Anyone find it is damn near impossible to take over cities? I just spent an hour attacking one city and getting NOWHERE.

Somehow, 7 Knights, 10 war elephants, 5 catapults, 4 Axe men, 2 Crossbow men < 3 longbowman, Maceman, Pikeman, Swordsman. Not to mention the computer automatically switches its defender. You pick a Knight it automatically switches to a Pikeman as the defender which just makes it even that more impossible. Even after using the catapults to bombard. Eventually after about an hour and a million turns, they brought in one of those 12 food mounted units (forget the name) and just rolled my entire army with them.

I had a friend recommend this game and am just getting fed up with it. Is war not even viable in this game? This game is frustrating beyond any other game I have ever played.

Do you use your catapults just for bombarding? If so try attacking with them first - they have collateral damage and can hurt more than one enemy at the same time. You will lose some catapults but you will quickly weaken the enemy enough for you to move in.

War is very frustrating in this game, I agree, especially attacking cities.

The problem here is, the enemy seemed quite strong and have a counter for most units. Therefore, you may want to consider using musketmen, since it's hard to counter them at this stage except with knights (but if you include a pikeman in your stack this should be no problem).

Also, you need: lots of catapults for suicide attacks (bombarding cities don't usually worth it), and a good tech lead for military superiority.

I have tried to use the catapults as fodder but it doesn't seem that effective, maybe I should just get a lot of them and do it. I tried it again and eventually did get Musketmen...but for some reason Horse Archers > Musketmen? I just lost 2 musketmen in a row to Horse Archers. Lol, this wasn't even when I was assaulting a city or anything. :confused:

I wouldn't use musketmen. I don't go on the offence until I get some rifles, unless I see a weak neandrathal civ.

I have tried to use the catapults as fodder but it doesn't seem that effective, maybe I should just get a lot of them and do it. I tried it again and eventually did get Musketmen...but for some reason Horse Archers > Musketmen? I just lost 2 musketmen in a row to Horse Archers. Lol, this wasn't even when I was assaulting a city or anything. :confused:

Yes, that is strange. :confused:

Problem is combat in Civ4 depends a lot on luck.

Seriously though, the medieval age is not a very good time to go to war. As mourndraken said, it's best to wait until you get good gunpowder units.

All times are great for war. Excepts the post-rush period before construction :)

Medieval is the time when you have trebs to oppose to longbow, it's not too difficult

Those defense multipliers and promotions really influece the outcome. Just look at the winning chance the game calculates. It should show low numbers if you lose this much.

The fact that the AI changes the defender is there by design. It's the same for you when you get attacked. It just chooses the best defender for the attacking unit.
You can sometimes use this knowledge to determine the order in which you attack the city and minimize your losses by softening up the strong units a bit.

HTH

Musketman are quite awfull city attackers for they lack the right promotions. Macemen with CR line will beat Muskets despite lower base strength. (Well the Muskets are quite awfull for just everything, imho, tho i am sure some players will disagree).

The city defence the OP talking about do not sound that bad... Should be takeable with the said army - spend some turns on bombarding first or use a spy for revolt (to take away the % defence bonus), then hit it with 2 or 3 cats for Collateral damage... Then go in... You will loose a couple of Knigths, should not be many tho.

ill just say this

You can take a city with even Warriors, you just have to bring enough catapults with you :)
Bring down cultural defense to 0% then suicide your cats to damage the defending stack as much as possible
Only then use your main attackers
Also you must bring adequate numbers of non siege troops with you to capture the city in 1 turn after you suicided your catapults otherwise the defenders will heal and gain promotions.

As a newbie I love catapults and always attack with them first. They may start with low odds, but the collateral damage is just lovely. Also, by not sending in the city raiders before the catapults have done som proper damage the city raiders usually survive and I end up with som highly promoted veterans.

Also I never attack before my entire stack is ready. I want to take the city in one turn. If my target survives the units heal and gets experience. It's worth waiting a few extra turns before starting the assault.

