How will GamePlay change if there is no City Defense?

[stealth_nsk]

I'm actually hoping a 1 pop city can actually be taken by a single warrior unit, barely, if there are literally zero supporting units. It will force somewhat more careful play to avoid overly quick expansion having disastrous results.

Did pop raise city hp in previous games? Because I definitely think it should. (though maybe not attack much or at all)

In previous games (before 5) there were no city HP. City without units was taken immediately.

I don't think you should be able to capture city with a warrior. Warrior + Slinger + time for a basic city is ok.

The problem with loosing a game in 1 turn near beginning is - it's not really a risk. Most players just ignore it and if they actually face barbarians taking their first city, they just restart.

 

[Barathor]

Did any of the preview videos ever show a settler founding a city? Probably... but if not, I wonder if Civ 6 would borrow the outpost mechanic from BE. In Civ, they could be called Settlements and they have to grow for a number of turns before they can become full cities that you can manage and start producing things from. (Only applies to expansion cities, of course; your capital starts out as a city!)

 

[stealth_nsk]

Did any of the preview videos ever show a settler founding a city? Probably... but if not, I wonder if Civ 6 would borrow the outpost mechanic from BE. In Civ, they could be called Settlements and they have to grow for a number of turns before they can become full cities that you can manage and start producing things from. (Only applies to expansion cities, of course; your capital starts out as a city!)

Yes, we've seen founding city several times. They use regular settler mechanics.

 

[historix69]

I'm actually hoping a 1 pop city can actually be taken by a single warrior unit, barely, if there are literally zero supporting units. It will force somewhat more careful play to avoid overly quick expansion having disastrous results.

Did pop raise city hp in previous games? Because I definitely think it should. (though maybe not attack much or at all)

As long as they don't have build their walls, you can try an archer rush ...

You can completely deactivate the range defense for cities in Civ5 via a simple mod and then archers become even more valuable since they do not take damage from attacking a city and often there is no ranged unit to strike back ...

 

[Babri]

How about CBP style city defences. Without a garrison or city defences a city might defend against one or two units but it won't last long against half a decent army. If the city has walls/castles etc you better bring siege units to capture them.

Sent from my HTC Desire 820s dual sim using Tapatalk

 

[Magil]

How about CBP style city defences. Without a garrison or city defences a city might defend against one or two units but it won't last long against half a decent army. If the city has walls/castles etc you better bring siege units to capture them.

CBP cities are still too difficult to take early on IMO. Especially considering the AI can and will just cash-rush unit after unit in the city if you try to "wear them down".

One possible good change might be for cities to not heal at all if they took damage on the previous turn.

 

[Simplicity2]

From a design perspective, Civ5 needed cities to have a defense. This is because you could only put one unit on the city tile to defend it. This is no longer true in Civ6, because we have armies. You can combine military units to form an army and defend that way.

In Civ5, losing the one unit guarding your city because a city was taken was a minor concern. Almost incidental. In Civ6, if you have a army guarding your city, which may have consisted of (i forget now) nine units? It's a major blow to lose those units when the city is taken. So, that unit defense had better be factored into city defense somehow.

 

[Callonia]

I just wonder how combat / conquest would change in Civ5 / Civ6 if cities would have no City Defense element with hit points and ranged attack but rather provide a simple defensive bonus to its garrisoned unit (e.g. 50% default, 100% with city walls) ... an undefended (ungarrisoned) city would be immediately conquered/taken/plundered by every military unit stepping on the city tile ... player and AI would be forced to build multiple units per city (e.g. melee, range, medic, reserves) early to be able to defend against barbarian attacks and neighbours looking for advantages ... maybe the military upkeep would have to be lowered to allow enough units for defense without going bankrupt early in the game.

You're describing Civ 4 and earlier games without stacking of units.

Early on the battles will likely be confined to just around the city for quick reinforcements from city itself. There's just not that many districts to worry about in classical era, etc.

Later on, players will likely try to contain the battles to the borders of their civilizations or allow soldiers enter portion of their lands that they consider to be acceptable damage. But might attempt to keep enemy soldiers away from most valuable cities.

Personally, I like it when cities have hit points. They were too easy for me to take without!

 

[Acken]

Hit points are necessary and fine. But you should need many units to defend an attack. Not 3 archers and a city.

 

[Browd]

So, on turn 20, when 3 barb warriors and a barb horseman show up at your capital, what should happen? If you're going to die, at least it happens early?

 

[Ryika]

Well, if that's a concern then they could just make it so Barbarians don't start spawning their scout-thingies before a reasonable point in the game and instead make them act purely defensively until then.

But I still think Cities should not be able to be taken that easily. They should have a basic resilience against attack, but that resilience should come in the form of not collapsing immediately, not in the form of it being able to just snipe off half an army by itself.

In my opinion failing to have sufficient Military (while having some at least) should lead to your lands being pillaged, not your cities being captured.

