City Strength

[Questdog]

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.

Only if the rush was for certain to come. If you wanted to gamble that it wouldn't, then that would raise the tension level considerably, which to me equals more fun. And if you have total freedom on what to do, then that means you are not being challenged. The fun for me, at least in older Civs, was working my way up to the point when I COULD have some freedom to choose my destiny......

 

[Txurce]

Only if the rush was for certain to come. If you wanted to gamble that it wouldn't, then that would raise the tension level considerably, which to me equals more fun. And if you have total freedom on what to do, then that means you are not being challenged. The fun for me, at least in older Civs, was working my way up to the point when I COULD have some freedom to choose my destiny......

If a warrior rush would kill you, you'd be foolish to gamble on it not coming.

No one said anything about total freedom - just some choice, as opposed to having to build up defenses.

I don't see Civ 5's approach as being worse than Civ 2 or 3 - in fact, not being able to have warrior or axe rushes makes it much better for me.

 

[Thalassicus]

I misspoke and indented to say my goal is to prevent human rushes against the AI. A successful ancient-era rush is basically a game over victory.

I don't have any problem with AI rushes against the human. When Firaxis introduced the AI rushes, I actually had a few games where I lost due to the AI massing an army to capture my outer cities. The threat of a rush discourages us from overexpanding, which is a good thing, because a human is a lot better than the AI at aggressive land grabs.