City walls

[Catwalk]

If it works that way then I'm okay with it. I'll go on to repeat my original suggestions

1) Ammo.
Ammo level is doubled at the start of combat for all defending units in a town with city walls. This makes it much harder to siege city walls with ranged units, expending all your ammo safely before moving in with melee.
2) Ranged defenders
The AI is tweaked to give higher preference to ranged units for town defense (might be problematic). This one is crucial, is there any chance of it happening kyrub?
3) Defense
The defense bonus is upgraded so it doubles the unit's ranged defense instead of giving +3 shields, and the defense bonus behind broken walls is removed. I'm actually undecided about this one, as it may help weak units less than the current bonus and high def units would be all but invincible. How about +5 or +6 instead?
4) Cost
Make them a bit more costly to produce and maintain. How about production cost of 250 and upkeep 5?

[kyrub]

1) Would be nice, but I cannot promise without looking in the code. Determining "in the walls status" is a space-taking thing. (Mechanics' changes requests from your side are starting to worryingly grow in numbers.) Also, this change has no effect if we cannot learn the AI to conserve % of its shots to shoot at nearby enemies. This is hard to do so that it cannot be abused by humans.

2) This will lead to AI attacking armies without shooters.

3) I agree with your own arguments, +6 is the way to go (shields are weak!). And fix the wraith, flying. Personally, I have no problems with some +1 staying there when the walls come tumbling down, +1 shield is so negligible in MoM...

[Catwalk]

Wishful thinking: Can we close off the gate entirely and require wall crushers to be present in order to do melee combat against a walled city?

[kyrub]

Fearful thinking: Can we teach the AI to bring a wall-crusher always along when going after a CWalled city? Can we teach the AI to stop a 20-turn trip to a city that has just build a CWall? Can we somehow protect the only wall-crusher AI brings along from being destroyed by a direct damage spell during the siege?

In short, are we able to stop this becoming a massive exploit for the human player?

[Catwalk]

I don't know, are we?

[Jtm]

Wishful thinking: Can we close off the gate entirely and require wall crushers to be present in order to do melee combat against a walled city?

We are forgetting the possibility of the gate crushers, aren't we? As far as I know wall crushers crush walls not gates (although gate could be interpreted as a wall). I've always assumed the units themselves carry required gate crusher to the gate and demolishes it before entering. I see no problem with that. But ya in real life wall crushers are nevertheless useful though not required (unless the gate is impenetrable). In any case, like kyrub said.

[Catwalk]

Crazy idea: Give wall crusher to most foot units. Can a wall crusher attack through any wall, and will it do so on its own accord if controlled by the AI?

[Vagabond]

Crazy idea: Give wall crusher to most foot units. Can a wall crusher attack through any wall, and will it do so on its own accord if controlled by the AI?

What's the end goal here? If you give wall crusher to most foot units, haven't you just given everything but Cav a way to deal with walls? Ranged, melee and flyers all bypass walls in some way, some obviously better than others. I thought the goal was to make city walls harder to overcome.

I'm wondering if we're overthinking this whole thing. The current problem is two-fold, city walls aren't worth the build time and upkeep, and it limits AI actions. Why not decrease upkeep, increase ranged defense and call it a day? AI seems to favor only a few melee units then lots of ranged units for defending important cities. With walls helping against ranged attacks, the few melee units form a choke-point while the protected range units weaken the attackers. Just let the AI do what it already does, and slightly tweak the walls to work with the current AI pattern.

[Catwalk]

I'd want to reduce the chances of breaking a wall at the same time. This would make it highly interesting to use catapults to break walls down before invading. It also creates an interesting use for foot units, and discourages all-hero stacks. That said, it would create a large number of situations where you have to wait out a battle.

If we just do the above mentioned changes, would wall crushers be worth bothering with? I would like to make wall crusher a useful ability.

[kyrub]

Most units wall crushers, that would probably work for the AI, but it is a "swimming settler" for me. Let's avoid this, it leads nowhere.

A small summary of realistic corrections (so far) :
- defense bonus: double defense / +5-6 shields / halved attack
- the defense bonus is applied even if the unit attacks "from the wall"
- flyers and wraith-form ignore defense bonus (bug)
- double ammo for defenders
- AI conserves shots for close defense
- (an endcombat measure that makes the fire-and-wait-for-turn-50 exploit impossible)

I would probably try to add two more:
- the attacker cannot enter the city diagonally through the gate. The city can be held with one unit only.
- the suppression effect does not work in city walls

For me, a combination of these corrections (a lot of work, mind you) should make the City walls desirable for the AI and for the human player. Then, wall crusher becomes interesting.