GAME CONCEPTS
City Defense and Sieges
A city is only as safe as the units standing in it: if the attackers destroy every defender, the city falls. What the city itself adds is a defensive bonus that works as extra armor
for every unit defending on its tile, with no cap. Everything below adds together; see Combat Bonuses for what it is worth in a fight.
Where the bonus comes from
- Culture: +20% for every culture level, counting a new city as level 1, up to +100% at level 5.
- Walls and other defenses:
- Sun Tzu: Adds +15% defensive bonus when defending this city.
- Kofun Iron Cuirass: Adds +20% defensive bonus when defending this city.
- Tizona: Adds +25% defensive bonus when defending this city.
- Castle: Adds +50% defensive bonus when defending this city.
- City Walls: Adds +25% defensive bonus when defending this city.
- Motes: Half the defensive bonus of City Walls in every city, walled or not
- Terrain: the tile the city stands on adds its own bonus, so a city on hills is harder to take. See Combat Bonuses.
- Fortification: a fortified garrison adds +10%.
- Artifacts slotted in the city can add more.
Sieges
- Siege units with a Bombard order wear a city's bonus down turn by turn before the assault. It regrows 5% per turn once 5 quiet turns have passed.
- In the battle itself siege units fire through a column, reaching the units behind the front row, which is where a city's archers stand.
- Assaulting a walled city without siege is how armies are lost: bring siege, or starve the city by pillaging the tiles around it.
Garrisons
- A city larger than 3 citizens with no military unit standing in it loses 1
for every citizen over that, on top of being open to capture. See City Happiness. - What happens to a captured city, its buildings and its wonders is on Cities.