I think walls and castles were poorly implemented in civ4

[futurehermit]

Re: Historical accuracy: There are a number of things in this *game* that are not historically accurate. So, I don't see why it couldn't be a gameplay function for walls/castles to cover your BFC. I mean, it's not historically accurate that tens of thousands of units can stand on each others' shoulders to occupy the exact same spot of terrain, is it (i.e., SoD)?

In the RTS games I mentioned, you can use workers to build walls wherever you want to create strategic defenses. That model can't really work in civ4 because of the way the terrain is laid out. However, I think having walls/castles somehow provide territorial defenses instead of just increasing a value in your city defense score would be a nice addition. That's kind of what I was going for anyway. Maybe what I was suggesting is too extreme. Maybe it would be better if walls provided defenses for your actual city and castles provide defenses for the inner ring of your BFCs with the outer ring being the "surrounding lands" of your castle. Something like that I think would be cool.

I also think cultural defense is too high. I don't think it is reasonable to think that the artists in my city will protect my units from arrows and swords. I think if you don't have walls in your city, your defenses should be minimal. If you have a castle surrounding you, your defenses should be huge, with walls somewhere in between. I think if your units were getting zero defenses you might be more likely to build walls/castles in your border cities. If that were to be combined with some territorial defense (i.e., inner ring) and changes to siege to make them necessary/more expensive/less effective at taking down these defenses things would improve

If they were to stay the way they are, however, I would say they definitely need to last longer and castles should be available earlier with say monarchy. What is a king without a castle?

 

[AmazonQueen]

To make sense cultural defence should probably apply anywhere within your cultural borders. Your troops fight harder to defend the homeland. That would probably be overpowered unless it was something like a flat 25%? bonus. That would also possibly have the benefit of making battles outside cities more common.

Walls and castles losing their defensive bonus against all gunpowder troops doesn't make sense to me. It should only be gunpowder artillery that they are less effective against. Even then they should still have some defensive benefit.

 

[Sib]

Some very good ideas here! I was thinking about the castle issue a bit more- perhaps a modest bonus for attacking from a city with a castle representing the support/ supression from the troops manning the fortifications as the brave defenders sally forth etc etc.
I'm not sure I like the idea of making cities any more difficult to capture- it can take long enough as it is, but i like the above idea of making the culture bonus apply outside the city. I always imagined that this didn't just include the morale of the troops 'fighting for their homes', but also the resistance of loyal peasants and citizens supplying friendly armies and hindering the invaders.
Also, regarding all this talk of workers building defenses on terrain... isn't that what forts are? I know they don't provide any tile bonuses, but they offer a defensive bonus throughout the game don't they? Or am I wrong?

 

[Winth]

What about it:

-an unit stationed behind the walls would get a promotion of City Garrison I (City Garrison II with Castle) for the time defending the wall; Protective would get even better.
-a "stale" number of culture that can't be bombed (or can be bombed VERY hard) after the whole culture is destroyed. For walls it could be 25%, for example. Even if the walls are ruined, it's still easier to hold on in some kind of breach.
-get some kind of a flanking option. Catapults are always on the backyard. They should be pretty vulnerable to mounted units. The option of "severe damage" isn't just like that.
-get Zones of Control back, but limit them! It's crazy that enemy armies can go right under your nose and your bowmen and ballistas (good addition methinks) can't just reap the hell out of them, barraging them with arrows.

 

[Florian]

Futurehermit,

Sure, some things aren't realistic. Some of those could be fixed (e.g. by introducing stack limits, in the example you raise). Some of them probably couldn't be (e.g. the way unit movement scales, and how it compares to the speed at which resources move). If walls did surround the whole BFC, that would be one of the things that could be fixed. It would make no sense for walls to protect a city's hinterland. And I'm not just considering the absence of historical precedent or the real-world impracticality of such walls, but also the history of warfare. The downside of withdrawing to your fortified city has always been that the enemy can pillage your territory and live off your land and deny it to you. That's what a siege is.

Maybe it would be better if walls provided defenses for your actual city and castles provide defenses for the inner ring of your BFCs

Castles are smaller than city walls. They get built in cities, not around them.

