Every city is a Minas Tirith...

Hi guyz, here I am because I find more and more annoying dealing with enemy cities.
I sear it's not only to whine (but also ), I just want to understand if I'm doing anything wrong since I'm not a long time player.
My case is this:

I am trying to conquer the last egyptian city, Thebes, which is also the egyptian capital.
The city has something like 34 of defense (I know, is quite a lot).
Whatever, WHATEVER I try doing, the city won't fall.
I am attacking it with 3 catapults, 1 company of archers, 6 melee units.
What pisses my off is:

-the city self-heals every turn for 5 hps. 5HPS!?! ARE U KIDDING ME? What's the meaning of it, do they have some kind of auto regenerative wall?

-I am attacking with 3 catapults. It's not a %@!? sling, it's a catapult. You wanna know the damage? Most times 1 dmg dealt by each catapult. ARE U KIDDING ME? Their archers strike each turn dealing 3 or 4 dmg, and a catapult does 1 dmg? Who's the engineer behind this count fail?

-Why on earth is the city able to attack u BOTH when it's its turn to attack AND when u assault it? and the most ridiculous thing, when they attack you = 1 dmg dealt (2 at most, but rarely), when you assault them...A WHOLE <snip> BATTALION WIPED AWAY IN JUST ONE HIT...really, I need to know this, who's the genius behind this system?

-They have one unit garrisoned, 1 company of archers. Fine. With a trick I managed to take them out of their nest, and kill them. I start attacking the city, and guess what? A trireme comes back from the sea and garrisons the city...FFS, A BOAT! How on earth is a boat supposed to attack from inside a city? Staying on ç"!@ dry land? Are u kidding me again?

Ok, since I'm not only a whiner (just a little ) I'm here to get if cities are really overpowered, as I do believe, and must be balanced, or it's just me not grasping the right technique to assault it.
I understand making the game slightly harder to increase the challenge and the longevity.
But I just hate, HATE games where developers just make things IMPOSSIBLE and tend to cheat just to pretend to improve the challenge. (If any of you ever played Empire Total War on very hard will understand...).

Well, here I am.
Any hints on how to face this are well accepted.
Any shared complaints too.
Thx, and sorry for sharing my frustrations.

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Off the top of my head (I'm at work right now and haven't played in couple of weeks due to graphics card failure and still waiting for new one to arrive), I think the issue is relative strength. The catapult is about 10-12 iirc. So attacking a 34 strength unit (in this case the city) is always going to fail.

I would suggest pulling back a few tiles and kill any foolish unit that leaves the safety of the city and rush your research towards trebuchets (spelling?), then when they are nearly ready pull your catapults back to your own tiles in time to upgrade and go back to the city to lay siege again.

As for the city regeneration, I believe it's equal to the city popuation, so a way to reduce that would be to pillage the lands around the city to starve them. Horsemen are good for this as they can move in, pillage and run away again.

It's like Lunchmoney sais: Cities heal every turn (just as units do) and your units are too weak to conquer a 34 strength city! Did you fall back in techs or forgot to upgrade? What kind of melee units did you use, swords or longswords??? FWIW my advice is: cancel this hopeless mission, settle for peace, upgrade your units and try again later!

I'd agree except for the peace part.

But remember, you are going to take a massive diplomacy hit for killing his last city.

Major_Heartfire said:

I'd agree except for the peace part.

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This might be true if the attacking units were still alive and upgradable. But maybe I jumped to conclusions too fast. It depends on the availability of replacing units,techs, gold, .... And maybe the difficulty level would be nice to know. I myself am testing the G&K civs and gamemechanics at prince (on vanilla playing at emperor level) and find taking cities just a little harder now.

My general advice in trying to conquer cities is first: check the numer and strength of the units you need and if tha's enough to bring down city defenses in one or two turns, second: is the city directly accessable from sufficient tiles (especially important for melee units), third: are there enough tiles to position your siege/ranged units on? If one of the answers is NO, you may have to reconsider about attacking the city.
Maybe it is best to watch some Let's Play videos from experienced players to see how they conquer cities. Very informative!
Also, horse based units are very often extremely useful in taking cities, in spite of the penalty they get for this. The issue is that most of them may move after attacking, which makes it possible to attack multiple times from one accessable tile next to the city. Hit and run can be a very powerful tactics to bring down city defences!

Literally lay siege to his last city. Pillage all the tiles then back out, kill everything he produces and capture his workers. Push your techs to upgrade your Catapults to Trebuchets along with your other units. They are too weak to effectively take a city so strong.

