In all of the other civs, catapults and cannons were never necessary to conquer an enemy. But after wasting a whole stack of various units in my first game, I learned even cities with archers and longbowmen etc fall to the power of bombarding defenses and then the next turn collateral damage of about 5-6 catapults follwed by a few follow up units. And catapults with the flank upgrade withdraw about half of the time you dont lose all of your catapults.

I was surprised the AI doesn't use the catapults offensively in any games I play.

In all of the other civs, catapults and cannons were never necessary to conquer an enemy. But after wasting a whole stack of various units in my first game, I learned even cities with archers and longbowmen etc fall to the power of bombarding defenses and then the next turn collateral damage of about 5-6 catapults follwed by a few follow up units. And catapults with the flank upgrade withdraw about half of the time you dont lose all of your catapults.

I was surprised the AI doesn't use the catapults offensively in any games I play.
In my game, I haven't built any myself yet, but China is smashing me to hell with them offensively...

never did collateral damage , but im sure its good .

I used catapult to remove defense and it worked great . Its a need to attack city , impossible to do without them .
Most player forget this .

I learned the hard way how powerful catapults are. I didn't make any until Genghis Khan invaded with a couple of them. Those things are nasty! :mad:

I havent been using siege wepons, i guess i should try them out, but do they work the same way as in civ 3?

They are nothing like civ3 siege weapons.

They can bombard like in Civ3 or attack and cause damage to multiple units at the same time.

They can also defend. No more Civs capturing all your seige units! You have to be careful though the Ai will change to units that get 100% bonus versus them so dont think they are overpowered.

Their bombard ability is nothing like civ3 bombard. It doesn't even damage any units.

Their bombard ability is nothing like civ3 bombard. It doesn't even damage any units.

I've had them knock out a few units in cities -- seige weapons when used correctly do a very nice job;)

The bombard only damages the defence.

But if you order them to attack you hurt units, but can loose catapults.

With 2 colateral dmg upgrades, everytime I did dmg I hurt the whole stack, so when my 4 catapults were done, the defenders were trashes(city on a hill )