Designate Defender

[trev]

A bad idea, it would be another part of the game the AI could not do well and therefore to even up the AI vs Human battle even more unfair advantages would have to be given to the AI to compensate.

[Senethro]

And whats the problem? Are we concerned about hurting the AI's feelings when it loses again?

Just to be clear, I think the SP is an accessory to the MP play.

[petermarkab]

General Ludd:
Historically, archers have been excellent defenders, especially when positioned behind enemy walls. A hail of arrows will decimate an onrushing cavalry unit, but a slow moving infantry unit can protect itself by stopping and shielding itself. Why presume anything about the combat system?

Boris Godunov:
Not pointless.

Suppose my strongest unit is cavalry with which i will launch a counter attack. I then want my musketeer (at 1 hit point) to defend no matter what. If he loses, i can still attack with my cavalry (and probably win). If my cavalry defends (in RL who ever heard of cavalry defending anyway?) he'll probably lose, and my musket won't have much chance on the counter-attack.

Thats the point of designate defender!
If you have a ton of obsolete units in a city, upgrade them! They can defend that turn, but they can't attack.
I would say your dubious tactic is just that.

Alva:
Sounds like you're falling out of love with Deity

Senethro:
I think Boris is right about your "hopeless defence" scenario but wrong about the value of desgnate dender to tactics, as i outlined previously

Alva (2nd post):
I suppose you could define your defence order to the nth degree although this would be tedious. However if the city is important enough to you, I'm sure you'd want to give yourself the best chance of repulsing the attack.

Alternatively, you could define general "Rules of Engagement" eg. Never defend with your offensive units, or Only fire cannon at Infantry

You shouldn't have to switch defender as the 'RoE' will take care of the order.

Patcon
I would argue that there's no such thing as going first as you describe it. This is because the attacker has the option of when to disclose his attacking force (by that i mean keeping units in the Fog-of-war) and in what order he sends his units into battle, while the defender defines what type of unit faces the attacker. Of course in Civ 3 only one of his units is visible at any one time.

But in my view the onus is on the attacker to capture the city rather than the defender to lose the city. So I would lean towards the home team getting advantage.

My best against your best doesn't cut it in a complex simulation like Civ. If you want to play with those rules, I suggest Pokemon!

Vee4473
The comp chooses the defender in a simplistic way taking no account of the subtleties of combat and you and I think we can enhance that to provide a more realistic enjoyable combat simulator. I like your analogy with the city governer: if players want to turn on the automation, so be it.

Trev
I didn't consider the AI handling of this, but should we aspire to nothing but the lowest common denominator in strategy just because the computer can't use it? (no)

As Senethro says, you conveniently forgot to mention the MP aspect of this game, and lest we not forget, Armies are broken for SP AI

[alva]

Alternatively, you could define general "Rules of Engagement" eg. Never defend with your offensive units, or Only fire cannon at Infantry

Ahh, this is a different point all together, I too absolutely hate it when an offensive army starts as a first defender and therefore doesn't heal ( fast enough).

Sounds like you're falling out of love with Deity

Nah, I still prefer deity, it just takes too long, read: I'm not really good enough to play at this level.

[petermarkab]

Alva:
It's not really a different point. It's more of an enhancement to the original point, in that it could automate the defence queue.

As an analogy, its like setting the build queue manually in your city or letting the governer decide based on a pre-set list of priorities.

[Shogun Gunner]

This thread reminds me how much I'm disliking the "one attacker, one defender" combat model of Civ.

Sure, call me a CTP lover if you must, but I'm starting to really see the merit of stacked combat.

[Fosse]

Here here, Shogun Gunner.
The units in your military should fight together, just as they would in the real world.

It also would prevent the unimaginably absurd situation where the "defending" 10.1.1 unit just sits there and lets itself be killed by the 3.1.1, which seems to be one of the chief considerations in the various 1st Defender scenarios in this thread.

[Elias]

I love the Idea have only defence units defent and if there are only offencive units to defend then use the strongest one. although perhaps it would be better to sacrafice an un-needed offensive unit to save your defending unit if you need it to deffend with the next turn? Im sure they could figure out some complicated way to always make you defend with the right unit given certin veriables. maby how long you have held the city, if it is being attacked, if you plan on lauching an attack from the given city, what units your can and cannot part with I.E resources aviable and costs. but well thats just too complicated