Good day,

I'm wondering on opinions here on what people do in this scenerio:

You are sieging a medium sized city with a medium sized army defending it. A nice mix of defensive units. You also have a perfect mix of units as well.

But you have several siege weapons with promotions. Now of course you attack with the siege first to weaken all the units BUT....

which siege do you use to attack first with? Since you normally loose the first few. Do you attack with the siege with lots of City raid promotions first? Or do you use the siege with a lot of collateral damage promotions?

I normally make some with 3 promotions in city raid and the others with a couple in collateral damage.

Should collateral siege go first? or do they not have enough time to damage most units because the first ones have like 0.5% chance of victory? Or should you go with the city raider siege and have a 5-10% chance so the siege lasts longer and does more damage???? See I'm not sure if it matters how long the siege unit lasts.

Thanks, hope that made since.

Like you I use city raider and collateral damage cats. I produce a good amount of pure collateral cats and some pure city raider cats. The collateral cats can be used just as well for city defence as seiging so I consider them my all purpose cats. They will virtually always die so they will not usually be promoted. The city raiders I will eventually promote all the way up the city raider promotions and then the drill and possibly extra bombardment.

When I attack a city I will throw collateral cats in first, unless the city raider already has a good chance of victory. Collateral damage is done regardless of whether the cat even scores a hit so damage is done regardless (except to the unit it is actually attacking). Once numbers become better I will throw in the city raider, but I always consider this unit a keeper.

** edit. I haven't got warlords as yet, but I imagine I'll be turning out trebuchets as city raiders from now on and making all cats collateral damage. The logic is that you will always need a good sieger and bombardment machine in your army if it is to have any chance taking on a city stack. Don't be tempted to upgrade its combat because you want this unit(s) to fight last should you be attacked. The fact that trebs have only strength 4 will also help this unit survive within a moving army.

if ur cats have no chance of winning I'd stop making them, just keep enough to takedown the cultural. start using 2 normal attackers to kill 1 defender, instead of using 5 cats to somewhat weakan the defenders.

and I haven't done any research but I've always been much more satisfied w/ city raider upgrades on my siege. providing of course they can win.

Thanks Salah al-Din, that makes since.

Just wanted to clear that up. I have warlords but am still using cats and not trebs. Old habbit maybe, but I rarely take cities with siege. I just collateral the crap out of it so all units have very little health then run in with calvary.

My last game I would reduce a cities defences to 0 with a frigate way before my army got there. And my army consisted of 50% cannons, the rest calvary with anti-gunpowder. I didn't really use city raider promos on my siege that game, I just made them all expendable collateral.

I found it was just as effective.

no warlords here, so vanilla siege opinion ;)

I don't (well, not much) use collateral promotion.
Some cats will retreat, some will win. Most will die.

My way is to build catapults anywhere (so some start without any promotion). Those are expandable = first attackers.
Then i send in CR1 (from barracks), then CR2 and more
The goal is to let the promoted live longer, and expand the expandable (= just built).

Why don't i use barrage promotions? because they gain no ability to live, even if they get any other promotion. So in my opinion, it's just not taking into account the fact that some (20%) will live to see another battle.
Vanilla cats out of barracks have 4xp. Meaning one promotion and another for just 1 more Xp. Meaning that a retreating cat will gain a second promotion. So i like it that my 2 promotion cats get CR 2, much more usefull than a "going to die" barrage 2.

just my opinion

Before Longbows come into play, I tend to win most cat attacks (unless its a double city garrison upgraded archer on a hill). If it's a well defended city:

1. Use a couple low-level collateral cats to weaken most/all defenders.
2. If there's still an undamaged defender, attack with a city raider promoted sword or comabat promoted horse archer to seriously damage or kill that tough guy.
3. Attack with city raider cats (which by now will probably survive)
4. If clean up is necessary, attack with regular units.

p.s. No warlords for me, so this is strictly vanilla.

Before Longbows come into play, I tend to win most cat attacks (unless its a double city garrison upgraded archer on a hill). If it's a well defended city:

1. Use a couple low-level collateral cats to weaken most/all defenders.
2. If there's still an undamaged defender, attack with a city raider promoted sword or comabat promoted horse archer to seriously damage or kill that tough guy.
3. Attack with city raider cats (which by now will probably survive)
4. If clean up is necessary, attack with regular units.

p.s. No warlords for me, so this is strictly vanilla.

:D
looks like i have another cat lover in this forum !
It just the exact same way i do it!

I used to be all city raider I and city bombardment, but then I saw some guy using full Drill cats and got me thinking!

If I'm building Cats specifically for war, then they have CR promotions; surviving a few more rounds of combat = more collateral damage anyway, near as I can tell.

But the problem is that I also have a group of Cats that are part of my defensive network, and they have Barrage. When the AI marches a SoD into your territory, you want to take it down to a manageable strength, fast, and those CR promotions are no help. In the end, there's usually a couple of these that survive, and they end up going along on the counterattack-- waste not, want not and all. It's not the end of the world if each and every unit is optimized, at least not on Noble.

MirvShag, you really should start building Trebs ASAP. They're the counter to Longbows, and even Musketmen. There were some complaints that the unit was too powrful, and maybe I'll change my mind, but right now they seem to allow warring in a previously 'dead' period of the game. The unit also seems to be the only way to take out AI Protective civs, which can get to CGIII (and more!) in a heartbeat. In my previous games, once the AI got Longbows, it was pretty much a race to Rifles or Grenadiers; now, war before then might be a productive option.

if ur cats have no chance of winning I'd stop making them, just keep enough to takedown the cultural. start using 2 normal attackers to kill 1 defender, instead of using 5 cats to somewhat weakan the defenders.
ok, ignore this guy. catapults cost as much as a sword and can withdraw and cause collateral damage. since you'll be using catapults longer than swords, soon, they become one of the cheapest units you can still build. suicide as many catapults as it takes before you send in your valuable troops! better to suicide fresh cheap units to keep your experienced troops rolling.

Before Longbows come into play, I tend to win most cat attacks (unless its a double city garrison upgraded archer on a hill). If it's a well defended city:

1. Use a couple low-level collateral cats to weaken most/all defenders.
2. If there's still an undamaged defender, attack with a city raider promoted sword or comabat promoted horse archer to seriously damage or kill that tough guy.
3. Attack with city raider cats (which by now will probably survive)
4. If clean up is necessary, attack with regular units.

p.s. No warlords for me, so this is strictly vanilla.

That's sort of what I do, although I sometimes use a CR cat to put a dent in an undamaged defender (#2 above) instead.

Regarding #3 and #4: At this stage, I choose whatever unit in my stack has the best chance of winning. Even that isn't a hard and fast rule: I would rather take a lower chance with a CRII cat than take say a 30% chance of losing a highly promoted city attacker unit like CRIII swordsman. I also consider which unit would immediately get another promotion if I use it. You also have to think about what units you want to save for moving into the city immediately to hold it against any counterattack. That's one nice thing about using CR cats to take down defenders - you can move in regular units that get defense bonuses to hold the city. With a road, you can fortify them, too.

It's also nice to have 4 cats with accuracy promotion, which you can use purely to take out cultural defense.