Defensive artillery in city

Moderator Action: Discussion part moved from the request thread

I'm looking for ways to increase the defensiveness of early wars in my scenario because it was too easy to conquer another civ early on in the game, but I don't want to simply up the defense of early units (I did that too, but it's kind of mundane, I want something new ). So this was my idea, if you have an immobile cannon in the city it makes it very difficult to beseige because it will fire on you each time you attack the city, and it will fire on any units in the tiles immediately in front of the city during the enemy's turn.

This makes it pretty hard to assault a city, as it should be. However I am aware that it could get out of hand, so I'm experimenting with ways to limit the emplaced cannons to certain cities (IE Mother Country/Core cities) and making them expensive enough to make the player choose between spending shields on offense, expansion, OR defense. I'm thinking perhaps it's only possible to build emplaced cannons if your city has built a foundry, which is only possible with metallurgy...I don't know, any ideas on that front?

I'm doing something similar in my mod.

I've given a week bombard strength to all archer, so if you stack some in cities, they can shoot at besieger, and besieger can use their own archers.

Catapult / trebuchet have a strong bombard, but cannot defend themselves.

And the Boiling oil is immobile but has a good bombard.

Later, I'll expand that with bunkers, naval batterie (with a lethal sea bombardment), etc.


In the same way, in my Napoleonic scenario, I have the fort made by Wyrmshadow, which is also immobile.

You have a fortress as a unit? Interesting...is it capturable then, or would you have to rebuild it upon capturing a city?

The fortress is buildable, as a defense, so you need to destroy it and rebuilt it.

It's not really perfect, as there is no way to force the city to have only one of them, so in theory you could build 50 fortress to defend your city.

In my Napoleonic scenario, it's the only unit that can be build directly, the other are generate via buildings.

And if you have no unit buildable at all, the game crash...

Hi Da3dalus. Have an idea for you: when the AI is threatened it normally withdraws all it's workers into cities. How about giving workers defensive bombardment? It would represent the workers helping to man the battlements or re-supply the front line troops. It should give a slight defensive advantage without unbalancing the game too much, and it's something that the AI will be able to benefit from.

Also - have you considered a defensive bonus for the capital city? It wouldn't stop other cities being conquered but will provide a little extra defence where it's most important.

Hmm, that's an interesting idea Keroro. I did have a few concerns that a) The AI wouldn't be able to handle the "emplaced cannon", and b) that these emplaced cannons would unbalance the game too much because it would be nearly impossible to take a city defended by half-a-dozen of them.

It might look really strange to have an attacking unit bombarded by a worker, but if the AI can handle that in an intelligent manner I'm all for it!

Would this mean though, that a stack of workers in the field will bombard an attacker before they're captured? That might be stranger than seeing a worker bombard from a city, but I suppose it makes sense as a group of workers would put up a token resistance before being captured.

No, that wouldn't be the case, since they only have a defensive bombardment (like the Archer)

Workers with a defensive bombardment sounds good in theory (really good actually) but has anyone tested it out in game?

Doesn't the Ranger have that already? Defensive capability? If attacked he will defend, but can't attack.

If you want cities more difficult to conquer, I believe, in the general settings tab of the editor you can choose how much defensive bounus individual buildings give to the units defending the city. You could increase this bonus. I believe it's something like 15% defensive bonus per building. Can't check now because not at home.

Keroro That worker idea is very ingenious. Way to think outside the box. And AI friendly too! Hope it works as it seems it should.

nick0515 said:

If you want cities more difficult to conquer, I believe, in the general settings tab of the editor you can choose how much defensive bounus individual buildings give to the units defending the city. You could increase this bonus. I believe it's something like 15% defensive bonus per building. Can't check now because not at home.

Click to expand...

You can increase the defense of the city as a whole (with different values for different city size), but this bonus doesn't depend on the number of building.
Or you can modify the effect of building individually (like bonus for walls).
However, the defense against bombardment (IIRC) means the building will "disappear" when the city reaches size 7. Why is it not an option in the editor? Because Firaxis sucks at designing games.

Steph said:

You can increase the defense of the city as a whole (with different values for different city size), but this bonus doesn't depend on the number of building.
Or you can modify the effect of building individually (like bonus for walls).
However, the defense against bombardment (IIRC) means the building will "disappear" when the city reaches size 7. Why is it not an option in the editor? Because Firaxis sucks at designing games.

Click to expand...

Damn. Guess I remembered wrong.

da3dalus said:

Hmm, that's an interesting idea Keroro. I did have a few concerns that a) The AI wouldn't be able to handle the "emplaced cannon", and b) that these emplaced cannons would unbalance the game too much because it would be nearly impossible to take a city defended by half-a-dozen of them.

Click to expand...

