Wars being delayed by terrain

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King
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Mar 12, 2008
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I have noticed that it is very difficult to take cities pre-dynamite because the AI loves to settle cities right behind multiple forests/hills. By the time my seige engines (and melee units) get into range and setup, they are shredded by the city + ranged units. The only counter seems to be to wait till i get dynamite, which means no progress still the industrial age...and the AI just doesn't care how many of your troops you kill, they only offer peace if they feel a city is threatened.
 
You send first your mele unit infront, when the AI start to double attack them with archer and city arrow, u move your siege weapon and archer, sometime u must move it close to the city because the terrain avoid you to take the ranges. When one of your mele unit it wounded, let them heal, and the AI will keep double attack the unit and ignore the others unit, because they focus the attack to the one who wounded. And you can attack the city with your range unit, and finalize it with your mele even sometime your horse unit despite it get city attack penalty, but if it in good shapes and the city already ready be to taken, you just need to deliver the last blow and it fall.

Capturing the city is the easiest, but to maintain the city with all of the happiness things and all of the penalty is the hardest, I always cover my economy by capturing enemy city and give it to other player with ransom of money, lux and gpt. And capturing the city is one of my key element to win the game and to control who fight who in civ 5.
 
My units get focused fired and die before i can switch them out.

I just had a game where i was warring with polynesia who had the great wall built. It was nearly impossible to make any progress because it took two turns for my melee units to get into melee range (which also meant 2 turns for my ranged units to get into range). During that time, his ranged units and cities would just focus fire my units down one by one.

Im starting to get frustrated by combat in civ 5. The AI just doesnt care if they lose 10 units while attacking your city to achieve nothing...they will continue warring forever. The AI only seems to ask for peace when you are close to taking out one of their cities.
 
I understand what you mean, I usually attack enemy city with 3 range unit and 3 mele or more (in condition I already kill most of their unit near my city border, well they will spend their gold on buying new unit to defend it, sometime it can be also cause a problem, thats why I always produce new unit and accumulate it when I'm in the state of war in case if I do a wrong move, it don't totally fail my siege), mele walk infront each range unit, to anticipate any direct attack to my range unit. So when the mele unit start to enter city border and enter the attack range (while my range unit still outside from their attack range) they start to shot my mele unit. and I directly heal, while the other unit walk infront of the city, I order the mele to fortify while the range unit start the siege, and enemy unit focusing to shot wounded unit.

There are only some possibility that your unit die before it approach enemy city that rely their defense only with city arrow and a garrison range unit,

1. When your unit get wounded, you keep them active on the siege instead stop for healing.
2. Their technology way to advance from yours.

I always promote my unit with something that can enchant the healing, so when it walk with formation, it becoming stronger (I always go on honor) and heal more wounded. Another tips, use swordman when you go on siege, they are stronger on taking arrow damages, they really works as your tanks. Maybe you can post the picture and also your difficulty level. In vanila I play in high difficulty level, but in the new expansion honestly speaking I still try the difficulty so I play on prince, but it is so easy for me, but comparing to vanila prince the AI is indeed smarter and harder. But with these tactic I easily win the war in civ 5 vanila on emperor level.
 
You just have to make sure that the very first volley of attacks will take a huge chunk of the city's health. And bring at least two melee units.

Also, there really are cases when the city is damn near-unassailable. Like if it's behind a river, on a hill where the only patch of open terrain is on your side of the river and you can't make it around the city because it's just all rough terrain out there. In that case, you have no choice but to switch plans and conquer something else, or just tech hard and come back. No city is tough enough when faced with Siege-promoted, double firing Artillery. Or Rocket Artillery, for that matter (or if you warmongered enough already, a three-range cannon). Also be sure to use spotters. Promoted scouts are great for this. If you're warmongering anyway, your main cities will have a Barracks and an Armory. Roll out a scout from them, and take the visibility promotions. This will tide you over until helicopters.

