Tips for attacking a capital surrounded by lakes, hills and mountains?

[ajl1980]

I wish I had a screenshot or a save, but I just did a fresh o/s install...

Basically I was Russia, had wiped out Japan, subjugated Persia and Carthage. France took out Sweden and was the next in line behind me. In other words, taking Paris was my objective in order to win the game.

I had been whooping everyone else's behind in every way possible, and decided to approach Paris which was surrounded 50% with lakes, and the other 50% was hills (3 deep) and mountains in such a configuration that only two routes were possible, and VERY SLOW (1 tile/turn movement across the mountains).

Napoleon had a huge amount of ships in the lakes, able to easily pick off any unit I tried to send across the water to shortcut to Paris. On the other hand, movement was so slow and constricted around the mountains and across the hills that the half-dozen each of cavalry, riflemen and cannons were just massacred even with medic II promotions.

I saw two outcomes, one of which I chose:

(1) send everything you've got, which ended in disaster
(2) waiting until air combat units were available for bombardment, which wouldn't have held my interest

Was there a 3rd option I wasn't seeing? I've been playing war-based games a lot lately and have suddenly become interested in upping the difficulty and using terrain to maximum advantage

 

[DevilHell]

I wish I had a screenshot or a save, but I just did a fresh o/s install...

Basically I was Russia, had wiped out Japan, subjugated Persia and Carthage. France took out Sweden and was the next in line behind me. In other words, taking Paris was my objective in order to win the game.

I had been whooping everyone else's behind in every way possible, and decided to approach Paris which was surrounded 50% with lakes, and the other 50% was hills (3 deep) and mountains in such a configuration that only two routes were possible, and VERY SLOW (1 tile/turn movement across the mountains).

Napoleon had a huge amount of ships in the lakes, able to easily pick off any unit I tried to send across the water to shortcut to Paris. On the other hand, movement was so slow and constricted around the mountains and across the hills that the half-dozen each of cavalry, riflemen and cannons were just massacred even with medic II promotions.

I saw two outcomes, one of which I chose:

(1) send everything you've got, which ended in disaster
(2) waiting until air combat units were available for bombardment, which wouldn't have held my interest

Was there a 3rd option I wasn't seeing? I've been playing war-based games a lot lately and have suddenly become interested in upping the difficulty and using terrain to maximum advantage

Well, first, before attacking such a capital, you should open borders and make a road to the capital
Secondly, without waiting until aircraft units, you could have waited until artillery and could've made in the meanwhile a lit of cavs and cannos to bombard 3 tiles away and take it with a cav

Edit: You could also use a GG to place a so that your borders were closer to the city
Those are my ideas

 

[Suliz]

A screenshot obviously would have been helpful for specific suggestions, but a few general ideas:

1. How big is the lake? Do you have the gold to rush buy a navy that can chip away at his?

2. What is hammering your units that approach the city by land? It is the ships and the city and its garrison? Or are there screening units in front of it? Artillery could help lots here, since the city can't return fire.

3. One thing you could do is deploy a GG to create a citadel (this might require building a city close by if your borders are close enough)

I had a couple more thoughts, but gotta run for now....

 

[ajl1980]

1. How big is the lake? Do you have the gold to rush buy a navy that can chip away at his?

this may have been what I was looking for... we were at opposite ends of the map so a road was out of the question, as was a citadel. may have been a good idea to settle a city on the other end of the lake, pump out enough naval units to clear the waters then send units across and avoid the hills/mountains completely

im obviously still in the civ 4 mindset about settling distant cities

thanks!

 

[Syntax Error]

Bombers and Paratroopers, as demonstrated by Maddjinn in his Maya LP.

 

[DutchJob]

How far are you from artillery?

Bee-line that while you produce some more melee and cavalry.

Go in China/Soviet style, and know you gonna lose units.

Sometimes a bliyzkrieg is just not possible.

Really no screenshot?

 

[smallfish]

You can do this with artillery, no need to go deep into Bombers/Paras. Just build roads and make them enjoy Citadel first

 

[fluffuit]

Had something similar. Japan had a city on th coast. It was surrounded on all but one side by a river. Also all mountains about three deep. So all that combined with their UA keeping their units at full strength I had trouble taking it. Ended up building a long road to speed things up. Like others have said soften up resistance with artillery. If you get ships use them to knock down defenses. Build way more units than you need and be ready to lose a few