How do walls really work?

alexman · April 28, 2003, 19:45

Now that people are playing more MP, walls seem to have come somewhat into fashion against other humans. But how do they really work? Here are some tidbits of information that you may or may not know:

Walls in Civ3 are defined as any improvement with a non-zero bombard defense. This improvement gets the special walls graphic, and its benefits supposedly expire when the city reaches size 7.
In reality, it's only the bombard defense that expires when the city reaches size 7. The defense bonus remains until the walls are sold or destroyed, no matter what the size of the city.
When you attack a city with a ground unit (or a marine), the defender gets the defensive bonus of the wall.
When you bombard a city with ground artillery (but not with ships or planes), the first thing that gets targeted are the walls. If the bombard unit wins against the walls' bombard defense, then the walls are destroyed. If the walls win, then all improvements, citizens, and units in the city are safe. This happens only if the city is size 6 or smaller.
When you attack a city with an air unit, the bombard defense of walls do not apply, but the defensive bonus does. The bombard unit has a chance of hitting either a unit, an improvement, or a citizen. Once the target is determined, combat is resolved between the bombard strength of the air unit and the modified defensive strength of the defending unit (which always includes any wall and terrain bonus), the improvement's defensive value (16), or a citizen's defensive value (16), depending on what is the determined target.
The same as with air bombardment is true for naval bombardment, except that coastal fortresses have a chance to protect the city or get destroyed (just like the walls do against ground artillery) against the first bombarding naval unit.

Dominae · April 28, 2003, 20:53

Thanks for the info, alexman (nice to see you back, too)!

Pretty fishy that you only post this after you build the Great Wall in Strat PBEM 4...but it will soon expire (if not already), so all is well.

Dominae

Nakar Gabab · April 28, 2003, 21:58

Quote:

Originally posted by Dominae
Pretty fishy that you only post this after you build the Great Wall in Strat PBEM 4...but it will soon expire (if not already), so all is well.

The smart player never shows his hand until the pot is already won, Dominae.

I gotta start building walls now. One more thing to do in my early cities, dangit! Oh well, they're cheap.

Jaybe · April 28, 2003, 22:10

Quote:

When you bombard a city with ground artillery (but not with ships or planes), the first thing that gets targeted are the walls.

Beg to differ with you on this point. I have repeatedly built walls and had them being the first to be destroyed by non-ground bombardment (I think it was ships). PTW single-player (late Nov. 2002).

Arrian · April 28, 2003, 22:16

But wouldn't a coastal fortress, if the city had one, be targetted first for naval units? Then walls?

-Arrian

alexman · April 28, 2003, 23:27

Quote:

Originally posted by Jaybe

Beg to differ with you on this point. I have repeatedly built walls and had them being the first to be destroyed by non-ground bombardment (I think it was ships). PTW single-player (late Nov. 2002).

Ok, since you beg...

But the fact that your walls got destroyed first doesn't mean that they were actually part of the bombard defense process. They could have been randomly selected as the damaged item after a hit on a city improvement was determined. Trust me, I just did some extensive testing.

alexman · April 28, 2003, 23:38

Quote:

Originally posted by Arrian
But wouldn't a coastal fortress, if the city had one, be targetted first for naval units? Then walls?

Yes to the first part, but no to the second. As far as naval (and air) bombardment is concerned, walls are just as likely to be destroyed as any other improvement in the city (except the CF, of course).

Jaybe · April 29, 2003, 01:08

Doh! It is POSSIBLE that walls were the only improvement I had remaining at the time (that game initiated my hatred for Hannibal).

Catt · April 29, 2003, 13:44

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman

In reality, it's only the bombard defense that expires when the city reaches size 7. The defense bonus remains until the walls are sold or destroyed, no matter what the size of the city.

Someone else divined the same thing at CFC (can't rememnber the poster's name) -- I've got to believe that this is a bug and will be fixed (assuming there is another patch) since every instance of documentation (and possibly Firaxian comment?) seems to indicate that walls shouldn't work this way. Do you think it is a bug?

Makes the AU version of the GW quite an intersting wonder (even moreso for an AI - more likely to be on defense than a human).

