attacks from cities

[Snipergw]

City attacks are pretty bad design imo. It never made much sense to me thematically either -- sure, citizens will defend themselves, as Pineappledan said, but that's basically what units taking damage when slamming the city is. An ungarrisoned city shouldn't be able to hit back at the ranged and siege units on the hill. What are they supposed to do, send the old and infirm out with scythes to charge the enemy army?

Gameplay wise it also makes more sense for a naked, undefended city to be more exposed. The power of the ranged attack is really hard to balance -- either it is too strong, and makes attacking a slog, or it is so weak its just a chore to plink the enemy every turn with. Units are significantly more interesting: xp, promotions, unique abilities from civs or wonders, terrain bonuses, the rock/paper/scissors of unit types. Even without the added bonus of removing bad code, ripping it out wholesale would improve the game imo.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

What I dislike here is that it would interfere with certain policy and religion choices, as well as wonders, that modify the cities attack strength. Removing it would make the game more poor.

There are no religious buildings that affect city attack strength, and Red Fort is the only wonder. I already gave a small example showing some interesting options regarding policies; barracks, armory, and military academy/base could all add +5 dmg if paired with authority, fealty and Imperialism respectively. You'd have to earn it. Remember the city would only do damage if it's spending turns running the process.

 

[Tekamthi]

City attacks are pretty bad design imo. It never made much sense to me thematically either

imo it's against spirit of VP to take things out from vanilla. City attack is not game breaking, just unpredictable and inconsistent.

In ancient times, a turn spans what, like 20 years? Reasonable to assume the citizens can build a makeshift catapult or something in that time.

None of the suggested changes here really jump off the screen as worthwhile. I think maybe status quo just needs small tweak

 

[civplayer33]

The power of the ranged attack is really hard to balance -- either it is too strong, and makes attacking a slog, or it is so weak its just a chore to plink the enemy every turn with.

It's either too strong or too weak? How does that make any sense? Just because extremes can exist doesn't mean every possible state is an extreme; I think you just used a rather roundabout way to say "I don't like it and don't care how you tune it".
I get that it requires balancing, as does anything else, but in the current state it is mostly fine already, before even tweaking it further...there can be cases where some people think the attack is too weak (while others like that in certain circumstances), but that is easily taken care of by adding minimum damage; even with 10 minimum damage it will be enough to snipe that unit that didn't quite die or inflict wounded status. And 10 damage across multiple turns against a barbarian in the very early game can be the difference between relief and despair.
And regarding the "too strong" argument: we have people here suggesting 25 damage per turn to ALL units surrounding the City...it seems hypocritical to critique too strong City Attacks of a single unit per turn but not this (and Red Fort one-shotting units is pretty much the only extreme case of the current status quo...only one player, at most (maybe no one picks Fealty?) can have it). Plus, this is another thing we can fine-tune, even if we were to add some sort of "maximum damage" (though personally I would not be in favor of that).
Lastly, regarding realism: the City is still working tiles while it is being besieged, so that already breaks realism; after all, this is a game, not a reality simulator...you can imagine all sorts of options, like the City having people who train with and craft bows, even in peacetime, (in Ancient and Classical the City Attack is even displayed by arrows, after all), constructing Catapults for City defense (see the animation in Medieval and Renaissance) and later using things like missiles to fend off the attacker. To me this sounds more realistic than some Citizen working 3 tiles away from the City, with the enemy units surrounding the City and him, and yet somehow managing to bring in that Stone from the Quarry, for example, to aid in the construction of the City's Castle.

 

[DarkZero]

The problems whit city ranged attacks, the defender is already at an advantage, and the current implementation of this mechanic benefits wide play far more than tall, to the point where to go at war whit some
ai is an absolute chore as a decent siege into a city sometimes puts your units in range of 3 city bombardments, the damage is very inconsistent whit some units taking massive damage while others pitiful, I was even able to one shot fully healed embarked units.
Maybe removing it may not be the best option, but if there was a way or a condition for it to stop working after a trigger, say, when the city is blockaded or is at half hp.

