Unit balance off? Or are promotions too powerful?

[tristangreer]

I was playing a game, and I waged war against the Spanish, mainly because I hate Isabella so much. Anyway, I got her down to just one city, and it was impossible for me to take it. By this point I had a huge tech lead, and was attempting to take the city with only modern infantry and whatever cavalry I had left. Her longbowmen were able to kill every single infantry unit I could build.

Point is: Is it just me, or are the defensive bonuses too powerful?

 

[Smidlee]

just like those milk commericals "Got artillery?"

 

[OzzyAlyanak]

Hehe, great answer...
First of all , promotions are very strong
Second of all, it seems like the last city is always challanging because its the toughest city... AI defends it strongly and usually, the last city is the capital, and the capital is culturallly enhanced.... and consequently, defense-wise the best.
Third, if they have longbow men, try using knights or any other mounted units. Dont use infantry, maceman, etc.
And of course, "got artillery"

 

[tristangreer]

To give another example of how defense bonuses might be too powerful is when my modern infantry and cavalry were losing when they attacked macemen which were on forested hills. To me that makes those defense bonuses way too strong.

 

[warpstorm]

Did you remove the city defense with arty and use City Raiders and Arty to soften them up (I prefer Arty with City Radier)?

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Also a slow stream of units is MUCH less effective than clumps of units. (because the major way to beat a unit is to weaken it, which means no healing between attacks)

 

[calyth]

To give another example of how defense bonuses might be too powerful is when my modern infantry and cavalry were losing when they attacked macemen which were on forested hills. To me that makes those defense bonuses way too strong.

Well, if you know they already get a defense bonus on a forested hill (which gives a lot of defense), why did you attack anyways?
The defense bonus is just that, a defense bonus. If they decided to attack adjacent units, it doesn't give them bonus.
If you're setting up a seige, you should try and put your units on hills that are adjacent to the city. That way their counterattack is much harder on them too.
Bring artillery.
Don't feed them units. The more units that get battered up and survive, the more experience they get, which in turn, Isabella is going to pump them full of city defense, making your job even harder. Either attack until they die, or go around unhooking resources/setting up embargo until you've got enough units to hammer a well defended city down. I know because I did exactly same thing to a mech. infantry, which when attacked in a city, it has at least 60 strength, and basically impossible to take down.

 

[The Spac]

Make sure your not attacking over a river. I've lost entire armies because of that. When I reloaded to test how powerful a defense that actually was and moved to the other side of the city, I barely lost any.

Make sure you bombard till the defense is all gone, and attacking with siege weapons to cause collatoral damage.

Yes promotions are powerful. If you really want to attack make sure you have that religious civic that increases your army units skills, and choose the city attack skills. When playing as Japanese I had 3 promotions on my guys as they walked out the door, and that was very very powerful.

The +Str isn't too powerful, when attacking a city see what they got and do your promotions to match, city attack, or even to counter the specific unit, such as +25% vs archers if their using archers.

When attacking make sure you have at least as many troops as they have in the city. Maybe +50%.

Make sure you attack in 1 turn that way they won't be able to heal.

Once a unit has been damaged it can pretty much be eliminated without much trouble.

When attacking a city you will loose alot, mostly all your attacks will just end up damaging enemies. That way you need another 50% to finish off their defenders. Don't expect to wipe out an enemy army in 1 attack.

You can see the combat statistics int he bottom left hand corner when you use the right mouse button to tell your guy to attack, holding down the button and see you chance there.

If you can't beat a town then pillage everything around it. Doing this will make it harder for them to replace their units. Also! their pop will drop.

 

[Warspite2]

In CIV4, i'm finding it a must most of the time to pre-bombard a large powerful city prior to attacking it. Use what you have available... airstrikes, artillery, ships, etc and bring that defense down to zero before you attack.

If you really want to practically "walk on in" try to destroy improvements and roads around the targeted city, starving it out and bringing down the pop... then bombard, attack and move in for capture. This worked pretty good in CIV3 but to be honest, I have not tried it yet in CIV4. I assume it would probaby work just as good though. Good luck!