Artillery vs armor

No doubt about it, the howitzer (and stealth fighter) are my favorite city capturing units, when I have the corresponding techs. But what to do when you have techs "Mobile warfare" = armors and "Machine tools" = artillery? These two are that time the best attacking ground units. So, what should one build if he heads for world domination? My two cents here are: build artilleries!

Why artilleries? Why no armors, might one ask. After all, both of them have basic attack strength of 10 and armors have 3 movement points against the 1 of artillery. Further, an armor has more hitpoints (3 vs 2) and much better defence (5 vs 1) as well. IMHO, the difference is in artillery's fire power which is 2 opposed to 1 of the armor's. Besides, artillery is much cheaper: 50 shield vs 80 of armor's. So the artillery is very efficient taking alpine/riflemen behind city walls one at the time - you can expect very few losses if you use them. Not so if you use armors.

I do build armors in my games: they are great killing the partisans and all other off-city units or finishing off the weakened city defenders (in the rather rare case when the artillery died). Further, they can protect those weak artilleries outside enemy cities. And of course, they are good taking the counter attacks inside the newly captured city.

My point in writing this post is to find out if this is a common practise. Somehow I've got the feeling that the artillery is a bit underrated and the armors preferred by civers..

edit: corrected the fire power values
[This message has been edited by Marko Polo (edited April 02, 2001).]

[War4ever]

your probably right! Armors three attacks per turn make them very effective for ground assault. I like artillery for cities with walls but usually dips take care of those. Of course anything on a mountain in a fort needs artillery as well. I find the best ground assaults are with 12 armor 4 artillery and 8 dips for the ground assault.... this is assuming no howies of course.

The biggest reason i can see for armor is the nostalgia of civ 1...... armor was by far the killer of that game and to be honest my favorite unit in civ 2 for modern warfare as well

unfortunately..... my main assault in civ is the calvalry vs phalanx

My games rarely get to modern warfare even on a large map
[This message has been edited by War4ever (edited April 02, 2001).]

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Artillery's 3 FP versus Armor's 2, and Artillery being cheaper to build sounds good in theory. But don't you find that even if your Artillery do win, that they're kind of vulnerable when your turn ends? Leaving 1d units in the field always seems to mean their demise - even if I do take the city, the Partisans will often attack anything I've left in the field. Assuming I don't leave a Bomber over the stack of attacking ground units, of course. And aside from assualting cities, I find the Armor unit to be much more flexible... so the Artillery would be a very specialized unit in my games. Do you have any stats to compare Armor and Artillery as against Riflemen/alpines/mechs behind walls?

My own experience is that pre-Howitzer, bribing cities is a lot more time and cost effective... of course I play SP and don't see a lot of AI democracies. Despite saying that, though, I find Howitzer conquest to be boring... just a question of building enough of them, railroading them up to the AI and taking out his cities four by four (one by one is too slow ). Maybe I should try a no-bribe, no howie game... if I do, I'll give the Artillery approach a try.

Do you build a preworked fortress next to the city you're attacking a put a Rifleman or other defensive unit in there, stacked with your Artillery? That would be my tactic if I had the resources to make it work.


STYOM

[geofelt]

I am an artillery fan. The increased firepower of a vet unit makes all the difference. I now don't try to destroy walls; artillery does the job on all but difficult defensive terrain. When I now take a city, I get the full population. If I have engineers, I will build a fortress to protect the units before and after assault.
If I have a city that needs to defend, artillery is better than armor or howitzers. After you fire, the lack of movement keeps you in the protective city or fortress.

quote: Originally posted by Six Thousand Year Old Man on 04-02-2001 11:21 AM Artillery's 2 FP versus Armor's 1, and Artillery being cheaper to build sounds good in theory. But don't you find that even if your Artillery do win, that they're kind of vulnerable when your turn ends? Leaving 1d units in the field always seems to mean their demise - even if I do take the city, the Partisans will often attack anything I've left in the field.