As good as the ai is right now it is still not at the player level, I had a game where despite the enemy numbers and my city being at 0 hp, thanks to a couple of well placed 3 range archers and the city attacks no melee units was ever able to capture the city.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

And regarding the "too strong" argument: we have people here suggesting 25 damage per turn to ALL units surrounding the City...it seems hypocritical to critique too strong City Attacks of a single unit per turn but not this

Fortified units healing with a Medic II flanking them in late game would only take 10 of that 25 dmg, by the way (and again, only if the city is running the defense process which means it can't build anything else like units, providing more reason and opportunity to have to buy them in emergency situations).

This topic seems to have sparked a bit too much hostility for something as simple as an idea I submitted in a thread specifically created to brainstorm ideas. Even I'm not entirely sure myself that it's a great move to abandon city attack this late, but there's no harm in trying to think of ways we can make VP as awesome as possible.

 

[saamohod]

There are no religious buildings that affect city attack strength, and Red Fort is the only wonder.

God of War; Bran, the Sleeping Guardian.
I wasn't talking about buildings.
Your suggestion regarding barracks etc and defense process modifying attack strength sounds interesting, but may be a pain to implement.

 

[Kim Dong Un]

God of War; Bran, the Sleeping Guardian.
I wasn't talking about buildings.
Your suggestion regarding barracks etc and defense process modifying attack strength sounds interesting, but may be a pain to implement.

Fair enough.

 

[civplayer33]

The problems whit city ranged attacks, the defender is already at an advantage, and the current implementation of this mechanic benefits wide play far more than tall

That's why I like the idea of the damage scaling with population to some degree...that way tall players, who already get extra damage from their Guardhouse (I assume they go Tradition), would get even more extra damage due to their larger Cities.

As good as the ai is right now it is still not at the player level, I had a game where despite the enemy numbers and my city being at 0 hp, thanks to a couple of well placed 3 range archers and the city attacks no melee units was ever able to capture the city.

Well if you built Walls then you deserve to have better defenses than a non-walled City, but regardless of that, if you already have 3 units defending your City you may as well have put a fourth there to take the job of what the City Attack did in that situation; if there was some sort of compensation for removing the City Attack, like preventing healing or having the Citadel effect on the City, defending it in that situation would likely have been even easier, probably even without that extra unit.

Fortified units healing with a Medic II flanking them in late game would only take 10 of that 25 dmg, by the way (and again, only if the city is running the defense process which means it can't build anything else like units, providing more reason and opportunity to have to buy them in emergency situations).

A properly besieged City already has low production, though (pillaged and occupied tiles), so the Defense process actually often makes more sense than some other production (the exception being some circumstances where you think you can push out that defensive building or unit just in time...something the human would certainly be better at judging and deciding, by the way), so I already use it quite often when under serious siege. And you would need at least 3 Medic II units to mitigate that Citadel damage, if that is possible at all (Mountains, Lakes, Ice and other circumstances can prevent you from being able to place all the Medics properly)...plus you're now constraining siege unit placement further and all of this is exactly the sort of thing the human would, again, be much better at than the AI, which was one of the arguments for removing City Attack; the human would be able to place Cities better in such a way as to make it extra hard to properly heal the besieging melees and be extra good at doing it during a siege, while the AI currently has no idea how to use Medic units at all, if I understood @ilteroi's comment correctly.

 

[Stalker0]

You could just divorce city attack entirely from defense and go based on tech. Aka if the civ has knights, it does knight damage, etc.

