Artillery Bombardment

[rid102]

I think bombardment is very useful

Oh yeah, it's useful alright.

Provided you want a unit which can't actually kill anything...

I can live with not being able to kill a unit in one hit with bombardment but repeated pounding a 1HP Warriors with Bombers won't kill it? OK....

I'm still shocked at how often Bombers "fail" when on bombing runs, especially against targets with no air defence at all. I mean, what happened couldn't they get the bomb-bay doors open or something?

[Grim Legacy]

Originally posted by Jaybe

Slow artillery?? What are you doing, bypassing enemy cities to strike at their capital or something?! Wiping out (taking or razing) cities on the border is done to speed your troops along.

I agree (game-wise) re leaving long range bombardment the same as adjacent bombardment. OTH, 'direct fire' (no coordinates to plug in, just sight through the barrel) has always been much more devastating. Maybe that would not be 'bombardment' though.

I have taken it on faith (or hope) that when you get no feedback on the effect of your bombardment, it is just that: something may have been hit, but you don't know what.

Ahm, no I'm not bypassing anything in fact. And I raze all enemy cities unless very stringent conditions are met.
It's just that the enemy's cultural borders usually extend 3-4 squares, so that it takes 2 turns to get my artillery into position, whereas my tanks are already hitting in the 2nd turn. If I had a range disadvantage I'd need 3 (!) turns to get the arty there, being able to bomb only on the 4th. Pretty useless then.

Re: your second point... hmrpf ok then I'll try to imagine that as well.

[player1]

Bombarder units are TERRORISING units.

The only thing in wich they are effective is POP KILLING and TILE IMPROVMENTS DESTORYING.

They are very slow in any other task (like damaging units).

So if you want to raze enemy city anyway, use them as much as you want. If you don't capture it, you still damaged it considerably.

But, if you want actually to keep city, then bombing is just unneeded.
They'll do to much damage to city itself compared to damaged to units.

But, when they actually do same damage to units (when you have a lot of bombers), then city is probbably alredy destoyed (low pop, no tile-imp.).


The way it is now, main use of bombing units is destruction of cities without killing a units.


I think that bombers should be more usefull in damaging units and a little less usefull in other (terrorising) tasks.

[rid102]

. And I raze all enemy cities unless very stringent conditions are met.

Problem is that razing cities is often -the only thing that makes sense. With corruption so rife, it's not worth keep a captured city unless:

- You're so small you need the population.

- The target city has a Wonder or three.

- You need a forward airbase/barracks.

- The city has loads of improvements left, so you capture it, sell them, abandon the city then recapture and raze it. Usually the AI sells out though...

[Arrian]

Bombard Units

Bombard units are actually very, very effective - in large numbers. One bomber or artillery piece isn't gonna do much. 25 artillery pieces (or bombers) can wreak havoc on your enemy.

Example:

Last night, the French and Russians ganged up on me. At the start of my turn, a stack of 8 Tanks and 3 Cavalry (French) was next to a city of mine, with more tanks nearby, along with several Cossacks trying to get behind me and cut some roads. I used my Bombers (about 15 I think) and artillery (maybe 8) to beat all of the tanks down to 1 hp and break some border roads. Then I used my Tanks to largely wipe out the attack force. The next several turns were used to break the roads connecting them to me (I wasn't really interested in taking territory at this point). I did a LOT of damage, and any unit of theirs that was dumb enough to try to attack me got pounded to 1hp and then dispatched. So believe me, bombard units are great stuff, you just have to build a bunch of them. They will fail sometimes. Bombs do miss, you know (see Afganistan for several perfect examples).

I kinda like the fact that they can't kill units. Airpower doesn't really do that. The US bombed Iraq for weeks, but still had to use ground forces to finish off those beat up units. The airpower made the ground troops' job a whole lot easier, but airpower on its own does not win wars. This, I think, was the reason Firaxis implemented bombard units the way they did.

-Arrian

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by sophist
You're kidding, right? Even catapults are useful. Just don't expect to be successful using just one at a time.

Catapults are of only limited use, as most cities in that time will be less than size 7. Cannons are powerful enough to affect damage and needed to get population down, but still mainly a fort-manning defensive unit.

Artillery is . . . GODLY, it is the biggest single hop in bombardment power because of the increase in range and rate. Sure bombers and battleships and radar art are more powerful, but they aren't as big of a jump as artillery over cannons. After art. the increases are mainly increases in bombardment power to keep up with increasing defense power in units. With artillery on, bombardment becomes effective at weakening defenses(getting all units to 1 health) contrary to what some others are suggesting. You just need to have enough of them(5 or 10 in my experience, a transport full of them is a good amount for a d-day force). Killing pop with bombardment is good not only for eliminating defensive bonuses, but also for getting rid of potential resisters if you are going to hold the city instead of razing it.

