Q: Siege vs. City broken?

[RD-BH]

In my last two games (post patch) I rolled first Suleiman and second Bismark.
As Suleiman, I started a war with al-Rashid.
I surrounded his city with janissaries and a couple cannons.
Against a fresh city the cannons only did 1 and 2 damage (city after city).
The janissaries were doing 7 and 8.

I thought this was a quirk of the janissaries attack bonus, but just now with Bismark, I saw the same ratio of 4:1 damage (melee over siege).

Siege still worked against units; just not cities.

So, is siege broken post patch or just working differently?

 

[The_Quasar]

I've noticed something similar too... however, siege works much better after a couple of promotions. I think siege may have been naffed a bit due to the rather overkill it used to have with 3 or more promotions. I've still not had any problems taking cities, you just need more than one siege, and preferably a good melee or 2 as well. I'm inclined to think this is probably an improvement.

 

[Thry]

Siege deals damage without taking damage. Other units will be severely wounded when dealing the same amount of damage.

 

[chazzycat]

Is it just the relative strength of city defense vs. the era of units you are using? I had a couple invasions with catapults & trebs and they were doing solid damage (3-5 prob on average) unless the opponent had great defense (walls, castle, etc.) Basically I didn't notice any difference from before the patch. Only played a couple games though and haven't got to cannons.

 

[blac]

If the city has no walls and no castle then it does do a lot of damage but if its well protected then siege really only does 1-2 damage. Because of this I try to stay ahead with siege tech

 

[JoeBas]

I've seen this too... last game as Rome my cannons were only doing 2-3, but riflemen were doing 8-9.

Had 2 cannons, but at only 2 damage a piece getting a city softened up would have taken like 30 turns!

 

[Samuil]

my artillery does from 6-8 damage, but I keep getting usefull promotions

 

[bryanw1995]

I just finished a game yesterday where I (persia) spawned on a relatively small continent with gandhi as my only neighbor. Naturally, my peace-loving development game went out the window and I took out all of his cities...except the capital. By the time I got there I had 3 LS (only 4 iron on the entire continent) and a catapult. He built a castle the turn I got there, bumping his combat power to 33. I literally could not take out his city, after 15-20 turns of stalement I finally made peace, then used the money to get 4 archers in (to do 1 dpt each...), so I was finally able to take his city. With a GG, my LS were doing 3-4 damage and the catapult was doing 2-3 damage. After that game finished I started a viking game last night. I ended up using a few canons with ski infantry on a couple of 31-33 str cities, and the canons did very well. They were doing 4-6 damage, with a couple of outliers at 2-3, while the ski infantry were doing avg 4-5.

 

[JoeBas]

my artillery does from 6-8 damage, but I keep getting usefull promotions

FWIW, both of my cannons had Drill I & City Siege I.

 

[DemonMaster]

FWIW, both of my cannons had Drill I & City Siege I.

Cannon aren't exactly up to date compared to Riflemen (or Artillery)

Edit: It's quite common to go for techs that upgrade your cannon fodder and then later go for techs that upgrade the cannons. This making an army a little bit out of sync.

 

[JoeBas]

Cannon aren't exactly up to date compared to Riflemen (or Artillery)

Edit: It's quite common to go for techs that upgrade your cannon fodder and then later go for techs that upgrade the cannons. This making an army a little bit out of sync.

Well, obviously at the time I had Rifling and Cannon techs, but not Artillery yet...

 

[bryanw1995]

@Demonmaster: Canons are almost exactly equivalent to riflemen. They are only available one tech sooner and have a combat power that is one point higher than riflemen. If anything, a highly promoted canon is better than a rifle imho. Artillery is a different era and, depending upon how you set up your beeline, can be 10+ techs later than rifles or canons. Like canons, artillery are best compared with the infantry unit of their era. You could just as easily say that trebuchets aren't exactly up to date when compared to canons, though the time to get from trebs to canons is typically much shorter than going from canons/rifles to artillery/infantry.

We need to see a game save from JoeBas. As I stated, my experience over the course of 2 games was in-line with what I have seen in the past from siege units.

 

[DemonMaster]

Well, obviously at the time I had Rifling and Cannon techs, but not Artillery yet...

What I meant was that you shouldn't compare units of different eras. It's like saying that your newly invented Longswordsman gives more damage than your Catapults. Hmm, dah, they should, they belong to a later era than the Catapult even though the Longswordsman get injured if they attack.

