Why Bomberd does't do much damage

[player1]

Let see, we have an infanrty units fortified in metropolis (12+ pop),
it will have defense of 10*(1+1+0.5)=25.
So chance of hitting with bomber is 8/(25+8)=24,24%
Since bomber has rate of fire 3, there is an averege 0.75 hits in turn.
Since units heal 1hp (or more wich barracks) per turn, one bomber can't do anything. So you must have MANY BOMBERS (at lest 4 or 5).

Maybe that CITY BONUS (+100 for metropolis) shouldn't be inculed.
Looking for patch?

In that case it would be 10*(1+0.5)=15
8/(15+8)=34% ---> average 1 hit per turn (maybe still not much, but remember bomber cost is just 100)

I haven included any modifiers for City Walls, Coastal Fortrress or SAM, since I don't know wich they are.

I thnik these abilities can be seen in editor & since I don't have the game, it would be nice if someone could read these abilities from EDITOR.


P.S.
For Artillery:
12/(25+12)=32,34% or 0.65 hits per turn (rate of fire 2)

for R. Artillery

16/(25+16)=39% or 0.78 hits per turn (rate of fire 2)

So all range units don't do much damage (not just Bombers)
That is also problem wich catapults (rate of fire 1).

Maybe solution is in lowering HEALING RATES (3 times):
-without barracks +1 hp evrey 3 turns
-with barracks +1 hp every turn

Probably because cities have barracks, it is almost impossibile to do any kind of damage without fleet of 8+ Bombers (in that case it is better to build 8 tanks & take city more easyly)

-HINT--HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT
Bobminig is at least usefull against ELITE ARMIES of SWORDSMEN.
It is more effective then losing Regular Tanks one by one.
-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT-HINT

These things SHOULD Firaxis take in serious consideration.

[TheDarkside]

I agree somewhat, If you want to siege a city as realistically as history, then you wont find it in Civ3- since next turn all the units in the city you're sieging has miraculously healed fully thanks to barracks. So in order to capture cities, you have to concentrate all your units in one turn. Bombard, then start attacking with your stack of units weaiting outisde his city.

I don't know if its at all possible, but from what I've seen bombard can NEVER kill a unit, only bring it to 1 hit point. I think there should at least be a small chance that you kill the unit... say you carpet bomb a city down to level 1 pop and all improvements destroyed. I think it should be safe to say some units should perish in that attack too instead of just brought down to the lower ceiling of 1 hp.

My only wish in this game was that it had more power in modding. alot of variables/settings you just dont have access to and cant change them

[SandMonkey]

It says in the book that you can't kill a unit by bombarding alone.

[player1]

Even worse, since then you must attack city in than turn or city units will be healed.

Germans bombard of England, NOT in this game.

How often bombrads kill a pop or destroy building?
If is is high enough, than this is maybe OK.

Imagine a need to bombard with 8 bombers & then assaulting with the Tanks is same turn, or else nothing would happen.

For MarkG:
Why you moved this thread from General Forum?

Now no one from Firaxis would read it.

I posted it mostly not to enlighten Apolytoneers with marvelous stratgeies, then to send message to Firaxis to FIX some things for the PATCH.

[Akillias]

its misses 2/5 of time its damage an unit 2/5 of time and kill a population or improvement 1/5 of time

[Dimension]

It really doesn't make sense that Firaxis made bombardment so much weaker than it was in SMAC vs. units in a city.

In SMAC, every shot from artillary hits EVERY unit in the city. Also, I think units damaged by bombardment don't heal any that turn (but maybe the reason they don't appear to heal is just that bombardment does significant damage in SMAC).

Was artillary really that powerful in SMAC? No... But now artillary gets several fewer hits, and also can be captured. On top of that is the ability to destroy random enhancements and kill population, which is actually a MAJOR DISADVANTAGE, because 99% of the time you're bombarding a city is because you intend to take it over. It sucks taking over a city that now has 1 pop and no enhancements because you bombarded it.

Bombarding units are useful for defense, though. It's nice having a few artillary on your border to weaken attackers. It's much more effective that way since the enemy units are not healing, and they're not usually stacked.

As far as offense, you'd be better off losing a few units in an assault than wasting production on a huge number of artillary and then paying their support every turn.

[shammy]

about bombing again.. i find it annoying when i bombard enemy war galleon 10 times with my bombers and stealthbombers.. i cant destroy it. perhaps naval vessels should be destroyed utterly after heavy bombing since they got nowhere to hide and hull is still vulnerable.. imagine 50 stealthbombers to drop their payload on a iron clad deck.. what wil happen. it would rock if this would be possible after you develop smart weapons at least

[Eli]

Also barracks should be changed so that they will double the healing rate instead of healing in one turn.

