Catapults are not worth the cost

Fistleaf · March 22, 2004, 10:58

Their meagre bombardment will usually result in failures when used on cities. As such, they are only useful against units, probably during defense.
Cannons are similarly not cost-effective. Sometimes 10 of them will fail in bombarding a city. Not worth the trouble when you consider that you have to babysit the cannons while they crawl at 1 square per turn towards the target. And all the while you pay upkeep (20 cannons for 50 turns = 1000 gold for rushbuilding other stuff).

Harovan · March 22, 2004, 12:18

You will love even the most inefficient bombardement units after you had for the first time to fend off the attack of a human player in a multiplayer game.

ducki · March 22, 2004, 13:47

I actually have been building Catapults lately, particularly when I don't have horses, and they work fairly well for me.

Since I'm usually sending along a slowmover defender-garrison on my assaults, the babysitting thing is not really an issue, and as mentioned, if you don't have horses or have chosen to go with a sword-based force(Immortals, Legions, etc.), it's really hard to outrun them.

Another plus is, should the AI send out a counterattacker that you just don't have the strength to take out(due to using obsolete units or being too injured) dinging 1 or 2 hitpoints off of the enemy is often enough to send him scrambling back home, buying you a bit of time to heal up.

alexman · March 22, 2004, 13:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
You will love even the most inefficient bombardement units after you had for the first time to fend off the attack of a human player in a multiplayer game.

Or after you have bought C3C, where their ability to target units before population and improvements makes them probably too powerful for their cost.

Hermann the Lombard · March 22, 2004, 14:15

In Mountain Sage's Dutch game, my crack catapult teams were batting about .400 to .500, mighty fine hitting in any baseball league! On one round they went 4 for 5. Pity my assault troops weren't ready that round!

Naturally, when they *were* ready, the cats went 1 for 5, so I waited a round and got 3 for 5. [I was planted on a hill while bringing up a stronger attack force, and plinking the defenders to blunt any sallies. Then if a defender bypassed my hill into open ground, the cats softened 'em up so that my elites could take pot shots.]

DrSpike · March 22, 2004, 16:18

In C3C bombard units are well worth their cost.......if anything they need a slight nerf. In higher level games good use of bombard is often a large factor in keeping up with the AI.

vondrack · March 22, 2004, 18:44

Quote:

Originally posted by Sir Ralph
You will love even the most inefficient bombardement units after you had for the first time to fend off the attack of a human player in a multiplayer game.

Amen.

vmxa1 · March 22, 2004, 20:08

I got to say that cats are very handy above emperor. I don't build them below Demi as it is too unfair. I find they are my only hope above Demi. The AI just has too many free units and support. You can't take the replacements at the rate the AI will.

The misses are off and on. but you need them anyway. They are critical at Sid to fend off frigate bombardment and caravel drops.

You are so often fighting superior units, need the help.

Aqualung71 · March 23, 2004, 06:45

Quote:

Originally posted by Fistleaf
Their meagre bombardment will usually result in failures when used on cities. As such, they are only useful against units, probably during defense.

Artillery usefulness is of course relative to the strength of the defense. Catapults are highly effective against their equivalent ancient age defender, the Spearman, as are Trebuchets against Pikes and to a lesser extent Musketmen, and Cannons against Riflemen. Fortification, terrain and city defensive bonuses of course change the odds, as they do in all battles.

If you are using Catapults to attack cities defended by Pikes/Muskets, it's time to upgrade them to Trebs. Even then you'll have a high failure rate - but you don't lose hitpoints! The upgrade cost is quite affordable.

Arrian · March 23, 2004, 09:03

Catapults rock.

-Arrian

Fistleaf · March 23, 2004, 10:36

Catapults and cannons only bombard the immediate next square. Against cities on flat land, isn't it a pain to move them 1 square at a time to the target? If those catapults are converted to units, the city would have been taken down albeit with losses.

Fast conquest of cities would reduce the number of troops the AI can send at you, and correspondingly reduce your losses. With catapults, you have to move them in position, wait one turn, fire (hope for the best), attack with units if successful. Turn advantage is lost here. The AI has more time to respond and defend other cities.

Concerning hittting units to force them to retreat, when the healed units come back, they would be in force and harder to beat.

Arrian · March 23, 2004, 10:59

Quote:

Catapults and cannons only bombard the immediate next square. Against cities on flat land, isn't it a pain to move them 1 square at a time to the target? If those catapults are converted to units, the city would have been taken down albeit with losses.

Bingo, it's all about minimizing losses.

