Cities are too strong.

[Kark]

I like it. Invading a city is a challenge. It takes planning.

As for realism: It's not small towns, it's big cities. Historically cities were built on places where they could be easily defended. Like on a rock in the middle of a river. Visit Toledo, Spain.

 

[the343danny]

I like the stronger cities a lot. I kind of like to roleplay, and create a history of the world in each of my games, so simply having each war be a war to the death, much smaller gains per war suits my Civ experience a lot. This adds more types of wars I think. It adds wars where the objective is to completely annex the nation, or a border skirmish type.

 

[ruskyandrei]

I don't mind cities being strong, I do mind however the apparent huge amount of hp they regenerate each turn.
IMO regeneration should only happen after 1 turn of not being attacked.
If needed, walls/castle/etc could be buffed if this were implemented.

 

[Vile_Despot]

I like the city strength right where its at.

 

[Bibor]

I don't mind cities being strong, I do mind however the apparent huge amount of hp they regenerate each turn.

Healing speed is based on defensive building level (walls/castle/m.base)

 

[elthrasher]

To take a city, you need four current-era units and you need to surround it and attack all on the same turn. Often you'll need to attack on the following turn as well. Now heal, then proceed to the next city and repeat. I conquered entire empires with four units. If that's not easy enough, well....

But the thing is the patch to increase city defenses actually made the game easier, at least on higher levels. Pre-patch often one distant AI would often take out all its neighbors and basically just spiral out of control, gaining a huge advantage over the player who just wasn't able to grow that quickly due to happiness limits that the AI don't share.

Now the AI can only take cities with great difficulty. No more runaway AI. Easier for the player.

 

[ImperialGuard]

IMHO the changes by the patch to increase city strength etc.. was right on !!

Taking cities with 4 warriors is just too easy and gamey.

It's still pretty easy, you just need 4 swordsmen instead of 4 warriors.

 

[Buccaneer]

Sigh. Why do some people want cities to be easier to take?? The patch did it right, esp. beefing up the capitals. I imagine there is a mod that can allow you to capture a city with one button click.

 

[Strategist83]

Cities are too strong, yes, but not by that much. What I consider a much bigger issue is how the city defenses INSTANTLY are at full strength immediately once you found the city. That isn't right at all. Cities should be founded with their health bars 'in the red' and only slowly 'healing' up to full strength. After all, a few moments ago there was no 'city' at all, just the pioneering settlers with their caravans with goods. The current system is incredibly cheesy, where you can instantly plop down a city to have a very powerful combat unit that can start to fire at nearby enemies right away. They also need to limit when walls etc can be purchased - I suggest removing the ability to rushbuy defenses completely as it is simply game-breakingly powerful. If you need that castle you better have prepared it in time and not simply insta-buy it when the enemy is at the gates.

 

[trueblue]

your insta-buying example could apply to... tiles, units and any other building.

 

[Nares]

Now the AI can only take cities with great difficulty. No more runaway AI. Easier for the player.

This.

I found the game far more exciting when AI-AI wars were raging and AI cities were changing hands freqeuently.

The first 100+ turns have returned to the snooze fest they were in CIV.

 

[Sofar Sogood]

Taking cities with 4 warriors is just too easy and gamey.

Not being able to take otherwise-undefended cities with 4 warriors is kind of questionable. I like the idea of it no longer being an absolute cakewalk, but making a Warrior rush a non-option sounds debatable to me.

 

[Leuf]

I wouldn't have a problem with it if you didn't need iron to build all the early siege units.

 

[Deussu]

Healing speed is based on defensive building level (walls/castle/m.base)

Really? I didn't know that. Not a surprise though as the civilopedia/help/everything is lacking.

Sigh. Why do some people want cities to be easier to take?? The patch did it right, esp. beefing up the capitals. I imagine there is a mod that can allow you to capture a city with one button click.

Heh, and I find cities still to be too lousy and easy to capture. Guess there's no pleasing everyone.

 

[joyous_gard]

Sigh. Why do some people want cities to be easier to take?? The patch did it right, esp. beefing up the capitals. I imagine there is a mod that can allow you to capture a city with one button click.

Maybe they are the right difficulty, but now there are many more cities to take which makes the beefing up more of a chore to get that initial land that my neighbor has. Most AI cities now are 3 tiles away from one another now and so it's just a royal PITA to make some progress. I have to wipe out 3 wiener cities before I get to one real city.

Beefing up cities and improving AI combat, would have been nice.... but we got beef up cities and more AI cities to make up for same AI combat.

EDIT: So now, when I can easily take one or 2 ICS cities... my fighting units get out-teched and I am back to plinking on super fortified city walls before I get the opportunity to take a city worth keeping (an inner core city). It's not an improved AI, it's just city spam defense.

 

[cman2010]

Not being able to take otherwise-undefended cities with 4 warriors is kind of questionable. I like the idea of it no longer being an absolute cakewalk, but making a Warrior rush a non-option sounds debatable to me.

Questionable? it should take alot more than just pumping out 4 warriors to take a city sounds like you want the game dumbed down even more to your level.

 

[rkay316]

Questionable? it should take alot more than just pumping out 4 warriors to take a city sounds like you want the game dumbed down even more to your level.

I have to agree this is what is killing the civ franchise things like lets make a city easy to take with only 4 warriors. I think it should be harder to take a city I would like to see a real blood bath to take a city but I like my games to be realistic and civ 5 does not like realisim

 

[Maniacal]

Civ4 is hardly realistic either... though I agree that realism (or at least plausibly realistic) is appreciated. If you really want a realistic game go try something like ARMA II. I know its an FPS, but it is one of the most realistic games.

 

[Sofar Sogood]

Questionable? it should take alot more than just pumping out 4 warriors to take a city sounds like you want the game dumbed down even more to your level.

It should... what?

The problem with a scenario like that, to me, says that you're not getting punished for neglecting your early defenses. If your opponent can walk up to you with four warriors, with you having nothing, and your opponent loses -- this seems sketchy. It's punishing early-game aggression to the point where it's almost a non-option and rewards people for not doing anything.

If I'm putting the effort into building a series of warriors, the least the game could do for my sake is force you to build a corresponding defense. It most definitely shouldn't force you to build four warriors of your own, but it should make you do something.

Marching one warrior up there with you having nothing and failing -- I can see that. Marching a couple -- maybe. Marching four up to you and failing with no real action required by you?

Something seems wrong here.

At any rate, this then skews you into requiring resources of finicky availability for any kind of early aggression. Since units are now capped to resources, I kind of do take issue with the "finicky availability" part of things.

 

[Civsassin]

Obviously, the designers wanted to make warfare more than "build and rush." They wanted a more strategic flavor to the game. You can't simply build four warriors and conquer the nearest enemy city. The first 50 or so turns are very important to the game and require planning. If you want to go to early war, plan for it. Prioritize the leap to either Civil Service or Iron Working. Civl Service is safer since Pikeman don't require andy special resource to build, and they are nearly as strong as Swordsman.

Cities are not difficult to take once you've prepared for the siege. You can make it even more difficult by city placement. Place your city with obstacles - mountains, lakes, rivers - surrounding it as much as possible, and keep your city spacing tight for mutual defense. In that case, not only do you have to worry about the city's inherent defense, you must also worry about archers or siege units within and around the cities. That becomes huge once you reach artillery and have the three hex range.

I think that cities are perfect just the way they are. I dislike the comparisons to CiIV. I don't want a new CiIV, I want CiV.