Big Issues with city defence/defence buildings!

[da6d]

*snip*
Also you miss my point on the subject at hand.I am talking about MULTIPLAYER. The place where your opponent attacks both by land and sea and spread and optimises his forces for the sole purpose of capturing your citys.And there you can see how UGLY BROKEN the city defence is because you can`t have a small army defending every city while he can choose his battles and one-turn snipe.

[bold emphasis mine]

Your opponent won by having a competent strategy? Horrors!

Sorry but I had to giggle when I read this, because this, to me, demonstrates that the underlying game mechanics for combat are (reasonably) sound. If the combat AI were even remotely competent I think these boards would be filled with people whining about how hard the game is, rather than how easy. Theoretically this should be pretty easy to fix with patches, or mods if the devs fail us.

I do believe many of the current issues people have about the game mechanics being broken (read: exploitable) would be alleviated greatly if the AI put up a truly scary military threat throughout the game.

 

[Creepy Old Man]

They have to declare war on you first, which should give you enough time to mobilize your units. Furthermore, you should see their units around your borders when they are preparing to attack you.

By default, we don't see movement of friendly troops. That means that another player can move two embarked riflemen near my coast without me being automatically alerted.

Turn n : they declare war and land the two riflemen beside my coastal city.
I bombard one of the riflemen for 1 damage, and start bringing in
reinforcements from wherever.
Turn n+1 : Both riflemen attack, taking 2 damage each. My city is almost captured.
I bombard one of the riflemen again for 1 damage. My reinforcements are
almost there.
Turn n+2 : The riflemen attack again, taking my city.

This is why city defenses need to be stronger. There are numerous suggestions above that one should keep a cannon/artillery in every city. There are two objections to that suggestion.

Economics for a large empire does not allow you to support a unit in every city.
If you have that many units, you should be using them to conquer someone.

Thus, city defenses need to be stronger. Not a *lot* stronger, but enough to hold out until reinforcements arrive. Yes, a handful of troops should be able to take a city, but not so fast.

Currently, city bombardment does 40% of the damage that would be done by a unit of equal strength. Therefore for most of the game, melee units can attack cities and take negligible damage. Why is this?

 

[player1 fanatic]

There is also a question of economics. You would expect that defense building that cost as much and needs maintenance as much as regular unit to be able to help defending the city at least as much as such unit. And probably more, to keep things balanced (since you can't "move" defense buildings).

 

[da6d]

you know,

as I think about this, I realize even fixing AI to handle 1upt siege tactics may not solve much.

A clever human will simply park a few mobile units (horsemen, etc) out on the edges of his civ and outflank an enemy army every time.

In PvP the invader might use mobile units/scouts to search the outer regions for exactly such things and take them out before pressing home the invasion. Certainly real wars did and do work like this, with good recon being 90% of victory.

But to program the currently abysmal AI to:

1) perform competent recon before and during a battle

2) arrange battle lines to best prepare for any number of possible counter-attacks as determined by the results of recon

3) actively adapt battle plans, including judicious use of retreats and feints to draw opponents out of position

This is basic to any strategy boardgamer, but the likelihood of making the AI competent at it seems low at best...

 

[Nutteria]

[bold emphasis mine]

Your opponent won by having a competent strategy? Horrors!

Sorry but I had to giggle when I read this, because this, to me, demonstrates that the underlying game mechanics for combat are (reasonably) sound. If the combat AI were even remotely competent I think these boards would be filled with people whining about how hard the game is, rather than how easy. Theoretically this should be pretty easy to fix with patches, or mods if the devs fail us.

I do believe many of the current issues people have about the game mechanics being broken (read: exploitable) would be alleviated greatly if the AI put up a truly scary military threat throughout the game.

But really you are only proving my point here.Yes if the AI is better and can make more meaningfull decision on where to build fortress citys ..etc. then you can partly solve the problem.

But in multiplayer you have to account for so much more.And in that thinking you have spread thin with yuor army to avoid 2 unit city-snipes.So in this case the other human player will just spearhead fwe key citys and still win.And that on its part turns to the inevitable attack rush we see the AI do too.AKA if you get your timing right and manage to kill his army you hands down win because one garnisson unit + 1 one more defensive unit(perfect scenario here too! most times this is not the case) can`t hold the line for even one extra turn.

So to solve this problem one whould need strong Fortress citys where he knows that a garnisson + defensive buildings can give enough time for yuor army to come to help .This in turn can bring way better tactical decision and not the rush or die.