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]

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]

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.

[Enigma]

-Catapaults suck. Period

As far as arty I tried to outnumber enemy units in a city 5-10 to 1... overkill always helps.

As far as the 1 movement rate remember that *any* movement rate is effectively infinite when it is moving over rails that belong to your empires borders... the solution?

Focus on expanding your empire's borders right before moving in Arty. I was often able to fire from within my borders into enemy bases when I brought settlers along into combat, this makes it simple to get the most out of your artillery by having it fire every round.

It is always important to get city sizes below 6, and improvements don't matter when you raze a city no matter what (not like this game gives you much of a choice)

Artillery is also useful for destroying enemy roads etc... isolating bases.

[David Floyd]

I use arty MUCH MORE now than earlier, actually...it makes for much more realistic military campaigns, and even though it was a useful tactic I was never to comfortable with "Howitzer Rushing" civs in Civ2...much too easy, much too boring, and very unrealistic.

[David Floyd]

And catapults certainly do NOT suck! You build some cheap catapults early in the game when you have nothing else to build, say in one of your top cities which has maxed out improvements and wonders and whatnot, and then upgrade them to Radar Artillery or whatever it's called a few hundred turns later! Same thing works with Spearmen->Mech. Infantry.

[Kc7mxo]

As long as I'm not playing on a pangea map, i find that a fleet a battleships is a wonderful force. In my last game I simply sailed up and down the japanese coast bombarding cities for a few turns and then assaulting with marines. Casualties among the marines were ussually one or two per city, but these were some sweet cities at the begining of the war.

Admittably there wasn't anything left when i was finished.

[duxup]

I use them for offense and defense. I think they're much more realistic now than in Civ 2 (the howitzer was far to powerful). They're great for offense when you want to "trim down" the population and defenders before invading. Just one or two notches off their health makes a huge difference when they're fortified in a city.

Defensively they're great for holding your position or city you just took that might be faced with a stiff counter attack. Also defensively I use them to fend off bombardment from enemy ships. The AI seems to love raiding or "nuisance" attacks along your shores with his ships (a good strategy) when you're at war. I've found artillery often wild do a good job of driving them off or softening them up for one of my ships to come along and sink them easily.

As for movement. I think having artillery move slow isn't too much of a problem. Until mechanized infantry your defensive units usually don't move any faster so they pair up with the artillery quite nicely. After all moving artillery unguarded in real life is no better an idea than it is in Civ 3.

[cort]

the trick about support units like artillary & cannon, etc. is to use them is vast numbers in which case they are EXTREMELY useful.

1. they are cheaper to build compared to other units
2. they take no damage hence you dont have to "attack, retreat to freindly territory & wait for heal & attack again" cycle comparing to a say cavalary rush
3. even a 24 sized metropolis with all improvements & defended by 5 elite mechs can be reduced to a size 6 town & all improvements destroyed & all mechs have 1/5 hit points by bombarding with 10 artillery in a few turns and can be captured quite easily.

on defense, they are equally useful as well, stack 10 artillery in a city which is attacked by 5 tanks, at least 4 of 5 tanks will lose all their hitpoints even before shooting a single shell.

[Jason]

I redid my recent riflemen vs riflemen war, only this time I changed about half of my riflemen to artillery during the buildup phase - about 10 artillery, 6-7 riflemen to start. It worked MUCH better than the pure foot-troops war. Each city I attacked I took below 6 population to begin with. As well on the turn of the attack I was always able to get the entire garrison down to 1 hp each. Instead of losing half my army with each town I took, I only lost one now and again, especially once I captured Rubber and upgraded infantry.

I conquered my enemy in a much shorter time without losing my tech lead because I didn't have to constantly rush-build replacements to keep the initiative.

I must say, from now on I'm going very artillery heavy.

[Shaka II]

I have to agree that the artillery is much more realistic now than in Civ II and I also use it in offense and defense. Defensively, when opponents (tanks in particular) are weakened to one or two hit points, than they can be taken out even by cavalry most of the time (as long as they aren't on hills). Since there is no upgrade for cavalry, I let them do some of this clean up work, when all my tanks have already played. I lose a few along the way, but this is a good way to go. My pikeman, I upgrade to infantry or mech infantry!

Presently, I am fighting against 5 civs, 4 of which are on my continent. Offensively crushing the Russians on one side, while defending against French, Greeks, and Romans on the other front (these darn mutual protection treaties).

Main problems are:

1) Being careful to bombard cities down below 8 or so, because they defect quite easily if they are larger, like 15 or so. I hate to completely raze the city, especially if is a wonder city (I don't know what happens to the wonder). Also, all that wasted infrastructure.

2) Enemy bombers destroying my improvements like mines and irrigation, etc., is taking it's toll, not to mention the hit on productivity from switching from democracy to commmunism.

I think in future games I will find a more delicate way to wage war without fighting 5 civs at once.

[Jason]

That's the great thing about artillery.

Why bring a settler along to re-found razed cities when you can just blow the bejesus out of the city till it's pop 3 or so, and probobly likely to starve down to one or two while you force the enemy off it's city radius and get rid of resisting workers? Just as easy and you get any wonders or improvements remaining.

It's a little depressing getting messages telling you you've wrecked the harbor, barracks, cathedral, university, library and granary on the same turn that you capture the city, but hey, beats losing 50% of your field army to full strength defenders.

[Cookie Monster]

I think it was Josef Stalin that once said "artillery is the god of war". Artillery (catapults) are very useful in this game if used correctly. Sure it takes forever to move them to the front. If you make sure they are protected with escorting ground units and you have the patience to move them to a heavily defended enemy city they can really aid in the swift capture of said city.

For example, if you attack a city that is well defended then you must have at bare minimum one extra attacking unit than the defenders have. Maybe you'll be able to take that city. However, if you have some artillery, then those same attackers can wait a turn while the artillery comes to the front. Next turn, bombard the city and then use your attackers to take out all the defenders. One strategy I try to use is place a few units on the roads that are on the opposite side of the city from where I'm attacking. This will help locate units that are trying to reinforce the city.

It's a long and tedious process but it is also methodical and it works.

2cents

[Ruiner]

I also think Arty is great. I generally build fortresses inside my border with another civ, put a few arty, defenders and offensive units. That way when I declare war I can defeat most of the AI's units before they get to my territory.

Adam