Most OP building - Walls

[Pistol90]

I wanted to start small discussion here about walls (all kind ancient/medieval/renaissance) and how I think they are totally wrongly used in Civ game. Walls were important in ancient and medieval era, but after gunpowder and especially in modern era they are completely absolute, while in the game one of the reasons why late game is boring is because even human player (not to say AI) cant have large teritorial gains by war just because walls (and then you add encampment walls and no army shall pass).

I dont know any battle where walls in modern (or even industrial) time had any (not small or significant) factor in city defence, but in the game you would be better defending city with walls than with one infantry and one tank army.

Also there is no mod for this to my knowledge, just disable all defensive bonuses to cities with walls after renaissance era.

 

[Sostratus]

Also there is no mod for this to my knowledge, just disable all defensive bonuses to cities with walls after renaissance era.

You can pretty easily make one yourself by setting the defensive HP of urban defenses to 0 (or a small number) or outright removing it.
But this would remove city bombardment.
You could also make it so that city walls don’t have the hidden resistances to melee and ranged attacks- walls (blue bar) have the incoming damage computed based on their combat strength, but then resist 85% of melee damage and 50% of ranged attacks. This is on top of ranged units getting that -17 strength penalty, and applies to naval ranged units too.

Urban defenses doesn’t mean walls per se- it can mean trenches, bunkers, machine gun nests, Pre sighted artillery, the whole slew of things armies did to reinforce cities in WW1 and WW2. Visually the walls still exist and yes, walls built in the past retain their resistances forever, which could perhaps be improved.

 

[Tech Osen]

ne of the reasons why late game is boring is because even human player (not to say AI) cant have large teritorial gains by war just because walls

Once you have balloons your artillery can take down walls with impunity. Coastal cities are toast once you get battleships. And bombers are I-win buttons. There is plenty amiss with the late game but walls shouldn't be an issue.
The AI being unable to use those tactics is a problem though.

 

[Victoria]

As @Sostratus said with regard to urban defences but more so. With the accuracy of rifles and larger, hard cover of any type including rubble makes it very difficult to take a city (bio/napalm/nuke aside) if you want to occupy a city rather than just waste it, it just ain’t easy. Take a Russian WW2 factory as an example.

title of this thread hugely misleading to me.

 

[Pistol90]

As @Sostratus said with regard to urban defences but more so. With the accuracy of rifles and larger, hard cover of any type including rubble makes it very difficult to take a city (bio/napalm/nuke aside) if you want to occupy a city rather than just waste it, it just ain’t easy.

title of this thread hugely misleading to me.

I dont understand .... why is titile misleading, for production of walls you gain more defensive power than if you produce two or three armies if you ask me (with encampment district) ... and you have it from ancient to modern era without need to upgrade.

What I was saying in this post and title is not that cities aren't defensive structures by themself (they are, a lot of buildings for cover, attacker cant use tanks etc), but that there is no backing in reallity of warfare where you would have infrantry at city walls defending with machine guns and snipers agains attacker in modern times. That would actually be suicidal, but in the game city walls are basically represented that way in modern era.

Walls in warfare history became obsolete when Turks capture Constantinpole when it became clear that high walls will not defend you anymore against artillery, all you are doing at standing at those walls is becoming more easy target.

 

[Victoria]

why is titile misleading,

Why are walls the most OP building would not be misleading.
For me, I read the title and thought.... factories are pretty OP, let’s see what everyone else says... oh it’s just another wall thread.
The discussion is only walls but is not mentioned in the title, simples.

 

[Pistol90]

Why are walls the most OP building would not be misleading.
For me, I read the title and thought.... factories are pretty OP, let’s see what everyone else says... oh it’s just another wall thread.
The discussion is only walls but is not mentioned in the title, simples.

My mistake than

Title is supposed to be statement, where I say walls are most OP building in the game, discussion should be where I say why I think so.
So title isn't discussion about other building, but just walls.

 

[Victoria]

Things can be read in different ways, was a small thing. You can always change it

 

[kb27787]

Hardly OP... if anyone remembers Civ V and how city states were so darned tough (esp. as the game went on) that sometimes they could take on whole civs with their armies...

In VI, starting with walls doesn't seem to help CS that much... catapults are way too strong (normal combat strength against melee and ranged units should be much much weaker IMO) which is rather poor balance. Moreover, even AIs without catapults can surround the city and constantly ram at it with melee units and take it.

My advice would be to scrap the wall mechanism altogether and make cities tougher in general. (City strength should be +10 from the strongest melee unit producible, including the initial warrior, with +10 more for palace guard)

 

[steveg700]

It is odd that putting up ancient walls means having defense that improves and improves over time, both growing in defense and ranged-attack strength, and yet the means for breaching walls--rams and towers--have short lifespans.

I despise the way encampments and walls work together to make the encampment unassailable to ranged or melee units. What the heck is happening there? Why does attacking it inflict piddling single-digits of damage, even when its combat strength is 10 or more less than the unit attacking it.

