How to deal with siege? Flanking or counter-siege?

A thread on siege weapons made me consider this idea: perhaps siege are not overpowered, but rather perhaps their counter (flanking) is underpowered.

Let's say you find yourself in an late-early game war (catapults, spears, axes, swords, horse archers). You see an average late-early game SoD coming at you (6 CR2 cats, 2 spears (one medic, one c2), 2 shock axes, and 6 CR2 swords). How do you deal with this SoD? Do you:
A. Hunker down in the cities. Count on defensive bonuses to serve you the best. (I would imagine this would be the least popular option, unless you are Sitting Bull and have mad CG1, Drill III or Drill IV archers and shock dog soldiers).
B. Engage enemy SoD in the field, mainly relying on counter-siege.
C. Engage enemy SoD in the field, mainly relying on counter-flanking of the siege with horse archers?

Consider case B: attacking with 5 catapults. You probably lose a few cats, but you take down the strength of the stack defenders enough that you can finish of the rest of the stack.

Consider case C: attacking with 5 horse archers. You lose 2 horse archers to the spearmen, and then you win or retreat from, on average, 3 battles vs. either weakened spears or the CR swords. You kill 3 CR swords, lose 2 horse archers, and damage the siege enough that those siege need to pull back and heal (or maybe 3 would be enough to kill off the siege...I'm not sure about the calculations). The rest of the stack stays intact.

With case B, you kill off the whole stack, losing only a few cats (and maaaaabye one other unit if you get unlucky with the RNG). You gain lots of experience.

With case C, you only kill off at most half the stack (at worst, you only kill off 3 units and merely force the stack to retreat in order to replace the spearmen and heal up the cats), while losing 2 or 3 horse archers. You gain only a little bit of experience.

To me, case B seems to be the no-brainer. If there were mechanisms to make it such that case B and C were highly competitive and dependent on situational circumstances, then I'd have to say that siege was not overpowered.

I consider any unit whose only same-era counter unit is that very same unit, I consider such units overpowered (although in the case of UU, I think they are meant to be slightly overpowered. That's their fun, dynamic aspect. But the UU's change from game to game. That keeps the game spiced up. Instead, if the same units are overpowered in every single game you play (cats, trebs, cannons, etc.), then that sort of overpowering gets boring.

Case D: Attack with 2 cats to damage the spears then 3 HA's to damage the siege. Bring a shock axe to protect the HA's that retreat.

Hmmm...will 2 cats be enough to damage the spears enough so that the HA's can kill them? Part of me suspects that, by the time you reduce the spears to a point where I will feel comfortable risking my HA's against them (strength of 2.5 or so), the whole stack is going to be weakened enough that you might as well send in the axes, if you have enough, and take out the whole stack.

But your case D does prove a valuable point: all you absolutely need in order to stave off a SoD that has siege is to have a few good city defenders (including a shock axe or two), plus 2-3 cats to weaken the spears, plus enough flanking units to take out the siege. Thank you for the tip. I will keep such a mobile defensive stack on hand in my future games.

Sige is necesarry to make it possible to defend easier than attacking... If you powered up flanking it would not be possible to defend as easily...

The best option if you can chose is obviously against that stack to just pummel it with siege/war elephants/horse archers(kill multiple cats at once), however flanking really isn't relevant as those siege units wouldn't get to attack you in the first place...

Zeiter said:

Hmmm...will 2 cats be enough to damage the spears enough so that the HA's can kill them? Part of me suspects that, by the time you reduce the spears to a point where I will feel comfortable risking my HA's against them (strength of 2.5 or so), the whole stack is going to be weakened enough that you might as well send in the axes, if you have enough, and take out the whole stack.

But your case D does prove a valuable point: all you absolutely need in order to stave off a SoD that has siege is to have a few good city defenders (including a shock axe or two), plus 2-3 cats to weaken the spears, plus enough flanking units to take out the siege. Thank you for the tip. I will keep such a mobile defensive stack on hand in my future games.

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You don't need the spears weakened enough to kill. Just weak enough that flanking2 HA's can retreat. All a HA has to do is survive the combat to inflict flanking damage.

Hunkering down in cities is not the right way to use your defensive units, unless by coincidence the city you are defending is the best location to engage the enemy.

The best way to defend is to engage the enemy on favorable terrain, utilizing the defensive bonuses of your units in combination with the defensive bonuses of the terrain. It takes true skill to make this happen effectively.

Defensive bonuses of terrain is rather worthless against siege.. But that said it is obviously better to smash enemy troops when they are out in the open compared to when they are in open terrain(not to mention easier).

