Occasionally, one in fifty games or so, I’ll issue an attack command to some artillery, bombards if I recall, but they don’t do damage. They will sit there firing once, twice, many times while I wonder why it is taking so long to destroy a building. Issuing a move command and then a new attack command seems to fix the issue. In my notes the most recent time was specifically while attacking a Mongol town center.
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Bombards are one of the sieges I try to avoid using because they are especially buggy. Any cannon of every faction behaves kind of like this:
If building/units are in a position but it is not revealed by a scout or another unit, the cannons set up and don’t shoot. Fighting in stealth forests makes cannons forget they had a target, because units that have not been fully discovered by your units and shoot from the shroud are basically covered and do not exist for the bombard. This made me create scouts or sacrifice a unit every time I am attacking enemy walls. If cannons lose sight they just get stuck and will enter firing range or even go in a bad positioning.
Yea I know what you mean, I sacrifice a scout or units too to make sure the cannons have sight, but this is a different issue. 3-4 instances out of 400 games I’ve had this happen where the cannons are fully in range, in sight, arced around the building all firing, firing, firing; but no damage being dealt. Moving them a tiny bit seems to fix it.
I was wondering if it maybe it was an intentional mechanic related to terrain or other buildings in the way of the bombard’s target. It would make sense if the bombard projectile dealt damage to the first thing in its line of fire instead of a target that is behind many other buildings. It has no arc like the mangonel or trebuchet, can’t fire through stone walls, but I can fire through 3-4 buildings to hit a landmark. Kind of silly but that’s a separate suggestion.
Oh actually, the cannon balls hit walls that are in front, but it applies only to walls as you know already. Terrain elevation affects the range of the cannon and if you press auto-attack, cannons don’t have splash damage and focus units faster than buildings depending on how close they are to them.
I’ll try to play with bombards today to see how to trigger that thing because certain villagers can hide at the edges of the town center and that can cause the bombard to act like a dummy. In that case you’ll need a direct attack command to focus specifically the TC if there are no other distractions around.
There are definitely a couple of Bombard bugs active that are being worked on. Do you know if you’ve only seen this when Bombards are only attacking a specific building or unit @Heftydogg?
I only just started keeping track the last time it happened bombards vs a mongol hardest AI town center. I can’t say for sure what the targets were the other times but probably a town center or landmark.
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Happened again today in a 4v4 quick match. Three bombards pounded at a university for over 30 seconds without doing any damage, while some mangonels and spearmen were able to damage it. I moved the bombards slightly and they still did no damage. So I moved them all the way up to the university and they instantly destroyed it.
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Thank you for reporting @Heftydogg! We are definitely working on this.
This is still a problem. Have noticed it with bombard vs University, Town Center, Farm, and today a Mining Camp. Cmon guys. Can you give us an update on what the Devs have discovered about this bug in the past 6 months? Why is it not fixed?
This one is a combination of a few bugs; I believe the first fix is slated for the Season 3 update. That one should make it better in the majority of situations. Another small fix is coming sometime after.
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Encountered this again today with bombards vs mining camp.
Thank you for the video @Heftydogg! What civ were you playing? Any chance you have map seed info?
I was playing Abbasid, lost the seed.