Also, Blitz is not that strong anymore. If you want to be able to take cities quickly, get the promotions you want for terrain (Shock or Drill), get March and have a Medic (on the same unit or another one.).
 
Now I really understand what question mean after I siege Constantinople and Delhi in my game. My catalput, is hit by both archer (ordinary archer not composite) and city arrow, and it have a full health, one hit it get me around 65, another it directly kill my unit. But I don't experiences it in other city just capital. Maybe in the new expansion they add more range power in capital city, if it combine with tradition which give them 50 percent range attack also with greatwall, well, it will be a lake of swords and spears.

In my game, my spearman can't hold the siege, the healing and the damages that it takes its have a far distinction. But it not make it impossible to be conquer, I lost 3-4 unit because my recklessness I don't put any strategy and careful on my siege, 1 of my keshik, spearman, catalput were killed. But my swordman can stand the double attack by both city wall and arrow, the health still reducing but unlike spearman which more vulnerable to take the damages.

I think u must lay siege in huge number of army, if you can't Syntax already mention a very good tactic, just capture the other non capital city, you can keep it or sell it to your friend, changes it for gold to buy more unit, or for gpt so you can hold more unit. But yes, your position must be quite challenging.
 
You need to learn to fear the Great Wall. I still have memories assaulting Iroquois forestlands with the Great wall, my units slogging slowly while assaulted on all sides.

On my current game I'm Denmark, I have probably the strongest navy with many frigates, privateers, a great admiral.. it's renaissance era.

I declared war against Inca with my ally Persia, and in my head figured that my navy would bombard their troops and coastal cities and my experienced Ski Infantries (some of them have Berserker promotions still too!) would walk over the enemy.

BUT!
I made a strategical error: Incan lands where a super-hilly area(map was Perfect World) and they had no coastal cities, meaning I couldnt bombard their cities with my strong navy and do an amphibious assault Denmark is good for.
Also hills meant that my frigates couldnt bombard far into inland because they didn't get line of sight and had no indirect fire like battleships too.

Now it's a big struggle, my ski infantry is fortified itself and are sustaining assault from Incas, while I'm desperately trying to create cannons to bring forth the assault against the Incan capital that's chock full of Wonders..
(it's a lot of fun, I'm glad the stacks are gone from Civ V)
 
Im not having problems with just one city + 1 ranged garrison...the problem is when the AI has a ranged army sitting there just focused firing everything i have down, or they hit me from the flanks when i am attacking the city.

I cant do a white peace because the AI is ******ed and thinks losing 10 units to kill nothing means its winning.

So every game ends up in the same scenario...i sit and turtle to dynamite. And the most annoying thing is that on king, the AI outresearches me even though i have better cities and wonders. How?
 
I still not finish playing my prince game, it will be take times to win because I play it in huge map and maxium civ and city state but I'm positively winning, I can build any wonder that I want and I'm top on science, I have Longsword man and Keshik while other still use swordman, but some of them have knight, and I'm top on sciences. But I don't know what exactly happen on King Difficulty, maybe it can be difference experiences. I will try it soon after I finish my games.

From my experiences, siege a city now its harder, but I still find it enjoyable, I lost more units, and I also get flank by their archer also their horseman. But I still manages to beat them with large army, also with my keshik which can easily dancing hit and run without letting the enemy to even touch their hair.

I can't give you fair advice, since I not yet try in King difficulty well I also want to read other respond on your post. Btw, bit out of topic, combination Keshik and greatwall, it must be so epic :) I will try it on my king games :D
 
Yea i can see how keshiks make things easy. I had camel archers and i could safely bombard cities without any threat to them (the downside was that i had no cavalry melee unit to take the city).

Then the game moved to another era, and well....
 
all of those unit becoming useless, yea.. but that balances the game for mongol, Keshik is way so powerful. But for camel archer, it bit waste. I hope they put both range unit promotion and mele promotion on terrain bonus in a same promotion, so it will not waste when it upgrade. How is your game? you already manage the siege?
 
A lot of horsemeat always does the trick!

