Totally new... how to take other cities?

[firecat318]

Alright this is my first Civ game and I have to say I absolutely love it! I've been a fan of Age of Empires III for a while but this game is great.

I'm still learning how to play in general but I have a question about taking over other cities. I came across a city state that had a defense of 13 and I wanted to take it over, so I used my three warrior units to simply attack it. Problem is during each turn the city would bombard my units and deplete them before I could actually destroy the city. Is there a way to like lay siege to the city and destroy it that way without actually having to engage it with warriors?

 

[Ahriman]

Warriors alone aren't going to be enough to take a well-defended city. You're probably better off waiting until you have spearmen and ideally a catapult.

There's no explicit siege mechanic, you just have to do enough damage to the city (reduce its hit points to zero).

 

[Banditt]

Boats are good for laying siege to coastal cities. For the larger cities on the interior of the continent you will probably need to wait for trebuchets or cannons so you can bomb down the defences before attacking with your troops.

I'm in the middle of my first civ 5 game and I made good use of the triremes and frigates early on to lay waste to Nobunaga. By the time I had taken most of his coastal cities I had cannons and took his interior cities. Ran into a bit of an unhappiness issue due to all the cities but I'm well on my way to a domination victory at this point.

 

[Louis XXIV]

Simply put, cities defend themselves and can take some effort to take down. In previous Civ games, they didn't, but they had a bunch of units in them, so it felt like the effect was similar (imo). To make a long story short, each melee unit you attack them with will get hit back by the city. You can damage it this way, but the odds are that it'll do more damage to you than you can to it overall. In response, ranged units (Archers if you have to, but especially catapults) are great for weakening the city at first. After you've weakened it, you can attack with your melee units with much greater effect. They are a tough nut to crack, so it takes some patience and discipline.

EDIT: This is based on just a little bit of experience, other thoughts might differ.

 

[Bibor]

With Persia I took London (in Demo) with an Archer (first tech to discover), an Immortal (got upgrade from ruins) and one warrior.

It took 3 shots from the archer followed by 3 attacks with both units. I had a barbarian brute eating 2 volleys though, so I guess it should work with +1 warrior.

This was on prince.

 

[bhavv]

Coastal cities are easy to capture like this:

Spoiler :

Just use a couple of ships, and a couple of ranged units. Bombard for a few turns then capture with a melee unit. Once a unit get too damaged from city fire, withdraw it.

 

[dottiee]

In the civ 5 demo, I assaulted a 20 strengt city-state with 4 warriors, 2 war chariots and a scout and got totally obliterated!! ... My war chariots did 0 dmg from their ranged attacks. So from that, I figure you need proper ranged attack, like catapults? Or does a normal archer do dmg to cities? Another strat could be suiciding melee units onto a city to weaken it, but I dont see how thats aviable strat early game. (or any periode in the game)

Have anyone had succes conquering cities early game? If so how? =)

 

[Balkor]

Although not as strong as 20 This is me a few turns after taking out Seoul, I only used the Hoptiles and two cavalry (archers didnt get into range in time) However the city did alot of damage to my cavalry, if i lost them I would have been screwed.

Spoiler :

 

[Louis XXIV]

In the civ 5 demo, I assaulted a 20 strengt city-state with 4 warriors, 2 war chariots and a scout and got totally obliterated!! ... My war chariots did 0 dmg from their ranged attacks. So from that, I figure you need proper ranged attack, like catapults? Or does a normal archer do dmg to cities? Another strat could be suiciding melee units onto a city to weaken it, but I dont see how thats aviable strat early game. (or any periode in the game)

Have anyone had succes conquering cities early game? If so how? =)

For starters, I don't attack a 20 strength city with warriors and chariots. I attacked a weaker city state with archers and immortals, though. I basically pepper it with arrows until they are somewhat weak, then I do a couple of Immortal charges and swap them with fresh Immortals. Immortals have an advantage over other units, though, in that they'll often heal the damage they get bombarded with in the same turn (if not, it balances to -1 HP a turn).

