attacks from cities

[usadefcon1]

If you don't want that or complicated code a hacky thing you could do is maybe take away the palace defense bonuses but give the capital a free wall on founding.

You mean the capitol gets free walls when Construction is researched?

 

[DeAnno]

You mean the capitol gets free walls when Construction is researched?

That wouldn't really help with stopping archers, so no, I was thinking immediately, with the loss of palace defense hopefully countering some of how strong that is early.

 

[pineappledan]

What about this? We increase base range to 2, but we also increase blockade bonuses? With how the city defense scaling works now, I think blockades could use some beefing up.

blockades now give +25% damage vs city, reduce city’s damage by 25%, and reduce its range to 1.

that takes care of the problem with the new cities sniping your ranged, if you can screen them behind melee units then you are safe.

 

[CrazyG]

You can do the rush with chariots too BTW, it isn't unique to archers (though archers do it a lot better). A 33% penalty against cities doesn't stop chariots from wearing down cities. +1 range to cities would really slow down any kind of ranged unit rush.

You can swarm the AI's cities with horsemen too, but they have to take time to heal, and are a lot worse if the AI brought a few warriors. You could probably do spearmen as well but I don't like spending science on bronze working.

I think that part of this discussion could just be adding like 1 or 2 CS directly to the cities. They have a base of 4 currently, a single horseman can solo a city without a garrison.

I want to note that the AI likes to build warriors even when they've unlocked trapping and already have several warriors. Archers are better against literally everything.

 

[civplayer33]

What about this? We increase base range to 2, but we also increase blockade bonuses? With how the city defense scaling works now, I think blockades could use some beefing up.

blockades now give +25% damage vs city, reduce city’s damage by 25%, and reduce its range to 1.

that takes care of the problem with the new cities sniping your ranged, if you can screen them behind melee units then you are safe.

I like that; it would also assuage the complaints of some that City Assault is currently not worth taking (though personally I disagree with that).

 

[AndreyK]

I think that increase city's attack range to 2 is best solution

 

[Stalker0]

Just one consideration on the weaken archer idea....archers are already very weak to Triremes. If you weaken them further, they literally won't be able to scratch them (they barely do now).

 

[Kim Dong Un]

I like that; it would also assuage the complaints of some that City Assault is currently not worth taking (though personally I disagree with that).

In a round about way, it also satisfies my need to see units adjacent to the city, from a realism standpoint, being the only ones vulnerable to incoming damage directly from cities themselves; I'd be able to ensure this safeguard for my ranged/siege, I'd just need to surround the city first. Paired with the +2 range, I'm in favour.

 

[AndreyK]

Also in current beta city's attack should be nerfed, I think may be 20-33%

 

[pineappledan]

Or maybe just not buffed 15% by castles?

 

[crdvis16]

this is exactly what I don’t want. These little promotion “fixes” are so many little fingers in the dike.

we’ve got spearmen with a special anti mounted promotion
VP adds siege units getting cover
Warriors get a special anti-barb promotion
skirmishers have this open terrain doctrine promotion
And now an obsoleting city malus promotion just to get archers past turn 50.

no thank you.

I actually really like these promotions. It sort of recreates the rock, paper, scissor aspect that a lot of RTS games use where certain units are strong against some types and weak against others.

You can do the rush with chariots too BTW, it isn't unique to archers (though archers do it a lot better). A 33% penalty against cities doesn't stop chariots from wearing down cities. +1 range to cities would really slow down any kind of ranged unit rush.

You can swarm the AI's cities with horsemen too, but they have to take time to heal, and are a lot worse if the AI brought a few warriors. You could probably do spearmen as well but I don't like spending science on bronze working.

I think that part of this discussion could just be adding like 1 or 2 CS directly to the cities. They have a base of 4 currently, a single horseman can solo a city without a garrison.

I want to note that the AI likes to build warriors even when they've unlocked trapping and already have several warriors. Archers are better against literally everything.

If it's not just archers that are the problem then the change needs to happen in the cities. Base 2-range and/or higher base city CS. My guess is that you need base 2-range, slightly higher base city CS, and then lowered city CS from defensive buildings (even with walls the city CS is getting kinda high for on-era combat imo).

 

[Tekamthi]

at risk of being the broken record here, would the growing consensus on 2 range cities be okay with a building available from start that conveys this effect? ie a watchtower or something? this way we get a player choice that will work some variety into strategy, tactics and build priorities, rather than just a flat auto-effect

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

What's problematic for being useless i.e tanged city attacks in early game is one of the worst offenders in the game literally 20~30 turns later when every single city gets the walls up and running.
It's one-shoting contemporary ranged and mounted ranged units .... even worse when arsenals starts appearing you can and you sill get attacked by city ranged strikes inside your own territory and this is way before 3 tiles range arrillery 3 becomes online.
Personally i think Archer and other units too rush is an exploit that i'm willing to overlook just because how trying to fix it would probably exaggerate the effects of an already annoying mechanic.
It has a short execution window before walls get online and archers basically become useless against cities.

 

[Heinz_Guderian]

What's problematic for being useless i.e tanged city attacks in early game is one of the worst offenders in the game literally 20~30 turns later when every single city gets the walls up and running.
It's one-shoting contemporary ranged and mounted ranged units .... even worse when arsenals starts appearing you can and you sill get attacked by city ranged strikes inside your own territory and this is way before 3 tiles range arrillery 3 becomes online.
Personally i think Archer and other units too rush is an exploit that i'm willing to overlook just because how trying to fix it would probably exaggerate the effects of an already annoying mechanic.
It has a short execution window before walls get online and archers basically become useless against cities.

