Attacking cities - unbalanced AI defence?

[Zarty]

I am getting bored with CivIV BTS because it seems to me that the game is unbalanced in the AI's favour for city attack and defence. Time and time again I've seen when trying to defend a city, regardless of it's high defensive rating and a good stack of promoted bowmen, get taken over at will by the enemy. Similarly, when trying to attack a city with a big stack of promoted units, it often happens that a single bowman will wipe-out all or most of the attacking stack. By that stage, I've invested so much time/resource into the units that it's basically game over for me. I've posted about this before and the only thing I read that I wasn't doing was to use seige weapons first... So I started to use them too. I experimented with knocking a cities defences down to 0% first and then moving the units in... Well, a bit better results but still getting wiped out by relatively few defending units.

I've attached my last game and it should come up with the trebs ready to attack. I used those trebs to get the defences down to zero, you can do the same. There are loads of good units in the city just behind the trebs as well as some more behind and to the left in the other nearby city. By rights, the city I'm attacking should fall. Why doesn't it? Or perhapd you can make it fall and, in this case, what am I doing wrong?

Zarty

 

[JujuLautre]

I just focused on taking the city, nothing else; after 4 turns of bombardement, here it goes:

Spoiler :

Perhaps I could have taken it in less turns. But one thing for sure, you don't have enough siege: you seem to use them for bringing defense down only, but you should also use them for collateral damage. And it would also have meant that the defenses went down earlier.

 

[mystyfly]

Capturing cities is easy enought as it is.

You can easily shuffle the odds in your favor by using the right promotion.

 

[Pir Lan Tota]

Be willing to throw in a lot of seige troops. You want your city raider troops to have atleast 75% to 80% chance of winning their battles. If it is less, throw in a cat/treb and check again. This means you will lose loads of cats and trebs early on, BUT your city raiders will quickly improve, meaning more city raider upgrades, which intern means less losses their. Seige troops FTW

 

[GooglyBoogly]

If siege is lacking, and the defender is on a hill/ has cultural def 40%+ then you will need to just overwhelm them with numbers, about a 3:1 ratio is required given (roughly) even base attack and defense values

 

[Jerrymander]

Wow, I find the opposite true. No AI effectively takes many - if any - of my cities and taking theirs is easy. I often have a 60% siege and 40% attacker mix. To start with, because some siege units die.

 

[Zarty]

Ok, thanks for the feedback. The general theme seems to be 'more seige' and for collateral as well as bringing defences down. Looks like I could be attacking more effectively too looking at JujuLautre's result - I didn't use the macemen very much. One other question related to this... JujuLautre said he 'focused just on winning the city' and it made me think that a lot of the time I get interrupted from the main objective of capturing a city with other things going on in the game. What's the best way to minimize those interruptions?

Jerrymander, are we playing the same game?

Cheers,
Zarty

 

[thadian]

set build queues before going to war - it is really annoying and can cause forgetfulness when you have to cycle through cities and completed units while assembling the lines and making your movements. you will be thinking 3 turns ahead, click next - Be forced to choose 2-3 buid options and lose your line of thought.

 

[Defiant47]

I can take gunpowder era cities with axemen. How? I always bring enough siege to drop everyone to their absolute lowest possible level given my siege weapons. In that case, even a nice CR3 axeman can finish off the units.

You know you've got enough siege weapons when after taking down the defenses and attacking, some of your siege weapons don't get to attack since all the enemies are at the minimum damage already, because you just have so many.

 

[thadian]

It is worth attacking with only siege until they are at min damage for extra GG points. Another thing you can do is try to use counter-units. Archers? Use siege and promote some units to be good vs archers. Got a lot of horses? build spearmen and tech your way to pikemen. Got a lot of melee units? Nail them with mounted ones. It is a very paper-rock-scissors based game with some units throwing it off (like axemen being good vs melee) but you can never ever have enough siege.

My army mostly consists of 60% siege, 20% spearmen 20%axe/macemen - and 1-2 longbowmen to protect waypoint forts.

Siege, Siege, Siege - they are wonderful pawns. you can also toss a horse archer on the other side of their city all by itself - or even 2. this way they can either reduce the number of defenders the city has - or let you choke them.

Oh, and one last thing.


Dont forget those siege weapons

 

[Jerrymander]

Jerrymander, are we playing the same game?

Yes, play me in multiplayer and I might show you how to take cities.

 

[JujuLautre]

One other question related to this... JujuLautre said he 'focused just on winning the city' and it made me think that a lot of the time I get interrupted from the main objective of capturing a city with other things going on in the game. What's the best way to minimize those interruptions?