If the city is anything close to 20, you need catapults.

 

[dottiee]

Tried with 2 archers and 3 immortals, pretty easy even thou the city was at strength 17. I did however have a great general nearby and the policy to grant ekstra %-multiplier.

Nice to see u actually can rush in this game... I am normally a builder, but I like to experiment while im learning to get a feel of the mechanics and units )

 

[Louis XXIV]

Yeah, I had assumed rushing was completely nerfed, but it seems OK. I'm not a rusher, but the demo kinda lends itself to it. Definitely seems well-handled. IMO, cities are about as difficult to take as before, just this time you're trying to get rid of health, while last time you were trying to kill a seemingly infinite number of units inside.

 

[rastak]

I just took down Hanoi which had 16 defense with 2 archers, 1 promoted spearman and a warrior (also a great general). Took me about 10 - 12 turns. My spearman was healing 2 but getting hit with 1 every turn which made him able to stand his ground and not rotate out.

 

[Onionsoilder]

Trying to rush cities early on is generally a pretty bad idea. I like waiting until I have either pikemen or catapults, though it can be done with spearmen and archers if you have enough.

 

[happyturtle]

I rushed in the demo, simply because I knew I only had 100 turns. Do I want to lay the foundations for a strong empire, or do I want to kick butt?

Archers are needed, as well as having enough units that you can cycle the wounded out of barrage range. I beelined iron working and ended up having 2 iron close by - enough for one catapult and one swordsman, though I think the immortal was probably a stronger unit than the swordsman, for the rapid healing.

Having a great general on the siege line is a huge help. The cover promotion is great to lessen bombardment damage against your melee troops, and the cats and archers can get a promotion that assists in city attacks.

When I don't have the 100 turn limit, I'll have a military city with a barracks and armoury to turn out great troops from the start, but for the demo, I just poured out mostly troops with the occasional worker.

 

[Gath]

Don't forget to utilize the apropriate veteran skills. When your unit has a strength of 6, +40% is huge. Specialize your soldiers to attacking open or attacking rough, and use them apropriately, it helps a lot.

 

[EmperorFool]

As Jon Shafer said during the live game, I found myself using the full heal "promotion" a lot to keep my more experienced/expensive units alive. I could let them get near death attacking a strong city and then *poof* they're at 10 hp after their attack (that's full health for those that haven't played the game).

I found the Chariot Archer to be quite weak. I built one to fend off an attack from the south, backing up a couple melee units I had there, and it wasn't very useful. I kept it behind the city and plinked away at whatever melee unit got close enough, but the city and my melee units were doing all the work. So I brought down a Horseman, and it was far more effective--even at finishing off the damaged Spearmen.

As with previous Civ games, there's nothing more comforting than a military tech advantage appropriately used.

 

[grahamsz]

I played for a while last night and here's a few things i found.

* Definitely start with ranged units, archers are a good starting point but trebuchets and musketmen are significantly better. You'll need to make sure you defend those units well (particularly catapults) so i try to put melee units in front of them.
* Ultimately you need a melee unit to take the city. I did eventually get there with just archers but it took forever to zap that last bit of strength from the city
* The logic about which unit the city strikes back at seems quite random. In one battle i had a couple of scouts nearby so i moved them in close to the city and sure enough the city expended a couple turns taking out sacrificial units which I was pounding them with archers. I've seen coastal cities seem to take out ships first regardless of whether they are more or less powerful than what's nearby.
* You should be able to exploit geography here. If there's a hill nearby then you might be able to set your catapult on the top of it.
* Keep replacement units on hand, your ranged attack units shouldn't sustain too much damage if they aren't right next to the city, but once they start to get low you can move them out to recover and bring in some fresh ones

 

[Balkor]

ID say best things needed for early rush are archers and horses, a couple of units of each should do great, maybe throw in a few scouts in the hopes they will take bombarded damage