Big Issues with city defence/defence buildings!

In think city defenses in general are bad.

If it wasn't the case, it wouldn't almost always happen on middle to higher difficulties for one AI to completely take out its own continent (which by the way, completely unbalances late game).

Plus, it's ridiculously bad the moment attacker gets range 3 artillery.
 
kaltorak said:
I think city defenses are fine. A city shouldnt be a warmachine, you need troops to defend it. The problem is you want the defense buildings to be better. I can't comment on that because I never use them. But I've read that 1 single catapult defending is better than all the defense buildings togeather.
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Agree. I think they should have some added value - increased fire range, great wall effect in city radius, citadel effect for city, something like that.
 
I agree that there should be a method to improve damage dealt by cities to units. Maybe boost city hit points a bit, but not sure about boosting them too much. Units should still be the key to fighting wars, or else you tip the balance so far in favour of "fortresses" that hardly any cities will ever change hands in a game.
 
kaltorak said:
I've read that 1 single catapult defending is better than all the defense buildings togeather
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That's a no brainer because the catapult gives you an extra attack and the defense buildings don't. The same is true early on for archers and the basic principle never changes. In coastal cities, you can get another extra attack from the city tile by parking a ship in the city.

Defense buildings may not do much for city attack, but they do help defend your units on the city tile, as their own health and strength doesn't count for defense, and their survival solely depends on the city's strength. Walls + castle can translate to as much as 50% better defense for your catapult. Of course, keeping the enemy away from your cities by other means is still more valuable.
 
I find it funny most people say, well if you loos a city you havent defended properly, I agree.

But for me it seems I can defend my city's with a few units but the AI cant seem to gather units to defend when I attack.

3/4 warriors/spears is easely strong enough to win from a capital city in the beginning on emperor. Thats where the error lies, I want a game thats hard to play where i have trouble taking city's.

Imo: make it so that all AI always get a free ranged unit in eatch city so they have some defence.
Or give AI city's a +5/15 str depending on the dificulty lvl.

Maybe people see it difrently but how this game now go's is if you want to win without to mutch trouble, make war. I would love to see that war matters but that its just as hard to win by war as by the other victory conditions (ofc ill go up in dificulty)
 
I think the big problem with walls is the maintenance. If you're fighting a war in 80BC and build a wall then you're still maintaining it in 2010. What's the sense in that?
 
bromidias said:
Imo: make it so that all AI always get a free ranged unit in eatch city so they have some defence.
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They already get this, at least on the higher levels. The problem is that they don't keep the ranged units in the cities, they send them out to the frontlines so they can be slaughtered easily by your troops. I guess a simple fix would be to tell the AI to keep at least one Archer in every city, and if a city is undefended then don't send out any Archers to frontlines until that city is defended. The more complicated fix, of course, is making the extra Archers (and all other units) fight properly on the frontline. ;)
 
Lord Parkin said:
They already get this, at least on the higher levels. The problem is that they don't keep the ranged units in the cities, they send them out to the frontlines so they can be slaughtered easily by your troops.
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This.

I got my deity achievement from a 52 turn game on a duel map. I was playing as Wu Zetian against Gandhi. I took his capital with I think three warriors and two archers. Gandhi had lots of elephants. But they all moved around in the general area.

What the AI should have done is keep them as far away as possible without losing the ability to shoot at every tile directly adjacent to the city (with range 2 units this basically means, on the other side of the city, I think if I had had more warriors, then the "farther away" should take precedence over the "without losing the ability to shoot..."). I think he could easily have killed my warriors but he didn't even try. In fact, on turn 51 I had one warrior and one archer left, and he focused all his efforts on... the archer. Including moving his elephants closer to the archer (who was of course not standing right next to the city). Then the warrior took the city on turn 52.
 
The simple truth is most players will not build walls or castles, that itself should highlight the need to re-think these buildings. I had already recommended that walls and castles increase the flat damage of the city bombardment feature as one option, but a hp buff to the city wouldn't be bad either.

Regardless, I am not going to waste 1-2 gold per turn per city for what amounts to no reasonable benefit...a catapult and a soldier or 2 nearby makes walls and castles obsolete.
 
Lord Parkin said:
The problem is that they don't keep the ranged units in the cities, they send them out to the frontlines so they can be slaughtered easily by your troops. I guess a simple fix would be to tell the AI to keep at least one Archer in every city, and if a city is undefended then don't send out any Archers to frontlines until that city is defended.
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Indeed, the fix of AI would be the best fix ofcourse ;)

But for the meanwhile, I think they should make it so that they must have a ranged unit in their city.
 
As far as I have gathered, the city strength should be compared to a unit strength in regard to battle outcome in melee combat. If a str 18 longswordsman attacks a str 24 city, he will most likely take more damage than he is able to give the city, but because the city can't "chase", he can do his damage and then retreat.

The same goes for ranged strength, if an archer with ranged strength of 6 attacks a strength 14 city, he will do a point or two of damage, whereas a catapult with ranged strength of 12 will probably do twice the damage. Having your city at 20 strength will prevent the archer from causing damage, but the catapult will still be able to do a point or two per barrage.

On the city offense, strength does not directly equal ranged attack strength, that seems to be a linear fraction, maybe 0.5 or 0.33.

Also, I think the era-defence multiplier also applies to building defenses?
 
kaltorak said:
Why don't you try to use the hammers and maintenance of those buildings in units?
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I'm sorry, but I have to agree with the OP here. City defense is clearly not scaling as it should. Yes you sir Kaltorak is right, it IS better to invest these hammers in units, but remember this:

The game designers made it very clear that they want the player to have more choices. The choice in this case would be between:
option 1.)fielding a lager army (with its upkeep) vs
option 2.) building buildings that improves defense and a smaller amount of units (maintanance vs upkeep should roughly break even with option 1).

