Balancing bombard against siege

First of all this suggestion is thought to improve team games/free for all and probably would have little impact on the 1v1 ladder.

A problem we have at the moment with the bombard is that it is simply too strong against other siege considering its purpose. In the late game you’ll see people spamming bombards and they can trade reasonably with culverins and springalds. I know that those two will trade better costwise but consider that those two basically only kill siege and the bombard can kill anything. So in the late game it is better to cap your pop with bombards than to risk having culverins and springalds that can’t do anything if there isn’t siege in their range. The bombard as it is is strong enough to undermine the diversity in siege composition in the lategame since it allows you to deal with countersiege (unless you’re severely outnumbered) and keep pushing buildings.

This is specially problematic if we’re talking about the Chinese bombard that absolutely dominates in the late game. It gets bonuses to range, HP and reload time making it above any rock-paper-scissors mechanic and an absolute nightmare to deal with.

Suggestion:

  • Bombard has 60% accuracy when shooting land units
  • Increase culverin range
  • Increase keep cost to 1000 stone to avoid excessive turtling

With those modifications you’re forced to deversify your siege comp depending on your intentions instead of mindlessly spamming bombards.

Yes bombards are overpowered. 2 to 3 bombard shoots are enough to destroy stone walls.

I don’t like your suggestions.

Remember, bombard are very expansive 400 Wood, 600 Gold, so 1k ressources. Fortuntaly for this cost it is strong.
If you play frenchpass on teamgames, we would know culverins are far superior than bombards, but not all civ have the culverin…

What you are suggesting is just : => i have a civ that have culverin, you don’t, i won. I guess you play mainly a civ which has acess to culverin…

Keep for 1000 stone is crazy. Keep are used in castle age and not that much in imperial, and it will totally break 1vs1 to have keep for 1000 stone unlike what you are saying.

If you nerf bombard vs units, it will make mass elephants too strong.

Also in 4vs4 teamgames wonder victory is busted, because of how gigantic are the maps and how easy it is to survive 15 min with turtle. And what you suggest would just make it worst.

2 Likes

My suggestion would make the culverin stronger yes, but the springalds would also become stronger relative to the bombards. Culverins would be stronger (as they should), but springalds would remain quite viable. Even though they cost a lot, bombards are still way too versatile specially when you consider how they can hold their ground against springalds and culverins. In my opinion it breaks the rock-paper-scisors principle because of how well rounded they are. A suggestion which I think would be valid as well is to increase assemble time.

I don’t know what kinds of games you’re playing but I see keeps being spammed in Imperial like crazy with the keep rush being used quite frequently so I think it would be fair to increase their cost.

Also how would my suggestion make the wonder victory worse if increasing the cost of the keeps will make it significantly harder to turtle. Bombards will remain just as effective against buildings you just can’t mindlessly spam them.

And lastly I don’t think mass elephants is anywhere near becoming a problem at the moment and even with bombards nerfed the handcannoneers and crossbows will still be extremely effective against them. They’re already a better option after the mangonel nerf.

How about bombard/culverin elephants? That sounds cool…