City Walls

[FrantzX]

Shouldn't Walls go obsolete around the discovery of gunpower? I mean, I don't think a city has had a wall build around it since ~1500. And without walls, the modern game will be alot harder beacuse you will have to keep battle away from your cities so they don't get wrecked.

[Adagio]

I agree, it seems a little strange that you still can build citywalls in the 20th century

[Mahdimael]

I think it would probably be the other way around- you can build walls, but certain units will be able to go around them or even potentially destroy them (?)

[Patriqvium]

Alpha Centauri had the Blink Displacer ability, which allowed units equipped with it to bypass any base defenses.

So, it is possible that some modern-age units can bypass city walls... but I've got no idea which ones. Any suggestions?

[DonJoel]

How about all of them?
But then you have to change the entire combat system and i dont think thats anything i want. Perhaps for civ4.

[Triped]

Walls would still help (to an extent)

Walls can keep modern-day infantry from marching straight in...obviously artillery could shell over. The Blink Displacer was a stroke of genius, in my opinion (just a little expensive)

[Mihai]

After gunpowder the wall don't dissapear, just became thicker and became known as fortification. The ones from Sevastopol had given germans a hard time in 1942.

[Bill3000]

In Civ2, the Howitzer ignored city walls, and the rules could be easily implented as simple as changing a 0 to 1. (Actually, that was what you had to do. )

I'm sure that there will be some rule like that - I mean, they have Air transporting, something not possible in Civ2.

[saracen31]

It's a nice look to have the walls still be there, but I agree they don't serve a whole lot of purpose in the modern age. Maybe they could only provide 1/4 protection or something after a certain year.

[Madine]

If you think of improvements as concepts it makes more sense.

If city walls became obsolete than other improvements should become obsolete too.

[Rakki]

I think city walls should be ignored by modern age military units (such as jet fighters, tanks and whatever), but still exist in the modern age so it provides protection against infantry and "ancient" units... we must assume that the upkeep also goes into progressively upgrading the city's defenses...... (keep pesky phalanx out, perhaps)

And if a city is attacked, there should always be the chance that population goes down (a stray shell detonates a stockpile) and a city improvement being destroyed ( there goes the aqueduct). This should encourage players to build fortifications on their boundaries and station troops in there... just like real life

I mean, after all, only in dire cases do you want to fight in cities. Urban warfare is expensive in both casualties and economic damage. They basically reduced Stalingrad to rubble.... of course, if you choose to fortify your units in the city, sure..... but you have to deal with the collateral damage....

[Nenad]

Originally posted by ADG
I agree, it seems a little strange that you still can build citywalls in the 20th century

As far as I remember, in WWI Belgium defense against Germans was based on fortified cities (Antwerp and some more). So, it's not silly to have the city walls in 20th century, but yes, it's maybe silly to build it at that era.

[Adagio]

Originally posted by Nenad


As far as I remember, in WWI Belgium defense against Germans was based on fortified cities (Antwerp and some more). So, it's not silly to have the city walls in 20th century, but yes, it's maybe silly to build it at that era.

it will still work at some point, but how many cities have actually built a city wall in the last 50 years?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by ADG


it will still work at some point, but how many cities have actually built a city wall in the last 50 years?

Simple solution: Rename "city walls" to "city fortifications."
If Firaxis doesn't do it, then just do it in your own mind.

[Pingu:]

City Walls are vital to the pre gunpowder warfare, but it's not the warfare that's made walls obselete, it's the cities.

Up until the agricultural revolution most city dwelling people lived inside the walls of the city, after it and the population expanded outside the walls. Perhaps a wall is good only for certain city size, once you get larger than a size 8 city (for example), the old wall becomes obselete and you have to build another one, which is much more expensive to maintain.

The way I'd like to see modern defense dealt with is something like the "Active Defender" thing in CTP.


Pingu: