I think walls and castles were poorly implemented in civ4

[futurehermit]

I think walls and castles could have been better implemented so that they would be much more useful/valuable.

Instead of simply boosting pre-gunpowder defenses of your city, since you don't want the AI to be attacking your cities in the first place, I think that instead they should have:

-Walls: Create a barrier, with a similar visual as the GW wonder, around the inner ring of your BFC. This barrier cannot be crossed at will by enemy or barbarian units, but instead requires siege units to tear down (this would have implications for axe and chariot rushes).

-Castles: Add an additional barrier or simply extend the existing barrier to the BFC. Again, siege would be required to get through.

Your units could pass through the walls at will (gates/drawbridges/etc.)

Perhaps the cost of walls and castles could be adjusted accordingly.

I think that this implementation would give human players more incentive to build walls/castles since it would delay opponent/barb attacks, help prevent pillagers, etc. It would also make warfare vs. the AI that much more interesting imo.

I take this idea from rts games (e.g., age of mythology) where you can build walls pretty much wherever to create a strategic advantage (which I think would be too difficult to implement in civ4)

 

[schwartz]

IMO, your idea is nice, but my feeling is that it would really throw off the flow of the game, by the time the wall is down + your units are ready to move towards the city the AI can have a good few more defenders, which is more than I think walls should be worth.

 

[elmerrietveld]

I think it's a great idea. Any city attack is delayed by culture stripping, so it wouldn't give the defender too much of an advantage. Although the current gameplay is more realistic, AFAIK pre-gunpowder warfare was all about plundering and attrition without actually attacking a city.

I also would like to see a post-gunpowder defensive buildings: fortresses, bunkers etc. that create more opportunities for city defense.

 

[r_rolo1]

I think that you should be able to do walls at leaisure as a tile improvement ( RL Great wall style ), but they would need to be somewhat vulnerable to large numbers of foes

And hermit, remember that in Civ IV we have City walls and castles. Having them to protect nearby landscape is both gamewise unbalanced and RL unsupported

 

[absimiliard]

Wouldn't be very historic. Most cities had trouble keeping their walls large enough to contain their populations. (they'd keep growing out of the walls they'd built)

Very few people built walls on the "Many hundreds of miles long" scale that even the inner ring of a BFC would be, much less the thousand or more miles of a full BFC.

In fact I can think of only two people to ever do it, Qin Xi Huang and Trajan.

Basically walls a few tens of miles long are pretty easy, lots of people make those. Heck, Julius Caesar even made two sets when he circumvallated Alesia and then made another set of walls facing outwards to hold off the relieving Gallic army. Walls that are hundreds of miles long are much harder, and rarer.

-abs

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

A simple way of making them better is just to make the defense bonus permanent. The fact that you can just use siege weapons to get rid of their bonus makes them useless. Siege weapons can get rid of the culture defense, but the 25% from the walls stays.

 

[r_rolo1]

@absimiliard

There are also the russian wooden wall system they made when recovering against the Tatars/Mongols ... combined they were pretty big

 

[Bhruic]

Personally, I'd leave them the way they are in terms of defense bonuses, but I'd modify them so that they decrease the amount of damage defenders take from collateral damage. Something like 33% less damage with walls, 67% less damage with castles. With most mid/late city assaults coming down to "attack with siege weapons, mop up after", that could decrease the reliance on siege, and require more useful attackers.

Bh

 

[Ad Hoc]

i can't see why castles and walls go obsolete at Gunpowder, they were still useful well into the 19th Century, id like to see them go obsolete with either artillery or assembly line.

 

[Feanor01]

I think Civ 4 has really really poorly implemented seige weapons and walls and castles. I don't have BtS so I cannot say what that is like.

1-Walls are great. I only recently started buildign them, but they can really help in the early game against a axe rush. I think they should stay.
2-Castles come in way too late. By the time they are available, I have musketmen usually. Riflemen are just around the corner, so they are useless.
2b-Castles should have the added benifit of hiding how many defenders are in teh city. For example, when you approach a city, you can tell what units are in it, making seiging much easier. If a city has a castle, you no longer see how many units are in the city. As well, you no longer see the strongest defender (usually long bow or musketman). YOu would be attacking blindly

3-Seige weapons should be able to destroy walls and castles. You should be able to use the seige weapons to remove the defensive bonus offered by these structures.

