Make Cities Weaker

[historix69]

I didn't read all the postings, just the op.

Recently I played a Civ5 mod where I tweaked the following :
- City attack range = 0 (cities can only defend)
- unit hit points 10 -> 20
- city hit points 30 -> 100
(+ other changes to buildings, science costs, etc.)

I enjoyed the game (on Giant Earth Map) very much. The AI founded hundreds of cities and used them as kind of Forts, most with a wall and a ranged unit inside. The AI was not able to capture more than a few cities during the whole game but was almost permanently on war with each other. There was no run-away civ. All civs stayed alive until the end of game. It felt very historical with all these small and medium sized civs around me. In normal games most civs are eliminated soon and continents turn into single-colored empires.

I suppose that making cities weaker will accelerate the run-away-process and will lead to early elimination of most civs.

Strong cities are definitely not historical but single-colored huge continents are also not historical.

[Atwork]

Strong cities are definitely not historical

Hmmmm....dunno how you come to that conclusion.

[historix69]

Strong cities lead to a game where cities cannot be conquered by the AI while in real history many cities including Athene, Rome, Carthage, Berlin, Alexandria, Babylon were conquered.

On the other side conquering cities in Civ5 is not historical since the conquered cities do not have the option to revolt and become independent again except when they are conquered by a third power which chooses to release them. Huge empires are too robust. In Civ5 Europe would probably be part of the Roman Empire for 2.500 years.

[killmeplease]

Originally Posted by Atwork

But, they're not repressing the people. They're emergency defense folks. Therefore, I don't think they should affect happiness, unless they were capable of reducing war weariness (which isn't presently a part of C5).

just name them guards, not militia.
guards were used to enforse laws as well as to defend a city. and they didnt just suppress riots but secure ppl from criminals which led to rise of wealth.
it think giving a guard specialist yields like +1 (or even 2) local happiness and +1 gold would make a perfect sence and make defensive buildings more valuable too.

[steveg700]

EDIT--Just realized that someone's necromancing.

[steveg700]

EDIT--Just realized that someone's necromancing.

[Targe]

Everyone is ignoring history. Untrained citizens are worthless against trained troops. Cities often fell without a shot fired, they surrendered en mass, at the first sign of the enemy.
I think undefended cities with no units should have zero combat ability. Should be captured immediately. To compeccompensate, give zero maint cost for garrisoned units, and allow limited stacking in cities.

[alpha wolf 64]

I would like to keep things as simple as possible.

City starts at 5 defense points.
Gets 5 (4 if puppet) more for each 10 in population, representing police, militia.
defensive buildings add a set amount, so maybe 5 for walls, 10 for castle, etc.
damage to attackers is like a citadel. range increases to 3 upon getting artillery.
land units in city get their full value added to defense. general adds 25.

nice and simple and fits with the way the game currently works.

[steveg700]

Originally Posted by Targe

Everyone is ignoring history. Untrained citizens are worthless against trained troops. Cities often fell without a shot fired, they surrendered en mass, at the first sign of the enemy.
I think undefended cities with no units should have zero combat ability. Should be captured immediately. To compeccompensate, give zero maint cost for garrisoned units, and allow limited stacking in cities.

Everyone's not ignoring history. We're bearing in mind that Civilization is not about historical recreation. To leave cities defenseless means that eveyrone should turtle up and huddle their units together rather than go out and actually do anything. After all, if you go wage war on one side of your empire, I can just blitzkrieg you and snatch all your border cities. Of course, while I'm doing that, somebody else is cheap-shotting me. And so it goes.

For this very reason, cities learned very the value of maintaining watches and militias. Any developed nation has internal defenses.