Artillery parks, and general war

[Jason]

Given that artillery is no longer a high-attack slow movement unit, but rather just a support unit, have most people been trimming their artillery and just using pure-attack units with the highest attack values available?

OR, does it mean that what we really need is a huge ton of artillery, say 3 or 4 per garrison defender, to try to get all of the defenders damaged before the land attack commences?

I'm curious to see what other peoples' approaches have been. I hear a lot of people suggesting that one should simply use armour without artillery for its high attack value.


Also, on a more general war note, have people been getting a lot of the "city defects back to original owner" when the garrison is larger than the population? I've been fighting mostly culturally weaker civs, so it hasn't been a problem, but I would be utterly demoralized if an army of 15-20 veterans suddenly poofed out of existance along with some lousy defecting size-8 city.

[Special_K]

For me the combination of no road bonus in enemy territory and 1 movement per turn make all artillary virtually useless. When I attack usually I start w/ my troops outside their border then march in and take their city. The artillary just can't keep up. In my opinion the artillary basically sucks.

[PMLF]

I use artillery only to defend my cities. I never use them as offensive weapons.

[HugoHillbilly]

I love using artillery in offensive. Take a size 25 city. with 10 artillery pieces and 8 bombers going at it in two turns it will be:

<7 (no def bonus)
Without Barracks,Harbour,Airport
Without other random improvements
All defenders will have 1 or 2 ticks of health left.

Then my calvary/tanks/modern armour just sweep in and crush with minimal casualties.

BTW I dont know how you can complain about the 1 move, Infantry only have 1 move as well so how do you defend your tanks properly before you get mech infantry??

[HalfLotus]

I almost always use artillery. It is the first bombard unit with a range of 2. I like to attack cities that are 2/3 squares into enemy territory so several artillery is easy to place. I can usually get my artillery onto a hill or something and blast away at the city.
I can reduce the population. If I can get the city below pop 12 or 6, the defensive bonuses are less.
I can also destroy barracks and city walls.
Also it damages units inside somtimes. If there is no message, a unit has been damaged.

This saves me lots of dead cavalry after a coupla turns of bombardament. After I get a few cities into their borders, the artillery sometimes falls behind.

[BelSlavin]

Good place to post a question about ROF

Hi all!
I've been Civ3ing for a week now, but I have a question I can't seem to find an answer for in neither the manual nor Civilopedia:

What is the rate of fire (ROF) attribute for when talking about units capable of bombardment?

Looking at the appendix in the manual (and the civopedia) you find three (and the optional range) attributes:
Bombardment Power, Range (and optional range), and ROF.

Can someone explain?
Thanks.

[sachmo71]

Another great thing about artillery is that on defense it bombards EVERY unit which attacks. I was attacked by 20 knights, and defending with one rifleman and 2 artillery. I won, but if I didn't have the cannon weakening the attackers, I probably would have lost.

As far as ROF, I haven't ever seen artillery attack more than once, so I really have no idea what it means!

[Jaybe]

Re: Good place to post a question about ROF

Originally posted by BelSlavin
...
What is the rate of fire (ROF) attribute for when talking about units capable of bombardment?
...

Rate of Fire is referring to how many times it shoots. Sometimes you will notice that a defending unit loses more than one hit point to a bombardment.

I have NOT seen multiple items being reduced by a single bombardment (e.g., an improvement and a population point).

[absimiliard]

ROF is actually pretty simple. Basically it's the number of "shots" that are taken.

Example 1: A cannon has an ROF of 1. The most damage it can do is one point, it only gets one attack.

Example 2: Artillery has an ROF of 2. Thus it makes two attacks. If it succeeds with both you could do two points of damage, if it hits with only one you'll only do one, and you're much less likely to do nothing to a target than a cannon.

Final Example: A bomber has an ROF of 3. So send over a bomber and you can do up to three points of damage to your target.

Peace. (I'm a builder after all, not a momentum player)

[nato]

I myself have been using lots of artillery for attacking. I generally have about 10 Catapults, 15 Cannons, or 30 Artillery depending on the era. These things are cheap to make!

It is true they are very slow ... but then so are defender type units, at least until mechs. If artillery is too slow, then so are Spearmen / Riflemen / Infantry. So then you must be sending in Knights / Cavalry / Tanks unescorted ... aren't they getting attacked and wiped out? They would be wide open.

The main thing is defense units have pretty high defense values, I would hate to just send in Knights / Cavalry / Tanks against full strength defenders. Maybe this does work ... after all they do retreat before getting killed. Still you must need tons of them. What really bothers me is to take full advantage of their speed they have to leave infantry defenders behind. Don't they get killed all by themselves?

[ken01]

On defense, artillery get a shot against every unit that attacks???

When I attack with my tanks, the enemy artillery get one shot, and maybe weaken the first tank. All the others pound away with not a peek from the artillery.

Is this a difficulty setting or something?

[Haphazard]

They can run away from enemy infantry/artillery too though. In battle/surrounded situations solely cavalary forces would lose to combined forces of equal strength. Probably

[Monoriu]

I use artillery, a lot. I usually have at least 40 units.

-I bombard every emeny unit in the open until they have 1 health left before I attack. Keeps casualty rates a lot lower.

-For cities, I bombard until pop. is below 6, and most enemy garrison units damaged before I attack. Again, saves the lifes of a lot of my soldiers.

-For defence at key points.

-Movement can be a problem, as someone else mentioned. But given the range of 2 tiles I can often keep them inside my rail system. The key is to raze enemy cities as you capture them, and immediately found a city nearby to extend your borders. Read the thread on "offensive settlers".

-No, artillery units only get one shot in defending the tile each turn. However, it can do a max damage of 2 points.

-Catapults, however, don't seem to be worth it.

[SerapisIV]

Here's an important question:

Do artillery and bomber attacks risk destroying wonders?

I'm about to embark on my first modern invasion of the #2 culture power civ and I don't want to lose the all-important wonders when I invade.

Oh yeah and why do radar artillery only have 1 movement point? Their icon is the MLRS system which can keep pace with even the armor and mech inf in the US army, so why do they still only have 1 mp while the mod. armor has 3 mp?

[Monoriu]

I have bombarded a lot of cities with wonders and destroyed most city improvements in those cities. I have never destroyed a wonder. So the simple answer is no, bombardment does not destroy wonders.