Sieging Extremely Difficult. Please Give Advice

[Mesix]

The key is ranged units. You should be hitting a city with ranged attacks to whittle it down to size and using a melee unit for the final blow. I generally find that 4-5 ranged units and 1-2 melee units is enough to take out the AI. Stay 3 tiles away from the city until you take out the enemy units. Move all ranged units into position to fire on the same turn. 2-3 turns later your melee unit should be able to take the city.

 

[BluegrassGeek]

1. Assaulting with longswordsmen does ~10 damage to a town. I don't know how much total hp they have but the bar barely moved. The swordsmen were ~20% life after an assault. Melee never used to be this weak.

Yep, melee is bad for trying to weaken a city. You need to drop the city's HP with archers & catapults/trebuchets first, if possible taking it down to 0. Then move your melee in to capture.

Now, you'll want at least one melee close to the city, so they are less likely to target your squishy ranged units. Use something tough enough to surivive an attack or two, then rotate it out with a full-health unit. Keep doing that until you can take the city.

2. Apparently 1UP is of the past. The Aztecs have a treb, galleas both in the city. So now the city, ship and treb all bombard the same unit (assuming the first two volleys don't kill it).

No, it's still 1UP. Cities on a coast are a bit weird: they count as both a land tile and a water tile. So you can have one land unit garrisoned in the city itself, and one ship in the "water tile" that happens to be at the city as well. Basically, the ship is sitting in the harbor.

 

[Iry]

I tend to play on Emperor or higher, and I experience almost none of the stupid AI behavior that is being described here. The AI always targets my siege first unless they are one shot away from killing a melee or archer, and then they will prioritize my archers unless they are one shot way from killing a melee.

This means I always have to move 4+ siege into range simultaneously, because it will start hammering them immediately. And honestly, that works fine unless I have been out-teched.

 

[Pnothy]

I played Vanilla last week after a long time of G&K to get the Suleiman achievement . But city sieging was definitely a lot easier back then. There were no HP's from walls/castles and melee units did much much more damage. Actually I was surprised the other way around, just how easy it was to take cities in vanilla.

So I understand why it's a leap for the OP now. There is some decent advice in this thread, it should help anyone coming from vanilla adopt to the 'new' situation.

 

[Blitz Spearman]

Finally, how do you folks go about making the units. If i spend the time producing the volume of units needed to take a city, i'm far behind on econ. Should I rely on straight up purchases/faith to bolster my ranks?

If you try to hard-build a newly-researched unit, it is going to take too goddamn long. You should rely on upgrades. Getting the Artillery tech in 20 turns? Build a ton of cannons, which should be cheap in hammers by now, and start saving money for upgrading them all. More efficient than both hard-buying and hard-building.

Also, some good tips were given here, but as you said later, sometimes the AI just won't attack your melee meatshields. Most of the time the best besieging tactic is to just spam ranged units, encircle the city all at the same time, and retreat the ones that get shot for them to heal in your territory. You should just make sure to have enough units to still be able to do enough damage after a few retreats. And then for the last hit in the city just attack with your horseman waiting in a safe distant spot, abusing its high movement.

Melee units like Swordsman are more for when the enemy still has an army protecting the city. They are great for attacking opposite ranged units and protecting your ranged units against melee.

 

[Murrica]

When building siege units I always like to go with 3 a city. Their second upgrade should always be the one that increases damage to cities. I like to use mounted units to take a hit before the siege units get into position. This way the horse unit can go around the city pillaging to regain health. It's also good to go in with a few melee units parked right on the city to take the damage from the city. The real resistance comes in the form of reinforcements. Also, good luck trying to take a city surrounded by mountains!

 

[jecjackal]

Thank guys for all the advice. I'm going to start a new game at difficulty 5 until i break the rust off. I'm really glad 2k upped the AI difficulty.

Also I didn't know about the pillaging restoring health. I'm definitely going to do that now .

 

[Maxym]

Bring a worker or two with you so you can repair improvements and repillage. Also try to bring in wounded melee with you to draw city fire.