Tips on invading and countering siege weapons

[johnnyboomboom]

I can't believe it took me so long to find this forum! In the couple days I've been reading, the stuff I've learned here has helped me immensely.

I've been trying to win on Noble for quite some time now. I'd pretty much just gotten my butt whooped every time and I'm usually in last or second to last in points by 2050 every game.

So I tried some new stuff this game and I've managed, as Tokugawa, to get myself into second behind Louis. It's a pretty close second. The problem is, I left space race victory on, and he's probably going to win it. But I'm trying to have some fun before the game ends. I'm playing on a large world, epic length, and don't have Warlords yet.

Invading my neighbors (Romans, Greeks) isn't an option anymore, because my past history (destroyed Saladin, took about 3/4s of Rome) drove them both to sign defensive pacts with France. I didn't take out Rome because to advance any further probably would have caused me to just ultimately lose my conquered territories to Greek or French (they have a couple cities on my continent) culture.

So I decided I'd load up my Galleons and head over to Spain, since Isabella has an entire continent neatly to herself, and a less powerful military, and also no real ability to invade me.

So I make landfall. Capture the first city, and from within the confines of the city I'm able to easily annihilate her initial counteroffensive. I reinforce with some good defenses, and decide to make a b-line for her capital (which has always seemed like a good strategy in the past), which lay about 10 tiles to the south in the interior of the island. I get within about 3 tiles of madrid, when here comes the damn suicide siege weapons. Catapults and cannons assail my forces from every direction, after which her seemingly endless supply of conquistadors are able to route my stack of Infantry and Riflemen.

So I don't know if there is a good counter to this. I'm wondering if anyone has any strategy tips for beating this type of attack. Is it simply to just bring a lot more troops?

Also, I'm wondering, if generally heading straight for the enemy capital is the best idea. There are two closer big cities I could take out first, and I don't think my stack would be as easily intercepted.

Thanks.

 

[Jet]

- bring many of your own siege units. they're key for attacking both cities and stacks.
- horse archers, cavalry, and marines have bonuses against certain siege weapons
- attack on favorable ground, defend on favorable ground
- if you have a very diverse unit mix you can break it up into many tiny stacks (the wall of doom). I haven't heard much about the wall of doom on these forums, but I'm not sure it's a bad idea.
- bring a medic or three

 

[Idiodyssey]

With Warlods, you can attach a warlord to a unit and create a Medic III unit provided it already has Medic I. A Medic III unit allows rapid healing in enemy territory. After the siege weapon assault, heal for a couple turns. All those suicide siege weapons will do nothing except build your own units experience (granted you may lose some units, or possibly many if they follow up with other units).

I've found that in multiplayer, any decent turtling player would simply mass siege weapons. Since your movement is greater in your own land, you can attack first and suicide a bunch of siege weapons and mop up later. Unless there's a massive tech gap, or invasion by sea, it usually ends up in a stalemate.

Another partial counter is to divide up your SoD into two or three SoDs.

 

[johnnyboomboom]

Well, I was thinking about the map a little more, and I realized that many, if not all her major cities apart from the capital are located on the coast.

I wonder if it would be practical to just capture all her coastal cities by boat and assumably kill her production ability. Though, I know the AI "cheats" on production anyway, so is she just going to be able to produce those huge stacks anyway?

 

[NoMan]

Siege weapons can only move 1 square. Use fast units to pillage the roads next to your stack and the siege weapons won't be able to reach you. If you're lucky they will stop right next to your stack and you can take them out. This is the only solution prior to flight.

Capture the coastal city. Move in transports with fast units and pillage the surrounding roads. You will probably have a few turns if they don't have rails so can even get to the roads on hills or in forests that are still covered by enemy culture. If you can find a coastal city with no surrounding hills or forests this will be easier (and not give the stalled counter attacking force any defensive bonuses) Wait for the counterattack. The timing of the counter attack is difficult to determine. If you think it will be a few turns you can start to advance from the city but the safest thing is to sit and wait.

 

[luniz]

if you take out the cities on the way, you have a place to heal any units that get hit on the way in, plus you reduce her ability to build reinforcements.

 

[oddball723]

i've actually been experiencing this problem myself some as i try Civ IV on harder difficulties.

