City defense and bad habits

[Sandman2012]

I'm a casual Civ 4 player, and have recently picked it up again playing at Noble level (I think noble - the one that's considered "balanced"). I do alright, and find that my natural inclination is to be a builder so I'm trying out more warmongering techniques to break bad habits.

I find that one of my flaws is to get real anal over city defense, making sure that there's a balance of defense in each city - e.g. one spearman, one archer, one axeman. I keep mounted units spread out for fast attackers. Am I wasting my time and resources keeping balanced defense in all cities? Should I leave inner cities less defended and just juice up the border and coastal ones? I'm wondering.

 

[theimmortal1]

My cities are poorly defended in nearly every game. I'll keep my "army" spread out among the border cities of my next target and some reaosnable d in other border cities.

But it is likely ill have warriors protecting quite a few cities, even my capital. Or maybe one modern unit protecting a border unit.

If someone declares wars, I simply mobilize. Move troops in the area. Whip etc.

You can usually whip two defenders before any stack can get to any city. Plus you add in city defense and fortify bonuses you should be fine. If he wants to bombard, then you got reinforcements plus more whip.

 

[Pbhead]

ya, i tend to be on the lacking side when it comes to defence... unless i want a war...

3 units should be fine (two more than i normally have) :/

 

[ownedbyakorat]

It's only worth it to defend cities that can be attacked... cities not on your front line don't need more than 1 unit in them. What I do is load up border cities with ~4 units and keep a stack behind the lines for reaction defense. Everything else gets 1 unit, and most of the time an obsolete unit at that.

However, your instincts are correct in keeping a mix of defenders. I tend to go heavy on spears for defense since the AI likes to attack with horses rather than ground troops. But it's good to be prepared for anything you might face.

As a theoretical example, let's say I had six cities, three on the front lines and three behind them and enough units to put an archer, a spear, and an axe in each. Each of the front line cities would get an archer and a spearman and an axeman; the back line cities would get only an archer apiece. The remaining 3 axes and 3 spears would be put in a stack, centrally placed if no threat, or towards the most threatened city otherwise.

 

[GoodSarmatian]

You don't really need to defend your inner cities.
I have one city only dedicated to unit production and when I am not building up an army to attack someone I'll just keep builing defenders or replacing old units by new ones, and I have almost all defenders in the border cities.
Mounted units are OK to intecept other mounted units (pillaging) , but the AI likes to attack cities with larger stacks, so it is good to have one or two siege weapons with barrage in your most important cities.
It is better to have more offensive units. You can use them to attack, or to tackle enemies in the field while the garrison promoted archery/gunpowder units are only useful to defend cities.

 

[topcatdk]

I’ve sometimes found myself in the later part of the game with a redicilous setup, even in wartime:
Border cities defended by 2 SAM’s each, coastlines guarded by a few destroyers and the core cities often still with either an archer or a warrior. However I’ve got a number of quick moving units in central positions behind the frontline, typically cavalry or (as I finally learned to use in the current GOTM) gunships, those things are incredible to have on standby to intercept enemy stacks before they do any damage, especially if we’ve got a few planes to soften the stack a bit first. The movement of 4 combined with roads/rail makes the gunships one of the best defensive units around.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Every turn a unit sits in a city is a turn it costs you. Even before the Financial Adviser is showing you an upkeep cost.

It cost shields to build. When you don't use that investment toward achieving your winning condition, it's wasted. Every. Single. Turn. Moreover, each turn you fail to make use of a unit, the more costly it is because of a missed turn advantage (earlier turns are more valuable than turns later in the game*).

Ideally you would only have units in a city the turn before the city was attacked (or 5 turns before for the full fortification bonus). And, the turn they were at full strength, they would be attacking enemy units. This is impossible to achieve, but you should only have units where they will fight. You should only have as many as can keep fighting. For those inner cities that have no concievable threat, ever, you should have a single unit to offset unhappiness, and it should be the cheapest unit you can build. In my current game I was being invaded, and instead of producing Musketmen I still had cities producing Longbows, because they were cheaper and I anticpated the tide would be shifting shorty, thus they'd never see combat.

Isn't there a risk associated with skimping on defense in this way? Yeah. But by and large the AI can be played like a fiddle, so by and large you should be able to keep extremely few units just sitting around.


*An evident example would be a beaker. If you manage to gain an additional beaker on turn 5 you might discover Writing a turn faster. Your library will be built a turn faster, thus you will get its 25% beaker bonus faster. Those additional 5 beakers could mean you discover Universal Suffrage two turns faster, allowing you to cash rush. Through an extra two turns of cash rushing you get a bank and university in every city, allowing you to discover Fiber Optics 20 turns faster than if you hadn't scored that single extra beaker on turn 5.

