Artillery units in Civ IV

[Guardian]

Ummm... excuse me if the question has been asked before, but WHAT ON EARTH were the designers thinking when they made artillery units have to engage in regular combat in order to hit enemy units??!?

I mean, that's exactly what artillery units DON'T do!!!

The whole point of having artillery is to fire at your enemies from a distance! Hence, you don't put your artillery way up in front of your army all by itself and then send a runner over to the enemy saying "Here's my artillery, go ahead and take it out - my other troops won't try to stop you!"

Geez!!!!

I mean, well, sure, some times you might have to put your siege units in harms way if you want them to be able to hit anything worth hitting, but not every time and not without any protection from other units.

I really love the game a lot, but this particular part of it makes me want to revert back to SMAC some times!

For example, in my latest game, I had a pretty tough force of riflemen, cavalry and canons guarding a city and an enemy was trying to lay siege on me with medieval units. (Catapults, macemen, etc.)

In this case, with the way Civ IV handles artillery units, I could not fire my canons at the medieval units outside the city because if I did, a maceman would walk into town and clobber the canon!

Yeah, right! And all the riflemen and cavalry would just sit around and wonder where their eyes rolled off to or something...

I think this is quite possibly the least sensible change ever made to the Civ series.

Sorry if I seem a bit grumpy on this one, but... well, geez! What where they thinking??!?

[The keeper]

Balance

[Guardian]

Aye, balance is a good thing - much of the time.

-But NOT when it ends up allowing a maceman to walk right by 3 riflemen and 2 cavalries to clobber a canon which is firing at him from inside a walled city!

That kind of balance is also known as bullsh!t, and it's something I don't enjoy seeing too much of in a great game like Civ.

[Guardian]

By the way, I suppose this could have been in the Civ4-General forum rather than in this subforum, so if any moderator is reading this, feel free to move it. (Sorry, I've been away for some time... )

[Guardian]

Hi again!
(*mutter*)
This is turning into a monologue.

Well, anyway, I thought it was about time for me to be a little more constructive here, so I have come up with a pretty short, sweet and simple solution to this issue:

Why don't we keep the current model of having the artillery units engage directly in regular combat, but give them a much higher chance of withdrawing if they lose, say about 80 % or so?

This would reflect the fact that in by far the most cases, artillery units remain virtually "untouchable" to their targets, hence they would usually not be destroyed when losing an engagement. However, it would be quite possible for them to take damage and have to spend time healing afterwards, AND... if you don't think it is realistic for them to have taken damage in the battle they just fought, you can just say they fired up most of their ammo and need to be resupplied before they can be effective again.

[Unimatrix11]

Well about artillery:

I think they should not be forced to engage directly as it is now. Instead they should be more expensive (maybe 2x) and have several bombardment options:

a) Collateral bombardment - pretty much as it is now, but without entering the tile.

b) Selected bombardment - choose a unit to bombard. Damages selected unit by maximal 50%, is more effective than collateral bombardment, but does only damage one unit.

c) city defence bombing - as it is now, except:

all types of bombardments give 1xp. Artillery would not be able to kill a unit - just damage them. Their bombardment strength should be much different than their actual combat strength, which should be very low, so that if they are directly attacked, they collapse easily.

Another way would be to have artillery just as some extra to the other units (maybe a mini unit-workshop a la smac), which would simply give that unit a certain amount of first strikes at a certain strength and remove artillery as an independent unit altogether (like in "hearts of iron").

Maybe it would even make sense to have both concepts in the same game...

[SystemError]

I agree. It seems in many ways civ4 is a step back, or atleast a step sideways from civ3.

[Paddy]

Originally posted by Guardian
Aye, balance is a good thing - much of the time.

-But NOT when it ends up allowing a maceman to walk right by 3 riflemen and 2 cavalries to clobber a canon which is firing at him from inside a walled city!

That kind of balance is also known as bullsh!t, and it's something I don't enjoy seeing too much of in a great game like Civ.

my brians trust - 6, 9, and 12 year olds, they all have a hard rtime with this as well

[iapetus556]

How exactly does artillery work in Civ IV? (I haven't got it yet, but hopefully will soon).

How does it compare with the Civ II version? (Normal combat, but with much higher attack, and lower defence, than other contempory units. E.g. Musketeer 3/3/1, Dragoon 5/2/2, Cannon 8/1/1)

[Metaliturtle]

There's no defense anymore, the big bonus of artillery is it ruins city defenses (a percentage bonus defenders get for being in the city) and if you direct attack with artillery you can do collateral damage (so if there are 30 units in the city, one catapult will hurt all/many of those units)

[Guardian]

I think a catapult can only damage 6 or 7 units in one attack.

In SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) and in Civ III, artillery units could bombard enemy units from a distance - like they do in real life. In Civ IV, you may only damage enemy units if you attack them directly - in which case you can damage more than one enemy unit, but you're likely to lose your artillery unit in the process because they're not that powerful.

I personally feel that this is a major step backwards in terms of realism and playability.

You may still bombard city defences from an adjacent tile, but doing so will never damage any of the defending units, just lower their defensive bonuses.

[Guardian]

Originally posted by iapetus556
How exactly does artillery work in Civ IV? (I haven't got it yet, but hopefully will soon).

How does it compare with the Civ II version? (Normal combat, but with much higher attack, and lower defence, than other contempory units. E.g. Musketeer 3/3/1, Dragoon 5/2/2, Cannon 8/1/1)

In Civ IV, units no longer have seperate attack and defense strengths, just a single power rating. However, now units have their unique strengths and weaknesses which can give them an offensive or defensive bonus (some times both) if you use them properly. In Civ IV, units also gain experience and can be promoted / upgraded whenever they gain a new experience level. Thus, you can have units specialized in jungle operations, urban warfare (city defense or attack), guerilla warfare, etc. Some units per definition get bonuses against certain other unit types, for example pikemen get a + 100% bonus against all mounted units while macemen get +50% against all melee units. You may also give them promotions that add to these bonuses. So, in addition to the power rating, every unit has its strengths and weaknesses which must be taken into account and it's rarely a good idea to just mass produce a single strong unit type because that will allow your enemy to easily exploit that one unit's weakness. Thus, combine arms is more important than ever. You have to plan your moves carefully and group together units that can supplement and support each other. Also, it's never a good idea to throw everything you've got into a single stack, because artillery units now cause collateral damage when attacking the stack - they don't just damage the defending unit, but other units in the stack as well. So, if you pile too many units in one place, you're making a big fat juicy target for enemy artillery and you may find yourself having to delay an attack because your spearhead units are all injured and need to heal up before they can get the job done. While your strongest units are all busy healing, the enemy can bring in fresh troops to bolster his defenses or worse yet, launch a counterattack against your units while they are all weakened and vulnerable.

This system forces you to think more and plan your military operations more carefully than any previous version of the Civ series. It's actually pretty cool, but I personally don't like the way they've implemented artillery in this version. It's still a great game though.