4-Seige weapons should NOT destroy cultural defense. Fighters would fight just as hard to defend their homeland whether there was a wall or not or if the unit was an axe man or a catapolt. I have never liked the idea of reducing cultural defense with a seige weapon. Seems silly. Perhaps the benifit offered from cultural defense shoudl not be as great as it is, or should only apply to Capitol, Forbidden Palace and Versilliles city. Or 3 largest cities.

5-(NOTE: I don't have BtS). Seige weapons should be able to wound units by bombarding. This was a bit ridiculous in Civ3. A stack of artillery could wipe a city out in 2-3 turns. Still being bombarded by cats or cannons for 3 turns has to inflict some damage on your warriors.

Well, I know some of these changes are implemented in BtS and some are a bit out there, but I think it would make the game a bit more challanging.

 

[King Jason]

To the original idea, I think the way they are is okay. Atleast being in the city themselves. If you want to protect your surrounding lands I feel it should require that extra effort. Additionally, the current way kind of works toward the idea of a real-life siege in the sense that the pillaging of the land surrounding the castle/walled hub more chokes out the resources of the city. Of course, this has no direct military advantage in Civ, But it's something that can happen, and certainly so to human players, since AIs tend to pillage.

Personally, I'd leave them the way they are in terms of defense bonuses, but I'd modify them so that they decrease the amount of damage defenders take from collateral damage. Something like 33% less damage with walls, 67% less damage with castles. With most mid/late city assaults coming down to "attack with siege weapons, mop up after", that could decrease the reliance on siege, and require more useful attackers.

I like this line of thought.

4-Seige weapons should NOT destroy cultural defense. Fighters would fight just as hard to defend their homeland whether there was a wall or not or if the unit was an axe man or a catapolt. I have never liked the idea of reducing cultural defense with a seige weapon. Seems silly. Perhaps the benifit offered from cultural defense shoudl not be as great as it is, or should only apply to Capitol, Forbidden Palace and Versilliles city. Or 3 largest cities.

I tend to think of Culture, when involved with combat, as a facet of the troops morale. So a City with High CD has units of high morale due to their culture. Just because they're invigorated by the fact that they're the Greeks defending the Parthenon doesn't change the simple fact that they can be demoralized after 100+ years of being "under siege". I think it makes plenty of sense. You're not reducing how proud they are of their nation. You're offsetting that morale boost by an equally demoralizing siege. Thus negating the "defense" benefit.

Either way, it's simply a mechanic and I doubt It was anchored too much in reality anyway. So you can choose to rationalize it or not.

 

[pigswill]

I think this easiest way to improve castles is to keep them as they are but have them become available with feudalism (maybe instead of the pretty naff serfdom civic).

 

[Sib]

I agree that castles come late and are expensive to build- not only do their defensive bonuses become obsolete to gunpowder, but the extra trade route disappears to whichever tech it is (Economics?) very quickly.

It's a shame, because they look great and are very cool flavour-wise. I like the idea of all my border/ coastal cities being defended by impregnable fortresses!

 

[bhavv]

Siege Units are just overpowered in Civ 4.


They should be able to tear down wall and castle defences, but NOT culture. And city revolts should remove cultural bonuses, but not wall / castle bonuses.


So in order to effectively take down a cities defense, you need to use both Siege and Spies. To prevent the spy revolt in your own cities is very easy. Just garrison a spy in every city (they are cheap and worth using for defence) and build Security Beuros. This should vastly boost your defences against enemy spies trying to cause a revolt in your cities prior to attack.


Also, bonuses for spy garrisons should stack, E.G. Each spy fortified in a city adds +5% to espionage defense each turn it is fortified, to a maximum of +50% defense (I.E. two spies max per city).

