[DLL] (7-NS) defensive buildings destroyed as corresponding city hp is lost

[Tekamthi]

This proposal does not conflict with other 7-57, but is closely related. In fact it would probably be desirable to do some of the other 7-57 along with this one, rather than this one alone

Problem:

Spoiler :

Buildings are unrealistically invulnerable to attack -- city can reach 0 hp and still have all important buildings fully functional, including those whose primary purpose is to prevent city from reaching 0 hp in the first place -- this is thematically jarring and creates a disconnected feeling to the cities we see on map vs the cities we see in city screen.

Past civ franchise titles have included mechanisms to destroy defensive buildings, short of full capture. Re-adding interesting civ franchise features missing from civ 5 vanilla is one of VP's prime reasons for existing.

Proposal:

• Any defensive building that confers hp to city can be destroyed when city is attacked, if city hp corresponding to the building is lost.
• City base hp is attacked first, ie no buildings lost til city base hp all gone.
• After hp amount corresponding to city base hp is lost, buildings are destroyed according to the order they appear in tech tree. Where two buildings are on same tech tier, whichever provides smaller HP amount is lost first.
• Wonders are all exempt of course. UB may be exempted as well IFF they are not replacing a normal defensive building (ie if someone has a unique library that added HP, it would be exempt, but unique walls are not)
• naval hp buildings exempt (lighthouse, harbor)
• All hp conferring buildings affected are buffed to 150% of their current HP values
• after building is destroyed, cannot be rebuilt for 10 turns

Example:

Spoiler :

(hp numbers used are just illustrative, not representative of actual game values):

City (100 hp) has walls (20 hp) castle (30hp) and arsenal (50 hp).

For the first 100 hp of damage suffered (city base amount), attack proceeds as we are accustomed to. Once the damage to city exceeds 120 hp (base + walls amount), the walls are destroyed and must be rebuilt in the city production queue. The hp denominator is reduced by corresponding amount (current numerator stays same) and the city loses any strength this building added. Calculation repeats for castle as more damage is inflicted to city, such that once and additional 30 hp is lost, castle is destroyed, etc.

 

[CppMaster]

Makes sense! Kinda similar to Civ6

 

[pineappledan]

So lighthouse/harbor are lost?

 

[Tekamthi]

Kinda similar to Civ6

Despite being a die hard civ fan since the first title, I have yet to move on to 6 in a serious way (I have the freebie on epic and clicked through a couple dozen turns). Can you sketch out the basic mechanism in 6? Possible there are a few others like me reading here.

My memory is foggy but I'm pretty sure I was referring to civ 3 in OP, where some units would destroy walls under certain conditions, though I can't recall the details. Civ 3 probably closer to the original proposal on this topic this round

 

[Tekamthi]

So lighthouse/harbor are lost?

As proposed, potentially. Of course player can do other things to avert the circumstance that leads to their loss.

Or they could be exempted -- the older game only included a few buildings as loseable iirc

 

[Stalker0]

I think this proposal underestimates the change to city conquest it would create.

This isn’t a subtle change, if would make cities MUCH easier to take, since you lose CS as well as the buildings die. Even just walks and castle is 14 CS.

I don’t mind the destruction off hand, but I think just flat losing the defensive CS from those buildings is too much

 

[pineappledan]

I’m against this for the same reason I’m against the proposal to have 0HP cities randomly get buildings destroyed if you continue to bomb them. This is more predictable, but it’s still destroying buildings. it still is the creation of a compatibility hurdle where none existed before

 

[Tekamthi]

I think this proposal underestimates the change to city conquest it would create.

Very true. I did not underestimate so much as intentionally ignore. We'd need to rebalance the hp numbers for sure, and possibly other attributes. Ideally we'd want first implementation to be conquest-neutral, meaning the cities are hardened up front in their full HP state from current, but then softer as hp degrades, such that the full number of turns and attacks stays more or less the same.

Or we just apply the change and tweak next round.

Edit: added flat hp buff to proposal

I’m against this for the same reason I’m against the proposal to have 0HP cities randomly get buildings destroyed if you continue to bomb them. This is more predictable, but it’s still destroying buildings. it still is the creation of a compatibility hurdle where none existed before

Would there be any limited application you'd find less offensive in this sense? Say we ONLY did this for walls, castle, and maybe a few others that are actually visually represented in the on-map city. Digging up specifics from civ 3 is difficult, but from what I've googled it was just walls maybe. Walls makes the most thematic sense in this regard...

 

[Legen]

Tradition's Royal Guardhouse grants +50 HP. If the capital is bombarded hard enough, a Tradition player would permanently lose that building.