Well it's good in practise too. About partisans, I usually take enough armors with me to kill the partisans, sometimes I bribe them if they are in rough terrain. I really hate partisans pillaging railroads! If I have enough units and feel like micromanaging , I surround the city with my troops so that there is no room for partisans to pop up. Then, if I can, I try to spread my artillery to many squares around the city to minimize the possible losses

Then I take advantage of AI built fortification where I station a couple of good defensive units between my newly conquered city and the rest of AI empire to take the blow of counter-attacks. To me, the AI counterattack on my artilleries is rarely a problem.

quote: Do you have any stats to compare Armor and Artillery as against Riflemen/alpines/mechs behind walls?

Actually, I do.. I just ran some test and here are the results:

Attacking a walled city on grassland with 10 vet riflemen, not fortified (am I right but I think fortification doesn't matter if you have city walls?)

Attack Defence Hitpts Firepts
Rifleman 5 4 2 1
Armor 10 5 3 1
Artillery 10 1 2 2

1. round
--------
10 vet armors: 4 successful, 6 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 9 successful, 1 casualty

2. round
--------
10 vet armors: 7 successful, 3 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 9 successful, 1 casualty

3. round
--------
10 vet armors: 4 successful, 6 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 8 successful, 2 casualty

4. round
--------
10 vet armors: 4 successful, 6 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 7 successful, 3 casualty

5. round
--------
10 vet armors: 4 successful, 6 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 9 successful, 1 casualty

6. round
--------
10 vet armors: 5 successful, 5 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 7 successful, 3 casualty

7. round
--------
10 vet armors: 5 successful, 5 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 7 successful, 3 casualty

8. round
--------
10 vet armors: 3 successful, 7 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 8 successful, 2 casualty

9. round
--------
10 vet armors: 4 successful, 6 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 9 successful, 1 casualty

10. round
--------
10 vet armors: 4 successful, 6 casualties
10 vet artilleries: 6 successful, 4 casualty


Summary
-------
Armors 44 successful, 56 casualties
Artillery 79 successful, 21 casualties

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This proves my (and Geofeld's) point, there is no need to sabotage city walls if you use artillery! You save the population and a bunch of city improvements. If you try sabotaging with diplos, city walls usually comes down last. You'll lose a lot of diplos and get an empty city with few population points, so..

There is one more thing: the riflemen I used in my test were all vets and very often AI's defenders are not. So in the game you can expect even better results using artilleries! Convinced yet?

quote: Originally posted by geofelt on 04-02-2001 11:44 AM After you fire, the lack of movement keeps you in the protective city or fortress.

Hmm, how do you move your units? If you move them with keyboard or using mouse arrows, your unit stays in his current square after attack, except diplos and spies. However, if you use mouse 'go'-command, then if the unit has enough movement points, it will go to that square after (successful) attack. Did I miss something?

[geofelt]

A unit with one movement always stays in place after a successful attack. A unit with two or more uses one point for the attack, then it will move if it was not too damaged and still has enough movement points to move into the defender's space. If it does not move, it may still have a "g" on the shield, and you may want to clear this before the end of the turn if you don't want it to move next turn. I always use the mouse pointer, not the keyboard to move. I would not think that this makes a difference. Using mouse clicks, I always leave the unit with no more movement unless I don't care if it goes astray.

[War4ever]

there is no doubt that artillery is great for the cities with walls..... armors flexibility as Geofelt stated is what gives it the advantage along with its defensive capabilities.

An army of artillery is good as long as your enemy can't counter attack. If you don't take out all the cities or get a cease fire then your in trouble. I rarely take engineers with me as the ai often has RR the whole continent.

However my production is usually great at this point in the game.... with a few cities producing around 80 shields. Actually any city doing this produces armour.

Plus on the homefront side , when those pesky barbs come in waves of twenty.... its better to have tanks than artillery for the three pronged attack.

Again the beauty of civ is that each game is different.... so are the conditions...so is production..... therefore each scenario requires a different train of thought

[Dis]

I never build them in regular civ games. Usually I'm so far ahead I just build armour. I wait until I get howies before going on the offensive. Until them armour is great for protecting your cities (killing approaching units etc.).

