Seige

[wrylachlan]

I was posting in the stack limits thread about how healing is essentially whacked in civ3, and that got me thinking about seiges. One of the reasons that traditional seiges are not modelled well by civ3 is that units in cities heal themselves, which means that a single strong defender can kill tons of attackers, then heal itself and start over.

A couple of suggestions in regards to making seige a better part of civ:

1)Units in cities, or fortresses under seige don't heal, or heal much, much slower.
2)Under seige is defined as having all surrounding tiles either occupied by an enemy, or adjacent to an enemy. So at minimum 3 units are required to seige a city, or fortress.
3)To compensate the defender for the loss of healing, the defensive bonus of fortresses, walls, etc is increased. The intended balance is that it should take about 2/3 or 3/4 of the current force needed to take out a city. But a straight up assault that doesn't use seige requires half again as much power.

[lajzar]

1) I agree the healing thing is ridiculous. Anyone remember the healing model from Master of magic? Except for the healer units, something like that might be good. Go back to civ2 style hit points; ie lots of wound levels, not civ3 granularity.

2) Seige and encirclement doesn't really make sense as a battle tactic on the civ scale. Not unless your cannon have a range of 55 miles anyway. The current system takes any occupied tile out of production.

3) I'd propose that instead of the current system, have a variety of city defence improvements. Forex:

* Barricade - basic walls
* City walls - as we know and love them. Reduces max population instead of fading out civ3 style.
* Citadel - city walls taken to excess. Find an aerial picture of Valletta in Malta - the entire city is essentially a giant castle. Bigger defence bonus, bigger hit o max population.
* Coastal Fortification - vs sea
* Anti Tank Defences - vs wheeled
* Civil Defence - ww2 evac and air raid siren, protect population
* Ballista towers - bonus for ranged/foot defenders
* Bunker - bonus for ranged/foot defenders
* Airport - bonus for air defenders (military radar)
* SDI - vs missiles an nukes
* Force Field - vs air, sea, missiles ,bombard

AA guns could be better handled as a specific unit rather than a structure.

4) To represent the fear of raiders etc, I would impose the following limits while under seige. Seige here is defined as more hostile than friendly units in the 3x3 tile area around the city.

* Any tile that is adjacent to a hostile unit cannot be worked, unless a friendly unit is in that tile.
* All inter-city trade income is lost. Arrows resulting from internal (to the city) trade is unaffected.
* Happiness takes a hit.

The first line especially will make seiges have a real effect. It reflects the zoc that a military unit will have on city workers. With this effect, almost all production will cease during a seige. So while it is still hard to assault a city, the defender now has a very good reson to find away from his cities.

[Agathon]

Can't you theoretically starve a city out if you have a big enough army? I mean stick a defensive unit on the most fertile food squares and vandalise a few others and you can starve a city down to 6 in a few turns. I find that sometimes makes a difference.

[Plotinus]

I love the idea of different kinds of fortification.

Why not make it so that if a city is not getting enough food - its food box is in the red and it's going to starve - then any units stationed there heal much more slowly? Then you can simulate a siege simply by having enough units stationed around the city to prevent the people working the fields.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by lajzar
2) Seige and encirclement doesn't really make sense as a battle tactic on the civ scale. Not unless your cannon have a range of 55 miles anyway. The current system takes any occupied tile out of production.

Once artillery are available I tend to have a stack of them sit back and destroy all the food improvements around really big cities. That helps with mega cities and reduces the amount of potential resisters.

[lajzar]

Well, yes, you can take those tiles out of effective production by shooting up the improvements, but seige as a means of changing the actual combat odds is what I was commenting on. I was talking tactics, not strategy.

I still think having your units impose a zoc against the citizens in the city to prevent those tiles being worked is a good idea.

Having slowed healing in a starving city is an excellent idea though.

[LDiCesare]

Unless you let two different civs occupy a single square, siege can't be modelled properly. If a city is walled, you could let the square be controlled by other units, but the city remains yours until the siege is broken. City doesn't produce anything outised its own square, but besieging civ doesn't control it either.
In purely civ terms, you would have siege units (catapults, cannons, artillery) that let you break the walls. If you lack these, you can't enter the city (except by bribing). The defender would have the option to defend in-field or stay fortified behind the walls. Offensive units behind the walls could be used to counterattack. Units behind the walls should probably take gradual damage as the population of the city decreases.
Siege engines would break walls in a time depending on their tech level (different wall types and different siege engines).

[AroSch]

I like the idea of having sieges. Something like LDiCesare's ideas seems workable.

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by lajzar
2) Seige and encirclement doesn't really make sense as a battle tactic on the civ scale. Not unless your cannon have a range of 55 miles anyway. The current system takes any occupied tile out of production.

The scale of civ is relative, it doesn't matter that if you measure the size of the world and divide by tiles you end up with 55 miles. What matters is the game play, and the relative sizes. If a city takes up 1 tile, then you could think of the adjacent tile as 1 city-width, which is a perfectly acceptable scale for seige.

[asleepathewheel]

Originally posted by lajzar
Well, yes, you can take those tiles out of effective production by shooting up the improvements, but seige as a means of changing the actual combat odds is what I was commenting on. I was talking tactics, not strategy.
.

In Civ3, different city sizes give different defensive bonuses, so in fact, sieging does reduce troop effectiveness and odds. I think the Metro (size 13+) bonus is 100% Cities (size 7-12) bonus is 50%. That's a hugely significant number, as some metros will be nigh impregnable. Of course, it is vastly more efficient to use bombardment to kill population than to starve them down, but it does occur. And post-occupation, you have to worry about the Culture flip, so you need to get that population down to 1 before letting it grow again, this is one way of doing it.

[asleepathewheel]

I would hasten to add to my previous post, that in some situations its far easier to siege than bombard to destroy population in C3C due to the new bombard rules, namely that units are targeted first and then pop and buildings. It can be quite a bear to knock out population when a city has 20 defenders and a barracks. I sort of agree with the above points, regarding insta healed units. I think once the roads to a city are cut or occupied they should only recover 1 hp a turn.

[Paddy]

Originally posted by asleepathewheel
I think once the roads to a city are cut or occupied they should only recover 1 hp a turn.

well said.

[GePap]

Well, the point of the new rules is to make sure if you are going to try to take a huge city with massed deffenders, bring a huge army with artillery- when it is your turn, unleash a massive bobardment by ladn and air forces (and sea if necessary), and then attack. Even if in that one turn you do not win, in theory you shoul be able to kill a fair number of defenders, and then, fiy uo have cut of the rial system (or if none exists), you hold back counterattackes and finish the city off.