I know why people do this, especially on Vanquisher difficulty, but does anyone else find it kind of sad that we have to? I’d like the game to be more balanced when it comes to the strength of walls. We should be disincentivized to build such excess, with more options for dealing with raiders before they breach. Also, sorry, but stacked walls are aesthetically hideous.
If the devs don’t want to make walls stronger so that we don’t have to build three layers of them, then perhaps they can include defensive alternatives to help prevent them falling so fast: allow us to build moats, or toss burning oil at them over the walls, etc and so forth.
I also want to call attention to this older post for its amazing ideas for how raids, armies and walls could work. Devs, please take note for post-release revisions, I’d love to play the game with more in-depth wall and defensive mechanics.
On Vanquisher we need at least double walls, especially triple gates…and they are all ugly as hell.
I think that walls should upgrade over lvl2 and implements moats with additional hitpoints and defenses. Also we absolutely need ways to deal with rams other than sendig out soldiers outnumbered 10:1 to intercept and kill rams before they make short work of walls.
A really simple solution: why can’t we have fire arrows? I heard that cavalry is coming but fire arrows would really be useful and obvious in a city defense scenario…
Completely agree with this. As the game progresses, raids keep getting larger (or are the numbers tied to the amount of villagers you have?) so you have to keep increasing the amount of wall layers to keep people out. It feels wrong, it looks bad and it’s impractical. I really hope they bring new ideas when it comes to raids, right now it feels very basic, not enough thought has been put into it.
100% Agree… In my current settlement witch is now a large city I currently must have 5 ( FIVE ) stacked wall layer, that’s a nasty beefy large wall… really, something must be done to address this, we should have better walls with each city level upgrade.
The alternative is soldiers. Zantai and myself have both made 1000 pop cities with only 1 layer of walls, where the defense is primarily soldiers. One time a while back I made a fairly large city with no walls, other than immediately around the trading post and storehouses, just using soldiers for defense.
I haven’t gotten that far recently but raiders have only been nerfed since then, so seems like it should still be quite possible, especially with new relics that grant military bonuses.
Maybe ill have to do a no-wall challenge and see how it works out now.
Use of soldiers should also improve in the coming months as we add in more military options and improve controls.
@medierra I understand what you said, but I have a pretty large city with 4 lv2 barracks stacked with soldiers + some towers, I have a pretty large percentage of population in military but still … one wall layer is a no go for me.
At least you should give players the “Option” to have better walls, it’s up to the player to pick the path it wants to defend the city … if we want better walls we build, if we want more military power we go from there… it’s a question of possibilities and choices, not giving us the “option” of higher level walls is the same as giving us less options, and I think a game like this should grant as much options as possible for the player to decide where it wants to go.
Surely it should be soldiers and…? What’s clear is that a lot of people feel a need for multiple layers of walls, regardless of how many soldiers they have. There’s something in the game’s design forcing people to make that choice. Maybe we’re just not playing the game right but like brunocerq has said, more options would be better. My vote goes to interesting functional ways to reinforce our wall defenses, as well as improvements in military. I’m looking forward to seeing your updates on this.
I hope you will also look at the older topic I linked, because the ideas there made me genuinely excited for what raids could be.
I just "finished " a no-wall 1000 pop settlement, Alpine Valleys, medium difficulty, medium map size.
Well, I didn’t have walls around my city, but I did have 6 barracks including 4 of them to cover the outside of the city which were themselves protected by a stone wall.
→ This is very do-able against regular raids without casualties. The direction of the raid would be covered by a specific barrack, which you can reinforce by placing the flags of 2 other barracks nearby, and the foot soldiers would attack the raiders while they’d be busy trying to breach into the attacked barrack’s stone wall.
→ When it comes to invading armies, I would either pay the tribute (if < 3k gold) or take the challenge, which in the second option leaves a lot of time to gather and organize my 6 barracks to counter the offensive.
In the end, the lakes and mountains help to define the strategic points to place your barracks. Also, paying attention the the rhythm of the raids is very helpful. They usually happened every third year, so I wouldn’t activate most of my barracks until that year came.
Your method could be seen in the community screenshots. Its problem is that it is very difficult both to implement and to master, especially for beginners. And it is not suitable for all cards. I play on open maps without hills or lakes. For convenient construction of large cities. On maps like this I’ll have to spend too much time terroforming
I honestly can never get this to work like I intend - how do you raise and lower terrain without mods? My attempts just end up flatting everything and creating even more entry points through my defenses
Regarding walls - I actually sort of like the aesthetic of double walls; I usually do this with quad gates (one sticking out on each side). Triple walls get uglier, and by the time we get to quad/quint walls, which I have absolutely done on some maps, it gets a bit silly.
I wouldn’t mind a tier 3 wall upgrade, although I suspect what really then happens is that that’s when the catapults and other things come out that balance it out. Strategic placement of castles and towers is always going to be important.
While I appreciate the info, I’m not into the idea of having to terraform citadels and walls out of the landscape in order to avoid triple stack walls. It’s not my playstyle, though I’m sure many do find it fun.
Leave the AI a way in and it will send most of the Raiders along the open path.
Road from the wild leads in from upper left, direct to gates where the first 90 degree angles meet.
Gates allow friendlies a quick path in, but when closed, the road in is a winding path that takes the enemy back and forth across multiple fields of fire, from all directions.
Open path leads them back left, then a u-turn right, then up, then u-turn down, then back left, another u-turn right, up, and then down and in.
Here, breaking through most of the walls that surround the towers to attack them does not allow access to the town the way a normal breakthrough would.
Some do attack the walls, but most try to follow the road, an open path that leads in, taking withering fire from all sides while doing so.
Plenty of room for more towers and archers as raid size increase.
It’s so amazing how differently people play the same games. I would never build such a labyrinth in my towns! But power to you, for figuring out how to make that work to keep raiders at back.
I would reduce the number of lines in the labyrinth from 5 to 3, and also place the towers in two barracks. 12 towers of 2 people each is 2 barracks of 12 each. The rear towers start shooting late, and the barracks have increased the accuracy of fire. If the main attack comes from the other side, soldiers from one barracks can be sent to help defend. You can’t do that with towers.
There is an artifact that reduces the cost of maintaining soldiers by 30%. I also had a city with 1500+ residents and 200 soldiers, the monthly income was +100, without an artifact to reduce maintenance. This was enough to repel attacks at an average difficulty level
