Wars after Early war and before Bombers

[PurpleHaze34]

What do you do? I just declared war late industrial / early modern. I have Bombards around value 50, The city I want to take has defense 49, but the preview says I'll scratch the walls.

I can warrior rush pre walls.

I can swordsman / siege tower early walls.

After that I feel like I have to wait for Bombers.

What am I missing?

 

[JesseS]

Musketmen help, as does turning bombards into corps and getting a great general so they can move and shoot on the same turn. Artillery and/or balloons are also a big boost too.

 

[PurpleHaze34]

Is there a formula people use as a rule of thumb? It's a 49 city defense so I need X units of greater than Y value?

Is it the level of walls that makes the difference? How do I know what level of wall the opponent has on their city?

 

[IsabelBraganca]

You are missing the observation balloon. It adds 1 range to bombards and artillery. Observation ballon + artillery army puts down city defenses. I usually aim for two armies. Bombard army + observation ballon cannot take down city defenses. I've successfully bombarded one city for an entire era (epic speed) and I took down around 90%. I had two bombards armies. I was playing Russia and switching from cultural to scientific victory and I needed more cities.

The city cannot attack them nor ranged units inside cities. You may need need some cavalry to put down the melee the AI will send towards you. Great Generals and supply wagons add movement so you can rotate more easily, railroads also helps. Artillery armies take a few turns against city defenses, but if the AI has only walls, you can take the city in one round or two.

 

[Big Earth]

Just played a game on emperor with Gaul on highlands map and used military engineers to build railroads, which sped up my army considerably. Amateurs think about tactics, professionals think about logisitics.

 

[oPunchDrunko]

I would like some advice on this aswell.

For me, Ancient and Classical is great for going to war and taking cities. Medieval and Renaissance is where it gets tough. Siege units in Med/ Ren are just too weak to take down walls and it gets hard to take down walls in time. Industrial and later eras it gets much easier since you get better siege units and support units.

Would it be wise to just skip Medieval and Renaissance warfare and wait until you get better units?

 

[Bibor]

Just played a game on emperor with Gaul on highlands map and used military engineers to build railroads, which sped up my army considerably. Amateurs think about tactics, professionals think about logisitics.

agreed, Civ6 loves its roads and railroads and, in turn, I learned to apprecitate Rome and other move-friendly mechanics even more.

No benefit to an army that simply isn’t there

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

I would like some advice on this aswell.

For me, Ancient and Classical is great for going to war and taking cities. Medieval and Renaissance is where it gets tough. Siege units in Med/ Ren are just too weak to take down walls and it gets hard to take down walls in time. Industrial and later eras it gets much easier since you get better siege units and support units.

Would it be wise to just skip Medieval and Renaissance warfare and wait until you get better units?

Bombards can handle Medieval Walls without a problem. Bombard corps can deal with Renaissance Walls. But even if you're in Medieval and Renaissance, AI will often not have updated their walls, so you can handle them with less of a problem than you would think.

Bombards get a lot better once you get the first two promotions on them. If you train up some catapults early and promote them up, you can get Bombards that shred through AI cities.

 

[oPunchDrunko]

Bombards can handle Medieval Walls without a problem. Bombard corps can deal with Renaissance Walls. But even if you're in Medieval and Renaissance, AI will often not have updated their walls, so you can handle them with less of a problem than you would think.

Bombards get a lot better once you get the first two promotions on them. If you train up some catapults early and promote them up, you can get Bombards that shred through AI cities.

In my experience, bombards do very little damage to Renaissance walls. Even bombard armies don’t do much. I know because I took on a city with an army bombard and it only took maybe 1/15th off of the wall health. On top of that, you really need observation balloons to effectively take down a city with Renaissance walls and beyond. This makes sieging cities in the Renaissance era basically impossible.

 

[MrRadar]

How do I know what level of wall the opponent has on their city?

You can tell that by the graphic representation of the walls: ancient, medieval and renaissance walls around the city look different enough on the map.

As for these different experiences:

Bombards can handle Medieval Walls without a problem. Bombard corps can deal with Renaissance Walls.

In my experience, bombards do very little damage to Renaissance walls. Even bombard armies don’t do much. I know because I took on a city with an army bombard and it only took maybe 1/15th off of the wall health. On top of that, you really need observation balloons to effectively take down a city with Renaissance walls and beyond. This makes sieging cities in the Renaissance era basically impossible.

it would be helpful to know a bit more of your game settings, the difficulty you're playing on in particular.

