Destroying longbowmen/crossbowmen

[FenrysWulf]

In all the Civilization games my strategy has always been to build only offensive units with high mobility, like mounted units and tanks. The theory being that you can defend yourself by attacking attackers before they get to you, and the quicker you get to the enemy city, the less time they have to bomb you or attack you with artillery, etc. I really don't like using a stack of slow moving infantry. This has always worked in the past games, but it's different here because of the fact that certain units are very susceptible to others, so knights against pikemen doesn't work like it used to. I have to learn a new way to make war, and it's hard to adjust.

 

[R3dKnight]

Problem is, you still gotta slow your mounted units down to the siege weapons speed. Unless you made infantry units like Axeman / Archers to escort them. I usually let the horsemen get in front. Pillage those improvements near cities I plan to raze / cannot capture then return to the Siege weapons stack when they are in position to bombard.

Best move you can do with mounted units are probably pillaging and intercept stragglers (small stacks that snuck up behind your borders), otherwise they're pretty horrible against most units when trying to take the city.

Cavalry is a little better, but I still like Grenadiers for all rounders. The real damage dealers during gunpowder era for me is the cannon. Everything else is just to protect the siege units.

 

[Shillen]

Here's my strategy. Build all catapults/macemen at first when building up for the war. Macemen are actually better attackers than knights IMO because of city raider promotions. Make sure you have a lot of cats - as many as you'll need for the entire war. Then you attack with all your macemen and catapults. Then switch all your military production cities to build knights. Why? Because the knights can get to the war front and join the battle much sooner than another maceman could.

But yeah you pretty much have to bombard every city down to at most 20% defense bonus. A city with 80% and a longbow in it is going to be nearly impossible to take. The thing is the more units you lose when attacking a city the more promotions the AI gets on its defenders. Soon that longbowman has city garrison 3 and combat 1 and then even a city raider 3 maceman with 0% defense bonus is likely to lose.

Also watch for cities on hills. They will be quite a bit harder to capture and you may want to sacrifice a catapult or two for collateral damage.

 

[NuWorld]

the only way u could win w/out any type of bombarment of the defense bonus is if u r somehow way ahead of your enemies and have tanks while they have longbowmen or sumthin

Last night I was forced into an early war with Tokugawa, didn't have time to build siege weapons. Focused all my strenght on Tokyo, it was heavily guarded + 60% defense bonus, but other cities were too far away. There was spearmen, catapult, 2 axemen, 2 longbowman and 6 archers inside. I attacked with 8 horse archers (strength-medic-25% vs melee) and 1 axemen (2x strength-3x city raider). Swept the city in 2 turns, loosing 4 horse archers in the process. 3 of those were lost in 1st turn, last one in 2nd turn. I checked the battle odds before each attack, most were not in my favor, not by much, yet I won. Only the Axemen had odds in his favor, not by much too, but he lost only 0,5 strength in both turns, slaughtering 1 longbowman and 1 archer. Sometimes siege weapons are not needed. Oh, this was on Monarch difficulty

 

[Shillen]

Last night I was forced into an early war with Tokugawa, didn't have time to build siege weapons. Focused all my strenght on Tokyo, it was heavily guarded + 60% defense bonus, but other cities were too far away. There was spearmen, catapult, 2 axemen, 2 longbowman and 6 archers inside. I attacked with 8 horse archers (strength-medic-25% vs melee) and 1 axemen (2x strength-3x city raider). Swept the city in 2 turns, loosing 4 horse archers in the process. 3 of those were lost in 1st turn, last one in 2nd turn. I checked the battle odds before each attack, most were not in my favor, not by much, yet I won. Only the Axemen had odds in his favor, not by much too, but he lost only 0,5 strength in both turns, slaughtering 1 longbowman and 1 archer. Sometimes siege weapons are not needed. Oh, this was on Monarch difficulty

That sounds like pure luck to me. A horse archer against a longbow in a 60% defense bonus city? I'll assume he was fortified in there. That would give the longbow an effective strength of like 12.6. Against a 6.6 strength horse archer? You should have lost all 8 of them trying to take that city. I'm having a hard time even believing this scenario.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

In all the Civilization games my strategy has always been to build only offensive units with high mobility, like mounted units and tanks. The theory being that you can defend yourself by attacking attackers before they get to you, and the quicker you get to the enemy city, the less time they have to bomb you or attack you with artillery, etc. I really don't like using a stack of slow moving infantry. This has always worked in the past games, but it's different here because of the fact that certain units are very susceptible to others, so knights against pikemen doesn't work like it used to. I have to learn a new way to make war, and it's hard to adjust.

