What if walled city attacks were removed entirely?

[Dustbrother]

What if walled city attacks were removed entirely but were left on encampments?

-On higher levels you wouldn't have to fight in the gaps between cities because your rival is one era ahead of you.
-The AI might actually stand a chance of being a domination threat with the huge armies they now build. Currently the AI armies are just wall fodder in the mid to late game.

I think it would make the game a hell of a lot more dynamic. It would be great to have this as an option in game setup. In my mind the game really suffers from OP city defenses.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Honestly, as someone who constantly bounces between civ 5 and 6, I think cities are a little too easy to capture in 6. Or maybe too hard to capture in 5? But I don't think city defenses are OP in 6.

 

[Dustbrother]

Honestly, as someone who constantly bounces between civ 5 and 6, I think cities are a little too easy to capture in 6. Or maybe too hard to capture in 5? But I don't think city defenses are OP in 6.

Fair play. I think the thing I have a problem with is the era scaling on the defenses.. It's probably correct on an even playing field but if you're even a single era behind it's rock solid. Especially when you hit modern era.

Also when do you ever see a civ conquer another civ in the mid to late game? It never happens for me.

 

[Melliores]

As I see it, the ranged attack is to avoid the situation of camping with a single siege unit in the early eras, thus only assigning one per army and speeding a lot any potential conquest. In the Modern Era you will need Aircraft to battle 3+ range siege units, however that is another issue in of itself.

On the topic of conquest in the Modern, the AI does do some conquering if you manage to break the exist balance of alliances and accords that settles around the Renaissance era. Once some wars break around Emergencies you can be sure that someone will lose quite a few cities.

 

[iammaxhailme]

Fair play. I think the thing I have a problem with is the era scaling on the defenses.. It's probably correct on an even playing field but if you're even a single era behind it's rock solid. Especially when you hit modern era.

Also when do you ever see a civ conquer another civ in the mid to late game? It never happens for me.

Definitely more in civ 6 than in civ 5. But maybe it's loyalty flipping, idk.

Although I am usually playing on Emperor. Maybe they capture more on diety?

 

[Lily_Lancer]

If you're an era behind then you shall not be able to Dom another more advanced Civ.

If you're an era ahead then your dom will be very easy.

I like this design.

In fact in Civ6 cities are harder to capture than in Civ5, however in Civ5 when you capture a city you may face serious negative effects but on Civ6 it's nearly always positive effect on your Civ to capture a city.

 

[Dustbrother]

If you're an era behind then you shall not be able to Dom another Civ.

If you're an era ahead then your dom will be very easy.

I like this design.

In fact in Civ6 cities are harder to capture than in Civ5, however in Civ5 when you capture a city you may face serious negative effects but on Civ6 it's nearly always positive effect on your Civ to capture a city.

Cool cool. I agree with the principle, I just think the tech jumps are super drastic.

 

[ChocolateShake]

I definitely think cities shouldn't be able to defend themselves. City defenses take a lot of tension out of having to defend your civ. I'd like to see the ranged attack either removed, or only have 1 range.

It seems the defenses were seen as needed when 1 UPT was added, but I don't think they add much to the game in return for how much harder it is now to run a sneak attack on a city.

 

[Beaver79]

If they made it so walls couldn't attack warfare would be even easier than it is right now. You could send 1 catapult or 1 bombard against a walled city and just shoot it down with no worry. If you try that now your cat/bombard will die in 2 to 3 hits. That's why war is so easy when artillery come into play. A corp of artillery can take 4 or 5 hits and can almost take a wall down before it has to retreat. You could also just melee down the walls and heal up without having to retreat.

For the AI attacking your cities it wouldn't make much difference. They would happily ram themselves into your walls killing themselves in the process. The problem is the AI is too dumb to take down a walled city.

 

[tetley]

Cities should have defenses. That's how old-style war is.

 

[Victoria]

, I just think the tech jumps are super drastic.

If wanting to Dom you have to push campuses to get ahead

 

[ChocolateShake]

If they made it so walls couldn't attack warfare would be even easier than it is right now. You could send 1 catapult or 1 bombard against a walled city and just shoot it down with no worry. If you try that now your cat/bombard will die in 2 to 3 hits. That's why war is so easy when artillery come into play. A corp of artillery can take 4 or 5 hits and can almost take a wall down before it has to retreat. You could also just melee down the walls and heal up without having to retreat.

For the AI attacking your cities it wouldn't make much difference. They would happily ram themselves into your walls killing themselves in the process. The problem is the AI is too dumb to take down a walled city.

