How to deal with siege? Flanking or counter-siege?

[CivCorpse]

Actually, my experience is similar to yours...in a real game, I've only used the individual pieces of the Caterpillar in actual battle.

However, mathematical logic shows that by linking the pieces together, they become stronger. Defensive bonuses are much more useful if they actually get used in battle. Consider the following:

1) A 3-length Caterpillar is sufficient to block forward movement of the enemy SOD, assuming correct movement of the Caterpillar.

2) A 4-length Caterpillar is sufficient to block both forward and lateral movement of the enemy SOD, assuming correct movement of the Caterpillar.

3) The low-defense tiles such as Plains can be improved by building Forts. This adds the following bonuses: the +25% bonus of the Fort, the inherent +25% city defense of the Longbowman, and the +20%/+45% city defense of CG1/CG2. This comes out to be +50% for a base Longbowman, +70% for one with CG1, and +95% for one with CG2. If you happen to be playing a Protective leader, chances are you can also have CG3, improving the bonus to +125%. And this is all from a Fort on a flatland tile.


You don't even need to be in your own cultural borders. Suppose that the enemy stack must move through "no-man's land". In this case, you can use the Caterpillar defense in both "no-man's land" and your own land, increasing its effectiveness.

1. I would rather have a cottage or a workshop on that tile.
2. Forts make the attackers CR promotions effective.

 

[Skallagrimson]

1. I would rather have a cottage or a workshop on that tile.
2. Forts make the attackers CR promotions effective.

If it's outside a BFC I can still see the utility in forts though. Let them go through a whole siege war just to own... a plains tile. And then after they win that they have... another plains tile fort to besiege. They get their bonuses but so do the LBs, only differences is, the stakes are the same for the AI, but lower for you.

If it's inside a BFC I'm back to holding hill forests and counterattack. Yet another reason why lumbermills > mines.

 

[Artichoker]

A) Outside a BFC -- Forts are worthwhile as long as you have enough Workers (or Worker bonuses) to produce them.

B) Inside a BFC-- Remeber the context in which these wars are happening...we're talking Catapults and Longbows here, which means cities with sizes of 10 or less, to be generous. An entire BFC covers 20 tiles, not including the center tile. This means that for a size-10 city, 10 of them remain unused. If it's a Plains tile, then all the better, since we can wait until Biology before actually destroying the Fort by building a Farm. If it's a Grassland tile, there's still a good chance we have another Grassland tile elsewhere that's of equal or better value. If it's a Desert tile, then we won't be working it anyway.

 

[Skallagrimson]

Murphy's Law of the Map states that the side of any city with the most productive or useful tiles will always be the one facing the enemy approach.

 

[Artichoker]

1. I would rather have a cottage or a workshop on that tile.
2. Forts make the attackers CR promotions effective.

Now, to address the CR issue...there are a few ways to deal with this:

1) Use the Crossbowmen variation of the Caterpillar defense. In combination with a Longbowman, you have 1 unit to act as anti-melee and 1 unit to act as general defense.

What are the units that can gain CR? In this era, it's either Catapults, Swordsmen, or Axemen (Macemen are a bit trickier, but there are other ways to deal with them).

If it's a Swordsman or Axeman, then you have at best, a 6 Str Swordsman with an inherent +10% and another +45% from CR2.

The Crossbowman also has 6 Str, but he gains an inherent +50%, +25% from the Fort, and another +45% from CG2.

So that's 6 base and +55% for the Swordsman, and 6 base and +120% for the Crossbowman.


Now what about a Catapult? In this case, it's 5 Str with +45% from CR2. It will be facing a Longbowman with 6 Str. Bonuses are an inherent +25%, +25% from the Fort, and another +45% from CG2.

So that's 5 base and +45% for the Catapult, and 6 base and +95% for the Longbowman.


2) Use the enemy's overemphasis on CR promotions to defeat them in non-city (or non-fort) battles.

It's simple...if the enemy is loaded with CR promotions, then it means it won't have promotions available for general situations, such as Combat. In this case, you can use your Combat-promoted units (or better yet, Shock-promoted) to destroy them whenever possible, even when attacking.

 

[Loki Strikes]

I have been a constant fan of siege and at least 50% of my army is composed of siege, and most of it is unpromoted until I attack, I have yet to find a problem enough siege cannot solve. I do keep a few HA/Knights/Cavs around for mopping up, but I consider my sentry promoted one or two to be more useful then my flanking ones.

and @ the catepillar, I find the Ai tends to avoid combat if it will lose a lot of units and there is an available move, i tend to have 3 stacks of 5 units(usually 2 cats, 1 LB, 2 maces) that maneuver the AI onto a plains, then I attack with siege and maces and decimate. (I also tend to have 3-4 horses nearby but not defending in case another emergency stack is needed, or additional attackers needed) However this works for lower number of siege units, in a mostly siege composition I would likely do 2-3 LbS and HA/Knights nearby

 

[feralminded]

I must play on weird maps (pangea, standard), because in my games there's basically never space beyond my BFCs between me and the AI to maneuver around in. I do use some of these defensive strategies ... for instance it's almost always worth parking a couple LBs on adjacent hills or forests to your city as this will either kill a bunch of the AI's stack or move them to a less defensible terrain. That said most of my borders are simply too long to be effectively defended at the border and as such I rarely get the opportunity to intelligently defend away from cities. That said I am a big advocate of proper terrain use ... just I don't get that many opportunities to play that kind of game. There's just not enough neutral terrain out there in which to play.