A horseman will die the next turn, pillage.

2-3 horses, 2-3 swords and a few archers will take any city down.
 
Maybe we should consider that some cities are difficult to capture because they're supposed to be? If it was as simple as throwing more swordmen and siege weapons at the city, where would the strategy be in that? War is not always the immediate solution, assuming a foreign city is a problem at all in the first place. The great thing about Civ is you can change plans if something's not working out.
 
Maybe we should consider that some cities are difficult to capture because they're supposed to be? If it was as simple as throwing more swordmen and siege weapons at the city, where would the strategy be in that? War is not always the immediate solution, assuming a foreign city is a problem at all in the first place. The great thing about Civ is you can change plans if something's not working out.

Yea. I agree. In reality, a lot of cities started in difficult to access places because it was safe from attack or made attack very difficlut. Castles near or on high hills was not unusual.
 
When a city sits on a strong position, the best way to attack is from the roadway, take some reroute or grab a satelite city if you can. At WW2, the fall of germany is written at Normandy, not at Berlin.
 
Maybe we should consider that some cities are difficult to capture because they're supposed to be? If it was as simple as throwing more swordmen and siege weapons at the city, where would the strategy be in that? War is not always the immediate solution, assuming a foreign city is a problem at all in the first place. The great thing about Civ is you can change plans if something's not working out.

Yes, but even in the ancient/classic eras there were plenty of ways to take such cities (and such cities did fall). Those solutions aren't present in civ 5...and weapons that did fire indirectly (like the catapault/trebutchet) can't in game, while cities magically can. How exactly is it that cities can see and fire indirectly anyway?

The only solution in civ 5 is to turtle and tech to dynamite, and after that you "win" because it is so powerful it invalidates everything the opponent does, unless they can tech to dynamite themselves (or air power).
 
In medieval era siege a city is harder than in modern area. A city like Constatinople its already been siege for hundreds year for its strategical position. From these hundreds years of trial and error, the Roman Catholics succeed one and later the Muslim in the time of Fatih Sultan, and change that name to Islambul later Istanbul. So for me its alright and quite challenging if some city is so hard to siege, and it is still acceptable.

And more advance the technology more easier the siege, it valid. Just imagine 500 year of trial to siege a city, but the things that must be balance maybe in civ5, the reward after player capture a city, it very not rewarding at all. The combat is fun, but capturing a city punish me so hardly more than then enemy unit punish me. But in this new expansion, things are more playable. Even I feel the civ5 punish the player so harshly when we capturing the city.
 
Workers can be a very valuable asset for an attacking army.

You can use them to cut down Forests and Jungles that are in the way. The AI's rarely bombard workers (though with G&K they seem more likely to attack embarked civilian units). Yes, they might occasionally be captured but that can work in your advantage.

The most valuable use I've found for workers is to draw out enemy units (especially from the city). I usually just kill the unit and take the worker back.

Workers can also be useful to "defend" your units by blocking other units. Normally, human players cannot take a worker and still attack with the same unit (ignoring Blitz and similar promotions). So that's one use in multi-player. Sometimes the AI seems to be able to ignore this rule (take a worker and still attack) just like how it is sometimes able to stack units but this is not always the case. I still find that blocking with workers can save me from getting attacked. Also, blocking with embarked workers can be helpful against other embarked units and also melee ships (but they die very easily to ranged attacks).

Uh, please don't give me any slack for using civilians as meat shields during wars! :blush:
 
:lol: thats a nice tips and exploit really. So far I use enemy worker that I got to walking around their territory. So I know their army position, and can put my army accordingly so it don't get ambush. Well I'm not exploiting them, I just deliver them to their own nation in another way :)
 
:lol: thats a nice tips and exploit really. So far I use enemy worker that I got to walking around their territory. So I know their army position, and can put my army accordingly so it don't get ambush. Well I'm not exploiting them, I just deliver them to their own nation in another way :)
Yeah, I also like to use workers as "spotters" for siege weapons (who tend to have limited visibility).
 
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