Catapults are not worth the cost

[Arrian]

am definitely finding catapults, trebs, and cannons to be very worthwhile - especially for bolstering my military from towns without barracks, where I can afford to do a slower build of a "less important" unit until I grow enough to build a worker/settler or between necessary city improvements, such as markets, aqueducts, courthouses or if happiness is really suffering or I really need culture, a temple(preferably after the CH).
Cats/Trebs/Cannon are cheap enough to fit in the build queue in those cases and not impacted by not coming from a barracks.

Yes, this is typically how I get my catapults. That, and capturing the AI's catapults.

I've had games where I find I've little to no bombard force, and I realize it's because I was doing so well early on as a builder that I had Sun Tzu before my major military buildup, and thus didn't fit cats/trebs into the build queues. This is especially true if I'm really fast to engineering (say I'm playing a scientific civ, nail the CoL+Philo = Republic free AND get engineering as my bonus medieval tech). Trebs are 30 shields. Cats, at 20, are easier to fit in.

Just like you said, I find it more difficult to build bombard units in cities with barracks. So there are times when I will suddenly switch every unit-building city over to a round of artillery units, and *wham* pump out 20 arty or so.

-Arrian

[vmxa1]

Yup very early in the game those cities that have nothing to build and have no barracks and are not real productive can be set to crank out cats. This gives you a boost to your defense and offensive.

I have not use the trebs much, but they seem to hit with a high rate. Not enough games with them to know if it was a fluke or a trend.

[ducki]

Trebs definitely _seem_ more ... effective, even against pikes in larger cities. Cannons are very effective against even Muskets in size 12s - and against pikes,

Hey Fistleaf - have you tried using non-barracks towns to gradually build up a stack of Cats in between builds?

[Fistleaf]

Yes, I have done that and now I have 20+ artillery. Artillery are definitely useful because of range-2 bombardment. But cannons are a pain because they keep missing and it took me so long to take down Thebes while my army and cavalry are idling right outside the city.

[vmxa1]

Not as painful as losing lots of units on a city or metro.

[ducki]

while my army and cavalry are idling right outside the city

I would recommend helping your cannons out a bit. Since, Cavs can move, pillage, move, hit the highest food squares or luxuries and return to safety if you haven't already.
Some folks don't like having to reimprove the tiles, but I'd rather do that than face the defensive bonus for city sizes.
And if your attackers are just idling anyway...

[vmxa1]

I dislike pillaging, but sometimes it is the best way to get that metro down to a city or that city to a town. If I have armies, then I can forego pillage and just attack to kill defenders, or i you have a superior unit.

[ErikM]

Originally posted by Arrian
Catapults rock.

Especially captured ones

[Last Conformist]

I actually found the C3C changes to artillery targeting a mixed blessing - it suddenly became much harder to knock down city sizes to get rid of defense bonuses, and "strategic" bombardments became prety pointless; after sinking an enemy fleet, I used to use my ships to systematically reduce enemy coastal cities to size one with no improvements, but that became very hard to do unless you've got obscene numbers of BBs in C3C.

That said, bombardment units rule, pure and simple. The AI is not yet born that can deal with a few dozen Arty pieces, and they're essential against human opponents.