How to defend against trebuchets?

[Virdrago]

Ranged units should have some collateral damage ability versus trebs (or artillery in general). If an archer (or longbowman) is attacking, it's all well and good to get your maceman defending the attack, but the archer probably would want to take out as many trebs and other ranged defenders so they don't get shot back at while attacking. This should include Horse Archers, crossbowmen, archers, longbowmen,and any gunpowder units.

Hope the rambling made sense.

[Yaga]

Mmm...thread hijacking

Originally posted by LzPrst
as for razing stuff... Grozny anyone? the russians pulled up some artillery and pummeled the city into a big heap of rubble covered by a thick layer of poison gas as the local chemical factory stores were blown up

Yeah, but the destruction was done in the process of attacking the city -- it's not as though Russia "caputured" Gorzny and *then* blew bits of it up.

there should be several options when you Conquer a city. ..

I would rather structure the severity strictly in terms of plunder and, to keep the options few:
- Annex : Small gold from plunder, light damage (only one or two buildings destroyed)
- Plunder and Occupy : Significant gold, heavy damage, 1-2 population lost, significant "You plundered us!" hit to city happiness for 30 turns
- Raze * with the caveat tha just as cities of size 1 are auto-razed, you cannot raze cities greater than size N, where N scales through eras.

Add to that that when a civ capitulates, you *then* have the option of handing back some of its cities to them. If you merely Annexed their cities, the diplomacy hit isn't too bad, a la Renaissance Europe.

As for the original thread -- I'd love to see the collateral damage of all seige weapons be scaled somehow. Instead of automatically injuring 6 units regardless of the primary defender's strength, how about they injure 1 unit for every round they successfully hit the primary defender, up to a maximum of 6?

[Dis]

Came into a similar situation last game. Again it was a recently conquered city. I built a theatre and library, but the cultural borders were still up to the city. And it was the Vikings. Those *******s attacked me 3 times last game. The first time I went through and pillaged everything. The second time I captured the city mentioned above to get him to broker peace (I still had to give him a tech).

The 3rd time he attempted to retake the city. He moved a huge stack up to my city, and dropped off about 8 riflemen and trebuchets from galleons right next to the city (I was still using musketmen, crossbowmen, and cavalry to defend). I knew it was hopeless. So I took the advice mentioned above and withdrew (though initially I was going to attack, so I had to strand one trebuchet in the city that I used to weaken his stack). This worked out well. I consolidated to my nearest city and picked off his troops as he approached it.

Then I counter attacked and this time razed his city. My cultural borders went up to another one of his cities. So I marched some cannons up and took that city and razed it as well. Finally he accepted peace. And I had some breathing room (though he eventually built a couple new cities near the original ones). But he never attacked me the rest of the game.

In summary, some of these civs build the **** out of trebuchets. I see sometimes close to 10 of them in an offensive force.

[CarnalCanaan]

Re: Mmm...thread hijacking

Originally posted by Yaga
I would rather structure the severity strictly in terms of plunder and, to keep the options few:
- Annex : Small gold from plunder, light damage (only one or two buildings destroyed)
- Plunder and Occupy : Significant gold, heavy damage, 1-2 population lost, significant "You plundered us!" hit to city happiness for 30 turns
- Raze * with the caveat tha just as cities of size 1 are auto-razed, you cannot raze cities greater than size N, where N scales through eras.

Add to that that when a civ capitulates, you *then* have the option of handing back some of its cities to them. If you merely Annexed their cities, the diplomacy hit isn't too bad, a la Renaissance Europe.

Maybe this is stuff that should be implemented in a Mod. I'd like to see someone take another shot at the Napoleonic wars. With Civ IV, I think the historical situation could be nicely represented. Or maybe even the Age of Revolutions, between the Napoleonic Era and the Franco-Prussian War.

But it may also confuse the heck out of us as we stumble to understand why we're forced to take the maintenance hit during our end-game military struggle. Plus, it would seriously screw up AI Montezuma's late-game strategy. (Not that this is a bad thing...)

[Yaga]

Re: Re: Mmm...thread hijacking

Originally posted by CarnalCanaan
Maybe this is stuff that should be implemented in a Mod...
But it may also confuse the heck out of us as we stumble to understand why we're forced to take the maintenance hit during our end-game military struggle.

Hrm...this does raise the issue of wars of conquest, where you want to have the cities remain as intact as possible, vs wars of domination where you don't want the maintenence hit.

Perhaps a nice, happy medium would be to allow units stationed in a city to be able to Pillage city improvements? After all, if a roaming band of warriors can destroy a farm complex, surely they could also tear down a few temples or factories.

You'd get the gold boost there (as opposed to the randomish "you've pillages 143 gold from XYZ!) *and* it would scale with your army : if only one, lone Axeman survives to capture the city, he won't have much chance to do any pillaging before your cavalary arrives. To the left, if you've got eight Leigions left over -- bye bye Carthage.

And to return to the thread briefly -- perhaps disallow seige weapons to pillage? Yes, I know this seems counter-intuitive, but if you translated the 'bombard' effect to causing unhappiness in addition to loss of defenses this might balance...