Finally, if I'm planning on taking several cities I'm always looking for a possibility to take out some strategic resources forcing the AI out in the open and making it impossible for him to produce many types of units.

after the city defences hit less than 5% use those cats to cause as much collateral damage as possible, like Refar sez. If they all die, don't be disturbed because that's what they are supposed to do (cats are not survivors and don't have 9 lives). keep your knights and elephants away from that fortified pikeman. Those axemen are goners unless you upgrade them to maces or something.

When you are at tech parity, expect to give as good as you get as fas as city vulnerability. If they have better units, then you will need massive amounts of low tech bodies. Defence has more bouses than attackers. expect heavy losses. Bringing no city assault units to the fight is a very bad idea. Do you have swords ?

I find that a pre-gunpowder war takes at least a hundred years to grind to a stop.

Okay, I had this problem when I first played the game. I would dellibertly pick out the attacker I wanted and attack with one unit at a time. The defender would auto assign the best defender, not the defender shown. To counter this you must select every unit in the stack that can attack. The computer will sellect the best attacker and attack with the appropriate one.

To take this city try: 5 catipolts, 2 pikes, 2 crossbows, 10 knights, 3 longbows. Bombard with the catapolts till the defence is zero. Attack with the knights until you take the city. Fortify with the 3 longbows. Heal the other units and then move on to the next city. The pikes/spears adn x-bows are there to protect your stack.

As has been stated, you need more cats. It's really that simple.

well just my two cents. the combat system is great.. but i think it needs some looking at... what boggles me and it seems to be boggling him too. I have seen calavry beat a helicopter. a caval destory a destoryer. a few examples. while the combat is great, there are times when you just have to call BS.

Anyone find it is damn near impossible to take over cities? I just spent an hour attacking one city and getting NOWHERE.


No, I don't find that's true at all. Let's look at what happened to you and see if we can figure out what went wrong.


Somehow, 7 Knights, 10 war elephants, 5 catapults, 4 Axe men, 2 Crossbow men < 3 longbowman, Maceman, Pikeman, Swordsman.


17 decent attacking units (plus 5 cats) got waxed by 3 good defenders (longbows), 1 specialized defender (pike), and 2 attack units that aren't that good at defense? Wow.

Honestly, assuming you'd bombarded down the defenses, you shouldn't even need to do suicide cats against that stack with that attack force, although of course it would make it easier if you did. You should expect to lose, at most, 2 units each to the longbows and the pike (true about the pike only because all your good attackers are mounted). That's a loss of 8 units, which is ugly but remember this is worst-case. The weakened defenders should fall after that, and unless you get really unlucky you shouldn't lose any units attacking the maceman or (especially) the swordsman.

If you did suicide your cats, you might lose none of your other units against that city. Certainly you would lose fewer.

Are you really saying your whole attacking force was wiped by those defenders? Or are you just having a problem because your first attacker lost to the first defender? I'm getting a sense that may be it when you say this:


Not to mention the computer automatically switches its defender. You pick a Knight it automatically switches to a Pikeman as the defender which just makes it even that more impossible.


Yeah, as someone already explained, that happens. It's the way the game is designed. When you attack, your attacker is up against the best defender in the stack versus that attacker. Same is true when you get attacked, though.

When you go to war, you should expect to take casualties.

If you're really saying your whole stack was beaten by those defenders, which I find hard to believe actually, consider the following possibilities:

1) You say you bombarded the defenses. Did you take several turns and bombard them all the way to zero, or did you just bombard for one turn and then get impatient?

2) What kind of promotions do your units have? That can make a big difference.

I was playing the Europa Europa mod and I was finding it impossible to take Zürich (a Barbarian city of pop. 3) while playing as the Germans. I finally pulled out and concentrated on defense.

Someone mentioned trebuchets, consider getting these asap if you are going to be taking some cities. They are just BEASTLY city annihilating machines, provided that they are in a properly defended stack.

Also someone mentioned musketmen... idk but it seems like they would be nice to bring along for both defense and possibly some offense as it would seem they would be hard to directly counter.

One other point....

As I learned the hard way, do not start attacking until you think you can take the city in one or two turns. If you attack turn after turn you are just letting the defenders promote up the line. Beating a CGI (City-Garrison I) longbow is much easier than taking on a CGIII, GII (Guerrilla II) longbow. (I just finished a game where the well-promoted longbow was a better defender than a rifle).

