Stack Bombardment vs. Auto-Bombardment

[Gyromancer]

Originally posted by meriadoc
I'm not sure what "ctrl-u" was supposed to do, but it didn't do anything when I tried it. I tried it as a stack-bombard function using a stack of artillery and as a "do your automatic stuff" function at the beginning of a turn. Thank you, though, for the thought.

Hmmm. Sorry about the enigmatic respone. Thought it would be obvious. Did you have 1-move units set to auto bombard from the previous turn when you pressed ctrl-u? If so, they should have let fly. I have only used this in multiplayer though. I'll try it in SP when I get home tonight.....

[IthacaMike]

Originally posted by meriadoc
The case against auto-bombardment gets even thicker as I write this. I was playing Civ3:PTW for much of the night and discovered that, annoyingly enough, the auto-bombard feature wasn't working. I tried everything to convince the artillery to continue bombarding the next turn, but it just wouldn't do it on its own. Aargh.

If an enemy unit is next to the artillery unit the artillery unit will 'wake up' and not do the auto-bomb any longer. This means that auto-bomb will never work for catapults and cannons. Nor will it work for artillery adjacent to the city being bombarded.

BTW, auto-bomb works for aircraft too. The is a problem in that once the target is captured or destroyed the aircraft go to sleep and you have to manually go and wake them up for their next mission.

As an aside, one of the reasons I use auto-bomb is to reduce the population of the target city. If Thebes has a population 22 when I capture it it is likely to flip back to Egypt. If I bombard it down to a population of 1, it is mine forever. This is usually faster than using starvation & rushing Settlers to reduce the population.

Ithaca Mike

[FNBrown]

Originally posted by IthacaMike


As an aside, one of the reasons I use auto-bomb is to reduce the population of the target city. If Thebes has a population 22 when I capture it it is likely to flip back to Egypt. If I bombard it down to a population of 1, it is mine forever. This is usually faster than using starvation & rushing Settlers to reduce the population.

Ithaca Mike

Nothing like a little strategic ethnic cleansing, eh?

[Jaybe]

Ctrl-u is just for MP. Doesn't work for SP.
I do not remember what ctrl-u is for, since I do SP only.

[Gyromancer]

ctrl-u forces automated orders to be performed. I guess they have it in mp for those simultaneous move games, so that you can do all your automatic stuff before the other guy moves. I mostly use it for auto-bombard.

It'd be nice if they added it to SP. (I see no reason why they cannot....)

[Willem]

Originally posted by IthacaMike


If an enemy unit is next to the artillery unit the artillery unit will 'wake up' and not do the auto-bomb any longer. This means that auto-bomb will never work for catapults and cannons. Nor will it work for artillery adjacent to the city being bombarded.


Ithaca Mike

It will if you deselect the preference that's wakes the unit when it's next to an enemy. Not exactly the most practical solution but it works. I really hope they fix that.

[meriadoc]

Bump

[olaf]

I would definitely like a stack bombard feature, but I would also like some solution to auto bombard with one range units. For instance, units set to auto-bombard should ignore the 'wake up if next to an enemy code', while the rest of your units would still be affected by it.

olaf

[steven8r]

I can see a couple of potential problems with a 'Stack Bombard' command.

Say you have a stack of 10 artillery-type units and issue a 'Stack Bombard' command, then all 10 would fire, (so far no problem), but only so many terrain improvements can be destroyed--even with several misses. You would wind up 'wasting' bombardment.

If you are bombarding a city, how many units does it take to destroy the Barracks, weaken/kill the defenders, remove improvements, and diminish the population to a managable size? I've found that a stack of about 30 arty's will accomplish this in 1, or at the most 2, turns. Then I can take the city. You could probably use some of your units more efficiently. You could always move some to the next target.

I personally like to manually do the bombard. I guess I just like to micro-manage things, like Workers and Bombardment. It's just more vicserally satisfying to bombard manually and see the results of the shot, or more heartbreaking to have 15 misses in a row. This allows me to congratulate or berrate my units--depending upon their results. The really bad ones get left where they can be captured, and then recaptured to see if they've learned their lesson.

Ok, that last paragraph was a little derranged, but I really get into this game!