[gamma]

Artillery is also a big leap over cannon because it happens to come after your railroad network has been laid. Now you have dozens of artillery riding all over your map, terrorizing anything that dares attack you. (It's really too bad the AI doesn't do this.)

Also, that 2-square range often means artillery can beginning bombarding an enemy city on the same turn that it started anywhere in your territory, or on the very next turn, again because of those rails, and the fact that city borders typically extend only 2-3 squares out at the corners.

[ElitePersian]

Originally posted by rid102


Oh yeah, it's useful alright.

Provided you want a unit which can't actually kill anything...

I can live with not being able to kill a unit in one hit with bombardment but repeated pounding a 1HP Warriors with Bombers won't kill it? OK....

I'm still shocked at how often Bombers "fail" when on bombing runs, especially against targets with no air defence at all. I mean, what happened couldn't they get the bomb-bay doors open or something?

yeah i agree, bombing runs shouldnt fail.

[ElitePersian]

i dont know how you can say bombardment is useless, its probably cause you only use one at a time. get a bunch of them together, and you can TOAST the AI. When i attack enemy cities, i MAKE SURE to use bombardment to lower his population size which reduces defensive bonuses, and i also get a couple of hits on the defensive units to make it easier for my cavs or tanks to crush the rest of them. also if they are on mountains, they are even more effective (not sure HOW they are more effective-but they are).

[ElitePersian]

does anyone know FOR A FACT (heard from one of the firaxians) that it doesnt make a difference to bombard from 2 or 1 tile away?

[Ralf]

There ARE other bombardment-targets the the city-square itself - dont forget that. Pillage-bombard especially productive and strategically important improved terrain-tiles often works better, with less failed shots, it seems.

[sophist]

Well, yeah, actually. Or they could just plain miss. I mean, if Bomber is the equivalent of a B-17 squadron well, the US sent tons of B-17s at once over Germany, sometimes as many as 500 at once. If they had perfect accuracy, the number necessary would have been a fraction of that.

Originally posted by rid102

I'm still shocked at how often Bombers "fail" when on bombing runs, especially against targets with no air defence at all. I mean, what happened couldn't they get the bomb-bay doors open or something?

[Malleus]

RL bombardment is notorious for being ineffective. Look at strategic bombing in WWII...hundreds of thousands of payloads dropped and still the war machines were churning out defenses.
Also, discounting Dresden, think of the casualties. There wasn;t instances where tens of thousands of people died from a group of sorties (as killing a pop point would be).
In Vietnam, the US tried to bomb that country into a parking lot...and failed to truly suppress the enemy infantry. We had total air superiority and failed to achieve mission objectives on many of the missions.

Re: Artillery bombardment accuracy, the game gets it right. With modern artillery, the difference between 1 mile, and 50 miles is minor. The hit rates are very very close. I feel they should keep it as it is. Even in WWI artillery on average had surprisingly good accuracy at different ranges.

K

[Frank Johnson]

There's 2 distinct phazes in a war.

First part is when the enemy has a real army and it itching to fight. That is when artillery is the most useful......a huge stack of AI units will head toward your empire. If met by a huge barrage of artillery and a few mobile units it can be crushed easily.

Once the enemy's offensive army is defeated the artillery becomes more of a liablity than a help. Its slow in enemy territory, has to be stacked and guarded, and that's a high risk if the enemy has defensive artillery of its own (too bad the computer is too stupid to do this). Better to send foward your tanks or cavalry to get the job done, espically if you are a tech level ahead in units.

So the verdict is artillery is good when
1) you're on the defensive.
2) you're fighting a war where you don't really want to take and cities.
3) you're fighting a war where the enemy is strong and progess would be slow in any case.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Grim Legacy
Ahm, no I'm not bypassing anything in fact. And I raze all enemy cities unless very stringent conditions are met.
It's just that the enemy's cultural borders usually extend 3-4 squares, so that it takes 2 turns to get my artillery into position, whereas my tanks are already hitting in the 2nd turn. If I had a range disadvantage I'd need 3 (!) turns to get the arty there, being able to bomb only on the 4th. Pretty useless then. ...

Sorry, but that's just like it has always been in real life -- the tanks get there before the support is available. It's not just getting the artillery there, but the ordinance/ammunition involved is horrendous! And you have to keep it coming in a constant flow or the artillery is out of ammunition. You can only put so many rounds in each truck (the rounds are heavy, so you cannot fill the truck to the top), and each truck takes 50+ meters of road space,* ....

If you have outpaced your support, then as long as you are secure, use your advance units to "terrorize the countryside." Pillage, interdict, etc. Once you have learned how to do this effectively, your campaigns may become more fulfilling. Get historical (with grains of salt).

If all else fails, use bombers (if he hasn't got air superiority(AS)). If he does have AS, send out your fighters to recon or bombard within his AS radius (half his operational radius), and you'll at least use them up so you can bomb him.

*referring to 150mm+ artillery. You spread trucks out on the road so they don't all get hit at once in an enemy artillery/air strike.