The AI aren't great at using artillery full stop really. I'm not at all sure that the AI would use an immobile unit to actively bombard enemy units. I'd suggest NOT giving the adjusted workers the AI bombard flag (that will cause the AI to build some workers as artillery rather than as workers due to some hard coded limitations and they'll not be used for worker jobs). But if you give then the ZoC flag then they'll harrass the enemy as they approach their city too.

da3dalus said:

It might look really strange to have an attacking unit bombarded by a worker, but if the AI can handle that in an intelligent manner I'm all for it!

Click to expand...

It might look a bit strange - but some of the unit creators might be able to provide workers with a reasonable attack animation. I think that a few of Plotinus' workers might already have that in fact. Otherwise you could maybe use the boiling oil unit anim as the worker's bombard anim (for the ancient and medievil ages) and use one of Wrymshadow's modern worker unit anim's for the modern age. They should look just fine.

da3dalus said:

Would this mean though, that a stack of workers in the field will bombard an attacker before they're captured? That might be stranger than seeing a worker bombard from a city, but I suppose it makes sense as a group of workers would put up a token resistance before being captured.

Click to expand...

If you give the workers only a defensive bombard (range 0) then they won't be able to actively bombard, and they wouldn't get a 'shot' at the enemy unless they were stacked with other troops that can fight. Of course if you want the workers to put up more resistance then you could give them a hit point, but that will stop the workers from ever getting captured (they would be killed instead).

Wow! great thread! I rate it 4&1/2 stars. (what happened to "rate this thread")

nick0515 said:

If you want cities more difficult to conquer, I believe, in the general settings tab of the editor you can choose how much defensive bounus individual buildings give to the units defending the city. You could increase this bonus. I believe it's something like 15% defensive bonus per building. Can't check now because not at home.

Click to expand...

I may end up doing something like this, however the problem is that for the purposes of my scenario I want the mother country cities to be very difficult to capture while the new-world/colonial settlements are lightly defended leaving them exposed to attack from a strong maritime nation. I already have a "Mother Country" strategic resource, I may make it the requirement for some buildings/units with heightened defense/bombard.

I like the ZoC idea for workers. If I don't give them a bombard but I do give them ZoC, will they bombard an enemy unit trying to slip through their ZoC?

Everyone's got some great ideas, I'm going to have to test some of them to see what works best. Thanks!

Steph said:

You can increase the defense of the city as a whole (with different values for different city size), but this bonus doesn't depend on the number of building.
Or you can modify the effect of building individually (like bonus for walls).
However, the defense against bombardment (IIRC) means the building will "disappear" when the city reaches size 7. Why is it not an option in the editor? Because Firaxis sucks at designing games.

Click to expand...

Steph

This is what I was talking about under the general settings tab in the regular editor:



So what does the red circled 'building' do if not give a percentage defensive bonus per building built in that city?

Also while I'm asking can you tell me what the green underlined 'fortifications' is referring to? Is it the barricade upgrade of a fortress terrain building?

Cheers

Nick

EDIT: And yes I know I should really start using your editor. But I just haven't had time to get to know it yet. Did download it though.

As usual, the Firaxis editor has perfect naming so it's very intuitive to use...

nick0515 said:

So what does the red circled 'building' do if not give a percentage defensive bonus per building built in that city?

Click to expand...

It's obviously the "defense" of a building to see if it is destroyed when attacked. Well, I thinl. Ie if it's 16 and the bombardment strength is 8, then the bombardment has 33% to destroy the building.
Same for citizens: it's not a defense bonus for every citizen in the city, but the defense of citizen (and so the chance a citizen is killed when the city is bombed).

nick0515 said:

Also while I'm asking can you tell me what the green underlined 'fortifications' is referring to? Is it the barricade upgrade of a fortress terrain building?

Click to expand...

It's the defense bonus for a fortified unit me guess. Fortress is "Fortress",.

Steph said:

As usual, the Firaxis editor has perfect naming so it's very intuitive to use...


It's obviously the "defense" of a building to see if it is destroyed when attacked. Well, I thinl. Ie if it's 16 and the bombardment strength is 8, then the bombardment has 33% to destroy the building.
Same for citizens: it's not a defense bonus for every citizen in the city, but the defense of citizen (and so the chance a citizen is killed when the city is bombed).


It's the defense bonus for a fortified unit me guess. Fortress is "Fortress",.

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I see. Yes the title of 'Defensive Bonuses' is rather misleading. It's not so much a bonus but the actual defense of a builing or citizen in those two cases.

da3dalus said:

I like the ZoC idea for workers. If I don't give them a bombard but I do give them ZoC, will they bombard an enemy unit trying to slip through their ZoC?

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The ZoC of a unit is based on it's Attack value compared to the enemy unit's Defense value (or vice versa, can't remember). So in order for the worker to get a pop shot in, it would need an attack value. In this case, you can still leave defense at 0 so workers can be captured, and they maybe able to use ZoC also, never tested it though to see if it works (AI usually goes for workers standing out alone instead of going around them though, so it's use would be minimal).

Tom

Steph said:

And the Boiling oil is immobile but has a good bombard.

Click to expand...

How do you keep the AI from attempting to load an immobile unit onto a ship?