City walls and forts=useless?

[Jelle]

Hey

I'm no civ veteran but I've been playing civ IV quite a bit, and loved it.
Ofcourse I was eager to try out this new version with all sorts of different tactics, playing together with a friend.

From the time I've spent playing civIV one good strategy was playing defensively, units stationed in cities would well be able to survive up to three times as many attacking units (given they were not sieged beforehand).
I tried to apply the same tactic to civV, but the results were incredibly disapointing. My friend was playing a very offensive military type tactic with the chinese, while I was focusing on a very small cultured empire with huge cities and loads of specialists playing as the Indians.
I figured I had better defend the few cities I had since the chinese next to me could field a massive amount of military units, whereas I lacked the production and commerce to sustain a huge army.

So I thought I could rely on making lots of walls and forts (mughal forts in the case of the indians). Buildings that add to the strength of a city? Neat so I will be able to fight back against a swarm of units. Wrong.
At the point I finally got under attack by an army of longswordsmen and cho cu no or however they are called, my city did a total of 1 dmg on attack, and was whiped out in 2 turns.

So what's the point of making walls and all that, if all it is is a meatshield? You'd just be delaying the inevitable since you can only really safegaurd a single unit in the city itself, any additional units would have to fight out in the field where your meatshield city will become useless.

So my question is, am I doing it wrong or is building lots of walls and forts a waste of production I could have spent on units?

 

[flip]

I've controlled some awesome choke points with forts.

 

[Godclone]

Their awesome, but you expect to much . Don't expect to fend off an attack with just city dmg if the opponent brings range units . Unless your city strength is so high (due to defensive buildings and upgrades) they don't do any dmg to it , but this is possible only later in game .

A wonder or two improving their defense is imba . City strength 80-90+ later in game, and 1 tech tier behind units do 0 dmg .

p.s. garrison range units in the city, preferably siege since it has allot of range dmg . (and use it to attack also ) ... the idea is that city strength prevents melee dmg until you take the opposing force out, it won't win the battle for you .

 

[Acidrain]

Walls are for delaying the attack against your city, until your units arrive to fight the enemy. If you could make your cities invincible against units, what purpose military units would have in the game at all then? You cant take cities with them... since everyone would make their cities invincible.

To defend, you must build units. You cant focus on only culture or science or w/e, it's logical a warmonger will just slice your throat. No high-end technology or culture border will stop your body bleeding empty.

 

[snoochems]

Never built a single wall, fort or any form of extra defensive structure after 86 hours of play. I really can't see the point. The building maintenance costs, and time to build these structures just is not balanced enough to make them worth it...

I would rather pay for a few more units, or use a Great General to pop a citadel. $$$ is very important in this game. I basically only build buildings that help with extra $$$ (markets, banks etc) and happiness/culture buildings. And I only build the latter so it allows me to build more/bigger cities so I can get more $$$. Towards the middle of the game, I even remove all farms, and replace them with the circus tents (trading posts) and rely on city-states for the food.

If they allowed you to sell buildings in this game, then maybe I would build walls/forts, as they could come in handy, and when I'm no longer relying on that city to defend my empire, I could at least sell them, removing the constant maintenance costs.

But for reasons known to only Sid himself, they have decided to NOT allow the player to sell buildings in this game. Apparently that would be too convenient or some such nonsense.

 

[Jelle]

Ah I meant to say castles instead of fort, I mistook since the replacing building is called a fort.

Thing is though if I wouldn't have built all those walls and castles I would instead have had an army of comparable size to counter with given all that production I wasted on the buildings.

 

[Lorteungen]

I agree, it would help balance a great deal if cities were beefed up a bit (like a lot!). You don't even need siege equipment to take a city as it is now. You can just hurl your units at it with "safe attacks" and it will fall with 3 strikes. Throwing horsemen at a fortified city without softening it up first should mean complete and instant destruction of that unit. It did in Civ4 and it should in Civ5 as well.

 

[Venger]

They aren't useless, they just aren't particularly useful.

As mentioned, keeping a quality ranged unit garrisoned helps, and have one or two melee units in the area so you can attack ranged, then move in melee for the kill. You will likely have a policy or somesuch that gives you an advantage on your home territory. Great Wall would be nice since it slows their advance and gives you an extra shot at hitting a unit from range.

I have successfully defended a city from a 5 AI dogpile using a great general and two legions, it can be done.

 

[nebux]

great wall doesn't work as intended, if i remember correctly France troops were able to move 2 hexes in my territory with great wall in it

 

[Humakty]

Cities completely changed in their military role.

civ 4 : passive bonus to every unit inside. (leading you to station a whole stack there on defence)

civ 5 : active ranged support. (a bit on the weak side)

This complete change is probably tied to the 1 upt change, as having passive bonus on only one unit wouldn't entice you much into building walls&co either.

