How do you feel about the attack/defense balance in Civilization 4?

I'm curious how people feel.

Assume you're not just rushing someone and catching them off guard. Also assume it's not the end of the game, where you're mopping up the vastly inferior opponents. Those types of wars are always easy. Assume you're going at a solid AI who has had time to prepare.

Also assume you're playing at a difficulty level that challenges you. This isn't about difficulty level so much as how much you have to invest -- technology and production -- in order to take a well defended city.

Is the investment required to take a city fair? Too easy for the attacker? Too easy for the defender? Don't just think about it as a single battle, but as the whole build up of a warmonger's economy. Is it worth it? Too profitable? Too costly? Just right?

Discuss.

Siege weapons (read: collateral damage) makes everything fair. Defenders get assload of "unfair" bonuses, attacker take them down with collateral damage.

I think that AI's are just too stupid at every level to fight a good solid war. In most wars, once you get near a city they hide away everybody in their city while you can just crank out more siege weapons until eventually you have enough.

Because of this mentality, there rarely is a "stale mate" war. On multiplayer, you see huge standoffs near the borders, where each player puts the other into a negative position. Somewhat like in chess, when a big multi-piece trade off is manufactured On single player, 1 of 4 things happens in my experience

1. Human player goes into AI's land, surrounds city/takes a square next to city, and eventually conquers city. War profitable.

2. Human player goes into AI's land, surrounds city, but doesn't ever get enough guys to take the city and has to settle for peace eventually.

3. Human player gets slaughtered by AI. Often early on in difficulties such as deity, where monty sends 4 archers to kill you when you barely have a 2nd city.

4. Human takes cities but doesn't have enough guys to keep them, so cities keep flip-flopping in the war.

Rarely do AI's go on the offensive, except when they totally kill the human. So, by nature the human by power of designing and planning the war will always have an advantage.

At least pre-BtS, I think the attacker has an advantage, merely because catapults are immune, and, if he's attacking, he has numerical superiority. This usually wasn't as a large a factor as it is made out to be....the defenders knew much better the lay of the land and could thus neutralize the attacker's advantage or even take the advantage themselves.

But...I suppose this is impossible. You can safely completely by-pass cities(which one usually cannot do IRL) and pillaging is far too effective, as large-scale pillaging effectively brings research to halt, despite the fact that the city, IRL, not the surrounding area, is the major point and contains all of the scientists, engineers, etc. especially in earlier times. All that would be in the countryside would be peasants and the farms, but cities store food. None of this is well-portrayed, and until some way is found to introduce more realism, the attacker will always have the advantage because the initiative is simply more powerful than anything else in Civ because there is no fog of war, not enough defensible terrain, scant reason to leave forests, and almost no use to forts.

In short, I find that the attack/defense balance fair in general, however on some occasion like warlord combat, I don't find it fair.

Wow I am one of the few to vote that it is easy for the defender. But I feel if you ignore the "rush advantages" and the the AI behavior due to "difficulty level that challenges you" Defenders get massive bonuses. Mainly because every bonus in the game is defensive. The only bonuses that are considered offensive (CR) are actualy ones that simply negate defensive bonuses.

I have seen people claim that they can't remember a time where an AI has taken a city of theirs. As in ever. To me this is because, yes the AI has a hard time figuring out how to fight a war. But also because even in the off chance they do something right, They also have to be lucky and hope that the defender has skimped on defense generously in their favor.
I personally use better AI mod, and I have had the AI take cities of mine. Yet, it isn't extrememly common and the main reason they usually take a city from me is because I personally wasn't defending that well at all, if at all. Along with the fact that terrain always favors the defender and never the attacker. Which is just insane. So to me, defense is overpowered.

But I also do recognize how easy the game becomes after a successful large invasion against an enemy. But I think that has more to do with economics system in the game than the warfare system.

King Flevance said:

Defenders get massive bonuses. Mainly because every bonus in the game is defensive.

