siege is sometimes irrelevant

[lightsedge]

When I have enough EPs, I spy down the city defense and bonk heads with axes/swords. Against archers they do well enough (just minor attrition from bad luck combats). Against LBs on flat land the swords obviously do better than the axes, but the swords are still doing the job (still with minor attrition, losing 1 to 2 per city raid). It's when the AI bring crossbows into their city D that I have to rethink the CR lineup and start to include siege and/or horse. Or get the CR upgraded to Maces.

Yeah, it seems like if the AI has a decent mixed defending stack, it's hard without seige ... which is why we have seige I guess

 

[Skallagrimson]

For the "horse only" stack, I cringe when I think of a typical AI's 2 to 3 pikemen in with their LBs on a hilled city with 80% culture defense. That's a lot of "retreat" that had better happen, or it can get ugly.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

For the "horse only" stack, I cringe when I think of a typical AI's 2 to 3 pikemen in with their LBs on a hilled city with 80% culture defense. That's a lot of "retreat" that had better happen, or it can get ugly.

...lbows AND pikes? How late are you "horsing"?!

Horse Archers can be had in FORCE in the 1000 BC to 0 AD range on most maps. That's well before at least some civs are going to get longbows (exception: deity most likely). Spears and archers are more reasonable and palatable.

Xbows are garbage vs HA's.

If it's getting later on, it's time for knights, or the more likely to be successful cuirassers/spies. That is...assuming you don't have too many cities from HAs to begin with.

For a ridiculous but still somewhat realistic example, check out what DaveMCW did with keshiks in round one of EC III.

 

[Skallagrimson]

"horse" as in... including knights. I guess hit 'em before anyone anywhere so much as has a sniff of Engineering, or it's all over.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't care what you use, it's not a good idea to take it up against an era-ahead counter unit. Pikes are a little troublesome for knights, but if the city had its d lowered by spies, the same can't be said for shock cuirassers, and you can get those pretty fast.

Knights are my least favorite/used troop in the mounted line, only because of their awkward tech placement.

 

[Ibian]

My siegeless game crashed. Boo. Started and abandoned about half a dozen other games so far, maybe someone can help me fix my problem.

See, i got 2 major issues with war in this game: siege and chokepoints.

Playing without siege is doable with spies and early rushes and whatnot, but im having trouble finding a map setup i like. Anyone know what settings to use if i wanted a big landmass with room for say, 4-5 rival civs and a lot of chokepoints? Not necessarily single tile chokes, just city-sized chokes.

 

[Cashew]

"horse" as in... including knights. I guess hit 'em before anyone anywhere so much as has a sniff of Engineering, or it's all over.

That late in the game you should be able to have a conventional force, as well as +15 knights. Create a distraction with your main force, and destroy weakly defended cities with a surprise attack. Can obviously be done in the same fashion with horse archers earlier. Works great on human players. It's kind of boring to do on the AI though.

 

[dankok8]

The only time I don't use siege is early rushes (mostly Axerushes and sometimes Sword or Horse Archer rushes) and Shock Cuirassier/Cavalry rushes against medieval AI with Spies to send the cities into revolt.

I find that siege is most critical in the medieval age. This is the age where defenses are very powerful and it's hard without Trebs to fight a war efficiently against the enemy. As TMIT said, it doesn't help that Knights are on an awkward tech path.

 

[Stewie0416]

@TMIT I always see you rush massive amounts of HAs at AI. In general you always seem to be able to must such a massive force seemingly out of nowhere. Being a massive noob, i just have to ask. HOW DO YOU DO IT!