Off-Topic: Long time no see, alexman. Good to see you back!

Catt

alexman · April 30, 2003, 11:34

Quote:

Originally posted by Catt

Do you think it is a bug?

Yes, it's definitely a bug introduced in PTW.

In vanilla civ3, walls were defined as any improvement with either a non-zero defensive bonus, or a non-zero bombard defense. All such improvements got the walls city graphic, and became obsolete for cities greater than size 6.

In PTW, the above approach would obviously not work, since the civil defense has a defensive bonus but is supposed to work for any size city. Firaxis decided to change the definition of walls to be any improvement with a non-zero bombard defense. Unfortunately, they forgot to make all other properties besides the bombard defense (such as the defensive bonus) of such improvements become obsolete after size 6. Note that the bombard defense still becomes negated after size 6, even in PTW.

Quote:

Makes the AU version of the GW quite an intersting wonder (even moreso for an AI - more likely to be on defense than a human).

The AU mod Great Wall is very powerful before metallurgy, but the player that builds it can actually be worse-off after metallurgy, as all the walls (and their defensive bonus) vanishes. Players that built walls in their towns before they became cities continue to get the defensive bonus, but the GW player can no longer build walls in his cities unless he starves them back to size 6.

Dominae · April 30, 2003, 12:08

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman
Players that built walls in their towns before they became cities continue to get the defensive bonus, but the GW player can no longer build walls in his cities unless he starves them back to size 6.

Sooo...I can expect to see many starving American cities in the near-future in Strat 4? Just wondering...

Dominae

Nor Me · April 30, 2003, 12:09

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman
The AU mod Great Wall is very powerful before metallurgy, but the player that builds it can actually be worse-off after metallurgy, as all the walls (and their defensive bonus) vanishes. Players that built walls in their towns before they became cities continue to get the defensive bonus, but the GW player can no longer build walls in his cities unless he starves them back to size 6.

Yes, there is a disadvantage immeadiately after metallurgy. But it's only a real disadvantage if you have fixed borders. Captured cities may have no opportunity to have walls anyway. The walls bonus is less significant in industrial-era metropolises.
From experience, it still doesn't stop your cities from falling to spearmen.

alexman · April 30, 2003, 12:50

Quote:

Originally posted by Nor Me
From experience, it still doesn't stop your cities from falling to spearmen.

It's well known that spearmen routinely kill tanks, do you expect them to fail to kill a defender hiding behind a crummy wall?

Inverse Icarus · April 30, 2003, 13:36

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman

It's well known that spearmen routinely kill tanks, do you expect them to fail to kill a defender hiding behind a crummy wall?

if you have hoplite or numidian merc (3) fortified (+25%) in a metropolis (+100%), on a hill (+50%) across a river (+25%), it has a defense of 9, which is no easy tak for a tank

i once had this early game with the great wall instead of the metro (double wall, 100%), while the enmies were throwing swordsmen / knights / mideval inf at it.

i never saw a defensive great leader before that game

Nor Me · April 30, 2003, 14:32

Quote:

Originally posted by UberKruX
while the enmies were throwing swordsmen / knights / mideval inf at it.

This is where they went wrong. They should have been using spearmen instead.

Dominae · April 30, 2003, 15:41

I sense some bitterness in Nor Me's posts in this thread. Thankfully I'm not the cause.

Dominae

PLATO · April 30, 2003, 21:30

Quote:

In reality, it's only the bombard defense that expires when the city reaches size 7. The defense bonus remains until the walls are sold or destroyed, no matter what the size of the city

This is an incredibly useful item. Thanks alexman!

MrWhereItsAt · April 30, 2003, 22:50

Indeed - another of those undocumented (of course) one-liner pearls of wisdom that should be noted well.

PLATO · May 30, 2003, 17:59

Quote:

Originally posted by alexman
In reality, it's only the bombard defense that expires when the city reaches size 7. The defense bonus remains until the walls are sold or destroyed, no matter what the size of the city.

