Is defending cities (and in general) a lost cause in CIV IV?

[mboettcher]

Look I'm sick of not being able to deal with collateral dmg. You can't win. The only thing thats logical is to preemptive strike and hit the enemy with artillery before they hit you.
Plus city raider actually makes it better to abandon the city sometimes and retake it cause you can do more dmg that way. This defending issue needs to be fixed.

This also applies to forts. Better not to build/use them cause city raider applies there too and it acutally puts you at a disadvantage.


Something more needs to be done to be done about the combat mechanics of artillery. Its ruining the way wars are played out.

Its not an easy fix because artillery needs to have a major role. I say that there needs to be some kind of antiartillery units, so that there can be counter battery fire. If artillery attacks a stack the counterbattery defenders need to be able to duel with it and only if the artillery wins (in other words manages to retreat) then it does major collateral dmg. If artillery loses it shouldn't do much or any collateral dmg.

I don't know, just a suggestion. Perhaps someone can point me towards a minor mod that addresses these issues.

 

[Wolfshanze]

The key to defending cities is to hit them before they hit you.

Realize that the AI will almost always take the time to knock the culture/defense down with catapults/cannons before it attacks in-ernest. This gives you time to bring-in your own troops to defend the city.

If he has catapults, bring horseman or knights... if he has cannon, bring cavalry... you can attack him with your own catapults/cannons, then attack with horse units... they will flank and destroy his siege weapons in the field.

I've never had a problem with defending cities using this strategy... about the only time it doesn't work, is if the AI attacks a city of yours with little to no culture defense and he can start attacking before you have a chance to bring troops up.

 

[mike p]

The other option is strategic retreat. Let your border city fall, after the enemy wastes time knocking down the defenses. Retreat to the next city where you've been building walls and or castle in the mean time. Let units whipped/drafted/built from all of your other cities converge there along your roads, while the enemy is only moving 1 tile per turn.

Hit them with Flanking mounted units and siege weapons of your own. Then retake the city once you've destroyed their stack in the field and start marching on their cities.

 

[Commodore Nate]

In regards to your question about collateral, the first strike line of promotions gives defense against collateral. Because a lot of your defenders will be able to go up that line (gunpowder and archers), it definitely pays to promote some of your city garrison along that line.

 

[Daedal]

Passive defense is pretty worthless. You could argue that it works with a protective leader, but even then it means sacrificing most of a city's improvements. Active defense is where it's at.

 

[Catan_Settler]

I think it's actually a fairly realistic mechanic... In most wars, the army fights to hold the enemy AWAY from their cities. Sure when they are losing they can get pushed back into the city, but honestly nobody really wants an urban war. Street fighting is nasty, slow going business, and pretty much destroys anything worth fighting over in the environment. Look at Stalingrad... Such a colossal waste of men and equipment, and long before the tide had turned against the Germans, their men on the ground could see that it was pretty pointless to keep fighting there-- the infrastructure was destroyed, all the industrial plants were a shambles, machine tools twisted and bombed to nothing. They were fighting to control piles of worthless rubble and losing men in their tens of thousands. The only strategic reason to continue fighting over it was to try and control the trade routes along the Volga, which could have actually been accomplished at other points on the river had they had someone more, shall we say, pragmatic calling the shots. I think Civ models that quite nicely in that it's almost always better to kill the enemy in the field, instead of waiting for them to hammer your cities to the ground. Now if only someone could let the AI know about this.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Actually, in WW2, at least in the early parts of the war (right up until around the battle of Kursk) the Soviets were trying to draw as much combat as possible into the cities, where the enormous German advantages in mobility, airpower, and tactical coordination didn't mean as much. The purpose of this wasn't so much as to defend the cities, but rather that an urban battleground gave them the best chance at harming the Wehrmacht.

IMO, if you want to make passive defense stronger, representing the mass retreat into strongholds that sometimes characterized medieval and early renissance warfare (to say nothing of the colossally long sieges in the classical period, like in the Peloponesean war), supply costs should be *much* nastier. While it's true that warfare has to be abstracted in a game like Civ, where turns can last decades if not longer, if you look at the spartan campaign to pillage the Athenian countryside after the Athenians pulled back into their walls, you see that they actually had quite a bit of trouble doing extensive damage, and never campaigned more than two months a year. They never even managed to hit the silver mines at Larium.