Let's take two hypothetical attack stacks, each comprised of 20 units:

#1 - 12 swords, 5 horse, 3 spear.
#2 - 10 swords, 3 horse, 2 spear, 5 cats.

Both are going to be able to attack and capture an AI town defended by comparable units. Stack #2, however, is likely to suffer lower losses.

There is an added benifit to bombardment besides simply lowering casualties. A unit that wins a fight is a unit that may be promoted. An elite unit that attacks a foe that has been damaged by bombardment has a better chance of winning, and surviving to win again. The more elite combat victories you have, the better your chances are of generating a MGL, which can create an army. Armies are quite powerful in Conquests.

I have found that using catapults doesn't really slow me down much, if at all. The reason for this is fast attack units like horsemen often need to spend time healing up anyway after a battle. If the enemy's territory is roaded, I will gain the use of some of those roads when a city falls. Going back to the #2 attack stack:

10 sword, 3 horse, 2 spear, 5 cat. Battle: all 5 cats fire. If there are any undamaged spearmen defending still, horsemen attack. Once we get down to damaged spears, the swords finish. Any damaged horsemen are then moved into the captured town, along with the spears and unused swords if there is the risk of counterattack (if the enemy has horsemen, or happens to have reinforcements adjacent to the city).

The following turn, the spears, cats, and unwounded swords move along the road net towards the next AI city. The rest of the units heal inside the captured town.

On the third turn, the cats/spears/swords march another tile toward the next city, and may now be next to it. The newly-healed horsemen, with their 2 moves, can catch up.

Turn four: attack!

Rinse, repeat.

-Arrian

ducki · March 23, 2004, 12:06

Quote:

Fast conquest of cities would reduce the number of troops the AI can send at you, and correspondingly reduce your losses. With catapults, you have to move them in position, wait one turn, fire (hope for the best), attack with units if successful. Turn advantage is lost here. The AI has more time to respond and defend other cities.

This assumes that you go against your foe in a straight line - I call it "with blinders on" because when I have fast and slowmovers and go one city at a time, I might as well let my little boy run things.

I'm playing MZO's BootCamp VII right now, total warmonger - Theseus, you'd be proud - ANYWAY....

I decided it was time to take the tech leader down a few(dozen) pegs. Upgrade all Knights to Cavs, re-assign my swordsman army to cannon-escort(later add a musket), and move my Cavs into place on target one(had to cross a river) and pillage tiles to bring down size. In those two moves, my stack of 12-15 cannons move into position.
Cavs take several counterattacks, then Cannons ping down the defenders, Cavs take the first town***, and rest up. While they are resting/healing, my cannon stack(and now 5 slaves) is escorted to the enemy capitol.
A fortress is begun, tile improvements bombarded, and the town bombarded to count defenders(and give my ally a shot at helping me out a bit, which he does).

Cavs are all healed up and move into position, more tile bombarding and town bombarding hoping to get a "real" defender count and my ally is able to help out a bit more.

Now, on the turn of the real attack, we see that it was the cannons waiting on the cavalry, not the other way around - even with 3 movement points. I ding all defenders down to ~2 hitpoints and take the town easily***.

If you plan well ahead, as I found in this game, it is rather easy to have your slowmover bombard stack marking time waiting for your fastmover stack, not the other way around, so forget what I said above about bombard units being primarily for slowmoving forces - I like them for any force.

***Theseus, you'd be proud. The 3 cities I took held Copernicus, SoZ, Sistine, Sun Tzu, and another wonder or two(maybe Bachs?) - and I razed all of them without missing a beat. I do, however, with the "We captured blahblahblah" dialog would list all the wonders in a town instead of just the first/last one on the list.

Arrian · March 23, 2004, 12:19

Quote:

The 3 cities I took held Copernicus, SoZ, Sistine, Sun Tzu, and another wonder or two(maybe Bachs?) and I razed all of them without missing a beat.

What have you become, man!?

Cop's & SoZ, ok, no biggie.
Sun Tzu? Meh, not that big a deal, especially if we're talking off-continent.

But razing the Sistine and Bachs?

Center-of-a-Black-Hole Side, indeed.

-Arrian

ducki · March 23, 2004, 12:43

I am definitely finding catapults, trebs, and cannons to be very worthwhile - especially for bolstering my military from towns without barracks, where I can afford to do a slower build of a "less important" unit until I grow enough to build a worker/settler or between necessary city improvements, such as markets, aqueducts, courthouses or if happiness is really suffering or I really need culture, a temple(preferably after the CH).
Cats/Trebs/Cannon are cheap enough to fit in the build queue in those cases and not impacted by not coming from a barracks.