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Attacking has quite a few inherent advantages, and defense needs bonuses to be a viable alternative.

1. The attacker can choose when to attack. You don't declare war when you're temporarily weak, you declare war when you've just upgraded lots of horse archers to cavalry and your enemy just has musketmen and medieval units. The defender needs bonuses so that a small disadvantage doesn't cause a total loss if it's going to take hip just a few more turns to cavalry of his own.

2. The attacker can choose where to attack and hit the defender where he's weakest. If one city is well defended, go to another city. If all cities are defended, pillage. If his land forces are to strong, blockade with your navy. The attacker can damage the defender's civ anywhere, so the defender has to defend everywhere.

3. If the attacker wins a battle, he becomes stronger (by capturing a city), and the defender becomes weaker (by losing a city). But if the defender wins a battle, it only preserves the status quo. The attacker has more to gain, and the defender has more to lose.

So, if defense had no bonuses, attack would have a major advantage, and the only way to survive would be to have an army stronger than your enemy. But once you have the stronger army, you might as well attack because you'll win with fewer losses than if you chose to defend. The big defense bonuses are what makes it possible to pursue a peaceful, non-aggressive strategy and be able to defend yourself against the warmongers, even if you can't conquer them. And despite the big defense bonuses, aggressive war is still a strong strategy. So, I like the balance.

In Civ3 you could take a half of your rival's empire in one turn using Panzers! So in Civ4, obviously, defence had been beefed up seriously.

I'm in agreement with King Flevance here (nice post, by the way). I think there are two main reasons why I find defense much more powerful than offense in Civ4: 1). Because the combat balance definitely favors defense much more than it did in Civ3, and 2). Because I like to fight with mostly troops, not mostly artillery units.

Without going into too much detail, defense gets a huge bonus because, in stack v. stack combat, the defender always uses the unit best suited to the one-on-one battle. So if you're attacking with macemen and Knights against crossbows and pikemen, you're going to be at a disadvantage every time if the numbers of each unit are equal - even though your attacking units are more expensive and have a higher base strength.

King Flevance said:

Wow I am one of the few to vote that it is easy for the defender. But I feel if you ignore the "rush advantages" and the the AI behavior due to "difficulty level that challenges you" Defenders get massive bonuses. Mainly because every bonus in the game is defensive. The only bonuses that are considered offensive (CR) are actualy ones that simply negate defensive bonuses.

I have seen people claim that they can't remember a time where an AI has taken a city of theirs. As in ever. To me this is because, yes the AI has a hard time figuring out how to fight a war. But also because even in the off chance they do something right, They also have to be lucky and hope that the defender has skimped on defense generously in their favor.
I personally use better AI mod, and I have had the AI take cities of mine. Yet, it isn't extrememly common and the main reason they usually take a city from me is because I personally wasn't defending that well at all, if at all. Along with the fact that terrain always favors the defender and never the attacker. Which is just insane. So to me, defense is overpowered.

But I also do recognize how easy the game becomes after a successful large invasion against an enemy. But I think that has more to do with economics system in the game than the warfare system.

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Early archers are still incredibly cheesy, if defending a hill city. As a huge map player, you just can't fog bust every square, (especially with rand pers ais your not sure about, you need the troops back home), and often I've sent a "settling party" off to found a new city, only to get there and find the barbs popped a suboptimally founded city, one tile to the left or right , but on a damn hill.

Now, just to found my city, I need to first build 7 or 8 CRI axes (against 3, probably 4 barb archers by the time I found the city, Monarch and upwards), just to get rid of the damn thing. That's 560 hammers of troops I don't really want to build, just to get rid of something that appeared overnight

And yes, there are times when I've had no metals or horses early on, and have been damn thankful for the overpowered archer defender, but especially with BTS ai whipping and chopping defences, cities are going to be a huge pain to take early on, as even now, I often reach an ai cap only to find 8 or more CGI archers sitting there on a hill.

