Attacking other Civs, was it meant to be this hard?

[itishe]

Hello,

I've quite enjoyed Civilization 4 for the past few days I've owned it, but one thing has pissed me off to the point where I'm pulling my hair out and it's the combat. I've heard complaints of Civilizations combat in the past, but from what I'm playing it seems rediculous. Perhaps I'm doing something wrong, but it seems like it's so tedious to prepare a force only to have it destroyed by a stack of 2 units.

I'm not sure what the problem is, but have you had an issue with the combat in the past but figured a way to make it more enjoyable?

 

[Artanis]

If you're losing entire stacks to just 2 units, either you're horribly out-teched, or you're trying to attack something with gigantic defense bonuses. If it's the former, you need to research better. If it's the latter, bring siege weapons (i.e. Catapults) to your city attacks to knock down the city defenses before throwing your assault stack against it.

 

[itishe]

We're on the same level of technology (unit wise, if not me even farther), but they do have 2 promotions or so of defense. I still believe this is somewhat unfeasable.

 

[warpstorm]

Use Seige Weapons to soften then and then bring City Raiders to counter the Garrison bonus.

 

[Big Bottom]

If you use siege and bombard the city before you attack I don't know what else advice to give you. I've had the game a few days but it seems pretty balanced to me. Holding down the right mouse button over the enemy will tell you what the attack odds are, if they're too high there's no point attacking.

 

[Rane Khan]

Walking your units carefully around the map can also help; like trailing your units to forrests and hills (which gives them defense bonuses). Once you have the tech for catapults ALWAYS bring siege weapons in good numbers. It is always helpful to bomb defense and/or hit units for collateral damage before beating their defenders into the dust.

Build forces with more then one type of unit. If your enemeies have horses you'll be glad about bringing some pikes.

Also; Promote smart. If you see cities defended with pretty much archers then give some units the cover promotion, ect...

Once you get the hang of it it isn't that hard and you will be conquering and burning worlds without trouble. ^^

 

[opticaljim]

I feel the pain. I understand that siege weapons will help tear down the city defenses but I was the Mongols and using fast Keshiks on a large continent and couldn't sit around waiting for the slow catapults.

A single Longbowsman crushed 8 of my Keshiks.

Okay, I understand that a unit should get more powerful as it gains experience but in the same turn? Should't he get, like, tired?

I actually started laughing because I was getting so upset watching him take that stupid bow and pop my Keshiks in the head one by one.

 

[warpstorm]

Keshiks aren't particularly good against Longbows. Especially LBs fortified and promoted for city defense. They have the same base strength as Longbows, but were designed to be fast pillagers, not city attackers. Swordsmen and Macemen are much better after the walls have been taken down by your catapults. I'm not surpised you lost all your units attacking like that. They didn't have a hope. You used the wrong tool for the job.

A Keshik has a a strength of 6, a Longbow fortified in a city has an effective strength of at least 13.5 not counting any wall, culture, or garrison promotion bonuses, just the normal ones for fortifying in a city.

Keshiks don't get any of the big promotion bonuses that would help attacking.

 

[DrewBledsoe]

A good tip:- before you attack , hold the "alt" key down and mouse over whoever you want to attack, this will give you a complete combat breakdown, and your odds of victory

 

[Bushface]

Walking your units carefully around the map can also help; like trailing your units to forrests and hills (which gives them defense bonuses). Once you have the tech for catapults ALWAYS bring siege weapons in good numbers. It is always helpful to bomb defense and/or hit units for collateral damage before beating their defenders into the dust.
^^

See manual, p.38 para 1, last sentence.( I wish I had read this earlier, it would have save me lots of frustration.) There's a big difference between bombing a city and bombarding it.

 

[KingCruz]

ARGH!
I know its hard, but thats what cats are for
Know when you need to use em. If a stack is heading your way, sacrafice a cat to do collateral damage, after about 3 or 4 cats their strength would go down to 2.0 (ancient era).
And remember your counters. Dont try to kill Spearmen with Chariots...

 

[stiletto]

I must say I agree.. Combat (especially taking cities) is way too hard. I generally find that I really need to out-tech my opponent or I just end up throwing lots of guys away. Very frustrating, and I end up training over and over. Maybe I just suck!

I've been playing as noble. The rule of thumb I go by is:

Opponent has Archers: Bring 3 Swordsmen for every archer. Expect to lose 1-2 for each archer. Better to attack with macemen.

Opponent has Longbowmen: Bring 5 Swordsmen for every longbowman. Expect to lose 3-4 for each longbowman, or bring 4 Macemen for every longbowman. Expect to lose 3 macemen. Better to attack with musketmen.

Opponent has Musketmen: Forget Macemen. You wont be able to take this city unless you get better tech. Bring 4 Grenadiers for every Musketman. Expect to lose 3. You almost need riflemen or infantry to take a city guarded by musketmen.

Of course this assumes I bombard city down to 0% defense.

