Catapults, Cannon & Artillery

[khines]

I'm kind of lost when it comes to attacking with Cats, Cannon & Artillery.

When you attack a city, if the defenders are "dug in," then the bombard icon shows up when the siege weapon is active. After the defense factor goes down to 0, then you cannot bombard any more. Why?

In addition, how do you attack "stacks" with siege weapons? The bombard icon does not show and all I seem to be able to do is use siege weapons in a normal, frontal attack, which they always seem to lose.

Any help would be greatly appreciated, as now I view them as useless weapons and pretty much skip building them.

[GeoModder]

The defense factor is "cultural" defense so to speak.
Think of bombarding that to 0 as demoralizing the defensive troops.
After this is down to zero, no further demoralizing can be done anymore, defensive troops are on their base strength+promotions.

And as you already noticed, artillery weapons can also attack normally. They have the benefice of hitting multiple targets (collateral deamage) even if they lose their combat with the primary unit they're fighting with. Also, they have a base chance of retreating from such an attack, while still having inflicted collateral damage to multiple units in the city/stack. I know the retreat chance is rather low, but it's not like you're force to use artillery as offensive unit after the cultural defense of the target city is down to zero.

[khines]

Thanks for the info. I wasn't sure if I was doing something incorrectly or if that was actually the way siege weapons were put in play in the game.

[GeoModder]

No problem, just attack 5 times in a row with a catapult/cannon/artillery after the cultural defense of the target city went to zero and there's bound to at least one to retreat before being destroyed. That one will become the more valuable because you can promote it.

[Willem]

Originally posted by khines
Any help would be greatly appreciated, as now I view them as useless weapons and pretty much skip building them.

That would be a mistake, they're probably the most valuable units in the game due to thier collateral damage. A few Catapults can weaken a stack enough that the other units will have a fairly easy time of mopping up. Yes you'll lose alot of them in the process, but you'll lose more units overall by not using them.

[rjmatsleepers]

At what point is it best to switch to a normal attack? My impression is that the collateral damage is more effective than eliminating that final 5% - particularly since the units are likely to be fortified anyway. Or does bombarding hit the fortification bonus?

RJM at Sleeper's

[proviisori]

Originally posted by GeoModder
The defense factor is "cultural" defense so to speak.
Think of bombarding that to 0 as demoralizing the defensive troops.
After this is down to zero, no further demoralizing can be done anymore, defensive troops are on their base strength+promotions.

The defense factor is also increased by walls and castles.
Then the bombarding actually just destroys these fortifications and thus reducing the defense factor.

to RJM: no, bombarding does not reduce the fortify bonus. It works only against city's "defence factor" i.e. 40% -> 0 %

edit: typo

[Demerzel]

I must admit that I didn't see much use in catapults when I first started but am definitely now a convert. Destroying the defensive bonus and then kamikazing a few against the defenders makes the jobs so much easier for the actual city attack units. I went from 5% chance of winning combat with my attacker against their best defender to 70% after a few kamikaze runs.

Learning that holding down alt and moving the mouse over the target tells you the odds of success was a rather nice tip I found here that has improved my conquest markedly

It's so useful for telling you when you can stop with the suicide catapult attacking, anything better than 66% success rate is when I definitely switch over. For a juicier target and when I have a fair few units, I'll go for 50% and risk losing a few in order to ensure I win.

[Thrax]

just how many artillery units do u people use?

I know with 4-5 units, any city def is down to 0% so thats my usual package on my side.

No i always prepare to capture multiple city's in one strike, so i mostly got 3 teams for attacking. But should i build even more artillery just for kamikaze then?

[proviisori]

Depends how strong the garrison in the city is. There is little sense attacking a two unit city with suicide catapults or artillery. But if it has 5 or more units, then IMO it's worth to sacrifice a few cats.

Demerzel says it well: you should also look how good those defenders are against your units and then make the decicion.

[Willem]

Originally posted by rjmatsleepers
At what point is it best to switch to a normal attack? My impression is that the collateral damage is more effective than eliminating that final 5% - particularly since the units are likely to be fortified anyway. Or does bombarding hit the fortification bonus?

RJM at Sleeper's

If you have enough Catapults etc. you can get the defences down to 0% and still have a few units left over to do the collateral attack. I find having 5 in a stack is a good number. I usually have about 3 units left over to engage in a normal attack after getting to the 0% mark. That's enough to do some fairly good damage to the defenders, provided there aren't scads of them in the city.

[marvinkosh]

It's best to build two varieties of catapult. The ones which you intend to sacrifice for the necessary collateral damage, and those which you improve gradually from one conquest to the next by mopping up half-strength defenders.

The ones which you improve can bring down the defences faster; or stand a better chance of surviving against one of the defenders, meaning even more wicked collateral damage in your future

[SystemError]

Im still really disapointed that you cannot target squares like in civ3. It seemed a more realistic setup.

[Rook]

I'm still of the opinion that siege weapons are implemented poorly in Civ 4. The suicide collateral damage attack is effective, but it's just not how seige weapons are used. You might as well paint a red circle on them and call them Kamikazis. A more realistic use would be to have them "combine" with other units as a support function. If the unit they are combined with is destroyed, then the siege weapon is destroyed with it.

[Harrier UK]

Originally posted by Rook
I'm still of the opinion that siege weapons are implemented poorly in Civ 4. The suicide collateral damage attack is effective, but it's just not how seige weapons are used. You might as well paint a red circle on them and call them Kamikazis. A more realistic use would be to have them "combine" with other units as a support function. If the unit they are combined with is destroyed, then the siege weapon is destroyed with it.

When building them imagine you are making the missiles they project. The missile can only be used once (usually). So the seige weapon being destroyed is you running out of missiles.