 

[silverbullet]

One thing which I would do for both walls and fortresses is bombarding the enemy. Any enemy in a square adjacent to walls takes some damage from the walls themselves. This makes putting fortresses in strategic locations very useful, and makes long siege somewhat difficult. I wouldn't do anything game breaking there, maybe the damage equivalent of a single catapult(and cannon later).

 

[Sib]

That sounds a bit like the old Civ 3 'zone of control', which was very useful. Enemy units moving past your own would have a chance of taking damage. The same (in theory) applied to coastal fortresses and ships, though I never once witnessed a coastal fortress damaging a ship, in fact they would be the first thing to go when ships bombarded your cities! Oops, i've digressed :/

Yes, walls.

 

[Killroyan]

I agree with a lot of things to improve castles and walls.

1. Bhruic suggestion to lower siege damage with 33% with walls and 66% reduction with castles is great!
2. Castles available as soon as feudalism would be great. Although a city on a hill with walls, castle and protective longbows and 66% less colateral damage is going to be b.tch to conquer. But this could be changed by simply adding benefits to castles at later stages. For example engineering improves the castle with less colateral damage.
3. Castles should not go obsolete with gunpowder. Sure you could blow up some walls but even in the era of cowboys and cavalry they defended in forts and had a huge defensive bonus. Harbors protected by castles were incredible hard to conquer for ships even with big canons on it, etc....

Right now I hardly build walls and I only build castles in culture games if I have nothing left to build They need improvement fast.

 

[madscientist]

I agree partly with what you suggest. Here is some more fodder

1) Walls. Can keep barabrians out of you cities 9 square inner circle, but no AIs.
2) Castles: Keep barbs out of your BFC, but not AIs.
3) Walls, forget that +25% bonus, make it +50% bonus to cultural defense. So for culture pop 1 it's 20% culture plus another 10%, culture pop 2 it's 40% culture plus another 20%. THe more culture the better the defense.
4) Castles, no 25% bonus, now it's another 50% to culture for 100% to culture.
5) Keep the 50% bonus versus barrage.
6) Castles and walls both go obsolete at steel, not rifling. Castles can be built up to steel, no economics.
7) Empower bunkers more. They give the same bonus as a castles (100% to culture defense) and can be built at double speed for protective leaders. Maintain the anti-aircraft aspect.
8) Bomb shelters should be double speed for protective leaders.


Here is a different angle on FH's idea. The AI can enter those walled/castle borders but an unit withing the perimeter is treated as city garrisoned.

Changing the walls/castles to be dependent on cutlure will help those larger/older cities stand up better than a smaller newer city that just got walls whipped in. Make smore sense to me.

One final idea: To help protective leaders as we always seam to want to do is to double the protective bonus of walls and castles.

 

[Daedal]

I agree that walls and castles are poorly implemented in CIV, both from a strategic and a historical standpoint. Strategically, they're useless because the human is almost always on attack or 'active defense' outside the city. Castles are doubly useless because they go obsolete so quickly. But fixing them by making them stronger would only help the AI and the AI doesn't need yet another bonus to defense.

How about a different mechanic altogether? City walls could be built by workers as tile improvements. Then, like cottages, they'd have to be worked to progress through wooden walls -> stone walls -> high stone walls. They'd give the units standing on it defensive bonuses for 'manning the walls,' and when being pillaged they'd have to be pillaged in stages like towns. As tile improvements they should also give -1 and +1. As for actually building something in a city, maybe we should call that a fort or a citadel. A fort built inside the city would provide active defense (like zones of control) against land and sea units adjacent to the city.

 

[Diamondeye]

I agree that walls and castles are poor, maybe you should do something like this:
Wall: Provides +50% defense for city tile, fast to break down with siege but only decimated minorly by non-siege attackers (like (attackerstrength)% reduction).
Castle: Provides +100% defense for city tile defenders of type archer, gunpowder, and +50% for others. City cannot be invaded for as long as bonus is 100% and bonus is only reduced by siege or succesful melee/mounted attacks.

Tile walls:
Should be an improvement that could stack ontop af another. Makes the tile unpassable, unless the fort improvement is present. Can be ruined by siege, although it may take some time. Provides defensive bonus.