City Strength

[Slanderbot]

Hey, so I've done 4-5 games with the Civpatch/thal balance mods and love how it changes the game and greatly improves it, however there is one thing I have noticed.

Every game everyone's cities rapidly reach 30+ strength, and in later techs reaching above 100 on average! It is possible to take them down but it really takes a lot of power to kill a 30 strength city with catapults and swordsmen, heh.

Now I only play on immortal, so I'm not the best player out there, which is why I was wondering if other people were experiencing similar scenarios.

 

[Seek]

Keep in mind that the levels are shifted down - king is emperor, emperor is immortal, so you're playing the equivalent of deity! Don't be ashamed to move down a level.

 

[Mortal D]

For a player this may not be a problem, but i have seen many AI vs AI wars where both loose their army yet dosnt take any city. But in the end this is only cuz AI is so useless in combat.

 

[Txurce]

Hey, so I've done 4-5 games with the Civpatch/thal balance mods and love how it changes the game and greatly improves it, however there is one thing I have noticed.

Every game everyone's cities rapidly reach 30+ strength, and in later techs reaching above 100 on average! It is possible to take them down but it really takes a lot of power to kill a 30 strength city with catapults and swordsmen, heh.

Now I only play on immortal, so I'm not the best player out there, which is why I was wondering if other people were experiencing similar scenarios.

Seconding what Seek wrote, I play on Emperor now, and wouldn't think of playing on Immortal. In my games it's not easy taking a 30-strength city with cat and swords, although it can be done with good timing. But I usually have higher-strength weapons by the time I encounter a city that size.

 

[Thalassicus]

I also play Civ on Emperor, it's been my difficulty level for about the past five years (both IV and V).

Cities are definitely a challenge to take. I've found I usually need 3 siege units of the appropriate era to capture a city.

 

[Babri]

Later in the game this is not a problem but earlier on you have limited production & gold making it very difficult to capture cities especially cities in hills.

 

[Thalassicus]

The main problem is Firaxis' decision to increase city healing from defensive buildings. It creates a threshold situation where we must have X units to capture a city. Any less than X is impossible to take the city (city heals faster than damage) and significantly more than X is too easy.

Neither "impossible" nor "too easy" are fun gameplay.

The better solution is to increase city hitpoints from defensive buildings. Increasing hitpoints affects large and small armies exactly the same and avoids the threshold problem. If the city heals 1 hp per turn and we're dealing 2 damage per turn, we will eventually capture the city, it'll just take a long time. Walls could increase hitpoints by 25%, castles by 25% and military bases 50%... or something along those lines. With all three buildings a city would take twice as long to capture but would still be possible with a small force.

 

[Txurce]

Speaking of taking cities, am I correct in noticing that range units no longer get the Siege promotion? It caught me off-guard when I realized what it meant, but think it's a good idea from the pov of having a balanced army. I'll bet I inspired you a little when I said I basically no longer used iron or horse units when playing non-domination!

 

[Thalassicus]

Yep, I do think about all feedback, even when I don't discuss it at length.

 

[Stalker0]

Do defensive buildings increase healing? I never noticed.

 

[Questdog]

I, for one, think the whole idea of the "City" as a living thing capable of defending itself and regenerating it's wounds like some alien from outerspace is stupid. If there's no army in Paris to stop the German's, then Paris will belong to the Germans. The buildings shouldn't magically come to life, shout "Viva la France!", and have at the Boche.

Another thing that really bothers me about cities: It takes 4 or 5 turns to build a road, 10 (!) turns to build a farm (on Epic), but you can whip out your can of Insta-City and have one on the fly. It should take a Settler at least 20 turns to build a city (on Epic). If this were true, I think it would make for more strategic gameplay. No more sneaking an unescorted settler over to quickly grab the prime real estate close to the enemy's homeland (or them doing it to you). Building a city would require a force to protect that settler while he does his business and give other players an opportunity to fight for the chosen spot.

Especially with the self-healing and self-defending cities of Civ V, it has become too easy to grab up real estate indiscriminately and then build your infrastructure later.

 

[Babri]

The main problem is Firaxis' decision to increase city healing from defensive buildings. It creates a threshold situation where we must have X units to capture a city. Any less than X is impossible to take the city (city heals faster than damage) and significantly more than X is too easy.

Neither "impossible" nor "too easy" are fun gameplay.

The better solution is to increase city hitpoints from defensive buildings. Increasing hitpoints affects large and small armies exactly the same and avoids the threshold problem. If the city heals 1 hp per turn and we're dealing 2 damage per turn, we will eventually capture the city, it'll just take a long time. Walls could increase hitpoints by 25%, castles by 25% and military bases 50%... or something along those lines. With all three buildings a city would take twice as long to capture but would still be possible with a small force.

