AI Bombardment and Bombardment in general

Zizka · November 14, 2001, 13:45

In recent game I saw something bit silly. the AI bombards tiles with its own units on it (but those tiles are mine).. ALso the AI will rather bombard a tile with an improvement than a city/unit. I was laughing silly as fleet of ironcalds kept popping turn after turn attacking a desert tile with a road and mine.. and missing

WHich brings me to my next question how the *bleep* does artillery miss?? If I bombard a city I may not hit unit.. but people or improvements.. But City is pretty hard to miss... as are static tile improvements.

Lobbing shells into city is bound to do SOME damage ..LOL just ask the you-know-whos who are being whalopped right now..

Z

The Eliminator · November 14, 2001, 15:20

Oh man I know! I had a fleet of destroyers with two battleships, and their mission was to knock out enemy roads and city defences. How surprised was I when my high tech killing machines were missing pikemen. What was even worse was when my badd-ass battleships rolled up and "failed" to wipe out improvements. C'mon, I thought the artillery and catapult was bad.

I HATE BOMBARDMENT - was theoretically a great idea.

jbird · November 14, 2001, 15:53

Im an avid user of bombardment.

As to why it would miss, it's quite common in warfare to completely miss any targets of value. In a city, if you blast the snot out of a park, you didn't do much dmg overall. If you only hit some light industry, you didn't really damage the city. If you just churn some rubble into a different pile of rubble, you didn't damage the city.

As for bombarding tiles instead of units, I myself use this to a great extent. If the unit in question is either not going to be killed by some of my ground forces that very turn, or is not a threat to kill any of my units, then i'd rather hit his terrain. This denies him the effective usage of that terrain, cutting down on his food, commerce, and production. In addition, he has to re-task workers to rebuild his infrastructure, even if the war stops (in the same way that his pikeman will just go somewhere and heal, nullifying the bombardment's effects).

I especially do this with bombers. I'm generally waiting on my artillery and infantry to march to the city, so why hit it now? Instead, play havoc with his road network, and make it impossible for him to effectively reinforce the front. If you are able to destroy his road network, even for just one row of tiles, it'll take him at *least* one more turn for mounted warriors to reach your position, and *two* more turns for leg infantry to reach you. These extra turns can sometimes be *invaluable*.

As for ironclads missing in bombardment, well, they're just not that heavily armed.

Jbird

derdede · November 14, 2001, 16:56

Actually the same applies for cruise missiles. Since they are a bombardment type of unit, you cannot put them on a sub, but instead have to use a transport ! They have a movement of 2 ! They should be considered missiles, like nukes.
I think the whole bombardment concept might work better, if a unit is allowed to kill. Why should a cannon or catapult not be able to destroy a spearman ? Why can't a cruise missile destroy a ship ???

daktaklakpak · November 14, 2001, 17:42

I have notice that if the AI ship's health bar drops to yellow or red, it will turn back in the next turn without even trying to unload the landing party. As long as I keep their ship health low using a bee line of artilleries, no AI land unit ever touches my shore. The wounded ships are just free meals for my ironclads. To me, the AI seems perfer to feed the fish than to do some real damage on my land.

Zizka · November 14, 2001, 18:18

I am not disputing the wisdom of bombarding/attacking terrain improvements.. but the AIs tenacity to destroy a mine in desert (12 ironclads, several destroyers and 2 frigates) versus attacking/bombarding a nearby city which was under siege(no bombardment there) seems silly.

Yes i can understand the logic of "missing" in an an abstarct sense but when you are attacking a walled city for example.. how hard is it to miss the wall .. and dont forget we're not talking about one gun but in game terms a battery or flotilla. If you get bombarded with several battle ships (representing each a small task force) ..several times its more like the shelling of Normandy. Look at what ONE bombing raid did to Dresden.. I agree that PERCISION bombing (specific target) is i highly chancy even with the best technology (see desert storm/afganistan) but can do severe collateral damage even if the target is missed causing fires, dislocations, and transport logistics problems...

LOL it would even be tad easier to swallow if teh message wasn't "missed" but rather "Minor collateral damage" or somesuch

Z

jbird · November 14, 2001, 19:37

Dresden was a few *hundred* bombers over 3 days, I believe. I think that the actual number of bombers deployed to Dresden would number over 1,000 total (counting the same bomber making multiple trips). This is far more power than your claim of a single bombing raid.

Now, as to why in the *world* the AI wouldn't bombard a city that he was attacking, I have *no* clue lol!

Maybe he wanted to keep the city improvements? I dunno how that script would work, perhaps Firaxis will explain it someday.

That being said, Ironclads do (and should) stink as bombardment options. They uniformly had a small number of guns, all with fairly shallow trajectory, all with relatively low muzzel velocities and somewhat small projectiles. This is why "mortar barges" were used to supplement an Ironclad's anti-land abilities.

You're dead on about the message, i'd tweak it too if I were Firaxis, but only after fixing some of actual bugs, like Air Superiority lol.