Help Please! Siege Tower/Battering Ram/Catapult

[cazaderonus]

Swordsmen with Rams are just so good and with the tortoise promotion they just cope so well against ranged they are hard to stop
I find archers rushes a struggle nowadays on deity unless it is open terrain or you are against a civ that has an agenda that lowers its ability to create units. If I can just get that Iron... get the archers to kill the camps to rush the iron at the same time as getting a settler to make use of it seems a better strat... until you find no iron.

This. I research bronze working almost always right after AH, archery and mining. Finding a settleable (new word !) iron location is almost a game over in any game. Settle the iron, spam warriors, stockpile money, build a battering ram, get iron working when you feel you have enough money and warriors, finish the tech, upgrade to swordsmen and steamroll like a crazy person. Doing it that way even prevents you from getting an encampment to build the swordsmen if you have only one source of iron.

If you manage to get 2 armies of say 5/6 swordsmen plus battering ram plus 2/3 archers you can easily attack a civ in 2 different directions after taking the time to destroy a good part of its units.

That's why civs with UU that replace swordsmen are the easiest civ to use. Not needing iron to build such an early force is just too good.

General topic

On the topic of siege units. I only use battering rams until i reach bombards. And even bombards are a bit weak if you attack a civ with high culture because at that point they reached civil service and its OP natural defense in most cases. Seriously, i dont like that virtual defense that comes out of nowhere.

Also... ranged units are crap to attack a city with walls... it just takes too long, units suffer too much attrition from strikes... Archers are only good to rush one or two cities VERY soon especially on deity. Past that, they become what they should be aka unit murderers.