Edit: bryan: Regarding what unit that belongs to what era, that is difficult. Cannon comes in between eras and Artillery also comes in between eras.

Regarding the issue of the OP. I think Catapult/Treb/Whatever are good units, but they can sometimes get outdated quickly.

Edit2: Or to have a unit that is too early can also make other units look bad. One of my first games I played England and by pure luck (research agreements) I got my ships while most of the worlds had galleys/spearman and swordsmen. Talk about dominating the sea and coastlines.

 

[bryanw1995]

you are confused, Rifles and Canons as close as you can get to the same tech level.

 

[DemonMaster]

you are confused, Rifles and Canons as close as you can get to the same tech level.

After you get your Musketman which is probably your first Renaissance units, you can go either directly towards your Cannons or you can go towards Riflemen which is further away on another path than that of the Cannons (both paths starts with Gunpowder).

Musketman is a Renaissance units as well as the Lancer.
Cannons are also a Renaissance unit.
Rifleman and Cavalry are in fact Renaissance units as well, although they mark the end of the Renaissance era.

So Cannons comes in between. A unit that will rule the battlefield in the early Renaissance era (well rule and rule) while (in theory) everyone has Musketman and perhaps some Lancers. During the late Renaissance era they are still good but they don't perhaps rule the battlefield by then.

Artillery is (or can be) among the first Industrial units you can get so in the same path as Riflemen actually.

 

[JoeBas]

We need to see a game save from JoeBas. As I stated, my experience over the course of 2 games was in-line with what I have seen in the past from siege units.

Yeah, I doubt I have one... this wasn't enough of a bug to make me stop and keep a gamesave, it just slowed my roflstomping of whoever I was roflstomping at the time by a few turns.

 

[bryanw1995]

@Demonmaster: I'm not trying to argue with you about this, I'm just saying that it only takes one tech longer to get to rifles than it does to get to canons. In fact, canons are slightly MORE powerful than rifles (26-25), while trebs (14-18) and artillery (32-36) are both slightly LESS powerful than their comparable infantry unit. And artillery is only available one tech sooner than infantry. Yes, if you get canons or artillery first that does delay by one tech the comparable infantry unit, but they are both available at nearly the same time. Depending upon the makeup of your army it is entirely possible that you would beeline canons or artillery instead of riflemen or infantry. The only reason that artillery pwn the battlefield is the 3 tile range, though with a bit of care it is typically possible to get the 4 promotions necessary to get siege units there before reaching artillery, anyway.

@JoeBas: maybe the RNG was just messing with you, to keep ya' honest, right?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The ridiculous thing with siege in this game is that contemporary cities outrange it. This is ridiculous; the whole point of siege is to wear down cities from beyond range! Add to this problem that it costs iron and is incredibly vulnerable in the field and you have yourself a unit with questionable utility, and for what? Does the defender really NEED that much of an advantage, given higher mobility, a punishing city attack on things getting in range, fast city healing, etc? Why make it so the defender needs very few units to defend a contemporary city?!

 

[RD-BH]

Well, hmmm...

1) Era wise: Janissaries and cannon go together (victim cities were 26)
... rifles showed up just before his demise
... restricted approach hill cities healed faster than I could attack w/nonpromoted siege
2) I usually build siege in secondary cities as a support unit (cannon doesn't req metal)
... going back and building in main cities w/promotions helped
3) I fired up FireTuner and checked bombardment with all non-promoted units
... results: promotions are not optional, they are a must have
4) Looking at the current situation, siege aren't worth the effort
... a) metal reqs on low end
... b) reqs promotions to be effective
... ... (ie NOT building a melee unit in order to produce a weaker promoted siege unit)
... c) slow to move/deploy ... guaranteed to take damage
5) All this == not FUN 8)

(sigh)

 

[Babri]

The ridiculous thing with siege in this game is that contemporary cities outrange it. This is ridiculous; the whole point of siege is to wear down cities from beyond range! Add to this problem that it costs iron and is incredibly vulnerable in the field and you have yourself a unit with questionable utility, and for what? Does the defender really NEED that much of an advantage, given higher mobility, a punishing city attack on things getting in range, fast city healing, etc? Why make it so the defender needs very few units to defend a contemporary city?!

They really need to buff siege units a bit.