Walls like that are expensive to build and maintain. And the whole 'artillery and planes' thing makes them a moot point anyway. When was the last time you heard of a city being taken from an army without artillery or air support? I'd think their lack of use would be from the development and deployment of wall-destroying weapons, these wall-ignoring weapons, and the relative cheapness of just having more troops. Mind you, it would be so nice if we could just blow the dang walls up with siege weapons. Even catapults can do that sort of thing. Maybe an action enabler could be used for that? And then when you get to real artillery, those could use an additional 'destroy building' command and (try to) destroy a random building too.True, I wanted to argue that the "most" technological fortification of that time was ineffective against modern warfare and if the Maginot-Line woudn't do it, what would? And why arent there any modern city fortifications? I stick to my pledge to reduce defense bonus, since admittely walls aren't as useless as I potrayed, their defence bonus still was much reduced over time compared to ancient times or middle age.
As a side thought, a larger-sized city should have more expensive city walls, both to build and to upkeep. I'd imagine they'd be much less attractive if they cost twice as much when your city reaches size 8, then triple the original at size 12.
As for reducing defense bonuses, I'd just suggest not letting them stack up too much.
Remove the river defense bonus with walls/fortress or outpost.
Cap the terrain defense bonuses off at 200% unless on a hill or mountain, and then to 225% for hills and 250% for mountains. (Or in other words, walls nullify natural terrain, except for a small 25% boost from hills and 50% from mountains)
For Outposts(100% defense, If you have them), use something like 150%, 200%, and 225% instead. (Or in other words, forests and hills get normal bonus minus any river bonus, and mountains get only +125% of their two-hundred percent base)
And don't forget that defenders already get a multiplier of 1.5x to their base defense when in a city or fortified. Racking up an additional 1,250% (20.25x defense...) from mountain-river-walls is just ridiculous. It might take some mathing (Or otherwise not using the terrain.spec defense values and doing it entirely via effects) to get the final numbers to come out close to right though. (Yeah, I think max defense should be x4.875, not freaking x20.25. That's just crazy. Obviously not considering veteran levels either, since both sides get that.)
When you consider that the different kinds of defense bonuses don't really stack up well together in real life, it makes a lot more sense.
Who attacks from the river side of a static defense location? (Well, unless you're pulling off some clever tactical ploy, which would probably undermine the defense bonus anyway)
Forests near city walls would DECREASE their effectiveness, since enemies could sneak right up to the walls.
Likewise, simply having to scale walls already gives nearly all the benefit that you'd get from defending from a hill or mountain.
Well, the main issues are that the Germanic tribes had iron weapons and Romans had Legions. Not really pre-bronze warriors at that point. Sadly freeciv lacks ancient unit granularity for them at this point. They would probably be 3/2 iron Swordsmen or some such. (Which is identical to Archers)If you equal warrior = Germanic tribes and phalanx = Romans, phalanx should definetely get more attack strength. Maybe a bonus in forrest for the warriors? (A small tribute to Arminius)
And some units (like phalanx, pikemen, legion, chariots, horsemen, knights) should be PENALIZED for defending in forests(and jungle, swamps, and for horse units, mountains, for that matter). They need nice open fields to keep their formations properly or move freely. Fighting in forests tended to be something that gets them killed by skirmishers rather than helping any. Sadly this is still hardcoded, and I don't think it's even softcoded in 3.0 at this point. Although one could simply make them a new unit class that doesn't get terrain defense bonuses. (Though it would still be somewhat off even then, since hills or mountains might be appropriate for defense bonuses)
