City Walls

[Princeps]

I find it stupid that in civ when you can only build walls to a town size city.
Well Roma had walls, and it had over million inhabitants. But, walls should be much, much more expensive. Every time city changes size from town to city, or from city to metropolis: You have to build larger walls, otherwise the city won't gain any defensive bonus. Also, i'd like to four city sizes:

Village: (size 1-2) = palside
Town: (3-6) Wooden Walls, Stone walls.
City: Stone Walls, Large Walls.
Metropolis: no walls



And, if the attacking force dosen't have eny siege weapons, and the city has a stone or, a large wall. The attacker cannot attack the city, they have to lay siege.

 

[DexterJ]

I think that walls should be replaced/ammended with castles as they played a crucial role in at least european history (my knowledge of other continents pre-modern history is not so good). perhaps walls could be a basic town defence and a castle a more expensive, but effective option.
There should be a siege option which takes much longer to capture a city but involves much lower losses for the defenders (if any).

 

[Princeps]

I think that walls should be replaced/ammended with castles as they played a crucial role in at least european history (my knowledge of other continents pre-modern history is not so good). perhaps walls could be a basic town defence and a castle a more expensive, but effective option.
There should be a siege option which takes much longer to capture a city but involves much lower losses for the defenders (if any).

Well, you see during the (dark) middle ages population was very low compered other place on earth. Castles were build usualy to protect borders, and nobles. During the pax romana for example, cities were much better defended than during the middle ages.

I mean that during the ancient times (in europe) places that had high population were fortified.

During the dark ages (in europe). Population was so low, that it was illogical to protect cities, because the walls and towers would take more money, that it would protect. Correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[rhialto]

Regarding wallş I think they should provide a defensive bonus to any city size, but they reduce the maximum population possible by 4 points. So say the default max pop is 6, the aqueduct will raise that by 4 points, maybe hospital and skuscrapers can raise that again, perhaps the suburb tile improvement can also raise it, and certain improvements, primarily city walls, will reduce it. I think this would work better than having 3 size classes. Flexible population caps seems better.

 

[DexterJ]

In roman times settlements the towns themselves were fortified with walls/stockades, after the collapse of the roman empire castle building took off as power became decentralised to local nobles who constructed their own castles as the centre of their local power base. These would not have been in the town usually but nearby on a more defensible position (like a hill). the local population would retreat into these castles if there was a threat. a town might also grow up around the castle. so in the middle ages there were a lot of castles in europe and also in the middle east (built by crusaders, the biggest castle in the world was in the middle east) .it was the best way on holding on to a territory as taking a castle took a very long time. sometimes a king would attempt to weaken threats to his rule by demolishing nobles castles (i forget which english king did this). as power became more centralised again castle building tailed off. but the state still constructed them to defend again foreign threats up until fairly recently (on the english coast there are castles built during the nappoleonic wars to defend against french invasion though these are of a very different design to earlier ones).

 

[greekguy]

i think you should be able to build city walls in citys, but how would you work out hte defense bonus? right now it stands walls and citys give a defense bonus of 25%. i think it should be something like 30-40% defense bonus for a city with walls. 50% percent is overkill, but it has to be bigger than a town wall bonus, right. actually it doesn't matter, as long as my units are still alive.

 

[rhialto]

Actually, logically a city wall gets less useful as the town gets bigger. Either large pars of teh town are outside the walls, which makes picking off citizens easy, or all the citizens rush inside the walls, making random bombardment certain to hit something, or the walls encompass a larger area, making squad support between individual parts of the wall less responsive.

 

[JanSobieski]

Maybe after a wall is built, units inside the wall with a ranged attack (i.e. bowmen or longbowmen at first, and marines later on) could have a bombard attack option.

Another idea is to have the option to built towers or gun turrets onto the wall at extra gpt maintanance cost. There should be a limit based on population size or something. That way cities aren't totally defensless when a huge army escorting 75 radar artillary comes right next door and starts to open fire.

 

[Kayak]

I like the original idea of having to rebuild walls when a city grows in size.

In addition I think that walls should have to be rebuild after the advent of gunpowder to account for modern seige tactics and they should become obsolete with modern artillery.

 

[Gogf]

I think that walls should be replaced/ammended with castles as they played a crucial role in at least european history (my knowledge of other continents pre-modern history is not so good). perhaps walls could be a basic town defence and a castle a more expensive, but effective option.
There should be a siege option which takes much longer to capture a city but involves much lower losses for the defenders (if any).

But castles weren't anywhere neat cities.

 

[DexterJ]

allmost all old cities/towns in britain have or had castles in or near them. see previous post

In roman times settlements the towns themselves were fortified with walls/stockades, after the collapse of the roman empire castle building took off as power became decentralised to local nobles who constructed their own castles as the centre of their local power base. These would not have been in the town usually but nearby on a more defensible position (like a hill). the local population would retreat into these castles if there was a threat. a town might also grow up around the castle. so in the middle ages there were a lot of castles in europe and also in the middle east (built by crusaders, the biggest castle in the world was in the middle east) .it was the best way on holding on to a territory as taking a castle took a very long time. sometimes a king would attempt to weaken threats to his rule by demolishing nobles castles (i forget which english king did this). as power became more centralised again castle building tailed off. but the state still constructed them to defend again foreign threats up until fairly recently (on the english coast there are castles built during the nappoleonic wars to defend against french invasion though these are of a very different design to earlier ones).

 

[DexterJ]

god dammit doesnt that look lame! I didnt mean to do that.

 

[davbenbak]

Perhaps the various types of walls (wooden palisades, High stone walls, Vauban style battlements) should become obsolete with the discovery of new techs just as they were historically.

 

[GoodGame]

I second Kayak and DexterJ's ideas.

Some cities grew up around medieval castles, and castles were useful up until serious cannons made them too intricate to be worth the energy input.

Really for every serious fortification revolution there's been a "bombardment" type unit to counter it---even to the modern era.

 

[Thangorodrim]

maybe the old walls become obsolete not when you research the new tech, but you don't know how to build the better walls until you know the tech.