So then you have a more consistent measure of damage

 

[Gazebo]

hello all!

it seems there is some discontent with the way attacks from cities work right now. it's just not clear which way to go for improvement. so i made my first survey ... let's see how it goes.

some background information:

city attack pro:
* you can fend off a siege more easily
* can tie policies to the attack strength

city attack con:
* complex and arcane rules to derive the attack strength of a city, hard to balance
* bad UI, only the defense strength is being shown
* lots of code for a weak effect

the only real usecase for me personally seems to be very early in the game, for example defending against barbarians if you don't have any units at hand and cannot buy one. however, barbarians don't capture cities, so there is no real danger from them. this is why I would prefer to simplify the game by removing the attacks from cities.

optionally we can try and compensate by setting the base heal rate in enemy territory to zero (note that pillaging and the medic promotion would still work). assuming a city attack would have done damage of 10hp/turn, that is equivalent to two units not healing 5hp/turn.

the realism argument: this is always difficult, after all we are talking about a game. but do note that that melee units will still take damage when attacking a city. also armies in enemy territory should normally suffer attrition from disease & desertion, so not healing is actually quite generous towards the attacker. naval units never had healing in enemy territory.

the AI performance aspect: right now, city attacks are a totally separate codepath from unit attacks, there is no coordination and no concentrated fire. units which need to heal will retreat to do so. AI players make use of pillaging if a unit is damaged. however, they do not consider the medic promotion (at the moment ...)

of course, there are some knock-on effects to consider as well: some policies and buildings might need re-balancing, some promotions could be changed eg to allow healing in enemy territory.

so, what's your opinion?

always remember: "perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove" (antoine de saint exupéry)

I think we just need to redo the code, make it use the same range attack logic as ranged units and have it be consistent with the city’s ‘strength.’ So that if a city has 20 CS, it attacks like it has 20 RCS. And so on. Easy, clear, simple to balance, as we can make the curve comparable to the curve for ranged units.

g

 

[azum4roll]

I think we just need to redo the code, make it use the same range attack logic as ranged units and have it be consistent with the city’s ‘strength.’ So that if a city has 20 CS, it attacks like it has 20 RCS. And so on. Easy, clear, simple to balance, as we can make the curve comparable to the curve for ranged units.

g

Yeah that's great, but obviously existing policies, pantheons and buildings need to be rebalanced in the same version the code is changed. And maybe give a -50% RCS promotion to cities at start so they won't start 2-hitting spearmen once walled.

 

[Voremonger]

If attacks from Cities were to be removed I think there would need to be some compensation, at least in the early game.
However, I think that neither disabling healing in enemy territory nor adding a Citadel-like effect would be suitable compensations.
I think a suitable compensation would be to instead

1. give each player a free Warrior at the beginning of the game and to
2. reduce the attack range of Archers from two hexes to one hex.

Let me explain why:
In the Ancient Era players have a low amount of Units, which is why Cities make up a relatively large amount of their firepower.
At the same time the threat from Barbarians is at its highest.
I therefore think that removing attacks from Cities without replacement can potentially make the early game very tedious since it will take you much longer to clear Barbarians.
I think the most suitable replacement would be to give each player a free Warrior in addition to the free Pathfinder.
(In my subjective opinion it is also more fun to fight Unit vs. Barbarians than to fight City vs. Barbarians)

However, in the early game there is also the threat of other players.
As of right now Warriors get absolutely obliterated by Archers.
Currently, if you rush Trapping and build a few Archers you can easily beat an AI that does not yet have Archers and/or Spearmen (even on Deity, at regular speed).
In that scenario a single Warrior is in no way a fair compensation for losing attacks from Cities.
I think that if you were to remove attacks from Cities with a Warrior as compensation rushing Archers would become an even more dominant strategy.

The way I see it there would be two ways to balance Archers if the attacks from Cities were to be removed:

1. Reduce the Combat Strength of Archers or
2. Reduce the attack range of Archers to one hex (and maybe give them a small CS bump to compensate).

I think that reducing the attack range of Archers to one hex would be the more sensible approach.
This is because I think that the fundamental problem with Archers in the (very) early game is that they can continuously attack Cities and Warriors from a safe distance with minimal risk.
If they had to move within one hex of their target it would make them more vulnerable to counterattacks.
Also, to effectively heal up during an early game siege they would have to back off first (and then approach again).
I think that the above two factors would greatly increase the attrition you would see with Archers in early game sieges and would therefore make them significantly less effective for that particular use case.
I think in order to achieve the same effect with a decrease in Combat Strength you would have to reduce the Combat Strength of Archers to such a degree that they become ineffective for anything but early game sieges.

