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Post by Atomation on Aug 27, 2006 14:13:53 GMT -5
I'd just like to point out that the addition of first strike as a supposed counter to catapults and collateral damage is a complete failure. 2 choko's with 7 first strikes protecting a stack on a hill still gets completely molested by catapults....after only 3 catapult attacks I look to see almost all of my 10 unit stack at the minimum health that can be inflicted from collateral. So are there any plans to fix this so that catapults are just this slowed uncounterable weapon that disallows anything that has 1 move from being able to attack? (2 move units are the weapon of choice mostly because they have the ability to dodge catapults to some extent).
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Post by swissy on Aug 27, 2006 14:53:56 GMT -5
The colateral protection starts with CD3 and FS3. Even then it is just a percentage decrease in amount of damage. In you situation, if I'm reading it correctly, the two cho-kos would each take at least one attack and get collateral from the two remaining. That's three attacks each on the cho-kos and 9 colaterals to be distributed to other units in the stack. You failed to say what the promos on the cats were, barrage2 would cause considerable damage to the non-FS3 units. Basically your stack wasn't big enough, nor did it contain enough FS3 units to hinder the cats significanly. I've found that cats will mess up a stack upto 4 times their number, so those three cats would do serious damage to your 10 units.
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Post by Tony on Aug 27, 2006 15:31:50 GMT -5
Due to the nature of the game catapults have to kill stacks no matter what they consist of, which is kinda lame but there is not soultion unless you totally re-design the game!
I think, the one thing that has stayed consistant from the first version of vanilla civ all the way to now, is in anciant games build catapults and build lots and lots of them, they can pretty much counter any stack, and they do a good job 1v1 agiasnt most units!
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Post by churchill1 on Aug 28, 2006 21:46:23 GMT -5
gotta test it baby. assume it is crap till proven otherwise ;D
I think the collateral promo is pretty weak from testing, but i can't prove it right now, so i may be wrong.
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Post by deviousdevil on Aug 29, 2006 9:25:16 GMT -5
Back from holiday, fit, bronzed and hopefully the tan won't flake off too quickly.
Right, as for catapults the easy "fix" for firaxis is to reduce the number of units affected by collateral damage per attack to 3 for catapults and maybe have it progressively increasing e.g 4 for trebs, 5 for cannon etc.
A reduction of the scale I've mentioned would still make catapults a worthwhile investment, but reduce the impact this seige weapon is having on open warfare.
As for the original post...I am pretty certain that the first strike promotions is there to reduce the impact of collateral damage on that unit. I am pretty certain it is not there to confer protection to other units in that stack, certainly that is my reading of the promotion.
Had your stack been 10 chokos with 7 first strikes, THEN I'd be interested if that stack was owned by the collateral, but to have only 2 and expect the rest of the stack to get a defensive bonus against collateral, that is something different.
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Post by thejesus on Aug 29, 2006 15:44:52 GMT -5
cats, cannons, etc, i think are pretty realistic. Cats we're used to throw everything from fireballs to dead animals into there enemy with great effect. In the civil war cannons devestated troops. The thing i miss is in civ 3 u could capture them just like in real life.
