What force can take an early capital?

[intutama]

Hi,
When upgrading my archers to CB I find it easy to take cities of strength up to 15. However I always have problem taking cities of strength ~20 with a CB inside. Do you have some evaluation on what force could take such a city quite easily? Thanks.

 

[bcaiko]

Hi,
When upgrading my archers to CB I find it easy to take cities of strength up to 15. However I always have problem taking cities of strength ~20 with a CB inside. Do you have some evaluation on what force could take such a city quite easily? Thanks.

Sounds like you're not using enough units and/or diverse unit types. A couple of longswordsman on the front lines absorbing some of the damage (and healing from pillaging or promotions), can keep your crossbowmen and siege units at 100% while the city is under siege. A few longswordsman, with a power of 21, can also quickly take a city of that strength themselves, especially with a Siege promotion, and they can be quickly built with the Honor policy's hammer reduction.

I know the general advice is the game isn't melee friendly, but the melee units do have their place.

 

[phillipwyllie]

Early warfare benefits from numbers rather than tech level, and wait until all are in position(3 hexes away) b4 making your attack.

 

[kaspergm]

Sounds like you're not using enough units and/or diverse unit types. A couple of longswordsman on the front lines absorbing some of the damage (and healing from pillaging or promotions), can keep your crossbowmen and siege units at 100% while the city is under siege. A few longswordsman, with a power of 21, can also quickly take a city of that strength themselves, especially with a Siege promotion, and they can be quickly built with the Honor policy's hammer reduction.

I know the general advice is the game isn't melee friendly, but the melee units do have their place.

Well problem is Longswordsmen come 3 tech levels after CBs, so if we're talking at a time of game where he's just upgraded to CB's, that's hardly an option.

The obvious answer would be Catapults. Catapults suck and die easily, but if terrain is flat and open you can bring ~3 of them along, and while the first one will probably be killed before it even gets to set up, that will still net you a shot or two with the other two, and they can do pretty serious damage to a city of so low power. If the city is hidden in forests, you can pretty much forget about it until you get to Artillery unless you outtech them so much that your Cannons will be able to survive multiple hits by the time you get to those.

Producing three catapults require a lot of resources so early in game, however, so clearly game is not designed to make life easy for warmongers.

 

[mikeville]

I feel like he means, early game, as in, EARLY game. The first era (Ancient?), before Comp bows. And I've found the answer to be a minimum four archers and one warrior. You have to have the archers all move into firing range at the same time. Siege the city for two or three turns. Then move the warrior in range and finish it off.

If the city is on a hill, you may need another archer or second warrior.

This strategy worked quite nicely for me in a recent game I played. I was Spain, and I discovered Assyria on a small continent with me. We were isolated from the rest of the world. So, I hard built three archers, bought a fourth after discovering a natural wonder, and took my warrior and scout to Assyria capital and wiped him out. No diplo penalties (since I hadn't met anyone yet), it was awesome. And then I had the whole island to myself.

 

[Scott Jegg]

5 or 6 cbows should be able to take a 20 strength city in about three turns as long as you have mown down their army from the edges of the borders.

That is my experience in my current game on immortal against that PITA Atilla anyway. Normally I don't attack till I have trebuchets, but I couldn't wait about in this game.

I think you can forget about taking a walled 20 str city with four normal archers. That's not going to work very well.

 

[Lucius_]

In my experience, its pretty rare to run into a city with 20+ defense that early. I'm guessing its a Capital with walls and on a hill. I agree you will need 6 CBs plus two pikes and maybe a horse. If you can get lucky with a catapult for a couple turns then you can get by with less CBs. The idea is for the city to focus on your melee or mounted units. If you move in with a damaged unit, that can help. Just know he is fodder and may to hold the line (pillage) and sacrafice himself to give the siege weapons as many shots as possible.

Or come back with Xbows or artillery, if you can wait that long.

 

[vanzlmalc]

7 CBs should be able to take ~20 strength city. You don't have to make melee units if hammers are tight, you can take early cities with scouts, tho having a horse to capture and a spear to keep AIs melee from your CBs help a lot.

I used to try to keep all my units alive no matter what which is not always good. Sometimes it's better to lose 2 CBs and take the city than wasting 15 turns shuffling while the AI is building pikes. So what i do is retreat damaged units until the city is low enough to die in 2 turns, then move all (even wounded ones) CBs in range and take the city.

 

[joshua43214]

Some of you go in for overkill...

archers will take a 12 defense city with no effort, 4 will do it in 2 rounds, 3 do it in 3 rounds.
3 CB's will take a 15 to 18 defense city, you want 4 for 20 to 25 defense.
3 x-bows for 30ish and 4 x-bows for 40ish

you can easily drop a cap by T65 with just 4 archers and 2 ancient era melee units

 

[Princeofnigeria]

Battering rams
But seriously, I go with three archers, a chariot, and two warriors/ spearmen (depending on goodie huts)

 

[Callonia]

I've taken plenty of ancient era cities in BNW, including capitals. Its basically relies on your numbers to race the city to 0 hp. If you lose, your army wasn't good enough, if you win your army was good enough. Terrain where city is built on plays a significant factor in ancient era. Ive brought something like ten units to assault an city in ancient era and succeed. You will have to make certain that the defending army is defeated first though. Or risk it.

 

[killmeplease]

i've taken Rome this morning
it was on a hill, so 20 str. one ballista garrisoned and two nearby
i brought 5 CBs, killed one ballista at first, then started to bombard the city (those CBs got exploding arrows i think). catapult/cb and a city kill a warrior in one turn so you need either 2 warriors or one faster moving unit (horseman or trirema) to finish the job. i had trirema for the final assault. so i lost 2 CBs (and wasted some promotions to insta-heal) what is pretty good pice for a size 4 city with a library and temple of artemis in it If i had 4 CBs i'd lose 3 i think.

 

[bcaiko]

Well problem is Longswordsmen come 3 tech levels after CBs, so if we're talking at a time of game where he's just upgraded to CB's, that's hardly an option.

By CBs, I thought he meant CROSSBOWMEN, not Composite Bows! I wrote a response, wondering why ANYONE would have trouble getting a city of that strength down with Crossbows, and then figured I was remembering the strength numbers wrong.

Looking at the numbers, I still think the OP needs to diversify a little. Swordsmen would provide good meat shields to take damage that's meant for his catapults. And with the support of Statue of Zeus (if OP can/has built it), they can certainly make taking the city go quicker.

In the end, I agree with other folks that the OP just needs more units, especially for a city that well defended. I'd say 8 units should do it.