 

[Artichoker]

I must play on weird maps (pangea, standard), because in my games there's basically never space beyond my BFCs between me and the AI to maneuver around in. I do use some of these defensive strategies ... for instance it's almost always worth parking a couple LBs on adjacent hills or forests to your city as this will either kill a bunch of the AI's stack or move them to a less defensible terrain. That said most of my borders are simply too long to be effectively defended at the border and as such I rarely get the opportunity to intelligently defend away from cities. That said I am a big advocate of proper terrain use ... just I don't get that many opportunities to play that kind of game. There's just not enough neutral terrain out there in which to play.

This is a problem that I see all too often...so you're not alone.

Making the jump from disorganized small defender stacks to organized is simply a matter of planning. The first step is knowing where the enemy is. This is usually rather easy, and you just need to position your units near the enemy units. The second step is having a plan to react to the enemy units. Here is where the Caterpillar Defense comes into play.

The situation you describe here is the type of situation where the Caterpillar Defense can help. Because the movement of the Caterpillar ensures that no matter how long your border is, the enemy SOD will not be able to get past the Caterpillar without attacking first. You can further limit the movement of the enemy by using more stacks in the Caterpillar. The minimum number is 3, but the Caterpillar's effectiveness to corner the enemy improves greatly when you use 4 or 5 stacks.

The other issue you mention here is not having enough room beyond the BFC to act as defensive ground (including Forts). One solution to this is plan ahead of time when founding your cities. Don't indiscriminately chop down Forests; instead, try to keep some up for their defensive value. Remember that a Fort built on a forested tile adds its +25% bonus to the +50% bonus of the forest. In addition, you still get the +1 hammer from the forest when working that tile.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

Doesn't building a fort destroy the forest? I guess I don't use forts enough to know...I mostly use them for canals and sometimes to hold air units.

 

[feralminded]

Oh I do understand the possible application of it ... again its just rare that I have a nice tidy border or even a single border. More often than not, specially after the conquest phase has begun, I have to defend 33% or more of my cultural border and this is when any kind of active defense becomes unmanageable. Again I am a huge proponent of active defense its just that the game rarely serves me opportunities to make intelligent use of it. Its kind of a shame because playing the territory game feels more realistic than the hide in the cities game but it just feels like its not how the game was designed. I mean clearly when you look at the ballista elephant the designers were hoping for some amount of open field combat its just that more often than not it quickly becomes impractical.

 

[obsolete]

The Ballista Elephant.... LOL!!!! Love the ratings on that UU.

One reading this thread, would think the best use of cats would be to no use them on offense, but just keep them as defenders to magically remove all the collateral damage.

 

[obsolete]

Ohh, and by the way. In my current game, despite having a ton of cats, the splash-damage from cat attacks on me is being distributed amoung my war-elephants. So what is the explanation here then?

 

[feralminded]

The Ballista Elephant.... LOL!!!! Love the ratings on that UU.

One reading this thread, would think the best use of cats would be to no use them on offense, but just keep them as defenders to magically remove all the collateral damage.

Yeah its always a race between him and the Hwacha for last place ... both suffer from the same problem ... neither are very useful in city combat and Civ is all about that unfortunately.

 

[feralminded]

Ohh, and by the way. In my current game, despite having a ton of cats, the splash-damage from cat attacks on me is being distributed amoung my war-elephants. So what is the explanation here then?

They're the biggest unit there and therefore more likely to get hit by the flying rocks?

 

[Levgre]

Ohh, and by the way. In my current game, despite having a ton of cats, the splash-damage from cat attacks on me is being distributed amoung my war-elephants. So what is the explanation here then?

There was a thread with the formula... units with the highest health left are most likely to get hit. I don't think units with higher strength are hit more often, but its possible.

Every time a catapult attacks you, 6 units are targeted, so if you have only elephants 6 units would get hit every time. So if you suffer less than 6 hits, that means your catapults took the hit (or units at under the damage limit for the siege). If you have 50% siege, and all units are at full health, on average you'd take 3 hits on that first strike. In one game today, I had 10 catapults in a stack of 27, and only suffered collateral damage to 2 units from a catapult.

Because targeting depends on what % of health units have left, your undamaged catapults will become more and more likely to be targeted, so they don't so much prevent partial damage, like 1-2 hits, but once all your non-catapult units are damaged enough, your catapults are very likely to be targeted, reducing units that are hit from say 5-6, to 4-1 each time. So at that point, having only 10% catapults can become a large asset for preventing further siege damage. But for the first collateral strikes that 10% would not prevent many hits.

 

[Skallagrimson]

To me when on the attack siege becomes sub-optimal against smaller numbers of stronger defenders (e.g., those odd AI back-cities on a hill with just two LBs). I find that to be an ideal time to thin the axeman herd and see who's worthy for upgrade to macemen. If I'm going to lose units like that, let it be non-siege so I can still be siege-deep on the next city raid where there are more defenders.

 

[Tephros]

Doesn't building a fort destroy the forest? I guess I don't use forts enough to know...I mostly use them for canals and sometimes to hold air units.

Not anymore. You must be using an old version of CIV. Now a forested hill with a fort gives +100% defense.

My question is: Does the AI still go "full ******" by attacking a fort on a forested hill instead of the city? +100% defense bonus cannot be taken down by siege so that'd be better than fighting in the city if so.

 

[Skallagrimson]

My question is: Does the AI still go "full ******" by attacking a fort on a forested hill instead of the city? +100% defense bonus cannot be taken down by siege so that'd be better than fighting in the city if so.

I've seen it go both ways, with the more aggro AIs going for it more, and the less aggro ones being smart enough to bypass. I think the modifier is the AI's "courage" level.

In practice this makes for delicious ways to put an early halt to doomstacks thrown my way from Monty, Genghis, et al., but for someone like Isabella or Cathy, who also war early and often, the forts are less useful (except as extra air bases in the mid-game when airships come along).