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Post by SweViking on Aug 30, 2006 8:12:23 GMT -5
If we are gonna reffer to the reality of the catapults or trebuchet ages wouldent the best "fix" be to make the catapult the siege weapon it was. To only be able to attack citys and from citys you could attack 1 tile out. Often in medieval times the catapults and trebs was assembled at the siege spot next to city walls or castle , as they were much to big to transport in 1 piece. A siegeweapon IMO should be only for a siege use, and if iknow my english correct, a siege is when pressing enemy inside city-walls and trying to capture town/city. Its almost as i think that the bombardment feature of catas and trebs would be enough, or decrease damage made by catas to 3 units maximum and maybe less in % also. A cata that attacks units in open field is redicules as catas was not very flexible to aim with and the only units they would kill in open field would be units that was chained to the ground and could not move when "stones was raining from the sky" For what i know it was hard enough to get em to hit the walls of the castle and now they can totally wipeout moving targets.. And how on hell can a cata have 5 power in defence or streanght when beeing attacked?? Should be 0,1 at most Oh well, catas in civ4 is like a big joke, not reflecting the history of the unit in anyway Oh well, im not sid meier but it seems iknow more about catas then him
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Post by Bantams on Aug 30, 2006 8:22:33 GMT -5
cats, cannons, etc, i think are pretty realistic. Cats we're used to throw everything from fireballs to dead animals into there enemy with great effect. In the civil war cannons devestated troops. The thing i miss is in civ 3 u could capture them just like in real life. yes would be nice if we could capture cats and even other units too as in the real world perhaps they could create pow camps for the next expansion would be a great idea and make the pows work as well like a chain gang building all my improvements would be nice
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Post by SweViking on Aug 30, 2006 9:23:03 GMT -5
Well we cant have all elements of reality in the game but when having units brought into game i guess it could be fun to make them so close to reality as possible. But maybe the best way of decreasing the cata effect is to make it cuase similuar effect in colleteral damage as a fighter or a bomber makes. We all know that a bomber cant damage a unit more then to 50% of its original power. So for unexample a knight can be "bombed" down to 5 maximum. IMO the bomber is more likely to damage more then 50% then a cata.. Maybe the cata should only damage down to maximum 75% of the units original power. So the knight in this case should go down to maximum 7,5 in power...Donno, but when my knight stack become levels like 1,2 and 0,8 after a cata stack have attacked me in open field, then i wonder who programmed this game... Aperently someone that skipped history lessons and ran away to the computer room
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Post by SirPartyMan on Aug 30, 2006 10:33:05 GMT -5
One of my big gripes against catapults in CIV3 is they only bombard cities when you are the attacker outside the city.
I miss the ability for the cats inside a city to bombarb units (both land and naval) one unit away from city. Historically, that certainly happened.
I even think cats should have bombard when "on the march" as well before they reach a city.
Just my two cents.
SPM
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Post by knupp on Aug 30, 2006 11:39:33 GMT -5
Siege weapons imo are a bit overpowered in this game. I'd like to see them to stay the way they are now but with the addition of being able to get captured. In ancient games you won't always see somebody march a stack of 3 elephants and 20 catapults up to your city. You could just kill those 3 phants with spears and capture the catapults. Would add a lot more realism and fun into the game imo. How often do you think an empire took a city with 20 catas and no soldiers!
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Post by Canucksoldier on Aug 30, 2006 11:40:36 GMT -5
One of my big gripes against catapults in CIV3 is they only bombard cities when you are the attacker outside the city. I miss the ability for the cats inside a city to bombarb units (both land and naval) one unit away from city. Historically, that certainly happened. I even think cats should have bombard when "on the march" as well before they reach a city. Just my two cents. SPM That was my first response during development as well, but the reason this was not used is that it would make a unit in Civ4 that can attack other units(in the open) without taking any damage. Which is why cats attack like every other unit and take there share of damage from direct assaults. I haven't looked at Dale's combat mod to closely but in that mod cats are more Civ3-like and can bombard units in the open, but I'm not sure how he balanced that in the game as a whole. CS
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Post by churchill1 on Aug 30, 2006 12:39:52 GMT -5
Donno, but when my knight stack become levels like 1,2 and 0,8 after a cata stack have attacked me in open field, then i wonder who programmed this game... Swevi it's impossible for a catapuilt to inflict damage to this point with collateral. There is a limit but it is only 50% hp for catapults, i.e. a stack of catas can take a stack of knights down to know more than 5.
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Post by swissy on Aug 30, 2006 17:54:30 GMT -5
Donno, but when my knight stack become levels like 1,2 and 0,8 after a cata stack have attacked me in open field, then i wonder who programmed this game... Swevi it's impossible for a catapuilt to inflict damage to this point with collateral. There is a limit but it is only 50% hp for catapults, i.e. a stack of catas can take a stack of knights down to know more than 5. You forget that each cat makes it attack in turn, so that a fresh cat will be attacking a collateraly damaged knight at some point. This is where the knights take a beating in that the fresh cats will take the knights below the 50% mark. Yes, the cat will most likely die, but the knights will be pretty beat up. It is even worse with Warlords and the immunity of seige to other seige until all the non-seige in the stack are gone. Typical attack sees the attack stack taken down by defending cats to a point where all the non-seige are 50% or below. So that only the attacker's catapults remain as an effective attack unit.