I don't think it is reasonable to think that the artists in my city will protect my units from arrows and swords.

They don't. They make your units fight harder and guarantee them the enthusiastic and eager support of the townsfolk. I've always figured that cultural defense is mostly replicating that latter effect. Instead of taking to the hills as partisans when the city falls, as in past civ games, they help in the fight to keep that city from falling in the first place.

 

[absimiliard]

Stack limits wouldn't make it more historically accurate.

Consider the size of a tile. A given tile is HUGE.

Historically we've seen armies that number in the hundreds of thousands routinely squaring off on battlefields a few miles wide.

Consider phalanx math: A typical greek phalanx was usually 8-16 ranks deep, each soldier stood in an area maybe 3 feet wide. So a 1000 man phalanx, not big for the period, presented a face to the enemy of 188-375 feet. That's pretty damn small if you think about it. A 10,000 man army of phalanxes (like the Athenian and Plataean army that faced Xerxes at Marathon) had a frontage of only 4000 feet at standard 8 man depths, this is less than a mile. (It is also why Miltiades thinned his center to a mere 4 man depth, he needed to extend his line in order to not get flanked by the Persians when he attacked.)

At Gaugemela Alexander faced off at least 100,000 Persians with 50,000 Greeks, and it was surely all within a single tile.

I think that when we consider stack limits, or city walls on a BFC scale, we are forgetting just what a tile represents. If I recall correctly the standard Earth map is like 128 tiles wide? Measured at the equator the Earth is 24,000 miles around. That makes each tile about 200 miles on a side. That's 40,000 square miles.

Stacking limits for a 40,000 square mile area sound kind of silly when you hear it phrased that way, don't they?

(And your wall that surrounds the BFC . . . 4000 miles long. Caesar was considered crazy by his generals when he suggested circumvallating Alesia, his walls were only 20 some miles in length. His double walling meant his men dug and built about 40 miles of fortifications. This was considered a spectacular engineering feat at the time, and it still stands as such even by today's standards. Four thousand miles of walls is very much on the Great Wall of China scale, in fact the Great Wall itself is only like 4100 miles long.)

Realism may well not be the defining feature in a game. Witness how Soren didn't think Guns, Germs, and Steel would make for a very good game. But realism does need to exist in at least large enough amounts that I'm not required to suspend my disbelief in order to play the game. Have units with magical flight, or cities building 4000 mile long walls in 40 years, or limits on how many units can fit into a 40,000 square mile area, and you're starting to seriously strain my ability to believe we are playing a game about history. Civ has enough believability issues, let's not add stacking limits or BFC sized walls to them please.

I like this game because it purports to duplicate history. If I want a tale of fancy that could never possibly happen I'll go play SMAC or Master of Magic.

-abs

 

[Florian]

Stack limits wouldn't make it more historically accurate.

Consider the size of a tile. A given tile is HUGE.

Yes, it is. I'm not talking about very restrictive stack limits. Maybe a limit of 10 units per tile.

A battle can happen in a relatively tiny space, but armies aren't always fighting. They need a lot more room for tents, for supply wagons, for horse-lines, latrines, foraging....

 

[Florian]

That makes each tile about 200 miles on a side. That's 40,000 square miles.

I don't think the standard earth map is even close to earth-sized. How many cities can you fit on Great Britain or Italy on the standard earth map? Now how many cities are actually there?

There weren't any ancient cities (or even modern ones, for that matter) that were anywhere close to 40,000 square miles in size. Nor were there many ancient cities that pulled in food for their population from fields 300 miles away.

I'm with you on the BFC walls though, Absimiliard.

 

[absimiliard]

I don't think the standard earth map is even close to earth-sized. How many cities can you fit on Great Britain or Italy on the standard earth map? Now how many cities are actually there?

There weren't any ancient cities (or even modern ones, for that matter) that were anywhere close to 40,000 square miles in size. Nor were there many ancient cities that pulled in food for their population from fields 300 miles away..

I think what we're seeing is two-fold w. regard to cities. First, the city-tile itself clearly represents both the city and the land immediately worked around it. Second, it's pretty clear that in Civ "city" actually just means a wide geographic area with some urbanization.

All this makes me twitch occasionally. (I was an archeaology student in college) I just try to forget it when I can.

