Range Zero Bombard Bug

[IthacaMike]

I've moded my missle based units (bows and guns) so they have a range zero bombard factor. This only comes into play when units are stacked and then get attacked. If two riflemen are stacked and get attacked then the one that is not defending gets one free shot at the attackers. This give stacked defenders a slight advantage.

The bug came about because the AI put 3 riflemen in an Army. The Army was stacked with an elite Musketman. I attacked with Infantry and everything seemed to be going as expected. The riflemen defending within the Army got their free range zero bombard and then another defender took up the fight. Every attacking infatry died (as you would expect) but the Army kept getting weaker. The bug poped up when the Army became weaker than the Musketman. Once that happend any subsequent attack on the stack caused the game to hang.

My guess is that the game can't handle have units within an Army having bombard capability when the Army is not the defender.

Mike G

[Inverse Icarus]

it's really an interesting idea, letting infantry take free shots before an attack begins, it would DEFINATELY make city capture a tad more difficult.

i like it. tell me when it stops hanging

[cracker]

I have been experimenting with this idea as well and I think you are on a great track.

This feature lets us confer a strong defensive trait on a unit without making the unit immune to attack by other bombardment units or attacks by multiple attackers.

I have been experimenting with setting the bombard strength high and then perhaps lowering the defensive strength in some cases to produce a unit that has the same defensive impact when attacked head-to-head by a ground unit on open terrain.

Because this artillery free shot at point blank range would not be scalable effected by the defensive fortification and terrain bonuses it could result in a much more realistic set of engagements.

As an example, a musketman fortified in a pop 7 city on a hill has defensive strength on the order of 9 (4 x (1 + 0.25 + 0.50 + 0.50)) and is currently almost impossible to defeat with knights attacking at 4. With the zero bombard rang free shot the musketman gets a free defender shot at its programmed bombard strength but I have been testing the musketman reduced to a D value of 3 to keep him at an equivalent of 4 when fortified in the open and an equivalent of 6.5 in the hill city case.

There is some real value in this though process if the impact of the potential bug you may have found can be mitigated.

[ALPHA WOLF 64]

I've done the same thing to my bow/gun units. This bug could jeopardize that

[notyoueither]

You could play around the bug to a large extent, but it would be a pain from time to time. Simply save before you engage the Army and then reload if the bug crops up and do things a bit different.

It is a good idea. I think the defender needs a bit more strength. Aside from rail roads, of course.

[Willem]

Originally posted by cracker

I have been experimenting with setting the bombard strength high and then perhaps lowering the defensive strength in some cases to produce a unit that has the same defensive impact when attacked head-to-head by a ground unit on open terrain.

I've played around with this as well, giving the ability to my Archers/Longbowman, and I discovered that setting the bombard strength high makes no difference. The most damage the free shot will do is 1 hit point, regardless of how high the value is.

[cracker]

Willem,

You are missinterpreting what setting the bombard strength high will do.

Yes, the artillery free shot only gets one shot, but the bombard strength is used to set a ratio against either the A or D rating of the Attacker. (I am unsure for certain if teh algorithm uses the A rating sense the attacker is attacking or if it still uses the D rating as if the attacker was defending against the artillery free shot.)

The key point is that the relationship between the bombardstrength and one of the AD factors of the attacker will determine the probability that the one artillery free shot is a hit or not.

If you set the bombard strength at 4 and the incoming attacker has a value of 2, then the chance of getting a free shot hit that knocks off one hit point is only 2 out of 3. If the bombard strength is 2 then the chances of the free shot having any effect will be only 50/50.

If you set the bombard strength to 20, even though that sounds excessive, all that does is give you a 9 out of 10 chance that the free shot will be a hit against a 2 value attacker.

Rate of fire is the variable tha controls the potential number of hits and this does have no impact on the free shot results.

[Willem]

Aah, that's interesting, thanks for the info. I didn't realize that.