I'm done with war in this game.

[Iberian]

So yeah; I'm just giving up war in this game. City defenses are overpowered and you guys can't convince me otherwise. Clearly the game is made for you to turtle and spam overpowered defensive wonders.

Well then.

What makes more sense here?

1) This game is stupid and the war mechanics make taking cities all but impossible and everyone else is also stupid because they keep winning games on Deity and complaining that war is too easy

OR

2) You need to learn from people who have been playing this game at a much higher level


I bet if you upload the save you are talking about people will show you dozens of ways to easily conquer that city. Every once in a great while people will post screen shots of a hard to capture city just because it is such a rarity. For the most part though it is a cakewalk.

Post the save and I will buy you another game on steam if you are right, and if I am right then we thank everyone who can show us a good way to conquer a city.

 

[Redaxe]

The OPs post, even if it does come across as a bit whiny does have a point.

Civ 5s combat mechanics could use a bit of polishing.
-Melee units shouldn't be so weak against cities. Yes I get it that siege weapons are intended for cities but melee is well identified as being weak - and the latest melee unit is usually too expensive to spam for a quick disposable army. For example - historically musketman replaced knights and swordsmen because it was CHEAPER to give a man a gun and teach him to how to shoot for a couple weeks and send him to war than to train a man for years how to master a sword and fight in complex phalanx-like formations and provide him with a full suit of armor to boot.
Realistically the Musketman should be cheaper than the Longswordsman and there are many other examples of poorly implemented mechanics.
When the best strategy for rushing is composite bows and then crossbows that already suggests there is imbalance.

-City strength should be taken down a notch
-Embarked units are over-penalised - so amphibious attacks are way too risky

My suggestion is either
1)Use Ackens Mod. It has some tweaks to city combat but also improved AI so it should be harder in general...
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=550671
2)Live with the current mechanics

And yes the AI cities can one-two shot range 2 siege units if they have other ranged units to support them. What you can do is spam lots of cheap units (scouts, triremes, privateers, horsemen, Landsknechts - Commerce is good with Mercenary Army + Mercentalism.....) and use them as fodder. Take workers along with your army so they can repair pillaged tiles so you can re-heal a unit.
Sometimes its worth blowing a citadel on an AI border to help break through a choke-point.

 

[Sclb]

He can only take out all your units in one shot if he is using nukes. Otherwise, he can only take down your units one at a time. Thus, you attack only with artillery from three tiles away so his city can't hit you at all. Once your arty gets the city down to 0 health, then you move in 2 or 3 rifles adjacent to the city. He can only one-shot one of them. One of the others takes the city. Don't move any units within 2 tiles of the city until it is at 0 health.

5 arty should take down defenses fairly quickly, especially if they are promoted property. If they can't get the job done, there is always one more choice: nuke 'em.

Actually assuming tech parity, nukes can't take out all your military units, they only severely cripple them. It'll kill all aircrafts in the city that was targeted, if it doesn't have bomb shelter. To avoid damage, always move all units more than 2 hexes away from city likely to get nuked.

Tradition Ethiopia, with defensive religion/pantheon could be tough, but I can't see how OP is having trouble. He says riflemans and cannons, but there is no way cannons are current units in the industrial era. Also, you need to take cover promotion for melee units in this game since they should be meat shield. Cover 2 melee unit fortified on a hill should be able to take city bombardments easily.

 

[Callonia]

It's a city with a few defensive wonders. At this point in the game; Riflemen and Cannons are current units. I could understand him one-shotting 19 warriors. But one-shotting and two-shotting recent units? That's overpowered.

I would've came back with more than 10 units, but he one-shotted and two-shotted the rest of my Riflemen and Cannons. Each Rifleman takes at least 5 or 6 turns to build; so that's 5 turns to build a unit, just to get destroyed in 1 turn.

So 10 Riflemen would take around 50 turns to produce; only to be defeated in less than 10. Riflemen and Cannons are not outdated at this point.

Being at war with everyone isn't really a problem. I can easily fight the other civilizations off with Citadels and a small army.

Yes, you're correct. Just because my army is advanced doesn't mean I should win. But to be able to two-shot recent or more advanced units is overpowered. That's just broken.

And I did take out most of the army defending the city. But then out of nowhere Arabia brings a bunch of more units. Which would not be a problem if he wasn't able to TWO-SHOT all of my Riflemen. And maybe if it wasn't for the city healing so much, some of my Riflemen would've survived.

I understand Artillery are not a god weapon. But if I have 5 Artillery, that should be able to do decent damage. But even with 5 Artillery it takes forever to weaken his city; because it heals so much.

And you fail to realize that I did not have any more units after the seige; because he one-shotted them all, with his overpowered city defense. Riflemen can't just be replaced in one turn.

