[Freeciv-Dev] Re: (PR#12484) Combining the defense buildings

["Benoit Hudson" <bh@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

<URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12484 >

On Fri, Mar 11, 2005 at 02:18:21AM -0800, Per I. Mathisen wrote:
> 
> <URL: http://bugs.freeciv.org/Ticket/Display.html?id=12484 >
> 
> This was suggested by Vasco one day on the irc channel, and I think he is
> right: The splitting of the defense building from civ1 to civ2 was a
> mistake. City walls are not good enough, and nobody I know builds Coastal
> Fortress, ever. The same goes for SAM and SDI. They are grossly expensive
> and set you back when you should be doing offensive. Not to mention that
> it is a bother to build so many defensive buildings if you want a
> somewhat decent defense somewhere.

Playing against the AI, city walls are a major big deal as-is.  A city
with walls more than triples the strength of its defenders (because
they're more likely to live and heal), so now I need about 4-5x as many
attackers to take a walled city, and I can hold a walled city with very
little defense expenditure: instead of needing 3-4 phalanxes and
replacing one every 3-4 turns, I post 2-3 phalanxes and they never die.
They're expensive to build, so I don't build them in every city, but
they make it possible to have a largely peaceful game.

The entire concept of shore and aerial bombardment bugs me, well beyond
the minor usefulness of coastal defense and SAM sites.  I hate how
well-fortified bronze-age defenders can sink a warship presumably
lobbing large shells from miles off-shore -- or shoot down a stealth
fighter!  CtP had a system I preferred, where bombardment meant you did
some damage to the other at no risk to yourself.  Colonization had a
nice system whereby coastal defenses would automatically shoot at enemy
ships sailing nearby; CtP had the same for SAM sites shooting at planes.  

If we have a concept of bombardment, we could say:
- city walls stay as-is (expensive, not impregnable)
- coastal defense disappears; cannon automatically bombards any number
  of enemy ships if the cannon is stationed in a city
- SAM site disappears; new unit mobile SAM site automatically bombards
  any number of enemy planes if the SAM is stationed in a city
- SDI stays as-is (although actually I hate its 100% hit rate)

        -- Benoît