How well do you defend your cities?

[Pikachu]

I want to know about your defensive strategy. What kind of units do you use to garrison your cities, and how many of each do you keep in different cities? And how successful are your defensive strategy (i.e. how often do you loose cities)?


I usually put one phalanx in each city and put a few chariots around ready to quickly move to any trouble spot. In particularly exposed cities I usually keep about 2-3 phalanxes and 2-3 offensive units. I rarely have more than one or two cities in such dangerous positions, so on average I guess I have about 2 units garrisoned in each city. This works well to fight off barbarians and arbitrary AI landings, but if the AI manages to launch a serious attack I usually loose a couple of cities. That can be very annoying, but instead of maintaining a larger defense, I think it is better use the recourses on offensive strikes into AI territory and hope that is enough to keep them busy so that they don’t send too many troops into my home territory.

 

[covok48]

I usually keep three high-defense units in my cities and one powerful attack unit as well. Usually I prefer speed to get ransoms and rush to trouble spots. It never hurts to have city walls as well.

Of course this puts a major drain on coins and shields, but it's all I can do to counter-balance civ's screwy combat system, especially at harder levels.

 

[bkwrm79]

Generally, about 3 units (not counting very new cities which just have one defender). One defensive, one offensive/mobile, and the third unit varies (probably most often an offensive/mobile). That way if I'm attacked, I can quickly shift a fairly large force of offensive units to the threatened area, and then counter-attack.

 

[TopAlwaysDown]

At least half the time, this is my general strategy:
1. Build a phalanx to defend the initial city
2. Spread out, build lots of settlers and cover lots of territory. I only build a phalanx first if I know the city has a pushy neighbor.
2.5. Before the Pyramids pop up, if I'm on a small continent, build a trireme and try to spread to another continent or a few other islands.
3. Build Pyramids. Get democracy. Destroy the Trireme. Start running down the Advances.
4. Build libraries in all the cities I can. Build diplomats to explore turf, make peace with everyone I can.
5. Get to Railroads as fast as I can, so I only need a couple military units to defend a network of cities.
6. Get to Industrialization as fast as I can, build a transport, run around with 8 settlers on board and spread like a virus.
7. Usually the game does not have one big continent. So then I get to Steel as fast as I can, and build a couple Battleships. The transport follows in tow, with several phalanxes on board. Battleships kill all the enemy cities' military units, then the Transport drops off a phalanx. Then I buy more phalanxes and military units to defend that city. By this time, the home cities of the Battleships are big enough to withstand the Unhappy Citizens that the Battleships produce.
8. Along the way, I build only wonders that produce happy citizens and reduce the number of unhappy citizens. I like big continents because then JSBach's Cathedral is stronger, but then battleships are less likely to take over most of the world.
9. If the game has one big continent, I'll fly by Steel on my way to the Armor units of Automobile. Admittedly, I'm not very good at this yet. I'm playing a game right now that has a continent that spans 2/3'rds of the whole world. And getting my butt kicked. But that's a long story.
10. Once I get the Armor/Battleships, I try my best to keep Democracy, maybe slipping down to Republic if I have to. I then switch from doing all the Advances I can, and I let my treasury build up to 200-400 so I have room to buy defensive units in cities I've taken.
11. After I've circled all the coasts with the Battleships, I then either get Armors and take all the interior cities, or I ease off and comfortably build a spaceship well ahead of the rest of the pack.

Lately, I've tried to mix it up and use different approaches, but I'm not very good at that.

And in having said all that, I can't help but notice that there is very little defense going on here. Usually, I'm quick enough that I'm attacking their cities with Battleships, so they don't have the time to bring the fight to my front door. Rare is the game when I have to defend myself from a significant military onslaught before I have my first Battleship out the door. I try to avoid defensive units because it slows down production too much. I build networks of roads and hopefully, railroads, to minimize the need for more than a couple phalanxes for a bunch of cities.

I guess my answer about "what's the best defense?" is- A Good Offense!

Although admittedly, I can pull this off easy at the King level, but I have a hard time pulling it off at the Emperor level. And I have a hard time pulling it off on big continents, too.

 

[Conrino]

One unit and 2 engineers for each city. 1 to build up irrigation and roads, another to make another city.

 

[Irish Caesar]

Typically I use two defensive units.
But lately I've been playing the "no science challenge"
Last night I could only build settlers and militia in my cities.
So I had a small continent (no triremes, I couldn't leave) with ~6 cities.
Each had about 16 militia.

I lasted until the game ended, but not by much.

 

[GoldBerg]

there is imho no real good strategy that will help in any case.

at chieftain and warlord level
2/two "state of the art" units are in most cases more than enough.

but i/most here
did see/might have seen
situation(s)
just at PRiNCE level where even 8 mechs or battleships
didn't help against a real big attack (diplomats; railroads & artillery; armor & bombers; 10-20 of them ---> city falls).

so i think the best is
- if an army is already visible in front of your city area to attack yourself first that wanna-attack-units if it's possible with the 'given' military units in your city/area (therefore the PYRAMiD WONDER is really in need - things get difficult in the endgame if communismn is developed - imho a SCORE killer, but better than lose a big, strategic important city...).