Unfortunatelly, cities strenght in Civ5 is strangely A LOT variable. And sometimes, it will prevent you to conquer, as much simple as that.

I'm playing on Warlord to be sure to have the advantage every time (as if I was playing a Civ2 Deity game when you know the mechanics), and I stucked sometimes on very odd things, like Russia having ALL of its cities at strenght 35+ when only at medieval.

To be comfortable with conquering, I usually assure myself that my units strenght is approximatively equal to the city I want. For example, if the city I want is 35 strenght, I will not conquer it before Infantry. And by the time, usually the strenght goes up... but with fast teching it doesn't go too far.

I also stuck one time with a 70/80 + city, I think it was Gandhi, really wonder how it managed toi do that that early. I simply renounced, and I don't even remember if I continued the game.

Civ5 is a harsh, frustrating piece of junk, when it's not happiness it's city strenght, strong city surrounded by hills with Great Wall or only one accessible hexagon of land. Other time, it's diplomacy, being attacked from every parts, other times it's gold, cruelly lacking because you simply is not on... a river.

The best strategy for this type of FAILS, is restarting a game. Sometimes you can prevent your problems to come back, by anticipating and adapting your strategy (when you know that weak civs are systematically ganged up, you want to have a minimum of military units even if you don't want to go to war), but sometimes there will be another bone, or the same when you don't have the solution. For example, I wonder what I will do if I stuck again with a 70/80 strenght enemy city that is my only close neighbour. Probably restart the game.

That's because of those things that I play on Warlords. First for the happiness boost (I can play on Prince but I don't like it, I like to expand wherever I want), second for all the hidden mechanics mess.

Civ5 is so unclear. You have to waste entire games, entire hours in order to figure certain things. It's really play & retry, when everything should be clear first. Or sensitive things to be underlined.

I see two possible Civ6 : one that renodes with the kind History simulation wich isn't a strategy game, only something that let us navigate between the eras, another one that makes the effort to be transparent so that the player is aware of its mechanics the first time he plays. I would prefer the first IMO, with civs mutation, fall, emergence etc... that doesn't frutrate the player and explains why it shouldn't be. No, I would prefer Civ6 to be both of those, actually.

Nowadays, Civ5 is so frustrating.

I found the mechanics of Civ5 to be very clear. I say that as someone who found Civ4 to be a little intimidating in its mechanics. Isn't one of its most common criticisms that it is too simplified compared to previous games?

I find the game very easy to win with any kind of strategy until Immortal, where I have to buckle down and play serious. On any other difficulty, I'd almost never consider restarting. If you're having so much trouble, especially on Warlord, you're missing some important fundamentals.

I'd suggest reading some guides on the game, or simply switching to something else. A single game of Civ5 can take 10 hours or so-why put yourself through that if you find it so annoying?

kjades said:

But I just hate, HATE games where developers just make things IMPOSSIBLE and tend to cheat just to pretend to improve the challenge. (If any of you ever played Empire Total War on very hard will understand...).

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You're complaining that trying to capture provinces on a Very Hard setting is ... very hard?

Naokaukodem said:

Unfortunatelly, cities strenght in Civ5 is strangely A LOT variable. And sometimes, it will prevent you to conquer, as much simple as that.

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I suspect the AI likes to use defensive improvements. Its cities always have higher strength than mine at an equivalent population level. It may also be that this is one of the AI advantages.

I'm playing on Warlord to be sure to have the advantage every time (as if I was playing a Civ2 Deity game when you know the mechanics), and I stucked sometimes on very odd things, like Russia having ALL of its cities at strenght 35+ when only at medieval.

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35 is reasonable in the medieval era, I think. In one recent game as the Huns my attacks started failing at 30-35 city strength, which happened in the late medieval or early Renaissance (or, as these were city-states, the CS equivalent).

To be comfortable with conquering, I usually assure myself that my units strenght is approximatively equal to the city I want. For example, if the city I want is 35 strenght, I will not conquer it before Infantry. And by the time, usually the strenght goes up... but with fast teching it doesn't go too far.

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That's not a good approach; although it may work on Warlord, you aren't going to be teching to Infantry before everyone has city strength 90+ on higher levels, so it's not a habit to be in. Bear in mind the 200% bonus siege weapons get - so a 10 strength catapult is attacking at strength 30. Also, of course, if you attack a strength 30 unit with a strength 30 unit, you'll deal as much damage to it as it will to you - so you'll take a lot of damage per attack, making it hard to launch further attacks.

