Why build walls?
- Thread starter much2much
- Start date
For Castles down the road, unless that prereq has been removed since I last tested.
Units also = cost. A few surviving units that gain xp while defending behind a wall are way more valuable than lots of green units that continually get wiped out and in doing so give the enemy xp.
I don't focus on culture too much early on with my frontier towns either.
Units also = cost. A few surviving units that gain xp while defending behind a wall are way more valuable than lots of green units that continually get wiped out and in doing so give the enemy xp.
I don't focus on culture too much early on with my frontier towns either.
Blakmane
Prince
- Joined
- Feb 17, 2007
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- 447
25% defence is a massive bonus, especially because it is applicable for the entire game (unlike in normal civ where it stops being useful after gunpowder).
later walls only take 1-2 turns to build, easily worth it.
also, these kind of questions should probably go in the strat forum shouldn't they? Someone should move them....
later walls only take 1-2 turns to build, easily worth it.
also, these kind of questions should probably go in the strat forum shouldn't they? Someone should move them....
Gamestation
Introducing Servo
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- May 24, 2006
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- 551
They add to your power rating and make you look stronger.
Ringtailed
Anthropomorphic Lemur
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I don't see a point to early wall-building. Walls and culture defense bonuses are not cumulative. Culture defense grants +20% at first expansion (10 culture on normal speed) and +40% at 100 culture. I try to make sure that my new cities get their first border expansion ASAP so they can use all tiles in the city's radius (creative trait, spreading +culture religion, obelisk, burning a prophet, employing an artist specialist, etc), so walls aren't very worthwhile.
The defense bonus from walls and castle are cumulative however, and the two add up to 75% defense bonus IIRC. In the later game, walls+castle make sense because it takes 5,000 culture on normal speed to get that kind of defense bonus.
Here's a question: does having walls *and* culture defense make a city's defense bonus rebuild faster (after being bombarded) than just having one or the other? I don't think so, but if it does I may have to re-evaluate my opinion...
The defense bonus from walls and castle are cumulative however, and the two add up to 75% defense bonus IIRC. In the later game, walls+castle make sense because it takes 5,000 culture on normal speed to get that kind of defense bonus.
Here's a question: does having walls *and* culture defense make a city's defense bonus rebuild faster (after being bombarded) than just having one or the other? I don't think so, but if it does I may have to re-evaluate my opinion...
slowcar
King
having an adept with earth1 makes "building" walls much easier 
99% of the time I garrison enough troops to smash attacking enemies before my tile improvements get pillaged, but you never know...if a strong enemy attacks and beelines for your city its very important to have walls and/or castles.
Plus it brings more to the table if you're playing live people.. I'd be less motivated to attack a fortified castle as oppose to a city without, this peace of mind and the improved city graphic make it worth the hammers, imo.
Plus it brings more to the table if you're playing live people.. I'd be less motivated to attack a fortified castle as oppose to a city without, this peace of mind and the improved city graphic make it worth the hammers, imo.
Walls+Castle = 75% (+Wall of Stone 25% = 100%, at least I think you can use one with a Wall, I think I've had both before)
vorshlumpf
Emperor
The spell and the actual wall are the same thing - they don't stack.
I find walls all-but-useless as they currently are. In half the time it takes to build them, you can build an obelisk, so for most cities you would have expanded culture and 20% defence before the time it would take you to build walls (to me, extended cultural borders are better for defending yourself than the 20% anyway). Plus, starting on your culture early means you'll get to that not-so-hard-to-reach +40% culture defence bonus - which of course makes the time you spent building walls a 99% waste.
As mentioned, you need walls for castles. However, castles come much later and, truthfully, I've never used castles to defend a city anyway. Building castles in new border-towns is too much time and building them in your strong cities is pointless since they're already at or near 80% culture defence.
The only time I've ever built castles (and, hence, walls) is for the special units they provide. It's not a defencive consideration at all.
I would like to see walls and even castles get more importance in defence. For instance, defencive bonuses from the two sources could compliment each other. I don't mean stack, but when bombarded the complimentary bonuses would each have to be reduced, therefor halving the effectiveness of the siege attack. For example, a city with culture +20 and walls (+25) gets bombarded by a catapult (10% bombard if I remember correctly). The first 5% disappears as normal, but the next 5% from the catapult is split between the two, bringing the city defence down to 17.5%. Next bombard by that catapult will be completely split, so only brings the defence to 12.5%.
Anyway, enough of my ragging on this issue.
- Niilo
I find walls all-but-useless as they currently are. In half the time it takes to build them, you can build an obelisk, so for most cities you would have expanded culture and 20% defence before the time it would take you to build walls (to me, extended cultural borders are better for defending yourself than the 20% anyway). Plus, starting on your culture early means you'll get to that not-so-hard-to-reach +40% culture defence bonus - which of course makes the time you spent building walls a 99% waste.
As mentioned, you need walls for castles. However, castles come much later and, truthfully, I've never used castles to defend a city anyway. Building castles in new border-towns is too much time and building them in your strong cities is pointless since they're already at or near 80% culture defence.
The only time I've ever built castles (and, hence, walls) is for the special units they provide. It's not a defencive consideration at all.
I would like to see walls and even castles get more importance in defence. For instance, defencive bonuses from the two sources could compliment each other. I don't mean stack, but when bombarded the complimentary bonuses would each have to be reduced, therefor halving the effectiveness of the siege attack. For example, a city with culture +20 and walls (+25) gets bombarded by a catapult (10% bombard if I remember correctly). The first 5% disappears as normal, but the next 5% from the catapult is split between the two, bringing the city defence down to 17.5%. Next bombard by that catapult will be completely split, so only brings the defence to 12.5%.
Anyway, enough of my ragging on this issue.
- Niilo
kenken244
Grammar Nazi
wall of stone ad regular walls do stack there seperate buildings otherwise walls would only last a turn unless you had a adpept with earth 1 in the city
i think they should stack though surely even if the troops are motivated to defend a beutiful city they would do it better if ther were walls and castles?
i think they should stack though surely even if the troops are motivated to defend a beutiful city they would do it better if ther were walls and castles?
Nikis-Knight
Deity
My idea on a use for city defense would be for defense to rise much slower due to culture and not ever get as high as you can due to building walls, castles, and maybe something new, but cultural defenses would not be able to be bombarded.
So a city with a 30% cultural defense and 75% forification defense would have 75% defense bonus, but that could be lowered down to 30% with bombardment.
Obviously that would require (too?) much rebalancing to be done at this point.
So a city with a 30% cultural defense and 75% forification defense would have 75% defense bonus, but that could be lowered down to 30% with bombardment.
Obviously that would require (too?) much rebalancing to be done at this point.
vorshlumpf
Emperor
Even as a culture-fiend I would support that.
- Niilo
- Niilo
EugeneStyles
Prince
- Joined
- May 21, 2007
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- 307
I don't think cultural defenses should be scrapped entirely, but reduced to something like 5% per level of expansion, so that it's *much* slower to build up. Maybe even cap it at 25% or 30%.
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