Namely in terms of large stacks of units just getting artillaried to death and then mopped up with whatever.

the key i've found... is. when you're heading into a territory (i personally don't play many water maps...so maybe this is a land invasion tactic) send in sacrificial units to chop up roads.

i've been having lots of fun bombing my enemies tile improvements...so that all that's left are rails and towns. ...helicopters, in late game have decent movement and can pillage each turn. i never expect my helicopters to do much good in battle... even against tanks, or damaged mechs or whatnot...decently in my favor combat odds still seem to wind up with a dead chopper. So. use them for what they're good for. late game pillagers.

early game... calvary. horse archers... chariots really early game. but the key is to cut any advantage possible.

rebuilding conquered lands seems easy. late game i usually have tons of workers just milling about. i can swarm a newly aquired territory after fighting and quickly rebuild it. so i am beginning to adopt a "salt the earth" philosophy in my fighting.

it helps also to pillage behind a city... especially with rails. cuts off a civ reinforcing that city if your initial attack goes badly ...or directly countering your wounded units with fresh offensive ones. or worse yet. decimating an initial assault force with endless artilary. god i hate that. they never seem to run out. and my mod armors kill 2 or 3 each, but then the tanks easy pickings for some offensive unit.


the warlords expansion apparently has unit upgrades that negate collateral damage. but i don't own the expansion either.

for vanilla civ. your best bet is better planning and more ruthless gameplay. the AI tends to stockpile collateral damage causing seige units... not to attack your towns. but to weaken attacking units.

i also try and front load my movements...so. where as...clicking for my units to wind up exactly alongside a city. have the final move be one tile away. logic being. if the move is right up along the city but after it gets their the unit has no more movement. all it can do is wait a turn and be attacked before it gets its next move. possibly being killed, or weakend to the point of worthlessness. stoping short a tile...makes sure everthing gets there at once, and hopefully will have an attack move left once it's smack dab next to the enemy city.(this maybe more so for late game, armors and mechs, most early and mid game units are 1 move units anyhow).

I also tend to resist using stacks. in Civ IV it doesn't grant combined bonuses or anything... that i know of. only serves to organize units. and make things simpler.

i like to direct multple small stacks, as apposed to massive stacks. surround cities from multiple angles. ...leave suicide or defender units on hills, or on the other side of rivers. anything to overwhelm or make the computer pick and choose what to kill...rather than just send endless artilary against my single stack.

certain units... like artilary. get bonuses against seige units. use a couple as defensive units. or to snipe the random seige unit they sent out against you that's just sort of out in the open...rather than wasting one of your primary offensive units.

if i need seige units. i normally have two sorts. sacrificial collateral damage types. and defense crushers. i try not to send them as front line attackers, prefering rather to have something surround the city, pillage for a round, and then have the seige stuff slide in afterward.

sometimes you have to chose who's going to die, and the actual value of each unit. invading an enemy's land...who's equal strength, or stronger to you... is pretty much going to require a bit of attrition. the AI just builds so many garbage units it's unreasonable to expect more than one quick surprise attack/victory on a city before they level you with a bit of their endless crap units.

try having units specifically built to take advantage of choke points, ...using hill defense boosts, or jungle/forrest boosts to defense. let them slam their weaker units against those units. hopefully buffing their exp levels further.

bring along medic units. nothing sucks more than getting whittled down by a seige collateral attack and having to sit a stack still on a hilltop for five turns while they heal and get picked off.

if you flip a city...consider a hospital as a good first building to build. especially if the fighting is still nearby, or you're using the city as a staging ground for incoming units or bombers and whatnot. retreating to heal is acceptable if you've cut the roads out behind you. you can attack on the run with more mobile units, peeking out of one of your conquered cities to kill their unit.

I also gave up most of my instinct to go after key power cities. in harder difficulties extending yourself too far into enemy land is pretty much a surefire way to wind up with a wasted assault. attack in force at coastal towns, and if need be raze... outer ring towns. but try not to get too greedy for the capital. it'll still be there, after you kill their other towns. and it's not like the computer will be upset.

besides... i think it's more fitting to choke off a towns roads and improvements ...bomb it to hell. and watch it slowly die.


hope some of this was helpful.


cheers


-S

 

[ABigCivFan]

Always check the AIs power graph relative to yours first. Its high, then you know its gonna be tough. You just have to bring more units.

If you have stronger units then break them into small groups to minimize collat dam.

Do not beeline your attack route, evaluate neighboring cities first, plan an attack route which will get you the best cities (Resource/Prod/Shrines/wonders and etc). Take all cities along the way, dont go deep into enermy territory without support/reinforcement.

Taking coastal cities is sometimes easier since you can get many ships to bombard the cultural defense down to 0% in 1 turn.

Sometimes, after you capture a city, leave 2 strong defenders in it, let the AI take it back (wait and lure its stacks to the city) then destroy its units with your siege weapons before going after the cities. This tactics will allow you to take out AI's offensive units with ease. After the AI run out of siege and offensive units, it will be a walk in the park for you to capture its cities.

 

[johnnyboomboom]

Well, what I ended up doing was focusing less on the capital, I moved a lot of units by water transport and took out the major cities on the coast. Eventually I'd crippled her production enough that she couldn't really counter me.

Another thing I did was use my own siege units. I quickly discovered that before they are able to build tanks, Artillery with City Raider 2+ are about the best unit in the game for capturing cities. I was just taking stacks of artillery, supported by a few infantry and was able to roll over all her cities pretty handily.

Ended up in first place for points by quite a bit, but Louis won a space race in 2038 heh.