ultimate defensive unit?

[BaconLad]

what is your units of choice when defending cities?

include land/sea/air units

i want to learn as much as possible.

i used to think i was great at this game untill i found this website and the thousands of people who are obviously all far superior to me and my humble 10yr old playstation version of civ2...

ive got a new found lust for this game!!!

 

[Sharwood]

It depends on the situation, like everything in this game. One idea you should take to heart is that the best defence is a good offence. It is far better to use destroy your enemies before they get to your cities than to even defend them. If you are forced to, obviously the best defensive unit available at the time is a must, but you should also garrison your cities with good offensive units.

For example, If your enemy attacks with knights, you should be okay if you have a few pikemen in your city, but it couldn't hurt to have a couple of catapults to attack the enemy with when it's your turn. Also be sure to link your cities with roads, so that units from one city can move to defend another ASAP if needed. There's probably a few articles in the War Academy that will help you out.

 

[SCG]

nothing is as effective at defence as preventative measures. That usually means offensive units able to strike and kill the advancing offending armies before they have a chance to strike at you. After that, a diplomat (and later a spy) can be deadly at turning away (bribe 1 unit and use it to kill off more if there are more). lastly, defending units are a function of the situation. like sharwood's example of pikemen against knights, a single warrior can hold out virtually forever against barbarians if it is located in your only city. and for units who will only be used to defend and not attack, cheaper is usually better - why pay 30 shields to defend with an archer when its only 20 for a phalanx or pikeman. if its only for disorder control, why pay 20 when you can pay 10 for a warrior). For that matter - there are quite a few members here that if they get an archer from a hut, they'll disband it for the shields because of its 1-movement

 

[BaconLad]

wow, maybe im a little bit better than i give myself credit for.

great examples guys,
i tend to do what you both said, (to an extent) i often defend with and leave dips/spys roaming around my borders to pick off barbs and hostile ai units. however it can get abit expensive at times. the odd phlanx fortified on a near mountain can work a treat aswell, sometimes i think its got a big red target on its a**, as it ushers enemys directly to it and away from my cities.

what i really wanted to know tho, was in the later stages (all advances) of the game, ive noticed that the ai cities tend to defend with alpine troops, i use marines, what is the official best defensive unit?

 

[Ace]

In the early game, a 2 on defense is the strongest you can get. Once you get 6 or so plus cities, a warrior is fine. The idea is to prevent a stray barb or ai unit from just walking into your city. Remember, there is no really good defensive unit. Elephants and crusaders will beat any defensive 2 strength unit unless it is in a really good defensive position. So, stay on the offensive, push the ai into defending his cities and he will leave yours alone.

One defensive unit (except in a frontline city that is under pressure from the ai) is more than enough and later in monarchy, add warriors to help with the riot control. This has the advantage that those warriors will "promote" to riflemen when you get Leo's. You will than have lots of 40 shield riflemen that you only paid 10 shields for.

In democracy, I like to garrison my cities with spies. This has the advantages of not requiring shield support and you have lots of spies available if you need to "buy" a suddenly hostile ai civ.... Until my SSC and a few key cities are well beyond the reach of barbs and ai civs, its comforting to keep a rifleman in them. In mathamatical terms, a vet mech inf is the best defensive unit, but they come so late, that the ai is impotent and building them is unnecessary.

 

[Peaster]

The land unit with the best defensive stats is the Mech Inf. The best sea unit is the battleship. But I agree with the earlier post, that it is better to attack [or expand] than defend.

 

[Ali Ardavan]

Early on the best defender is a Phalanx. If I am in hotile situations I try to build vet ones. If I have a large empire, I build Leo and thus all my early defensive units get upgraded to Riflemen. I rarely build Alpine or Marines, the extra 1 point in defense is not worth the extra building cost in my opinion unless my city is under constant attack.

 

[Theov]

the bomber

 

[Prof. Garfield]

One defensive unit (except in a frontline city that is under pressure from the ai) is more than enough and later in monarchy, add warriors to help with the riot control. This has the advantage that those warriors will "promote" to riflemen when you get Leo's. You will than have lots of 40 shield riflemen that you only paid 10 shields for.

