promotions that way. I've had better luck against a damaged unit at 80% defense than a healthy unit at 0% defense.

Is this anyone else's case?

[Willem]

There's no reason why you can't do both. I find it only takes 4 or 5 bombards to reduce a city's defences, then I can send in my Catapults for the collateral damage. So if I have 5 Catapults, that's only 2 turns that my regular units have to wait around. I do focus on collateral promotions though, I thinks that's ultimately the best ability of those units.

[Urban Ranger]

For catapults and other seige weapons I send on attack missions I usually give them at least City Raider I in additional to Barrage.

[trev]

Personally I give catapults etc collateral damge promotions as I use them first to bombard cities to zero defence then use the number required in suicide missions to allow about a 70% chance of success for my attacking units, so they mostly survive and steadily gain further promotions to become even stronger.