What determines city defense?

[Victoria]

Oh ok, the pacifist testing late at night cleary misread, apologies all

 

[JaqenHahaghar]

Thanks Victoria for the great work. This is amazingly interesting and definitively helps our understanding.

They should really spend more time on the pedia. What you said about cavalry versus melee seems an interesting design choice but it is mentioned nowhere.

 

[Victoria]

The thing was it was already known by people. I still found it fun to test and that feeling of discovery I enjoy. @Unconquered Sun saved me doing any more but the sigh was a tad unnecessary.

 

[Barking Iguana]

Sigh.

The strength of the city is the strongest unit you've ever built (not had!)* minus 10. Capital gives +3, districts give +2 each. Hills' bonus won't ever show up, but is active when attacking the city - it's the same as with units fighting.

Garrisoning a unit will increase the strength of the city to the strength of the unit, if higher. This, garrisoning your strongest unit is +10.

Walls shoot with the strength of your strongest ranged units from both the archers and the artillery lines.


* - basically this screws Atzecs in the beginning

Built not had means upgrading won't help, right? You have to build one from scratch?

 

[Sostratus]

I recall testing this myself. Obviously there's the strongest land unit for defense and ranged unit for city attack; and there is a per- district component. I can't recall, but i think there is also a population component at ~10 and ~15? I didn't know about the CS envoy thing. garrisoning a city will never result in a city having a worse rating than the garrisoned unit, I believe. They use ranged units defense values for this. Protip: ranged units universally have 10 less melee than ranged strength, which just means they take +50% damage when defending. But garrisoning a melee unit with the same strength as the city almost always improves the strength by like 10.
I should probably dig into it with a little firetuner action. I'd have to make sure the game updates properly when you click spawn in stuff though.

Built not had means upgrading won't help, right? You have to build one from scratch?

Upgrading is fine. it's the strongest unit you've possessed basically. Upgrading a unit counts for City state "build X" quests too.

 

[Draco84]

Since this topic came back to life, I can confirm navy will adjust your city defense, I haven't confirmed but I suspect if your naval ranged strength is the highest in your empire than the city will use that strength to determine ranged attack.