Attacking Enemy Cities

[Wembley]

So whats your strategy for attacking enemy cities cause I totally suck at it. No matter what, all those buffs the opposing civilization gets for defending inside a city, seem to make spearmen kill my navy seals all the time.

Here is my usual strategy. First I just bombard the crap out of the city until its defenses are zero and then usually i attack it with whatever i have. However no matter how advanced my tech is over theres these city buffs kill off ridiculous amounts of guys. It seems like i'm gonna have to make hundreds of units to be successful in any kind of war. I'm wondering if any kind of unit is better at attacking a city than others because i'm really seing some advanced guys getting taken out by some not so advanced guys. Any advice would be good.

[Bolgard]

Don't take my advice as solid gold, as I've admitted my shortcomings in another post here, but I've had success with the following method:

(1: Bombard a city's static defenses to zero.

(2: Send the siege unit in on a suicide run to do as much collateral damage as
possible

(3: Attack with units that are upgraded for city assault, such as swordsmen or
pikemen (with promotion).

Few key things to remember - early on, swordsmen are the best, bar none, for city attacks. After them, build pikemen in a city with a barracks so they get a promotion, and use that promotion to up their city attack by 20%.

I've had reasonable success with that method.

[LouLong]

Bolgard got it. That's the idea.

[Vietcong]

i bombrd city diffenses down to zero, but wont send my arty in for suicied runs as i dont want them killed.. i allso upgrade thear bombardment with the promotion.

i then chose a unit witch has an atantage aginst the defending unit, and has city assulet promotion. if i have no unit that has any of those advatages *witch is rare since i allways keep some city raiders on hand* i will chose the one most likly to win, if the odds are even 50/50 i wont atack the city, and i wont atack the city unless i atlest outnumber them 3 to 1.
allso, pillage nearbyi mprovments.

allso, Dont use pike men!!!! thats just a silly thing to do, only use pikement if its a mounted unit ur atacking, otherwise dont do it..
use macement with upgrades, ther much beater then pikement.

[Shillen]

Yep, pikemen are only good for attacking mounted units and defending against mounted units. As for whether to send in the siege weapons early for collateral damage it really depends on the situation. There are times where if I don't send the siege weapon in first I will lose multiple units because they are too strong. At the same time if I send one or two siege weapons in at the start I can prevent any further casualties barring a terrible stroke of luck. So then I only lose the 1-2 siege weapons instead of 2-4 of my attacking units. Siege weapons are generally cheaper to build too so that's a good tradeoff. But, yeah, most of the time I only bombard the defenses down.

[Wembley]

I tried a new method after reading some posts and I pretty much found out, if your gonna attack a city its all siege weapons. Barrage and then collateral damage. I pretty much only make the other units now as far as wars go to occupy the citys and defend my siege weapons in case they are attacked in the field. Only thing I guess I could do better now is to not lose so many siege weapons, kill off a couple and then attack with the city attack units.

[Fieryphoenix]

Yep. You have to spend units to win battles. But if you spend them wisely, you'll lose lots less than your opponent.

[PoweredBySoy]

Here's a question I've been having:

For some units, you are able to promote into either +% vs melee units, or +% city attack. Now, if that unit attacks a city that is getting defended by, say, axemen... which promotion would be more beneficial? Would those defending axemen be considered "melee", or "city"?

[thescaryworker]

It is considered to be both.

[Bolgard]

Originally Posted by Vietcong

allso, Dont use pike men!!!! thats just a silly thing to do, only use pikement if its a mounted unit ur atacking, otherwise dont do it..
use macement with upgrades, ther much beater then pikement.

Interesting - I'll give that a shot. The main reason I used pikemen was out of desperation and lack of macemen at the time. I'd say promoted pikemen work "well enough", but aren't ideal.

[Lord Shadow]

BOMBERS!

I've just discovered their usefulness today. Being able to deal collateral damage from FAR away without getting touched (unless there's fighter cover, SAM infantry and the like) is priceless when attacking heavily defended cities. They can also pillage from the air, bombing improvements, and attack large stacks (not only cities) with collateral slaughtering results! Fighters can do the same, but are quite weaker and don't deal collateral damage. The bonus point is that they can be transported on carriers, unlike bombers.

I've yet to try the Stealth Bomber and Jet Fighter units, but I predict even more pwnage!

[Pubknight]

I can't figure out exactly what I'm doing wrong... but my catapults don't even have an option to Bombard.

Is there a trick to this, or, more likely, what is the ridiculously obvious thing I am missing?

[MusicLaunch]

Your catapults have to be beside an enemy city to have the option of Bombarding

[Johnny Tsunami]

I like using my siege weapons and having mounted units w/ the promotion of auto withdraw, then I don't lose to many units -- yeah it's a trade off, but I can bring in back-up units pretty quick and don't lose a mounted unit decked out w/ 3 promos.

It works - but I'm playing on easy so what I just said may all bs

[cancerkitty]

One thing I've done is use the civic Vassalage to get some extra promotions out of your barracks. That way, you can upgrade your newly created units to have a better chance at successfully attacking the city.