In my current (always war) game I'm doing ok waiting for the enemy SOD's (cats, spears, swords, chariots, axes) inside my city but attacking them as soon they are adjacent to the city, much like CivCorpse suggests (barrage cats then flanking mounted). All surrounding tiles are plains (forest chopped), so no def bouns for the incoming SOD.

oyzar said:

Defensive bonuses of terrain is rather worthless against siege.. But that said it is obviously better to smash enemy troops when they are out in the open compared to when they are in open terrain(not to mention easier).

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I'm not suggesting attacking the siege with the defensive units...rather, let the siege attack your own units. The key is to minimize the effect of collateral damage by using fewer units per stack, and spreading out your units among several stacks.

Forts combined with terrain can give potentially better bonuses than cities, and do not pose the risk of economic loss.

Artichoker said:

I'm not suggesting attacking the siege with the defensive units...rather, let the siege attack your own units. The key is to minimize the effect of collateral damage by using fewer units per stack, and spreading out your units among several stacks.

Forts combined with terrain can give potentially better bonuses than cities, and do not pose the risk of economic loss.

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I know what you are proposing which is utter stupidity... Letting the enemy attack you is doomed to failure if your opponent is halfway competent... Maybe i didn't phrase myself clearly in the last post? Best way to stop siege is to counterattack. Wether you do it with flanking horse archers or loads of sige or just stronger units doesn't matter too much, but just sitting there and taking it is not a good plan due to the way combat and colleteral works.

oyzar said:

I know what you are proposing which is utter stupidity... Letting the enemy attack you is doomed to failure if your opponent is halfway competent... Maybe i didn't phrase myself clearly in the last post? Best way to stop siege is to counterattack. Wether you do it with flanking horse archers or loads of sige or just stronger units doesn't matter too much, but just sitting there and taking it is not a good plan due to the way combat and colleteral works.

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Where was it ever mentioned that a competent opponent was involved? If we're talking AI opponents, then its combat planning and behavior are predictable, in a way much similar to AI DOW determination. With this in mind, it is possible to engage the enemy on favorable terms, even while defending.

The real issue I have with siege is in modern times when trying to attack enemy cities. They have rails everywhere and always have about 20 artillery just sitting somewhere out of my bomber range. I cannot move even an inch into their territory without getting pounded to dust by the artillery which moves faster than my planes (hmm ...). I eventually end up having to split my stack into two and sending one in to take the beating with the second one sitting around to mop up and hopefully still have enough punch to complete the invasion. It really sucks because just that stack of artillery and a handful of tanks can demolish anything I own and there's nothing effective I can do to protect myself from it since rails enable the artillery to be everywhere at once.

feralminded said:

rails enable the artillery to be everywhere at once.

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Bomb the rails?

Counterattack is key, IMO. Sacrifice a couple of cavs against their rifles, and then just overwhelm the rest with flanking cavs, saving the ones with Blitz for cleanup. That's the AI's stack all over, and it's on a farmed floodplain instead of in a city.

DaveMcW said:

Bomb the rails?

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You know I never thought of that but it might actually work if you had enough bombers.

I have recently played few games where I got under heavy attack 15+ units x2, two stacks from two AIs. I lost first border city easily ofc and decided to hide in capital. I had protective leader, Longbows, Pikes and Maces, while AI had the same, plus Knights + Trebs.

After they bobmarded my capital giving me enough time to whip/build more units, I even got muskts soon and drafed a few there, first stack attacked causing massive damage, killing half of my defenders. I was lucky 2nd AI stack was wandering around strangely for 2-3 turns, giving me time to heal units and bring reinforcements, so I did eventually save the city and went on to kill the AIs.

--So hiding works sometimes..--

In other instances I found its impossible to hide, AI would suicide catas and then killed all my defenders easily. This usually happens with border cities in surprise attacks.

Other option: countering in open is not a problem if you have large enough stack and some catas. For example I couldn't counter those stacks in game I described because I couldn't hurt Knights without heavy loses on my side. I also never had enough catapults to make enough damage to 15+ unit stack. I never considered idea to use flanking, but I doubt it would help much, better to build extra longbow.

So when it comes to countering, it seems to me that you need to have big enough stack to kill attackers SoD. In order to effectively kill 15 units you need atleast 15 units so.. there's the math. I presume you are not technologicaly superior here.
If you don't have it, hide behind walls and buy time until you can build more units. Fail and you're dead, it happened to me once by Monty

Artichoker said:

Where was it ever mentioned that a competent opponent was involved? If we're talking AI opponents, then its combat planning and behavior are predictable, in a way much similar to AI DOW determination. With this in mind, it is possible to engage the enemy on favorable terms, even while defending.