There is an important downside to doing this. If you play republic, each of those units takes one shield of support each turn, which quickly eats up the 30 shield advantage of promoting warriors to riflemen. If you need garrisons in your cities, then it doesn't matter, but building lots of extra warriors to give yourself a large army will cost you big in production time or gold for rush buying. A more effective strategy is to delay chivalry for as long as possible, and, shortly before discovering it, build many, many horsemen. You should then very quickly discover leadership and tactics and have a nice large army of cavalry with which to pound your enemies.

In the early game, the best defence is, in my opinion, having a tech or two that a potential enemy does not and having enough cities to be able to afford to lose one or two by surprise. Giving a couple of techs to a potential enemy can quickly turn that enemy into a friend or even ally at this stage in the game. At this point, occupying as much land as possible is important.

As the game progresses, garrison important cities with what you have available, especially costal cities with wonders and cities bordering another civ, but one unit per city is usually enough. Keep enough gold (or caravans near good cities) to buy units or diplomats in emergencies. Around this time, stop giving techs or gold to foreign civs who make threats, because they should either be too far away to be a danger, or you should have preparations made to keep them at bay. You want, generally, to build ships and caravans at this stage, not military units.

In the later game, you can afford to start building a military and start punishing those who want to go to war with you. The enemy should very seldom be attacking your cities, because you will be attacking them.

 

[Ace]

There is an important downside to doing this. If you play republic, each of those units takes one shield of support each turn, which quickly eats up the 30 shield advantage of promoting warriors to riflemen....

You are correct, but you missed my point! You don't keep all those "free" riflemen, you disband them as seed shields to rush build city improvements and vans. You get 20 shields when you disband a riflemen, that is a 100% return on your original 10 shield investment.

The first thing to do after changing to Republic, is to disband all unnecessary garrison units.

 

[Ayatollah So]

This may not be the winningest strategy, but the most fun defensive unit is the settler, in combo with the construction technology, and the mountain pass. Build your fortress on the mountain, populate with a few defenders ("NONE" guys if you can get them), and watch the AI squander hordes of attackers on a hopeless cause. MWAHAHA!

 

[Prof. Garfield]

You are correct, but you missed my point! You don't keep all those "free" riflemen, you disband them as seed shields to rush build city improvements and vans. You get 20 shields when you disband a riflemen, that is a 100% return on your original 10 shield investment.

The first thing to do after changing to Republic, is to disband all unnecessary garrison units.

Fair point, but an early republic often is established before gunpowder, let alone conscription, which therefore necessitates supporting the units at a high cost. Moreover, a 100% return over the time between gunpowder (or feudalism) and conscription is not particularly good. Caravans can usually (and settlers often) give a better return than this. Of course, if building settlers or caravans is not possible or practical for a city, your idea becomes more practical.

 

[Ace]

Agreed. If your going to an early Republic, you must disband all surplus garrison units or your cities will be starved of shields. The warriors to riflemen thick is usually used in a democacy, staying in monarchy, communism, or fundy until ready to switch to demo.

 

[Rowan]

Mech Inf!

 

[Anithraldur]

Mind, I don't play hardcore... at all ever. Never saw the need or attraction.

That said, the building program is usually one or two of the early defensive units - phalanxes, because I like them - and then I build one a settler, or two (but no more). I repeat for every city I found, and things expand rapidly. By the time I have ten cities thats 20 settlers roaming about doing my bidding. I build one last defensive unit and dig in.

Later in the game, after the borders have solidified and cooled, I have usually gotten cities comfortably situated in any choke points by land and sea that I can find, and either have it set up so that my borders are shared with an ally, or indisputably mine in a treaty. If I can't fortify "hard" units in a spot, I build hordes of diplomats or spies, so that when the AI turns on me, their sacrifice will buy me some time to reinforce the front lines. I use engineers to turn the border cities into hills, put whatever good defensive units I can inside, and wait for war to break out. You ever seen an AEGIS cruiser sitting in city walls with SAMs on a hill during an air strike? It is a thing of beauty.

 

[civiijkw]

Usually the AI don't get strong enough to hit my home cities. In my first game at the prince level I took a Souix city from the sea (DC location on large real world map) and moved in 6-8 battleships, a couple of fighters and a few land units. The city still had walls and I fortified the battleships. I then watched as the Souix attacked back with the bulk of their army (using their rail web) and lost at least 30 units in the process while causing almost no damage (only the battleships ended up in the queue to fight in defense and I don't think any of them even got into yellow). The Souix empire started quickly collapsing after the loss of all the units that would have been needed to slow down an invader coming via the rails.