City Damage Brainstorm

[crdvis16]

Yeah. May obfuscate things too much, but I do worry about the double dip.

If you take the average (only if the garrison has higher CS) then the double dip is blunted somewhat. In Stalker's example a Knight in a non-walled city bumps the city CS up to roughly 15 instead of all the way to 25. You get some protection in a newly founded city but you would still be encouraged to build walls to get it up higher (and not have to plant your unit in the city all the time).

 

[Gazebo]

I don't quite understand why there is a big push for higher damaging cities.

IMO the model of siege warfare should be, defeat the opposing army in the field, set up your siege lines, bombard the city, assault the city. In this model, the city damage would play a pretty negligible role in the field battle, and during the siege the city damage would be minor. City damage being an abstraction for a raiding party/sallying force/archers on the walls, enough to be a nuisance but not enough to be serous threat to the siege. The strength of walls/castles being their ability make frontal assaults costly, therefore requiring siege equipment, therefore buying time for reinforcements to come lift the siege.

I think the proposals of: no walls = archer, walls = comp bow, castle = xbow is a good start. Cities should have a combat strength a good deal higher than contemporary melee units. Defensive buildings should add health. Blockades should deal damage to the city.

You misunderstand - higher damage is not the goal; clarity of damage potential is the goal.

G

 

[DeAnno]

Kinda defeats the purpose of making city RCS equal to their CS. The point was so people could SEE the damage potential of a city. The alternative would be some UI change to cities where they display their and scores independently.

I get that likely won’t happen, but it seems like the only way to have the cake and eat it too. If garrisons don’t affect city damage then we lose the clarity this new system provides. If we leave as is then cities can yo-yo between 2 massively damage output potentials.

Maybe the city base strength, not including the garrison, which it uses for ranged attacks, could always be what was displayed? And the Garrison boosted strength is only used for defense, which a player would be able to evaluate easily when choosing whether to attack and looking at damage potentials. Of the two the Ranged number is the one that's really important to see at a glance on the map.

This is part of why I'd like to get rid of all city damage boosters (God of War etc). Just turn them into small strength boosts instead.

 

[azum4roll]

Is it possible to display both CS and RCS on the city? Or is it possible to give promotions to cities? Something like -50% CS when attacking would be nice.

 

[SpankmyMetroid]

I personally don’t mind red fort making a city essentially indestructable for a few eras by beefing it up to 100ish CS. It’s a locked wonder that needs to be encouraged to be built on a frontier city (as opposed to most other wonders that just go in your high production capital) and there can only be one in the world. Same deterrent as Great Wall.

 

[usadefcon1]

We could just take the damage dealt by a city and divide it by an integer. At this point I think it would have to be by 3 or 4.

 

[crdvis16]

In my current game the CS of cities I am attacking are roughly 1.5x the on era ranged unit and it feels about right. The city can dish out damage but also isn't one shotting anything. Melee units with appropriate promotions are particularly able to absorb city attacks. My siege units deal appropriate damage.

So maybe 1.5x the on era ranged unit is a good goal for city CS throughout the game with various policies/beliefs buffing city CS on the order of 10% each (similar to the power of unit promotions)?

 

[Stalker0]

So if we go with the idea that city's should use equal era ranged unit damage, then I would recommend factoring in these promotions.

Archer - CS 6
C bow with Accuracy I - CS 14
Crossbow with Accuracy II - CS 28
Musketman with Accuracy III - CS 51

You could also mimic by saying:

Walls - +20% attack
Castle - +20% attack
Arsenal - +20% attack

And then lowering the CS values to the actual ranged unit base.
Walls - CS 12
Castle - CS 20
Musketman - CS 32

 

[pineappledan]

So barring other factors, your recommendation is that walls/castle/arsenal should increase city CS by 8/8/8, and Then Constabulary can add an additional 4?

 

[bigcat88]

Tradition cities with God of war will be a problem...

 

[Zuizgond]

I think city attack should be tuned to deal low damage (max 20 dmg) and having an unit in a city should not increase the damage dealt. And keep attack range how it is now.

Defenders should rely on his units to counter a siege and city attack should just be there to finish low HP enemies.

 

[pineappledan]

So if we go with the idea that city's should use equal era ranged unit damage, then I would recommend factoring in these promotions.

