Something seems a bit overpowered here

[GoodSarmatian]

Orleons looks like a military desaster waiting to happen.
I think I would have delayed the offensive and just focused on tech to get Navigation asap, and then landed troops west of Paris to take it with assistance from Frigates and Privateers. Then I would have taken Orleans with troops from the north with a little assistance from the south and my navy.

P.S. Are melee ships useful? So far I didn't find a reason to have them. The amount of damage dealt/taken is not worth it.

I just finished a game with the Dutch. Sea Beggars and normal Privateers are very good against cities, but there's a rather large gap when they don't cut it any more and can't be upgraded yet. Ironclads are very strong and were my primary weapons to take coastal cities during the aforementioned upgrade gap. They upgrade from Caravels which is really convenient since the AI seems to love to build a lot of those and you can steal them with Privateers.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Had to admit, Orleans was kind of hard to take.

Spoiler :

BTW, speaking of lack of improvements. 6 iron tile with forest on it.

Holy crap, that's one tough city. Almost safe from the sea (with that hill and a good natural harbor), hills, jungles, and mountains protecting its flanks. There are at least two spots to bombard and you potentially can have two ships in range, but cycling units are next to impossible.

BTW, it's this discussion which shows just how cool one unit per tile is. In Civ4, there would be next to nothing special about Orleans defensively.

 

[CYZ]

Wow, the AI placed Orleans particulary smart.

 

[The Pilgrim]

I'm not gonna say how many turns the siege of Orleans lasted just that it was a long and bloody battle.
Additional problem it was an inland sea! I had no cities on that side. And no 1 tile isthmus anywhere either. Had to marry Kuala Lumpur noble lady and spend all my gold to rush buy few ships just to find out they were no good. So there was basically no navy. GAd spawned on the other side, of course. Ended up training crossbows to range on french boats (picking Honor was wise in retrospective), which let me in eventually. This and huge piles of meatshield.

I just finished a game with the Dutch. Sea Beggars and normal Privateers are very good against cities, but there's a rather large gap when they don't cut it any more and can't be upgraded yet. Ironclads are very strong and were my primary weapons to take coastal cities during the aforementioned upgrade gap. They upgrade from Caravels which is really convenient since the AI seems to love to build a lot of those and you can steal them with Privateers.

I'm playing as Dutch right now, but again weirdly shaped map and no coastal cities to take with sea beggars. Too bad. Wanted to try them out. Triremes are a waste for anything other than exploring, from what I've seen.

BTW, it's this discussion which shows just how cool one unit per tile is. In Civ4, there would be next to nothing special about Orleans defensively.

No kidding. 1UPT is the best feature of Civ5, if you ask me. Granted AI can't handle it properly, but warring is actually fun now and requires planning and tactical thinking. Not the senseless suicidal cats nightmare back in Civ4 days.

 

[Txurce]

Playing on Emperor with a small Dutch army against a zero/one tech-behind Byzantium, I have been able to take well-defended cities slowly with 2 or 3 Gatling guns (one being blitz/march). Gatlings are tough enough that the AI tends to target other units. This was an experiment, playing the Netherlands more or less historically. I went crazy on the Sea Beggars, but focused on war vs Byzantium vs extracting tribute all over the place.

 

[GlobularFoody]

I had to deal with this against the Aztecs, I had a thread about it. You need to bait the Ai in attacking units other than your siege units. I had to move a spearman with cover promotion in a jungle tile and move my catapults away for a turn for that. Then move the rest of your melee guys near the city and hope the AI will attack them while your siege units do their thing.

All the people saying they're happy city-taking is so much harder, that's only in the early game. The AI still has no chance once Artillery shows up, which slaughter cities now. If you manage to get a double-shot artillery, forget about any challenge until the AI has bombers.

 

[gunnergoz]

In the early eras up to classical it is fairly easy to take cities as long as their defense is under 20 HP. After that you really need to expend a lot of units or wait until you get cannons. I prefer it this way. Meanwhile, as was stated, pillage his country to the ground and starve him out is the alternative to losing all those units.

 

[Ghonasiflaids]

I'm not gonna say how many turns the siege of Orleans lasted just that it was a long and bloody battle.
Additional problem it was an inland sea! I had no cities on that side. And no 1 tile isthmus anywhere either. Had to marry Kuala Lumpur noble lady and spend all my gold to rush buy few ships just to find out they were no good. So there was basically no navy. GAd spawned on the other side, of course. Ended up training crossbows to range on french boats (picking Honor was wise in retrospective), which let me in eventually. This and huge piles of meatshield.


I'm playing as Dutch right now, but again weirdly shaped map and no coastal cities to take with sea beggars. Too bad. Wanted to try them out. Triremes are a waste for anything other than exploring, from what I've seen.


No kidding. 1UPT is the best feature of Civ5, if you ask me. Granted AI can't handle it properly, but warring is actually fun now and requires planning and tactical thinking. Not the senseless suicidal cats nightmare back in Civ4 days.

The day G@K got realeased, I thought I heard someone say 1UP got removed, and my heart almost stopped. 1UPT is the thing that makes CiV good.

 

[Xichael]

I was in the same situation last game, Maya and the same units you described at 40 defence. I won with 2 trebuchet, 3 crossbow, 2 longsword 5 pikemen and 1 cataphract. I won the city but only had 3 crossbow, 1 trebuchet and 1 longsword left.

tl;dr expect to take heavy casualties.

 

[Buccaneer]

BTW, it's this discussion which shows just how cool one unit per tile is. In Civ4, there would be next to nothing special about Orleans defensively.

