CIV shouldn't have Siege Units

[ZEE]

Originally posted by Alexander01
Yes, I know that they did it for game balance. Hence, my suggestion that they look at it again and rebalance things.

OK, heres my way to REBALANCE it. catapults are an xtremely expendible unit IMHO. you can build like 20 of them, give them all collateral damage bonus, and wipe out almost any citys defenders. so maybie an ANTI-SIEGE weapon to protect stacks and cities from cheap, quick, and deadly catapult barrages?


piece

-edit- im not talking about the anti-siege promo either...

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Change the name of the unit category from Siege units to Shock Units.

Change the unit names (and associated graphics) to:

Catapult = Berzerker
Cannon = Fanatics
Artillery = Special Forces
(for example - I'm not married to any of these names)

Problem solved All of the new names are easily envisagable as suicide units.

Siege units could still exist in another form - knocking down city defenses is still an important function, and we'll still want analogues of Catapults, Cannon and Artillery to do that. It would be nice if Catapults/Cannon/Artillery also had the ability to reduce bonuses from fortification (in lieu of their lost collateral damage powers?)...

[JustAnotherUser]

Originally posted by DrSpike
The problem with making collateral damage a promotion and removing siege is that cats have another role - reducing defensive bonuses. I suppose you'll want to make bombard a promotion too? Purely on gameplay terms that's weak - the balance switches in favour of defence too much because you have to split your forces between bombard and collateral, with far fewer city raiders.

Or you could just put the option to bombard and doing collateral damage in the same promotion, maybe at a lower power level if you think it is too much.

But even if I like the idea of siege units as a promotion what I'd like to see is some form that give a chance to appropriate of the enemy siege unit, in the same way it happen with workers. something like,
-siege units can't defend, ever, they have a 0%defense against ground units, like ships in cities.
- if a unit attack a enemy siege unit on a square with no other units present he have a chance to capture them like it happen with workers (if they know how they works, of course) (btw, i'd like to see the same thing about naval units,I don't see why when I conquer a city I must sink ALL the ships, I could want to use some of them, but that is another thread)

-what about a limit on how much damage a attacking siege unit could take? (i.e. max 50%) That could better simulate the use of projectiles and the need to wait for resupply or attack at reduced efficiency that the total destruction of the unit, heck, make it that attacking [b]always[b] reduce a siege unit power and it must wait 1+ turns to heal/recharge.

[ZEE]

i like both of your suggestions a lot...


now only if firaxis would IMPLEMENT these ideas somehow





piece

[Alexander I]

Originally posted by AAHZ
i like both of your suggestions a lot...

now only if firaxis would IMPLEMENT these ideas somehow

Agreed.

[Francis Xavier]

Siege weaponry is fine in civ4 really. The 'teams' of people required to man the weapons can just be pre-assumed to be there, just not graphically put in place. The catapult isn't literally moving by itself across terrain.

The collateral damage makes a lot more sense coming from a piece of artillery than some infantry. You know, because an artillery shell landing on your head is going to take you out as well as everyone standing around you, while a bullet from an infantry unit using a rifle is probably only going to cause collateral damage if they miss their mark in the first place.

Siege weapons are very offensive weapons in real life and in civ, so using them offensively makes sense. Siege weapons make the first attacks on towns and cities via bombardment and really, they need to have that ability to cause collateral damage to units, so having them be forced to suicide is just a gameplay mechanic to make it more fair. I mean, could you imagine what would happen if Artillery could just hide behind a stack and just go to town on the enemy without any risk of losing?

Siege units are also kinda weak in general compared to the other units you can usually get with them. So most units you fight against that are of equivalent tech era pretty much means you're going to lose an artillery piece when you use it to hurt the enemy's stack.

It sounds like a bunch of people just keep losing massive armies to a couple siege units and being ticked off when it happens. Sure, it's frustrating to lose units or cities to siege weapons supporting a main army, but if you're going up against the ai it's easy enough to just split off a smaller section of your army out onto a hill or next to the "meat" of your force and let the AI go to town on that stack while your main force just obliterates them. The best defense against an extremely offensive unit is an even better offense.

