Okay, this is by no way the end all be all of warfare but after playing for a few days I think its pretty good. Everyone, including me, has been complaining about how hard it is to take cities in Civ III as compared to Civ II. Well, to tell the truth it IS harder. But that makes it MUCH more realistic.
In Civ II all you had to do was make 4-5 offensive units with pretty good power and you could roll over almost an entire civ. Not anymore. What is required now is COMBINED ARMS and SIEGE TACTICS. You actually have to PLAN your attack now and prepare for it turns in advance. Here are some suggested steps using a recent game I had with me as the Greeks and my opponent the Romans.
1) Pick your target. Dont even think about taking out a lot of cities or an entire civ unless you are far superior. Concentrate on a select few, maybe the capital and some with key strategic resources. I concentrated on Rome, as it was right next to one of my major cities, was 1 of only 2 10+ size cities he had (it was at 11), and it had 3 ivory tiles next to it.
2) Build your units. You will need to make more than one type of unit. For this example, I will use early middle age units - longbowmen, hoplites, and catapults. Note the categories: 1 strong offensive, 1 strong defensive, and 1 artillery. I used 8 catapults, 5 LBM, and 5 hoplites. These numbers are not essential, but you want to err on the side of caution rather than fall short . Also, make sure your cities that are building units have barracks which makes them Veteran by default (1 more HP).
3) Move into position. It is essential that you have roads going all the way into the enemy territory. Keep all your units in one stack so any attacks will be defended by your strong defender. Once your main stack is adjacent to the target city, move a couple hoplites around the city square occupying important resources like wheat, cattle, and strategic resources. With your troops camped out in these squares the enemy wont be able to use them. You will start to starve them and deny strategic resources.
4) Start the bombardment. Use your catapults to bombard the enemy city. This does several things. First, it damages all units in the city. Second, it kill population. Third, it has a chance to destroy improvements. Killing population is a good thing. The more pop, the higher the bonus the defending units get. And the new concept of nationality comes into play. If you capture a city of size 8, all those citizens are still Romans. They will resist your rule, requiring a lot of happiness improvements and effort. If you knock it down to a smaller size you can grow your OWN citizens after you capture it quite easily.
5) Start the attack. Once the bombardment gets the city down to about 3-4 pop you can think about starting your attack. Ideally, in one of your rounds of bombardment you destroyed the barracks. If you dont, every enemy unit will heal to full strength each turn, making the combat a LOT harder. However, if you keep bombing you might kill everyone and thus lose the good stuff like Big Wonders. Start the attack by bombarding with all your catapults to weaken the defenders. Once each has gone, start hitting with your LBM. With a 4 attack rating, they should work fine against everything except gunpowder. If they start dying make more. Each round of battle start with a bombardment to weaken the defenders.
6) Take the city. Your attacking unit will move a half space toward the city once the last defender is killed. Move in and take the place! You have a choice of making the city your own or razing it to the ground. Unless the city is in a great location or has Wonders, I ususally find myself razing it because of the problems with corruption in this game.
As you can see, this is not a short process. It takes a long, long, time. But that is reality. Ideally, you would take out the major cities to fracture a civ. Once that is done, you can either force them to declare peace and wait for your culture to absorb their cities or finish them off at your leisure. Keep in mind that under Republic/Democracy war weariness may set in. If you keep the war short and minimize your casualties it shouldnt be a problem. You can fix it by either changing govt to Monarchy or jacking luxuries for the duration of the war. Also, I havent gotten an army yet so I dont know how they would affect this but it should work fine in just about any age - just use the units good for that age.
Hope this helps, and please dont hesitate to correct something I did wrong or make suggestions. Enjoy!
Brian
In Civ II all you had to do was make 4-5 offensive units with pretty good power and you could roll over almost an entire civ. Not anymore. What is required now is COMBINED ARMS and SIEGE TACTICS. You actually have to PLAN your attack now and prepare for it turns in advance. Here are some suggested steps using a recent game I had with me as the Greeks and my opponent the Romans.
1) Pick your target. Dont even think about taking out a lot of cities or an entire civ unless you are far superior. Concentrate on a select few, maybe the capital and some with key strategic resources. I concentrated on Rome, as it was right next to one of my major cities, was 1 of only 2 10+ size cities he had (it was at 11), and it had 3 ivory tiles next to it.
2) Build your units. You will need to make more than one type of unit. For this example, I will use early middle age units - longbowmen, hoplites, and catapults. Note the categories: 1 strong offensive, 1 strong defensive, and 1 artillery. I used 8 catapults, 5 LBM, and 5 hoplites. These numbers are not essential, but you want to err on the side of caution rather than fall short . Also, make sure your cities that are building units have barracks which makes them Veteran by default (1 more HP).
3) Move into position. It is essential that you have roads going all the way into the enemy territory. Keep all your units in one stack so any attacks will be defended by your strong defender. Once your main stack is adjacent to the target city, move a couple hoplites around the city square occupying important resources like wheat, cattle, and strategic resources. With your troops camped out in these squares the enemy wont be able to use them. You will start to starve them and deny strategic resources.
4) Start the bombardment. Use your catapults to bombard the enemy city. This does several things. First, it damages all units in the city. Second, it kill population. Third, it has a chance to destroy improvements. Killing population is a good thing. The more pop, the higher the bonus the defending units get. And the new concept of nationality comes into play. If you capture a city of size 8, all those citizens are still Romans. They will resist your rule, requiring a lot of happiness improvements and effort. If you knock it down to a smaller size you can grow your OWN citizens after you capture it quite easily.
5) Start the attack. Once the bombardment gets the city down to about 3-4 pop you can think about starting your attack. Ideally, in one of your rounds of bombardment you destroyed the barracks. If you dont, every enemy unit will heal to full strength each turn, making the combat a LOT harder. However, if you keep bombing you might kill everyone and thus lose the good stuff like Big Wonders. Start the attack by bombarding with all your catapults to weaken the defenders. Once each has gone, start hitting with your LBM. With a 4 attack rating, they should work fine against everything except gunpowder. If they start dying make more. Each round of battle start with a bombardment to weaken the defenders.
6) Take the city. Your attacking unit will move a half space toward the city once the last defender is killed. Move in and take the place! You have a choice of making the city your own or razing it to the ground. Unless the city is in a great location or has Wonders, I ususally find myself razing it because of the problems with corruption in this game.
As you can see, this is not a short process. It takes a long, long, time. But that is reality. Ideally, you would take out the major cities to fracture a civ. Once that is done, you can either force them to declare peace and wait for your culture to absorb their cities or finish them off at your leisure. Keep in mind that under Republic/Democracy war weariness may set in. If you keep the war short and minimize your casualties it shouldnt be a problem. You can fix it by either changing govt to Monarchy or jacking luxuries for the duration of the war. Also, I havent gotten an army yet so I dont know how they would affect this but it should work fine in just about any age - just use the units good for that age.
Hope this helps, and please dont hesitate to correct something I did wrong or make suggestions. Enjoy!
Brian
