Lethal Bombardment

[Cruddy]

I go for naval lethal bombard, but ONLY for ship based air and cruise missiles.

Up to the aircraft carrier, ships had to engage at sea in a duel.

No land unit was ever destroyed by arty alone, so if I can figure out how to turn off LB for land based cruise I will (I'm still a klutz with the editor).

[cumi]

I voted for "All units (with ability for bombarding) should have...".

In real life, the bombers can also destroy totally the target army. I think, it would be very interesting to simulate this in civ3 game. But, of course, destroying units only with bombardments should be a very difficult task for the players...

Seconds, the importance of building fighters will be increses a lot, if the bombers would be so powerful. I think the most of the civ3 players never builds bombers, fighters or especially carriers! The "naval war" has also a minimal importance now.... It would be also interresting (for me), to be able to destroy ships with artillery.

Last but not least, this would be an interresting issue only if the AI would use the bombardments wisely...

[dexters]

I think the AI should be programmed to use artys more effectively.

Once they can do that, I think we'd all be modding our games back to non lethal.

[nbarclay]

I like the AU Mod's approach of giving lethal bombardment to fighters but not to bombers. That makes it possible to sink ships with air power alone, but the fact that fighters aren't very competent at bombing keeps the ability from creating serious balance problems.

When has air power ever completely destroyed all the military units in an area to a point where enemy troops could walk in with zero opposition? I think the way Civ 3 handles things on land reflects reality pretty well: American bombers reduce the Iraqi infantry to one hit point each, and America's Modern Armor clean them up easily.

On the other hand, naval units in the real world are a lot more vulnerable to lethal bombardment. But there are two catches. (1) In real life, a defender can't haul artillery across the continent on railroads, install it, and sink ships with it before the ships even get a chance to pull back. The artillery has to already be in place when the ships arrive. So denying artillery lethal bombardment against ships is a necessary counterweight against the ridiculously high mobility Civ 3 artillery has. (2) Historically, ships have far more to fear from precision weapons from smaller aircraft than they do from heavy bombloads from larger aircraft. Giving bombers their full attack power against ships, plus lethal bombardment, makes them too strong against ships.

[CerberusIV]

The point about giving bombers lethal sea bombardment is that once large scale airpower arrives then attacking into enemy territorial waters near their land should be pretty fatal for ships without fighter cover from aircraft carriers.

You only get one type of basic bomber, not the division into heavy bombers and torpedo bombers and so on that exist in the real world so the one unit ends up doing all the roles.

I find that the ideal way to deal with ships bombarding your coastal areas without giving artillery lethal sea bombardment is to shift artillery across by RR and bombard the ship down to 1HP then finish it off with a single cruise missile. I have never had one miss yet and it is more economical than using two or three cruise.

[Gen.Dragolen]

I´ve done some playtesting with lethal and non-lethal bombardment, and found that lethal was a little too much, but if you up the RoF 1 or 2 to a more relistic level, reducing even elite units to 1 hp makes their impact a little more realistic.

You can leave the buildings and pop untouched as artillery will start fires that do most of the damage. Even cruise missles should not have a lethal bombardment. Indirect fire, while devastating, is not capable of destroying the enemy alone. He just won´t stand still long enough for you to hit him...

However, I also increased the effect of being in a fortress to reflect how good it is in modern warfare to be ´dug in´ and that reduced the impact of artillery. After all, the Island campaigns in the Pacific showed that fortified infantry could take all that a battle ship could dish out, and still fight back effectively. And for modern units, being dugin amounts to being in a fortress. Being fortified in my mind is more like being ready to repell an attack than having constructed defensive works.

This also works well with bombers too. It does look impressive to see a unit taking 4 hits from a bombing raid and maybe a building destroyed.

D.

[monkspider]

My vote is for this, give lethal bombard to Man O War, F-16, and H'wacha.

[MyOlde]

Interesting thread. I had been holding off modding anything to lethal, being afraid of what the AI would do with it against me. But most of you seem to think they're not very good with it. That doesn't seem good, either. Maybe, once again, the game is best left alone -- the way the designers designed it.

[PLATO]

Originally posted by monkspider
My vote is for this, give lethal bombard to Man O War, F-16, and H'wacha.

Great Idea! This would actually make these UU's worth something!

[Epistax]

I think naval units need to be able to be sunk by aircraft.

Should a plane be able to completely destroy a convoy? Tough to say.

I would like to see ...

...bombardment damage randomly spread about all units in the stack that is effected, until precision weapons are developed.
...napalm tactical weapons which do more pop damage.
...non-nuclear ICBM's.
...lethal bombardment only to units in red status, no going from green to dead in one bombardment, or at least extreme (1000 to 1) odds against it.
...boats be completely destroyed by planes.

Also, whatever happened to units being slower when they are injured, especially boats? (off topic)

[Gen.Dragolen]

Epistax,

So what would you call carriers like the enterprise and hornet that were damaged but not sunk? They are effectively removed from being usefull with only 1 hp left. At that point even a lowly sub could score a kill.

Mind you, there is one unit I immediately upgraded the attack on since a torpedo can sink all by the biggest ships, and then they are crippled by a good hit. Even battleships which were designed to take a few torpedo hits suffer. The Bismark springs to mind, or the Italian Fleet at Taranto and US Fleet at Midway. Even the Japanese Fleet at Midway was not wiped out, but suffered heavy casualties and was withdrawn for repairs.

One thing you may want to try is changing the number of hit points a ship has if you are going to allow Lethal Bombardment. Part of this depends on the scale on which you see the game: Is a ship a single vessel, or a squadron of ships ? My vote is for the squadron, since this is supposed to be a strategic level wargame (IMO).

D.

[Epistax]

Originally posted by Gen.Dragolen
So what would you call carriers like the enterprise and hornet that were damaged but not sunk? They are effectively removed from being usefull with only 1 hp left. At that point even a lowly sub could score a kill.

I disagree entirely. Unless you have a fleet in an area, by the current rules no amount of bombing will destroy a ship. This makes it so that you need naval defense everywhere sorrounding you empire. While that isn't a lot to ask, it shouldn't have to be required.

Take the enemy computer. They barely bombard or build ships. If they bombard my carrier to one red, I'll happily keep bombing their continent into nothing because bombard as they like, my carrier will never die, and they'll never send a ship.

So at current to me, it doesn't matter how much health any carrier or any naval ship of mine has since they never get attacked directly.

[Jaybe]

A ship is not just a ship. It is a ship UNIT, representing several ships. A battleship, for instance, is roughly 3 battleships plus a few smaller ships (destroyers/escorts).

[ChrisiusMaximus]

Battleships should have two shots.

[Jaybe]

Chrisius, Chrisius, what do you want?!
An 18.16.5 with bombardment of 8.2.1 and BLITZ!! (RoF of 1 to partially comensate for the blitz that's available to destroyers, battleships and nuc subs).

Oh, wait ... nevermind. That's the way I play the game.