Help, no Iron - Which pre gunpoweder units to attack cities

Heh, I'm wondering if some sort of a front line of spearmen (or pikes, preferably, but that's not really early) heavily promoted for the terrain type, with cover and a medic somewhere, and a few archers backing up just for city healing suppression might be able to reliably wear down a city even after the new patch. Would give you incentive to have both barracks and armories in several cities, as promotions would make the difference...

Oh well. Looking forward to seeing how people do early game without iron.
 
Hmm actually, since I intend to play siam anyways, the answer is probably siam's elephants that have a bonus vs cities. Although dealing with spearmen is probably a bit of a hassle.

And maybe ghandi's elephants. That'd be funny if ghandi turned out to be the optimal rusher.
 
This thread cracked me up:

"Halp! How do I take cities without iron???"
"Try getting iron."
"There's no iron."
"You should trade for iron."
"There's no iron."
"Ah... Have you tried looking for iron?"

It's like the whole thread was this:


 
I was *loving* Gandhi's elephants pre-patch. They can't actually take the city themselves, but they could control the field and wipe the city down to one hitpoint and then a warrior could waltz in and take it - and to boot, one of them in a city was devastating as a defender.. I was basically getting three or four of those, my initial warrior, and going to war. Frankly, a bit overpowered, but it was a hell of a unit.

They obviously won't be as good now, but with ranged attack and some decent early promotions, I'll bet they'll still be able to do a number.

And yeah, Siam's elephant looks like quite the brute. I've never tried Siam, but, I'm curious to do so.
 
Heh, I'm wondering if some sort of a front line of spearmen (or pikes, preferably, but that's not really early) heavily promoted for the terrain type, with cover and a medic somewhere, and a few archers backing up just for city healing suppression might be able to reliably wear down a city even after the new patch. Would give you incentive to have both barracks and armories in several cities, as promotions would make the difference...

Oh well. Looking forward to seeing how people do early game without iron.

I don't believe that terrain type promotions have any effect when attacking cities.
 
He surely meant the archers would attack and the spearmen defend.
 
Yeah, slowpoke got it. The spearmen have to survive more than anything - a line or four or so with one going forward for the odd attack to keep whittling down the city, but for the most part, they'd just fortify and allow the attack to continue. I don't see any one or two turn blitz type attack being effective without iron, so it'll probably be more a case of setting up a veritable fortification and being able to survive while you whittle a city down. Properly terrain promoted spearmen might be able to weather city and unit attacks while dealing a bit of damage back themselves, while the back row of archers continually assaults.

Maybe, maybe, maybe...
 
So you'd mostly be relying on archers (or crossbowmen) to take out the city? That might work, but considering the strength of cities and the rate that they heal (especially with walls), you would need an awfull lot of archers to whittle it down in a reasonable (say less then 20) number of turns while continuing to cycle out damaged ones.
 
OK... desperation time...

Get yourself 6 horsemen - more if you can - and a bunch of crossbowmen. Get your horses as many promotions and flanking bonuses that you can. Practice on barbs if you have to. Use the crossbowmen to take out any spears and pikes. Then send in the horses. Take GGs if you have them. Envelop the city on three sides if you can without counter-fire to catch reinforcements coming in. Expect some losses but you'll probably still take a city in two turns.

Or restart! :D
 
Not relying on the archers to take the city so much, but just to make the city run at a net negative health gain every turn - even if by one point. With four spearmen up front, ideally, one or two of your units would be getting hit per turn, and maybe one spearmen could attack each turn while the others focus on defense. Basically, archers whittle, spearmen hold the line around the city and take attacks of opportunity when they reach full health. The attacks of opportunity from the spearmen should take the city in a few turns if your archers completely suppress the health gain - and this type of setup only requires 8 or so (well promoted) units.

The big thing is, if that front line of spearmen gets broken, by the time you shuffle in replacements the enemy city will be 100% again. Your spearmen need to survive, and as I understand it terrain bonuses give indiscriminate bonuses regardless of the unit type attacking unlike things like cover and formation.

I don't know if this has any chance of working, but I'm really fumbling to try and think of a way to take a city that doesn't require iron, UU's, or masses of sacrificial units. Open to suggestions :)
 
OK... desperation time...

Get yourself 6 horsemen - more if you can - and a bunch of crossbowmen. Get your horses as many promotions and flanking bonuses that you can. Practice on barbs if you have to. Use the crossbowmen to take out any spears and pikes. Then send in the horses. Take GGs if you have them. Envelop the city on three sides if you can without counter-fire to catch reinforcements coming in. Expect some losses but you'll probably still take a city in two turns.

