Artillery is strong enough

[Killazer]

bombard

The point of bombardment units isnt to kill other units its to weaken them so that they can be overrun by your offensive units. And I think they work fine. Some changes can be made for the realistic factor without unbalancing the game but changing artillery to just set attack pieces is pretty dumb. The largest potential area of change lies in the air/naval scene.

A couple well thought out changes in this area can be made permanent without unbalancing the game. Perhaps just air vs ship lethal although I dont see a huge problem with ship vs ship lethal. You have to think about bombard vs defense. Someone mentioned ironclads killing battleships with lethal bombard. It might happen but yer gonna need a helluvalot of ironclads. Having that many in the first place would prolly allow you to kill a battleship by just attacking it anyway. And then what happens? You use all yer clads to kill 1 BB and then the BBs tear your clads to shreds next turn.

As for catapults being too weak... Yes they are weak but they are only to be used in the very early game. Three or four catapults in a stack of a spearman and a few archers can prevent the loss of any of your units which might have otherwise been killed and thus the tide turned against you. This can be important in MP because you cannot save and reload constantly to avoid losing units and if an attack goes bad for you you are in serious trouble. Even if the catapults only take out 1 or 2 hits that can help you significantly. Six catapults and a couple defensive units plus five or 6 attackers can be a very difficult force to stop in the early game.

[Cyclotron]

I find massed artillery to be very useful once railroads are in place... I recently fought a large air war/artillery duel with the Russians, my jets shooting down their bombers and my bombers pounding their cities, with a stack of 12 of my artillery in a fortress 2 tiles from their base. In the end, I brought 2 metros and a city all down to town size, sent them into civil disorder from building loss, cut off their mainland resources by bombing out their harbors, and brought every single unit (mostly mech inf and inf) down to 1hp before wiping out all 3 cities in one turn with only 5 tanks. Since at the time I had lost my only source of oil, throwing tanks at metros would have exausted my tank reserve quickly, so I relied on my artillery to win the war for me.

Artillery is quite useful when non-lethal, a must-have for large scale land warfare once railroads are involved. Catas and cannons are really only useful for coastal defense and long sieges, since they have no good railroad system to tote them around.

[latenight]

lethal bombing + precision bombing

I am in the early industrial period in my first game since updating to 1.21f, and have not yet had the opportunity to check out any changes to the bombardment issues in this patch. Can someone explain with what units and when lethal bombardment works? In addition, I would like to see lethal bombardment ability for subs, most modern ships, and certainly bombers & fighters against ships. Just makes sense to me. Also, I'd really like to see precision bombing against cities--specific targeting of city improvements or population centers. Maybe this capability could be available with stealth only but given today's smart bombs, it seems like a natural. Curious to know what others think about this...

[Thrawn05]

Re: bombard

Originally posted by Killazer
The point of bombardment units isnt to kill other units its to weaken them so that they can be overrun by your offensive units.

That's why I won't build any. Because ANY unit that can't kill is a total waste of my time and shields. I would rather have churned out other offensive units that CAN kill, then to have units that CAN'T and to top off, be captured by the enemy.

Think of it this way, when I use a bombard unit that kills another land unit, that unit is not dead, their just so moraly destroyed that they give up and leave the game.

[Random Passerby]

I don't get this irrational hatred for units that don't kill things. I routinely build dozens of defensive units which will never ever kill anything, and for uber-empires this number could reach into the hundreds. Not every offensive unit I build is going to win all the battles it gets into; not only will these units not kill anything, but they will get killed themselves. If you're budgeting three offensive units for each up-to-date defensive unit (though this differs by era, this is still generally a dodgy ratio that's often prone to defeat and disappointment), then you're saying right off the bat that as many of two-thirds of your force is NOT going to be killing things. Of course this is inaccurate, as some of your attack force will be employed picking off stray counter-attacks, but the point remains: in conflicts where the opponent is at least roughly equal, you will be deliberately building offensive units knowing full well that they're just going to be spent wearing down the enemy so that other units can kill them. And if the conflicts aren't roughly equal, then in my opinion the entire friggin' game is a waste and it's time to restart.