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TacticalGrace
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Invisible, Silent, Deadly.
Jan 2001
time: 05:25
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Some people claim that bombardment is a waste of time and that you're better off just building "proper" units. What do you do?
Last edited by TacticalGrace on 15-01-2003 at 20:21
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latka
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Bloomington IL
Jan 2003
time: 05:25
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The higher the level the more the game becomes about advatages and disadvantages. Bombarment units add to your advantages in several ways.
1) Good defensive units. As enemies approach, you can get a first attack in to weaken or destroy their units. Of course you can not destroy their unit with your bombardment unit, but it sure is nice to knock a swordsmans down to one hit point and be able to take him out with a spearman or a warrior.
You also get a free bombardment from one of the units when the enemy does attack, thus inflicting more damage to your enemy,hopefully.
2) War is not always about taking cities. Damaging the enemy may be sufficent. After all, the AI or even other human players have to rebuild what is destroyed.
Killing enemy civilians decreases a cities production.
Tile improvements can be bombarded, thus having the same affect or even better. If a critical resourse is taken away, they may lose the ability to defend themselves affectively. This is nice to do with longer range bombardment units.
Destroying city improvements.
3) Going through an enemies territory on a campaign may require breaking up groups of units if you want to do damage to non-critical cities or territories on the way, thus lowering your defensive capabilities if an army or multiple stack units show up. Bombarding, allows one to break up stacks into smaller, but safe groups and still do damage.
4) Weaken those city and mountain units before attacking. I don't have the time or resource to keep rebuilding units that are lost in attacks. Given all Civs being equal, the AI can out produce me and is going to be more hostile towards me than any other civilization. The more civilizations there are, the greater the risk of multiple wars simaltaneously. I don't care about the items lost in a city, if I were to completely destroy the city and build a new one, I would have to build all the improvements anyway. Production and learning, that is what the father land is for.
5) Land and air units can not be damaged. No matter how much a square is bombarded by the enemy, their ability to bombard is not affected. Any units that has hit points are in a sense, because they do not have the luxury of being able to meet their full potential.
6) Keep those navel vessels away from me. I seem to do poorly at naval battles, especially if the units are of the same strengths as my units. When the enemy is going by with units to land on my shores, at least I have the chance of weakening the vessel so that my ships can have a descent chance of destroying them. My best example is when I bombarded a fully loaded aircraft carrier down to one hitpoint and was able to eliminate it with an ironclad. Oh how I needed that.
7) Upgradeable (Catapult->Canon->Artillary). I don't have to wait to build a large number of better bombardment units when I learn the necessary tech. I just have to have cash and then boom, I can have 6, 12, 18 better units. Definately a god send when you are behind in techs and you are in a defensive position.
8) Many would not consider this an advantage, but I do. I have to defend these units, so that my enemy does not get them. Thus, I have to build defensive units to protect them, which in turn requires that I build offensive units to protect the defensive units.
In summary, the low success rate of bombardment units are outweighed by the benefits that are recieved by them, even catapults. It just takes a fair amount of time to reap them. The important thing is to gain advatages over your enemy, so that you can keep them from; destroying, taking things, out producing, or even gaining advatanges over you.
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latka
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Bloomington IL
Jan 2003
time: 05:25
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The failure rate on cities is frustrating, but I do find it to be very realistic to modern times. In the seige of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, during WWII, the Germans bombed the cities heavily. The remaining people in the cities as well as the troops were so entrenched, that it was going to take a lot more than big guns and a few troops to get them out.
I think moding the defense strength down is actually doing an injustice to the game. After all, the cities that are the hardest to get are those that have been built-up by a civilization over a long period of time and the people are going to be more willing to die for their home. This needs to be reflected in the game some how.
Straying off the topic of bombardment a little and focusing on a strategic model, I would like point out another unit that helps me. The explorer is an extremely cheap unit that has the power to pillage (I like to think of them as sabtours). Once railroads are prevelant throughout the world, I find this to be a great benefit to the defense of a newly aquired city or even to my territory. I rush a pair of them to strategic locations in enemy territory and pillage the rails and roads, keeping my opponent from strking back quickly. When the enemy does enter into range of my units, I can then damage them with my artillary, saving any bombers for more critical longer range projects.
