I definitely like it.. having the expand to two range in middle ages provides enough flexibility for defending armies.  It gives a good bonus for Garisons (besides being an early commons quarter).  The walls should probably be improved if they are going to be more limited though.  That would make raiding wars a better choice than conquest wars a lot of the time.

I always wondered why garrison or garrison-equivalent EQ's never radiated fortification. Towns could be expansive but spread out far from the main plaza, just as fortified as a resource extractor district.

Can city centers and garrison-equivalents "overlap" in their fortification radiation? It would make sense for hyper-fortification in a phalanx-like manner, if a player was to implement an ultra-defensive strategy.

This does seem like a pretty good idea. I think if this was implemented, it would be nice to have a way to specifically create a wall around an extension. Maybe a special project that allows you to build walls around an extension and fortify it, with increasing industry costs depending on how far away said extension is from the nearest fortification source, and a much higher cost if it's not directly adjacent to another walled quarter. 

I disagree with the idea that giving the Dunnu a larger fortification radius will make it worth it to build. In the Ancient Era, I wouldn't think you'd have enough quarters that fortification radius will be a major issue, and once your cities do get large enough that fortification is important, you can no longer build the Dunnu. The buff will definitely make the Dunnu more useful for sure, and it's a step into making it more viable, but the Dunnu is going to need much larger buffs before it becomes something you want to build. 

One thing I have a problem with is the fact that fences protect as much as stone walls and palisades, bar the fact they're a little easier to knock down. A +6 combat strength bonus doesn't give much of an incentive to build palisade walls early on, since they both fall pretty easily to siege weapons and both have the same +6 bonus which also just seems a little too unrealistic.

I like the ideas in this thread. Regarding the Dunnu, though, I don't think it's that bad. It could use a bit of a buff, sure, but the fact that you can build it with any old outpost essentially means you're starting with +1 districts already built when you turn it into a city or attach it as a territory. Combined with the fact that it gives a stability bonus, I think it's a pretty neat little bonus to have. I think it's one of the most interesting of all the ancient era EQs even if it's not the strongest.

docktorkain wrote:

First, I think that a special project to forty hex-by-hex is a bit too much micromanagement, and having the garrisons do it requires no extra art assets and is easier to implement IMHO. Also it ties very well with the current district costs scheme, so it forces you to make a decision between focus on your economy or slow down your growth to have a better defense. I like this kind of tradeoffs and the strategical considerations you need to account for.

Ah, my suggestion was to have the manual fortification to be an alternative to the garrison, not a replacement of your idea. If you had one or two quarters that you want to fortify, I think that it'd be a bit silly to need to build a Garrison to do so, and being able to manually fortify might be useful. It can also be helpful in situations where the player for some reason doesn't want to build a Garrison. 

My idea is that manual fortification would also be a bit more expensive, so while it may be a little more cost-effective if you want to fortify a handful of specific tiles, for mass-fortification of your quarters, a Garrison would be ideal. That should hopefully reduce the micromanagement factor, since the default choice should be building a Garrison for fortification, instead of manual fortification. Likewise, the slightly higher cost would still keep the decision of slowing down your economy for your defense. 

docktorkain wrote:

About the Dunnu, I agree that in the Ancient Era the increased fortification range will not help too much, but it'll create an safer area you can use later on to build your cities toward. The "fortification status" of the district is not applied once the garrison is built - it'll apply to the districts build near the Dunnu even if several eras have passed after you build it first. Building the Dunnus in the Ancient Era may not help a lot right now, but frees you from building many garrisons later, allowing you to focus more on other districts later on. It may not be enough to lift the Assyrian from its current position as one of the weakest Ancient cultures (alongside Hitites), but it is an step in the right direction.

I think you sort of pointed out the issue with the Dunnu - it's not helpful now, it only becomes useful later. The extended fortification range of the Dunnu will likely only come into effect in the Classical Era (it would be odd if an Ancient Era Emblematic Quarter only becomes powerful after the Ancient Era), but it's also possible that the fortification won't even come into play during the entire game. 

The fact that the Dunnu doesn't help you at all right now means that it will almost always be deprioritized. Why build something that won't help until the Classical Era, when you can instead build something that will help you immediately? Compared to even the basic Farmers and Makers Quarters, the Dunnu will likely be less useful than both of them. You argued that building Dunnus will allow you to focus on more quarters later on, but why not just skip the Dunnu and focus on more quarters right now?