Next level walls mostly add more health - more hit points to the city that you need to chip away, and some limitations on the way to deal damage. As for the effectiveness of the bombardment, what's important here is the Combat Strenght (CS) difference between your siege CS and city defense CS, as in any other combat.

On lower difficulties, by the time you get to bombards, AI most probably haven't built more advanced and stronger land or sea units yet, which would bring up their city defensive CS to the next era level, so you bombard at a CS advantage, so all kind of walls just melt down.

On higer difficulties, AI tech quite fast and beeline to stronger melee units very soon, thus rendering their cities very strong, so you bombard their walls with your bombard corps and armies at CS parity at the best, or more probably at a disadvantage, because you're already bombarding with an obsolete siege unit in comparison to the advanced era defence they have, so the cannonballs just bounce off of any kind of walls. 1/15 off of Renaissance wall health sounds about right for bombarding at a slight CS disadvantage.

 

[Bibor]

Considering the importance of Oil and Aluminium I'd still urge FXS to reconsider and add a factory building for converting coal into oil and (say) getting Aluminium from power. Aluminium is not mined anyway - bauxite is.

In fact, I wouldn't power modern units with Oil at all - I'd use resources in general to produce fuel, which should be its own resource, that can be acquired by converting Oil, Coal or Uranium. Just like "an amenity" is a conversion from a luxury resource.

 

[Siddharth Venkatesh]

It would be helpful to know a bit more of your game settings, the difficulty you're playing on in particular.

Next level walls mostly add more health - more hit points to the city that you need to chip away, and some limitations on the way to deal damage. As for the effectiveness of the bombardment, what's important here is the Combat Strenght (CS) difference between your siege CS and city defense CS, as in any other combat.

On lower difficulties, by the time you get to bombards, AI most probably haven't built more advanced and stronger land or sea units yet, which would bring up their city defensive CS to the next era level, so you bombard at a CS advantage, so all kind of walls just melt down.

On higer difficulties, AI tech quite fast and beeline to stronger melee units very soon, thus rendering their cities very strong, so you bombard their walls with your bombard corps and armies at CS parity at the best, or more probably at a disadvantage, because you're already bombarding with an obsolete siege unit in comparison to the advanced era defence they have, so the cannonballs just bounce off of any kind of walls. 1/15 off of Renaissance wall health sounds about right for bombarding at a slight CS disadvantage.

I'm playing on Immortal or Deity usually. By the time I get to bombards, I usually am not that far behind on tech anymore. Either I've simmed or I've taken out a neighbor before bombards and in either case I'm usually fighting at close to parity in terms of CS.

Bombards do nothing to Renaissance Walls by themselves. You need Bombard corps with 2 promotions and then they can handle Renaissance Walls at parity in my experience. They won't do anything if the AI is at infantry or better, or if they have Urban Defenses. Also, they will start by doing low damage but walls don't heal and you do more damage as the walls get more damaged. With 2-3 Bombard Corps, a city with Renaissance Walls still goes down reasonably quickly. There's a small timing window where this works because you have to get to Nationalism and the AI needs to not have modern era defenses.

If I'm warmongering, I generally prefer doing it early so I tend to have a few catapults trained up reasonably highly. This gives me bombards with 3-4 promotions and a +1 range bombard with both the bonuses to district defenses does a lot of damage.

It is true that a fresh bombard without the bonuses to district defenses tends not to fare well against Medieval Walls.

 

[TheFinalChiTown]

getting a great general so they can move and shoot on the same turn. Artillery and/or balloons are also a big boost too.

This is big for siege units. They'll do much more damage to the walls if they can shoot before taking damage.

If you're already at bombards, it's better to go for artillery since you're already on the bottom of the tech tree.

Nationalism is a huge boost. Make sure you use the National Identity policy.

 

[myclan]

In my game. It is usually so difficult to take a city during renaissance so I need at least 3 bombards, even 3 bombard corps to take a city quick enough. A great general can help a lot to make bombard stronger and be able to move and shot in 1 turn. So do your best to get 1 if plan to expand at that time.

 

[Bibor]

A walled city’s attack damage should be roughly half of what it is right now.