Atm, option 2 is clearly not a viable alternative. To quote the game designers once more, "if the buildings/units are not worth the effort, why just remove them from the game" or something along those lines. (source not available atm, im at work).

TLDR version; I agree. City defenses needs a small overhaul, and I believe it will get it in a future patch. :king:
 
PibbZ said:
I'm sorry, but I have to agree with the OP here. City defense is clearly not scaling as it should. Yes you sir Kaltorak is right, it IS better to invest these hammers in units, but remember this:

The game designers made it very clear that they want the player to have more choices. The choice in this case would be between:
option 1.)fielding a lager army (with its upkeep) vs
option 2.) building buildings that improves defense and a smaller amount of units (maintanance vs upkeep should roughly break even with option 1).

Atm, option 2 is clearly not a viable alternative. To quote the game designers once more, "if the buildings/units are not worth the effort, why just remove them from the game" or something along those lines. (source not available atm, im at work).

TLDR version; I agree. City defenses needs a small overhaul, and I believe it will get it in a future patch. :king:
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Yes. All in all the buildings must have the ability to "pay for themselfs." Ofc leaving a city barren of troops is a no-no but what those defensive structures Should do is provide a few more turns of time for my troops to come and help or to whip a unit to defend etc.Also as said and confirmed by most people here the defensive buildings and melee units must provide bonus city damage .
 
When compared to all of the other civilization series, civilization 5 has really weak cities.

I don't think the guy is saying cities need to be all powerful, but I shouldn't fear for my entire civilization when a couple horsemen jump behind my lines.

maybe receiving damage is fine. if the mongols warped into the future and fired catapults at new york city would people die. The answer is a resounding yes.

I think the bigger problem is a cities ability to dish it out. A developed city should be able to beat any single siege weapon of its current era. Not much more mind you, but it should be able to ward off a rogue unit. Walls, and castles should also add more. maybe castles dealing 1 damage to adjacent units, and walls give you a second ranged strike? Just throwing out random ideas here...

Some of you will probably say that cities shouldn't be that strong, which is fine, but can we agree that their attack should do more then a damned archer?

It would also help a great deal if we received a discount on maintaining garrisoned troops. It costs me a ton to keep just a few units home to hold the fort down(literally) right now.
 
I think it's working as intended. Build ANY unit to take out a siege unit. They are incredibly weak and easy to take out. Just build a horseman or something. Whoever heard of a city who defended itself solely by bombarding the attackers? Get your ass out of the city and defend it. Take the fight to them. A good defense is a good offense, so to speak.

My point is that defensive buildings aren't the end all means to defense. You are going to have to build units to defend your cities.
 
Nutteria said:
And you think this is OK?

So its the same for a pop 4 city to have 20hp while pop 20 City with walls castle armory granary and 3 food resourses to have 20hp?!

This is false logic no matter how you look at it.

IMO if the food tiles(sheeps cows fish - etc etc etc) had the ability to add HP to the city they will make the map and city placement quite more interesting and tactical decision because right now they are not.

ALSO I suggest for the that the great general to have the option to build CItadel IN the city - for the cost of 4 GPT.(same goes for the rest of the GPs too! this can really make GP farming from useless to actually benefitial)
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Oh no, I do not agree. I think the great people system is fine the way it is, considering now cities can work 3 tiles wide instead of 2.
 
teks said:
I think the bigger problem is a cities ability to dish it out. A developed city should be able to beat any single siege weapon of its current era. Not much more mind you, but it should be able to ward off a rogue unit. Walls, and castles should also add more. maybe castles dealing 1 damage to adjacent units, and walls give you a second ranged strike? Just throwing out random ideas here...
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I quite like this idea. :)

teks said:
Some of you will probably say that cities shouldn't be that strong, which is fine, but can we agree that their attack should do more then a damned archer?
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Well, Archers are reasonably powerful in Civ5, so I'm not sure about that in the early game. However, later on cities should certainly do more damage than an Archer would.

teks said:
It would also help a great deal if we received a discount on maintaining garrisoned troops. It costs me a ton to keep just a few units home to hold the fort down(literally) right now.
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Indeed. Makes sense that units stationed in your cities should be cheaper, because they don't have any supply costs - unlike units stationed in foreign territory and overseas.
 
If it could be implemented that:
-city bombard damage would increase somewhat linearly with era advancement (i.e. each tech era you enter would add to city bombard damage or even increase range at some point, reflecting the efficacy of units gained in later eras)
-walls and castles could be sold off as your empire expands and the front-line cities change, thereby reducing maintenance ("selling buildings" is expected in upcoming patch)
-as above, reduced maintenance for garrisoned units

this would go a long way to balancing city defense. As CiV was meant to be a game of fewer units, cities would need to stand on their own, with modest support. I too think it should mean more to invest hammers in walls/castles for defense, but I haven't decided how best to do that.
 
In late game, cities do pathetic damage. Usually when you get infantry or mechanized infantry cities rarely do more then 1 point of damage to those units. Plus, those units are actually vulnerable if in cities (better defense if they are on hill nearby).

I think the problem is that late game cities have combat rating between 30-50 (more with buildings), and only 40% of it is used for ranged attack, which is really low against any modern infantry unit.


P.S.
Plus, I really think that cities need 3 tiles ranged attack from industry era and forward. Artillery units are way overpowered without that. If enemy units are crushed, you can take out cities from safe distance, with no chance to lose anything.
 
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