Questions about attacking a Sid AI with one city

In my current Sid game, one of the AI (China) has one city left. It is not on my landmass. It is not on the coast, size 12 city. China is ahead of me in tech and is probably somewhere near the end of the middle ages. They are on a landmass that is now owned entirely by Zulu except this one Chinese city. Last time I checked there were 28 units in the city, a few of which were pikes, and a settler or two. The rest were spearman or longbows and archers.

I wonder, how many units can they support?

How many longbows, trebuchet and pikes do I need to take the city?

Right now I have about 30 longbows, 10 pikes, a few trebs, a settler, a worker and warrior and a horseman massing just outside Zulu territory. I just signed ROP with the Zulu (cost me 1 gold).

I plan to send one boat ahead to scout and see if I have a place to land in Chinese territory. If so I can land there and place most of my units. (If not I am sure I will invent something creative to make one) A few bait units (worker and warrior) will be placed in view just out of reach in Zulu territory. I expect China will ask me to leave or declare.

The first turn I will pop the city. I am hoping my 10 pikes will be enough to survive round one. Each of the first 30+ attackers will have to face longbows or trebs so that should help, and how many units can they have? After that my new city will have tiles in the back that the Chinese spearman and other pillagers will head for. With any luck this will leave the city fairly lightly defended, as I have bait to draw out offensive units and tiles to pillage to pull out defensive units. In case I have to leave the city lightly defended I have a horseman to pillage a tile so the Chinese defensive units can’t make it back to their lone city in one turn.

China has the Great Library, which is why I am so interested in the city. Your thoughts or comments appreciated.

It will be a hard fight and time consuming, without an army. How many ships do you have to get the troops there?

The problem is the AI will not attack with pikes or spears, only the longbows. So you will have to kill as many as you can while they are in the open field.
IOW they will send all attackers and a bunch of defenders. YOu need to be able to kill many of those defenders while not in the city.

Do intend to gain the knowledge from the GL and then gift the city to someone? It will be a big flip risk and a magnet for Shaka.

I have enough ships to get them there - over 30 galley size.

I think the AI will pillage with pikes and spears, so I am hoping that having a city with tiles to pillage will draw them out. Since they have only one city, all I need to do is get the majority of the units out. I would not expect the settler to leave so as long as there is no Chinese boat with a settler all the remaining units will vanish once I take the city.

I intend to keep the city for one turn to collect techs, then I will probably raze it. I will get education from it so it will be no good to me after that.

I can only hope Shaka will let me keep it for one turn

Yeah they will pillage if any roads exist, but that won't take many units.

As long as you are not already at war with Shaka, you should be fine. Is there any other civs left to give the city? That may cause some friction, as long as they already know Ed, if not gift that to them first.

Sadly this did not work out so well. I send a one boat scouting mission to China ahead of the main force. I was glad to see from my boat that the Chinese were not spread out all over their tiles, they all appeared to be in the city. I landed a couple units in Zulu territory near the border to use for scouting. Then China tried to sell me chivalry for 1270 gold, which I declined. Then they declared war on me and took out my two units. The next turn Zulu declared war on them and China got crushed like a bug. I had 25 ships two turns away. I think an ROP rape attack against the GL would be suicide so I aborted the mission.

When the game is over I might go back and replay that scenario to see if I could change the outcome by not landing those units. These operations are way more delicate at Sid IMO.

May as well. I would try to land all my troops directly on China as long as there was a place to found a city.

If you have an army in the stacka nd I always will, they will not attack it, until you found the town. Without an army, it is hard to say if they will attack or not.

My first thought was yes do not buy and give them gold, but if you were bringing a few knights, it could be fine. I am thinging they cannot make many more units in two turns and you will get the gold back, Mean while calvs get that extra move and attack 6. That could come in handy for straglers, who knows.