Bombardment Targets Units in Cities First?

[Catt]

Either I'm experiencing an incredible RNG string or C3C has changed how the bombarment of cities operates - and changed it significantly. In 3 separate artillery barrages against enemy cities, a stack of 12 artillery either took hitpoints from defenders or missed -- not once (until all units were redlined) did the city lose an improvement or a pop point. Since one barage extended through two turns, that means 48 artillery barrages without taking a pop or an improvement until all defenders were redlined (and as best as memory serves, a few trebuchet assaults on cities had similar results).

Has anyone destroyed a pop point or a city improvement when there are defenders with more than 1 HP left?

Catt

[zorbop]

wow... this might make city bombardment useful . Now i dont have to destroy half of a city i will conquer that turn anyway to hurt a few units?

[ChrisiusMaximus]

I hope your right Catt and its not just an RNG fluke, bombardment needs improvement

[WarpStorm]

He's right

How could they do this? This will make the game way too easy.

Please bring back collateral damage.

[alva]

Just don't use arty

[WarpStorm]

More testing reveals that only land and sea units do this. Air units provide plenty of collateral damage

[Sarxis]

This is all good. I'm very pleased.

[WarpStorm]

I'm not. This is a big flaw that I think will need to be fixed.

[Louis XXIV]

I would rather it be more like, instead of 100% likely. (something like 50-75% chance of hitting units).

[Fried-Psitalon]

I believe the targeting is based on a formula- the more units in a city, the more likely you are to hit units. The less units in a city, the less likely you are to hit units.

This formula was actually posted here on the boards somewhere recently, I believe....

[Sarxis]

Yeah, now that I think about it, I'm not sure how I feel about it. I guess I'm just more curious if this was intentional or not.

[WarpStorm]

Fried, I just made a test case where I built stocked metropli ready for bombard with varying numbers of units (1 through 8 units). In every case, land bombard hit the units exclusively until they weren't eligible. I ran this scenario 3 times with different seeds. It could be random, but I kind of doubt it.

The air attacks seem to follow what you said, but arty seems to be always hitting units first.

[G'Kar]

I'm not sure if I like this or not. It's easier in the sense that you can easily knock down HPs, but then it takes longer to kill population, and reduce defense multipliers. I think they need to reintroduce random collateral damage.

[Dominae]

Originally posted by Defcon5
I'm not sure if I like this or not. It's easier in the sense that you can easily knock down HPs, but then it takes longer to kill population, and reduce defense multipliers. I think they need to reintroduce random collateral damage.

I would rather have all units at 1 HP before going after the defense multipliers. Againt the AI this is always better becaues it rarely defends its cities with over 5 units (on average).


Dominae

[Kuciwalker]

More testing reveals that only land and sea units do this. Air units provide plenty of collateral damage

If anything, this should be flipped. Land and sea units should provide collateral damage, and air units should (after Smart Weapons) target units specifically.