Artillary is great in scenarios where you are the same in tech. (nearly) as the opposing civ. And their cities have walls and they are geared for war (as in most scenarios). This really helps break the stalemate. But the require more work to protect them. And they don't work well on amphibious assaults (obviously) like in the pacific theater.

[La Fayette]

quote: Originally posted by Marko Polo on 04-02-2001 02:31 PM I just ran some test and here are the results: Attacking a walled city on grassland with 10 vet riflemen, not fortified (am I right but I think fortification doesn't matter if you have city walls?) Summary ------- Armors 44 successful, 56 casualties Artillery 79 successful, 21 casualties

Thank you for testing, Marko. I'm sure ST will be glad to know (since he's not yet finished testing catapults ).
May I mention that one of my beloved vet spies can do the job (bribing at 2/3 of the price, without any loss) much sooner(if you don't skip researching communism in time).

War4ever
unfortunately , my best assault in civ is vet horsemen against warriors

[War4ever]

i find that the calvalry vs phalanx is the time period of easy conquest..... you don't need to coordinate..... in the modern era the ai can counterstrike effectively if you don't take enough cities....

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

quote: Originally posted by Marko Polo on 04-02-2001 02:31 PM Actually, I do.. I just ran some test and here are the results: Attacking a walled city on grassland with 10 vet riflemen, not fortified (am I right but I think fortification doesn't matter if you have city walls?) Summary ------- Armors 44 successful, 56 casualties Artillery 79 successful, 21 casualties

Actually, I am convinced... I still prefer spies and eventually howitzers, of course, but if I do need to go on the offensive in the mid game, I'll definitely try Artillery... plus, I can keep Sun Tzu if I avoid MW

As for the fortification question, I thought it did matter, but I could be wrong. Either way, I would think Artillery would still be better than Armor against fortified Riflemen, in a similar ratio.

Thanks for the tip!

STYOM

[TCO]

A more fair comparison would be artillery and cavalry. Or catapults versus knights. I always pick the higher attack value unit, you can work around the trnsport issues. The winner takes all nature of civ2 favors high atack units.

quote: Originally posted by GP on 04-04-2001 12:15 AM A more fair comparison would be artillery and cavalry. Or catapults versus knights. I always pick the higher attack value unit, you can work around the trnsport issues. The winner takes all nature of civ2 favors high atack units.

I disageree. The armor is the end of the line of fast-moving high-attack units (horseman, knight, crusader, dragoon, cavalry, armor) and never get's obsolete. No doubt, it's better offensive unit than cavalry.

Inspired by GP's comment I ran a quick test attacking those 10 vet rifles in walled city with 10 vet cavalry (a8,d3,hp2,fp1) - and all of the poor guys with their horses died. I felt like a murderer sending them to a sure death..
[This message has been edited by Marko Polo (edited April 04, 2001).]

[La Fayette]

quote: Originally posted by Marko Polo on 04-04-2001 03:50 PM d. I felt like a murderer sending them to a sure death.. [This message has been edited by Marko Polo (edited April 04, 2001).]

Requiescant in pace...
My backyard is full of dead dips and spies; so, believe me, I'm with you!

[Blaupanzer]

Fortified units in walled cities matter to howies and bombers, as they ignore the walls. For the other attackers, the game gives the wall bonus INSTEAD of the fortified bonus to the defenders.

Do ships that attack care about fortified status? I know both units go to one in firepower, and units in cities with coastal fortresses benefit from that. I'm not sure whether a unit's fortification status or, for that matter, whether it is in an engineer-built fortress matters to the attacking ship.

[ColdWizard]

i usually build both artillery and armor, artillery to take out the tough cities and armor to shoot up any units that are blocking my way to the enemies other cities. there's almost no way i'd only build only one or the other

[La Fayette]

quote: Originally posted by Blaupanzer on 04-05-2001 12:02 PM Do ships that attack care about fortified status? .

