Border war with citadels

[azum4roll]

One of your normal tiles being overrun by an enemy unit: you temporarily lose access to work that tile, and surrounding tiles if you don't have units on them.
One of your citadel being overrun by an enemy unit: you permanently lose access to that tile and all surrounding tiles.

It's definitely worse having a citadel. A human would've replaced it with something else before the defending unit dies.

 

[CivTheGame]

I see your point now. This logic could be countered, if with replacing Citadel with something else you would also lose additional tiles that came with it, and if capturing a Citadel would cost a General.

I'm strongly leaning to the idea of Forts/Citadels making surrounding tiles immune to stealing. Can't see any downside. Other ideas regarding Citadels should be considered more carefully.

 

[AndreyK]

While citadel tiles could be immune for stealing, I don't understand why forts should be made so much stronger. I think that they are fine and citadels cost you GG. As is, warfare is more interesting and complex.

 

[CivTheGame]

The main reason would be reducing Fort-Citadel spam that sometimes occur on borders. In almost every game I have a situation, where about 5-10 Forts/Citadels with 1-2 tile spacing are build after triggering with Citadel stealing.

When you talk about Citadel tiles immune to stealing, It's actually regarding a thing that makes little sense. You build a Citadel and gain +1 tile radius around it, then someone builds his Citadel 1 tile space next to it. He also gained +1 tile radius around his Citadel, but you lost yours. Why his Citadel weakens your Citadel and takes the land you "secured" first just because it was build after yours? Makes no sense from any point of view, especially military one. Shouldn't it be "first come, first served" like with Cities?

It's also the main reason why Fort-Citadel spam occurs. The biggest streak I've seen was made with 5 Citadels (not counting Forts), all ended 1 tile from another.

 

[azum4roll]

The main reason would be reducing Fort-Citadel spam that sometimes occur on borders. In almost every game I have a situation, where about 5-10 Forts/Citadels with 1-2 tile spacing are build after triggering with Citadel stealing.

And why's that bad? It represents a frontier.

 

[CivTheGame]

Depends on how you picture such frontier. For me it's more of a single Fort/Citadel put on a most tactically beneficient position, like hill or a bottle neck between mountains. Not placing another Fort/Citadel, as close as you can, for every Fort/Citadel placed by other player, even if you have 5 already in 10 surrounding tiles.

 

[azum4roll]

It's a good thing. Each side fortifies their frontline so pushing that front is pretty much impossible without significant advantage. But at the same time, both have spent an amount of great generals so other fronts are going to be more vulnerable. Of course, AI may or may not capitalize on that.

 

[CivTheGame]

I'm taking into account also the "realism" of such occurence. As I remember from human history, forts, citadels, and similar constructions were build to independently guard specific region, resources, border section, or terrain of militaristic importance. It never was a race "for each of their fort near our border we build another two in front of theirs".

It's not that anyone should abstain from such actions in the game if they see some strategic benefits from it. It's more to stop AI from this weird spamming behavior trigerred by building a Citadel.

 

[phantom22]

Could citadels be given HP like cities and would require conquering like a city to capture? Perhaps leaving it without a garrison could be an instant capture like undefended cities in Civ I.

 

[balparmak]

One of your citadel being overrun by an enemy unit: you permanently lose access to that tile and all surrounding tiles.

It's definitely worse having a citadel. A human would've replaced it with something else before the defending unit dies.

Yeah all of your points were pretty good, so I'm inclined to give up the idea. I still think Citadels should have a counter that is still costly but doesn't require your to capture a whole city to get back a few tiles. What do you think about that, do you have any ideas?

 

[azum4roll]

Yeah all of your points were pretty good, so I'm inclined to give up the idea. I still think Citadels should have a counter that is still costly but doesn't require your to capture a whole city to get back a few tiles. What do you think about that, do you have any ideas?

We'll have to introduce a new type of ownership for tiles. A tile is "contested" by two players if it's in the radius of citadels from both sides. Both players cannot work the tile but can enter it; and it counts as neutral territory for combat between the two players, and friendly territory otherwise. Foreign units require open borders (or war) from both players to enter these tiles, which are treated as enemy territory when at war with either player. UI-wise, the borders will overlap (but not sure if that can be changed at all).

Pillaging all enemy citadels influencing a contested tile will permanently end the "contested" status, and you gain the tile back as your own.

 

[balparmak]

Man having a mechanic like that would be great. It could also bring what I like about Humankind most with borders becoming more flexible. Getting rid of fixed borders in early game would be both fun and accurate

 

[trinket]

placing another Fort/Citadel, as close as you can, for every Fort/Citadel placed by other player

Isn't this fine? irl you get heavily fortified regions between belligerent nations like in Korea or the crusader states. Admittedly citadel bombing chains are a pain, which is why I used the Hex Conquer mod.

a new type of ownership for tiles. A tile is "contested" by two players if it's in the radius of citadels from both sides.

Why not just make it neutral while within the influence of 2 or more citadels? then if the other citadels get pillaged the last one gains its area control, and if both gets pillaged at the same time the tiles remain neutral. It'd be a lot less complex especially when situations like pic related happen.

 

[CivTheGame]

This picture illustrates the very lack of sense in current mechanics. Orange player built his Citadel first and aquired some land. And this newly aquired land was stolen because white player built his Citadel after the orange player. And then both of their newly aquired land was stolen by the purple player who built his Citadel after theirs.

Why would a Citadel steal some land from the other Citadel just because it got there later? I have a problem understanding the logic in that. When a City is built near an existing City, it doesn't steal the already aquired land. So why Citadels do?

 

[Siegfroh]

As for cities, can there be a minimum distance between them set somewhere in the files ?

A minimum distance of 2 tiles between citadels would solve the problem of land stealing from another citadel.

 

[CivTheGame]

It would be the easiest and most elegant way to solve all the issues addressed earlier.

In this way Forts would not require immunity from stealing, because Citadels would play this role. And it would greatly help with Citadel spam.

 

[Tekamthi]

I don't understand why forts should be made so much stronger

i think you're overstating things here -- its so easy to wreck a fort, the increase in "strength" in this regard is trivial; i'd see it more of a functionality change than a buff. If this "strength" were seen as an unbalancing problem, we could maybe look at giving siege units a way of disabling a fort without capturing the tile directly... ie bombard with siege/bomber, fort flips to pillage state and all the bonuses disabled til repaired

the easy wreck-ability of forts is what makes this concept viable imo... does not work if we assign same function to citadels themselves, it should only be available on forts

 

[CivTheGame]

It's not a bad concept itself, but in this case it kinda sounds more complicated than it should be necessary.

I think Siegfroh had the best idea so far. If only Citadels would have both the ability to steal tiles and to block stealing (by increasing allowed distance between Citadels) it would solve all of the "problems" in a relatively easy way - it would only require to increase the shortest distance between two Citadels to two tiles.

In this case Forts would lose tiles to Citadel (because we assume Citadels are "stronger" than Forts), but you could always put your Citadel there first and no one would be able to do anything about that. As I think it should work from the beginning.

 

[Tekamthi]

you could always put your Citadel there first and no one would be able to do anything about that

its just too permanent and binary of an effectc -- the fort option leaves it open for borders to change vastly over time, but for player to affect and mitigate these changes as well; ie better analog for reality, and better compromise of status quo

 

[CivTheGame]

Yes, I get your idea and it's nice. It's just I don't think it's easy and simple enough to make it work. Or maybe there is someone who could make it work and would like to test it.