The fact that Dunnus can be built in Outposts can help make them built more often, because they're going to competing with less things. However, it's still going to have lower prioritization than most other things - the moment that you unlock Harbors, you'll more than likely be building Harbors in your Outposts before you choose to build Dunnus. 

I think a problem with Garrisons and defensive Emblematic Quarters is that they're extremely situational. By allowing them to create fortification in nearby quarters, they become useful in more situations, but they will still be situational. As long as you're not immediately threatened, the most useful part of building a Garrison is the extra Stability, which the Commons Quarter outclasses easily, or at least until the Industrial Era Police Force. As such, Garrisons have zero economic benefits, and are only useful when you're on the defense. 

I think a fix to making Garrisons useful would be to give them some sort of economic benefit. 

To build on your idea of fortifying quarters, maybe unfortified quarters will have a penalty. For example, an unfortified quarter bordering an empty tile will -1 Stability for every edge that is bordering an empty tile, and possibly an extra -1 yield penalty. This can sort of symbolize banditry and small raids on the vulnerable quarters. 

If this were added, I think that this could possibly be enough to make Garrisons and defensive Emblematic Quarters more viable (although obviously, I'm going to be quite biased, so maybe not). Compared to Commons Quarters when Stability is needed, Commons Quarters will be more useful in the core of your cities, while Garrisons will be more useful near the edges. The ability to remove the yield penalties of exposed quarters will cause the Garrisons to have more economic bonuses, causing them to be more useful outside of defense. Perhaps a more complicated system would be something like Stellaris' Piracy system, directly linking your defense to your economy, making Garrisons much more useful, but that may take some effort to design and code. 

Of course, this will still not solve the problem with Ancient Era EQs. In the Ancient Era, you won't have enough districts up that fortification will become a major problem, meaning that even if fortification was made more important via the economic changes, it won't actually make these EQs more useful. A suggestion that I've seen would be to allow these defensive EQs to exploit certain yields near them, which can make them a bit like early Hamlets. This will likely make them a good deal more viable, since they now have an economic bonus and therefore may be prioritized a little bit more than Farmers and Makers Quarters. 

So overall, I think the main problem with defensive quarters is that they're extremely situational, and are only useful in defensive situations. By making them fortify quarters, they become more useful in a large number of situations, but the core issue is still the same - they're still only useful in defensive situations. I think the way to fix the usability of Garrison and Garrison substitutes is to give them slight economic bonuses, making them useful outside of defense as well. 

I think that the present siege mechanic should have defensive structures and i also think that the city should have artwork of being damage after siege depending on intensity of battle.

 This can be like damage effect on city centre or district in civilization series showing effects of war or water tiles with floating remains of drowned ships.

 In endless space 2 after a battle we can observe ruins of ships after big battle.

I know this is an old post, but I like the idea of limiting the walls as I think they spread too much making them easier to climb and infiltrate from more points after which they lose purpose, over-spreading also forces you to defend at weaker positions (low altitude tiles for example) instead of making use of strong strategic positions just because you extended your districts there.

But, If we do limit where the walls appear automatically, I think it will be a good idea to allow extending the walls manually to selected tiles even if for a low production cost, like placing forests (but much cheaper).. this allows designing the defensive borders of the wall to cover good strategic points.

I would also like if units can't jump cliffs inside districts during siege (specially when we allow districts outside walls here), to make the battle more realistic (even inside walls). but I understand that would make siege battles very defensive and very hard for attackers specially with current battle mechanics and melee units movements after attacking and such.. but it will also make laying siege to strong cities instead of assaulting them a more viable option than what it is now which is still more realistic.

This is actually pretty interesting way to spice things up. To add to that tho. Come industrial era i feel like there should be more static defensive structures other than just walls and garrisons. I feel like it was definitely a mistake to make machine gun into a unit. Aside from just me finding it silly that a machinegun is rolled on to the front lines, it would have been such a great static defensive structure in an era where the defender should really have a massive advantage over attacker. 

fado41 wrote:
i feel like there should be more static defensive structures other than just walls and garrisons.

Agreed.  I really love this idea of creating additional defensive structures/mechanics.  A machine gun, or a battery of them, added to a garrison or fort, would be an exciting enhancement.  It'd be an interesting production choice for a player on the run from a stronger military force:  Do I build more units, when I know mine are weaker because I'm behind in military science, or vastly outnumbered?  Or do I focus my efforts on trying to make my defensive measures stronger around my key cities?