 

[Malkaviel]

The ai isn't good enough, tactically, to make a tactical defense like fort-building matter. Basically it's going to win with lots of units and attrition, or it's going to lose with more than enough units and just romping them around in circles while your ranged/siege kill them.

Walls are meant to buy you an extra turn or 2 to get your defensive army to the location, but (and this isn't a bad thing, kind of realistic) if the aggressor brings enough firepower pointed on the city asap, the walls won't matter. I've had walls matter a couple times, but those times weren't enough for me to argue against someone saying they're "worthless".

 

[Jelle]

Just to clarify I don't mean defending against an AI, the AI is so laughably bad at military tactics it requires nearly no effort to win even if he outnumbers you 1 to 5, I'm talking about an enemy player that knows what he's doing.

What I really want you to understand is that the walls and likewise buildings are useful to only 1 unit. A superb well trained unit vs an ai is a slaughter if you do it right, but that's not going to work here. You need plenty more units wich won't sit in the city and ofcourse a player will kill those units first, and happely ignore that 1dmg a turn meat shield of a city.
After that, like someone said, it doesn't even take siege units. It just requires about 5 units to attack simeltaniously and gone is your city. The only thing the walls will help against is when you face a melee unit, but ofcourse you use a ranged unit to attack a city, this is common sense.

I could go on, but I think I made my point. Another thing that annoyed me in this game is the immense amount of hapiness necesary to initiate a golden age. I focused on getting loads of hapiness then that piety policy that reduces the amount you need, and only got about 35 turns out golden age out of say 400 turns (marathon setting). But that's another discussion I guess.

 

[AriochIV]

City walls seem like a waste of time, but I've found forts to be very useful. They can help to anchor a defensive line, especially a vulnerable tile that's in open terrain.

 

[keisukekun]

i thik they underestimate just how hard it is to take a city in teh medieval era. It would be cool if your armies presence made working teh tiles they are on impossible (of course you can destroy them) and just starve out a city till its defense drops.

Remember in medieval time sieges took years in some cases (yes i know that technically one turn is liek 50 years -_-)

edit. Does starvign a city make its defense drop? gotta try that....

 

[dannythefool]

It would be cool if your armies presence made working teh tiles they are on impossible (of course you can destroy them)

That's what happens in Civ IV and in CivRev. It's kinda hard to test in Civ V unless you do it in multiplayer, has anyone tried?

 

[Justicex]

It's all a part of the strategy. Walls and city defenders are the absolute last line of defence. They are there to buy you time to get more units in play if your military is routed or falls completely.

A great example of this is in the movie, "Troy". There is a scene where the Trojian footmen are lined up in front of the walls of Troy where archers stand ready. The Greeks march in, bashing against the shields of the Trojans while the archers on the wall take out the rear ranks.

This is the model you should use when building city defences.

 

[Gaizokubanou]

That's what happens in Civ IV and in CivRev. It's kinda hard to test in Civ V unless you do it in multiplayer, has anyone tried?

You can't work the tiles that your enemies are sitting on, if that's what you mean.

You can check this easily whenever barbarian unit comes into your city limit.

Keisukekun, sorry defense doesn't drop when cities starve... cities just starve (population drops). And if you had enough army to starve a city, you have enough to just storm it anyway.

 

[keisukekun]

thats dumb then whats the point of starving a city unless just to piss of teh other guy and not take it so he has to start over

 

[UKScud]

You can't work the tiles that your enemies are sitting on, if that's what you mean.

You can check this easily whenever barbarian unit comes into your city limit.

Keisukekun, sorry defense doesn't drop when cities starve... cities just starve (population drops). And if you had enough army to starve a city, you have enough to just storm it anyway.

Given the much larger set of tiles to work that are available (expecially with the ability to purchase tiles), seiges have become a rather redundant feature, despite the role they played in history.

I can't believe noone saw this? Still, perphaps some kind modder could come up with something to reinstate seiges to their proper place. Perhaps, rather than an enemy unit disrupting production in just one tile, it could disrupt production in all tiles that it could reach in one turn...so with relatively few units you could close a city down...isn't that what happened historically...sometimes for years and years?

 

[MAntoninus]

It's all a part of the strategy. Walls and city defenders are the absolute last line of defence. They are there to buy you time to get more units in play if your military is routed or falls completely.

A great example of this is in the movie, "Troy". There is a scene where the Trojian footmen are lined up in front of the walls of Troy where archers stand ready. The Greeks march in, bashing against the shields of the Trojans while the archers on the wall take out the rear ranks.

This is the model you should use when building city defences.

Great post. Don't cry for me Alesia.