Counterproposal to:
City siege always seems to take longer and longer as the game goes on, and only becomes faster again when you have highly promoted units and/or air superiority. This is not just from human perspective; AI wars also take forever to progress, and usually only do when the army and economy of one of them fall apart.
What went wrong? It's not about city strength, as post-walls units of the same line deal roughly the same damage against appropriately defended cities, like Tercio vs Castle and Fusilier vs Bastion Fort. The problem lies in the continuous HP boosts given by defensive buildings. See below table:
The units between Walls era and Arsenal era are all at most range 2, so the maximum number of units attacking a city per turn stays the same, dealing the same damage. Yet, the HP continues to increase. If you have 5 units attacking the city with 20 damage per hit, it takes 5 turns to take a city with walls, but 10 turns to take one with Bastion Fort and Harbor.
The other problem is with Harbor, which was given HP to patch the gap between Castle and Arsenal when cities were very vulnerable to sea-based attacks from Corvettes and Frigates, the strongest units at the time. But now that Bastion Fort exists (and Ironclad's free city attack bonus is about to be removed), the HP shouldn't be necessary anymore.
The common theme of these problems is that HP is merely functioning as a stall so city siege takes longer and the defender has more time to react. Removing all this should make siege duration fall back to a normal length.
Note: Base city HP formula = 300 + Population * 10
Arsenal is the only other building that receives the HP boost, as the tech tier after that introduces range 3 units and air strikes, which means around doubling the units attacking the city per turn.
Military Base gets the extra
boost to cover the ease of killing the garrison with missiles.
Mine Field removal is due to it already having a strong effect AND the generic ship nerf that comes with ENW making naval defense easier than land defense.
SDS boost stays just as flavour.
But wait, wouldn't this make Castle and Bastion Fort both more expensive and weaker than Walls? Well it certainly feels so even though they're actually progressive upgrades. But we can do more with new code!
We add flat damage reduction to Castle and Bastion Fort. Each attack against them will do 2 less damage if the city has either building, and 4 less if it has both.
Advantages over adding more CS:
1. City ranged strike doesn't get stronger than it currently is
2. It encourages using specialized city attackers over ranged/skirmisher spamming, as reducing a 37-damage attack to 35 is much less impactful than reducing 8 damage to 6.
Arsenal HP boost is reduced from previous table to compensate.
[Sponsored] - (4-03) Proposal: Swap Military Bases with Airports
Rationale: 1. Military Bases are a bit too close to Arsenals in the Tech Tree. 2. Part of the gap between Flight Air Units and Radar Air Units is how many Air Units can be placed in a City. Airports triple this (2 base per City > 6, +4 w/ Airports). Proposal: Swap Military Bases w/ Airports...
forums.civfanatics.com
City siege always seems to take longer and longer as the game goes on, and only becomes faster again when you have highly promoted units and/or air superiority. This is not just from human perspective; AI wars also take forever to progress, and usually only do when the army and economy of one of them fall apart.
What went wrong? It's not about city strength, as post-walls units of the same line deal roughly the same damage against appropriately defended cities, like Tercio vs Castle and Fusilier vs Bastion Fort. The problem lies in the continuous HP boosts given by defensive buildings. See below table:
Spoiler Current :
The units between Walls era and Arsenal era are all at most range 2, so the maximum number of units attacking a city per turn stays the same, dealing the same damage. Yet, the HP continues to increase. If you have 5 units attacking the city with 20 damage per hit, it takes 5 turns to take a city with walls, but 10 turns to take one with Bastion Fort and Harbor.
The other problem is with Harbor, which was given HP to patch the gap between Castle and Arsenal when cities were very vulnerable to sea-based attacks from Corvettes and Frigates, the strongest units at the time. But now that Bastion Fort exists (and Ironclad's free city attack bonus is about to be removed), the HP shouldn't be necessary anymore.
The common theme of these problems is that HP is merely functioning as a stall so city siege takes longer and the defender has more time to react. Removing all this should make siege duration fall back to a normal length.
Note: Base city HP formula = 300 + Population * 10
Spoiler What about this? :
Arsenal is the only other building that receives the HP boost, as the tech tier after that introduces range 3 units and air strikes, which means around doubling the units attacking the city per turn.
Military Base gets the extra
boost to cover the ease of killing the garrison with missiles.Mine Field
removal is due to it already having a strong effect AND the generic ship nerf that comes with ENW making naval defense easier than land defense.SDS
boost stays just as flavour.But wait, wouldn't this make Castle and Bastion Fort both more expensive and weaker than Walls? Well it certainly feels so even though they're actually progressive upgrades. But we can do more with new code!
Spoiler Full proposal :
We add flat damage reduction to Castle and Bastion Fort. Each attack against them will do 2 less damage if the city has either building, and 4 less if it has both.
Advantages over adding more CS:
1. City ranged strike doesn't get stronger than it currently is
2. It encourages using specialized city attackers over ranged/skirmisher spamming, as reducing a 37-damage attack to 35 is much less impactful than reducing 8 damage to 6.
Arsenal HP boost is reduced from previous table to compensate.
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