 

[CppMaster]

Can you sketch out the basic mechanism in 6? Possible there are a few others like me reading here.

City combat (Civ6)

Back to Combat City combat changes dramatically in Civilization VI, thanks to the new district system and the new rules for City Defenses. Having large, strategically important parts of the city outside of its main tile gives the attacker new possibilities for harassment, and forces the defender...

civilization.fandom.com

To summarize a City have 200HP and there are 4 tiers of walls that each adds 100HP to outer defences. Outer defences are damaged first and don't regenerate. They have to be repaired similar to building a building. Also when walls are damaged, you can't build next tier of walls. It's not accurate, because it's quite complex, but you get the idea.

BTW, why harbor makes the city more resilient against land units? It doesn't makes sense.

 

[Rekk]

Or they could be exempted

hurray!

 

[Rekk]

For this to workable, it has to be a specific feature of the building.

That is, it's a building trait that causes it to destroy itself at X% HP. Then you could continue to overload the text on walls, castle and other specific buildings that you were thinking about initially.

This way, it avoids dealing with other buildings that do similar things that you weren't intending to be affected by this change.

 

[Tekamthi]

Tradition's Royal Guardhouse

I'd throw this into the "national wonder" category, and thus exempt. Not sure if it's formally designated as such but certainly would have to be exempt.

BTW, why harbor makes the city more resilient against land units? It doesn't makes sense.

I think it's to give those isolated island cities some added survivability, in lieu of some other tactical option. Nothing has ever emerged on the latter. Maybe an island only building for this purpose would be preferable

For this to workable, it has to be a specific feature of the building.

That is, it's a building trait that causes it to destroy itself at X% HP. Then you could continue to overload the text on walls, castle and other specific buildings that you were thinking about initially.

This way, it avoids dealing with other buildings that do similar things that you weren't intending to be affected by this change.

Yeah this is a good idea, will revise along these lines. In the meantime, what buildings do we want to function this way? Walls and castle are the two I notice when looking at a city on the map, if there are other defensive buildings that have 3d models I don't know what they are, but these would be the ones I'm inclined to include.

 

[Stalker0]

For this to workable, it has to be a specific feature of the building.

That is, it's a building trait that causes it to destroy itself at X% HP. Then you could continue to overload the text on walls, castle and other specific buildings that you were thinking about initially.

This way, it avoids dealing with other buildings that do similar things that you weren't intending to be affected by this change.

Could you do it at specific damage numbers rather than a %? A % wouldn’t work, at walls it’s up is a major part of the total city hp, at military base a small fraction

 

[Rekk]

BTW, why harbor makes the city more resilient against land units? It doesn't makes sense.

Because people didn't like that Naval units have higher CS than Land units, that other people advocated for to be necessary in order for Naval units to have any relevance at all.

 

[Tekamthi]

Could you do it at specific damage numbers rather than a %? A % wouldn’t work, at walls it’s up is a major part of the total city hp, at military base a small fraction

If we did only walls and castle, I'd probably make the thresholds correspond to the yellow/green/red hp bar for city ie lose walls at 33% DMG, lose castle at 66%. Is there some reason I'm overlooking this couldn't work?
It wouldn't work out to the building hp value exactly but it's still a valid trigger for their loss.

Possibly we just group any others according to these two options as well, as this then includes a built-in visual indicator of when certain things will be lost

 

[Rekk]

If we did only walls and castle, I'd probably make the thresholds correspond to the yellow/green/red hp bar for city ie lose walls at 33% DMG, lose castle at 66%. Is there some reason I'm overlooking this couldn't work?
It wouldn't work out to the building hp value exactly but it's still a valid trigger for their loss.

Possibly we just group any others according to these two options as well, as this then includes a built-in visual indicator of when certain things will be lost

Why would you lose the castle before the walls, when the walls would be the first structure taken by the invader? We're going back to being gamey.

 

[pineappledan]

Why would there be a castle inside a city in the first place?

 

[Tekamthi]

Why would you lose the castle before the walls, when the walls would be the first structure taken by the invader? We're going back to being gamey.

I confused things by talking about damage instead of remaining HP -- on a remaining HP basis, I'd propose walls go at 66%, castle at 33%

Why would there be a castle inside a city in the first place?

This raises another good point, that older civ games did better -- things like walls and castles shouldn't matter in modern eras -- the older games made them obsolete and the new buildings just take their place -- you couldn't build them anymore, and if you still had one you'd just get tourism/culture rather than whatever yields they gave when they were current. In my thematic opinion this would be preferable for VP but alas we've had this other model so long now...

 

[Rekk]

Why would there be a castle inside a city in the first place?

London?
Himeji?
Urban Castles in general