I have been taking a watchful eye the last month while playing and I believe that this is correct. Building walls at size 5 or 6 is something I used to avoid. But now it is becoming more SOP.

alva · May 30, 2003, 22:03

Quote:

quote:
Originally posted by Catt

Do you think it is a bug?

Yes, it's definitely a bug introduced in PTW. [/q][/q]
I actually like this bud and hope firaxis doesn't change it, you now finally have a reason to build them (although now theu should probably increase somewhat in cost though)
-
Again, thanks for the master to come with things like this

GarP2 · June 3, 2003, 14:13

How is the selection between unit, population, or improvement as bombardment target made by the AI?

Thanks
GarP

alexman · June 3, 2003, 14:15

It's random. I believe the odds are something like 50% chance of targetting a unit, 25% an improvement, and 25% a citizen.

GarP2 · June 3, 2003, 17:28

Is it also proportional to the number of each? Seems like when I need to kill units, I kill a lot of pop instead.

Yahweh Sabaoth · June 16, 2003, 11:05

The Idiot Speaks

Ok, first of all, I didn't know that a walls effect's remained in effect after a city grew past size 6. D'oh!

Secondly, I don't even know what "bombard defense" refers to.

Er, well, I know what it refers to, but I don't know how it works.

I'm only recently becoming a saavy enough player to be interested in bombardment. Could someone explain the basics for me, and the rest of us out here in idiot-land?

In the meantime, looks like I'll be building more walls... I've mostly used them for under-size-6 cities on frontiers of late-game conquests, far from "home"...

alexman · June 18, 2003, 10:08

Bombardment works like normal combat, except that the odds are determined using the bombard strength of the attacking unit, instead of its attack strength. The defender's strength and modifiers are the same in both cases.
If the attacker wins, the defender gets one HP of damage. If the attacker loses, nothing happens.
Bombardment consists of as many rounds of combat as the ROF value of the attacking unit. So each bomardment can result in between zero and ROF hit points of damage.
When you use a ground unit to bombard a city with walls, you have to first destroy the walls (by damaging them as if they were a unit with a defensive strength of 8) before you can harm anything else.
After the walls are destroyed, each subsequent bombard unit can destroy a unit, improvement, or population in the city. When you target a city, you have a 50% chance of targetting the top unit, a 25% chance of targetting population, and a 25% chance of targetting improvements.
Population and improvements are treated like a unit with a defensive strength of 16. If during an attack an improvement is targetted but the city has no improvements, it's an automatic miss. Similarly, if population is tagretted but the city is of size 1, it's a also a sure miss.

Yahweh Sabaoth · June 18, 2003, 10:42

Wow! Thank you Alexman, that's more information than I had ever heard. I had no idea how that stuff really worked. Where is that information in the Civilopedia?

Arrian · June 18, 2003, 11:01

Thanks, alexman.

-Arrian

Yahweh Sabaoth · June 18, 2003, 11:29

Leads one to speculate: will the Trebuchet be a 0.0.1/6.1.1 unit, or simply a more expensive cannon?

GarP2 · June 18, 2003, 14:17

Thanks, Alexman. That helps to make bombardment less frustrating (even if not more effective), knowing that something is really going on. So does that mean that when there is no message, something (pop or improvement) was hit but not destroyed, and when it say "bombardment failed" that is one of the automatic miss conditions?

I really dont have a problem with the inefficiency of bombardment, since it is a risk-free attack. Besides that, it's much more effective against an exposed unit, making it a good defensive technique.

How do these rules extend to bombardment of terrain improvements? Same as city improvements?

Thanks,
GarP

alexman · June 19, 2003, 00:57

As far as I know, when you bombard a city there is never no message at all, unless you actually hit and damage a unit. You either succeed in doing some damage, or you get the "bombardment failed" message. It might have been different before PTW though.

As for terrain improvements, they have a base defense of 16, modified by the defensive value of the terrain.

When you bombard a non-city tile there is no random selection of the target. You first target any unit in the tile. When all units have been reduced to 1 HP you target any railroad, and when the railroad has been destroyed you target the road/mines/irrigation. I think radar towers get targetted after all other improvements have been destroyed, but I can't remember for sure.