Bombardment missing the point

[Zizka]

AFter finishing 2 games in 1.29f (as well as earlier icarnations) I have become more and more frustrated with bomardment. It seems like the ability tends to miss A LOT; regardless of the unit. IN one battle i had 4 battleships, 4 destroyers, 5 artillery and 2 bombers bombard a city.. the next effect -- ONE (count 'em) one unit (out of 6) in a size 12 city w/o walls (as if it matters LOL).

I seldom used bombard units in Civ I/II and even in Civ III, but decided to see if they could make a difference. In general my observations are that unless you have MASSIVE amounts of bombard units (about 1/2 to 3/4 of you military) its pretty worthless -- you're better off building offensive units.

However that said.. artillery units are handy on defense though as they can inflict a that initial HP to an attacker.

While teh latter is nice I'd like to see atrillery units be more useful as they were in civ I/II.

LOL frankly the ol' "Artillery bombardment failed" message is getting real annoying.

I'm not going to get into the historical arguments; as it is as much gameplay issue as anything.

Z

[Grumbold]

In terms of playing the game, I agree. It's boring to have to tote round two dozen artillery units because only six of them are going to achieve anything when they finally get to open fire. On the other hand when on defence every single one of them is effective and a single artillery piece should not be more effective than it already is when you take the average result.

Its just a pity each one couldn't deal out some visible damage so that you don't get infuriated by the 'failed' messages. If each one did 20 shields damage to a building, for instance, it would still take 8 attempts to destroy the cathedral but all 8 would have been achieving something.

[Moonsinger]

I don't have any problem with bombardment. Yeah, bombardment miss a lot; however, once you are able to reduce the target city to size 12 or under, it will hit more often. I usually have about 150 arttileries firing and reducing at least three major cities to dirt at every turn. You can it more about it at this link.

[dunk]

The thing is, all you have to do is build catapults and you have your artillery for the rest of the game.

In my last game, I used bombardment and infantry to completely wipe out a continent full of riflemen-loaded cities. I had maybe 20-30 pieces of artillery and hordes of infantry. After raining artillery down on each city and leaving each defender with 1 HP, I used 3-4 infantry units to capture it. If I had simply attacked with my infantry, I would have suffered MUCH higher casualties.

[Moonsinger]

Yeah, artillery is great! In fact, I have stopped using artillery at the lower level because victory seems so hollow.

[Grumbold]

Oh sure, 150 artillery is going to get the job done, no question, especially if you adopt the settler strategy, but 150 extra cavalry could easily take 3 cities a turn without having to bother with all the faffing around with settlers and workers. I don't think my army has ever had more than 50 offensive units in it. The question is whether you can stand the tedium of firing and missing upteen times every turn.

[Moonsinger]

If you turn off the animation, firing 150 arttileries won't take much time. Here is the fastest way to do it:

1. Put the mouse pointer on the target that you wish to bombard with one hand. Note: From now on, you just need to click to fire and don't move your mouse off the target!

2. Hit the "B" on your keyboard with your other hand and click the mouse with the hand that holding the mouse to fire.

3. Repeat step 1 and 2.

[Zizka]

I think the above post sillustrate my point. Unless you create OBSCENE amounts of artillery (150+ in examples) its likely to be more efficient (both from capturing vs levelling cities and unit cost) to use regular offensive units like cavalry that move faster. I'd rather have 150 cavalry that could sweep in a conquer a large swath of terr rather than moving 150 artillery/infantry one at a time.

Moreover unless you play on a large/huge map its unlikely you will have an army >200 units TOTAL which makes such huge stacks prohibitatively expensive.

In essence building one catapault/cannon/arty is useless. Ther is no sense build up a small early to mid game army with a few "artilley support" units, but imagine if an army of 5 musketeers with "a few cannon regiments" would most likely be much more effective in a seige than 5 musketeers and a few horsemen.

ALthough mentioned in my thread; but not adressed is the fact that bombers have this same problem.. sending swathes of bombers usually doesnt do that much (and fighters bombing is just useless). I realize that even today aerial bombardment is not an exact science but for bomber (and artillery) to completely miss (no collateral damage) especially against entrenched (fortified units) seems silly.

Z

[Willem]

Re: Bombardment missing the point

Originally posted by Zizka

LOL frankly the ol' "Artillery bombardment failed" message is getting real annoying.

That will get better with PtW, and the auto-bombard feature that's going to be included. Between that and the stack movement, you'll be able to think of 10 or so Artillery as one unit.

Frankly, since the AI never uses them, I think increasing their effectiveness would make the game totally unbalancing. Already, if I have a stack of Artillery pounding a city, there's not much that can stop me from turning the defense into mincemeat before I attack with my regular troops.

[Arrian]

I usually don't build many bombard units. In fact, most of the ones I end up with are captured catapults that I upgrade. I usually end up with about 15 artillery units. I find artillery is very useful on defense and firing on units out in the open. This is particularly handy in between infantry and tanks.

It's not particularly effective vs. large cities, but usually can knock of a hit point here and there, which helps. But in general I'd rather have more attack units.

-Arrian

[Willem]

Originally posted by Grumbold
Oh sure, 150 artillery is going to get the job done, no question, especially if you adopt the settler strategy, but 150 extra cavalry could easily take 3 cities a turn without having to bother with all the faffing around with settlers and workers. I don't think my army has ever had more than 50 offensive units in it. The question is whether you can stand the tedium of firing and missing upteen times every turn.

But how much does 150 Cavalry cost in comparison to the same number of Artillery? Bombard units are pretty much the cheapest in the game, and unless captured out right, they never take any damage, or die. So as someone pointed out, you can start building your Artillery regiment as soon as you have Catapults available. And they're dirt cheap to upgrade.

[Arrian]

Willem,

Well sure you can start building your arty once you have mathematics, but you can start building your Cavalry once you have The Wheel. Plus you can do a lot of damage with that force once you upgrade them to horsemen and again when you make them knights.

Cavalry are what, 80 or 90 shields? Artillery are slightly less (70?). So if you're building from scratch, you will typically find that an artillery unit will take 1 turn less to build in a good city. I'll take the attack unit most of the time.

In terms up upkeep, 150 units, no matter what the units are, cost 150 gold per turn (unless, of course, you are using a system of government which provides free units). Back to the idea of building catapults early on: if I'm going to pay upkeep on units early on, I want them to be able to kill things and take cities. I have neither the shields nor the cash to waste on catapults. I will keep 'em if I capture them, though.

-Arrian

[kimmygibler]

I quit using it mainly because of the increase in tedious clicking. If they had a better way to manage though I would use em. They are pretty useful.

[N. Machiavelli]

In my standard Mod, I've given all bombard units, with the exception of catapults and Frigates, Lethal Bombardment. This, I have found, dramatically increases their usefullness.

[Moonsinger]

For those of you that don't care much for artillery, you may want to check out this thread. In fact, I can't wait to use artillery against the human player in the multi-player game.