My concern is that stacking limits, or 4000 mile long city walls, make it harder for me to forget the discrepencies.

Anyhow I should probalby get out of this conversation. I have a huge respect for Future Hermit's Civ-skills. He's a very good player and I don't like disagreeing with him on something as trivial as "what ifs". I'd rather not make him feel I'm personally attacking his ideas, when that might cause him to post less of his ideas. Which would be bad for me since, as I've mentioned, I think he has mad civ-skills and I've learned tricks from him in the past.

-abs

 

[Florian]

First, the city-tile itself clearly represents both the city and the land immediately worked around it.

Right. But that just means you have to tack another 100 miles onto the distance that food shipments have to travel if you're assuming a full-sized earth.

Second, it's pretty clear that in Civ "city" actually just means a wide geographic area with some urbanization.

I just think we play on small maps, because otherwise the game would be too huge to handle.

All this makes me twitch occasionally. (I was an archeaology student in college)

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action: Moved to general discussions.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think what we're seeing is two-fold w. regard to cities. First, the city-tile itself clearly represents both the city and the land immediately worked around it. Second, it's pretty clear that in Civ "city" actually just means a wide geographic area with some urbanization.

All this makes me twitch occasionally. (I was an archeaology student in college) I just try to forget it when I can.

My concern is that stacking limits, or 4000 mile long city walls, make it harder for me to forget the discrepencies.

Anyhow I should probalby get out of this conversation. I have a huge respect for Future Hermit's Civ-skills. He's a very good player and I don't like disagreeing with him on something as trivial as "what ifs". I'd rather not make him feel I'm personally attacking his ideas, when that might cause him to post less of his ideas. Which would be bad for me since, as I've mentioned, I think he has mad civ-skills and I've learned tricks from him in the past.

-abs

I don't know that futurehermit is offering suggestions for the sole purpose of realism anyway. Walls + castles are a serious balance issue in the game right now... as in they're almost entirely useless. THAT is not historically accurate at all either. Cities didn't just make them because they looked cool (or offered trade?!)

The problem is any considerable increase to their power may tilt the game into essentially all defense. As ridiculous and unrealistic as siege and collateral damage are now (arguably, it was better in civ 3), taking cities without collateral damage in civ 4 would just RUIN civs in terms of WW...especially human civs on higher difficulties. Wars would be next to impossible...and that isn't as fun as having offense be feasible.

Now how to fix this, really? Even after reading all the suggestions here, the simplest to implement, and the one that dampens realism the least is merely to extend the time it takes for both to be obsolete. A lot. I'll continue to stand by the fact that RIFLES from 1920 can NOT fire through a foot or more of stone or cement. Especially not consistently or in a way that will cause people behind such cover any real damage. Actually, most modern weapons can not...meaning even now a castle would provide SOME minimal advantage to defenders in the event of a ground-only attack.

The walls of Fort St. Augustine routinely saw cannon fire bounce off or do minimal damage. Does civ 4 seriously need these gunpowder units "obsoleting" castles so early?

Screw that. Walls/castles are borderline useless right now (especially castles). I want to see them obsolete later, which doesn't really HURT realism, but also makes them actually worthwhile in this game. I don't care which modern tech does so, but it should be something along the lines of: assembly line, flight, rocketry, industrialism, combustion...whatever. Some modern age military ability that would allow for EASY breaching of castle walls.

Other than that, the only thing I can think of that would be reasonable is giving castle'd cities "zones of control" back. After all, armies didn't just prance about in arrow range or dally in front of castles without paying very, very close attention to what the army inside was doing and potential reinforcements.

Whatever...at least make them obsolete later...there is NO REASON to obsolete walls/castles at gunpowder/economics AT ALL. NONE. WHY is it this way in the first place?

 

[Wacky]

It would like to starf city's to death than, surround them and cutt of resources.

 

[Airefuego]

Walls in Civ IV are weird because you can still work tiles while you are besieged.

In "real life" once you shut the gates you couldn't "work tiles." On the upside in real life the walls (and especially a castle) could let a much smaller defensive force hold a city against a much bigger attacking force. The walls / castle were the main thing stopping the offensive army and gave a huge bonus..