I played civ3 like this quite a lot. I was mostly a monarch player though (low enough that I could play fairly quickly and not lose ). I'd send Knights, Cavs, Tanks depending on the age out in front with workers and defensive units and settlers coming behind. I was never a huge artillery player since it would slow my offensive down so much and I counted on being ahead in tech. I'm sure the more experienced better players will say I should've moved up to harder levels, but I still felt it to be challenging for the amount of energy I wanted to put into it. That strategy just isn't a strategy anymore, at least until tanks come around and even then it's not really valid. No more 3 movement units and the cultural borders are a much bigger problem for that strategy now. Combined arms stacks are the only way to defeat opposing cities now. First, even at noble the AI can stay with you tech wise in the beginning. That means it'll be a long time before you have a significant strength advantage and even then city defenses will massively protect a weaker unit. Cats are the only way to bring down cities defense until frigates and bombers. Since you need to bring them, then there is no significant speed advantage to having horses instead of melee/archer etc.. units since you won't be able to attack a city until it's defenses are down. I find I almost don't build more then a couple cavalry units anymore. They're still very useful for pillaging, to have a few at home for offensive defense against counterattacks, or to pick off units near your stack so that you can still retreat back to the stack. Also, since they are often the highest strength unit of the age they are valuable, but there is no way you can get away with just masses of cavalry against cities anymore.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

Last night I was forced into an early war with Tokugawa, didn't have time to build siege weapons. Focused all my strenght on Tokyo, it was heavily guarded + 60% defense bonus, but other cities were too far away. There was spearmen, catapult, 2 axemen, 2 longbowman and 6 archers inside. I attacked with 8 horse archers (strength-medic-25% vs melee) and 1 axemen (2x strength-3x city raider). Swept the city in 2 turns, loosing 4 horse archers in the process. 3 of those were lost in 1st turn, last one in 2nd turn. I checked the battle odds before each attack, most were not in my favor, not by much, yet I won. Only the Axemen had odds in his favor, not by much too, but he lost only 0,5 strength in both turns, slaughtering 1 longbowman and 1 archer. Sometimes siege weapons are not needed. Oh, this was on Monarch difficulty

All these calculations include the promotions you said the units had and the 60% city defense, as well as the inherit abilities of each unit. The order of the battles is based on how the AI would choose what to defend with next (to the best of my ability).You would start this out with 6.6 horse vs 11.1 longbow for your best odds (no promotions for the long bow, city not on a hill). If you lost 3 horses the first turn, then we'll assume you lost one to a longbow, then the 2nd horse won (highly unlikely at those odds). Then repeat for the second longbow. Then you would face a 10.4 spearman to a 6.6 horse. Assume that you lose the third here and win with the second horse again. You still have 2 horses and one axeman (this is if you moved to within one square of the city the turn before and no units attacked you including the catapult? or did any damage). You now have two horses and an axeman left. If you win the next two battles with 8.6 horses against 8 strength axes. Then your remaining axe defeats the catapult at 7.5 to 8 underdog. On the next turn you have 5 horses and one axe that have to be damaged in the very least, since they've all won underdog battles last turn and now you have to beat 6 archers that equal a 6.3 against you. You also said you lost a horse on the second turn, so unless there was a battle of mutual destruction (never seen that happen, you not have enough units left to defeat 6 archers, and there is no way any of the units would've been in good enough shape to do so. As far as I know, there is no difficulty level that would allow this to happen and taking all the numbers out of the equation in terms of strength, just saying you lost 3 units on the first turn, means at best you only killed 6 of 12 defending units. Then if you lost one more on the second turn you could only defeat defeat 5 of the remaining 6 archers.

 

[Shillen]

You would start this out with 6.6 horse vs 11.1 longbow for your best odds (no promotions for the long bow, city not on a hill).