You need to attack cities with multiple units, and have them supported by multiple siege weapons and possibly other ranged units to boot. Once cities get too strong for composite bows (very early), ranged units that aren't siege weapons won't do much damage by themselves until you get to gatling guns, which can just about defeat equivalent-era cities.

Civ5 is a harsh, frustrating piece of junk, when it's not happiness it's city strenght, strong city surrounded by hills with Great Wall or only one accessible hexagon of land.

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Hit it from the sea?

Other time, it's diplomacy, being attacked from every parts

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Engage in diplomacy yourself and this stops happening.

other times it's gold, cruelly lacking because you simply is not on... a river.

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Gold is rather easy because each gold you farm = 1 gold in the bank (in contrast to commerce in earlier games), and past Currency there are a lot of ways to make gold. Plantation luxuries are everywhere and most of them produce large amounts of gold when farmed, usually better than non-resource tiles along a river.

The best strategy for this type of FAILS, is restarting a game. Sometimes you can prevent your problems to come back, by anticipating and adapting your strategy (when you know that weak civs are systematically ganged up, you want to have a minimum of military units even if you don't want to go to war), but sometimes there will be another bone, or the same when you don't have the solution. For example, I wonder what I will do if I stuck again with a 70/80 strenght enemy city that is my only close neighbour. Probably restart the game.

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Don't bother attacking it if you haven't worked out an effective way to capture it? You can win a war without wiping out the enemy - just look threatening enough and ask for peace, or just keep up your defence. The AI isn't good at adapting its strategy - if you have a force it can't break through once, chances are it won't be able to break through on its next attempt either.

That's because of those things that I play on Warlords. First for the happiness boost (I can play on Prince but I don't like it, I like to expand wherever I want),

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I'm playing tall on Emperor with 4 cities at the moment, all above size 10 (the capital is close to size 20), but I still have 12 happiness. As another poster said, you must be doing something wrong.

second for all the hidden mechanics mess.

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Hidden mechanics?

If you have the units of which I am assuming which are archers, catapults and a few basic swordsmen or even warriors, 32 defense city is far too strong to attack especially with the info you've given. I am going to assume you are playing on Prince or lesser difficulty, but if you intend to attack with said units, I would do it much earlier as AI in the game are much less aggressive and would like to make peace early game if you defeat a unit or two (assuming they have one or two cities only). Now I'm not sure how to fix your situation, but I'll give you my two cents on my approach. Usually when I tend to go for domination victories or early game civ killing (usually on Prince or lower difficulty) I rush to long swordsmen and produce about 4 - 6 swordsmen and go city smashing. With some back up this is a fairly easy task as swordsmen are quite buff comparatively if you are rushing to them. With that said, it's always easiest using the Japanese to do this strategy.

Zednaught said:

I found the mechanics of Civ5 to be very clear. I say that as someone who found Civ4 to be a little intimidating in its mechanics. Isn't one of its most common criticisms that it is too simplified compared to previous games?

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It's not because it's common criticisms that it's right.

I find the game very easy to win with any kind of strategy until Immortal, where I have to buckle down and play serious. On any other difficulty, I'd almost never consider restarting. If you're having so much trouble, especially on Warlord, you're missing some important fundamentals.

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You didn't get me. In Warlords, I win all the time whatever I do. But I feel the early game interesting enough. I like to hunt ruins and grab those shiny resources.

I'd suggest reading some guides on the game, or simply switching to something else. A single game of Civ5 can take 10 hours or so-why put yourself through that if you find it so annoying?

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I've found it annoying, and I still find it annoying in higher difficulty levels. But I'm playing Warlord-Prince, so it's fine.

PhilBowles said:

That's not a good approach; although it may work on Warlord, you aren't going to be teching to Infantry before everyone has city strength 90+ on higher levels, so it's not a habit to be in. Bear in mind the 200% bonus siege weapons get - so a 10 strength catapult is attacking at strength 30. Also, of course, if you attack a strength 30 unit with a strength 30 unit, you'll deal as much damage to it as it will to you - so you'll take a lot of damage per attack, making it hard to launch further attacks.

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All cities 90+ strenght on higher levels ? Vanilla ?

You need to attack cities with multiple units, and have them supported by multiple siege weapons and possibly other ranged units to boot. Once cities get too strong for composite bows (very early), ranged units that aren't siege weapons won't do much damage by themselves until you get to gatling guns, which can just about defeat equivalent-era cities.