I suggest Civ should take this approach. Your city with walls or a castle can choose to go into "lockdown." If you do this, the gates and drawbridges slam shut and the defenders man the walls.


LOCKDOWN MODE SUMMARY: No working tiles. Huge defensive bonus. Health /food problems unless you have granary / aqueduct.

DETAILS:

In lockdown mode, Walls / Castle would add a big defensive bonus proportional to the size of the city's population. Because everyone in the city is basically on garrison duty.

Say walls add 10% per 1 population. Castle adds another 15% (25% in total). No additional bonus after size 6, because the rest of the city is too big to be contained within the walls / castle. Of course the bonus can be reduced slowly with siege, as in current BTS.

So a size 6 city with a castle gets a massive 150% defensive bonus when in lockdown mode. It is really hard to capture, which is realistic.

The downside for the defenders is that in lockdown mode, the city can't work tiles. So you can't build much, and you'd better have food and water stored up.

Without fresh water, you would get a big negative health hit in lockdown mode. If your city is not placed on fresh water, you'd need an aqueduct to avoid this.

If you have a granary, I think you should start losing food at only HALF the normal rate. This is because you are locked down on rations - sure, no new food is coming in, but you aren't working the tiles either, so your citizens can get by with less food than normal. If you have no granary, you lose food at the normal rate and you are going to be in a lot of trouble soon.

In either case need to be capable of waiting out the siege, relieving it with an outside army or driving off the attackers with a desperate sortie from within. On the other hand the opposing army isn't likely to capture your city as long as you have a few longbows in there.

There is always another option too - paying the attacking army to go away. This exists already in Civ.

Lockdown mode should be optional. You could set it up for the game to prompt you about it, if enemy troops end their turn within a tile or two of your city. If you aren't in lockdown, the walls/castle give some benefit but not much - maybe a flat 10% / 25% but not multiplied by population. Of course you can work tiles as normal. So you don't need to lock down if the opposing threat is not immense.



Speaking of which, what about the attacking army? They can't sit around forever without eating either. Ancient sieges were often a battle of attrition to see who ran out of food first.

This is a whole new field of debate - about army supply lines etc - on which I hope Civ 5 will have some interesting ideas. The current situation - sxemen who sit in the desert for 1000 years, or the two million maceman stack that can walk through hostile territory indefinitely without getting hungry - are a bit incompatible with my suggested approach.

In short, if a turn is 10-20 years, sieges should be resolved FAST, either with a victory, a defeat, starvation, or a ransom.

 

[ace94d]

If they just didn't obsolete as fast, it would be good, or at least better.

Maybe until Rocketry? Since flying stuff could go over walls and Rocketry does so. And Artillery for Castles, perhaps, since I would imagine Artillery would go through them pretty good? Or perhaps just have it reduce the bonusses?

 

[r_rolo1]

In fact arties don't do much to castles, they weren't done for that.... because of that castles were used with defensive proposes in WW II ( the more famous is the fortified abbey of Mount Cassinno ). Of course that they were more useful as a pile of debris than intact ,but .......

 

[Emac78]

I had to add my two cents to this thread.

I think the whole siege thing is done wrong. They should go back to the old Civ2 and Civ1 where walls really meant something with a twist of Total War. They were more expensive to build but definitely worth it. A city should only be able to garrison the same amount of units as the size of the city. So if you attack a size 6 city then it should only be able to hold 6 units to garrison the city and a city can only hold a max of 10 units to defend a city. No more 20 or more units defending one city. To balance this out, the attackers can only have a max of 10 units on a tile at one time. This would ensure more battles in the field instead of seeing 20 longbows defending one city from 30 attacking units. This would weaken the Stack of Doom phenomenon we've seen since Civ3. In Civ1 and Civ2 there were rarely Stacks of Doom because if the top unit of the stack lost a battle, the entire stack was destroyed. This made those games far more strategic as stacking units was necessary but risky. Another thing that has got to be brought back is "zone of control" and not the kind from Civ3. In Civ1 and Civ2 it was impossible to go around an enemy unit as each unit had a zone of control and kept units at bay. This allowed us to keep our borders from being crossed. There were no borders back then but it stopped enemies from going right by you without a fight. Naval units epecially need to have zone of control at least half as large as their total movement points and the ability to attack an enemy that comes within that zone of control. I hate seeing transports go right by my frigates or destroyers when they should have an opportunity to shoot them down. I think there was this kind of mechanic in Colonization. I know this is way off topic but this sort of strategy should be brought back.

