How conquer cities in middle age?

[planetfall]

I've finally realized I skip city conquest in middle ages. Once medieval walls come, I wait for artillery and bombers. Yes it's possible to take a city in the age, but the cost is horrible. For me it takes too many units: about 6 for seige, and 5 for bombard. The cost is just too high since miss out on expansion and production increases pumping out military. The reason I need so many is the strength of walls and especially barracks means I need to rotate units in and out of range to keep up the pressure. If encampments didn't have bombard abiltity it would be much easier and fewer units would be neded.

So what do you do? If conquer cities in medieval age, what is your method?

 

[vorlon_mi]

Not a high level player, but here's what I try to do --
If an AI city has Renaissance Walls, that's much tougher. If the city has Medeival Walls or less, then pairing my attackers with Siege Towers is my go-to tactic. Surround the city so that the walls won't heal, dig in the infantry units and bombard the walls for 2 turns. Even the relatively fragile coursers or cavalry will serve to put the city under siege.Start hitting the city before the walls are already down, when the tool tip says, "Minor Victory". The effectiveness of your infantry will get better as the city is more damaged.

Also, whenever possible, attack with a corps or army, rather than a single unit. Much better strength.

Beware if you don't / can't get the city under siege. That may mean that the AI has Victor as the governor with the promotion to prevent it from being put under siege. Switch to another city, if you can.

Yes, if the city has Ren walls, you may need to wait for artillery and even bombers. The costs -- to replace units, missing out on expansion -- are too high.
Go find the oil that you will need for arty and infantry.

 

[planetfall]

Yes, that is the way I play except I prebuild about 5 settlers and usually preposition in areas where I suspect oil/alum will pop up. Just saw the thread about winning around turn 200 and was wondering if I could speed up wins without being so production focused. No worries. I'll just keep on. I try to think of some new twist to playing the game every month and it keeps it interesting. thank you.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

As usual in this game, the faster you can snowball and abuse game mechanics, the better.
Not sure what difficulty you play on, but from Emperor onwards to Deity, the AI generally has a strong early advantage and you cant mindlessly bum rush it anymore.
So you generally want to snowball fast, and the fastest way to do that is to beat down a neighbouring AI very early, as this means you get access to free cities, you have a standing veteran army (dont lose units), and your core empire (self settled cities) is free to expand and play peacefully behind it.

Generally you can win domination in any era, with the "slowest" point being when the enemy gets medieval and renaissance walls up.
In order to mitigate the power of those walls (and the base combat strength of the city which is the backbone of how powerful the walls are), you need to get good at the tactical and strategic part.
Tactically meaning how and where you place your units (when attacking), and what orders you give them.
Usually the best way is to surround a city with enough melee units (or cavalry type units) to force the city to be besieged, and longer heal up.
You should generally not attack with melee unless you are certain that the city goes down, but rather fortity and heal outside the city and let ranged units do their thing (catapult type units).
If you can train a catapult to its 4th promotion, it gets 3 range and can generally shoot unharmed at an enemy city, at which point its just a matter of when that city drops to 0.
Heck, you can even train a catapult on a city state to have a relatively "safe" XP farming avenue, as long as you keep a melee unit or two nearby for safety.
Generally I run with at least 2 catapults (ideally 3-4) so as to speed up the rate at which cities blow up, or even splitting them if I want to hit more cities at the same time in different directions.

Strategically is a different thing, and relates to choices you make before attacking.
Who is weak, who is vulnerable?
If someone has a low city combat strength, that indicates a low military tech level, and an easy city to mow down.
If someone has cities mostly on open terrain rather than hills and forests, you get a ton of space to maneuver and set up a quick attack.
And very importantly, work on combat strength modifiers before and during every war, you want to stack those.
You can get those from cards, abilities, religion, government types etc., and abusing them is key (by having an intuitive feel of how they shift a battle outcome before you engage, so that you are certain that you win without having to find out the hard way).

 

[planetfall]

Thank you. Difficulty level depends on how much I want to think. Normally emperor, but drop back to king if want easy game. World size is usually small or standard and pretty much standard settings, except always high seas. At low difficult levels, I'ld go for religion first, but can't at higher levels. Typical game have religion around turn 100, civ is chugging along wonderfully at least by turn 150 and games usually end about turn 200. Sometimes if want more thinking, I'll set world age to new.

Last game I lucked out with normal civs and ended at 157. However the game just before I was sandwiched between two agressive civs and hungary distroyed me by contant war.