I attacked my neighbor and got my a$$ handed to me.

charon2112

charon2112

King
Joined
May 8, 2009
Messages
990
Location
Massachusetts USA
Wow. I am licking my wounds right now. I just launched an attack on a northern neighbor, and got demolished. But I thought I had him hopelessly outnumbered. I had been hammering his city for maybe 10 or 12 turns with a catapult and a trebuchet to soften the defenses then went in for the kill with fully three times as many units as he had defending...and I got ruined. I watched his little archers kill unit after unit while taking almost no damage.

what the heck happened...?
 
charon2112 said:
Wow. I am licking my wounds right now. I just launched an attack on a northern neighbor, and got demolished. But I thought I had him hopelessly outnumbered. I had been hammering his city for maybe 10 or 12 turns with a catapult and a trebuchet to soften the defenses then went in for the kill with fully three times as many units as he had defending...and I got ruined. I watched his little archers kill unit after unit while taking almost no damage.

what the heck happened...?
Click to expand...
Were you attacking with the cats and trebs or just doing bombard?
 
Charon, we can't help you with the scant information you gave us. Please be more specific:

- what units did you use? did they have any promotions?
- what units did your opponent have? did they have any promotions?
- what was the terrain?
- what difficulty level are you playing?
- did the city have walls?
- did you bombard his defenses before attacking?
- did your opponent have chichen itza?

If you can please post a screen shot of the city you attacked.
 
Bring more siege so you can knock down the cultural defense faster as well as to inflict collateral damage before attacking. You allowed 10-12 turns of reinforcements to enter the city before attacking. Archers in cities on hills behind walls take a lot of punishment....
 
Helghallen said:
Were you attacking with the cats and trebs or just doing bombard?
Click to expand...

I was bombarding, I had 2 trebuchets, and 2 catapults... :( I think I need more, and I need to bombard longer. I believe the defenses were down to about 40%...
 
Build something like 10 trebs. First bombard defences to 0%, on the next turn you suicide 5 of those trebs. It doesn't matter if the first one has less than 1% chance of winning. After those 5 trebs you have caused a great deal of collateral damage and your non-siege units can easily capture the city.

After a while you learn to adjust your numbers of siege and non-siege units in your stack :)
 
Windsor said:
Build something like 10 trebs. First bombard defences to 0%, on the next turn you suicide 5 of those trebs. It doesn't matter if the first one has less than 1% chance of winning. After those 5 trebs you have caused a great deal of collateral damage and your non-siege units can easily capture the city.

After a while you learn to adjust your numbers of siege and non-siege units in your stack :)
Click to expand...

THAT sounds like a strategy! Thanks :)
 
As Windsor said, never attack a city until its defense bonus is 0. Siege units are made for suicide...it's a powerful tactic so use it! Yes they will die but they're easy to rebuild.
 
Birdman6 said:
As Windsor said, never attack a city until its defense bonus is 0. Siege units are made for suicide...it's a powerful tactic so use it! Yes they will die but they're easy to rebuild.
Click to expand...

So anytime you use a seige unit to attack a stack of enemies, it will automatically do collateral damage to the whole stack? Or is that a special attack that I have to do?
 
Flying Pig said:
It hurts a set number, which increases with the size of the gun
Click to expand...

Also some units are immune to collateral damage from seige like other siege units and machine guns.
 
Yeah, if you were going to spend 10 turns bombarding the cultural defense down to 0%, you should have either

a - brought more seige so that you could knock the AI cultural defense to 0 in a turn or 2. That gives the AI less time to bring in reinforcements, which I would bet it did during the 10 turn bombardment, or

b - used your seige to suicide attack on the 11th turn. If you are going to delay for 10 turns, you might as well wait another turn and damage all the defenders. You'll lose the seige units, but that's better than losing all your Swordmen/Axes/Maces/whatever.
 
I'm going to try again with the advice given here. Thanks guys. :)
 
Also make note that you can use spies to reduce defenses before you attack if you have enough espionage points. This can be quicker and it prevents the AI from reinforcing from nearby cities while you're taking several turns to bombard city defenses down to 0%.

Check the espionage screen to see if you have enough points to incite city revolt. If you send the spy prior to your attack and fortify him there for a few turns, it will be cheaper. Best to send 3 or 4 in case some get captured or fail. Revolt the city the turn AFTER your stack moves next to the city. If the revolt is succesful, the cultural defenses are down for 1 TURN and you can use your siege to attack causing colateral damage. Make sure you have enough units to take the city. The defenses are only down for 1 TURN using this method.
 
I use that method heavily - indeed in m amphibious warfare article I point out that it is the only way to attack a city quickly with any chance of success, short of bringing a massive seige train, which then needs lugging.
 
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