In short, You should have at least a 3:2 advantage in numbers when attacking a city assuming tech-equal units. (Axe vs archers, Maces vs. Longbows, etc).

If that bad guys have longbows and pikes, I would really want maces before I would even think about attacking...and only than with a bunch of cats to suicide attack first.

best time for war is in the beginning with the incans, build a few of their UUs and go attack a city, if you get lucky and fina a city right next to you with a civ that starts with no warror your in luck.

That's true McGoo (lol), especially when you consider the additional pain brought to your civilization from prolonged war in the form of unhappiness. I had a horribly rough war that is making my current game rather difficult as I deal with the aftermath. I had something like 14 unhappiness per city pre-jail and pre-Mt.Rushmore o.O So basically many turns of no science... very hard playing catchup.

Anyone find it is damn near impossible to take over cities? I just spent an hour attacking one city and getting NOWHERE.

How to take over an enemy fortress/city housing massive number of defenders? It's really easy! Just have a couple of your units ride up to their front gate and ask them to abandon their city.:) Seriously, I'm not kidding! I have taken countless cities with this tactic. If you really want to know how to implement this tactic, I will explain step by step.

Btw, you can also learn this tactic by watching Ran (an old Japanese movie masterpiece). You don't really need a lot of units, just some good old fashion warring tactic. Hint: If you ask your enemy to abandon their city, they probably won't listen to you. However, if you lure them into thinking that it's a great idea to abandon their city, they will definitely do so. Once their city is abandoned, a couple of your units can just move in with ease and that's how we take over an enemy fortress (nearly impossible to take by force).

PS: If I forget to follow up with this post (since I don't usually post here), PM me.

One other point....

As I learned the hard way, do not start attacking until you think you can take the city in one or two turns. If you attack turn after turn you are just letting the defenders promote up the line. Beating a CGI (City-Garrison I) longbow is much easier than taking on a CGIII, GII (Guerrilla II) longbow. (I just finished a game where the well-promoted longbow was a better defender than a rifle).

In short, You should have at least a 3:2 advantage in numbers when attacking a city assuming tech-equal units. (Axe vs archers, Maces vs. Longbows, etc).

If that bad guys have longbows and pikes, I would really want maces before I would even think about attacking...and only than with a bunch of cats to suicide attack first.

By the same token as you conquer cities your units will get promotions. You will lose fewer troops as you take an AI's cities. Plus as his cities fall his research and ability to replenish his troops will tank.

Don't despair. Conquering another civ should be hard and it is. You will pay for it short term but will be much stronger in the end.

As someone else said, your stack was imbalanced with mounted units and the defender had a pikeman in his stack which was probably fortified. Since you included some foot soldiers and artillery and were not assaulting the city you should have included a few city raider promoted macemen in your stack, one could have been upgraded from the axeman.

Macemen are good at targetting the top longbow defenders whereas mounted will be facing pikemen which works bad in most situations due to the where the pikes 100% bonus against mounted and in cities even worse as if the pike has been static for 5 turns will have another 25% fortification bonus.

Was the city on a hill by any chance, that increases defensive bonuses and more so for longbows?

you need to use tactics! If this is a core city deep inside enemy territory, then attack other towns. If this is a border city, just declare cease fire. After 3-4 turns, the defenders should move away a bit, and redeclare war again and see if this helps. I often find enemy usually move away most of their defenders and by the time I get to their border cities again, they only have 2 to 3 units defending, which is pretty easy.

Hmmm... does a ceasefire temporarily alleviate war discontent?

Be ready to lose a LOT of cats. Collateral damage for the win. (like others have mentioned). I will agree.:)

Hmmm... does a ceasefire temporarily alleviate war discontent?

Yes (starting on the next turn I think). If you DoW again it all comes back though. It fades gradually.

Ah that could be a good tactic I'll have to keep that in mind!

The best way that I have found to take cities is to make lots of City Raider-promoted trebuchet and have them attack first after busting up the city's defenses. City Raider helps increase the chance of the trebuchet surviving their attacks, and thus helping them gain more exp for more City Raider promotions, and other promotions if they manage to get past level 3 or 4.