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LOL, I know that. And that doesn't tell me how to beat 90+ strenght cities without GDRs or nuclear weapons.

Hit it from the sea?

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And for the hilled/moutained/great walled ones ?

Engage in diplomacy yourself and this stops happening.

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Wow, what an advice ! Simple, clear... no kidding, what does that mean ?

Gold is rather easy because each gold you farm = 1 gold in the bank (in contrast to commerce in earlier games), and past Currency there are a lot of ways to make gold. Plantation luxuries are everywhere and most of them produce large amounts of gold when farmed, usually better than non-resource tiles along a river.

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No. Plantations are much more less common that you seem to think. Currency ? What do you have ? Markets ? I have markets in every city of course, every game and as soon as possible, they are such a no brainer. As to gold being much easier than commerce, I don't think so, the only operation less to do is the percentage one. Other than that, gold per turns fluctuates strangely from a turn to another.

Don't bother attacking it if you haven't worked out an effective way to capture it? You can win a war without wiping out the enemy - just look threatening enough and ask for peace, or just keep up your defence. The AI isn't good at adapting its strategy - if you have a force it can't break through once, chances are it won't be able to break through on its next attempt either.

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I don't want to win a war, I want to take the enemy capital, especially if it's close to me.

I'm playing tall on Emperor with 4 cities at the moment, all above size 10 (the capital is close to size 20), but I still have 12 happiness. As another poster said, you must be doing something wrong.

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Well you are lucky.

Hidden mechanics?

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For example the AI behavior : if you build enough military units, it won't attack you. You have to know that, and you have to know that they can see your military whatever you do. If you don't know that, you will not succeed in higher difficulty levels, not even in lower ones by the way.

Naokaukodem said:

To be comfortable with conquering, I usually assure myself that my units strenght is approximatively equal to the city I want.
.

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This way you will never be able to get a domination win, or conquer a capitol. At the time you get rifles most capitols will be strength 60 or up. Ranged attacks (siege) are the key. When possible, stay out of the cities combat range untill defenses are low, or you can reach the city with 3-4 strong units.

Last night as Haile Selassi I conquered Babylon (strength 126 + The Great Wall). I used 6 bombers (str 65), two battleships (str 65) and a single tank (str 70) to do the trick. After three rounds of bombing, Babylons defenses were completely gone and my tank only had to drive into the city.

I think that Ai-cities, especially capitols, tend to build defensive buildings a lot more.

Dude, strength 34 capital, and you have strength 8 warriors and archers and catapults.... do the math. You're telling men armed with stone clubs and hunting bows backed up with catapults to go assault an extremely protected city. It can be done but, you'll lose tons and tons and tons if you can somehow reinforce same amount each single turn.

This just reminded me of the time in vanilla civ5 when i went to war against persia, my longswordmen managed to find the capital but, it had like str 40, i shat my pants and fled, and focused on all other cities he had. i didn't even dare to attack it til I got riflemen and cannons ready to go, if i remember correctly, i sent like 15+ rifleman double line deep with 10ish cannons as the third row and encircled the capital out of range of the city's firing range and persia actually had a surprise reserve but it was too few, its last ditch reinforcement got torn apart and then I advanced on the city and fortified my arse on the enemy capital's first ring with cannons in 2nd ring and extra rifleman reinforcements on third line. 2-3 turns of bombardment and persopolis is gone.

if you feel like that's too much trouble.

download sdk and use firetuner and worldbuild to your hearts content and spam giant death robots for funneths.

Naokaukodem said:

All cities 90+ strenght on higher levels ? Vanilla ?

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Not all cities, but capitals and most major cities. The only full-on domination game I've played to the end was in vanilla.

LOL, I know that. And that doesn't tell me how to beat 90+ strenght cities without GDRs or nuclear weapons.

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Bombers and artillery. Bombers are cheap, numerous, and not limited to the number you can stick in a three-tile radius around the city with space for melee units. A nuke won't do more than halve the hitpoints of a large late-game city by itself, though it definitely speeds up the process.

And for the hilled/moutained/great walled ones ?

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They're difficult to take by design. Best option if there isn't room to place units around it is to leave it alone until you get Artillery, or hit it from the sea if it's close enough to the coast to shoot with Galleas/Frigates. Although personally I've never really noticed the Great Wall when attacking AI cities in a civ that has it. If the city's in hills or forests the Great Wall doesn't do anything anyway, since early-era units aren't moving at more than 1 tile a turn through this terrain to begin with.

