Both irritating and major ...

[kaspergm]

Ok that was a bit tongue-in-cheek, but seriously: I have Mbanza-Mpangu under siege and down in red health, when Mvemba builds ancient walls in the city, even though it is under heavy assault, and uses the city ranged attack to kill off one of my warriors, thus lifting the siege and bringing the city back to life.

There is already a rule that you can't repair walls while city is under assault. Why does this rule not apply to building new Ancient Walls as well?

Spoiler :

 

[PiR]

weird that it would be reported only now?

 

[Naokaukodem]

Imagine that you are the defender. Preventing wall repairs during a siege is logical, either way you will never take any city, but building walls during a siege is just fine.

 

[MrRadar]

John Henry said to his Captain,
"A man is nothing but a man,
But before I let those bastards run us down,
I'd die but I build the City Wall, Lord, Lord,
I'd die but I build the City Wall."

Song of John Henry, Wall Building Man
(by Anonymous Kongo author)

 

[Planktonic]

I agree that this makes no sense, but wouldn't like it changed. Many times I've started an early campaign against a neighboring civ only to have it falter somewhat when the cities under attack threw up walls. If the AI couldn't do that it would be even easier to overcome militarily, which would not help game play much imho....

 

[Gorbles]

There is already a rule that you can't repair walls while city is under assault. Why does this rule not apply to building new Ancient Walls as well?

Building costs a lot more production than repairing, and establishes a permanent feature. If you can't starve them of production improvements and / or take the city before they can build a wall, isn't that on you?

 

[Vargas1]

The only change I would like is to have it so that if you have a military unit next to the city center, you can see what is being produced and the turns left (akin to when you have a high level of diplomatic visibility, I think). It makes sense logically since if your unit is right there they can see what's happening, and while it wouldn't stop the city from building walls you could at least know it's coming.

 

[General_Sahib]

The only change I would like is to have it so that if you have a military unit next to the city center, you can see what is being produced and the turns left (akin to when you have a high level of diplomatic visibility, I think). It makes sense logically since if your unit is right there they can see what's happening, and while it wouldn't stop the city from building walls you could at least know it's coming.

Best not to worry too much here. I always rationalise this by accepting that ALL ai opponents in Civ 6 start the game secretly as Valetta's suzerain and are eternally ready to insta-faith-rush walls when this precise OP scenario arises.

 

[criZp]

Building costs a lot more production than repairing, and establishes a permanent feature. If you can't starve them of production improvements and / or take the city before they can build a wall, isn't that on you?

Still doesn't make any sense.

 

[Bibor]

love it or hate it, walls take a number of turns to build, offering zero protection while being built and all the protection once completed. If a city can finish units or insta-buy them with gold… its just game mechanics. It brenefits your gameplay more if you simply get used to adding the battering ram into your conquest plans - and get surprised when you didn’t need it, rather than vice versa.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

If you can't starve them of production improvements and / or take the city before they can build a wall, isn't that on you?

Not really, at least not on deity.
The AI will more often than not get walls up, even if you go for a 2-3 city warrior rush without waiting for higher tech units.
I generally consider myself lucky if the AI doesn't get walls up.
And with the heavy teching that they do these days, that walled city can soon get up to 40 CS as they garrison a swordsman there, at which point it's quickly game over if I committed to the rush without an ace up my sleeve.

 

[Gorbles]

Not really, at least not on deity.
The AI will more often than not get walls up, even if you go for a 2-3 city warrior rush without waiting for higher tech units.
I generally consider myself lucky if the AI doesn't get walls up.
And with the heavy teching that they do these days, that walled city can soon get up to 40 CS as they garrison a swordsman there, at which point it's quickly game over if I committed to the rush without an ace up my sleeve.

Sure, but you know this ahead of time. You're not getting flipped on an attempted offense because they got walls up in the nick of time. You expect them to.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Sure, but you know this ahead of time. You're not getting flipped on an attempted offense because they got walls up in the nick of time. You expect them to.

It's not consistent though, which makes it very annoying to deal with. In some cases going peaceful isnt an option, for example when locked in with no room to expand, and about to lose your own cities to loyalty pressure.

Which is incidentally why I play with the mod "stupidwalls" on, which reduced the walls by 50% back to what they used to be until Firaxis suddenly doubled wall strength in GS. Even 50 health walls are still an issue to take down, but it makes the game much more enjoyable for me personally. Walls should never have been doubled to begin with imo.

 

[General_Sahib]

Sure, but you know this ahead of time. You're not getting flipped on an attempted offense because they got walls up in the nick of time. You expect them to.

I agree with this. Deity is a whole different ball game precisely because of AI walls, whether they insta-appear or are established before your raid. Multiple tricks are needed to overcome AI wall building shenanigans and this makes Deity interesting. Although, I do sympathise that civs that don't have certain tricks or useful UUs up their sleeve are suddenly unable to go for early domination rushes on Deity.

Often, 2 raiding parties in separate waves are needed, first one as a suicide mission to get the walls down to half or less, then send in the second before AI repairs the wall (which they always take ages to actually even consider doing for some unknown reason). This second wave will survive and also acquire some valuable promotions to help against other cities (e.g. double attacks, range increase, turtle etc) which makes a big difference. In my playthroughs, it's getting that first city which is the challenge and often your surviving troops are beefed up enough to snowball through several other cities, with minimal reinforcements, despite walls being present them.

 

[reddishrecue]

I checked Kongo UT and UB so that's not it. Maybe its the difficulty setting or it could be something else.