Which I guess is another key point in whether Cats/Cannons are "worth it". If you have barracks everywhere then I'm sure it's tougher to justify spending shields on bombardment. If, however, you have a few specialized barracks cities producing all your troops, it's much easier to just keep them building vets and let other towns build bombardment, workers, settlers, improvements.

Small font so as to minimize the effect of the threadjack. Sorry Fistleaf.
@Arrian -
Well, Sun Tzu's I had considered keeping for one turn to heal up faster, but thought better of it - the Sumerians have at least 3 times my culture, probably 4 or 5 - with size 12 cities - and at least 4-5 techs lead on the upper branch. I didn't want to tie up MPs or risk losing the main of my force. Easier to retreat a few squares to neutral territory - especially with Cavalry. And no, not off-continent. Just feeling the fire.

Plus, I've got 3-4 settlers just waiting for culture holes to open up.

I did build Leo's by hand, though.
What have I become, indeed.

Arrian · March 23, 2004, 13:03

Quote:

am definitely finding catapults, trebs, and cannons to be very worthwhile - especially for bolstering my military from towns without barracks, where I can afford to do a slower build of a "less important" unit until I grow enough to build a worker/settler or between necessary city improvements, such as markets, aqueducts, courthouses or if happiness is really suffering or I really need culture, a temple(preferably after the CH).
Cats/Trebs/Cannon are cheap enough to fit in the build queue in those cases and not impacted by not coming from a barracks.

Yes, this is typically how I get my catapults. That, and capturing the AI's catapults.

I've had games where I find I've little to no bombard force, and I realize it's because I was doing so well early on as a builder that I had Sun Tzu before my major military buildup, and thus didn't fit cats/trebs into the build queues. This is especially true if I'm really fast to engineering (say I'm playing a scientific civ, nail the CoL+Philo = Republic free AND get engineering as my bonus medieval tech). Trebs are 30 shields. Cats, at 20, are easier to fit in.

Just like you said, I find it more difficult to build bombard units in cities with barracks. So there are times when I will suddenly switch every unit-building city over to a round of artillery units, and *wham* pump out 20 arty or so.

-Arrian

vmxa1 · March 23, 2004, 13:34

Yup very early in the game those cities that have nothing to build and have no barracks and are not real productive can be set to crank out cats. This gives you a boost to your defense and offensive.

I have not use the trebs much, but they seem to hit with a high rate. Not enough games with them to know if it was a fluke or a trend.

ducki · March 23, 2004, 13:40

Trebs definitely _seem_ more ... effective, even against pikes in larger cities. Cannons are very effective against even Muskets in size 12s - and against pikes,

Hey Fistleaf - have you tried using non-barracks towns to gradually build up a stack of Cats in between builds?

Fistleaf · March 23, 2004, 23:14

Yes, I have done that and now I have 20+ artillery. Artillery are definitely useful because of range-2 bombardment. But cannons are a pain because they keep missing and it took me so long to take down Thebes while my army and cavalry are idling right outside the city.

vmxa1 · March 24, 2004, 03:08

Not as painful as losing lots of units on a city or metro.

ducki · March 24, 2004, 11:44

Quote:

while my army and cavalry are idling right outside the city

I would recommend helping your cannons out a bit. Since, Cavs can move, pillage, move, hit the highest food squares or luxuries and return to safety if you haven't already.
Some folks don't like having to reimprove the tiles, but I'd rather do that than face the defensive bonus for city sizes.
And if your attackers are just idling anyway...

vmxa1 · March 24, 2004, 13:35

I dislike pillaging, but sometimes it is the best way to get that metro down to a city or that city to a town. If I have armies, then I can forego pillage and just attack to kill defenders, or i you have a superior unit.

ErikM · March 24, 2004, 13:47

Quote:

Originally posted by Arrian
Catapults rock.

Especially captured ones

Last Conformist · March 28, 2004, 18:26

I actually found the C3C changes to artillery targeting a mixed blessing - it suddenly became much harder to knock down city sizes to get rid of defense bonuses, and "strategic" bombardments became prety pointless; after sinking an enemy fleet, I used to use my ships to systematically reduce enemy coastal cities to size one with no improvements, but that became very hard to do unless you've got obscene numbers of BBs in C3C.

That said, bombardment units rule, pure and simple. The AI is not yet born that can deal with a few dozen Arty pieces, and they're essential against human opponents.