 

[cabert]

lord chambers' point is good, and i'm a lacking defender myself.
But i do the following to compensate :
- one strong defender for border cities
- i love spiritual leaders. If i don't play a spi, i keep on slavery as long as possible. If i do play spi, i switch to slavery+nation (if available) and poprush a unit (siege!) then conscript another. and i do that everywhere around (not just the attacked city). Conscripts can move on the turn they're built, so i start flooding them to the target city.
If needed (big powerfull stack) i send the siege units for collateral damage ASAP, then conscripts kill what they can and retreat to the city (with the one big defender still fortified).
this often breaks stacks in 2/3 turns, and opens the way for counterattack.

 

[BadHorsie]

I only have 1 warrior in each of my inner cities to stop unhappiness from "We demand military protection"

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Having played only single player, I tend to play the AI like a fiddle as well. Few large border stacks with the single unit in the larger interior cities that are complaining about it. Units are cheap most of the game compared to city upkeep, except in war.

 

[cabert]

Having played only single player, I tend to play the AI like a fiddle as well. Few large border stacks with the single unit in the larger interior cities that are complaining about it. Units are cheap most of the game compared to city upkeep, even in war.

units costs you a lot when they're outside your borders
thus, going to war with a huge army (victory requires it) is costing you A LOT!

 

[Stolen Rutters]

units costs you a lot when they're outside your borders
thus, going to war with a huge army (victory requires it) is costing you A LOT!

Ahh, that would explain those periodic times where my cashflow goes massively negative for no reason... Good to know, thanks. (Changed last post from "even" to "except".)

 

[cabert]

Ahh, that would explain those periodic times where my cashflow goes massively negative for no reason... Good to know, thanks. (Changed last post from "even" to "except".)

so if you can choose 2 paths, choose the one mostly inside your territory
if you put a galley to sleep, better to do it inside your territory (exception being fog busting)

 

[IglooDame]

I only have 1 warrior in each of my inner cities to stop unhappiness from "We demand military protection"

Same here, and if I can't build warriors any more and am doing some serious conquest, I'll build explorers instead for the same purpose - plus with two mps, they can get there from the core cities that much quicker.

 

[cabert]

IglooDude : more than 9000 posts!
wow!
how come i never read any of those? All civ 3?

 

[Dagoril]

When I started playing Civ4 I was extremely anal about city defense. I'm still trying to lose some of the habits I picked up in Civ2 hehe, where the ai liked to do things like paradrop in units near your core cities if they could. If you had only one unit or only weak units defending the core, you'd lose your city.

So my first Civ4 wars were successful, but my economy was out of control from my unnecessary hordes of units, one outside the border conquering (necessary), and one inside the border just sitting there costing me upkeep (unnecessary). So I started heavily garrisoning only coastal and border cities, but even that was putting a drag on my economy, and the cities rarely get attacked anyway.

The roving defense stack idea sounds like it would work fine for those times when the ai manages to sneak some units behind your invasion force, I'm gonna have to try that out.

 

[Naismith]

I've seen this mentioned on other threads: I don't build many defensive units, especially early game. I end up building a lot of axemen. I hardly ever build spears, unless I see my neighbor has a significant number of horse archers, and that neighbor is a credible threat.

I build cheap defensive units to occupy cities I have taken, so my offensive units can move on to the next target. Interior cities get 1 defender, sometimes a warrior.

Typically, the first ten units I build might be 3 warriors, followed by 7 axemen. My next ten units: 8 axemen and 2 archers to occupy the cities I've taken.

I encourage you to build more offensive units. Like anything else, it can be overdone, but try it out. Be sure to build enough units to keep your Soldiers rating on the Demograhics screen pretty high, preferably #1. That way, you can concentrate on building for offense, rather than defense.

 

[IglooDame]

IglooDude : more than 9000 posts!
wow!
how come i never read any of those? All civ 3?

They're mostly in OffTopic. I mostly read and absorb Civ4 forum stuff, rather than posting in it.

 

[gunkulator]

When I started playing Civ4 I was extremely anal about city defense. I'm still trying to lose some of the habits I picked up in Civ2 hehe, where the ai liked to do things like paradrop in units near your core cities if they could. If you had only one unit or only weak units defending the core, you'd lose your city.

IIRC, Civ2 Paratroopers only had a range of 10 so they were never much of a threat. Your coastal cities, however, were in constant danger of AI frigates showing up out of nowhere and landing 8 dragoons who could land and attack on the same turn. Also, AI units could use your rails so, yes, city defense was essential in Civ2. Civ3 and Civ4? Not so much.

 

[bfordyce]

Another thing I do in Civ 4 is build plenty of roads. They cost you nothing and let you respond a lot quicker to enemy/barbarians. Even though roads no longer give you a bonus, IMO, it's worth it to build roads to your border areas when the workers have some time on their hands.