Cities too strong?

[Hreat]

Cep 3.0.5
I'm frequently finding when trying to take an AI city that they city kills one of my troops each round (either by the city itself hitting for 100, or the city hitting for 70-80 and a garrisoned archer doing the rest). This is true against equal tech level melee troops, siege units, and regardless of defensive promotions.

Was this change intended?

 

[Thalassicus]

Cep doesn't significantly change this from the unmodded game, so what you're seeing is largely vanilla behavior. I haven't personally had trouble like that with cities.

Are you certain the AI did not have city strength boosters like a garrison, religion, oligarchy, defensive buildings, etc? Basic city strength is relatively weak. The people you're fighting might have had many bonuses.

I'd be willing to reduce city strength.

 

[Hreat]

tested it a bit and it seems to be the effect of having a garrison.

I attacked a city two rounds after it was founded, it did predictably weak damage (19). then the AI bought walls and an archer and the city did 60-80 every round thereafter.

attacking the city with melee troops became pretty much suicidal, since the pikeman/swordsman would deal ~15 damage and take 60 back.

no other modifiers were visible in the combat modifiers (defender of the faith, etc)

 

[Thalassicus]

How many siege units do you bring? Against a strong city with walls and archer, I typically use melee troops as expendable damage soaks while my siege units tear down the city from afar. I usually lose just one unit taking each city. City damage is mostly unchanged from the vanilla game. I'd be willing to lower it.

 

[Hreat]

I brought 3 catapults. 3 rounds later I had zero catapults.

 

[mystikx21]

Thal, as I recall walls based defence was lowered in GEM (mostly this was extra HP), if that wasn't active, that's one source of extra power. A minor reduction to garrison strength would be another. Raw city strength and HP is already about as low as I would go unless you are fiddling with the tech/pop formulas.

The main change from the unit side was having the city attack bonus also work on defence (but not the city attack penalty, which should just be on attack). I don't think that change was active in 3.05, and should be noticeable when it is.