 

[Jonathan]

All combat is long-winded and dreary because it has to be done one unit at a time. And selecting the stack attack option doesn't really help much (I've tried it). This has been a major flaw in the whole Civ series. A battle should be resolved as one battle, not as a tedious series of single combats.

 

[opticaljim]

Keshiks aren't particularly good against Longbows. Especially LBs fortified and promoted for city defense. They have the same base strength as Longbows, but were designed to be fast pillagers, not city attackers. Swordsmen and Macemen are much better after the walls have been taken down by your catapults. I'm not surpised you lost all your units attacking like that. They didn't have a hope. You used the wrong tool for the job.

A Keshik has a a strength of 6, a Longbow fortified in a city has an effective strength of at least 13.5 not counting any wall, culture, or garrison promotion bonuses, just the normal ones for fortifying in a city.

Keshiks don't get any of the big promotion bonuses that would help attacking.

Good stuff! Thanks. Now it makes sense. I read the no-defense bonus part on Keshiks but I must have misunderstood.

 

[Koelle]

It seems strange to me since I've almost never lost more than 2 attacking units for a defense one. Make sure your units have some useful promotion bonuses (attacking city, against archery units. etc ...) As for Achers, i always use axemen to take them down (it's much easier with swordman, of course, but you wont have them early in your game), just sacrifice some warriors to reduce their strength (their strength might not be reduced, but they wont be fortified units anymore) and let your axemen finish their job comfortable

I also dont think that grenadiers are good to take city. They're too slow and only get advantage against riftlemen. Build a stack of knights instead and send them quickly to the city you want to take. And remember stay at least 1 turn next to the city, dont attack the city immediately even if they are within your reach, otherwise you might lose your entire stack

 

[Vietcong]

cats are a compleat waste in production, yet u need them!!

some shold mod in a 100% chance retreat ability for them!! plzz!

 

[The Q-Meister]

A good tip:- before you attack , hold the "alt" key down and mouse over whoever you want to attack, this will give you a complete combat breakdown, and your odds of victory

I know many players do this and it's not technically cheating, but I can't bring myself to doing that. It just seems so fake and artificial to me, like a big reminder that "You are playing a game" I mean, I know this is a game of course but in real life no one can give you an exact breakdown of what the percentages are. Particularly in the pre-modern era.(For a good analogy: think of being a tourist in a foreign country, most people, even though they are tourists don't want to wear a big sign on their head saying "TOURIST HERE" but would rather mix in with the locals as best they can. Same logic applies here.) I try to play the game as realistic as I can, even if that means missing out on some of the perks.

 

[The Q-Meister]

Now to answer the original post: Could it be that you are stacking your units together on one tile when attacking the city? If so, that could make your army prone to a catapult attack and thus make your forces easier to be counter-attacked even with a smaller force. Remember that it is the general rule in history that when attacking, you need more troops than the enemy does. Yes there are exceptions to this, especially when you have a tech advantage, but generally it is true.

Also, perhaps it is wise if you haven't done so already to build some barracks and give your units the "City Raider" promotions. Maybe you should consider changing to a civic that gives you an automatic "unit promotion" And remember, some units just work better on some units than others. For example, if your opponent is heavy on archers, build some units which have bonuses against archers and give them a promotion or two.

I am playing a game where as Julius Caesar I am using a huge army of Praetorian Guards, axemen, and cats to nearly double my territory. And no, I don't consider myself a great player by any stretch of the imagination. I personally like this new combat system even though I had my doubts when I first heard of it. I like making all the decisions of which units to build when, what promotions to give, etc. And making a siege of a city should not be over in 1 turn, historically, some sieges have taken years, decades even.

 

[Lewsir]

I'm also a newbie and have been playing around with different attack combinations, but where I'm skeptical is that the cats are such a bargain compared to building another attacker. They would make sense if you could crank them out, say, twice as fast as the attackers they support but in many cases they take almost the same amount of turns to produce (e.g axemen). So the question becomes: does the cat, on average, do more damage to the defending units than one attacking unit would (presuming both are going to die in the process)? Not obvious to me that they do, at least in some situations. I've had plenty of cases where the cat yields only a small amount of damage to 1 or 2 units.

 

[Wodan]

I'm also a newbie and have been playing around with different attack combinations, but where I'm skeptical is that the cats are such a bargain compared to building another attacker. They would make sense if you could crank them out, say, twice as fast as the attackers they support but in many cases they take almost the same amount of turns to produce (e.g axemen). So the question becomes: does the cat, on average, do more damage to the defending units than one attacking unit would (presuming both are going to die in the process)? Not obvious to me that they do, at least in some situations. I've had plenty of cases where the cat yields only a small amount of damage to 1 or 2 units.

Better to build more Cats or more Swordsmen? I'd say about 50/50, but add in more Cats if you want to speed up the bombardment.

Each cat will probably die, but it will lower most of the other defending units down to a point where most of the Swords will live.

Wodan