Most effective way to use seige?

[Sincro]

When you go a-conquering, what types of promotions do you give your siege, and how do you use them when you arrive at the city gates?

I have become a one size fits all kind of person, and promote all my siege down the barrage line. Upon arrival at the city gates, I don't bother to waste any turns taking down defenses, cultural or otherwise, unless I have more siege then the city has defending units. I typically immediately suicide my siege into the city, one per defender, more if the first defender kills my first siege unit without taking any damage, and then use my 'killers' to kill off the weakened units after the suicide run. I have found that I end up needing far fewer overall kill-capable units, and during actual war-time, the only units I continue constructing are replacement siege and city garrison units for cities I intend to keep. (I always forget to bring those no matter how many times I remind myself...)

My war goals are typically to have any wars last as short as possible, and not wasting turns bringing down defenses seems to have helped. Is this a strategy I should be following, or is it more effective to spend the extra time bringing down defenses, in the hopes that an extra siege unit might withdraw instead of being killed?

 

[Thain Esh Kelch]

I usually spend one turn taking down the defences with siege units, and the following turn suicide them as attackers. In this way you only spend one turn more, but still take down quite a bit of defense-%'s. You might actually end up with some siege units that survive.

Also, I only use balistas (Is that what they are called? The ones after catapults), since the get +100% vs. cities.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

On high levels you can't get away with trading 1 siege per defender, and have to bombard down or use spies.

CR siege will survive frequently if contemporary or better.

 

[Pir Lan Tota]

City Raider. When attacking, always knock down all the culture defenses (unless there is like only 1 or 2 pretty poor defenders, maces vs archers). Then, when the defensive bonus is gone, note the winning % your siege has vs the defender, rinse and repeat for a few times until either your assault troops or your remaining seige have 90%+ chances.

City raider is the best promo as your siege should never be defending in the first place when attacked, also, it might take a few more turns to knock down the cities defensive bonus, allowing the AI to stack a lot of troops into that city.....with CR you get a very nice bonus against them when attacking with your Siege unit.

 

[Dumanios]

I used to used siege more but since they got mega-nerfed in BTS I only use them against cities and large stacks.

 

[FriendoftheDork]

I use CR with most my siege. As said, against contemporary units they can often survive, and CR 3 cannons can take on rifles and win easily unless they are experienced (with city defender).

Against enemies that my CR siege has a hard time damaging (say, 10% or less withdrawal chance), I often use 1 or two suicide siege with barrage so that I can damage as much as possible collaterally. For field artillery I sometimes use drill arty, as first strikes can help even things out.

Bombarding city defenses is normal for me, at least 1 round if the enemy has more than 2-3 defenders that are not obsolete. Even when using cannons against longbows I often bombard first as it is better to spend one turn bombarding than 3-5 turns healing my cannons and even losing some against inferior units.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Cannons don't suffer the walls penalty though, so it's easy to blow the defenses away with them or anything else post-trebs. Where as it would take 13 non accuracy trebs 2 turns to blow away castle defenses, you can pretty much strip the same amount away with 6 or so cannons in one round.

It's not hard to come up with > 6 cannons.

 

[Coach_81]

I usually try to build seige weapons in a city with barracks and a settled great general. Then I can promote to B1 and Accuracy. After I get around 6, I switch to CRI / CRII promotions. I crush the culture bonus in a city using the B/A cats then suicide attack with the CRI/ II cats. Some or all of the suicide cats will survive to fight another day. I usually don't build trebs. I can build many more cats in less turns. I'll build trebs if the per turn difference is only one or two.

 

[DrakenKin]

Yesterday I had a game where I started really bad vs 2 empires, one had 50% of worldland, the other had 25% and had his cities mixed with mine, slowly killing me with culture. I was a dozen technologies late compared to both of them, and less than 1/3 their income... the situation was looking very bad. I was still getting musketmen when the AI was upgrading to grenadiers.

I ended up massing siege (catapults with colateral damage upgrades), musketmen (with pinch), and macemen (with shock upgrade to counter mounted). Basicly :

- I used spies to start a revolt and remove culture defense bonus for 1 turn (I only used catapults to bombard when I was waiting for my other units/stacks to arrive there)
- Catapults suicide to lower health of all units defending the city until the odds for my musketmen become acceptable
- Take the city with musket/macemen

I was making around 3 times as much catapults as musket/mace. Lost an insane number of catapults, but I was surprised to be able to beat a much stronger AI with its better units simply by massing collateral damage.

 

[kochman]

When you go a-conquering, what types of promotions do you give your siege, and how do you use them when you arrive at the city gates?

What will be the primary use of siege?
City attacks, right?

So, city raider...
After straight to CR3, go for the drill line. You can't get medic promotions with siege, so this is the best way to go.

 

[DrakenKin]

Why city attack and not collateral damage? Since this is the siege unique ability and it helps with big stacks defending cities?

 

[kochman]

Why city attack and not collateral damage? Since this is the siege unique ability and it helps with big stacks defending cities?

Because CR makes it "stronger", increasing its odds of survival. If it has a great collateral, and dies, its only good once. Better to have it do a little less collateral damage several times than do a bit more and die.
The drill line is good because it increases your odds of doing damage against the target unit, even if you die despite have CR3.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

CR usually has higher expected damage to a city defender than drill. Of course CR is useless in the field...drill is the only thing siege can take that actually increases its field odds.

 

[kochman]

CR usually has higher expected damage to a city defender than drill. Of course CR is useless in the field...drill is the only thing siege can take that actually increases its field odds.

Yeah, that's why I always max out the CR first, then work on drill.
Ideally, your siege should never have to defend, so CR is the way to go of course.

 

[Iranon]

The vast majority will be optimised city attackers (CR, switch to Trebuchets asap), maybe around 4 Barrage-promoted catapults as a life insurance (preferred use: weakening a big ugly stack/garrison until I like my odds for the rest).

I rarely use the Accuracy promotion... the Barrage catapults and damaged city raiders (watch out for Horse Archers/Knights if you take these along though!) will be sufficient for bombardment.

 

[6K Man]

City Raider. If I happen to have a seige unit survive to level 5, I am undecided whether to use Drill or Barrage.

If I can get better than 50% odds on my first seige attacker not dying, I will forego the bombarding of defenses down to 0%. It's a bit of a judgment whether to attack or bombard if the odds are worse than 50% - depends on whether I have more seige units coming up to reinforce my attack stack, how quickly the AI can muster additional defenses, and what the odds are for my non-seige attackers.

 

[Rabid Weasel]

In my games, most siege gets Drill and City Raider, while the rest are either Drill and Barrage, or full Barrage. I always knock the def down to single digit, if not 0. If there are 4+ in the city, I sacrifice a full barrage, then a drill/barrage, then a raider drill, so then the other troops in the SoD can fight well enough.