I just meant here that I moved the units and did nothing else (like bringing reinforcements, building stuff...)

 

[szemek77]

I totally agree: AI takes your cities much more easier than you take AI's. Of course the higher level you play, the harder it gets. From my experience - it goes really easy if you have huge technology advantage (tanks or armors against grenadiers or musketmans). If not - it takes a lot of effort.

Siege weapon is a must. Place your stack on a hill next to foreign city and start the siege. On one hand it gives AI time to collect more defense units in dangered city. On the other hand - isn't it a great opportunity for your second army to attack your enemy from other side?

Anyway - frontal attack without catapults or trebuchets is just wasting your army. From Polish military history I can name Monte Cassino (1944) as a good example......

 

[Arksa]

Anyway - frontal attack without catapults or trebuchets is just wasting your army. From Polish military history I can name Monte Cassino (1944) as a good example......

Try Cataphracts. Assuming they don't have castles built yet.

 

[Rusty Edge]

My advice is worth what you pay for it.

As for city defense, there is more to it than several bowmen. It's a mixed forces game.

A barrage -promoted seige can weaken a SoD. I like to have a "rapid reaction force" of flank-promoted horsemen that can weaken approaching seige . A pike can be useful defending against knights. A crossbow does well against maces.



On Offense-

You can use spies against defenses, freeing your seige for direct fire.

Sometimes it helps to cut the roads and metal/horses so that your enemy can't re-enforce as readily, or build counterattackers.

Logically you attack with your best first, but what if your best isn't good enough?

Usually only the top two A.I. defenders are highly promoted. So, if you've expended your seige this turn and still must attack, sometimes it's best to attack with a sacrifial maceman or two first- the fresh, green ones, not the highly promoted CRIII veterans. This should weaken the best defenders so that they don't defend first, or are able to be attacked by your best maces at favorable odds. As an alternative, you may be able to use flank-promoted horsemen instead. They will take a lot of damage if they survive, but they may weaken the defender enough, and they'll damage the defender's seige if they have them. It won't do much good if the A.I. has pikes in the city.

 

[Zarty]

Well, thanks everyone. I reloaded a save and tried again to win the city and succeeded this time but... as if interpretting my pending victory over that city, the other CIV declared war on me this time. Completely screwed again. Anyway, the info has all been useful.

Zarty

 

[Arksa]

SO basically you're bored because you haven't been as lucky as people usually are.
How come I haven't experienced any of this ****? Or Many others I know who play civ 4.
Options: play better, stop thinking that AI is favoured in combat, or both.

Just telling how things are.

 

[warpus]

If you get anything out of this thread, I hope that it's the fact that you should be sending cats/trebs/cannons/artillery on suicide runs a turn AFTER city defense has been lowered to 0%, and only sending in the rest of the army when you're seeing an 80%+ chance of victory. keep suicide-ramming the city with your siege weapons until then..

 

[thadian]

If you get anything out of this thread, I hope that it's the fact that you should be sending cats/trebs/cannons/artillery on suicide runs a turn AFTER city defense has been lowered to 0%, and only sending in the rest of the army when you're seeing an 80%+ chance of victory. keep suicide-ramming the city with your siege weapons until then..

I saw this advice on another thread and went from noble to monarch

another thing you can do is place a few pawns (units you could care less about losing) outside of the city by itself. It will usually kill horses, which horses is the usual response to this (because they can kill the pawn and retreat back to the city).

This will cause one of their units to be damaged, and if they dont take the pawn, you can start the pillage or even move a few spaces over to scout the kind of reinforcements getting sent in.

Using spies to reduce defenses... Now thats good advice.

 

[Gumbolt]

Looked at save. You have lots of maces with CR promo. Ai city has 100% defence bonus due to culture and other buildings. It will take more than 4 trebs to lower the defence bonus quickly. Much, much more!!! You also have a lot of units still defending cities. Making coats for the winter months ahead? Too many of one type of unit can be a bad thing. Macemen against crossbowmen could be bad news. Pikemen are good against knights roaming around. Riflemen even better.

On a plus side you have riflemen who will stand a much higher chance of winning without the use of trebs against longbowmen. You have the tech advantage you should use that while you can.

I would pump taxes up to 100% and upgrade a few macemen. Strength 8 to 14 in one upgrade. Lots more trebs/cannons would help.

Not sure why you only have 7 cities at 1700ad. On a huge map I would get gobbled up with only 7 cities on monarch.