Here's my ideas for how WALLS could be implemented.

[BigJMoney]

**I've posted this message on a lot of sites, so if you have seen it before, that's probably why**

A LOT of people are interested in adding walls to Rise of Nations, and I have to agree that, if done properly, it would make the game more fun and also add to the game's profitibility. Here are my suggestions:

- You can't build walls unless you already have built a fort in the city's radius. In other words, walls require a very large investment.

- Once built, walls automatically surround the city's radius. Whether you use villagers to construct them or not does not matter to me personally. Walls will never exist outside a city's radius.

- In the earlier ages, walls could consist of wooden pallisade. Later on, they can increase to stone, and then heavy stone. These types of walls should either have gates, or you can choose to built gates on any section of the wall.

- In later ages, walls could become trenches and barbed wire, and later on become sandbags and razor fence. The gates could either disappear and allow easier entry or simply become gates more appropriate to the new wall type.

- Having walls in a city should decrease its economic produce by something around 25%. Maybe some civilization could decrease this effect.

- Towers built into walls could have an increase in the number of hitpoints and generally look much cooler

- Archers/Riflemen should be able to walk along the walls for the coolness factor and maybe a +x to their defence, where x is related either to the level of the wall, or a seperate research that can be researched at the wall. Any towers that are connected to the walls are also available to the archers on the wall if they'd like to garrison instead of firing from the wall.

- The dynamics and advantages of walls should change from Age to Age, as I have suggested below:

- In the earliest ages, walls prevent the rush. It should not be too difficult to construct one barracks, a set of walls, and then wait until you see enemy spearmen before you pump out some archers to defend your city.

- Once seige engines are introduced, walls are less useful for preventing attacks, but they can prevent scouts and spies from entering your base since these units would have to be micromanaged to enter your city. Example: your opponent would literally have to wait outside your gate until it opens before they could send in their spy. You could easily position a scout or a lookout tower in the wall to discover the spy, also.

- In the final ages of the game, scouts and spies should gain the ability to climb walls without much/any hassle. The usefulness of walls in these ages is greatly reduced, and it might even benefit the player to get rid of them to gain the 25% production back. An alternative idea I have for the information age is a wall research (maybe a special wonder?) called "Clandestine Operations" which would cause all of your walled cities to constantly spawn the black, unexplored cloud overhead so your enemy cannot see what is going on inside, unless they have an actualy unit there or an informer. In my opinion, this ability should supercede the ability of the Space Program Wonder.

- A new wonder, called "The Great Wall" that actually creates a doubly-thick wall around your entire nation. I don't know what to suggest about where the gates should go, or wether archers should be allowed on it.

There are my 2 cents worth...

=$= Big J Money =$=

[MattH]

It's already hard enough to rush...
And if your army was outside of the city on one end and the enemy was entering the city via the gate... It takes away alot of free movement of soilders and peasants.

[Mort]

i think walls are a good idea

just make sure its expensive, and slow to build.

scouts and spies should be able to pass this wall using craft points (or entering through opened gates as you said).

walls shouldnt be strong either though, and easily taken down by seiges.

the main thing abotu walls is to notify when and where you enemy is attacking from, and to slow them down.

edit - i like the idea about the great wall wonder, would make a good bonus for the chinese.

and when nukes are dropped - atleast you know youll have some time to rebuild as the walls will slow the enemy down.

[Sovereign]

I agree with most of your points about walls.

Walls could make the game more interesting. After all, almost every civ in our history built walls for defense at some time or another. Ancient Sumer, China, Greece, Rome, Medieveal Europe, France's Maignot Line, Berlin Wall (more symbolic), etc.

I agree with the economic penalty, makes sense. After all, there would be traffic snarls and stuff with many people coming and going through 1 or 2 gates, rather than from any direction. Resources would be a lot slower coming in.


Here's an interesting point.

What if two cities overlap radius?

In addition, some civ's built walls away from the city, between mountain passes or at choke-points with forts. France built the Maignot line, which wasn't confined to just one city. Rome built defensive walls away from cities, garrisoned with barracks and forts. One example of this Roman wall-building was aganist the Celts in England.



Here's what I propose to refine this wall idea.

First, walls may only be built within a Fort's borders (the border it exerts) outside of the city borders at, say, mountain passes or near lakes, etc.

Second, for this to occur, two forts must be placed in proximity of each other. What I mean by this is the second fort must be placed somewhere inside the first fort's borders (to balance out gameplay, so players can't just plop 1 fort down and build walls willy-nilly). Then if you want an extension of the wall, you need to place a third fort in the borders of the second fort, and so forth, exactly like in real life fortifications.

Third, walls built inside or on the city radius itself gain a 3x speed of wall-building, due to its proximity to the "center of civilization". Forts are still required in the city radius for the walls.

Fourth, walls should be 2 "hexes" thick (the thickness of 2 bunker towers placed side by side). Also, walls should be 2x2 size, to simplify building, and no auto-build. You have to build the wall in sections, to balance gameplay. Your enemy should be given the chance to sabotage or wreck your wall building plans.

Fifith, walls should have rising costs to build just like forts. First section costs 25 wood and gold, then second section would cost 50 wood and gold, third section = 75 wood and gold, and so forth.

Last, walls will need 3 military researches, just like Forts to be enabled to be built.


This will make the player think strategically which city to wall, or what mountain pass to wall, since it'll be extremely expensive to wall EVERY city, EVERY mountain pass, EVERY choke point. You can only gain enough resources to do this by the end-game, not to mention the losses you may suffer from the enemy destroying your walls, driving up the costs of additional walls.


I welcome any ideas, debates, or criticisms of my ideas how to refine this interesting concept.

[Azrikam]

Very interesting concepts, but my opinion is that RoN is better without walls. It's already pretty easy to turtle without them.

[Daftpanzer]

I think walls would be nice, given the role of city walls throughout history. I liked both the above ideas about walls.

However i guess the developers made the decision not to include walls for gameplay reasons. Walls would be more historically accurate, but then the game doesnt allow for proper sieges were the defenders can be starved out etc, the game might be better off without them.