As King Flev said, Combat almost always favors the defender, as all terrain bonuses are on the defenders side, and a similar mixed stack vs a similar mixed stack, and because of the rock/scisssors/ paper method, whoever attacks loses.

Sure, the answer is just bring a bigger stack, and yes I'm obviously very used to the combat system now, but that doesn't mean I have to like it......

Horribly over-powered for defenders. Just because the AI is ******ed in war doesn't mean that defense isn't easier.

Definitely almost everything favors the defenders. I can think of all the bonuses the defenders got in a second, e.g.

• All the crazy city defence and the cheesy archery units
• Only defensive bonus and fortification (Knight: let me destroy these longbows by charging down this forest hill from an ambush; Squire: Sir, I'm afraid your great plan won't work. We are in the magic kingdom called Civ4. Attack tactics don't exist here. Just attack)
• Defenders in the stack choose the strongest unit to counter (Soldier: Sir, we are going to win this war, their troop are all axemen, Our 5 chariots will eat them for breakfast.... Commander: Oh no, did you see they have that cool lonely spearman standing right in the left? We NEED to run our chariots to destroy him first.)
• Almost only the defenders can use roads and later railroads which can gather troops very quick. Commando promotion is really hard to get
• No 2-movement seige weapons till BtS
• War weariness and increased unit upkeep all on the attackers
• Aggressive trait helps both attack and defence. Protective mainly helps the defence.

The claim that the attackers have an edge just assume that the attackers outnumber and/or outclass the defenders. This is an unfair assumption to start with already. The question is in a fair fight, who should have an advantage. Then obviously it's the defenders. OK, you can bring you stack of doom in, but the first step you get to my border, if this is a fair fight, my stack of cats will bomb the attacker's stack in doom already.

gettingfat said:

Soldier: Sir, we are going to win this war, their troop are all axemen, Our 5 chariots will eat them for breakfast.... Commander: Oh no, did you see they have that cool lonely spearman standing right in the left? We NEED to run our chariots to destroy him first.

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Exactly the problem. You'd think when there's 19 axemen and 2 spearmen the chariots would be able to target the axemen, but they never do.

Quintillus said:

Exactly the problem. You'd think when there's 19 axemen and 2 spearmen the chariots would be able to target the axemen, but they never do.

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From a little while ago, on a similar subject...http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=5147052&postcount=42

DrewBledsoe said:

Early archers are still incredibly cheesy, if defending a hill city.

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True. I think the early era unit balance is just a bit loose.

DrewBledsoe said:

As King Flev said, Combat almost always favors the defender, as all terrain bonuses are on the defenders side, and a similar mixed stack vs a similar mixed stack, and because of the rock/scisssors/ paper method, whoever attacks loses.

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True again, unless you have enough siege weapons to soften the defender first. Part of the problem is that you must move all units in your turn and there is no chance for combat-turn-to-combat-turn action. I do think the CIV IV combat system is a great improvement compared to Civ III, but there is also room for more improvement. I believe an attempt to solve things was done in the Total Realism mod -- or something like that. I did not try it more then twice for some half a dozen of turns, but, if I recall correctly, there each unit in a stack got an extra bonus from the other unit types in the same stack, so the first units fight more according to the "average" stack strength, rather then their individual strength, at least giving you a chance to break through an otherwise unbreakable stack. I thought it was more realistic and better indeed.

This kind of trick, combined perhaps with more strategic importance of terrain during combat -- I'm thinking of penalties like some "collateral damage" for passing (or rather, ending in) harsh enemy terrains such as desert, ice, jungle so you can better judge where a stack can go -- may help to get more battles outside cities.

Also, I don't want my units just sitting inside cities to increase hapiness in HR. I want them to control strategic points near the cities.

Jaca

Well, I am not really sure what are you asking.
Do you mean attack and defence on each battle or do you mean if it is the civ which declares war the one which has an advantage?

In the first case i think that the defender has a too big advantage by choosing the best counter against each attacker. In order to solve this problem I would suggest the following solutions:
-Bring back civ 3 artyllery but let it cause collateral damage against every unit in stack. This way stacks would be made unreliable. Artillery units should be able to attack and destroy other artllery units even if they re protected by other units.
-Transform combat. Make it possible that entire stacks fight against entire stacks.
-Bring back furtive attack. this way the attacker can choose which unit does he want to attack. Defender units should have some possibility of intercepting.

In the second case, i think the advantage goes too much in benefit of the warmoger. This is mostly because econmy in Civ is based on land. Beause of this civ that conquer many cities are wealthier than those which have a reduced number of cities but are triying to develop them.
In order to change this, the econmy in civ should be changed in order to make it less dependant of terrain and more of good management.

I think that the balance of the military is well laid out and cant complain ,however I just don't like how the mechanics work and feel they are unrealistic.It really bothers me that it takes a hundred years to build up any sizable force then another hundred years to strategically move your forces and another hundred years to take a city.It equally bothers me that an island city with huge access to growth potential cant produce units as fast as a city nestled in some hills and forest with just a little access to food.In my opinion a city such as the latter while stratigically important to building war mongering weapons just doesn't have the vast population required to mass a huge army and how you build forces should happen the opposite of what is in the game.

Moral and supply are poorly represented in the game ,adding additional cost to an invading force there by slowing down your science just isn't realistic.As matter of fact it would do the opposite ,because of applied science a large invading force would spur new ideas in the field of war.If anything a large force would struggle to keep up with the logistics ,feeding and supplying a huge force and would be the key to the success or failure of such an invasion.

RTS games while they do bring the cost of population into account ,do it very abstractly (food levels grow and it typical works like a saving account in that as long as you aren't using food one farm could slowly build a massive army, again not realistic and if the farm is destroyed has no bearing on the strength of the force).

With adding generals in the various mods and the expansion of warlords we have an avenue that allow us to build a force based on population. To do this hiring these specialist should give you units ,these units would require weapons that would be manufactured by improvements somewhere within your empire or purchased from another civ.You could look at the specialist as a general and the food that is used to hire the general feeds his army.having to remove the general specialist( this would be because of starvation or being in peace time) results in the loss of the unit or units .In this way it becomes paramount to meet an invading force before it has a chance to destroy improvements and diminish your ability to raise defenses.This would also allow you to raise a force quickly if needed for defense.

If the AI is defending, it favors the attacker.
If the AI is attacking, it favors the defender.

Overall, I think it is balanced when you consider the intent. The AI just can't pull it off attacking or defending well. I'm not sure that the AI has any concept of what preparation is. When attacking the AI, it will have defenders in the cities and someone sitting on resources. It also has units patrolling like guards around the territory. I'm not sure what that is all about. The AI will have cities in the middle of their territory, that would take me 10 turns to reach, heavily defended and big frontier cities lightly defended. After the AI finishes a war, it doesn't reposition it's forces either centrally or near the biggest threat. I can mass troops along the border and the AI just figures they are sightseers. I'm just not sure I've ever really seen the AI prepared. It attacks dumb and it defends dumb. Once in a while, it may win, but that is either due to shear force of numbers or just plain luck.

All the promotions giving bonuses against certain units favour the defender, because one cannot choose to attack the defender one has the best chance of defeating. And in any case, whether the human player is attacking or defending, the thrice-accursed so-called RNG favours the AI.
But on the whole, I think the balance is quite reasonable.

I think offense/defense is just right.

Yes it is extremely hard to take cities, but city taking is the mindset of older civ games. Early civilization warfare is not about taking, its about pillaging!! Its about mowing down your enemies cottages while reaping huge gold benefits. Its about watching his economy drop into the stone age while you leap ahead.

He can keep his cities, I'll just come back once in a while for his cottages

Now towards later in the game, city taking becomes a lot easier, as it should be.