Well if you would put cities at 2 range from the get go you would obviously have to remove the range bonus from walls

 

[pineappledan]

What's problematic for being useless i.e tanged city attacks in early game is one of the worst offenders in the game literally 20~30 turns later when every single city gets the walls up and running.
It's one-shoting contemporary ranged and mounted ranged units .... even worse when arsenals starts appearing you can and you sill get attacked by city ranged strikes inside your own territory and this is way before 3 tiles range arrillery 3 becomes online.
Personally i think Archer and other units too rush is an exploit that i'm willing to overlook just because how trying to fix it would probably exaggerate the effects of an already annoying mechanic.
It has a short execution window before walls get online and archers basically become useless against cities.

The change that makes city damage actually scale on CS means that we can meaningfully address city defence for the first time. Gazebo’s right, we’ve been dealing with half-measures this entire time, and it’s causing opinions to fly off in wild directions. The main cause of this is we have an entirely new mechanic on our hands, but it’s being boosted by buildings/policies/etc still balanced around the old, obtuse and opaque system.

first thing, I think we should reduce ALL defense buildings to 10City defense. Walls currently have 15 and are factored into city damage now, and they can quadruple a city’s damage output. We can completely do away with city ranged strikes on castles and military bases until we have a better grasp of how the base defense stat holds up in a game on its own.

If cities are falling too fast, we can add HP at the appropriate building.
If city DPS falls off we can give the appropriate building level a strike modifier back.

right now we are getting all sorts of reports about cities being murder machines past castles, and of course they are. They are currently getting 25CS above whatever their base defence would be from population/hills/garrisons AND a +15% modifier. The highest defence stat these cities will face is a 25 samurai for at least an era. We’ve stacked so many bonuses onto defence buildings in order to patch up a broken city defence mechanic. Now that broken system is gone and only the band-aids are left; we need to wipe the slate clean and reorient ourselves.

EDIT: I imagine we could get to a point with the new system where the ranged strike modifier is reserved for UBs and wonders like Red Fort or Himeji.

 

[Gazebo]

who exactly are these “all other units”?

Archer is the only unit unlocked before city range increases to 2. No one would dare attempt a warrior rush, so increasing base range back to 2 really does punish archers exclusively. Spears, horses, etc don’t care; they have had to deal with 2 range cities the whole time.

there is no degree of nerfing where this ceases to be a problem, short of a) archers doing <5 damage per attack or b) we go back to archers being so bad that barbarian horsemen can 1-shot them from the fog of war. If archers can hit a city with no reprisal then, short of the defender being able to tech to and then construct walls in the time it takes for 4 archers to kill the city, this will remain a problem.

I am completely uninterested in some 1-time city malus just to make up for cities’ inability to defend themselves, when returning to a vanilla mechanic would accomplish the same thing. This is needless overcomplication; no more of these bespoke promotions plastering over combat and pulling further and further away from the vanilla game’s base mechanics, please.

are you done grandstanding? I never said I’d add any promotions.

G

 

[LifeOfBrian]

Gazebo, what are your current thoughts/plans on reducing city bombardment damage? I'm finding this version very interesting, but the overpowered city bombardment seems to be skewing my games against warmongers quite considerably.

 

[SuperNoobCamper]

The change that makes city damage actually scale on CS means that we can meaningfully address city defence for the first time. Gazebo’s right, we’ve been dealing with half-measures this entire time, and it’s causing opinions to fly off in wild directions. The main cause of this is we have an entirely new mechanic on our hands, but it’s being boosted by buildings/policies/etc still balanced around the old, obtuse and opaque system.

That's relieving to hear, i'm not against the presence of powerful city ranged strike at all but the experimental one we got this patch is really frustrating to play against.
I'm actually glad you went for a radical solution instead of band aiding.

right now we are getting all sorts of reports about cities being murder machines past castles, and of course they are. They are currently getting 25CS above whatever their base defence would be from population/hills/garrisons AND a +15% modifier. The highest defence stat these cities will face is a 25 samurai for at least an era. We’ve stacked so many bonuses onto defence buildings in order to patch up a broken city defence mechanic. Now that broken system is gone and only the band-aids are left; we need to wipe the slate clean and reorient ourselves.

EDIT: I imagine we could get to a point with the new system where the ranged strike modifier is reserved for UBs and wonders like Red Fort or Himeji.

I personally would like the flavor of Red Fort and Himeji castle to stay, a unique wonder in a single city in the game is not the end of the world and it makes the race for them and fealty meaningful; the range, HP, and of Red Fort is an extreme case but i don't mind a single city to stay unassailable without an overwhelming army till modern or atomic era if you invest in it.

 

[CrazyG]

Yea this patch if you want to conquer, better do it quick because cities are powerful. All the more reason to archer rush your neighbor.

I want to note Dan's comment "Who are these other units?". Right now the ancient era is the era of archers. The only reason I'd look at spearmen is to tribute CS. Horses have some uses, for tributing and for hunting enemy archers.

I just had a game where I took a capital and two more cities without taking a single point of damage on my archers, then I got stopped at shanghai, not by walls or classical era units, but a single archer.

 

[Stalker0]

then I got stopped at shanghai, not by walls or classical era units, but a single archer.

What I have found is that a single archer garrison is pretty damaging, but if I'm hitting the city with 4 archers what happens is the archer garrison gets hurt and pulls out of the city (too quick I think, it could do enough damage to force a unit pull out before running and still survive I think).

Honestly the only thing that has stopped my archer rushes is:

1) Carthage, just because they can buy units super quick.
2) Barbs....because my god the barbs. They love to find a way to muck up my invasions, or attack my cities while I'm rushing...or both...usually both.