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Post by churchill1 on Aug 30, 2006 18:43:16 GMT -5
Of course that is true but killing a stack of knights solely with catapults will be very expensive. Well i woulda thought so anyway. So i wouldnt be too worried if someone did this to me.
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Post by SweViking on Aug 31, 2006 1:53:08 GMT -5
Naa
Killing a stack of 10 knights with 15 catas is much cheeper then the 10 knights to build.
And with my experiance, maybe 1/3 of the catas withdraw or win also and the knights are dead.
So 10 knights loss vs 10 catas loss is a big win IMO.
And as swissy said, its not completly the collateral that makes knights go down to numbers like 1,5 in power. But if you hit with 5 fresh colleteral 2 catas and then hit with the remaining 10 it will almost erase every knight in the stack. Or you can kill of with archers with a 99% win chance.
So when a knight is power 5, it should be impossible to attack at all with the cata, thats my suggestion. Just like a bomber.. And a cata should only make collateral damage, not be able to use its own 5 power. Like a machinegun, not a attacking unit.
And catas cost like 23 hammers to build, way to cheep IMO with that damage it can inflict. Maybe about 40 hammers would be more reasonable...
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Post by Atomation on Aug 31, 2006 19:50:04 GMT -5
I think everyone is getting way off the point here....
Catapults are good, even overpowered, but the way they work in the game is necessary, or balanced stacks would be basically undefeatable. However, they do need some kind of counter - and this is where first strike comes in. No one really uses first strike much anyway, so why not just have first strike units default defend against collateral attackers, and when a first strike unit defends the collateral effect is reduced to the whole stack? This is how I thought the first strike improvement would work, when I read the manual, and I remember thinking how clever it was. Apparently I gave too much credit!
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Post by deyreepher on Aug 31, 2006 20:16:04 GMT -5
Never say never. 1st Strike is one of my favourite promotions. However, MissLadyLuck there does have a point. In stack defense, it would be nice for the 1st strikers to get their shots off. But then think about what we're saying here:
1. Would you have all defending 1st strikers fire off in succession before the attacking siege unit does its attack? It would probably result in more combined arms stacks, but I would like to see this tested. I have a sneaking suspicion such a system could be abused in some way.
2. The highest rated 1st striker defender is called up to defend against the catapult. Chances are you'll have Archers before you ever get to Crossbows. Having Archers defend every time against Catapults when there are better units at defending would piss me off. I would rather that Horse Archers (if anybody actually builds these in an ancient start) defend against these suckers.
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Post by notagoodname on Aug 31, 2006 21:07:26 GMT -5
It's been said a ton of times in different threads but...
Hey Firaxis! Make cats cost more!
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Post by rupman on Sept 4, 2006 17:22:54 GMT -5
Seige weapons should be like they were in civ 3 plain and simple. When people are building stacks of seige weapons and little to no ground troops it's just slowed. Infantry have always been the largest contigent of an army save Ghengis Khan's, but even he added a large element of it later on. Seige weapons shoud be a compliment to an army not the major component.
While I'm on the topic of rediculous units in civ. Swordman are still damn near worthless. I maybe build one swordman once a month to go against a guy with no metal but has archers or LB's in a city. In most cases a swordman would own an axeman because axes tend to be clumsy. Also a phallanx would more than likely own axes since the axemen would get run through with spears before ever getting close to the axes. The only unit that was able to effectively counter the Greek Phallanx was the Roman Legion and that was due to the ease at which the Roman Legion could move as compared to the tight fomation of a Phallanx. Because of this the Legions would own the Phallanx on any terrain other than flat land. Which brings me ot another point. The phallanx gets a defense on hills even though the phallanx couldn't hold it's formation well on hills and therefore made it weaker. It's the whole damn reason the Romans conquered Greece with ease.
Someone PM Firaxis and tell them they suck at life.
Also Knights and Cavs should be able to dismount and fight on foot. They did it in real life all the time. They should be able to do it in game. When dismounted they would a move point and it should take a move point to dismount, but spears and pikes would lose their effectiveness against them and the unmounted Knight or Cav could receive defensive bonuses.
I'm gonna stop now. I could go on all day.
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