Frankly, I'd be more concerned with the sheer amount of ownage that Airports + bombers + your typical modern army can just reign down on anyone lightning fast. The Airlift ability probably has much, much more of an impact on just utterly destroying an opponent in the late game than anything else, and pretty much requires you to be on the offensive end of things to avoid it happening.

[Dis]

I hate seige weapons. i hate how a stack of trebuchets can take any city even if they have modern units defending it. I'm tired of infantry losing to macemen.

Civ3's model I don't remember being that bad. Perhaps I am remembering wrong. Obviously you would have to take out the idea of capturing them. Just have them be destroyed once the last defender is killed off.

But I still feel they need to be in the game. I do like the idea of limiting SOD's. This would create more of a "front line" and make combat slightly more realistic. And I especially would like to limit stacks of trebuchets. ****ing annoying they are. even catapults can destroy my tanks sometimes.

Tiles should not support more than 5 units. City tiles should have a limit as well. Obviously these numbers would have to be tested for game balance.

Or would this be an unecessary complication and micromanagement? I don't think so and would like to see it.

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man
Change the name of the unit category from Siege units to Shock Units.

Change the unit names (and associated graphics) to:

Catapult = Berzerker
Cannon = Fanatics
Artillery = Special Forces
(for example - I'm not married to any of these names)

Problem solved All of the new names are easily envisagable as suicide units.

Siege units could still exist in another form - knocking down city defenses is still an important function, and we'll still want analogues of Catapults, Cannon and Artillery to do that. It would be nice if Catapults/Cannon/Artillery also had the ability to reduce bonuses from fortification (in lieu of their lost collateral damage powers?)...

As I think about this further, a refinement would be to put a limit on how many of the Shock (formerly Siege) units could be built.

It would probably have to be more than three (cf. Spy, Missionary) but not more than 10, to eliminate the SOD problem. Perhaps it could be tied to nation size?

This sort of limit is realistic, too - very few nations can provide an unlimited supply of elite, fanatical troops willing to die for their nation.

[Jaybe]

EDITED: Suggestions that a user could implement

Eureka!
Siege could be fixed with a rule that they NEVER win while attacking.
They can reduce city defenses.
They can cause collateral damage in an attack, but their 25% chance of withdrawl is the only way they can survive.
The unit they attack suffers collateral along with the other units in the stack, but otherwise takes no damage.

Defensively, they operate normally.

In this way the seige concept of being an expenditure of effort/ammunition is purified.

Question: Can the AI be modified to adjust?

---
EDIT: Perhaps this can be attempted by simply lowering the strength of the various siege units, along with lowering their hammer cost. The only available promotions should be Barrage & Accuracy.

[DrSpike]

This is the closest to being a sensible solution yet.

[Jaybe]

Thank you, DrSpike.

What I would also like however, is for some mechanism where gunpowder-type siege (particularly artillery), can be used defensively.

[ZEE]

agreed. there MUST be a unit able to counter bombard attacks. this is a huge flaw in the combat system in my opinion, balance or not

[Jaybe]

AAHZ, I wasn't referring to defensive counter-battery fire. I was referring to defensive artillery destroying the waves of assaulting troops.

Counter-battery fire could be a chance thing similar to how air-defense is done in Civ4 (perhaps no more than 25% chance of counter-battery). Success against any adjacent enemy bombarding siege would cancel its bombardment & possibly damage it. Damaged siege units would have their bombardment/collateral effects reduced.

[ZEE]

i see...

sorry for misunderstanding, but i think defensive counter-battery fire might be an option for upcoming products. i just dont see any flaws with it, other than upsetting people like me who love to go crazy throwing waves of siege weapons at opponents. thats been a staple civ4 strategy for me, and i would like to see SOME sort of counter for it. ive taken down injured-by-my-cannons machine guns, with obsolete macemen and knights! then i cleaned up the rest, and defeated opponents that had a distinct tech advantage over me. good strategy actually...

[Senethro]

Some of you guys have plenty words but seem to be short on reasonable alternatives and solutions. Others imply that they're fans of the 1/2 defender per city mistake or that they're too lazy to aggressively defend their territory with field attacks and their own suicide siege units vs. SoD.

Siege units are only a problem if a lower investment of Siege/Offense beats a higher investment of defenders, which I've never found to be the case unless the defenders make it easy by all standing on the same tile.