[player1]

---NOTE TO FIRAXIS---

Units in cities sould only heal if city ISN'T in SEIGE.
SIEGE should exisit if:
-enemy units are in yours 21 tile radius, or
-ememy air units have that city in their range of operation

---END---

Something abaout that galley. It's strage, because,
bombing chace is 8/(8+1)=89% to make a hit & since rate of fire with bomber is 3, you take out 2.66 hp in turn approx.

But, maybe bombing CAN'T KILL a unit, than just damage it to 1 hp.
Personnaly if this is a case I think that it should be allowed to Fighters to have ability so kill units with thier "tactical" bombards.
Strategy: Bomb with bombers, then kill with fighters.
Anyway fighters & bombers have sinked many carriers in history, right?

[Stryfe]

The way to execute successful siege warfare (once artillery is around) is to bombard with 4-8 units a turn for, say, three turns. Or for longer with fewer units, if you have the time. At some point you will destroy the barracks, decrease the population to the point that it doesn't get any defense bonus, and destroy the city walls (usually). Sieges shouldn't be quick. They aren't. Mostly they involve soldiers sitting outside doing nothing. But I'm only talking about the industrial age and afterward.

In the ancient world, siege warfare is aggravating, since catapults seem to be almost useless (except in ambushes of stray swordsmen and for defensive purposes). Something has to be done to increase their power so that you don't need eight or nine of them to make a dent in a city. Cannons need help too. Both are unbelievibly underpowered.

[player1]

I really think that best way would be to make cities under SEIGE unable to heal their units.
That way you could actually do some damage & their units won't heal instantly next turn.

Just to note, bombard units are just OK as they are, regading killing pop or buildings (for those defense is considered to be 4 & they don't have hp, see edior)

Bombard units just barely (if ever) do any damage to units.

[CB2034]

just last night, playing as the english i was able to bombard with a man-o-war and destroy a unit. it was a persian spearman with 2 hitpoints left (yellow) and my man-o-war did two hits and killed it. i have noticed though if there are no improvements in a tile and the units there have only 1 hitpoint left u can not bombard.

[johnpaul_riley]

While I can understand many of your gripes with the system of
bombardment, the only one I really agree with is the idea a previous poster had about defining a "siege" state for certain cities to prevent their garrisons from healing.

Other than that, I think the bombardment system is FANTASTIC.

First of all, you do not win a war by strictly bombardment alone.
Historically, this is bourn out. WWII, gulf war, even current military action, bombardment is used to soften
defenses, damage the economy of an enemy, and disrupt
his ability to make war.

If bombarding could kill units, than the obvious strategy would
be to rely on bombarding solely. This way with the limitation
that units are only damaged, you are forced to use a
"combined arms" approach with a mix of
land forces/air power/naval power you get the full experience of a
cooridinated land/air/naval assault being the most effective and
safest means of invasion/attack which more closely mirrors
reality IMHO.

In my games, I have successfully pursued a strategy of using
bombardment in a few ways.

First of all you need a LOT of them to make a big impact. But
by using bombarding to soften up cities, you lower the population,
you damage the units. When you invade with land forces, they
win more easily, get promoted easily because they tend to survive. I rarely lose any units at all when I bombard a city for a few turns prior to invasion.

Secondly, DO not underestimate the ability of bombers to damage
the economy. In one of my games, I parked an aircraft carrier off
the coast of my enemy, and bombed his strategic oil supplies, which were 3 around one city. I couldn't invade that well protected city yet, so I just bombed the oil. I magaged to setup a trade embargo with the only other player who had oil against the enemy. Every time he used a worker to build roads on the oil, I bombed them. He couldn't build any oil based units, which in the modern era was crippling. After losing a few cities defended by cavalary agaisnt my modern armour, he sued for peace.

I didn't even need to invade the city which had the oil. If the
strategic resource is in their territory,but they can't build a road
to it, they don't get it. Very realistic in my opionion. There
are many creative and effective ways bombardment can be
used to cripple your enemy, above and beyond just attacking
units.

Kudos to Firaxis for modeling the intricate complexities of
warfare with a simple elegant solution.

-JP

[Grunthex]

I agree that the bombing system is very well done, with one caveat and one bug fix:

Obviously the fact I can NOT intercept enemy bombers will be fixed. That's the bug, so I can wait until the patch.

Caveat: Bombing SHOULD be able to sink naval units. Don't kill land units, but boats go DOWN to bombers.

[Skanky Burns]

Originally posted by Grunthex
I agree that the bombing system is very well done, with one caveat and one bug fix:

Obviously the fact I can NOT intercept enemy bombers will be fixed. That's the bug, so I can wait until the patch.

Caveat: Bombing SHOULD be able to sink naval units. Don't kill land units, but boats go DOWN to bombers.

