Bombarding... too many failed artillery attacks and bombing runs?

[AJ Corp. The FAIR]

Originally posted by Jarvin
It depends on what kind of artillery you are using, catapults and cannons are useless, period.

Not true !!!

They ARE useful ... that is ... in their proper era.

Imaine you being attacked in ancient era by a stronger rival. You're forced to defend ...
A good road network can gather your defensive units in the soon to be besieged city. Having a couple of catapults to reduce enemy's hitpoints before they attack -and often reducing one more when they actually attack- can result in defeating the enemy's forces instead of losing your city.

Believe me ... I've experienced this already a couple of times

Love those ancient battles, a pity the era flies so quickly though

AJ

[Mad Bomber]

Originally posted by AJ Corp. The FAIR


Not true !!!

They ARE useful ... that is ... in their proper era.

Imaine you being attacked in ancient era by a stronger rival. You're forced to defend ...
A good road network can gather your defensive units in the soon to be besieged city. Having a couple of catapults to reduce enemy's hitpoints before they attack -and often reducing one more when they actually attack- can result in defeating the enemy's forces instead of losing your city.

Believe me ... I've experienced this already a couple of times

Love those ancient battles, a pity the era flies so quickly though

AJ

The use of multiple cats is magnified in effectiveness when you consider that the AI tends to assault a beiseiged city in groups of one or two units at a time.

[MPatton]

Air units suck. besides by the time these come available I already got 80 or 90 arty So screw the air force except fighters and just mass produce tanks
both kinds arty rules and land bombarders never die unless their transport is sunk
naval ok except the low end stuff like frigates
cannon ok good against rifleman
catapult have not tried
I think the way it works is this
arty is 12 bombard infantry the same but rifleman is 6 so arty will blast the crap out of a rifleman or lower but a mech inf it will miss alot
I got it down where I move 1 turn or maybe more depending on culture bombard and the same turn attack and take over. I bet level of difficulty plays a part of it to
Also arty can shoot back at naval units coastal fortress can too but can be destroyed by bombardment.
The AI seems to use arty and cannons for defense and bombers to destroy terrain improvements

[Worthingtons]

The Cost of 30 Arty is wrongly imagined. Which will do more damage , 30 tanks or 30 arty?? it need not answering, but if consider the indefinate useful life of Arty it's a small price to pay (providing you defend you're stack!), The damage that Unit's like tanks do is often paid for in the form of heavy casualties. Even MA vs MI you will lose a LOT of units on one average defended city.

[Jon Shafer]

Originally posted by Rob_S
Shock and awe.

As others have said, you need to pick the right moment to use bombardment units. They're not the kind of unit that you throw into battle because you need a unit (like Tanks), but ones you plan for in advance and use to their full potential.

[glsunder]

Does anyone else use cruise missiles? I started using them a few months ago and even though they're fairly expensive being one shot, I've found them to be very effective against cities. I prefer to keep cities and roads/RR intact, since they're going to soon be under my care and I'll need them to move troops to move to the next target.

In current game (huge map), 3 turns after getting MA, I was able to conquer the vikings (about 25 or 30 cities) in 2 turns by using cruise missiles on the border cities and saving my armies as nutcrackers against large cities that the cruiese missiles couldn't reach. It would have taken a huge number of bombers or arties to achieve that and the cities would have been nearly useless.

[Jaybe]

Yes, if you want to capture cities intact, with population and improvements, cruise missiles are the way to go.

[Qilue]

I think the failure rate of precision strikes needs repair.

During a recent game, the failure rate when doing precision strikes with stealth bombers was around 60% (I don't have hard figures yet).

Also, different units seem to do diffent damage when bombarding cities. Radar arty seems to usually hit buildings first whereas aegis cruisers usually hit the garrison or citizens. These two units also seem to have low failure rates compared to battleships and standard artillery when bombarbding cities and/or tile improvements. Infact, battleships and artillery were better at bombing tile improvements than bombers.


Stealth bombers are hopeless for doing both and the intercept rate by jet fighters appears much higher than 5%. I once had 4 stealth bombers in a row intercepted when attacking a tile between 3 cities. This leads me to believe that each intercepter gets a separate check to see if it intercepts a bombing/airdrop mission. Curiously, recon missions do not seem to be checked for interception.

Bombing ships with planes however has much better success rates and can be quite effective.

I like air power and in civ3, it worked just right. There were failures, and interceptions, but in ptw, interception is the only thing that works with the rest being almost totally broken.

EDIT
Cruise missles. I modded these to have a range of 4. This had the effect of the AI sniping at any ships heading home for repair along with any unit I had near their border.

I like them and tend to build way too many, although I do use them on massed barrages to remove a radar tower or pests that stay out of arty range off my coast.

[Dida]

I doubled the bombardment value of everything in my mod. Bombardment value of Cruise Missle is more than doubled. And Ageis Cruise can carry some missle.
I also gave Ageis Cruiser 'intercept' ability, and Radar Arty 'Precision Strike', would this work?
It will be wonderful to have my Ageise Cruiser shoot down enemy bombers. It way Ageis Cruiser is used in real combat.

[Worthingtons]

Doubled - crikey...

Are Tanks still worth bothering with?? , I mean I dread to think of the damage a good squadren of Bombers to the AI before you could roll in with any unit with a reasnable attack value.

[Dida]

of course, things such as bombards and arty got more expensive.
But from my play expensive, doubling bombard strength enhance the game play.