Couldn't have said it better myself. That one thing alone makes Civ5 better than Civ4 and so much fun to play.

 

[The Pilgrim]

The day G@K got realeased, I thought I heard someone say 1UP got removed, and my heart almost stopped. 1UPT is the thing that makes CiV good.

I think it was CFC stuff April fools' joke that some people took for real.

Stacking naval and land units is cool though. My crossbows got attacked by embarked pikes and could inflict no damage back.

tl;dr expect to take heavy casualties.

Oh yeah. And that's how it should be. In Information era I'll settle on less casualties than in Ancient. But you just can't walk through the whole game with initial 6 warriors. It's ludicrous. Overall the changes of combat system are cool.

 

[woodshadows]

Yes, I spent half the early game trying to take Attila's Court - although it was surrounded by forest, which undoubtedly helped. In my new game, I don't even need siege units to do serious damage to a non-capital Hunnic city (also defended by horse archers), and haven't lost a unit. It's welcome that the AI is better at defence, however I feel there's something wrong if you're at a stage where you've wiped out the AI's army, it's so soundly beaten that it has no prospect of recovering, and yet you still can't take the city no matter what. It should be harder for the AI to lose, not harder to eradicate an AI that's comprehensively lost.

think Hannibal after the battle of Cannae. Roman army in shambles, no siege/viable strategy to take Rome. That being said, I think the game poorly reflects all of this. A city should *not* be able to fire punishing powerful shots two tiles away over mountains. I prefer the idea of attrition, have units station in enemy lands suffer damage every turn, which would work well with pillaging, as a way to prolong fighting strength. This way you can't just camp out beside an enemy city indefinitely but nor can the enemy city just peg off your army one by one every turn. With this you'd probably have to remove the ability to heal in enemy lands as well (outside of the pillage healing).. which honestly seems like a good idea anyhow.

 

[mintcandy]

Had to admit, Orleans was kind of hard to take.

Spoiler :

I can't see that well, but would it be possible to bypass Orleans and conduct an amphibious invasion on Paris?

 

[pensivepeppers]

Requires a little sacrifice. When I was trying to capture London once, it took me 3 tries, and the first 2 pretty much demolished my entire army save 2 or 3 units and garrisons, so I had to rebuild my entire army.

 

[Dtekkar]

When his city already has 40 strength and 24 population, it's a pretty good sign that your tech speed was too low.

You could easily have cannons by that point which make short work of a city like this.

It's probably your own fault and it doesn't mean that cities are OP.

This.

/toughlove


Technology is key to having an effective military.

 

[Hammer Rabbi]

im playing an immortal America game and one of my neighbors is China. They always build the Great Wall and I need to rush them before they get it and CKNs. They have 2 cities. Ive gotten my 4-city setup plus 6 Comp Bows, a spearman, 2 Catas and i just got iron to upgrade my 1 warrior. I also have a GG but its about 5 turns of travel away.

I couldnt take her cap because 2 cities were producing units faster than my 4-cities. Her Compbows and spears kept coming and i was killing 1-2 units per turn. She had maybe 600g so couldnt buy them forever. She did stop her attack on a CS to rally the other units but it was like 6 total units. She offered 2 peace deals but I didnt want to take them so she could rebuild and rush the Great Wall. City strength was at 19-20 with 11 citizens but I couldnt get the catas in position without losing them instantly to a spear/bow attack and I couldnt kill enough units fast enough. 1 spearman takes about 4 shots from comp bows before going down. when she got her GG it was even worse.

I'm on a 3rd replay to rush her again. I'm going to have to change my tactics to get her units down. She has a mtn ridge that forces me to attack from the same angle but I do have decent room if I can just reduce her unit numbers.

 

[Dentalfury]

I did something similar in my last game as OCC Ethiopia going for a Culture win. Did the best I could to keep up with the other civs on an archipelago map and The Polynesians were the clear runaway building 2/3 of the worlds wonders. They were about 5-10 techs ahead of me. I barely got the battleship tech in time to upgrade my 5 frigates and sent them in to start shelling his cities while he was building the Utopia project (I was like 5 policies away myself). All I had was those 5 BS, 1 Sub, and 1 Ironclad. I spent a lot of the early game fighting naval skirmishes so I got the range upgrade on all my BS just in time to shell all those cities safely. Had to wipe out their entire Civ because every time I destroyed their top city the next one down switched production to the Utopia project.

I pretty much carried on like that for the next 150 turns visiting rival Civ's who were too close for comfort to beating me to building a Utopia project and I just shelled them back to the stone age.

 

[PibbZ]

BTW, it's this discussion which shows just how cool one unit per tile is. In Civ4, there would be next to nothing special about Orleans defensively.

Exactly, it's a whole new world when it comes to strategy and planning your wars and troop movements. Love it!

 

[Civilopedian]

With that Orleans nightmare, I would try to build a road to Orleans before attacking. This lets you run away quickly when you need to heal. For the most part I would prefer to attack primarily with navy and have siege units on that road. But even better, first take Paris. Enter via the northern city state so that your units are not bombarded by both cities and move inland to skirt around the forest. Otherwise, bring a worker and chop it down!

 

[Socratatus]

There`s no doubt that cities are much harder to take. If you get lazy and send a few units, ill-prepared, as I have, you`ll be easily beaten back. You have to plan; have you siege weapons ready, your army ready and even naval ships if a coastel city. Then bombard him to bits all at once and finally take it. But I like it. It forces you to plan ahead of time.

Also, taking a defended city has always needed at least 3 times the attacking army as the defender (plus planning) to succeed in real life, so this is pretty authentic.

It`s a pity that a city can`t just be sieged. That`s what we could really use.