What good are walls and castles...

[MenacingVitamin]

when a small stack of catapaults can whittle them down in a turn or two. Is is just me, or are the seige units super powerful? I finally had my first all out war last night (I usually play civ somewhat peacefully) and I sent only three catapaults with my advancing armies. Three proved to be sufficient for the situation because they were able to destroy the cities defences within two turns. I'm not sure I'm going to bother castling my cities anymore and instead protect with extra units.


Since I'm here, I'll ask another question. Are courthouses any good? My largest and furthest away cities (from the capitol) right now have a maintenence of like 5 gold. What's the point of building courthouses if they will only reduce the maintenence to 4 gold or so? Seems like not much of an impact when I could use the production for something a bit more useful.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

What difficulty level? It sounds like that's the reason to me. Having walls/castles for your own border cities can at the very least force an invasion force to bring bombarding units or get crushed by your well defended troops. In terms of invading if you couldn't destroy the cities defense then I don't know how you'd ever take cities, since the bonuses for the defender would be enormous. Also, the difference between 1 and 2 turns is a big deal since it give the other side an extra turn to rush units to the front or counterattack. For instance if you're in a stack they could do a lot of collateral damage against you in the extra turn where you're waiting for the defenses to get broken down.

 

[don_lahnum_jr]

Building enough courthouses also allows you to build The Forbidden Palace!!!

 

[petey]

Walls aren't very useful at all. It's much better spend time building cultural stuff, since that also increases the city's protective value and has all the other benefits, too. I'd just forget about them.

 

[Marcus_Aurelius]

So far when I have been attacked by the AI they haven't used seige units. Since walls are fairly easy to build, I would totaly take the defense bonus if I was concerned about being attacked. Of course they are useless against gunpowder units, but I would totaly build walls for early wars.

About the courthouses... I think they reduce maintenance by 50%. So if you are hovering around + or - 1 or 2 in your treasury that can make a difference, especially if you want to expand your empire, it can gererate some money to go towards more cities.

 

[DeathsHead]

I tend to build walls very early on in my frontier cities, at least then your good until your enemies bring catapults. While he is reducing my defences I launch sorties at his forces with units I bring from other areas to help the besieged city.

 

[cAPS lOCK]

I was under the impression that you receive the greater of your wall/castle defense bonus or the cultural bonus. Is this correct?

 

[don_lahnum_jr]

I was under the impression that you receive the greater of your wall/castle defense bonus or the cultural bonus. Is this correct?

I could be wrong but I think it all adds in! If you have a longbow defending a city with a wall...and have culture defense at 50% I would think your longbow would get ((6*25% for the wall) * 50% for culture) = 11.25 for defense!

 

[MenacingVitamin]

I could be wrong but I think it all adds in! If you have a longbow defending a city with a wall...and have culture defense at 50% I would think your longbow would get ((6*25% for the wall) * 50% for culture) = 11.25 for defense!

Culture Defense....muh?

Explain please?

 

[vmxa]

Walls can be useful before cats. Castle are not useful. Well I guess you could say they are useful in that it takes a few hits to knock it down to 0 defense.

That may be enough time for you to get help there. Early wars the walls can really help, when they can only send melee/archer types.

 

[don_lahnum_jr]

Culture Defense....muh?

Explain please?

You gain a % from your culture for defense of the city! It is the percentage that displays above your city's name!

 

[oopsy poopsy]

I could be wrong but I think it all adds in! If you have a longbow defending a city with a wall...and have culture defense at 50% I would think your longbow would get ((6*25% for the wall) * 50% for culture) = 11.25 for defense!

I actually think you'd get 10.5 in this case. I think the formula (from hovering over the defender with my attacking unit) looks more like this:

6 * (.25 + .50) = 10.5.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure all added bonuses are added together and you won't get a bonus increasing another bonus. This is especially true since with unit promotions and culture and walls and unit specific advantages vs. other types of units you could end up with 5 or 6 bonuses and if they multiplied on each other you would end up with incredibly high strengths.

 

[don_lahnum_jr]

I actually think you'd get 10.5 in this case. I think the formula (from hovering over the defender with my attacking unit) looks more like this:

6 * (.25 + .50) = 10.5.

I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure all added bonuses are added together and you won't get a bonus increasing another bonus. This is especially true since with unit promotions and culture and walls and unit specific advantages vs. other types of units you could end up with 5 or 6 bonuses and if they multiplied on each other you would end up with incredibly high strengths.

I'll bet you are right! I wasn't thinking about that! Thanks!

 

[Sprint]

Culture defense and wall defense are separate. You get the higher bonus, not both. Walls and Castles are most useful in border cities that don't have a lot of culture in them, since it takes many turns to get an equivalent bonus with culture. The main advantage of cities (the defense bonus) is useful because catapults and other seige units are slow, and having to tote them along will blunt the speed of the enemy offensive. Otherwise you get raided a lot by mounted units.

Also note that walls/castles are useless against gunpowder era units.

 

[don_lahnum_jr]

Culture defense and wall defense are separate. You get the higher bonus, not both. Walls and Castles are most useful in border cities that don't have a lot of culture in them, since it takes many turns to get an equivalent bonus with culture. The main advantage of cities (the defense bonus) is useful because catapults and other seige units are slow, and having to tote them along will blunt the speed of the enemy offensive. Otherwise you get raided a lot by mounted units.

Also note that walls/castles are useless against gunpowder era units.

Are you sure they are separate? Can you post a link or something where you found this?

 

[Dr. Feh]

It's in the manual and the civilopedia, look it up.

It's also borne out in actual gameplay.

 

[don_lahnum_jr]

Well...if that's the case...it changes my strat on some of my cities!!!

 

[Eyemaze]

but if the cats deplete your higher culture rating to a point where it is going to lower than your wall or castle rating do they take over? Seems a strange mechanice to only get the higher of the two.

 

[don_lahnum_jr]

but if the cats deplete your higher culture rating to a point where it is going to lower than your wall or castle rating do they take over? Seems a strange mechanice to only get the higher of the two.

I agree...so when they bombard my city...are they demoralizing my citizens and this is the cause for the depletion of culture? Or are they destroying my buildings that make the culture?

 

[Sprint]

They aren't damaging your culture, just the defense bonus from it. Give it a few turns to recover and the city is just as vibrant as before.

Think of it as a way to model a city like London's resilience in the face of German bombing campaigns.