Making battle fought outside of cities rather than at city

In real life, most battles are found near the city but not at the city itself. If the defender has enough strength to hold off the enemy, they generally would come out and challenge the invader head on.

I think in civ4, there should be a penalty for the defender for not coming out. If a battle is fought over the city square, a city inprovement would get randomly destroyed, some of its citizens will get killed and so on. This will encourage the defender to come out and kill the invader before he reaches the city square.

To make the game more fun, I think some unit should receive bonus for attacking cities, while others receive bonus for fighting battle in the open field. Cavalry, for example, is useless when fight battle inside of a city. Infantry, which is useful when fight street battles will get ridden down like grass if challenging cavalry in the open. This should be simulated in civ4, for example, infantry will receive 2x bonus when attack cities and so on.

i believe that this is present in some degree in civ2, for example pikemen had a 2x defense bonus against mounted units

Maybe limiting the amount of offensive and defensive units inside of a city would be better.

Yes, this was true in Civ2, IIRC, each time you killed a unit inside a city the population goes down one point.

It must be hard to fight in a city for the attacker, but if the defender choose to defend his country just from his cities, it must result in alot of destruction and civilian losses! Like Stalingrad and Leningrad during WW2!

A weaker civ must still be able to choose hard city resistance to hope for a chanse versus a stronger civ, but it must have its consecvenses!

Originally posted by Philips beard
It must be hard to fight in a city for the attacker, but if the defender choose to defend his country just from his cities, it must result in alot of destruction and civilian losses! Like Stalingrad and Leningrad during WW2!

A weaker civ must still be able to choose hard city resistance to hope for a chanse versus a stronger civ, but it must have its consecvenses!

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I agree with this. Defending a city should give advantages to the defeneder. Seiges have occurred quite often throughout history - many times, a defender would prefer to stay in the city than come out and fight. But every major battle shouldn't involve a city! I think bringing back Civ 2's mechanism, and possibly expanding on it, is the best way to go. Cities (especially with walls) give a defensive bonus, but if a unit loses, some destruction of population/improvments can occur. That way, stronger forces will have an incentive to sally forth and meet the invaders outside the city, but weaker forces will have a chance if they decide to defend the city itself instead.

This will have the potential of making fortress a lot more useful.

It could make it more hard to defent a city, because an invading army could come from 8 possible directions, meaning that to defend a city you would need the defence force making a perimeter outside the city.

No, this doesn't mean you need infantry on all eight sides. It means you need to do some spying work to figure out where your enemy is coming from. It also encourage player to have some offensive unit even if he is playing a defensive game. If the defender doesn't have the strength to challenge the invader outside of the city, then he still have the option to turtle in. His city will suffer some damage during to the battle and siege fire, but he will have higher chance of holding off the assault. Was Moscow damaged during the German siege?

As for fortress, I think ZoC should work as they are in Civ2. Any units passing by a fortress will have to stop, and move only 1 square per turn around the fortress. So building fortress on the border will be important and useful.

Ahh i understand now. Yes you are correct. I still feel that some other changes would need ot be made to units and maybe combat itself, but I'm starting to liek the idea.

Originally posted by Dida
In real life, most battles are found near the city but not at the city itself. If the defender has enough strength to hold off the enemy, they generally would come out and challenge the invader head on.

I think in civ4, there should be a penalty for the defender for not coming out. If a battle is fought over the city square, a city inprovement would get randomly destroyed, some of its citizens will get killed and so on. This will encourage the defender to come out and kill the invader before he reaches the city square.

To make the game more fun, I think some unit should receive bonus for attacking cities, while others receive bonus for fighting battle in the open field. Cavalry, for example, is useless when fight battle inside of a city. Infantry, which is useful when fight street battles will get ridden down like grass if challenging cavalry in the open. This should be simulated in civ4, for example, infantry will receive 2x bonus when attack cities and so on.

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I know that some people have tried to address some of this...
In real life, battles are fought outside of cities to prevent damage to the cities, and to the surrounding countryside and support systems.
In Civ, battles that reach the city have a chance of damaging city improvements; units outside the city might damage terrain improvements, possibly cutting the city off from needed supplies; terrain squares can't provide food, resources or money to the city under siege; reinforcements are less well defended, if they have to come in from the outside; catapults, cannons, etc. may damage city improvements or kill citizens...so players may wish to confront armies before they get to the city limits, but if there aren't enough units to go around, they will have to fight from the city, just like in real life.
Also, in Civ, AI units come out of cities to try to head off invaders, but if they feel there aren't enough units to spare, they fall back to the cities, or stay in the cities. Just like the real world.
Forcing units to behave differently should be left as an option for the AI and the players.
If the AI and the player wants to take their chances and 'run the gauntlet', they should have the option to do so. Just like the real world.
The penalties/bonuses for defending and attacking are already built into the units stats and the terrain modifiers.
Pretty much every one of your issues is already dealt with, in Civ 3. Maybe they could use a little polishing, but overall they have been addressed.

Maybe there is some misunderstanding based on the way I said things.
My main idea was that, we give some unit bonus while attacking cities, and other unit bonus while attacking in the field. So we make all units useful, and combined arms an important concept.
I would like to see a defending cities suffer more damage from battle, to encourage players to build a mixer of different units.

I would also like to see battlements have a chance of destruction (if defended, then a very good chance) when an enemy comes in. One of the bizarre circumstances that I have noticed in many of my games in Civ3 and all of my games in Civ2 is that building a fortress near a city is near suicide. It's the last thing pillaged and gives the attacking force a place to rest and defend. This makes virtually no sense at all.

