Promotions for suicide artillery?

[Diadem]

Collatoral damage is based on the strength of the unit, isn't it? A strong unit does more collatoral damage than a weak one. So a unit with CR will do more collatoral damage than a unit without, just like a treb does more collatoral damage than a catapult when attacking cities.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Myself, my top priority for any seige unit is the promotion that increases bombardment of city's defenses by 10%. (My first priority is to negate the city's defenses so my melee units City Raider promotions become more worthwhile)

It wasn't clear to me in my first game how that worked.

Does the promotion increase bombardment by 10% so that the defense is reduced by 110% what would otherwise have been reduced or does the city lose a whopping addtional flat 10% of it's defense on top of the amount of defense it would have lost had the unite attacked without the promotion?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Thedrin


It allows the unit with the most number of first strikes - either the attacker or the defender - the chance to strike before the actual engagement.

what exactly does it mean to strike before the actual engagement? When that occurs does it simply increase damage flaty? how do you compare the combat bennefit of that promotion to other promotions?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Myself, my top priority for any seige unit is the promotion that increases bombardment of city's defenses by 10%. (My first priority is to negate the city's defenses so my melee units City Raider promotions become more worthwhile)

After that one, if I'm against a large stack of defenders in cities I want to increase colaterial damage. Against a small stack of defenders in city I want city raider. What NOT to do is give the same unit level 1 in both; one art type unit with level 2 City Raider and another art type unit with level 2 extra col bombard perform much better than 2 art type units with level 1 of each.

Are you sure? looking at the total of the bonuses in both cases it seems as if having one of each provides more bonuses. OTOH I think I may have been misunderstanding how the promotions work.

For instance for city raider I it tells me the units will be 20% stronger in city attacks.

For city raider II it tells me the unit will be 25% stronger in city attacks.

I interpreted the description for CR II as giving the net bonus the unit will enjoy from having the CR II promotion essentially replacing CR I.

is it instead the case that a CR II unit will be not 25% stronger but a whopping 45% stronger when attacking cities?

That would indeed be an important revelation.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by VoiceOfUnreason

As for the strategic question, when I have many promotable disposapults at hand, I'll give the first a CR I promotion to get an accurate picture of the odds. Then I give barrage promotions and suicide until I like the success chances for the city raider.

noob question:

I know it's supposed to be possible to view the odds of winning a fight before attacking in civ4 but I only ever see the odds displayed as the attack actually proceeds. I try right and left clicking on the unit to attack and I can't seem to get those combat odds to display for me without committing to the attack.

[binTravkin]

To view odds, you must hover, not click

[binTravkin]

I'm working from memory, rather than looking at the combat code; but I have a strong impression that collateral damage is calculated and distrubed before (and therefore completely independently of) the actual combat.

Again, think behind what's written (see Diadem's post)

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by binTravkin
To view odds, you must hover, not click

It just doesn't work!

It shows me the strength of the unit but it doesn't add up the odds like it does when I actually attack.

I'm talking about the red and green font text that shows the final total attack strength vs final total defender strength and also has a breakdown of various modifiers such as terrain and fortifying for each side listed in red and green below the totals.

I see that every time I attack but wherever I hover or click it never seems to be possible to display it before committing to the attack.

[edit] NM! someone in another thread kindly pointed out that I need to hover the cursor while using the move to function in order for the odds to display! I had hardly ever used the move to function so it doesn't surprise me that I missed that.

[SandMonkey]

Alright, I'm having some issues about whats being said in this thread regarding collateral damage, specifically it appeared to me that some people were suggesting that CR would increase your collateral damage in combat, and that didn't make any sense to me, so I decided to test some of this stuff in the world builder. I'm using Vanilla 1.61, so if something has changed for Warlords, it won't be in this data.

I started with 5 cities, each with 3 longbowmen, and I attacked each with one catapult.