You're either leaving out the +25% fortification bonus or the +25% innate city defense bonus that longbows have. It should be 6.6 vs 12.6 which is nearly impossible odds. It would likely take 4 or 5 horse archers just to take out that one longbowman.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

You're either leaving out the +25% fortification bonus or the +25% innate city defense bonus that longbows have. It should be 6.6 vs 12.6 which is nearly impossible odds.

You're right, I forgot to include the up to 25% fortification bonus for any of the defending units. That way the only way these odds are are even this good are if all the units in the city just got there and none of them have received any xp promotions yet. I think we've proven that post was full of crap.

 

[joelzhl]

You would start this out with 6.6 horse vs 11.1 longbow for your best odds (no promotions for the long bow, city not on a hill).

This might not be true, I think he probably attacked the city with axe before horses just to get rid of one of the longbow. Assuming the longbow has no city defense promotion, then the axe does have a chance of winning 5 * (1 + 0.75 + 0.2) vs 6 * (1 + 0.6 + 0.25 + 0.25) or a 9.75 vs 12.6 odd. Now this is is actually capable of winning, though much luck is need. If he's lucky continues, the second attack via horses should take the 2nd longbow down at least 1/2 hp. From this point onward, it's all 50/50 fights. Odds in this game are sometimes really screwed, I lost a combat 5 commando infantry to a green infantry yesterday , it was a 30.0 vs 22.0 odd too.

 

[Shillen]

This might not be true, I think he probably attacked the city with axe before horses just to get rid of one of the longbow. Assuming the longbow has no city defense promotion, then the axe does have a chance of winning 5 * (1 + 0.75 + 0.2) vs 6 * (1 + 0.6 + 0.25 + 0.25) or a 9.75 vs 12.6 odd. Now this is is actually capable of winning, though much luck is need. If he's lucky continues, the second attack via horses should take the 2nd longbow down at least 1/2 hp. From this point onward, it's all 50/50 fights. Odds in this game are sometimes really screwed, I lost a combat 5 commando infantry to a green infantry yesterday , it was a 30.0 vs 22.0 odd too.

Well he stated his axeman had odds in his favor, which indicates he did not use it to attack first, even though that would have been in his best interest. But your calculations are wrong anyway. City raider promotion actually subtracts from the defense bonus of the defender. So the axeman would actually have 5 * (1+0.2) vs 6 * (1+0.6+0.25+0.25-0.75) = 6 vs 8.1 odds. And that's only if the longbow had been fortified for 5 turns. If the longbow had just gotten there then it would be 6 vs 6.6 odds which is VERY winnable.

But it's also unlikely that neither of the longbows had city garrison promotion, which is something we've been assuming in these posts.

I think we've analyzed this scenario to death now.

 

[oopsy poopsy]

This might not be true, I think he probably attacked the city with axe before horses just to get rid of one of the longbow. Assuming the longbow has no city defense promotion, then the axe does have a chance of winning 5 * (1 + 0.75 + 0.2) vs 6 * (1 + 0.6 + 0.25 + 0.25) or a 9.75 vs 12.6 odd. Now this is is actually capable of winning, though much luck is need. If he's lucky continues, the second attack via horses should take the 2nd longbow down at least 1/2 hp. From this point onward, it's all 50/50 fights. Odds in this game are sometimes really screwed, I lost a combat 5 commando infantry to a green infantry yesterday , it was a 30.0 vs 22.0 odd too.

Forgot to add the city raiders consecutively, just gave the 30%. So, say that happens, then he must lose either two horses to the spear or two to the other longbow instead and he kills an archer instead of the cat, because the horse is +50% vs. cat so it wouldn't be picked as a defender. Then it's conceivable that the cat attacks the stack IBT, then if it loses the remaining attackers would have enough guys left to defeat the remaining defenders. However, the odds at this point would have to be incredibly long. No matter how you slice it, this never happened.

@Shillen: I didn't know it subtracts from the city defense bonus. I knew it wasn't a straight add up though, 'cause I've seen lots of times where my city raiders units aren't nearly as high attacking as I thought, but I could also see the defender was lowered, so I knew there was some cancelling going on, but didn't know exactly how it worked.

 

[FenrysWulf]

I don't know if that person was lying or not, but I do know that I seem to lose battles I think I should win a lot more often than I win battles I should lose.