 

[Catan_Settler]

Well that is true I suppose... In asymmetrical warfare the weaker force does stand to gain more tactically by fighting in urban environments, if they are willing to overlook the fact that they're bringing about the death of their own civilians and the destruction of their livelihoods. I suppose the war in Iraq is another good example of this, as was Leningrad when the Russian army was still being knocked around like a punching bag.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

I don't think human player devote enough of the proper military units to city defense. Most of the time, the human player will have an archer or two in the city plus a ton of attack units. Of course your city will be taken over since you have very poor defenders.

If you want to use passive defense, you need to dedicate enough defenders for the job. Instead of making your stack of doom, you need the stack of defense. In addition, you need to promote them along the defensive line.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I think it's actually a fairly realistic mechanic... In most wars, the army fights to hold the enemy AWAY from their cities. Sure when they are losing they can get pushed back into the city, but honestly nobody really wants an urban war. Street fighting is nasty, slow going business, and pretty much destroys anything worth fighting over in the environment. Look at Stalingrad... Such a colossal waste of men and equipment, and long before the tide had turned against the Germans, their men on the ground could see that it was pretty pointless to keep fighting there-- the infrastructure was destroyed, all the industrial plants were a shambles, machine tools twisted and bombed to nothing. They were fighting to control piles of worthless rubble and losing men in their tens of thousands. The only strategic reason to continue fighting over it was to try and control the trade routes along the Volga, which could have actually been accomplished at other points on the river had they had someone more, shall we say, pragmatic calling the shots. I think Civ models that quite nicely in that it's almost always better to kill the enemy in the field, instead of waiting for them to hammer your cities to the ground. Now if only someone could let the AI know about this.

I'm all for improved AI tactics, but you'd have to be careful with tweaking this. The AI splits its forces and leaves too many garrison troops right now, allowing us to chew through it piece by piece. What if it didn't do that though? You could easily bait almost all garrison defenders into one spot, then flank via the sea and take a city, loading up tons of city garrison units there (which would, for a change, be useful without dealing with tons of pillaging, since the AI would target this city as if it were a magnet, and won't pillage a captured city until it comes out of revolt). Programming the AI for war without making HUGE holes in its defense is probably one of the harder endeavors fireaxis had to go through. Tech paths and improvements are pretty easy, but how to adapt to dynamic human tendencies? Not so much.

 

[bhavv]

There needs to be a successor to Machine Guns.


Perhaps a 28 Str unit that is immune to Collateral Damage and First Strikes in the modern era, but that an only defend.


I find that a good way to defend is to fill your cities up with air units. If you get attacked, bombard the attackers with your Air units to weaken them and then pick them off with your riflemen / Infantry.


Although prior to getting riflemen and Air units, city defense is a joke. But after that you can take down attacking stacks using Air bombards and your city garrisons.

 

[Slip de Garcon]

Perhaps a 28 Str unit that is immune to Collateral Damage and First Strikes in the modern era, but that an only defend.

Soviet-style RPGs? As now seen in Iraq/Afganistan? Very troublesome in urban warfare - or is too close to the cruelly-short-lived anti-tank in concept?

 

[Bradlius]

In whatever era I'm in, I try to keep a collateral-damage weapon or two in most of my border cities, along with two City Garrison defenders. When an AI stack comes within range, I hit them with the cats/cannons and take the wind out of their sails, so to speak. They either panic and try to take my city with units that are now not at full strength, and fail utterly, or go on a pillaging spree, by which time I can usually move my reserve chariots/horse-archers/cavalry into mop-up mode.

 

[Yakk]

I'm all for improved AI tactics, but you'd have to be careful with tweaking this. The AI splits its forces and leaves too many garrison troops right now, allowing us to chew through it piece by piece. What if it didn't do that though? You could easily bait almost all garrison defenders into one spot, then flank via the sea and take a city, loading up tons of city garrison units there (which would, for a change, be useful without dealing with tons of pillaging, since the AI would target this city as if it were a magnet, and won't pillage a captured city until it comes out of revolt). Programming the AI for war without making HUGE holes in its defense is probably one of the harder endeavors fireaxis had to go through. Tech paths and improvements are pretty easy, but how to adapt to dynamic human tendencies? Not so much.

