15-11-2003 00:17									#1
	Totally Random Idea to balance Artillery... Support Apolyton, pre-order Civilization IV

I was just sending my trebuchet stack of doom around to visit all of my neighbors on this continent and it occured to me one way to limit the power of these beasts would be to make more terrain impassable to wheeled units without roads. I'm thinking of adding forest and hills to the currently impassable-by-wheeled jungles, marshes, mountains, and volcanoes. It would also be cool if you could prevent wheeled units from crossing rivers if there are not bridges (i.e roads on both sides of the river) -- this could allow you to set up interesting tactics where the defender could pillage or bomb a bunch of roads around a river to delay an invasion: the enemy would have to fight his way across the river with foot units -- giving the defenders a defensive river bonus, then being workers/engineers over to rebuild the roads on both sides before you could bring the artillery. I think this would be good for gameplay as well as more realistic (after all, it shouldn't be very easy to transport large numbers of artillery across enemy territory...it should slow down your troops advance.), plus it increases the tactical importance of terrain.

What do people think?

Last edited by RobC on 15-11-2003 at 00:25

	15-11-2003 00:20									#2
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And yes, this would suck for chariots, but it's still realistic and who uses the standard chariot much anyway? You could always add defensive bombard and ZoC to the War Chariot and 3-man-chariot if you want to give them something to compensate...

	15-11-2003 00:22									#3
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You should add deserts to the list of impassable-by-wheeled terrain, too.

I like your river crossing idea. Too bad that can't be modded; it would need an "official" fix.

	15-11-2003 00:28									#4
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Artillery should damage all units in the square. Just like in real life. When artillery bombards owercrowded land it causes more damage.

And MilitariZm(R) is an excelent example of advantages of this concept.

But units must be better protected against artillery. Also artillery should be very vulunerable to aircraft (aircraft should have special order to destroy escorted artillery)

	15-11-2003 00:30									#5
	Re: Totally Random Idea to balance Artillery... Lose 30 kilos (of popups)

quote: Originally posted by RobC I was just sending my trebuchet stack of doom around to visit all of my neighbors on this continent and it occured to me one way to limit the power of these beasts would be to make more terrain impassable to wheeled units without roads. I'm thinking of adding forest and hills to the currently impassable-by-wheeled jungles, marshes, mountains, and volcanoes. It would also be cool if you could prevent wheeled units from crossing rivers if there are not bridges (i.e roads on both sides of the river) -- this could allow you to set up interesting tactics where the defender could pillage or bomb a bunch of roads around a river to delay an invasion: the enemy would have to fight his way across the river with foot units -- giving the defenders a defensive river bonus, then being workers/engineers over to rebuild the roads on both sides before you could bring the artillery. I think this would be good for gameplay as well as more realistic (after all, it shouldn't be very easy to transport large numbers of artillery across enemy territory...it should slow down your troops advance.), plus it increases the tactical importance of terrain. What do people think?

Hmm. I think I like it. I never really understood how "wheeled" units were supposed to deal with forests and hills.

-Arrian

	15-11-2003 00:43									#6
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Good suggestion, except that by the time the really powerful bombard units arrive (artillery), most of the world is roaded anyway...

	15-11-2003 03:05									#7
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quote: Originally posted by alexman Good suggestion, except that by the time the really powerful bombard units arrive (artillery), most of the world is roaded anyway...

But you can still pillage/bomb lots of roads across rivers and through terrain unfriendly to wheeled units, even your own tiles, to slow down an enemy advance.

	15-11-2003 03:13									#8
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Another cool thing about this that I realized after I started playing with this mod is that you can 'strand' artillery that's already in the field...forces you to more carefully plan and protect your attack routes, as well as bringing some protected workers just in case.

	15-11-2003 03:52									#9
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quote: Originally posted by muxec Artillery should damage all units in the square. Just like in real life. When artillery bombards owercrowded land it causes more damage.

No, this is what I hated about SMAC combat.

It seems very unrealistic to me. Why should one artillery unit be able to cause damage to all the units in an area of many square miles?

	15-11-2003 03:59									#10
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Warpstorm: Agreed, but I do miss the artillery duels.

	15-11-2003 04:43									#11
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quote: Originally posted by muxec Artillery should damage all units in the square. Just like in real life. When artillery bombards owercrowded land it causes more damage.

What's overcrowded? On a standard 100x100 map, each tile is 1/10,000th of the surface area of the earth, which is approximately 5x10^14 square meters. So each tile is 5x10^10 square meters in area. I don't care if each unit represents a company, a division, or a batallion, there's no way even 4000 of those units (max. # of units allowed in the game) is going to 'overcrowd' any of those tiles.

