Can I bombard units in a city in early game?

[Simo]

Having just sorted some money problems I have managed to get to the point where I wanna take out my smaller neighbour.

However im having a heap of trouble getting through the city defenses.

In previous civ games I just needed to bring enough units to eventually break through (to a point). But in this BTS game my odds are constantly nearly 0% due to the defensive bonuses.

We are both pretty close in tech, they are 1 above (have riflemen to my muskets) but I am much larger. My cavalry (in civ 3 were unstopable) are useless.

So I tried using catapaults to reduce the defences and it does remove the city defence after a few turns. But the bombard feature seems to disapear when at 0% meaning I can keep hitting the city to damage the units I cant beat.

I eventually got 1 city but the time it will take me to mass the units it will take me 1000 years to take a few cities.

How do you people wage war and break through what seems to be endless % advantages for the defence?

E.g. say my unit has a strength of 10 and the defence also has 10.....but then the city walls, city defence, fortification, + for certain unit etc etc adds so many % that my combat odds are nil. I even tried a mass stack attack as the units I figured would get injured at least and eventually loose but I lost every single unit!!!

I have grenaider, cavalry, musketman, catapault and berserk or something (and some more but they are the highest strength) available to attack cities defended with rifleman.

With this in mind what do I need to do to conquer without taking 1000 turns to pillage each surrounding square and eventually win through sheer mass of numbers/time and there inability to rebuild?

I play on the 3rd lowest level and just seem to be stuck.

Thanks from a frustrated war monger

 

[ShunNakamura]

The bombard just slashes the defense bonuses. If you wish to cause collateral damage you must tell the cats to attack[suicide pretty much]. The cats will damage several units a certain amount. Trebuchets are better at this even though their strength is lower[thanks to their 100% city attack]; However, even with trebs you will liking be throwing some away until you weaken them considerably.

So the idea is to throw your siege at them until you have caused enough collateral damage to run right through them.

For my assualt team I try to keep as much siege or even more siege than I have regular units. This is for two reasons. 1 that much siege reduces defense to 0 on the first turn. And second it means you don't have to keep carting slow siege units to the front line because to many died weakening the cities for you.

 

[AlessioCerci]

Bombard defenses, suicide some cats, then use grenadiers. (btw if you have cavalry then you can create rifles yourself)

 

[UncleJJ]

(btw if you have cavalry then you can create rifles yourself)

True in BtS but not for Warlord's or Vanilla. He didn't say what version he was playing.

 

[Percy]

I must say i share the OP's feeling. I recently started playing Monarch, but i'll probably go back a level. I don't really enjoy having to kill 10 enemy units per city, especially when killing a unit causes so much WW that it shuts down my empire after taking a couple of cities... I don't find war really enjoyable in BtS.

 

[AlessioCerci]

True in BtS but not for Warlord's or Vanilla. He didn't say what version he was playing.

Is that really true.

 

[UncleJJ]

Is that really true.

Yes, in Vanilla and Warlords a well know strategy is the cavalry rush. There you beeline to Military Tradition and Gunpowder. Rifling requires quite a few techs more.

In BtS that research path would fetch you cuirassiers instead of cavalry. You need Rifling now to use cavalry and that is one of the big tech differences in BtS.

Edit: Sorry, I see what you mean now, in the 3rd paragraph of the OP. You are right but ambiguous

He meant that the OP said he was playing BTS.

Thanks for pointing out my mistake. Ignore my tangent.

 

[slobberinbear]

If he has Rifles and you have Muskets, I'd wait to attack unless I had overwhelming numbers.

Because Rifles have a high strength, they're not going to be damaged as much as medieval units by catapults, blow for blow. You'll need a lot of suicide catapults and trebuchets, but it can still work.

Ideally, you'd have rifles, grenadiers, and cannons, with some cavalry in the mix as well.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

You can always send your cavalry to pillage his strategic resources. Usually the AI will abandon (stupidly) his cities to kill off your pillagers. Sure, you'll lose cavalry, but you'd be losing them attacking the cities anyway.

 

[Welnic]

Is that really true.

He meant that the OP said he was playing BTS.

 

[xanadux]

You need cannon. A cat up against a fortified rifleman with CG promotions is going to have bad odds to even hit the rifleman once, and IIRC, your siege unit has to damage the unit defending in order to cause any collateral damage.

When going up against tough defenders, it is important to promote your siege weapons with city raider, not bombard or accuracy. Early in the game, accuracy is nice for a few cats because their bombard% is so low.

Except for just a few units to protect against stacks outside of cities, I no longer use the bombard promotion for siege units past cats. Sure, bombard 3 cannon against longbows are nice. But CR3 cannon are what you need against rifles or infantry.