Couldnt agree more. Good analysis

[Sarxis]

Bombing/bombard works great. I don't always look to take down unit health at first with my bombing runs and artillery poundings, but I love seeing messages like, "Our artillery has destroyed the barracks in Rome."

Now THAT is worth it!

[player1]

Summary:
Fighters should intercept bomber (BUG probably)
Ship should be sinked by air bombers (or MAYBE exclusevly with Fighters?)
Units should not be heled after bombard (or use that SEIGE option I stated), since bombers main role is to soften enemy defenses, by injuring (not killing) land units, not destruction of all buildings and killinig of all popultaion BEFORE that.

---GOOD IDEA---
Or maybe if your units are in the range of enemy artillery, ship, or operatiolnal rage of air units, they should not be healed (or optionally, should heal 1hp, if they have barracks)
---GOOD IDEA---

Note: while buildings & pop have defense of 4 agains bombard, other land units have too just to much high defense

Example: infantry in metropolis: 25 (all fortified)
tank in metropolis: 20
mech. inf. in metropolis: 45

I think that city bonus should not be included when bombing with air units.
(Artillery units have high bombing range so this won't hurt them)

P.S. I'm not sure is this system right (is city bonus used maybe only agains land attcking units?, or how city walls protects against bombardment?)

[Grumbold]

Unit healing is fine IMO. Bombard and assault or bombard to destroy the barracks. Don't expect it to do the job alone.

I can see the arguement in favour of bombardment sinking ships but again you have to consider the scale of the game. We're not building in a 1:1 basis so is it reasonable to assume that an air attack could destroy a whole fleet? To my knowledge there has been one recorded incident of a tank formation having every single vehicle destroyed by air attack (but crew surviving), none for infantry and none for naval battles. If a carrier unit represents just the carrier then it should be sinkable, but if it represents a carrier group then needing the last hp to be removed by naval attack is quite reasonable.

Massive bombardment has become a very popular means of modern engagement because it reduces the risk of friendly casualties and looks clinical, clean and scientific. You never capture any ground until the footsoldiers go in and rout out the survivors though. The only thing Civ lacks is a means of having enemy forts or cities surrender. The scale is too macro to properly model six month sieges, sapping, assaults etc differently to straight battles for ground.

[TheDarkside]

Here's what I think would make some good improvment:

I. Remove barracks incredible healing bonus, barracks do NOT improve healing at all under any circumstances. It just dosent make sense. The only other healing bonus will be units in a city, regardless of improvments- but they heal at twice normal rate- not fully healed in one turn.

II. Allow HOSPITALS to heal units fully in one turn, previous a barracks feature.

III. Aerial bombardment must be allowed to destroy naval units

-OR-

IV. Add a new feature to naval units... When naval units sustain 50% or more damage, they are checked at the end of every turn if they sink. The more damage it has taken, the more likely it is to sink at the end of the turn.

sound good or totally off?

[Haphazard]

I agree that bombarding units should only soften them up, and it should be a lot harder to bombard units in cities to submission. As for Darksides proposals:

I, II This combination would just leave the status quo. The healing of units by barracks represents recruiting reinforcement, so you could make a case for lowering the experience of the unit, but this is too complicated to easily put in.

III Agreed. Very important.

IV Hmm. Not convinced. How about ship units can only repair in ports?

[player1]

How quicky heal units in seige?
In reality, very slow.

My opinion is that any units in bombardement range should not be healed, or healed 1hp in cities with barracks (because of lack or supplies)
Still, units SHOULD NOT be destroyed solely by bombing (exept ships).

If you break the siege (remove those atrilley units or remove air threat), units should heal is they are now (quickly), since supplies have arrived.

[gfrazieror]

I agree that bombardment is handled well in the game. I also think that you should be able to destroy naval units by bombardment. I've noticed that you can't heal naval units anywhere but in port...this can be deceptive, because in the age of sail naval refits could be conducted away from naval bases.

I've found that on land, using artillery to harrass attackers is a good strategy. Artillery is not as effective as an offensive weapons, which, given how well it performed in those decisive (sic) battles of 1914-1918, is a pretty accurate historically.

[SlightlyMadman]

I really like the bombardment system, I think it's very balanced. I do, however, agree that it's sometimes totally ineffective. I usually find myself just hammering at them until the barracks goes, and then for 2-3 more turns to weaken their units.

Instead of compicated "siege healing" rules, or revamping barracks (which are pretty balanced, IMO), why not make it more likely for the barracks to be destroyed? Especially with bombers, important military installations would of course be targeted, and be far more likely to go down than something like a cathedral (although that will happen, too, eventually). Or maybe the bombers could specifically be ordered to destroy an improvement? That might make them too powerful, I don't know.

It's a good system as it is, but a little tweak like this makes sense, and allows for fewer civilian deaths (those always make me feel so bad).