Culture defence

[kingbeef]

Is this the most pointless thing in the game? It removes the value of Walls and Castles because 40% cultural defence (Only 10% less than Walls) is very easy to achieve early in the game and it never goes obsolete. How was such a glaring error missed during development?

 

[CivNoobie]

how is it pointless if you said it's almost as good as the wall?

 

[Manco Capac]

Walls and castles are awesome...to make the AI despicably hard to conquer tending Middle Ages. Without them, medieval wars wouldn't be as sluggish.

 

[God-Emperor]

Walls and castles don't just give defense, they actual reduce the rate at which pre-gunpowder siege units bombard defenses away.

A wall not only gives 50% defense, it also cuts the amount each pre-gunpowder bombard reduces the city defenses by half. This is even used when the cultural defense is higher than the wall's defense. So it takes twice as long to reduce the defenses to the target level (unless there is a large excess of bombard capable units attacking so they can still get it to 0 in 1 turn).

The castle not only gives another 50% defense, but also an additional 25% bombard defense for a total reduction in bomabard damage taken of 75% - each bombard against the city defenses will do only 1/4 as much reduction to the defenses, so the trebuchet's 16 per bombard becomes 4 per bombard. (And it's done in integer math so all fractions round down, although in regular BtS this doesn't matter since they are all multiple of 4 but in a lot of mods they are not.)

Therefore walls and castles are still good for defense, should you find yourself on the defensive. Their function, much like just the cultural defense but more so, is to buy you time to respond to an attack via moving existing troops and/or training/whipping/drafting some and moving them over. (It is generally better to spend the production on military units that you use to attack "them" instead of defending against them, but that is not always the way it works out.)

 

[kingbeef]

how is it pointless if you said it's almost as good as the wall?

Ah yes. I worded it completely wrong . What I meant was it is a bad thing to include in the game as it makes Walls and Castles pointless.

Walls and castles are awesome...to make the AI despicably hard to conquer tending Middle Ages. Without them, medieval wars wouldn't be as sluggish.

Agreed. In fact this makes walls something that makes the game boring rather than just being useless.

Walls and castles don't just give defense, they actual reduce the rate at which pre-gunpowder siege units bombard defenses away.

A wall not only gives 50% defense, it also cuts the amount each pre-gunpowder bombard reduces the city defenses by half. This is even used when the cultural defense is higher than the wall's defense. So it takes twice as long to reduce the defenses to the target level (unless there is a large excess of bombard capable units attacking so they can still get it to 0 in 1 turn).

The castle not only gives another 50% defense, but also an additional 25% bombard defense for a total reduction in bomabard damage taken of 75% - each bombard against the city defenses will do only 1/4 as much reduction to the defenses, so the trebuchet's 16 per bombard becomes 4 per bombard. (And it's done in integer math so all fractions round down, although in regular BtS this doesn't matter since they are all multiple of 4 but in a lot of mods they are not.)

Therefore walls and castles are still good for defense, should you find yourself on the defensive. Their function, much like just the cultural defense but more so, is to buy you time to respond to an attack via moving existing troops and/or training/whipping/drafting some and moving them over. (It is generally better to spend the production on military units that you use to attack "them" instead of defending against them, but that is not always the way it works out.)

I understand this but there are always better ways to spend my hammers. The AI doesn't build enough Siege units to begin with and if they manage to find the time to sit around wearing down a cities defenses then I am generally screwed anyway. A slower reduction in defence still ends up at the same point as a fast one. No cultural defence would have made Walls and Castles a real benefit.

It would be similar to allowing Warriors to settle cities. It would make Settlers redundant.

 

[Ghpstage]

I think you may be seeing this from too narrow a perspective, the main reason walls are more or less useless to human players is because its simply better to fight the AI elsewhere in almost all circustances. Though it may make walls a little more attractive, this wouldn't really change much if culture gave no defense at all.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

The original point was about cultural defense sucking. The thing is, you get cultural defense by doing things that help you economically (like building libraries for research or temples for happy or just a ton of other things) Plus, walls and castles go obsolete, though once you get to cannon, cultural defenses fall apart very quickly, since they aren't slowed the way cats/trebs are.

 

[MensPulchra]

I think you may be seeing this from too narrow a perspective, the main reason walls are more or less useless to human players is because its simply better to fight the AI elsewhere in almost all circustances. Though it may make walls a little more attractive, this wouldn't really change much if culture gave no defense at all.

Just like protective, walls and castles are mean to AI's...