I think it's fine to remove attacks from Cities for the Classical Era and beyond.
Compared to now it would give an advantage to the attacker but I think if anything attacking is a little too difficult right now.

Regarding the idea of disallowing healing in enemy territory:
I think this will be entirely ineffective.
Healing in enemy territory is really bad anyways.
I think it's a much better strategy to pull out and heal up in neutral/your own territory.

Regarding the idea of giving Cities a Citadel-like effect:
I really don't like this proposal because I think it would be really annoying to play against.
Approaching Cities (on higher difficulties) is already dangerous.
Ideally you would use melee Units as meat shields for your siege Units and fire away.
I think for the Citadel-like effect to be relevant the damage would have to be more than ~10.
However, if Cities were to deal more than ~10 damage to adjacent Units I think the rate of attrition among melee units would be too high to actually approach the City.
I think as an attacker it would be a far better strategy to level up your siege units to 100 Experience so you can safely attack Cities without having to suffer the Citadel-like effect.
As a defender I think the best strategy would be to use mounted ranged Units that use the City as a barrier against approaching enemy units.
If you cannot use mounted ranged units the second best choice would be to put ranged units next to/slightly behind your Cities so that they cannot be attacked without walking next to the City.

 

[Stalker0]

The 1 range archer is interesting

 

[CrazyG]

I'd try a version with 1 range archers.

I'd like to start with a warrior in addition either way. About 1/50 games on Deity barbarians just wreck you early game. Warrior first is a terrible build order in 49 of your games though, so it's not like you do it.

We could talk about cities having two range regardless of having walls, like in vanilla. The biggest impact of this change from vanilla is it makes archer rushing the AI a lot easier. Or maybe just capitals start with 2 range.

We could also experiment with stronger cities as part of the AI's handicap on high difficulties.

 

[Tarzan737]

why not make it optionally before start a game? it seems 50/50 with people who want it and those who not want it

 

[pineappledan]

Seems like increasing base city attack range back to 2 would solve problems better than nerfing archers or removing city attacks

 

[HungryForFood]

I'm with increasing base city attack range to 2, as changing Archer range has balance implications vs other units.

 

[crdvis16]

It seems like there's a couple different issues being discussed now:

1) city attacks being either too high or too low and not intuitive. It seems like G intends to look into the code and fix it rather than remove city attack or something.

2) barbarians occasionally being horrendous in early game. I'd be in favor of everyone getting a free warrior and pathfinder at turn 0 personally. I don't see much downside to that and I doubt there would be much in the way of side effects.

3) a potentially overpowered tactic of capping early cities easily with just a few archers and a single warrior/pathfinder. This seems harder to address. Reduce archer line city damage maybe? Bump initial city CS somewhat even when not garrisoned?

 

[Tekamthi]

Early military action needs to remain viable imo.. most changes I'm reading here seem to suggest that early capture of a poorly defended city, or at least capital, should be designed out of vp... Other than fighting barbarians, there is little other purpose to 1st gen military without a viable opportunity for conquest.

I think the problem identified with rush is slightly over emphasized here. Eg play 43-civs and eliminate even 3 other capitals early via rush, and you obtain only a modest advantage as the game wears on. I understand this is more profound on small map with only 4-6 civs, and both extremes need to play well, but eliminating early city capture altogether just flattens the game's strategy.

Maybe early supply needs to be adjusted to penalize early conqueror? ie playing deity, capital starts by providing 7 supply typically.. this usually reduces to 6 from tech level before you can even get 2-3 units built, nvm 7. Instead of starting at 7, reducing to 6, then increasing from there, if supply started from 1, and built gradually, at least conqueror would have to face economic penalties for early rush.

Alternatively a pre-wall defensive building, available from the start might work well too, and there's good historical basis for wooden palisades etc, leaving the conquest rush open to gameplay instead of design decision. Could obsolete early on even to avoid throwing off later balance