Obsolescence and City Defense

[_alphaBeta_]

I'm a bit confused, so let's back up. A city has two defense modifiers, one from culture and the other from walls/castle, if present. The attacker will always see the higher of the two. Gunpowder units see the culture defense only. Non-gunpowder units still see the higher of the two regardless of either party's technology advances, correct? This post, I think, says just that since defense from walls/castle is not tied to the building itself:

Yes, once both Walls and Castles are built you still retain the defence bonuses against pre-Gunpowder units. The loss of that bonus is not tied to the structure itself, it's in the UnitInfo entries. This line here to be precise:

<bIgnoreBuildingDefense>0</bIgnoreBuildingDefense>

If set to 1, which all Gunpowder and later units do, then Walls and Castles get no bonuses against them. So you can still be able to build Walls, but they won't be doing you any good if an enemy is attacking you with Grenadiers.

That's for attacking. Now bombarding:

... Attacking Cannons would attack this 100% Castle like it was 40% (defense-bonus-wise) because they ignore the extra % head-on, but a bombard still takes from the 100% relatively, ...

The meat of my question is: What 100%? The 100% defense from non-gunpowder attackers? I thought that would be irrelevant for gunpowder bombarders as well. Are you saying this 100% hangs around for bombardment purposes forever? I never knew of gunpowder bombarders chipping away at an intermediate value of the culture defense. If I understand you correctly the bombardment from a cannon of a 40% culture defense city is:

damage	[COLOR="DarkOrange"]intermediate[/COLOR]	displayed defense
-----------------------------------------
     	[COLOR="DarkOrange"]100%[/COLOR]		40
-12%	[COLOR="DarkOrange"]88%[/COLOR]		35
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]76%[/COLOR]		30
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]64%[/COLOR]		26
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]52%[/COLOR]		21
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]40%[/COLOR]		16
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]28%[/COLOR]		11
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]16%[/COLOR]		6
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]4%[/COLOR]		2
-12%	[COLOR="darkorange"]-8%[/COLOR]		-3

So, what if only walls are present? What if there are no walls or castle? How does this chart change? Does the intermediate value simply go away and the percentages come directly off the displayed defense?

 

[Silu]

Yes, that's exactly how it works as far as I know - Walls and Castles forever continue to be of use for cities with less culture defense than that building would give regarding bombardment efficiency.

Defense can never be negative though

So, what if only walls are present? What if there are no walls or castle? How does this chart change? Does the intermediate value simply go away and the percentages come directly off the displayed defense?

AFAIK:

With only Walls: no effect if the culture is 60% or more. If it's less (40 in your example), the intermediate value starts from 50% instead of 100% and each cannon blast reduces that with 12%. After a single Cannon blast the intermediate value would be 38% and the actual (for post-Gunpowder units) and displayed value would be 40 * (38/50) % ~= 30 %.

Without Walls or Castle: Yes, in your example, the "intermediate value" goes away as the displayed defense is also the "actual" defense. Meaning it will only take 4 Cannon blasts to reduce defense to 0% instead of the 9 in your example.

All the confusion stems from the fact that the defense value is given as "%" when it's really not for some purposes. Reducing % from % values is always confusing as usually it's impossible to know if the %s mean actual percentages or percentage-units.

 

[_alphaBeta_]

Defense can never be negative though

Yeah, I know. Just letting the tables run their course.

With only Walls: no effect if the culture is 60% or more.

Did you mean 50% or more? When you run the math, anything over 50% and the wall scenario starts losing defense quicker than simply subtracting the number as if there were no walls. That would make having walls in the city worse.

I treat the defense "percentage" displayed as a simple number since I believe this figure isn't used as a percentage until combat begins. So, same example as above, but with only walls and no castle (rounding figures down):

	50/50	40
-12	38/50	30
-12	26/50	20
-12	14/50	11
-12	2/50	1

Castle scenario again with rounding and negatives removed:

	100/100	40
-12	88/100	35
-12	76/100	30
-12	64/100	25
-12	52/100	20
-12	40/100	16
-12	28/100	11
-12	16/100	6
-12	4/100	1

Finally, no castles or walls.

	40
-12	28
-12	16
-12	4

So this concept of the intermediate value (as I'm calling it) only comes into play when the culture defense is less than 50% (for walls only, always applies for castle), the city has walls or a castle and is bombarded by a gunpowder unit.

In addition the defense and bombard bonuses apply to non-gunpowder units for the duration of the game. Correct?

 

[Silu]

^ I said 60% or more since base culture defense can only be a number divisible by 20, and 60 is the first one larger than 50. Also Castle has no effect (for post-Gunpowder units) if the city already has 100% defense due to having Legendary culture status. The rest seems correct as far as I can tell.

 

[Baldyr]

Apart from all the math displayer in this thread (which I'm not even gonna try to follow), am I to understand that City Walls and Castles will slow down enemy bombardment rate with gunpowder siege units? Do they speed up the buildup of the defensive bonus (after bombardment) also?

But the defensive bonus of City Walls and Castles doesn't apply when attacked by gunpowder units. So, if a Cannon attacks a city with 20% cultural defense and 50% fortification defense, the defending unit will still only receive a 20% defensive bonus. Right?

What about Forts? They give a defensive terrain bonus - not a city defense bonus. Since that defense bonus can't be bombarded, do you get it against gunpowder units?

 

[_alphaBeta_]

... am I to understand that City Walls and Castles will slow down enemy bombardment rate with gunpowder siege units?

I haven't tested any of this myself, I just wrote out some of the math that others were claiming to better understand them. Assuming they are correct, then YES walls and castles do slow bombardment.

Do they speed up the buildup of the defensive bonus (after bombardment) also?

I doubt it.

But the defensive bonus of City Walls and Castles doesn't apply when attacked by gunpowder units. So, if a Cannon attacks a city with 20% cultural defense and 50% fortification defense, the defending unit will still only receive a 20% defensive bonus. Right?

That's correct, but that's when the cannon attacks the city. We're talking bombardment to reduce defenses.

What about Forts? They give a defensive terrain bonus - not a city defense bonus. Since that defense bonus can't be bombarded, do you get it against gunpowder units?

Forts give a 25% defensive bonus that cannot be bombarded. The bonus is comparable to that of hills, so it applies to all units.

 

[Stalker0]

When I think about castles I always think about how gypped the Spanish are in terms of UB. That's pretty unfair that their UB has such a short useful window.

I'll echo this one...even in BTS castles don't last nearly long enough.

I don't think they should become obsolete until steel or maybe chemistry. Bullets do not break through stone very well until you get to modern ballistics or siege like weaponry (such as cannon). Its not until people have knowledge of explosives (aka chemistry) that stone fortifications would truly be outdated.

 

[Baldyr]

I don't think they should become obsolete until steel or maybe chemistry. Bullets do not break through stone very well until you get to modern ballistics or siege like weaponry (such as cannon). Its not until people have knowledge of explosives (aka chemistry) that stone fortifications would truly be outdated.

This would be easy to mod for anyone who wants to. I believe its just a couple of numbers in one XML file.

What you would suggest is that Musketman and Cannon don't count as "explosives units" then? Just make those two units not be counted in the "gunpowder group". I haven't looked it up, but it could be that simple.

I've also thought about making the Horse Archer into an archery unit rather than a mounted one. Because its more a tactic than it is weaponry. Horse archers don't engage in close combat at all, but always keep their distance. This is why it was so revolutionary when it was introduced in the west. In Civ4 terms this would be represented by the withdrawal chance. The pikeman tactics shouldn't apply though, but rather any anti archery trait or promotion.