 

[Magil]

So, on turn 20, when 3 barb warriors and a barb horseman show up at your capital, what should happen? If you're going to die, at least it happens early?

If 3 barbarian warriors and a horsemen show up at your capital on turn 20 and you haven't built any defense... then maybe you should die? I'd guess that you have raging barbarians or something on for that kind of force to be showing up that early in the game, though.

There's little wrong with dying to barbarians in the early game, if you're playing raging barbarians or a modded game of some sort and decided to build no military. I have a few zero score entries in the Hall of Fame for my Fall from Heaven 2 games due to my capital being destroyed by a lucky lizardmen or an unfortunate lair result...

And you know, for the first four Civilization titles, an enemy unit could literally walk into your capital if it was empty and destroy it. It wasn't a particularly interesting part of the game, but it wasn't terrible, and I do think they went more than a little overboard with city defenses in V.

Heck, what I'd be fine with is if the very first city you settle, your capital, was quite strong to start with. But any additional cities should be very weak when they're first founded, and require the construction of city defenses and a garrison to hold out against enemy aggression or barbarians. It'd certainly help to curtail REX strategies.

 

[Acken]

So, on turn 20, when 3 barb warriors and a barb horseman show up at your capital, what should happen? If you're going to die, at least it happens early?

That doesn't happen.
Barbarians are also part of the balance process.

 

[cooldude1128]

I'd prefer the capitol to be equal to a few units in strength, and all other cities to be weak enough to withstand two or three turns of bombardment from a single enemy unit on their own, but with very little offensive capabilities without the likes of a garrison inside the walls. If the defenders have no military nearby, the city should fall; the ranged attack of the city should be that of a ranged unit inside the city.

 

[OnceAKing]

It's only fair that cities have HP and can defend themseves.

In reality you could put a massive army within your city and defend it. And if it's within a wall, you almost have an incentive to sit your army in the castle rather than send them out to the field....

However in civ, you're limited to just one unit. Is just not fair to have that one unit taking bombardment from the enemy's entire military. There's an imbalance there.

There has to be something to represent the fact that cities were fortresses that you could retreat to for protection....

Lastly, for all intents and purposes your city is spread out among the districts. If you want an important district to be protected you must park a unit there. So I think that's the perfect balance to force players to use more units but not make it so taking cities just means surrounding cities and bombarding one unit

 

[malekithau]

City bombard equals local defence forces engaging invaders and attrition in my mind. When you consider that a "city" is in fact more like a province it makes sense.

 

[CivScientist]

it has been confirmed that cities have defense from the start but no ranged attack until walls. Also, there are two bars above the city representing hit points for both the city and the wall (once built), with the wall having to be destroyed (which will presumably remove the ranged attack) before the city itself starts taking damage.

Well, this would probably work. This way a city will eventually fall if you have no units to defend it. But, it also means ungarrisoned cities aren't destroyed by a single warrior in one turn.

It also makes sieges more realistic and potent. You wipe out the army around a city and it's a race to knock down the cities defences before a proper counter attack can be mounted. It would be doubly interesting if you could call on your neighbours to send in an army (unlikely but one can dream).

 

[King Rad]

Don't forget also, that in VI the units will spawn in the military district once it's built. Also, once wall are build around the city, they will also appear around the military district. So once a city has a military district and walls, it will have two ranged attacks; and new units spawning in the military district can then flank a unit attacking the city center. Also, while units will be able to combine into more powerful units (corps and army), this will not happen until later in the game. So early game, you can still have at most one standard military unit in the city center. However, if everything's balanced (and hopefully it will be), then a purely undefended city will be vulnerable unless it invests in units, walls, a military district, or more probably, some combination of those.

I really like that an invading army has to take down the walls before being able to attack the city center directly. But even early on, at least once a civ has 1 or 2 non-military districts, it's possible that the focus will be on attacking the districts rather than trying to take the city per se - an ancient analogy of the strategic bombing of WWII.

 

[Nick31]

The hopeful thing about this quandary is that Beach has had 6 long years to re-imagine what he feels city defense/attack should be. He also has a new AI engine.

At the moment, the real issue/skepticism is balancing the mechanic and the AI's understanding of it. Because there are enough cool variables in play where if they get it right, i.e. making it a thoughtful process yet one where the AI doesn't malfunction, then the "why" doesn't matter. A functional "how" will be everything.

 

[stealth_nsk]

The hopeful thing about this quandary is that Beach has had 6 long years to re-imagine what he feels city defense/attack should be. He also has a new AI engine.

At the moment, the real issue/skepticism is balancing the mechanic and the AI's understanding of it. Because there are enough cool variables in play where if they get it right, i.e. making it a thoughtful process yet one where the AI doesn't malfunction, then the "why" doesn't matter. A functional "how" will be everything.

I don't see any gameplay limitations from AI here. Playing "skill vs numbers" on high difficulty levels is almost as fun as "skill vs skill". With nerfed city ranged attack we could expect no mindless AI slaughter even if AI didn't improved at all since Civ5.