 

[Sostratus]

I despise the way encampments and walls work together to make the encampment unassailable to ranged or melee units. What the heck is happening there? Why does attacking it inflict piddling single-digits of damage, even when its combat strength is 10 or more less than the unit attacking it.

its exactly because walls have these crazy resistances that are hidden from view but never obsolete. This turns 100HP of wall into into about 400HP against ranged attacks and a monster ~700HP vs melee attacks. And urban defense has 400 wall HP, so a city like that is essentially 3,000HP (2800 effectively vs melee plus 200HP green bar) against infantry or tanks.

I have mentioned this before but I think earlier walls should all have a set combat strength independent of units you’ve built, so that you can outscale a defender who doesn’t keep investing. After all, you have to upgrade your combat units; why shouldn’t they have to keep their walls up to date?

 

[Archon_Wing]

???? Defense is useless late game. Balloons, planes, tanks, and GDRs make it very easy for almost any non-Victor city to fall. And of course nukes. You people attacking with like 6 units or something?

It's a pain during early classical, medieval, and renaissance but I don't see any problem with them elsewhere. But even if you can't take cities, pillaging them is already a huge gain.

I thought we gathered that war was OP and conquering 40 cities before t200 was the norm?

 

[steveg700]

its exactly because walls have these crazy resistances that are hidden from view but never obsolete. This turns 100HP of wall into into about 400HP against ranged attacks and a monster ~700HP vs melee attacks. And urban defense has 400 wall HP, so a city like that is essentially 3,000HP (2800 effectively vs melee plus 200HP green bar) against infantry or tanks.

I have mentioned this before but I think earlier walls should all have a set combat strength independent of units you’ve built, so that you can outscale a defender who doesn’t keep investing. After all, you have to upgrade your combat units; why shouldn’t they have to keep their walls up to date?

Yeah, pretty insane. I guess this is all in the interests of encouraging players to build siege units. Of course, if a siege unit can shred walls in two shots, it's kind of humorously counter-intuitive: attacking a city is only siege without siege units.

If nothing, units should be able to bust an encampment with greater ease than a city.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm not sure what the OP is going for, but I will admit the wall situation has problems.

It's a pain during early classical, medieval, and renaissance but I don't see any problem with them elsewhere.

Is this really how it was in history though? This is my problem with walls. Cities were sieged and taken many times throughout classical, medieval, and renaissance ages. I would say it was probably easier to take a city then than it was during WW2 and after. Right now taking cities gets easier once you get balloons/artillery and bombers as mentioned above. But I'm not sure that should even be the case. I would like to see military play more an important role during the earlier eras (meaning you better have military to defend your cities) while later eras cities should be more difficult to take.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Is this really how it was in history though? This is my problem with walls. Cities were sieged and taken many times throughout classical, medieval, and renaissance ages. I would say it was probably easier to take a city then than it was during WW2 and after.

Well, the way sieges worked was that they surrounded the city and forced them to surrender. Actually breaching in was costly and became rather bloody afterwards.

In game this is represented by placing a city under siege, though I guess you could make the city lose health when placed under siege. Of course, I also imagine many here are just randomly launching attacks without planning (eg, researching gunpowder and then start building musketman for a while and then get shocked that they are ineffective by the time they get used)

I suppose I don't deity enough, but there are plenty that do and steamroll the other civs like nothing. So there is a bit of confusion for me when people say the game is too easy but taking cities from the AI is hard. That just leads me to conclude user error.

But perhaps this topic is poorly phrased. If it were phrased as "how to take walled cities?" instead of passing that off as an assumption and accepted then it may be more interesting.

 

[acluewithout]

I’m not sure what to make of this thread.

I find with Walls that they’re pretty easy to take down so long as you’re organised and have got the timing right. But if you screw up, and now all your Swordsmen are getting massacred by Wall Mounted Cross Bows, then yeah Walls can suddenly feel impossible.

I think it’s hard to comment on the effectiveness of Walls so long as we have the current unit gaps, particularly no medieval melee or Seige units. But I suspect @Sostratus is right, and there’s something off about how all the numbers work.

 

[Sostratus]

then yeah Walls can suddenly feel impossible.

The game pretty strongly beats into your that using archers to bombard city = ineffective, and using catapults = good. Okay, you say, I get what's going on here. It would make archers too good. They put it in your face that there is that -17 strength penalty.
But what the game is very quiet about is the severity of the melee penalty. Players hear the whole song and dance regarding range attacks but there isn't one clearly presented that melee units are even less effective than ranged units!!! (-85% vs -75%)
There's no stated melee penalty in the combat preview, so they see strength 36 swords chopping at a strength ~38 wall and seeing it takes forever and the city is butchering their swordsmen. Conclusion: omg, walls are way too strong!!

