City strength

There has been some discussion as to whether or not the changes made to city strength are a welcome change. I'm curious how city strength now works in G&K and would be grateful if the Community could explain this to me. EDIT: I'll update this post to reflect the information provided by everyone. Please say if something is inaccurate.

Vanilla city strength:

* A city had a "Combat Strength" and "Hit Points"
* A city's Hit Points were always 20. Once this number hit zero the city was captured
* A city's Combat Strength was based on the city's location, size, whether the city had a garrison and defensive buildings. The base value was 9
* A city's Combat Strength was equal to its Ranged Combat Strength
* Defensive buildings increased how fast Hit Points regenerated
* I presume that city Combat Strength also had some effect on how easily Hit Points depleted

G&K city strength:

* A city has a "Combat Strength" (aka "Defense Strength") and "Hit Points"
* A city's Hit Points are 200 (base value) and can be increased with defensive buildings. Once this number hit zero the city is captured
* A city's Combat Strength is based on the city's location, size, whether the city had a garrison and defensive buildings. The base value is [9?]
* A city's Combat Strength is equal to its Ranged Combat Strength
* Defensive buildings work as follows:
- Walls: +5 Combat Strength, +50 Hit Points
- Castle: +7 Combat Strength, + 25 Hit Points
- Arsenal: + 9 Combat Strength, +25 Hit Points
- Military Base: +12 Combat Strength, +25 Hit Points

City Hit Points increase with defensive buildings like Walls, ect. If you can tell as city has a wall or more, they not only have a higher combat value, but they have more HP.

The city changes are a welcome change. It makes peaceful playing more possible by making Domination a less viable option. Cities should be hard to take. And that's from a routine warmonger.

bcaiko said:

The city changes are a welcome change. It makes peaceful playing more possible by making Domination a less viable option. Cities should be hard to take.

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So much this. Vanilla city capture = dig in adjacent to the city with a couple swordsmen, walk 2-3 catapults into range, and pummel for 3-5 turns until you can walk your melee unit in. Heal, march 4 tiles further, repeat.

Now it actually requires some tactics (and a larger force). The AI is better at focusing fire (not good yet, but better), the cities can both take more damage and dish more out, and if you go in without sufficient forces you're going to lose your units. Alternately, if you tend to play for more peaceful wins it's a whole lot easier to defend your cities without having to field a massive army...especially against the obligatory AI warrior rush that always seems to come right around the time iron working starts getting researched.

regeneration64 said:

There has been some discussion as to whether or not the changes made to city strength are a welcome change. I'm curious how city strength now works in G&K and would be grateful if the Community could explain this to me.

In vanilla, I understood it as this:

* Cities had a combat strength and hit points
* A city's hit points were always 20. Once this number hits zero the city is captured
* A city's combat strength was based on the city's location, size and whether the city had a garrison
* A city's combat strength was equal to its ranged combat strength
* Walls, Castles etc increased a city's combat strength
* I presume that city combat strength also had some effect on how easily hit points depleted

In G&K this appears to have been changed somewhat:

* Hit points work in the same way but can be increased from the base value (if so, how can hit points increase and what is the base value?)
* A city still has a combat strength but the way Walls, Castles etc work has altered

If someone could elaborate/correct me where I'm wrong I would much appreciate it. Trying to get my head around the number crunching and how city strength now works!

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City hit points now start at 200 (same scaling as unit health). However, Walls and other defensive buildings now add health to that (in addition to increasing the city strength). Walls add 50 health (Walls of Babylon 100 health), Castles/Arsenals/Military Bases +25. Theoretically, a maxed out city could have 325 health (Babylon 375), making the city nearly twice as tough to take as a Vanilla city even without the other city strength changes.

SDEngineer said:

City hit points now start at 200 (same scaling as unit health). However, Walls and other defensive buildings now add health to that (in addition to increasing the city strength). Walls add 50 health (Walls of Babylon 100 health), Castles/Arsenals/Military Bases +25. Theoretically, a maxed out city could have 325 health (Babylon 375), making the city nearly twice as tough to take as a Vanilla city even without the other city strength changes.

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City HP was 25 in Vanilla, so Walls in G&K get you to where you were in Vanilla. Ranged Combat Strength of cities has definitely gone back up though. I haven't seen how city healing works. In Vanilla a Wall improved city healing from 3 to 5 HP per turn.

Certain late-game units can still punch through city defenses easily, like long-range artillery and the robot

its a little weird that cities are super-strong against seige units now. A city plus an archer will one-shot a catapult every time. now we are almost back to "suicide" catapults...

overall it still feels like an improvement, but this bugs me.

Thanks for the info guys, I'll edit the OP to reflect your points.

Calouste said:

City HP was 25 in Vanilla, so Walls in G&K get you to where you were in Vanilla. Ranged Combat Strength of cities has definitely gone back up though. I haven't seen how city healing works. In Vanilla a Wall improved city healing from 3 to 5 HP per turn.

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Good point about city healing. I presume this is a hidden stat and will be interesting to see if it's still present.