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AI wasn't mentioned in the OP at all either . The point is that the OP thinks that flanking is underpowered while he isn't using it right at all... Flanking can be used on the offense due to mounted unit's 2 moves. Colleteral damage from siege can not be used that way(again against a competent opponent), due to the fact that he'll obliterate your stack before you get a chance to attack with the siege(and siege aren't very good at defending).

How to counter siege depends on the composition of their stack, and whether you are in a defensive or offensive position.

Defensive position means that the opponent is obligated to attack that tile. This usually happens when you are a weaker nation trying to be a hassle to larger nation, but not always. Sometimes a player needs to take you out asap because they are spending too much money on military.


In that case, here is how you counter catapults:

If they have many catapults, you want a stack with fewer catapults, and more strong assault units. Like say they are 60% catapults, 40% other units. You want 20% catapults, 80% other units.

This is because, when they have many catapults, your catapults do less collateral damage, because their catapults are chosen, and are immune to collateral damage.

Catapults aren't chosen to defend because they are not the best defender. So if all your units are strong assault units, and you have 20 versus their 13(slightly injured from a couple catapults), you kill the majority of theirs, and catapults alone can't do crap. So then you mop the catapults up when they try to retreat. You want maybe 3-6 catapults to attack and damage their defending units beforehand, but that's it.

Of course this doesn't work if you have weaker assault units, like only swordsmen/axemen and they have elephants. Then you have to try to win by having more catapults, and larger numbers. But the same principle applies, you want to kill all their non-catapult units so their stack is crippled. It's impossible to completely wipe out the stack so that is not your aim.

First counter strategy, you have strong, elite units.

Second counter strategy, you have weaker units, along with strong catapult support. But for this you usually need more hammer investment than them. If they have stronger units, and more production, and have a
balanced stack, you are more or less screwed.

Both strategies you are going for partial stack isolation, that is, you are trying to gang up on the non-catapult component of their stack, due to the nature of how civ4 chooses defenders.



A 3rd strategy is full out defense. If they do the 70-30 stack (30% being catapults), you could potentially defend their attack with enough numbers (usually about 20-30% more than them) and a high enough fortify bonus. If they do 50-50 you are screwed probably. Almost always you will need most of your units being fortified for 5 turns (+25%), and also be on a hill for another +25%, so you can use archers who are 6+ strength undamaged. They will make sure you don't get overwhelmed... they are strong defenders, they are cheap(greater numbers means less susceptible to catapults), they will at least damage say elephants, so in the 2nd assault, your healed and promoted units can defend the followup attack. The first strikes also help in making sure the enemy stack isn't too healthy for the next attack. There is almost always a followup attack, assuming you had enough units/production to have a chance of defending in the first place.

Of course with this 3rd strategy you have no ability to attack their stack. So they can postpone the attack and bring in more catapults. But if they do decide to attack, you will probably survive and inflict near equal casualties... or perhaps you'll get assistance from someone else, or get a tech to upgrade to muskets, whatever.
In this case you will want 3-6 catapults (assuming your stack is 25+) just to absorb collateral damage, not to attack with... unless perhaps they underestimated your defense strength, and you can counter attack and mop up some units.

If I have no choice but to defend in a city, I'll start to park units 1 tile outside of it, either as fresh reinforcements clear of collateral damage, in a multi-turn siege, or as a retake force. A stack is highly vulnerable right at the moment they first take a city, and the AI almost never inserts a CG on the very first turn they take a city, yet half or more of their city raiders are sitting there open to attack. This sacrifices some buildings and pop in that city (preferably a border town or marginal resource-grabber type city), but with a minimal number of units you can absolutely eliminate a much larger force, putting an effective halt to their war effort.

oyzar said:

AI wasn't mentioned in the OP at all either . The point is that the OP thinks that flanking is underpowered while he isn't using it right at all... Flanking can be used on the offense due to mounted unit's 2 moves. Colleteral damage from siege can not be used that way(again against a competent opponent), due to the fact that he'll obliterate your stack before you get a chance to attack with the siege(and siege aren't very good at defending).

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Even the AI will smack you with some collateral if you sit there and let it. So, even NON COMPETENT opposition is bad to defend against if they have siege.

Of course, early in the game before anybody has siege, defending might be helpful. The AI will still suicide its units into that wall city or whatever. Mostly though, walls are for abusing the AI tendency to sit there and bombard to 0 before attacking, allowing time to easily reinforce a TON of units since the AI will often bring like 2-3 catapults for stacks of > 10 units. Especially on normal or the god-awful quick speed, the time it takes to bombard that is an ETERNITY (why couldn't at least bombardment rates scale with speed? Was that too much to #@%$ing ask?).