Walls should be a bit tougher (more hps)

[Larsenex]

After watching Quill rampage with his legions (I am only on episode 7), it seems that ancient walls are paper thin and even common warriors and swordsmen can quickly damage them down to get to juicy city vitals.

My thought is that they should be a bit beefier on hit points and tier that up along the line. After all most of the tubers I have seen have not bothered with walls but it seems that if you make that hammer investment it should <really> help you on defense.

 

[j51]

Nah. Sieges are boring.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I thought initially melee units couldn't attack a city with walls unless you had a battering ram but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I thought initially melee units couldn't attack a city with walls unless you had a battering ram but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore?

The Battering Ram allows them to do full damage to walls. I'm not sure how much they do without the Ram.

 

[GeoModder]

I thought a unit linked with a siege unit ignored city walls and can attack the city directly?

 

[Haggbart]

I agree, mainly because stronger cities would help the AI. They could consider giving the AI a direct boost to city defence on higher difficulty levels.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

I thought a unit linked with a siege unit ignored city walls and can attack the city directly?

That's the Seige Tower.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

I agree, mainly because stronger cities would help the AI. They could consider giving the AI a direct boost to city defence on higher difficulty levels.

That's what they tried with civV. (making cities stronger so it was harder to conquer the AI).. unfortunately making cities stronger allowed humans to turtle until they had a big enough tech advantage

Now if Difficulty level made AI cities stronger (while human cities were just as weak), that would work ok...they already made AI units stronger with difficulty levels.

 

[Ebrim]

I'm not sure that wall HP should be increased but perhaps the penalty for attacking walls without equipment should be increased. The only potential downside here is that it may have unintended consequences with naval units.

Attacking a city with walls without any way to get around/through them should be next to pointless.

 

[Atwork]

City walls should inflict damage to all attacking units that end their turn adjacent to city walls, similar to the way forts inflicted damage in C5.

 

[Browd]

City walls should inflict damage to all attacking units that end their turn adjacent to city walls, similar to the way forts inflicted damage in C5.

I think you have confused Forts with Citadels. I see no logical basis for imposing HP loss on adjacent units just because you or the AI invested some hammers in walls. City bombard and fortification defense should be sufficient.

 

[Calouste]

The idea with city walls is that you have an encampment that gets the walls as well, and then have attackers in a cross fire with ranged attacks from the city and the encampment, and archers in them. If you just have a city with walls and barely any defensive units, it should fall fairly quickly.

 

[ehecatzin]

To be honest walls are something that could probably be expanded to act like its own district (overlayed on the city one). So you could get it special defense buildings, to counter specific siege units. Burning oil against battering rams, more towers for extra bombard tower, or coastal fortifications against melee naval units.

Probably expansion material, tho Byzantium could do some crazy stuff with something like that.

 

[Deggial]

We have two support units to overcome city walls. Currently, they don't seem to be needed. City walls may need to give more protection against (melee) attackers without them. Damage from the ranged-line units (not the catapult line, which should and does do massive dammage to walls) seems to be okay, though.
All this is obviously only based on the current play-throughs and walled AI cities were rare enough. More personal testing is needed for a final verdict.

Ehecatzin, I really like your suggestion of an expanded city protection system! But why bother with a complicated "overlay district"? Don't advanced buildings in norml districts need their precursors already? I honestly didn't pay attention to this, but it wouldn't make sense if not.
If so, city defense improvements would simply need existing walls to be built.

 

[phryxolydian]

Burning oil against battering rams

Nice suggestion, man. Very Total War-ish. I think that kind of stuff could be added as part of a tech though and instantly implemented if you already have ancient walls in a given city. Maybe somewhere between ancient walls and a castle (if there's such a thing now)?

 

[Deggial]

Or it could be an additional civic card. Do we have military cards that increase city defense? I don't think so. Migth be a worthwhile addition.

 

[gunnergoz]

So far have not seen the AI being particularly aggressive about pillaging improved resource tiles & districts. Has anyone seen some evidence otherwise?

 

[masda_gib]

Or it could be an additional civic card. Do we have military cards that increase city defense? I don't think so. Migth be a worthwhile addition.

Yes, there is one card that gives bonus to city defense and city bombard strength. It is in "Defensive Tactics" civic. Forgot the name though.

 

[Mustakrakish]

I think the walls should remain the same, catapults should remain the same. The only changes should be that melee units indeed shouldn't do any damage to walls without battering rams (or very very minimal 2-3 hp per attack). Battering rams themselves should only provide the bonus to the unit they are tied with (same tile).
Siege towers also affecting only the unit on the same tile. They should allow to bypass the walls doing damage directly to city hp.

That's how I would do it. One battering ram being enough to destroy walls from any direction is too much IMO... and the fact that melee are destroying walls with ease without siege is also too much.

 

[Deggial]

^ What he said. Everything of it!

(... well, maybe with the exception of siege towers, which are okay granting the ability of direct damage to adjacent units. If placed succesfully, they allowed streams of attackers to pass the walls, after all.)