Cities being able to one-shot current and more advanced units is broken. City defense needs to be nerfed.

It seems like my post wasn't completely in vain and you learned something. That capital was so very hard because it had several defensive wonders that allowed it to oneshot or twoshot your units. If you go back to my post you'll see me leaving Vienna completely alone and choose to fight defensively. You can see a bunch of pillaged hexs I did in Austrian territory which proves that I attempted to mount an offense during riflemen/cannon era and gave up on it. The advantage was too much in austrian's favor and I had japan/netherlands/ottomans to worry about. So I took most of my soldiers and went to three other empires instead.

And if the enemy show up with an army that you think will be able to defeat all your units and then only rational thing to do is to retreat. I've done a bunch of retreats.

You can even sack cities with riflemen/Artillery just have the riflemen wait at range 3 or 4 where it cannot fire on them while artillery is busy reducing the city's hp. And once it's low enough, rush in all your riflemen. At most it'll be able to shoot at one of them and that's it.

But if you are truly incapable of interacting with how city sieges work in civ5, I do recommend playing Civ3 or Civ4. They have defenseless cities that even a conscript warrior can take over and burn down to the ground in one turn.

Oh.... and look at Izumo screenshot as well, You will see tht I have a bunch of wounded panzers. That's because I used them to forcibly take a western seaport from Japan only to have them counterattack me with Battleships+land units so I gave up on the city and retreated them all to have them join in the offense on Izumo. If I tried to stay in there I would've lost alot of panzers for no gain hitler style.

 

[tat501]

If you're not doing damage to a city, even with walls etc you've fallen too far behind technologically. Science eats everything. Get better units faster and you can take down even the most well defended fortress with 6 units or so.

 

[noto2]

I'm a long time civ fan, been playing since 2, and I've still got more hours logged in on 4 than 5, but I have to say I like the fact that cities can be really tough in 5. I think taking an important city, especially capital, should be incredibly difficult. Civs shouldn't be total push-overs. If anything, in previous versions of the game, the defender advantage was far too little.

Think about it. And this is something I used to complain about all the time in Civ4. The defender had virtually no advantage. The advantage went to whoever managed to attack their opponent's stack with collateral damage first. This was often the defender, but not always.

In strategy games, the defender NEEDS to have an advantage, otherwise the game doesn't work (A kind of exception to this rule is the board game RISK, but that's because the game is about taking.... wait for it... a risk). If the defender has none, or if the advantage is too weak, then the game will always be won by whoever builds an army and rushes first. If the defender hasn't a significant advantage, there is never any point to ever trying to be a "builder", to build infrastructure or wonders.

In every game, from Starcraft and Warcraft, to Civ, the defender has an advantage. In Civ4 it was arguably too small. In Civ5 I think they got it right. You can do damage to your opponent and even take a small city or two if your military is slightly stronger than theirs, but to completely conquer them and their capital, your military needs to be more than just a little better, it needs to be significantly better, as it should be.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Too primitive? Seriously? Arabia doesn't even have Artillery yet. Most civilizations are still using Riflemen. Better tactics? What tactics can I do when EVERY UNIT whether siege or melee gets one-shotted. It's not about tactics.

If you have even the *slightest* desire to learn, post your save and I'll make a video demonstrating the tactics you can use the take the city.

 

[beetle]

In every game, from Starcraft and Warcraft, to Civ, the defender has an advantage. In Civ4 it was arguably too small. In Civ5 I think they got it right. You can do damage to your opponent and even take a small city or two if your military is slightly stronger than theirs, but to completely conquer them and their capital, your military needs to be more than just a little better, it needs to be significantly better, as it should be.

I agree with these points. So I disagree w/ OP premise, even I think he overstates the problem. That said, with 5 melee and 5 siege, he is in position to take the cap. Glad to see I am not the only one offering to provide a little hand-holding.

 

[lindsay40k]

OP: have you tried filling left side Honor and getting your ranged units (arrows or siege or both) promoted? If your plan expects you to be at war with the rest of the world, there's a lot to gain from committing your Social Policies to warmongering & turning a rubbish City State into your piñata of XP to get some Range Logistics gunners.

As long as you're not leaving them exposed to Bombers, a fully promoted crew are more effective than a next-gen weapon.

 

[Popedesu]

. . . and/or Oligarchy from Tradition SP.

oh yeah forgot that Oligarchy gave that perk, I mostly focused on the no unit mantinence.

 

[Iberian]

I'm a long time civ fan, been playing since 2, and I've still got more hours logged in on 4 than 5, but I have to say I like the fact that cities can be really tough in 5. I think taking an important city, especially capital, should be incredibly difficult. Civs shouldn't be total push-overs. If anything, in previous versions of the game, the defender advantage was far too little.

