POLL: Do you like the change to bombardment (never hits city improvements)?

[Arnelos]

Originally posted by RobC
IMHO it would be best for both realism and gameplay overall if you always had some chance of hitting something you weren't trying to -- there should always be a non-trivial chance to hit military, civilians, or improvements whenever bombarding a city, and ideally, you should be able to specify what you are aiming at and the better your tech (the more advanced the artillery), the better your chances of hitting your target.

My understanding is that this is how stock Civ3 bombardment worked, no?

[Tiberius]

Originally posted by RobC
IMHO it would be best for both realism and gameplay overall if you always had some chance of hitting something you weren't trying to -- there should always be a non-trivial chance to hit military, civilians, or improvements whenever bombarding a city, and ideally, you should be able to specify what you are aiming at and the better your tech (the more advanced the artillery), the better your chances of hitting your target.

[RomanGod]

No..., no sir, I don't like it. I loved being able bombard a city till it had no improvements. Instead of building units, it would go back to making a marketplace, just to keep up.

[RobC]

Speaking of bombardment, check out this bizarre bombardment bug I encountered:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=2484080#post2484080

[WarpStorm]

That looks like a bug!

[vmxa1]

Did they do anything to make arties more likely to hit? I seem to be getting a much higher rate than I have ever noticed, not that I am complaining.

PS, that is against troops, out side of the city, not attacking a city.

[MyOlde]

I voted yes. Haven't used it yet but in previous versions it always bugged me that I was destroying things in the city that I wanted to capture. If they've built walls or temples or whatever, I want that infrastructure. I don't want a city that's reduced to rubble once I take it. AS a result I seldom used artillery on cities previously...only on AI military units out in the open.

[muxec]

It'd be cool to have an option of two artillery modes, one hits improvements and other hits only units... Just like in MilitariZm.

[Panag]

Originally posted by muxec
It'd be cool to have an option of two artillery modes, one hits improvements and other hits only units... Just like in MilitariZm.

hi ,

, why not have two units , .......

have a nice day

[RobC]

That would be easy enough to mod if the collateral damage flag worked on artillery (then you create one artillery unit with it checked to target improvements, and leave the current version alone, so it targets units)

[Catt]

Thought I'd throw a little fuel onto the fire that is the debate around artillery versus cities

Land artillery seem to be strengthened in an additional way in C3C. In PTW and vanilla, a bombard attack against a city had four possible results: (1) hit a unit; (2) destroy an improvement; (3) kill one pop point; or (4) miss. IIRC, the chances of targeting a unit were 50%, and 25% each for improvements and population. The chance of a miss depended on the defense value of what was targeted versus the bombard value and ROF of the bombarding unit (and the RNG, of course). But, if you reduced the city to one citizen, and therefore could no longer kill pop points, your artillery would still target population 25% of the time -- when it did but there were no valid targets remaining, you automatically missed. In other words, the targeting percentages were not changed simply because one of the possible targets was no longer available.

As discussed earlier, in C3C, land artillery will now target units exclusively until no more unit targets are available (all are red-lined), it will then switch to a mix of improvements or pop. The question I asked earlier and which continued to bug me (so I tested it!) was what sort of targeting procedures were used after all defenders were red-lined? Was 50% unit targeting still in play, resulting in automatic misses when targeted? Or were improvements and pop targeted exclusively on a 50% - 50% basis (or some other split)? Turns out that units are removed from the targeting equation -- the land-based artillery will no longer automatically miss 50% of the time when untis are no longer available targets.

So, it strikes me that the implications of the changes to artillery are: (1) the player can choose to only go after defenders and take intact cities (except for the incidental building destruction upon taking the city); or (2) the player can continue the bombardment past unit-redline and the chances of success are significantly improved (no longer 50% auto-miss). The weakening of this new artillery scheme shows up only when the defending unit's defense is greater than the defense value of citizens and improvements (16 by default) -- in PTW your artilley could target a non-unit with a defense of 16 instead of a higher-defense unit; in C3C you must target the higher-value units first.

Testing details available if wanted.

Catt

[Panag]

Originally posted by RobC
That would be easy enough to mod if the collateral damage flag worked on artillery (then you create one artillery unit with it checked to target improvements, and leave the current version alone, so it targets units)

hi ,

, well mech and regular artillery would be nice for that , ......

it should be put in the game

have a nice day

[steven8r]

I kinda like the way that artillery now works.
You can redline all the defenders, then if you want, you can take out the improvements/population too.

I finally got a chance to use artillery in my game. It's still exploitable by the human--I haven't seen the AI bombard with anything but ships so far.

It's also great defensively. I had just gotten Saltpeter and could (finally) upgrade my Pikes to Musketmen to defend against the AI's Infantry (I also had no Rubber). The only thing that kept my country from being invaded was my huge stack o' canons that would wear-down the attacking Infantry so that my Cavalry had a chance to kill them. During the same war, I was able to upgrade canon to Artillery and with the 2 sqare range, I was finally able to take some cities. I just LOVE Artillery!!!


And Bombers are now Lethal. I found it kind of strange that I could completely kill the unit guarding the AI's Radio Tower, but I couldn't bomb the Tower (perhaps I didn't bomb enough). I find it rather currious that I can kill a fortified soldier and the road he's on, but I can't knock-down the Tower that he's defending.

[Jaybe]

The tower falls after you have destroyed any other improvements on the tile, as with forts (you cannot have forts and towers on the same tile).

[MrWhereItsAt]

I have read nye's comments closely, and I certainly take the point about the fact that, since pop will not go down in bombardment, taking and then holding the city is that much harder.

HOWEVER, in my games I have yet to get to the stage where cities have reached that level. What if I just want to cripple my opponent rather than risk taking cities, which entails defending them, preventing flips etc? Also, frequently in the later ages I will have one or two massive opponents - I can't hope or just don't want to take them on properly until the late Industrial or early Modern, but I want to get ahead of them. So what do I do? I bombard them to kill their improvements. This was for me a big part of the usefulness of Arty in vanilla/PtW that didn't abuse SODs to roll unharmed through whereever I wanted. I was waging a war of attrition against their capacity to build and maintain gold/happiness by smashing banks etc of cities I could NOT take. This has been taken away and I am NOT happy.

I voted no to the new system. A city under siege for decades will have smashed improvements no matter how many defenders are in it. Generally arguments along the lines of "it should be like this as it's more realistic" don't wash with me, but I propose this now as when it starts to impact on a serious part of the game for me (Arty as economic killer rather than just weapon to make invasions easier), it should change. Preferably in the backwards direction.