Do cities benefit from terrain defensive bonuses?

[morchuflex]

Hello.

If my city is built on a hill, I expect defenders to get a 50% bonus.
But I have some questions:
- is this bonus cumulative with other ones? In Civ2, they weren't: you could not benefit from both the fortified bonus and the walls bonus.
- What if the city is built on jungle or forest? Isn't the vegetal cover automatically removed when the city is founded, bringing the defense bonus down to that of a plain or grassland?

 

[kevincompton]

Good question, heres how it should be but I don't know for sure if this is how it works or not.

Bonus for Hills, no bonus for forest or jungle since it gets cleared and walls bonus cumulitive.

Anyone know how it works though?

 

[Gainy]

You're right about the forest/jungle bit, they do not count, as they are cleared when the city is founded.
However, everything else is cumulative. If you had walls/fortified unit/metropolis/ontop of a hill, it would all be added up. Thus making it rather hard to defeat those defenders

 

[morchuflex]

Thus making it rather hard to defeat those defenders

BTW, does anyone else agree that Civ3 outrageously favors defense against offence?
At any given time, defenders have an advantage vs attackers.
For the "same" research level (not quite, in fact:warrior code is more expensive than bronze...), you can have spearmen and archers. That's a 2 attack vs a 2 defence, but only on paper, because there are many defence bonuses and no attack bonus. Of course, one might say that swordsmen are not far away. But swordsmen are 50% more expensive than spearmen, and they won't fare well against spearmen fortified in a town, even if the town is built on grass and has no walls (2.7 defense). With walls, the spearmen's defense rises to 3.2...
Same goes for knights against pikemen: knights have 4, pikemen 4.05 or 5.55 depending on the same criteria.
And musketmen come right after pikemen, while cavalry is far away.
Things get even worse in the third era: you're still stuck with cavalry, against riflemen, or worse: infantry (which can be obtained pretty fast).
Not to mention defensive bombardment, the ability for damaged defenders to heal between turns while attackers cannot without retreating, and the fact that attackers move slowly into enemy territory whereas the defending country can bring reinforcements in no time...
Of course, a good use of artillery will level chances - but only to some extent...

 

[Grogs]

Morchuflex:

I agree that Civ3 favors the defender, but I don't find anything outrageous about it. I think if you look at a history of warfare, I think you will find that the defender has *always* had an advantage. How much of an advantage depends on things like terrain, i.e. standing in the middle of a wide open field, very little advantage; standing at the mouth of a narrow pass/chokepoint (Thermopylae), big advantage. In order to overcome that advantage, the attacker has to use either better technology or greater numbers.

In modern military doctrine, the attacker wants to have at least a 3 to 1 numerical advantage over the defender to have a good chance to achieve victory. If you don't have those numbers, you should consider using things that will improve your odds like artillery, air support, etc (hence the term 'combat multiplier.')

In Civ3, a veteran knight attacking a veteran musketman fortified inside a city built on top of a hill (worst case assuming approx. equal levels of technology) only wins 11% of the time. Reduce the musketman to 1hp with catapults/cannons and the knight wins 74% of the time. Even against infantry@1hp the knight wins almost half (45%) of the time. It forces us to make a choice: Do we make a steady, coordinated assault resulting in few losses, but taking a long time? Or do we just simply bumrush the enemy with our most powerful offensive units and accept the higher losses?

I will agree with you that movement is a bit out of whack though. Unless the defender has taken specific measures to deny their use (cutting trees / snipers / ambushes / etc.) to stop the attacker from using the roads, I can't see any reason the attacker can't travel on roads just as fast as the defender (railroads are a different story though.)

 

[Mr. Do]

If you had walls/fortified unit/metropolis/ontop of a hill, it would all be added up. Thus making it rather hard to defeat those defenders

Except that the effect of the walls would no longer be active by the time the city became a metropolis, right?

 

[Tomoyo]

It could have civil defense...

 

[Gainy]

Except that the effect of the walls would no longer be active by the time the city became a metropolis, right?

Right. But it technically still would be added up, even though there wouldn't be anything to add (regarding the walls)

 

[JMK]

Building Veteran units instead of regular units will greatly help the attacker.
ex: Reg Archer attacks Reg Spearman fortified in a town located on grassland will win in 36.3% . Make your Archer Veteran and you will win in 50.9%!
The AIs do not build barracks so early in the game.
Now replace your Archer by Swordsman or even worst (Immortal) and let see if the game outrageously favors defense against offence.

 

[crazyluke2001]

defensive units always come earlier in the era than offensive units, the time to strike is at the end of the era therefore.

 

[Dirkonium]

Morchuflex:

I agree that Civ3 favors the defender, but I don't find anything outrageous about it. I think if you look at a history of warfare, I think you will find that the defender has *always* had an advantage. How much of an advantage depends on things like terrain, i.e. standing in the middle of a wide open field, very little advantage; standing at the mouth of a narrow pass/chokepoint (Thermopylae), big advantage. In order to overcome that advantage, the attacker has to use either better technology or greater numbers. ...

Well said, and I agree 100%. It's a natural fact that when attacking any kind of constructed enclosure, anything from a castle to a large city, the "units" in the city have all kinds of advantages due merely to being IN the enclosure. This is why walls cease to give benefits after a city grows past 6: the size of the city itself begins to make it far more difficult to defeat its defenders than any wall could. A 'symptom' of this natural fact is the very existence of siege warfare and all the various battery units in Civ. If defenders *didn't* have natural advantages, then no one would have found it necessary to invent siege weapons like catapults, cannon, etc.

I guess I'm feeling smart about siege weaponry lately, as I've discovered the enormous advantages of keeping a stack of 20-30 artillery around to pound a large well defended city before I try to take it. Even tanks aren't very good against infantry defenders in a large city, and forget it if the city is on a hill. But a couple of turns of massive artillery barrage really changes the picture nicely!

 

[Paradigne]

But a couple of turns of massive artillery barrage really changes the picture nicely!

If there is a barracks in the city, you only need one turn of barrage...

 

[magritte]

Grogs, I agree with you in general, but I think there could be some justification for slower movement for the attacker through foreign terrain. An army needs food and other supplies which will either need to be brought in from the home country or mustered by force from the local population.

 

[King PJ]

It could have civil defense...

Civil defense is always great to have on your border cities, it makes them very hard to beat. That is, assuming if you get that far in the game before winning.