City walls. Are they worth the bother?

[KhanMan]

My view on walls is that I never build them until a front has stopped expanding (ie. when I hit another civ, and I want peace/alliance, or I'm not in the mood to crush them). Then I build walls in cities on that front.

I think the wall's defense bonus combines rather nicely with my frontier towns on forest/mountain/hill squares... I love it when the other guy forgets to do the math, and loses a lot of attacking units.

-KhanMan the paranoid expansionist

[Jim W]

One reason for _not_ building walls everywhere is the initial cost; everywhere you're building a wall, you can't build anything else until the wall's done.

I always seem to hit a point, after about the first five cities, where I'm pushed to be able to build anything quickly, and spending money on a wall around a city that doesn't have a demonstrated danger near it seems like poor use of resources to me.


im W

[War4ever]

the two theories i have on walls are this....
1) if you build them early you can sit back and rush other improvements ie markets and libraries... which is good for the long term game especially if you on a large map.
2) if i am on a small map and my opponent is close by i wont bother with walls as i will be rushing units to the slaughter house

City walls are a must if your playing against a human player. I build them anyways. They have no upkeep, so why not?

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[Scouse Gits]

I don't build walls in every city. I do in the following cases:
1) Capital
2) Wonder cities
3) Ports - Barb dragoons making a surprise attack is the main reason. The barbs seem to "know" the towns on the coast without them!
4) Any city near the front line, and ALWAYS in a city just captured.
I don't have walls in "safe" cities, such as interior cities on my home continent. The exception to the rule about ports, are those one sqaure islands. As yet, I never seen barb marines.
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SG (2)

[The Mad Monk]

I always shoot for the Great Wall wonder (or its equivalent), and build walls in all of my cities as metallurgy approaches (if I built the GW, it approaches very slowly). It's only good sense; even if you don't lose the city under attack, it's a pain to lose population every time the attacker gets lucky.

[Vespasian]

I always build them. If you share a continent with a warmonger and failed to knock them out earlier on, they're almost essential. The main incentive to build walls, however, is their upkeep cost: 0. That makes it almost always a good thing to build.


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"On ne peut pas apprendre la chance si on n'est pas hardii."-Napolean
[This message has been edited by Vespasian (edited March 25, 2000).]

[Jim W]

Subject line pretty well says it. I find that I very seldom build city walls, save in cases where I have a nearly-isolated city, with heavy-duty enemy forces comeing at me all the time.

What does everybody else say?

Jim W