Help an old Civ player who battles to work out Civ4 BTS

Simo,

As you've found, it's hard when enemy technologies match yours. Once you get ahead (Rifles vs swordsmen for example) then it becomes easier. Once you get the hang of taking cities (and I think you're there) then it's easier.

However, I made a mess of a city attack last night, charging a group of muskets and axemen to a city. Whoops, forgot the seige guys who were either healing from an earlier battle or scurrying off to attack a different city! By the time I was ready to attack the city had whipped 4-5 extra defenders but cannons soon dealt with them.
 
I had cavalry, and cannons - the cannons are a big leap ahead in the siege phase, collateral damage went through the roof along with lots of withdrawals.

Aha!!! I see you have discovered the wonders of the Cannon :D

They really do rock :goodjob:, in fact what i wanted to suggest is that you either war right at the beginning (axe rush, chariot rush etc.) or since you have a tech lead race towards cannons ( a good way to do that is to pick up Steel as the free tech from liberelism - if you get to Lib first) and then Build a whole lot of Cannons + anything else and go wipe out everybody :D. No need to slog it out in the medieval era :p
 
Cities:
Just as somebody earlier pointed out, in CIV4 you cannot just use massive stack of your nominally best attackers and hammer away. If you attack with cuirassiers, the enemy defends with pikemen (6 + 100% = 12). Bring a mixed stack. Also patience with bombard, then suicide your artillery (they cause collateral + have decent chance to withdraw). Besides you should have about 2-3 times the enemy's stack in order to take a city.

This isn't very good advice. You can actually do pretty well in this situation with pure cuirassiers- much better than with a mix of cuirassiers and macemen. The first wave of cuirassiers will have a hard time against the pikemen (it helps to give them flanking promotions so that some can withdraw), but then the rest will clean up. They'll also ignore a lot of the defense.
 
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