Wow, what an advice ! Simple, clear... no kidding, what does that mean ?

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Make friends and influence people...

No. Plantations are much more less common that you seem to think.

Strange, I get vast numbers of them. I've had cities founded with access to 3 sugar before now, which is enough to maintain your civ for much of the early game by itself. In my current game there are at least six incense tiles within the radii of two of my cities. Sea resources are good earners too.

Currency ? What do you have ? Markets ?

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In vanilla, which you sound as though you're playing, you also have Macchu Picchu. Of course you also have trading posts by the time you reach Trapping, rather than having to wait until you get Guilds.

I have markets in every city of course, every game and as soon as possible, they are such a no brainer. As to gold being much easier than commerce, I don't think so, the only operation less to do is the percentage one

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.

It's easier because you get every 1 gold for fewer workers - and you don't have the slider set mostly to science eating up all that commerce.

Other than that, gold per turns fluctuates strangely from a turn to another.

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It does sometimes, which is odd. But your problem is likely not having too little gold, but spending too much. It's easy to duplicate buildings unnecessarily or produce more units than you actually need, all of which costs maintenance you probably shouldn't be paying.

I don't want to win a war, I want to take the enemy capital, especially if it's close to me.

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Well, that's an entire victory condition, and if you have a victory condition which involves taking a maximum of 12 capitals in 6,000 years, you'd hope they're hard to take. Most of the time you won't be able to take capitals in the early game unless you rush right at the start (Rome can hit a bit later with its overstrength Legions and unique catapult, but for anyone else - Huns included assuming the enemy has built any units to defend - once you're into the Classical Era taking capitals becomes difficult).

Well you are lucky.

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No, this is pretty standard - although I usually have a wider empire with slightly smaller cities (at least a smaller capital). Luck doesn't have a lot to do with success in this game.

For example the AI behavior : if you build enough military units, it won't attack you. You have to know that, and you have to know that they can see your military whatever you do. If you don't know that, you will not succeed in higher difficulty levels, not even in lower ones by the way.

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You already have your own Advisor telling you what the other civs' military strength is - it makes sense that the AI has an equivalent, which isn't in any way "hidden". The other is common sense as soon as you learn that the AI is likely to be aggressive early in the game (which takes a few games to identify as a consistent pattern, certainly).

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It sounds like you just need to buff up more before you attack. If you can, get your archers up to range 3 so you can attack from beyond the cities attack and/or add more ranged damage.

Your melee units should also have at least the first heal promotion and cover.

Even with the right tactics you'll sometimes find a city that is just very hard to take because of terrain. When that happens just go fight somewhere else until you have the upgrades / units to overcome whatever the limitation is.

Post up a screen shot if you'd like more specific advice on how to take this city.

Haha! That first post is gold! I agree that melee naval units shouldn't be able to attack when garrisoned in the city. I think you could have taken out Thebes with those units if you went after it first but since you took the other cities, they've had time to build up defences and now your units need upgrades to take the capital.

Basically, if your siege units start dying before they can dent a city, it's the game's way of telling you you need better siege units.

The most noticeable time this happens for me is the Industrial Era: cities get a huge boost to defense when they enter Industrial (presumably to simulate more widespread firearms, I don't know). Either way I find that cannons suddenly seem very weak to those cursed rocket bombardments. This means you need to come back when you have Artillery or Great War Bombers, or at least a bit more cannon-fodder.

Get more catapults. Capital cities are always hard to get. Sometimes it takes surrounding the city with catapults and bombarding it so hard it can only repair a little next turn. then you go in with the troops.

Oh yes, have LOTS of troops INFRONT of the catapults so that they take the city attacks (many will be destroyed), but they`ll hopefully ignore your catapults. But lots of catapults are essential, 3 is not enough. Get 5.

Uberfrog said:

The most noticeable time this happens for me is the Industrial Era: cities get a huge boost to defense when they enter Industrial (presumably to simulate more widespread firearms, I don't know). Either way I find that cannons suddenly seem very weak to those cursed rocket bombardments. This means you need to come back when you have Artillery or Great War Bombers, or at least a bit more cannon-fodder.

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Cannons should do well against Industrial cities. The problem comes when using Trebuchets to chop them down; you can still do it (use Trebs to whittle a Industrial city), but just bring and ring more of them. They die real quick from pesky double shots.

Even though your catapaults are a bit weak for that city, you should be doing (considerably) more than 1 damage.
Do you have a save when it's your turn? There's something amiss.