the merits of City Defense (walls)

[kenc80]

Among my favorite things in the game, along with having hordes of pegasi, dwarves and frequently losing to KGB is City Defense. Whenever I take over a castle I always make sure the city defense is at least wall strength 1 (I guess thats level3) and if its in a hot spot or chokepoint ill level it on up to level 2 walls. So I have a comment and then a question: It amazes me when I fight players that have cities that are below a city wall level 1. Recently ive fought a bunch of castles against guys that arent even leveling their castles up to +1. Am I crazy, am I over-rating city defense? I think its fantastic and is almost always a game changer until very late in games when folks are flying around with demons and maybe a catapault. I guess if your strategy is to be really offensive then you dont really care but jeez. why not at least wall level 1?

My other question: Does a city lose a level of defense when taken and does a city that is pillaged lose even more levels?

[SnotlinG]

Currently a city loses one citywall level when taken.
Plundering the city doesnt affect the citywall level any further.

[ams16]

I don't change the walls of my city unless:
1)I have at least 3 units defending the city
2) it is going to be under attack
3) I hope to be able to keep it from the attackers if I up the defense. (I.e., if they are attacking with a stack of 8 led by a hero and a medusa, and I have 3 pikeman, why spend the money?)

City walls are expensive, and most of the time, I don't think they are worth the money.

[LPhillips]

City walls are beast if you have the cash to spare. They'll become even more useful and important when you can't splurge on hero+allies every other turn.

Cashflow is pretty important, so obviously I don't up city walls when it's not cost-effective. But sometimes a little investment of 100 or so can be extremely effective in making even certain losses more costly to the enemy. I'll even splurge all the way up to level 3 to protect important heroes.