Siege Weapons?

[pangu]

Do anyone ignore siege weapons in games? It seems that for over 95% of the games I played, I never build any siege weapons (except cats in early rush). They cannot kill units and get flank attacked. The lowering of city defences can be done by spies...

Unless I use horses, I tend to go rifleman -> infantry -> tank -> mech infantry -> modern armor, and ignore all air and siege units. The only gap in this seems to be when AI has machineguns while I still do not have tanks.

 

[Verge]

If there is any unit you want to send to its death, it's a siege unit. They are invaluable in city attacks, since the collateral effect will allow you to cause more damage per hammer lost than a standard ground unit. I think a strong emphasis on siege production was what helped me the most while learning how to conduct war on higher difficulty settings.

 

[Iranon]

Siege is a very cost-effective way to soften up cities. Spies burn EP and can't damage anyone; after they erode cultural defences siege weapons can damage many units in near-suicidal attacks.

against a heavily defended city, I'd rather send in 3 catappults at 5, 50 and 80% chances, then clean up with Swordsmen that are almost guaranteed to win compared to Attacking with Swords at unfavourable odds.

 

[martin026]

I build a lot of siege. They are so easy to replace and help to really turn the battle in your favor.

Spies are good and all, but the problem is they have a chance to get caught, or a chance to fail. So siege is a good backup plan. Plus if the spy does his job, you now can suicide cats a turn or two earlier and have the city quicker.

 

[Backwards Logic]

I usually bring along 10-15 seige per city I'm attacking in my stack. Plus I leave a few in my border cities in case a surprise stack shows up. Nothing wipes an AI stack faster than a nice well-timed siege suicide run.

 

[Zanttu]

Do anyone ignore siege weapons in games? It seems that for over 95% of the games I played, I never build any siege weapons (except cats in early rush). They cannot kill units and get flank attacked. The lowering of city defences can be done by spies...

I always try to bring in some siege weapons, except if I'm going for early rush (because EARLY rush should really be done well before cats are on-line). Siege weapons are great for collateral damage. And collateral damage gets better while the opposing stacks grow bigger, and on the levels I play on the AI city garrison usually contains more than 2 troops...

 

[futurehermit]

I like attacking with axes --> cavalry --> tanks, none of which require siege, especially if you have a tech lead with the latter.

I'm really not a fan of the slow-moving wars where you're lugging around a bunch of melee units and siege.

Some games though, it is necessary and maybe even ideal given your circumstances. Elephants + catapults, for example, is a strong army in the classical era. Some people swear by rifles and cannons on these forums and they can make a strong army. But I'd rather be flying through an opponent empire with cavalry if at all possible.

Getting a tech lead on the highest levels is not always possible, however, and when you face monster stacks siege can be the only thing that levels the playing field.

 

[ICNP]

If they don't have any interceptors then bombers are great. I love just reducing the strength of a whole stack with m y barrage siege weapons. If you want something a little more from your collatoral try the Chukonu. Its fun to throw loads of collatoral attacks and then rush in the maces.

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Siege weapons are overpowered. They make it impossible to defend a city until you get machine guns. Collateral damage needs to be toned down, and the max damage they can do should be higher, like 80% max, like air ships.

I know there are counters, like flanking knights, but aggressive civs like to bring a stack of catapults to your towns as early as 100 ad, which really isn't enough time to get a cavalry set up.

And I know siege weapons are overpowered when I use them. I can take out entire empires with my cannons and rifles and at most lose 1 per city, and it's really not rare for me to not lose any.

 

[pangu]

I do not deny the benefit of collateral damage, but it seems from the tech path that if I ignore all air and siege units, I can get way better gunpowder units way faster. So for example, if I start making rifleman units once I hit rifles and then beeline assembly lines, and then switch research to 0% while I upgrade my riflemen (and draft infantry), I can get a ton of very powerful units relatively early, whereas if I waste turns researching steel, artillery etc, I will not get infantry so fast.

I actually came across this the hard way while playing a game. I had a nice mix of units, i.e. rifle, gren, cannon, cav etc., but the AI (bismarck) got only 1 type of unit, infantry, and it was hell trying to take down his infantry in the cities with my nice mix of units. I actually gave up and sue for peace (he was actually quite extreme in the game, I think he did not even have education when he got infantry, I wonder whether AIs have a tendency to beeline a tech which it has a UB ). Then I decided to switch to his style and get pure infantry and that seemed to kill the rifle, gren, cannon, cav SoD easy (i.e. 20 infantry wins over 5 rifle + 5 gren + 5 cav + 5 cannon). There are so many techs I can skip if I beeline infantry, plus infantry can be drafted. The Pentagon is an awesome side benefit as well and I normally save 1 engineer to rush that.

I would actually prefer using horses for speed but then I am stuck with tons of cav for a long time even when the AI has infantry and mac guns and things tend to suck a bit by then...

 

[Diamondeye]

I do not deny the benefit of collateral damage, but it seems from the tech path that if I ignore all air and siege units, I can get way better gunpowder units way faster. So for example, if I start making rifleman units once I hit rifles and then beeline assembly lines, and then switch research to 0% while I upgrade my riflemen (and draft infantry), I can get a ton of very powerful units relatively early, whereas if I waste turns researching steel, artillery etc, I will not get infantry so fast.

Problem here is, rifles strength: 14) against a long bow with 2 promotions and a castle, victory it at all guaranteed, and the long bow is very much cheaper. A lbow with 100% defenses and 2 promos can be 6*2,7 = 16 when defending. Bring along a cannon or a couple of trebs, more if you like (and most of us do ), and you have a long bow with 6*1,7 = 10. Much easier and can even be done with maces. Add the collateral to the blend, and you'll be unstoppable. I'd rather have a well equipped medieval army than a lousy gunpowder one.