Although it's not in the same genre, I think I'd like to see the same sort of circle that happens with games like Age of Empires 2 (yes I'm that old ). Siege units can chip away at a castle or town center while being outside of its range. The defending player either has to work on taking out the siege with cavalry or their own siege weapons, or has to fully engage the army laying the siege.

I'm not sure why it was decided that city attacks should be able to reach out so far, and be so effective. Having to actively garrison cities you wanted to defend seemed to be more challenging. If you got disorganized like I did you might end up with a sneaky AI leading their lone unit and capturing a city

 

[Depravo]

If you're an era behind then you shall not be able to Dom another Civ.

If you're an era ahead then your dom will be very easy.

I like this design.

In fact in Civ6 cities are harder to capture than in Civ5, however in Civ5 when you capture a city you may face serious negative effects but on Civ6 it's nearly always positive effect on your Civ to capture a city.

One little thing that always niggled me was how when you capture, then immediately raze a city you get all the CS quest bonus envoys for having 'built' any or all of the districts that belonged to the city you just destroyed.

'Hey, we wanted you to BUILD a place to honour the gods, but you brutally pillaged and then destroyed someone else's and that's good enough for us!'

 

[NukeAJS]

Maybe from an "AI doesn't really know how to handle it" perspective, it makes sense. The mechanic itself is fine although I have a small gripe with how the strength of cities are determined generally. I think it should be the population+number of tiles owned+extra bonuses (like walls, capital palace, some wonders etc.)

Just beelining knights and then having all your cities immediately get the same strength is just odd and it's a little gimmicky.

 

[WillowBrook]

Maybe limit the city attack range to one tile. Then you'd need a ranged unit in the city to attack siege units from inside city.

Of course, there's always the good ole days of requiring a unit in the city to have any defense...

 

[Sostratus]

I don’t think, with one unit per tile, and the general existence of cavalry in their civ6 implementation, that many players would like to see city tiles that outright can’t defend themselves, a la civ4.
The change from 5 in that you need walls to shoot back is a great change.

Walls allowing city attacks are a way for players to invest production into defense more efficiently than having regular military units. If they didn’t have them we would just build more archers.

That said, I think allowing the “double up” of ranged unit + city strike is a bit abusive (why would you want to garrison a melee unit) and the worst part about city walls is that they scale with whatever the strongest melee and ranged unit you’ve built is. This absolutely ruins the entire wall upgrade line beyond ancient walls because once you have crossbows, ALL your walls shoot at 40, once you have muskets ALL your cities get the strength upgrade.

I strongly feel that the wall upgrades are a good system that should be extended by (oh boy, here’s Sostratus’ rant again) having each level of wall tied to specific strengths similar to what units of the era have.

As an example, following the loose progression of unit strength, Ancient/Medieval/Ren walls could offer 25/45/55 and 20/40/50. Since walls have huge HP and massive damage resistance, they’d hold up just fine. You just would be more aware as a player that you can’t pile up some blocks around the city and have full powered defenses in the renaissance.

You could play around with city defenses a little more and even add some extra stuff, like a coastal defense upgrade for cities with the city center on the water that allowed a full damage bombard attack against ships, or late game anti air defenses or bomb shelters for nuclear strikes. (This would imply urban defenses would get periodic upgrades in the tech trees.)
But I don’t think it makes sense to have city defense scale on a dozen factors including the strongest unit you’ve made, which just skews to heavy cav, instead of something where we just treat the walls as a unit class themselves so we have very conscious levers to balance exactly how strong cities are at any stage of the game.

As an aside I also dislike the unit garrison rules and wish there was a better way so it’s not so cheesy to park a ranged unit inside walls, which basically gives you double attack with no downside. Perhaps each type of unit cannot attack and simply offers +5 or (depending on type) to the city defense.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I never did like the "design" that cities by themselves are a massive threat to armies. Proper evaluation of troop investment and where those troops are positions should matter, both for historical *and* gameplay reasons.

Wall scaling on non-walls is awkward, but the fact that a ranged unit + city wall can counter multiple contemporary siege units is also awkward.

 

[Sostratus]

I never did like the "design" that cities by themselves are a massive threat to armies. Proper evaluation of troop investment and where those troops are positions should matter, both for historical *and* gameplay reasons.

Wall scaling on non-walls is awkward, but the fact that a ranged unit + city wall can counter multiple contemporary siege units is also awkward.