As far as the sieges are concerned, walls should have +50 defense and castles should have +100 defense. Also, when the attackers besiege a city, the city should only have a certain amount of time before they have to give up as in real life the city would starve and be forced to give up. Having walls and a castle would give the city more time to hold out. Siege weapons would be used to bombard the walls and hope to knock the defenses down but only down to +25 as rarely were walls completely destroyed. A small breach would be made and the attackers would be forced to attack through the small opening so the defenders would still have a huge advantage.

These are just some ideas to change the strategy of warfare. Also, I hate hate hate longbowmen. They bring the game to a halt offensively unless you have a ton of siege weapons or just a huge army or get macemen and trebs. As far as I always knew, longbows were only used by the Welsh and the British adopted longbows into their army. The longbow should be the English UU, and everybody else should have crossbows. Also, castles should come with the Feudalism tech, and knights should also come with the Feudalism tech or at least some kind of armored horsemen. Knights ruled the battlefield during that era. Knights would be far more powerful and more useful if this were the case but they would probably have to be nerfed a bit to maybe an 8 strength. Guilds just seems way too late to get knights. Heck, muskets are only a hop away by that time.

 

[Jazzmail]

I think castles and walls should simply provide a smaller bonus than they do now, but one that cannot be removed by siege units.

The defense bonus of walls and castles doesn't do anything as it is now, as siege units will come anyway to take down the cultural defense bonus first and the extra % from walls and castles only take one extra turn to bring down to 0 aswell.

With a pemanent bonus things would start looking better. Maybe allow siege units to bring down only half of the defense bonus.
Even a line of rubble to take cover behind and to block the way should help.
So for example: walls +50% defense bonus, even against gunpowder units. Can be lowerded by siege units down to 20%.

Then make the whole thing go obsolete with flight.

 

[Roxlimn]

The defense bonus of walls and castles doesn't do anything as it is now, as siege units will come anyway to take down the cultural defense bonus first and the extra % from walls and castles only take one extra turn to bring down to 0 as well.

Not completely true. Without Cannon to bring them down, Castles make reducing defense bonuses a real pain. It's definitely more than just "one extra turn."

 

[Florian]

TheMeinTeam,

RIFLES from 1920 can NOT fire through a foot or more of stone or cement

No, but where there are rifles, there is gunpowder, and gunpowder can be used by sappers to break holes in walls. I think that's what the game is getting at. But I agree that gunpowder shouldn't make the walls worthless.


Airefuego,

In "real life" once you shut the gates you couldn't "work tiles."

In Civ4 as it is right now, attackers can create this affect by spreading across the city's tiles instead of staying in one tidy stack. It's just too much of a pain. Accordingly, something like your "lockdown" concept would be a good idea.

This is a whole new field of debate - about army supply lines etc

Civ4 does incorporate this a little. I assume it's why unit maintenance goes up when they enter enemy territory. It's the cost of supplying the troops from a distance. I agree it would be cool to see this developed more. You could do things like make unit maintenance go really high when your troops are in desert tiles, or allow defending units to cause damage to attacking units by getting behind them (i.e. between them and their source of supply). Some of this might go beyond the scope of \i{Civilization}, though. It's not a tactical simulation.

Jazzmail,

The defense bonus of walls and castles doesn't do anything as it is now

Yes it does. It makes invaders bring huge stacks of siege units, and slows their conquest down to a crawl if they don't make that investment. I agree that the walls don't make as much difference as they should, but could just as easily be because cultural defense is overpowered as because walls are underpowered.

Emac78,

All good ideas, I think, and good food for thought for Civ5 (or SMAC2; where's SMAC2, anyway?), but I don't know if they would appreciably increase my enjoyment of the game. And it's a minor point, but I think Civ3's Zone of Control made more sense than Civ 1 and 2's. Those tiles represent LARGE areas.