Think about it. And this is something I used to complain about all the time in Civ4. The defender had virtually no advantage. The advantage went to whoever managed to attack their opponent's stack with collateral damage first. This was often the defender, but not always.

In strategy games, the defender NEEDS to have an advantage, otherwise the game doesn't work (A kind of exception to this rule is the board game RISK, but that's because the game is about taking.... wait for it... a risk). If the defender has none, or if the advantage is too weak, then the game will always be won by whoever builds an army and rushes first. If the defender hasn't a significant advantage, there is never any point to ever trying to be a "builder", to build infrastructure or wonders.

In every game, from Starcraft and Warcraft, to Civ, the defender has an advantage. In Civ4 it was arguably too small. In Civ5 I think they got it right. You can do damage to your opponent and even take a small city or two if your military is slightly stronger than theirs, but to completely conquer them and their capital, your military needs to be more than just a little better, it needs to be significantly better, as it should be.

From a game balance perspective I think we need strong cities. Anyone playing Civ 1 remembers how lame no city defenses were. You either had to have 2 units in every city that could be attacked or once you got really good you pretty much had zero units in every city and exploited other AI weaknesses.

The strong cities are great for ensuring no one gets a major strategic advantage for a minor investment. Being able to turn 30 or 40 turns of production for an enemy capital and being able to keep >50% of those turns in the form of more experienced troops is unfair.

What I do agree with the OP on is that the city strength should be more geared to being defensive and less adept are killing units. Stalingrad didn't stand because it just sat there. Millions of troops were required to defend. Game should be the same. There should be a defenders advantage and the defense of cities should allow time for an army to arrive but require the army to actually come. Maybe in Civ 6 or a mod but I don't you will see this patched in 5.

I will laugh though if he posts that save and it turns out to be one of those stupid high defense cities with terrible access and we all eat our words.

 

[beetle]

I will laugh though if he posts that save and it turns out to be one of those stupid high defense cities with terrible access and we all eat our words.

I would be fine with that outcome actually! It would not be the first nor last time I was wrong on these forums...

 

[docbud]

I just hope the OP shares the save file. But I think he's been asked several times over the past couple years on other subjects and he never does.

I'd be curious to see it.

 

[Sclb]

Strong cities seem to be only a problem early on in the game with defensive buildings/wonders and it does work well to prevent early rushes being too easy. Later in the game it doesn't really matter, especially after artillery comes into action. For example rocket artillery melt even 200+ defense cities. I'm pretty sure the problem is the bad usage of units.

 

[docbud]

^^Rocket artillery are great. Two or three of them will bring a very strong city down to zero in just a turn or two.

 

[noto2]

turning a rubbish City State into your piñata of XP to get some Range Logistics gunners.

Ha ha, I never thought of that. It's extreme cheese, though.

 

[LordBalkoth]

Ha ha, I never thought of that. It's extreme cheese, though.

Indeed. I never partake in that or "worker stealing" (referring to hunting down AI workers very early game to whisk them away -- if I actually go to war with an AI and stumble across a worker that's fair game).

 

[lindsay40k]

Ha ha, I never thought of that. It's extreme cheese, though.

I agree, mostly because there's no diplomatic penalty for declaring war, promising to knock it off, and then maintaining a state of war without crossing the line and capturing the city. That would go a long way towards sorting out the XP farming issue - though it would still be do-able with an AI reduced to a single crippled city.

 

[chuckh89]

I personally found myself frustrated at times when playing Civ,...there are so many nuances that it takes time, and it is unlike a lot of other games because to excel you need to use the other leaders in the game to gain a advantage.

The thing that changed my gameplay 100 times over,...

Play games that others are playing,...HOF games (Gauntlets), Game of the Month, "Let's Play"(Acken). When your going through similar situations, skill level, and setups then it is easier to gain information to excel. I also find the players in this community to be overwhelmingly supportive and nice. Also, downloading games from the HOF files and loading them can give you a reference of the path taken by many of the better players in the game.



_

 

[SupremacyKing2]

I personally found myself frustrated at times when playing Civ,...there are so many nuances that it takes time, and it is unlike a lot of other games because to excel you need to use the other leaders in the game to gain a advantage.

I can definitely empathize with the OP. I too have been frustrated at times with civ5's 1upt model because it can be very unforgiving if you mess up. There have been many times when I thought I had enough to take the city, only to see the city bombard my units and take them out one by one. Cities can be very strong. Also, terrain plays a huge role. If there are mountain tiles that make it difficult to completely surround the city, then taking the city will be even harder. Unit placement and having the right units are critical. You need lots of strong ranged units that can wear the city down and enough melee units to take the city.