I actually came across this the hard way while playing a game. I had a nice mix of units, i.e. rifle, gren, cannon, cav etc., but the AI (bismarck) got only 1 type of unit, infantry, and it was hell trying to take down his infantry in the cities with my nice mix of units. I actually gave up and sue for peace (he was actually quite extreme in the game, I think he did not even have education when he got infantry, I wonder whether AIs have a tendency to beeline a tech which it has a UB ). Then I decided to switch to his style and get pure infantry and that seemed to kill the rifle, gren, cannon, cav SoD easy (i.e. 20 infantry wins over 5 rifle + 5 gren + 5 cav + 5 cannon). There are so many techs I can skip if I beeline infantry, plus infantry can be drafted. The Pentagon is an awesome side benefit as well and I normally save 1 engineer to rush that.

That is because the step from rifles to infantry is so huge. 14 -> 20 and a bonus against gunpowder. Combined with the fact that he did probably have CG. Generally, if you're on equal tech terms with the AI, use siege. Lots of siege. And what about UUs? Germans don't have an infantry UU?

Oh yeah and Pentagon can make your day when warring.

I would actually prefer using horses for speed but then I am stuck with tons of cav for a long time even when the AI has infantry and mac guns and things tend to suck a bit by then...

Sounds to me like your main problems are:
1) You tech a bit slower than the AI
2) You don't like a lot of units, and therefore, you are beaten yellow and gr een by the AI

 

[Gooblah]

Germany has the Panzer, the Tank UU. No Civ has an Infantry UU.

Anyways, siege are great. Blah, blah, blah. Cutting to the chase, siege have two main uses:
1) Bombardment. Pretty simple. Reduce defenses at a set % per turn; However (there are a few threads on this), all is not as it seems. Bombardment is calculated a different way, so you'll need around 10-15 Siege Units to remove defenses completely before a mature city falls. You can do this with a spy, but there are two main reasons not to: a) they can be caught, and thus killed, and b), if they are successful, they get sent back to the capital, which can be quite a ways from the front line.

2) Suicide. Again, simple. Throw Siege units at the opponent's stack until they all withdraw without causing collateral. This softens up the stack until you have 70% or greater odds of taking out the stack with your other units.

 

[humbe]

If you have more advanced techs than the AI, especially early game, you're not playing on a hard difficulty, and you can do a lot of stuff and still make it..

If you play on tough difficulties the AI will be in the tech lead. He will have more advanced units than you, not the other way around.

Defenders have a huge advantage in combat, as the game choose the defender with the best chance of defeating the current attacker. On top of this, the defender can have terrain and defense bonuses which can get considerable.

To cut your losses considerably, you should bombard the city until it has no defenses. Other bonuses will still favor the defender heavily though, so you still will probably lose units when attacking. Until the defenders lose enough strength to match your attackers strength. Collateral damage is then the cheapest way to soften the defenses, given that there are a few of them at least.

If you don't need them, that's just because you play well enough compared to the difficulty level, such that you can live with the extra cost, or have techlead enough to avoid the problem.

 

[Gliese 581]

I use catapults fairly extensively in the early ages but I see what you're saying about infantry. I often get the great library and /or the parthenon so I usually prefer to delay scientific method and go for assembly line really early without diverting my attention to steel. When you upgrade a big stack of CR2/CR3 macemen/riflemen to infantry and go against an army consisting of 50% longbowmen and 50% riflemen those CR infantry is going to tear them up. I find that the AI is often slow to get both rifling and assembly line and would rather chase after wonders and civic-enabling techs.
Now if I'm going after someone that is in the tech lead or has a huge pwoer lead this changes somewhat, but usually by this time in the game I can get assembly line shorty after the AIs are starting to get rifling if I really beeline it and if attacking a close neighbour they wont even have had time to upgrade their whole army. No need for cannons then..

 

[JBossch]

Infantry are great, and yes they can be beelined pretty effectively against the AI even on higher difficulties. Still, in my last game I neglected siege (they had all died in the previous riflemen war and I never had the chance to rebuild, still didn't even have steel for cannons yet) and I found that against my opponents best cities I often didn't have much better than a 50% chance against his CG riflemen. I don't know about you guys but I don't like sending in a CRIII infantry against any odds below 80%. That RNG is just way too untrustworthy. Finally I got airships in there and that tipped the balance. They can be an effective alternative to siege at this stage if you have enough. They don't do collateral damage, of course, and have a pretty low max damage.

 

[vicawoo]

Grond! Grond! Grond!

 

[Gliese 581]

Infantry are great, and yes they can be beelined pretty effectively against the AI even on higher difficulties. Still, in my last game I neglected siege (they had all died in the previous riflemen war and I never had the chance to rebuild, still didn't even have steel for cannons yet) and I found that against my opponents best cities I often didn't have much better than a 50% chance against his CG riflemen. I don't know about you guys but I don't like sending in a CRIII infantry against any odds below 80%. That RNG is just way too untrustworthy. Finally I got airships in there and that tipped the balance. They can be an effective alternative to siege at this stage if you have enough. They don't do collateral damage, of course, and have a pretty low max damage.

Wars for me this late are often the final push as I seldom go for conquest/domination. I do war a lot though, often crippling any potential threats so that I can basically choose my win condition in the end if all goes well. If it's going to be a war to end all wars then it doesn't matter how many of your soldiers die.. wait that reminds me of something..