Wall`s of Babylon

I was playing an immortal game yesterday. I defeated montezuma`s attack on turn 134 quite easely with 4 babylon bowman and a good city. Montezuma diddnt even bother to attack my city and all it could do was hurt my archers of which none actually got killed. Montezuma had an army of 7 jaguars, 3 archers and 2 chariots.

Then i was thinking why diddnt he attack my city itself. The city was located on a hill, behind a river. It has 23 shields and a population of 5. The thing is that massive army of his couldnt even take the city when i withdrew my army. All 7 jaguars committed suicide on the wall`s of babylon or got shot by the city`s attack. My city diddnt even have an archer unit to defend itself. And its healthbar diddnt even go much below half.

What can we tell about all this? Is the wall of babylon so strong that a big army without siege weapons cant hurt it? Are citys in general just very strong? Is the ai unable to effectively attack and capture a good defended city. (i doubt the ai is that dumb cause it moved quite effectively. shot the city with arrows first and attacked with melee later. I couldnt do much better except maybe come from different angles instead of a big blob. But this could only like safe me 2 turns.

Im having fun with it. Guess i might even do with 2 bowman instead of 4

Anyone had simular experiences or commands on this post please join in.

So your city is on a hill, across a river, he brought no siege untis, and you had the Walls of Babylon?

He didn't stand a chance. Monty would have had to have brought closer to 25 Jaguars and some more archers. Even then it would have been a massacre, a Phyrric victory even if he finally got your city.

His early game force, had your city been on a plain, without a river, and with no walls or normal walls, probably would have been enough to capture a city.

citys are strong, walls of babylon behind river on a hill even stronger. he'd have needed some siege or a decent number of composites at least to make that attack work. jaguars are just warriors in terms of attacking cities and archers are pretty weak for attacking cities. that said, it's great when you can find an easily defensible spot like that, it can make an enormous difference on the course of a game, allowing you to field a much smaller defensive army.

My guess is that monty would have need maybe 2/3 early siege units, 4 swordsman, some composite bowman to take the city. But then i am only guessing. And of course i could have had an army which would mean it would be more difficult. But then it would take him at least 100 turns more to make this work to tech up.

Pretty decent for a wall which only costs like 830 gold on marathon to defend the city all by itself.

What would be a good plan to exploid my unbeatable defence. Go tall? go science? I wouldnt even need to build the wall. Just keeping the money in the bank is enough to just rushbuy it when i am treatened by a big army.

use your defense offensively? i've had a lot of success doing it with other civs, so with babylon it might work even better in some circumstances. want to really mess with a neighbouring civ early in the game? get your first settler built/(preferably)bought, send it right up to the enemies capital, build as close as possible (3 tiles, unless you're late and the culture has moved out more than 3 tiles), buy a tile in the direction of the enemy capital if you can (if their culture hasn't expanded past the first ring), declare war and use the honour tree great general to jump over the border and build a citadel to grab land right around the enemy city center. watch the ai send their units into your citadel/city, as you decimate their army while getting your (preferably) ranged units all super upgraded. i imagine a hybrid of this strategy could be used, not bothering with the honour tree general, instead going tradition for the 50% ranged attack, walls of babylon, bowmen, which would mess up the AI just as bad. depending on difficulty level you could potentially just build cities pushed right up against all neighbours' cities, letting them waste their armies strength against your strong cities attacks.

They need to give catapults cover when besieging cities, imo, and make them even less effective against units. Still too hard to take cities with anything other than a legion of swordsmen with a Great General and pillaging for heals.

well, in turn 134 he should have better units than jaguars/archers/chariots. those units against a strength 23 city with terrain benefits isnt enough for anyone usually. pikes/swords or comp bows/trebuchets in that mix would have helped.

it wasnt the Walls that totally made the difference, but they did let you retreat your units which is handy.

On the subject of the Walls Of Babylon, do their special stats carry over into all the later defensive structures built over them? Castle, Military Base, etc., or do they only apply to the initial walls?

Later defensive structures don't replace earlier ones, they work along with them. The walls of babylon retain their advantage throughout the game but other defensive buildings are the same for babylon as anyone else.

I had an interesting game recently where I was attacked early by two civs. I had one other city but my capital was positioned so that they went for it. It was in a strong defensive position (mountain on one side, river on two more, built on a hill, some river and hills making it difficult to approach). As soon as they came into view I bought walls in my capital, bringing it up to 22 or so defense against a 2 civ warrior/archer/chariot archer rush (deity level). Warriors would just bounce off a city that strong, nearly killing themselves to do 10-15 damage. However, they never attacked.

It was actually very effective. I had a slinger in my city but between the city and the unit they couldn't quite kill a warrior each turn. Split between two deity AIs they don't even notice those losses. They were occupying so much terrain around the city it had to work whatever tiles it could get and since they would be sitting on every tile adjacent to the city at the start of my turn I couldn't even build a second slinger to get out and harass them. Eventually I build/bought a couple more slingers at my second city and beat them back. After I did that I reloaded a save to see if there was a better way to fight them off. By holding off on building walls until they'd knocked my city down to 2/3-1/2 health I had a much easier time killing them quickly and creating some economic space for myself. Appearing too strong was preventing me from using the strength, HP and regeneration of my city as part of my defense and in the end made me much weaker than when I had less HP and regeneration but was able to use it. I wonder if the Walls of Babylon couldn't leave you in the same situation.

The whole thing was probably dependent on the two civs attacking simultaneously though. Neither one of them considers itself weakened enough to retreat but they are also preventing each other from getting into position with enough units to think they could attack. There's no reason a single deity AI couldn't muster the units to pull it off all by itself though.