Most of the time, my explores do not go far into the enemies territory, thus, I am able to retrieve them. If I lose them, though, no big deal. The AI doesn't seem to want to use them in the same manner and I can replace them quickly when I am ready to move on to another city. It also causes the AI to expend individual units on frivalous things (baiting them), which gives me a chance to weaken their overall strength by taking these sole units sitting in no-mans land.
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Nym
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France
Mar 2002
time: 06:25
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quote:
Originally posted by latka
The failure rate on cities is frustrating, but I do find it to be very realistic to modern times. In the seige of Leningrad, Moscow and Stalingrad, during WWII, the Germans bombed the cities heavily. The remaining people in the cities as well as the troops were so entrenched, that it was going to take a lot more than big guns and a few troops to get them out.
I think moding the defense strength down is actually doing an injustice to the game. After all, the cities that are the hardest to get are those that have been built-up by a civilization over a long period of time and the people are going to be more willing to die for their home. This needs to be reflected in the game some how. |
Good point 
quote:
Straying off the topic of bombardment a little and focusing on a strategic model, I would like point out another unit that helps me. The explorer is an extremely cheap unit that has the power to pillage (I like to think of them as sabtours). Once railroads are prevelant throughout the world, I find this to be a great benefit to the defense of a newly aquired city or even to my territory. I rush a pair of them to strategic locations in enemy territory and pillage the rails and roads, keeping my opponent from strking back quickly. When the enemy does enter into range of my units, I can then damage them with my artillary, saving any bombers for more critical longer range projects. |
Good idea 
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Keeper of Hell
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Later bombardment units (re: stealth bombers) are almost completely useless unless you beef them up. Although I generally agree that it's realistic to have an artillery barrage do an underwhelming amount of damage to cites and garrisons, modern day bombers can do an incredible amount of damage because they can pinpoint strikes so accurately. The fact that stealth bombers are weaker than many ground-based artillery units makes absolutely no sense.
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CerberusIV
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There are a lot of statements about how useless catapults are and it is true that they don't do as much damage as later artillery units. However they can take a HP off a couple of defenders and make all the difference. In my current game I just took a size 7 city defended by three fortified regular pikemen. A stack of 5 catapults took one HP off two pikemen and I attacked with knights and med inf. I took the city without casualties but the first (undamaged) pikeman fought off a knight and took 2 HP off the second knight. The two damaged pikemen went down without any trouble. For the cost of building them catapults can make a difference and avert expensive losses IMHO.
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nbarclay
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Huntsville, Alabama
Dec 1999
time: 23:25
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quote:
Originally posted by latka
I am curious to know how nbarclay defeats heavily defended cites when behind in advances. In my most recent game, I sent 11 legioneers against 2 pikemen and one spearman. I lost everything. The city did not have walls and was on plains. I did not hardly do any damage to any of the three units. I would have at least thought that 4 legioneers, two elite and two vetern would elminate one regular spearman that was fortified. All I did was make regular units into elite units and got my b*tt kicked
What do you do when you don't have truely superior units, but do have numbers. I finally took the city when I got knights. It took me two attacks with five knights and seven catapults.
At the same time, I lost a city with one fortified elite pikeman to a regular archer. Arrrg! |
Were your legionaires veterans? If not, that could go a long way toward explaining the problem, but even then it sounds like a run of pretty bad luck. (The only non-vet units I deliberately build are normally my first handful of scouting warriors and warriors a city with one food surplus builds while waiting for the food for a worker, although I do occasionally forget to build a barracks before putting a city on building a unit.)
There are two main reasons I don't have any more use for artillery than I do. First, I'm good at the research/builder aspect of the game, so it's almost unheard of for me to be permanently stuck in a situation where I can't get unit superiority. And second, I pick the timing on my wars carefully - for example, if I'm going to need to attack to get more room, I try to make sure I attack before technology reaches the point where my opponent will have pikes. Between those two factors, my skills with "legions against pikemen" type fighting haven't evolved all that far.
I definitely recognize the value of artillery when (for example) taking on infantry before tanks are available. I've even used that type of strategy once or twice when I had a special reason for doing so. But my normal solution is to wait until I have tanks or, more likely still, modern armor upgraded from tanks, and then I can stomp to my heart's content with minimal difficulty.
(I know a lot of players love the thrill of a tough, hard-fought war, but the real fun for me is the economic contest. Quick, easy wars are my prize for doing well in that economic contest.)
Nathan
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15-01-2003 15:07
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