If the fortresses were, say, 75% likely to be destroyed when an attacking force marched in, then cities would be defended outside of the city. Who would want to have all of their improvements ripped up if they could defend the place at the perimeters. Two of the biggest reasons, IMHO, that we are constantly defending city squares is because 1. The city square controls the whole countryside 2. Putting a fortress near the city as a defense does not defend the city!

#2 above really needs to be addressed in Civ4.

What about an option to "surrender city"? Napoleon took Moscow without a battle (well, the Russians burned and abandoned it), and Hitler took Paris without a major battle at the city. It could work like this: once down to the last defender in a city, the AI or human has an option to offer the city in a surrender to the attacking force. The benefit for the surrendering city could be things like, retaining all cultural improvements (resulting in a higher chance that city will flip back); a guarantee that governor will not starve city and concentrate on food and happiness; no re-naming of city; any workers or settlers allowed to return to capital. The benefit for the attacker would be to take the city regardless of the health of any remaining offensive forces within striking distance. I don't know if something like this has been proposed; thoughts?

Originally posted by Dida
Maybe there is some misunderstanding based on the way I said things.
My main idea was that, we give some units bonus while attacking cities, and other units bonus while attacking in the field. So we make all units useful, and combined arms an important concept.
I would like to see a defending cities suffer more damage from battle, to encourage players to build a mixer of different units.

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As I understand it, some units already have bonuses for attacking cities. Catapults aren't at risk of being destroyed in Civ 3, and ignore city walls in Civ 2.
I don't see what other bonuses/penalties could be given that aren't already reflected in the stats of the physically attacking/defending units. Suggestions would be helpful in determining the validity/viability of making these sorts of adjustments.
As for damage to cities, the only thing I can think of would be to give city improvements hit points, and have them be destroyed when they reach 0, and adding some method in the game for repairing the damaged improvements, such as giving Workers the ability to Repair Improvement, or creating special units or specialist citizens for carrying out the same function.
I've seen this method used in other games, and it seems to be a pretty good way of dealing with the issue.

Originally posted by rcoutme
I would also like to see battlements have a chance of destruction (if defended, then a very good chance) when an enemy comes in. One of the bizarre circumstances that I have noticed in many of my games in Civ3 and all of my games in Civ2 is that building a fortress near a city is near suicide. It's the last thing pillaged and gives the attacking force a place to rest and defend. This makes virtually no sense at all.

If the fortresses were, say, 75% likely to be destroyed when an attacking force marched in, then cities would be defended outside of the city. Who would want to have all of their improvements ripped up if they could defend the place at the perimeters. Two of the biggest reasons, IMHO, that we are constantly defending city squares is because
1. The city square controls the whole countryside
2. Putting a fortress near the city as a defense does not defend the city!

#2 above really needs to be addressed in Civ4.

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Giving Fortresses hitpoints, similarly to the above described solution, should handle this fairly well.
Most fortresses were usually useable to some degree after defeating the occupants, especially if they had been abandoned.
The attackers were usually more interested in killing off the defenders than destroying the fortress itself, especially considering that they might be able to use the fortress after the defenders had been removed.
Having a Fortress near a city is a very good defense, when coupled with the default 'free attack' on enemies passing by, and the added defensive value that makes removing the threat of the Fortress defenders dangerous to the attackers. Would you go waltzing past a fortress with this threat to your military, knowing that the undefeated foes would be behind you as well as within the cities?
Anyone silly enough to leave an unoccupied fortress near their cities is just asking for trouble. How difficult can it be to pillage your own fortress before leaving it, or to send more troops to occupy it when the enemy approaches your city? It's not like they're going to zip through the rail system to the heart of your empire before you can remove or occupy any leftover Fortress you may have.

Quasar1011, I kind of think the ability to contact a rival, and demand something for peace, during a war, is Civ 3's current answer to that.
The chance that some, all, or none of the city improvements are destroyed, seems to simulate the remaining reactions from the resistors and the efforts to quell them. Plus the subsequent tendency to loot the city's cultural centers for the financial value of its artifacts and art.
Leaving the Cultural Improvements in a city would actually reduce the chance of the city reverting back to its original nationality, because everyone would be happy, and the culture value of the city would remain high, increasing the city's resistance to Culture Flipping.
Giving the AI a chance of offering peace before conquering a city does seem like an option that should be added, but I tend to think that the AI would usually just take the city if it could, and then, maybe, offer peace or allow the player to negotiate for peace on their turn.

Denarr said:

Anyone silly enough to leave an unoccupied fortress near their cities is just asking for trouble. How difficult can it be to pillage your own fortress before leaving it, or to send more troops to occupy it when the enemy approaches your city?

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Answer: it is very difficult. First you destroy the RR, next you destroy the road and mine/irrigation, LAST you destroy the fortress. There needs to be a toggle (like in Civ2) asking what you want to pillage. This was a failure of a lack of feature in Civ3, IMO.

rcoutme said:

Answer: it is very difficult. First you destroy the RR, next you destroy the road and mine/irrigation, LAST you destroy the fortress. There needs to be a toggle (like in Civ2) asking what you want to pillage. This was a failure of a lack of feature in Civ3, IMO.

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Interesting.... I just realized that I haven't ever used the Pillage command in .
I've only seen Pillaging being done by the enemy once...yesterday...and I'm still trying to figure out how one unit can destroy Irrigation, a Road, and walk away, all in the same turn. And you tell me that we only get to do one at a time, and we can't choose which one is destroyed?
That just don't make no sense, nohow.

It should be good to see a bonus for Guerrillas, on an urban warfare, a bonus attacking and/or defending cities