Possibility for Urban Warfare

[Stilgar08]

Military Encampment and center will have hitpoints and you will be able to pillage districts, even bombard districts directly, hereby destroying buildings built in there or destroying them completely. I read an ED Beach interview where he pointed out, that you might have to decide which district to sacrifce to secure another one (he used a new science district in one city compared to a very highly developed one in another city as an example...)

 

[OnceAKing]

I'm sure, for what its worth, that beelining a city center will become more and more impossible as the game goes on. I think that's why urban warfare will be less prevalent in the early game. But once you get to the industrial age, most AI should be programmed and most humans should learn that you should surround your city center with other installations. Also it would just be a plain waste of resources to leave an empty path of hexes leading to the city. I think in the WW2 era and beyond most inland cities will be surrounded by districts of varying types that would almost have to be addressed before taking the city center.

Another cool point of this city sprawl is the usefulness of forts. They've been utterly useless in Civ V and with this set up they probably come out as an extension of the military encampments. If you're a war ready civ I'm sure you have plenty of encampments around the city ready for contingencies.

 

[Mustakrakish]

Oh there's no doubt about being able to pillage, you just won't need to "conquer" them first (with exception of military encampment and city center), it will simply be a matter of unit stepping onto it and pillaging, like any other improvement. What happens to buildings is unknown, but I doubt they'll make the buildings built in district go extinct upon pillage, just incapacitated until district "repaired". It would be way to frustrating for average Joe to loose a few of his buildings because of one loose horseman.

 

[stealth_nsk]

That is certainly not gonna happen. Only city center will have hitpoints (not sure about military encampment, but both and only them will have walls) and only them will be able to fire. That much is known.

Actually, it's known what military encampment could bombard units as well. Most likely it has some kind of HP.

We don't know about the rest of districts and it's quite complex thing. Developers wanted to make strategic bombing and other form of district attacks viable, so we should assume the pillaged districts are very hard to restore. This could mean, for balancing reasons, what they are not so easy to destroy too. I can see a single cavalry behind the lines crippling science and production of the whole empire - this may need to be balanced.

Of course, that's just speculation as we didn't play the actual game, but I'd say it's possible what all districts have some kind of hit points.

 

[m15a]

There may be something as simple as districts providing a bonus to unit defense strength. That may already be disproven by screenshots, though.

 

[AriochIV]

It was specifically mentioned that Encampments do have hit points like the City Center, and it is attacked in the same way (not sure what happens to it when those hit points are depleted). That it was specifically compared to the City Center in this respect implies that the other districts don't have hit points (though it's not certain).

There may be something as simple as districts providing a bonus to unit defense strength. That may already be disproven by screenshots, though.

If they do, it's not in the tooltips for the Holy Site or the City Center.

 

[Felis Renidens]

My guess is that pillaging districts will destroy one building at a time, and you'll have one pillage per turn except maybe some unique units. A fully developed district will have 4 buildings and the district itself, so you can sit there destroying building after building while being bombarded or just do some damage and going away or trying to take the center. Bombers at least return to base after the bombing run and so will be more efficient. Horses on the plain might be able to move in, pillage and get out of bombard range, so putting your districts behind a river or on hills or putting a spearman unit on them might be a good idea.

 

[stiiknafuulia]

I wish you could also pillage Wonders (they've stated that this isn't possible)! Maybe make it take like 5 turns to balance it and give some time to react... Imagine watching the enemy occupy your Pyramids or Forbidden Palace and start burning it to the ground! You'd suffer from dehydration due to cold sweat by the time you figured out the way to reclaim your wonder before its doom. (Or you could just reload, but people already do that in a desperate situation, so it's a moot point imo.)

Conversely, if you know that you cannot take Thebes but see that the Pyramids are located in the outskirts and left undefended, you could snipe that wonder (at the cost of your valiant sappers, probably), and choke on your evil laugh as you watch Egypt's cities go into disorder!

EDIT: Perhaps a pillaged wonder could be available for rebuilding by other civs (with reduced bonuses?)? It'd give you a third option after losing a wonder race (apart from reloading or capturing the city that built it).

 

[CultureManiac]

From everything that's been said by the designers, it seems like a district-by-district city capture is the most likely procedure - for big cities anyway. And will require a district-by-district defence.

For example, if Babylon is more advanced, you don't necessarily have to take Neb's cities, you can send in a swarm of troops and burn down his science buildings. If you harass the builders coming to fix them up, you could handicap his science output severely.

Because military units come from an encampment, if you seize that first, then the city can not make any more units to defend itself, and would rely on backup from other cities.

In addition, bombing an industrial area would set back an enemy's production. So it seems like warfare is really going to expand across the city tiles. Turtling with a few archers/Xbows/artillery or aircraft until the enemy runs low on units - then counterattacking - doesn't seem like such a viable strategy any more. They won't just pillage your luxuries and mines. Many of your buildings will now be out in the open and vulnerable, so you will have to defend your districts too.

Looking forward to it

 

[Stilgar08]

Because military units come from an encampment, if you seize that first, then the city can not make any more units to defend itself, and would rely on backup from other cities.

from how I understand it, if you don't have an encampment, you get the units in your main city tile. Additionally I heard in a video you can build the encampment district after discovering bronze-working. You surely will be able to build units before that...

 

[Felis Renidens]

By the way, interesting what will and what will not be protected by bomb shelters and what will be the penalty for having a districts covered in nuclear waste. And by interesting I mean that I hope to learn from somebody else's experience.

 

[shaglio]

This might be slightly off topic, but I'm interested to see how we'll be able to protect our cities from naval invasion. Will there be a Coastal Bombardment type district that will have a ranged attack similar to the Military Encampment, or will we need to just build a massive navy to patrol the shores? I know we haven't seen much on this topic yet, but it might be easier to send some ranged and melee ships to capture a city, rather than wading though all the land districts (especially if the Military Encampment is built away from the coast).

 

[dexters]

It was specifically mentioned that Encampments do have hit points like the City Center, and it is attacked in the same way (not sure what happens to it when those hit points are depleted). That it was specifically compared to the City Center in this respect implies that the other districts don't have hit points (though it's not certain).


If they do, it's not in the tooltips for the Holy Site or the City Center.

I'm thinking encampment may provide zone of control working like forts. And reducing all unit movementioned in adjacent tiles to 1