I really feel that siege units should have a big resistance against ranged attacks, either +10 or +17 strength. They are simply too fragile to city attacks. They are still extremely weak to someone walking up and punching them, which would at least make a defending army necessary for serious sieges.

funny enough, cities by themselves are not that strong numerically; they are a little stronger than whatever units you are fielding, they just have more HP; 200 for the city and 1-400 for walls. However, walls have a massive resistance against melee attacks (83%? Something like that) and ranged attacks (ranged units deal half plus the walls resist another half of that for a net of 25%.)

So against a walled city you’re really dealing with a unit that has the attack of a single ranged unit, the defense of a melee unit, and 200+ effective wall HP, which is about 5 times what it says thanks to resists.
Ancient/Medieval/Ren walls sport about 500/1000/1500 HP. Yes, that’s enough to take an army (albeit very low offensive value.)

however, simply taking a battering ram with removes the wall resist so the effective city HP is 300 instead of 700 (for ancient walls, which is was you usually face.)
A siege tower cuts that medieval walled city from a mammoth 1200 hp down to just 200.
A siege tower makes a city essentially a tough unit with twice the health. Not very formidable, If you can strip off the defending army.

Renaissance Walls have solved the thermal exhaust port vulnerability against siege equipment but no one, even the AI, builds them so it’s not a big deal.

The real problem is urban defenses getting handed out for free with NO siege support countermeasure, basically making artillery, battleships, or bombers mandatory, since there is no way to bypass wall resists for melee or ranged units. I mean you would think soldiers with rocket launchers and tanks would fare a little better against concrete barriers and MG nests but I guess not. Urban defenses seriously need some kind of resistance or HP nerf. Add a city center building we can hard build to give back the current level of defense if needed. But once you get steel, a settler is one of the strongest units in the field with how ridiculous regular units are vs city defenses.

@Boris Gudenuf correct me if wrong but my understanding of modern sieges is that fortifications like walls matter less than the garrison itself these days?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I really feel that siege units should have a big resistance against ranged attacks, either +10 or +17 strength. They are simply too fragile to city attacks. They are still extremely weak to someone walking up and punching them, which would at least make a defending army necessary for serious sieges.

Siege engines were fairly easy to defend against attacks from their target city by 'digging them in' even in the Classical Era. By the Renaissance, 'Batteries' of earthworks where Bombards or other siege machinery were concentrated were 'standard practice'. In game terms, Siege engines 'ready to fire' could be given an extra defense against Ranged Attacks representing the fact that they were protected by 'battery' works.

The real problem is urban defenses getting handed out for free with NO siege support countermeasure, basically making artillery, battleships, or bombers mandatory, since there is no way to bypass wall resists for melee or ranged units. I mean you would think soldiers with rocket launchers and tanks would fare a little better against concrete barriers and MG nests but I guess not. Urban defenses seriously need some kind of resistance or HP nerf. Add a city center building we can hard build to give back the current level of defense if needed. But once you get steel, a settler is one of the strongest units in the field with how ridiculous regular units are vs city defenses.

@Boris Gudenuf correct me if wrong but my understanding of modern sieges is that fortifications like walls matter less than the garrison itself these days?

Permanent City defenses mostly went out with the early Modern Era. There were still some leftovers, like the concrete forts around Verdun in WWI, but the fortifications in WWII were all Outside the cities, as in the Mozhaisk Line west of Moscow in 1941 or the lines quickly dug west of Stalingrad in 1942.
What happened was that cities from the Industrial Era on became largely masses of brick, metal and concrete, so there was no need to add more. In fact, the worst thing an attacker could do was smash the city structures into rubble, because piles of concrete, brick and metal rubble blocked forward movement by those tanks and heavy weapons and provided even more cover for the defenders. The Germans learned this the hard way when they started their attack on Stalingrad with a mighty air strike that turned the center of the city into a Fortress, and the US Army relearned it at Aachen in 1944 by making the same mistake.
You're exactly right in that the amount and quality of the garrison became the deciding factor: Moscow had defense lines built all around the edges of the city, but what made it virtually untakeable after October 1941 was a garrison of 6 divisions, including 2 NKVD divisions that had trained in street fighting since the 1920s, and 100,000 men in militia units made up of workers in the city that were literally defending their own homes and families. The place was a death trap for any attacking infantry. Stalingrad's defense depended on large concrete and steel wrecked factory and urban buildings occupied by troops like the 13th and 39th Guards Rifle Divisions with Ni Shagu Nazad ("Not A Step Back!") engraved on their hearts, and the submachineguns, mines, mortars, and artillery support to make the slogan a reality.

 

[Depravo]

For game purposes and especially given the state of the AI I'm perfectly fine with siege units being vulnerable. It is for the attacker to move with due caution and protect his investment.