Civil Engineering and the Perma-walls

[isau]

FWIW in my Combined Tweaks mod I removed Urban Defenses from the Civic tree entirely and made it a Policy. Your cities get the bonus only if you sacrifice a slot to the Policy. It's a bit overpowered still (is why in "Hardcore" mode I delayed the Policy until very late) but it does at least make the ability not totally free. Unfortunately AI isn't any good with it, but that's just how it goes.

 

[bbbt]

A combo of civil engineering coming early, them being relatively expensive to build anew, and then walls not having any value after civil service.

I'd like it if they had value past civil service - for instance, they could generate tourism, representing having a 'historical city center' (as someone who has very much enjoyed walking on city walls whether they are ancient or 'restored').

Also, it seems like medieval/renaissance walls should be an 'upgrade' if you have prior walls, and cost less production.

 

[lindsay40k]

I think there's an argument to soft-obsolete the walls of olden days that encircled much of a city by having them borderline irrelevant to the defence of a sprawling industrialised city protected by a home guard type organisation, and give the players the option to dismantle them to recoup hammers (such as happened all over the place in the English Revolution) or maintain them as sources of Culture and, later on, Tourism.

I think Civ V had a good direction with its defensive buildings that represented the progression in defensive planning by having the modern military base far more formidable than a Castle; rather than stacking, though, as a better one comes along it could replace the older one's bonuses and build queue position and make it generate culture instead.

 

[Furycrab]

I like what this does to a game, but I'm unsure of the implementation?

I like that it puts a real clock to Archer/Crossbow spam strategy, same for melee units + a ram. However there's obviously 1 too many tiers of Walls, and Monarchy housing should probably be tied to something else.

Personally, I just would like to see slightly better siege options that are relatively easy to use, so both players and AI have reasonable options to take out a city after Crossbows go out of style. Support units don't seem to get much traction with the AI, and they are honestly not "that" good. In 5, it was the point where you needed Artillery or Battleships. Now you need Battleships, Flight, or Overwhelming numbers with easy terrain, makes it a little daunting.

That said, my bandaid fix would be that Industrial + units have some sort of caked in Battering Ram effect. Makes no sense that my 84 strength Infantry Core without a ram does 8 damage to defenses of a 70 strength encampment.