Yes, you also have to deal with naval invasions being far far too easy.

First, a seperate naval power graph that reflects your fleet size, so the AI understands that you have a large fleet.

Second, the ability to intercept fleets easier.

Third, faster ships with lower "throughput". Ie, all ships (barring carriers) have a capacity of 1. Higher tech ships get faster. Defenders can to a defensive "blockade" like action that damages your fleet as it moves through it. Units in ships lose their movement points when the ship moves, leaving your invasion force open to counter attack on the high seas. More ships with Blitz (or something like it), so a large fleet of weak ships cannot bypass a handful of high-end defenders.

So now the tactic of "picking up a huge army, going out into the deep sea where nobody can probably see you, then appearing out of nowhere off of the coast of your enemy with a massive army" tactic doesn't work. (As a tactic, it is pretty cheesy).

Instead, there will be a war over blockading the ocean -- a battle of naval superiority. As you win it, the AI learns that you are endangering the coasts of their empire: giving the AI a chance to build up defenses. When you do invade, instead of 3 to 4 military units per boat you get to drop off 1 per boat at one time, and you have to run the coastal blockades of the defending nation, and you have to suffer attempts to sink your fleet while it is unloading the troops.

By making modern boats 4 times faster, the "units moved per unit time" remains the same. You just cannot alpha strike as cheaply.

...

To pull this off:
1> Extend Blockade to include defensive attacking ships. When you move into a region that is being Blockaded, you suffer attack from the ship doing the Blockade. It fights until it takes damage, at which point it withdraws. If it has a withdraw chance, it rolls that to avoid taking the damage.

This happens every time your ship moves a square within the radius of a blockade.

2> Boost the radius of the blockade action. Faster ships, you can blockade further away!

3> Implement the "units in boats lose their movement" code.

4> Make the AI understand what to do with the naval power graph (play a naval keep-up game, just like a military keep-up game), and how to set up defensive blockades and anti-invasion naval forces on it's coasts. Have the AI understand that their local anti-invasion naval forces being intact means that their coasts are less dangerous.

Not that hard to do...

Note that the way most players play, a sudden naval invasion often is just as bad for them as it is for AIs. The AI is just worse at setting up these tricks.

 

[Catan_Settler]

1 unit per transport ship would suck so bad... They'd have to do something to unit maintenance costs or that would pretty much kill naval warfare.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I think it's actually a fairly realistic mechanic... In most wars, the army fights to hold the enemy AWAY from their cities.

Modern wars are like that, but most medieval battles involved siege warfare.

I do, however disagree with the OP that siege/artillery are "too powerful", and if anything the game is extremely unrealistic in the way they are made to spontaneously die if they fire a shot and miss.

My reform of artillery would be to treat them more like a land-based dynamic of the way Civ does air strikes: they have a percentage chance of doing a percentage of damage, although I don't think (during their attacking turn) that there should be any risk to artillery other than a small percentage chance of backfire explosions in the cannons, etc. The realistic way to balance out artillery power is to perhaps beef up the chances that cavalry have for "flanking" damage that they get against them in BtS.

IMO.

 

[Skallagrimson]

I find that a good way to defend is to fill your cities up with air units. If you get attacked, bombard the attackers with your Air units to weaken them and then pick them off with your riflemen / Infantry.

Air counterattack is indeed a favorite defensive measure of mine, especially when the enemy stack is still in its own borders (no WW for airstrikes woo HOO!)

But if the enemy stack is still closing in on my city in my zone, my preferred tactic is to use field artillery (or tanks with Barrage in the later game), sacrificed en massed (or not, in the case of tanks, as the tanks rarely have to deal with anti-tank or similar units in the games I play--I'm usually a level or two ahead in technology), and then annihilate the entire enemy stack with waves of cavalry, infantry, marines, etc., after they've been worn down.

If an enemy stack is parked next to one of my cities, I consider that an emergency condition and almost all of my military energy goes toward units with defensive and field combat promotions to lift the siege.

