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The Problem
Like Ground Bombardment, Naval Bombardment has also been changed in C3C to target units before city improvements and population. Like Walls against land units, Coastal fortresses provide a first line of defense for a city against naval units.
The problem is that except for the rare case of a combined ground assault with naval bombardment, or until the advent of Amphibious Warfare, cities are relatively safe from naval bombardment because units absorb the hits (but can’t get killed), which save the city improvements. There is little motivation to build Coastal Fortresses, which easily get destroyed anyway, especially with the C3C 50% increase of the bombard strength of Ironclads and Frigates (5 Frigate attacks will destroy a Coastal Fortresses 80% of the time, and 5 Ironclads will destroy it 94% of the time).
A secondary problem with naval bombardment is that the C3C AI prefers to bombard cities instead of resources, even when it doesn’t follow up with ground or amphibious attacks. The units bombarded by the AI heal in the next turn, often resulting in no damage suffered by the bombarded civilization (unless it was silly enough to build a coastal fortress in that city!).
Clearly, Coastal Fortresses do not currently serve their purpose of protecting a city from naval bombardment, especially since it’s so easy to avoid the shots from their ZOC. They are definitely the least often built city improvement in Civ3, even by the AI.
Possible Solution
Quadruple the naval bombardment defense of the Coastal Fortress from 8 to 32. A Frigate attack would then have just 9% chance to destroy it (5 of them would have a 36% chance), and an Ironclad would have a 16% chance (58% for 5 of them).
A stronger coastal fortress may also solve the naval targeting problem of the AI. Ideally, it may discourage attacks on cities, forcing the AI to instead bombard improvements as in PTW. (The AI already knows which cities have a coastal fortress, as evidenced by its ability to avoid ZOC shots). At the very least, stronger fortresses will encourage players to build them, so the AI will have finally something to destroy when bombarding cities!
There are at least two problems that need to be solved if this change is implemented. First of all, the AI needs to know to build coastal fortresses, otherwise it will not take advantage of its new strength (I don’t believe that the AI currently builds them, just as it doesn’t build walls). This is easily solved by giving it the ability to produce veteran units, for example. Harbors would also retain this ability, of course.
Secondly, coastal fortresses should probably lose some of their effectiveness in the modern age, at least against Battleships. This is a realism consideration so it shouldn’t be very important to the AU mod, but perhaps battleships should have their bombard strength increased from their current value of 8 (12?). On the other hand, if you imagine that coastal fortresses become modernized with time, maybe it’s not necessary to make them obsolete in the industrial age. They don’t get removed from the build queues after all, so we might as well extend their useful life.
So what do you think? Is a change necessary? Is the proposed increase in bombard defense too much? All input is welcome!
Like Ground Bombardment, Naval Bombardment has also been changed in C3C to target units before city improvements and population. Like Walls against land units, Coastal fortresses provide a first line of defense for a city against naval units.
The problem is that except for the rare case of a combined ground assault with naval bombardment, or until the advent of Amphibious Warfare, cities are relatively safe from naval bombardment because units absorb the hits (but can’t get killed), which save the city improvements. There is little motivation to build Coastal Fortresses, which easily get destroyed anyway, especially with the C3C 50% increase of the bombard strength of Ironclads and Frigates (5 Frigate attacks will destroy a Coastal Fortresses 80% of the time, and 5 Ironclads will destroy it 94% of the time).
A secondary problem with naval bombardment is that the C3C AI prefers to bombard cities instead of resources, even when it doesn’t follow up with ground or amphibious attacks. The units bombarded by the AI heal in the next turn, often resulting in no damage suffered by the bombarded civilization (unless it was silly enough to build a coastal fortress in that city!).
Clearly, Coastal Fortresses do not currently serve their purpose of protecting a city from naval bombardment, especially since it’s so easy to avoid the shots from their ZOC. They are definitely the least often built city improvement in Civ3, even by the AI.
Possible Solution
Quadruple the naval bombardment defense of the Coastal Fortress from 8 to 32. A Frigate attack would then have just 9% chance to destroy it (5 of them would have a 36% chance), and an Ironclad would have a 16% chance (58% for 5 of them).
A stronger coastal fortress may also solve the naval targeting problem of the AI. Ideally, it may discourage attacks on cities, forcing the AI to instead bombard improvements as in PTW. (The AI already knows which cities have a coastal fortress, as evidenced by its ability to avoid ZOC shots). At the very least, stronger fortresses will encourage players to build them, so the AI will have finally something to destroy when bombarding cities!
There are at least two problems that need to be solved if this change is implemented. First of all, the AI needs to know to build coastal fortresses, otherwise it will not take advantage of its new strength (I don’t believe that the AI currently builds them, just as it doesn’t build walls). This is easily solved by giving it the ability to produce veteran units, for example. Harbors would also retain this ability, of course.
Secondly, coastal fortresses should probably lose some of their effectiveness in the modern age, at least against Battleships. This is a realism consideration so it shouldn’t be very important to the AU mod, but perhaps battleships should have their bombard strength increased from their current value of 8 (12?). On the other hand, if you imagine that coastal fortresses become modernized with time, maybe it’s not necessary to make them obsolete in the industrial age. They don’t get removed from the build queues after all, so we might as well extend their useful life.
So what do you think? Is a change necessary? Is the proposed increase in bombard defense too much? All input is welcome!
It would make it actually worth to build, well, at least in some cities.
This may be one of the tougher problems to iron out, as I can see few solutions that would both benefit the AI and not give the human player more advantages...
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