 

[blitzkrieg1980]

Actually, the collateral damage is done anyway, however, the strongest defensive unit is still fully intact. It doesn't make much sense, but collateral damage is always done.

 

[Cer]

If the AI enemy's prime defensive unit is riflemen, (and often it is) then the only non-siege unit you need is grenadiers. Grenadiers work well against no-defense-bonus rifles and of course they work great against knights, muskets, and anything else with strength of 10 or less.

But battles are always easier with enough catapults to bombard defenses to 0 AND suicide one or two in only 2 turns. (5 catapults is enough.)

 

[Simo]

Thank you all for your replies, I actually tried last night after sending some cats/cannons to die first and my other units easily took them
So I guess an army of expendable siege weapons is what I was truely lacking.

(btw if you have cavalry then you can create rifles yourself)

Oops I didnt realise that! But even so at the time I had only just got cavalry from the new unit cuirassiers which must be a BTS or warlords addition.

Anyway thanks for the help and just for an update, I took another city, had a large stack of siege ready to take the next when I was forced to make peace due to sitting bull becoming a vassal state of saladin (who would kick my ass as well as him being a friendly trading nation).

Ill put this game down to a learning curve as I now have only 90 turns left and still using horses!


Thanks again

 

[xanadux]

Actually, the collateral damage is done anyway, however, the strongest defensive unit is still fully intact. It doesn't make much sense, but collateral damage is always done.

I guess that is the case. But when facing long odds against many units in a city, especially 2 or 3 particularly tough units, the collateral damage is pretty low, and often 0 against the really tough units. An example from my last game:

Due to having to stop all the AIs from getting to space, I had to invade 2 continents with inferior units. When tackling Roosevelt's island, I had tanks and artillery against his mech inf, fighters, and bombers. Chicago was the tough nut to crack ... it had 2 CG3, combat 1 mech inf fortified in it. My plan was to take out 4 coastal cities in 1 turn with only 2 stacks of units via amphibious assault ... losing a few extra units seemed well worth quickly taking out 4 of the 9 american cities, as I had learned how badly opposing air power can hurt when you have no counter but destroyers.

Well 3 of the cities fell, but those CG3 mech inf gave too long of odds from the sea, and had to land my forces. The point here is that the odds my bombard 3 artillery got were so bad, I would be unlikely to even scratch that shiny gold armour. Ended up having to use the CR3 tanks to soften them up, and it still took quite a few.

I only mention this because sometimes the key to cracking a city isn't just the collateral damage, but somehow knocking some hitpoints off one or two super strong defenders. Any old siege engine won't do that ... you may need to sacrifice some of your best City raider units to get the job done.

I've actually been doing this more and more of late ... when facing a city with 1 highly promoted defensive unit, injure it before sending in the siege units.

An example ... AI city has a CG3 longbow (clearly newly promoted), with a CG1 longbow and several archers and axes. I have a big stack of swordsmen and cats. Suppose I have 2 CR3 swords, 6 CR2 swords, and a bunch of 4 exp CR1 rookies. I could throw cat after cat against that tough longbow, and pretty much know they are all going to die if they don't withdraw, and likely won't even scratch him. Sure everything else will get damaged, but the tough longbow may not, even with 5 or 6 cats. Better to sac 1 of the CR3 swords ... It will likely die, but will also likely knock off half or more of the tough defender's hitpoints. Now the cats can actually do some damage to the defending unit and may actually survive once in a while. Of course, I wouldn't sack my highest promoted unit and be in danger of not building West Point, but what are your highly promoted units for if you only use them for mop up?

Just a few thought from my recent experiences cracking tough cities while trying to minimize losses.

 

[Cer]

I only mention this because sometimes the key to cracking a city isn't just the collateral damage, but somehow knocking some hitpoints off one or two super strong defenders. Any old siege engine won't do that ... you may need to sacrifice some of your best City raider units to get the job done.

I tend to make my sacrificial siege units into city raiders about as often as I make them bombard's. One city raider catapult puts some real hurt on a highly promoted longbow... and two city raider 1 catapults can turn a promoted rifleman into something your old cityraider maceman stands a chance at killing. Those city raider catapults are doing much needed collateral damage but they also put some ouch on some of the toughest defenders.

 

[xanadux]

Yeah, I was pretty sure I wasn't the first to think of it. It's just I used to blindly promote my siege weapons up the bombard 1, 2, 3, or get accuracy. I would even make quite a few tanks bombard 3. Following some poor strategy advice from old war academy articles on here. I finally realized that CR is way better than bombard most of the time when taking cities, and especially with tanks ... if they don't meet a stack outside a city, those bombard promotions just aren't that hot. And once you have tanks, aside from taking down defenses, artillery are just weak tanks, and you need far less of them than you may have needed cats and cannon earlier in the game.