I use this especially when it is early game and I dont have much of an army to take over that Barbarian city, or maybe later in the game if I have to fight against somebody with higher technology than myself...

So ya, if you cant kill a defending unit because of overpowering +% buffs in a city, go to the tile next to it, and set your unit to fortify. This seems to rub the AI the wrong way, and every time, after a few turns they attack with their DEFENSIVE unit and throw away their advantage!

Unforunetly I bet it is only a matter of time before this catches on and the AI gets tweaked in a patch, but hey, just doing my part here ;)

Awesome! Good find! :D

Not sure how often thsi is going to work. It seems they will not attack, if it looks like the unit(s) are too strong.

I have had them go around a lone pike and skip a small stack of good units (for that time). I have had them attack mostly lightly defended units or towns.

I dunno, the first time I did it, I got it to work with a rifleman fortified, and the comp's infantry that was guarding. the second time, it was a barbarian city, and he sent all his defending archers to attack my warrior. =D

Maybe you are right about it not working if you put strong units outside? I guess just make sure to save some cannon fodder ;)

I noticed on Noble that they will leave a minimum amount of troops to defend the city (still a big stack) and not move if they don't feel they have enough to defend (however that is decided). I literally took 20 turns to take a city from the french (pop 9 when I started). During that time they launced 3-4 attacks on my stack.

I just finished a domination victory on Noble and the AI almost never attacked my units. Maybe it's because I had the tech lead and better units than they did. Only once in a blue moon they would send a catapult at my stack to do collateral damage, but that's it. They usually just left their stack of 4-6 units in the city and made me kill them one by one.

I use this especially when it is early game and I dont have much of an army to take over that Barbarian city, or maybe later in the game if I have to fight against somebody with higher technology than myself...

So ya, if you cant kill a defending unit because of overpowering +% buffs in a city, go to the tile next to it, and set your unit to fortify. This seems to rub the AI the wrong way, and every time, after a few turns they attack with their DEFENSIVE unit and throw away their advantage!

Unforunetly I bet it is only a matter of time before this catches on and the AI gets tweaked in a patch, but hey, just doing my part here ;)


Actually this is one of the game hints. I believe it was along the lines of:

'if you find yourself overpowered by a cities defenses, don't attack the city itself. Instead pillage the improvements around the city, this may cause the units from within the city to leave their safety to attack you.'

Something like that, so I don't think they'll fix it in a patch.

It also could have to do with it being a barbarian city (barbarians should be more likely to attack with their units.