I like it - it has potential. Hopefully one could get it to work with archers since crossbows do take a while to get to, but it has some moxy, and the horses give you flexibility to move around and intercept reinforcements.

Or restart! :D

Genius strategy ;)
 
If you can get 4 archers/ Chariots into firing position and 2/3 spears you should be able to hold and net -1 or more HP/Turn. Of course on higher dificultys you will have constant enemy re-enforsements. It is likely on a high enough dificulty setting taking the city may not be possible. In that case I supose raid and pillage to keep him weaker than you would be your only choise. They realy need to fix the issue, I for one think siege weapons should not require iron.

I could be wrong in my thinking but I always thought of resourses as large quantitys of the resourse, not a you have it or you dont. I feal that laking iron doesn't mean you have none at all, just not sufficiant ammounts to field and maintain legions of men with swords, shield and armor. Having to make due without swordsmen is resonable, but without siege weapons of any kind is a bit drastic for one resourse. I am not very knowledgeble on how much Iron is used to make a catapult, but they look to me to be primarily made of wood. Even if large amounts of quality metal were required to make them I still think for game balance it should not be required.

What do you guys think about removing the requirement of Iron to make seige weapons? Would it break any important mechanics of the game?
 
If you can get 4 archers/ Chariots into firing position and 2/3 spears you should be able to hold and net -1 or more HP/Turn.
Consider how much time you invested in those units. Isn't that just a bit ridiculous to kill just one city? What if you were facing a human opponent rather than an AI?
 
I Agree with you. Honestly I think in multi-player I would not even attempt it untill I had a very significant economic lead. I get that we need catapults to take citys with walls, and don't have a problem with that, but just like you I am stumped as what to do as long as catapults require iron. Generaly speaking it takes 3-4 units to take a non walled city, +1 if he has an missile garrison. With walls you pretty much have to double that and expect some losses. So if we don't REALY REALY REALY need that city for now we probably just want to constantly trash his military and infastucture. Over time his lost income will result in you haveing the nessesary resourses. Think of it as a training facility for your troops. After all you are paying those troops the same when fighting or at peace, might as well make them earn that paycheck.
 
BTW regarding my last post, I am not saying that it isn't frustrating sometimes. I don't even want to think about if the AI builds forts/citidels in good locations and you have no iron. Might as well just fence up your border and go on building up what you got, untill gunpowder at least. :D
 
I'm on ~Turn 160 of my first post-patch game as England (quick speed) and took multiple French cities with a Longbowman army. It started as an Archer army with 3-5 archers & 1 spearman. He declared, I killed his army with city bombarding and retreating archers since he couldn't take my city with his warriors/spearmen/archers/1 horseman and I counter attacked after I could upgrade to longbows.

Longbows are great of course because they can often target a city without getting shot back, but I'm sure crossbowmen do fine as well. Each will do 1-3 damage, but consistently 2-3 with the correct promotion to match the city land and consistently 3 with a second +city attack promotion. So 3 longbows per turn with 1 upgrade each will do around 5-7 damage. City heals back ~2 so it's down in 4-7 turns.

Paris was another story as it was a size 14 and ~25 defense - I think I got a swordsman down there by that time and had been gifted a catapult by my citystate ally (I didn't have iron working yet, btw -- I'd consider this a bug). I'm sure I could have taken it out with a pikeman or two and the 3-4 longbowman but it would have taken a while.

Definitely is hard to fight pre-catapult wars and even with catapults it's slow going
 
Who has actually seen the AI make catapults and use them so far?

Rat
 
Well Mahatmajon, it's nice to hear of your success, but I think you're a bit optimistic about people being able to pull off something similar with crossbows without major changes. The reality is, that extra range on those English Longbows makes it a *very* powerful UU and changes the whole strategy dynamic of how you can move and attack with your army. Longbows can wipe out units with no response that crossbows would likely get hit by and, as you pointed out, longbows can oftentimes attack cities without being hit back. Longbows besieging a city make reinforcements much harder to manage than crossbows, and they're also much, much harder to attack in themselves. Cho-ko-nu are a similar case... heck, actually, both of the crossbow based UU's are pretty spectacular.

Personally, I'm more curious about strategies that don't rely on a UU - I mean, are regular units really just all but incapable of taking cities in the new patch pre gunpowder? Without a *vast* commitment of resources, or relying on the fundamental stupidity of the AI?
 
Well, consider a longsword is 18 strength and a pikeman is like 10. They'd just get squashed.
 
as an aside why do catapults and trebuchets need iron when cannons don't? which one has more iron in it? with the changes in city defense the game really needs a siege unit that does not need a strategic resource
 
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