I think they do ( = as ships ignore city walls, I suppose that the units inside the city get the same kind of defence bonus as if they were anywhere else: especially 'terrain' bonus and 'fortified' bonus).
That is why I advise to have a look before attacking a fortified phalanx inside a city built on good defensive terrain (hill or river). Even vet ironclads happen to lose now and then (but I haven't tested that thoroughly and my friend SlowThinker seems to be away, probably testing a new model of catapult somewhere ).


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aux bords mystérieux du monde occidental

[Scouse Gits]

In fact Slow Thinker was sidelined by the upgrade and has only yesterday come back on stream ...

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Scouse Git[1] -- git1@scousers.net

"Staring at your screen in horror and disbelief when you open a saved game is one of the fun things of a succession game " - Hueij
"The Great Library must be built!"
"A short cut has to be challenging,
were it not so it would be 'the way'." - Paul Craven

[Everyman]

There's no question that when you compare the two units -- artillery and armor -- armor is preferable due to its movement of three. But there are situations (for example when I'm conquering technologically backwards civs) when I'd prefer not to have armor in exchange for the effects of Leo's workshop.

By the end-game phase, I'm conquering cities by force or bribery. If I'm taking over cities by bribery, I may find the cities to be defended by inferior units such as musketeers or perhaps even phalanx, which, however, can be upgraded into riflemen due to Leo's workshop. Armor can only be obtained by going through Automobile, which means that you have to give up Leo to get it.

In other words, when I have a big tech lead, I'll conquer the world through bribery or by force using cavalry and artillery and hold off on armor.

[War4ever]

quote: Originally posted by Everyman on 04-06-2001 04:06 PM There's no question that when you compare the two units -- artillery and armor -- armor is preferable due to its movement of three. But there are situations (for example when I'm conquering technologically backwards civs) when I'd prefer not to have armor in exchange for the effects of Leo's workshop. By the end-game phase, I'm conquering cities by force or bribery. If I'm taking over cities by bribery, I may find the cities to be defended by inferior units such as musketeers or perhaps even phalanx, which, however, can be upgraded into riflemen due to Leo's workshop. Armor can only be obtained by going through Automobile, which means that you have to give up Leo to get it. In other words, when I have a big tech lead, I'll conquer the world through bribery or by force using cavalry and artillery and hold off on armor.

Hence why i stated earlier that my biggest conquest time is calvalry vs phalanx

quote: Originally posted by Everyman on 04-06-2001 04:06 PM There's no question that when you compare the two units -- artillery and armor -- armor is preferable due to its movement of three.

Agreed, against technologically backward civs I'd use armors too. However, the situation changes when you are attacking e.g. walled veteran riflemen. Then prepare to heavy losses if you rely on armors - only 44% of the attacks are successful. With artillery you are much more successful with 79% chance. See my test results earlier in the thread.

[La Fayette]

quote: Originally posted by Scouse Gits on 04-06-2001 09:37 AM In fact Slow Thinker was sidelined by the upgrade and has only yesterday come back on stream ...

Very happy to know he's back (still suspecting that he might have tested a new catapult in the meantime ).

[La Fayette]

SG(1)
I have good news.
Slow Thinker was in fact busy sending smileys to a friend in Slovenia

[SlowThinker]

La Fayette,
I bumped "Info: diplomats and spies" thread for you and I see you are taking a rest here...

[La Fayette]

quote: Originally posted by SlowThinker on 04-09-2001 06:48 PM La Fayette, I bumped "Info: diplomats and spies" thread for you and I see you are taking a rest here...

I'm on vacation tomorrow. Can't afford to get tired today.

[SlowThinker]

Ok. Bon repos!

{combat system}
{walls}{fortify}
{}{end2}{SlowThinker}

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This is a post with keywords. See a thread The Great Library: a hierarchical structure" thread.
[This message has been edited by SlowThinker (edited April 15, 2001).]

Artillery has more firepower but and in a siege artillery is better for breaking defense, armor does pretty well too, I choose artillery for sieging and armor for all-around.

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