And the main reason for that is because when a city falls it loses most (or sometimes all) of its buildings. If the city is empty of buildings anyway, I switch tactics and park a city raid stack outside for retakes until the enemy stack is all dead.

 

[Ur_Vile_Wedge]

Modern wars are like that, but most medieval battles involved siege warfare.

I do, however disagree with the OP that siege/artillery are "too powerful", and if anything the game is extremely unrealistic in the way they are made to spontaneously die if they fire a shot and miss.

My reform of artillery would be to treat them more like a land-based dynamic of the way Civ does air strikes: they have a percentage chance of doing a percentage of damage, although I don't think (during their attacking turn) that there should be any risk to artillery other than a small percentage chance of backfire explosions in the cannons, etc. The realistic way to balance out artillery power is to perhaps beef up the chances that cavalry have for "flanking" damage that they get against them in BtS.

IMO.

*sighs* This is not realistic. Not at all. Before the advent of modern cannon, artillery had practically no battlefield ramifications at all. They were too small, to innacurate, fired too slowly (a shot an hour doesn't mean too much in a time when most battles were over in 4) were too clumsy to manuever around, and didn't pack enough of a punch. Furthermore, a trebuchets effective range was (at least at the siege of Ashyun) some 300 meters for a projectile weighting around 100kg. That is easily within range for a limited counterattack to target and destroy, something that happned, and happned quite frequently. (and if a turn is lasting 10 years, an "attack" probably represents some back and forth fighting.)

Personally,I think that if you want to keep gameplay balanced, you either need to rewrite the entire combat system so that stack defense isn't so powerful or forget about nerfing artillery. If you want to keep the game realistic, pre-cannon artillery should be completely worthless, and even post cannon shouldn't be the core of an army, (like it was back in civ 3)

 

[Yakk]

What if we extended the flanking rules?

Every unit attempts to flank. It does a strength contest against the defender, both sides getting withdraw bonuses. If the defender wins, the attacker fights the strongest defender as usual.

If it wins, the defender gets another attempt to screen the attacker. The strongest "withdraw" defender tries a contest. If the "screen" defender wins, the fight goes on with this defender.

If the attacker wins both of the above contests, it gets to pick it's target -- the weakest target in the stack.

The result? Wounded defenders get killed by attackers sometimes. Having cavalry around to screen your weak units is important. Your "anti-horse" spearmen, when they attack, can sometimes get to fight defending horsemen.

Do this at the same time as you heavily nerf ancient siege weapons (reduce them to anti-city weapons), and claw back collateral damage from cannons and up...

 

[TheMeInTeam]

*sighs* This is not realistic. Not at all. Before the advent of modern cannon, artillery had practically no battlefield ramifications at all. They were too small, to innacurate, fired too slowly (a shot an hour doesn't mean too much in a time when most battles were over in 4) were too clumsy to manuever around, and didn't pack enough of a punch. Furthermore, a trebuchets effective range was (at least at the siege of Ashyun) some 300 meters for a projectile weighting around 100kg. That is easily within range for a limited counterattack to target and destroy, something that happned, and happned quite frequently. (and if a turn is lasting 10 years, an "attack" probably represents some back and forth fighting.)

Personally,I think that if you want to keep gameplay balanced, you either need to rewrite the entire combat system so that stack defense isn't so powerful or forget about nerfing artillery. If you want to keep the game realistic, pre-cannon artillery should be completely worthless, and even post cannon shouldn't be the core of an army, (like it was back in civ 3)

Or, you could just make it so that siege has its attack power only when attacking cities.

IMO, this game could be improved if forts gave zones of control (when they have units in them, that is). Zones of control were a bit ridiculous in the past, but limited use would allow for strategic depth and realism. Besides, prior to their use as airbases, who the !@#$ uses forts in their current state? I surely don't, and don't see much use for them. Forts *did* have some use in history, though!

Zones of control forts would also allow players to play defensively if they so choose, without demolishing any hope of offense. It would definitely do something to curb stupid weaksauce AI pillaging. Blowing by forts with units in them and having no ramifications for doing so is just stupid, IMO.