Two Catapults Working Against Walls

[budweiser]

Immortal Germany

Here is how the old cats & spears attack looks in civ vi. The spears are soaking up the city shots (at least they are supposed to). I kind of made a soft bee-line to Cats. I took out 1 CS to test UA and then went after a few Greek cities for pay back on an earlier DoW.

My army is 3 spears, 2 cats and 1 horse. I am attacking a 33 defense Greek city.

Turn 1 - 125BC

Spoiler :

Prepare to fire.

Half the wall is gone with 1 shot.

The wall is down in 2 shots.

Next turn 1AD.

Spoiler :

The city shot at one cat and took half its life.

Now its my turn.

Shoot

Shoot

Send in the spears.

Finishing up 25AD.

Spoiler :

Sparta falls.

At this point, my troops are damaged and I decide not to press on. Peace breaks out. I accept the deal as is. This force basically took out 3 cities. I might have been able to get Athens with some patience and/or some fresh troops coming up from my core.

Spoiler :

 

[gatorsurgeon]

I haven't really gotten to catapults yet. My strategy for current Gernamy/Emporer/continents game was to build slingers and rush straight to archery. Upgrade the slingers and add one warrior. Four archers plus two warriors will knock over any city without walls, and the AI doesn't seem to get walls up very quickly. Got a 5th Archer and a battering ram, and even walled city with ~25 hp can be taken with archers/warriors. So Greece was first to go. Then took Brazils two biggest cities. Now Norway, which doesn't have walls, is going down. While this is going on, do mining/bronze/iron and get an iron mine built. Now warriors upgraded to swords, and researching stirrups. I think I can conquer the whole continent with this army and then sit back and do districts in peace for many turns.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

It's basically all cats are good for, so they should be good at is yes.

 

[stormtrooper412]

I find it easier to rush Archery, kill them before they get Walls up

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Walls can show up quite early. I had a game where Rome had walls in all his cities between T30 to T40. It's hard to get your archers plus enough warriors ready and in place that early unless you basically spawn 9 flat tiles away from his capital.
Good for me i was Aztec and my Eagle Warriors ate those walls.

 

[Lucius_]

I'm finding if I'm not ready to march for war by t25, I'm gonna hit walls. At that point, archers are next to useless besides clearing the units out. The archer/warrior rush works quite well if you have a super close neighbor and you can get there by t30 or so, or if you get lucky and they took a different tech path. After that, I find rams/catapults the way to go, though catapults are really squishy.

 

[gatorsurgeon]

Once the AI gets walls, the easiest solution is to get siege towers. A siege tower and 3 Knights will knock over a walled city with no issues.

 

[stormtrooper412]

I'm not really sure, Walls only set you back 2-3 turns maybe. I was able to clear out Deity Scythia by turn 50-60 using Archers and a few of my own Horsemen. Forward expos tend not to have earlier walls and if you happen to capture the capital first, you might make peace, regroup and take another swing at them

 

[agonistes]

I think it depends on your expectations for the length of a campaign, and what units the defense will be putting up.

I've had no problem taking walled cities pretty quickly with just swordsmen and archers. But having 3-4 catapults makes life much easier, maybe shaving off 2-4 turns per city?

I also know that catapults can be extremely vulnerable to enemy defensive units, like musketmen, or the Kongo UU, whereas swordsmen can mash their heads against the walls for a couple of turns and not worry about return fire.

Try just using some melee with a couple of support units. Not saying its better, just saying try it out as part of the larger experiment.

 

[budweiser]

I think it depends on your expectations for the length of a campaign, and what units the defense will be putting up.

I've had no problem taking walled cities pretty quickly with just swordsmen and archers. But having 3-4 catapults makes life much easier, maybe shaving off 2-4 turns per city?

In the example above, it took just 3 turns to take the city 33 defense city using 2 cats & 3 melee. Adding a cat and or another melee could have taken the city in 2 turns.

 

[Fuccimama]

You could have pillaged the farm under the cat before taking the city, and that should have been enough to take Athens as well, via the eastern and northern sides of the city. Always pillage farms for health before you take a city, as the population usually drops enough that they become unnecessary.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Cats are really helpful but I usually have the job done already before I unlock them. I guess having more cities wrapped up earlier is more useful