City walls. Are they worth the bother?

[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

[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.


------------------
"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).]

[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.

[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.
----------
SG (2)

[MasterBob]

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

------------------
Webmaster---Come to the Civworld Forums

"If you cannot beat them, don't join them, instead corrupt them, make them join you, then throw them off a cliff."

"Greatness is measured by how evil you are, the more evil, the greater you become."

[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

[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

[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

[SlowHand]

Yes, walls are worth it. I build them in all cities. No maintenace, why not?

[War4ever]

because while your building walls i have two more settlers per each wall you build thus i have a larger and more powerfull empire including more troops in and out of the field.... these troops will prevent you from reaching my cities

[adaMada]

I ALWAYS build city walls, in every city. The 3x defensive bonus is worth it, and I generally don't build too many cities, and defend the ones I do build well. Most of the time, with city walls, only two or three units can hold a city agianst multiple hit-and-run raids.

------------------
adaMada

[KhanMan]

aM: Uh, I hate to ask this, but:
How many mp games have you played? My limited experience has been that, when a human player wants your city, (s)he will normally send at least ten units, timed to attack the same turn. You're risking alot my not expanding...

-KhanMan the paranoid expansionist

[War4ever]

KhanMan you hit the nail on the head..... expansion is a must in MP..... if you don't your dead......especially in a small map..

[Sieve Too]

In SP against the AI, don't bother. Build two more Settlers instead. Get Elephants/Crusaders and Diplos early. Connect your cities with roads. Rush units to the attack point and take out the AI before they strike even once at your city.

You should make it a habit to engage the AI outside of your city radii. There's nothing more annoying or harder to get rid of than a fortified AI Phalanx sitting on your mined hill. And if you're really unlucky, the AI and barbs will pillage all your hard-earned mines, irrigation and roads.
What good is a wall protected city to you if it can't produce anything?

[tobyr]

Build city walls, but do not build them too soon!

If you build them early, the cost in lost turns, when you could have built something else, is too great. The biggest potential cost is that you could have founded a number of additional cities instead of building walls. I would rather build four more cities and lose one, than put up walls to protect the six cities I already had.

A great feature of the great wall wonder is that by the time it expires, it only costs you a few turns to build real walls.

I play the ToT 4-map fantasy game, in which the considerations for building walls are somewhat different:

Underground and undersea, you can postpone walls a long time unless under heavy attack.

On ground level, you need walls usually before 1AD to deal with powerful barbarians.

In the sky, you need walls a little later, also to deal with very powerful barbarians.

Many of the tribes in the fantasy game have a good defensive unit that can really hold a city if it has a wall (unless attacked by dragon or Kraken barbarians early in the game).

The great wall ("Excaliber") expires earlier in the fantasy game, sometimes right after you build it. Also, in the fantasy game you are relatively likely to want to bribe a few expensive barbarians (250 to 500 gold each) around 1 AD. Where do you get
gold like that? When desperate, you can sell some city walls!
- toby


------------------
toby robison
criticalpaths@mindspring.com