	15-11-2003 05:50									#12
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I don't like the river idea, because it seems like it would just get in the way.

	15-11-2003 07:34									#13
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quote: Originally posted by skywalker I don't like the river idea, because it seems like it would just get in the way.

isn't that the idea/suggestion???

	15-11-2003 12:11									#14
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Yes. You'd have to destroy hundreds of square miles of farms and villages to deny the enemy the use of a few bridges. Like he said, it would get in the way.

If you really want to balance bombard units, reduce their bombard so that incidence of hits become less frequent. At some point the lack of bombard effectiveness would meet the cost of upkeep and put an end to the arty stack of doom in most cases.

	15-11-2003 15:59									#15
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I say make bombard units vulunerable to air units and you'll balance the game.

	15-11-2003 16:15									#16
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Nice idea for the late game, muxec. My favorite era for large scale wars is the mid industrial age though when I crank SODs of Arty and Infantry (amd tanks when they are available) plowing through my neighbors. Your proposal won't balance that scenario, though.

	15-11-2003 16:59									#17
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quote: Originally posted by Shogun Gunner isn't that the idea/suggestion???

I mean of the game, and normal gameplay. Mountains, hills, etc. are quickly visible, and you can see all of that stuff on a quick overview of terrain. They are also almost always stuck in clumps, meaning it is relatively simple to go around them. Rivers would just make it tedious.

	15-11-2003 17:00									#18
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quote: Originally posted by muxec I say make bombard units vulunerable to air units and you'll balance the game.

And workers too.

	15-11-2003 18:03									#19
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Workers...? Not sure... But worth a try.

	15-11-2003 18:30									#20
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How exactly would air attacks killing workers balance the game? (Especially considering that most of my games end before then).

It seems to me that this would make the first person to get air even stronger as he could crater the enemy terrain and his opponent wouldn't even have workers to attempt to fix it. Making the strong stronger doesn't seem to equate to balance to me.

	15-11-2003 19:35									#21
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Air needs to be stronger. It is far weaker than land

The reason is, workers essentially can waltz straight through any sort of bombardment, so with enough workers you can't even effectively destroy terrain improvements.

	15-11-2003 20:18									#22
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Maybe giving artillery one hit point and one defnce would help?

	15-11-2003 20:59									#23
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quote: Originally posted by skywalker The reason is, workers essentially can waltz straight through any sort of bombardment, so with enough workers you can't even effectively destroy terrain improvements.

You would need a lot of workers in a tile to immediately undo the effects of craters and to rebuild the railroads. Not that you can't get them, but if I see astack of workers like that it'd be a tempting target for capture.

	23-11-2003 09:31									#24
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quote: Originally posted by WarpStorm You would need a lot of workers in a tile to immediately undo the effects of craters and to rebuild the railroads. Not that you can't get them, but if I see astack of workers like that it'd be a tempting target for capture.

I just saw this scenario in my most recent game. During my war with the Americans, I was able to pillage their Iron. We signed a Peace Treaty, but the Americans were still at war with the Aztecs.

The Americans sent-out a stack of about 6 Workers at one time to re-road their 'Iron Hill'. The Aztec Ironclads would come in, bomb the road and leave. The next turn the road was back, so were the Aztecs. (Wash, Rinse, Repeat.)

This continued for several more turns until my 20-turn peace was up and those American Workers just became too tempting a target for me. Sorry Abe, I just needed more slaves.

	23-11-2003 19:06									#25
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quote: Originally posted by muxec Maybe giving artillery one hit point and one defnce would help?

Combine your idea with giving Fighters, Jet Fighters, F-15's and Stealth Fighters the "Stealth Attack ability" and "Lethal Land bombardment" (I can't recall offhand if the lethal land bombard is standard in C3C) and arty suddenly becomes very vulnerable.

Fighter aircraft and Flack/Mobile SAMs become much more important. The artillery SOD will have it's day in the early Industrial, but should become much more vulnerable in the late Industrial.

Worth trying out for my next run at the epic game.

	26-11-2003 21:28									#26
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quote: Originally posted by RobC ...I realized after I started playing with this mod is that you can 'strand' artillery that's already in the field...

This happened to me. I had roaded a Mountain so that my canons could bomb the enemy's iron. Then I moved my canons onto the ememy's (used to be iron) hill. The only way back for me was through my mountain. They couldn't do it because I had destroyed their road. The only way I could 'rescue' my Canons was to build a Galleon and sail it down to them so they could load-up.

I felt like such a moron when I couldn't let my canons retreat!!!

Edit: And this wasn't even w/ the mod!