The reason resists are used for walls instead of direct combat penalties is because it would make the counterattack damage from walls way too strong. A wall of X strength with 50% resist and a wall of X+17 strength and no resist will take the same damage from an attack, but the latter will deal 2x the counterattack damage. Cities already have higher strength than units in many cases (which i think is a poor choice.*) If represented in the combat preview it would look like this:
Archers
-17 : Penalty attacking fortifications (displayed now)
-17 : Wall Resistance to ranged
Melee
-47 : Wall resistance to melee
I'm not kidding: 85% resistance is equal to a 47 strength defense boost. (Because flipped around, that would be ~6x damage, or 3x twice, which is what +30 and +17 are.) If players actually saw that, they would immediately realize that wall resist is really high. Especially late game, when you don't have battering rams or siege towers, and mechanized infantry and tanks just have to eat that penalty. I'm not making a statement on the current balancing of wall resistance numbers, but they are fairly concealed in a way that leads to these kinds of threads.

*City defense strength seems to scale up on # of districts and possibly population, on top of the base strength from Units you've built. I think this is well-intentioned (bigger city = harder to take because there's more of it) but it would be better to award more HP to the city itself because you avoid the combat formula's counter attack damage problem for melee units.

 

[steveg700]

Right, and encampments further complicate things, because they're so resistant that they should simply never be attacked. Given that it's best to ignore it and attack the city directly, it might as well be rendered invulnerable so players aren't even tempted to pick at it (or grind it for XP).

 

[acluewithout]

The game pretty strongly beats into your that using archers to bombard city = ineffective, and using catapults = good. Okay, you say, I get what's going on here. It would make archers too good. They put it in your face that there is that -17 strength penalty.
But what the game is very quiet about is the severity of the melee penalty. Players hear the whole song and dance regarding range attacks but there isn't one clearly presented that melee units are even less effective than ranged units!!! (-85% vs -75%)
There's no stated melee penalty in the combat preview, so they see strength 36 swords chopping at a strength ~38 wall and seeing it takes forever and the city is butchering their swordsmen. Conclusion: omg, walls are way too strong!!

The reason resists are used for walls instead of direct combat penalties is because it would make the counterattack damage from walls way too strong. A wall of X strength with 50% resist and a wall of X+17 strength and no resist will take the same damage from an attack, but the latter will deal 2x the counterattack damage. Cities already have higher strength than units in many cases (which i think is a poor choice.*) If represented in the combat preview it would look like this:
Archers
-17 : Penalty attacking fortifications (displayed now)
-17 : Wall Resistance to ranged
Melee
-47 : Wall resistance to melee
I'm not kidding: 85% resistance is equal to a 47 strength defense boost. (Because flipped around, that would be ~6x damage, or 3x twice, which is what +30 and +17 are.) If players actually saw that, they would immediately realize that wall resist is really high. Especially late game, when you don't have battering rams or siege towers, and mechanized infantry and tanks just have to eat that penalty. I'm not making a statement on the current balancing of wall resistance numbers, but they are fairly concealed in a way that leads to these kinds of threads.

*City defense strength seems to scale up on # of districts and possibly population, on top of the base strength from Units you've built. I think this is well-intentioned (bigger city = harder to take because there's more of it) but it would be better to award more HP to the city itself because you avoid the combat formula's counter attack damage problem for melee units.

I didn’t realise the resist for Melee. To be clear, and 85% resist means the City takes damage as if the melee attack was reduced by 85%?

I agree the game should make that penalty more clear in terms of UI, but I’m not sure I disagree with having the penalty overall. I’ve certainly never noticed it anyway - early game I’ll take Cities with a Ram or Tower if they have Walls; it’s been a long time since I took a City Late game, but when I have I used Naval or Land Bombardment and maybe Bombers.

I’m conscious too that City Defence and City Attacks also being based on strongest units is a bit of a fudge and can produce some silly gameplay sometimes, but overall I think it’s a workable way to escalate CD and CA. I’m sure stuff could be tweaked and mechanics could be explained better, but the existing mechanics are a solid B+ if you ask me (other than some annoying unit gaps).

 

[Sostratus]

I didn’t realise the resist for Melee. To be clear, and 85% resist means the City takes damage as if the melee attack was reduced by 85%?

I agree the game should make that penalty more clear in terms of UI, but I’m not sure I disagree with having the penalty overall.

So if you would deal 20 points of damage in an attack, based on combat strength, 85% resist means the target only takes 3.
For clarity, 2 units with equal strength means the attacker deals 30 damage.

I perhaps wasn’t clear enough that I do not take issue with the penalty existing, not at all. It’s got good gameplay reasons.
Although, I think wall melee resist in the age of urban defenses is perhaps a little too much.l, when the only siege attacks require oil or aluminum upkeep and there is no siege support unit for direct attack troops.
And melee resist in general prevents a strategy of swarming a city with a cloud of melee units from being successful - which is how the AI fights. So for that reason I might consider a melee resist of 75% instead of 85%, at least for urban defenses.