So do you have plans of fixing it ?

 

[Txurce]

So do you have plans of fixing it ?

I think what he means is that it can't be fixed without access to the code.

 

[Thalassicus]

@Stalker0
Yes, each defensive building increases city healing by about 1 hp per turn. (It's based on the defense value of the building so it's somewhat complicated.)


@Questdog
City defense is identical to a strong archer in each city, capable of attacking and healing until dead. When the "unit" dies the city is captured. It reduces the tedious micromanagement of stocking each city with a unit in previous versions of Civ, so I like Civ 5's method.

There's two time delay options for city construction:

• Settler takes time to build, city is instant.
• Settler is instant, city takes time to build.

In the real world it's more like B. People can grab their belongings and leave a building immediately, but it takes a while to construct a new building. Civ chose method A because it makes more sense with the overall unit training method in Civ.


@Babri
City healing and hitpoints are hardcoded in the c++ side of things we don't have access to, or I would have fixed it a long time ago. It's been the #1 thing on my wishlist for over half a year.

 

[Questdog]

@Questdog
City defense is identical to a strong archer in each city, capable of attacking and healing until dead. When the "unit" dies the city is captured. It reduces the tedious micromanagement of stocking each city with a unit in previous versions of Civ, so I like Civ 5's method.

There's two time delay options for city construction:

• Settler takes time to build, city is instant.
• Settler is instant, city takes time to build.

In the real world it's more like B. People can grab their belongings and leave a building immediately, but it takes a while to construct a new building. Civ chose method A because it makes more sense with the overall unit training method in Civ.

I really think it would make for much more good tactical gameplay if the city had to be built at the spot it was going to reside, rather than in your analogy, where it is built safely in another city and then carted to a location and doused with a little water to dehydrate it into a fully functional entity.....

And there is no reason why the two methods you list have to be mutually exclusive. It can take time to get a wagon party together to begin the trek to Oregon and then once you get there it can take time to build a home......

 

[Thalassicus]

In a way the time delay is the building construction process itself. It starts at population 1 and no buildings -- basically just like as if the settler group erected a simple perimeter defense, and picked up some bows to shoot at attackers. That seems decently realistic. It takes time to get walls up in the city, grow the population, or construct other buildings.

 

[Questdog]

In a way the time delay is the building construction process itself. It starts at population 1 and no buildings -- basically just like as if the settler group erected a simple perimeter defense, and picked up some bows to shoot at attackers. That seems decently realistic. It takes time to get walls up in the city, grow the population, or construct other buildings.

In the early game, a newly constructed city is virtually indestructible without a massively concerted effort. If three Warriors could take out a new city with no defenders, then I would be okay with them popping into existence. But as it is now, once an AI plops a city down that you are not happy about, you have to stop everything and concentrate on eliminating it, or live with it until you can get some catapults and swordsmen.....

New cities are just too tough...

 

[Thalassicus]

There's two potential balance problems which would be introduced by the capability to destroy cities with our starting units.

One is the butterfly effect -- small differences in early gameplay have an amplified effect on the game as a whole. This is why I avoid significant changes to the early game when possible. A little random luck, or a dumb mistake by the AI, and we've basically won the game before turn 50.

Another goal is to prevent rushes in general. The reason for this is rushes in Civ do not take the tactical skill of rushes in games like Starcraft. Build 5 warriors, move to the enemy city, capture it. In this timeperiod warriors are the only combat unit we can build. It requires no significant practice, strategy, or careful timing, nor much tactical skill in executing the plan. Delaying the start of conquest until the classical era opens up a lot more strategy in gameplay due to the wider variety of units on the field.

 

[Questdog]

Another goal is to prevent rushes in general. The reason for this is rushes in Civ do not take the tactical skill of rushes in games like Starcraft. Build 5 warriors, move to the enemy city, capture it. In this timeperiod warriors are the only combat unit we can build. It requires no significant practice, strategy, or careful timing, nor much tactical skill in executing the plan. Delaying the start of conquest until the classical era opens up a lot more strategy in gameplay due to the wider variety of units on the field.

I don't think you should want to prevent rushes, but to make them an iffy proposition. Certainly the AI sometimes tries to rush me very early and unless he's caught me trying to overextend myself (which I sometimes am tempted to do), it usually ends up in a guaranteed overall loss for them since they are so easily wiped out. I think it would make the game more fun if seeing four or five warriors come over the horizon headed for your capital was something to fear.....

 

[Txurce]

I think it would make the game more fun if seeing four or five warriors come over the horizon headed for your capital was something to fear.....

If it's something to fear, you have to start every game the same way - developing your defenses. That is inherently less interesting, because it eliminates all choice.