Vatras said:

Certain late-game units can still punch through city defenses easily, like long-range artillery and the robot

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I've always preferred late-game combat (even against cities). Having access to three-range artillery will have to be balanced with the fact that late-game cities are going to be super strong when deciding what era to take on the AIs cities.

chazzycat said:

its a little weird that cities are super-strong against seige units now. A city plus an archer will one-shot a catapult every time. now we are almost back to "suicide" catapults...

overall it still feels like an improvement, but this bugs me.

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This is odd, bearing in mind that seige units are a city's worst enemy. Imo, seige units should be most vulnerable to calvalry/tanks and take a decent amount of damage from melee units (swordsmen, riflemen etc) but only take minimal damage from ranged attacks - including those from cities. For now, it's all about a new strategy, which is to bring along at least three seige units backed up by melee.

cities seem too get + strength with each technological era you advance

a 1 pop city just founded in the future era has waaay more strength than a 1 pop city just founded in the ancient era...

I love the changes. Cities are difficult to capture in real life and the game finally reflects this. I'm also a fan of the auto-garrison thing as it means less clicking about when defending.

peddroelm said:

cities seem too get + strength with each technological era you advance

a 1 pop city just founded in the future era has waaay more strength than a 1 pop city just founded in the ancient era...

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Oooo, this is an interesting find. Any numbers? Is the base Combat Strength still 9 (i.e. a one pop city on grassland founded in ancient era)?

EDIT: OP updated.

Siege units should be highly resistant to ranged attacks & their worst enemies should be mainly cavalry. That would make the defender to plan the defence instead of rush buy an archer & wipe of all the AI forces.

Then the value you see next to the shield at the top of the city screen or with the city marquee, is the combat strength in the same terms as used with a unit?

Elizabeth just wiped out my bombers with a city strength of 229. Since a jet fighter has a strength of 100 for interception, this would mean one hit from her city would equal more than two hits from a jet fighter.

Is this right?

to the OP, thank you for making this thread, these are the sort of questions which will be valuable to everyone to know and which I have been wondering myself for a long time. Knowing for instance that a city has a base of 200 hp can help you estimate whether an attack with available units will be successful or not.

as for myself - i dont like the change. makes battles too city-centric and siege centric

clif9710 said:

Then the value you see next to the shield at the top of the city screen or with the city marquee, is the combat strength in the same terms as used with a unit?

Elizabeth just wiped out my bombers with a city strength of 229. Since a jet fighter has a strength of 100 for interception, this would mean one hit from her city would equal more than two hits from a jet fighter.

Is this right?

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you would think it worked that way, but as i experienced and show in another thread, you can see in the picture that the math isn't so clear:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=479794


I would think that a city with strength 40 vs a unit strength 20 would result in the city doing double the damage as an attacking unit... except this isn't how it works out for some reason.. so there must be modifiers which don't show up in the combat odds screen, or some other factor im not aware of.

Babri said:

Siege units should be highly resistant to ranged attacks & their worst enemies should be mainly cavalry. That would make the defender to plan the defence instead of rush buy an archer & wipe of all the AI forces.

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I agree with this. I am not a fan of the current system where you can snipe off attacking siege units with little effort. I'm fighting theodora post patch, and she can shoot down my trebs quite easily with her city and a crossbow.This leaves me with an invasion force in the field and no siege, even though I have dispatched her cataphracts. I'm having to promote siege to (cover) to make up for this.

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Some pantheons and beliefs can modify city ranged combat strength as well. I forget what the actual numbers are (I think 30% for the Protection pantheon). I'm not sure if the bonus applies only to your base city combat strength, or if it is affected by other factors (walls, garrison, etc.).

Regarding siege units, I find that the best thing to do with them is to ignore the promotion that grants a damage bonus against cities (Volly, I think), and instead prioritize the Cover 1 and Cover 2 promotions. In fact, I find myself putting at least Cover 1 on virtually all of my infantry and siege units in G&K. This is extremely helpful for dealing with things like Crossbow or Artillery spam, and increases the longevity of units when attacking cities.

I made a mod to reduce City Strength and it can be found http://forums.civfanatics.com/downloads.php?do=file&id=20233 if you are intersted

regeneration64 said:

This is odd, bearing in mind that seige units are a city's worst enemy. Imo, seige units should be most vulnerable to calvalry/tanks and take a decent amount of damage from melee units (swordsmen, riflemen etc) but only take minimal damage from ranged attacks - including those from cities. For now, it's all about a new strategy, which is to bring along at least three seige units backed up by melee.

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This is a very good point. Not only would that be more historically accurate it would mean more interesting gameplay. Seige would start with a bonus against ranged attack (or just non-city ranged attacks). The horse line of troops would have a bonus versus siege. This would protect catapults from being killed right away to a city with an archer and would encourage the defender to have horse or melee units nearby to repel attacking siege units. Right now ranged is a little too strong. This wouldn't nerf them much, but it would make them more situational than they are now, which I think is a good thing.