Archer - CS 6
C bow with Accuracy I - CS 14
Crossbow with Accuracy II - CS 28
Musketman with Accuracy III - CS 51

You could also mimic by saying:

Walls - +20% attack
Castle - +20% attack
Arsenal - +20% attack

And then lowering the CS values to the actual ranged unit base.
Walls - CS 12
Castle - CS 20
Musketman - CS 32

So maybe this is a good starting model for the next patch? Current CS in (Bold Red)

Remove all CityStrikeModifiers
(5) Palace :: 5
(10) Walls :: 8
(12) Walls of Babylon :: 10
(10) Castles :: 8
(12) Missions :: 8
(15) Arsenals:: 8
(15) Krepost :: 8
(20) Military Bases :: 8
(3) Royal Guardhouses :: 2 (increase base HP +100)
(2) Acropolis :: 2
(5) White Tower :: 2
(4) Venetian Arsenal :: 2
(3) Orders :: 2 (increase base HP +100)
(0) Constabulary :: 2
(2) Minefield :: 5
(2) Bomb Shelter :: 2
(10) Red Fort :: 8

 

[Stalker0]

So maybe this is a good starting model for the next patch? Current CS in (Bold Red)

Remove all CityStrikeModifiers
(5) Palace :: 5
(10) Walls :: 8
(12) Walls of Babylon :: 10
(10) Castles :: 8
(12) Missions :: 8
(15) Arsenals:: 8
(15) Krepost :: 8
(20) Military Bases :: 8
(3) Royal Guardhouses :: 2 (increase base HP +100)
(2) Acropolis :: 2
(5) White Tower :: 2
(4) Venetian Arsenal :: 2
(3) Orders :: 2 (increase base HP +100)
(0) Constabulary :: 2
(2) Minefield :: 5
(2) Bomb Shelter :: 2
(10) Red Fort :: 8

So now lets take a look at how melee attackers would do in this model. For this purpose, I am not going to factor in city assault, because I think that promotion would likely have to be dropped or greatly changed in this paradigm. So lets see how the standard drill line fares.

Swordsman (Drill I) vs Walls: 21.6 vs 12 (Dmg Dealt: 46, Dmg Taken: 19.5)
Longsword (Drill II) vs Castle: 35.7 vs 20 (Dmg Dealt: 46, Dmg Taken: 19.7)
Tercio (Drill II) vs Castle: 42.5 vs 20 (Dmg Dealt: 55.4, Dmg Taken: 16.2)
Fusilier (Drill III) vs Arsenal: 77.9 vs 30(Dmg Dealt: 72.5, Dmg Taken: 12.4)

I do think the palace CS would likely need to be nerfed as well, probably 2 instead of 5. 5 RCS and CS is an incredible boost in damage especially early in the game.

 

[pineappledan]

At this values, a fealty scaler of 1 is still functionally a full 5th level of defense building, and red fort is functionally a 6th level.

I also wonder if bomb shelter defence shouldn’t be swapped for more HP?

 

[Gazebo]

Before I futz with this further, does anyone find this display of CS/RCS offensive?

Spoiler :

 

[Revolutionist_8]

Looks reasonable to me

 

[pineappledan]

Before I futz with this further, does anyone find this display of CS/RCS offensive?

Spoiler :

View attachment 543425

oh wow; I didn’t think that was a possibility. That’s terrific.

I wonder if you will need to thicken the outlines on the numbers? The contrast on a desert background could be pretty low. Maybe what is already there is enough, but hard to know from that picture.

 

[civplayer33]

Before I futz with this further, does anyone find this display of CS/RCS offensive?

It could use a darker, not completely transparent, background, as is done with the CityStrength elements now, because otherwise it will be hard to see the numbers easily sometimes...you could use the same textures already available but stretch them dynamically.

 

[Gazebo]

It could use a darker, not completely transparent, background, as is done with the CityStrength elements now, because otherwise it will be hard to see the numbers easily sometimes...you could use the same textures already available but stretch them dynamically.

Unfortunately the existing texture doesn’t stretch well...also it has a shield in it.
G

 

[civplayer33]

Unfortunately the existing texture doesn’t stretch well...also it has a shield in it.
G

I would suggest modifying it but I can't even seem to find "CityBannerStrengthFrame.dds" or the other one...there are no files by those names in the Civ 5 install directory...I suppose they're part of some texture atlas that is referenced in some non-source-released, obfuscated file?