City 1: Cat had no promotions. Longbowmen suffering collateral damage were reduced to 5.5/6.0 health

City 2: Cat - Barrage I. LB = 5.4/6.0

City 3: Cat - Barrage II. LB = 5.4/6.0

City 4: Cat - Barrage III. LB = 5.3/6.0

City 5: Cat - City Raider I. LB = 5.5/6.0

Since cities 2 and 3 had the same damage, i figured it was due to rounding, so i also ran the test with 5 cities containing 3 infantry each, and I used artillery.

City 1: Artillery - no promotions. Infantry = 18.2/20.0

City 2: Art - Barrage I. Infantry = 18.0/20.0

City 3: Art - Barrage II. Infantry = 17.8/20.0

City 4: Art - Barrage III. Infantry = 17.4/20.0

City 5: Art - City Raider III (just to be sure ). Infantry = 18.2/20.0

So for me thats enough to show that CR has NO effect on barrage damage, as it dealt the same damage as a unit with no promotions. Again, this was damage dealt to units other than the one being directly attacked (obviously, but I'm just making that clear).

In the end, this means that if you want to attack a stack inside or outside of a city and cause the maximum collateral damage (but not necessarily maximum damage on the unit being attacked), Barrage will deal out slightly more damage than other promotions.

[DrSpike]

Why would CR have an effect on collateral damage? The point is CR is better because it performs better in the 1 on 1 battle that the cat initiates, which is highly advantageousas as it damages the unit on top of the stack more and in particular gives a higher chance of surviving to own again later.

[SandMonkey]

DrSpike:

Originally posted by Diadem
Collatoral damage is based on the strength of the unit, isn't it? A strong unit does more collatoral damage than a weak one. So a unit with CR will do more collatoral damage than a unit without, just like a treb does more collatoral damage than a catapult when attacking cities.

Nothing against you specifically, Diadem, but it was statements like that that prompted me to run that test. Diadem is correct that a cannon will cause more collateral damage than a cat, and an artillery more than a cannon. As VoiceOfUnreason said earlier in the discussion, what does not affect the collateral damage inflicted is a promotion that increase the strength of the seige unit.

Also, the OP asked what would be the best promotion for a suicide artillery unit. While CR does indeed give a unit a better chance of surviving an attack (against a city), is it really a better suicide unit?

I think there is a decent argument to say that CR, even though it doesn't increase collateral damage, could actually be a useful suicide promotion. Considering that my test showed that there's not a drastic difference between no promotion and Barrage I, if you're attacking a city the additional 25% strength when attacking could provide more of a benefit than knocking off an additional .1 or .2 strength from a few units.

Of course, when attacking a stack outside of a city, a promotion like Combat I might not offset the potential benefit of something like Barrage I since the addition of only 10% strength might not cause enough damage against the unit being attacked.

[DrSpike]

Originally posted by SandMonkey
Also, the OP asked what would be the best promotion for a suicide artillery unit. While CR does indeed give a unit a better chance of surviving an attack (against a city), is it really a better suicide unit?

Hehe yes, perhaps the real answer should have been have a higher aspiration for your cats.

[Blake]

Random note:
Collateral is not reduced by amphibious attack penalty....

[Diadem]

My apologies then for the confusion.

I thought collatoral damage was relative the the unit's strength. That seemed entirely logical to me. If that were the case, then, logicly, a unit with more strength would do more collatoral damage.

If that's not the case... That's just plain weird. A catapult does the same collatoral damage to a mech. inf. as an artillery does? That'd be stupid.. Are you sure that's the case.?

[edit]
I guess I should learn how to read, someone just a few posts ago said that artillery does indeed do more collatoral damage then a cat. So strength does matter. So why does city raider not increase the collatoral damage?

That's just .. bad game design.

[DrSpike]

Because base strength is the same, and collateral damage is calculated based on that. The bonus applies to the catapult as an attack unit when attacking cities.

It's perfectly sensible, otherwise CR would be terribly imbalanced, affecting the chance of winning against the top unit in the defensive stack and being better than the collateral damage upgrade for damaging other units anyway.