Yikes, taking down Sitting Bull.

[LightSpectra]

His capital city is the Taoist holy city, on a hill, with five longbowmen (he's adding more); the city itself has a totem pole, a barracks, a military center, wall and castle.

Should I just be patient and spend forever trying to conquer it, or should I take down all of his other cities and attempt to capitulate?

 

[NaZdReG]

tough nut to crack but not impossible. you have a couple of good options.. though it depends on where you are tech wise.. and you didn't elaborate.

if you have knights.. a stack of those will pwn the lbows.. if you can tech to guilds quickly (like next few turns) then do that. otherwise

if you only have horse archers.. enough of them will do the job but you'll take HEAVY casualties. even if not your only option I'd include a few, they are immune to first strikes and that can atleast weaken a longbow.

if you have catapults.. an equal number of cats to lbows + a few and atleast 8-10 offensive units and you should be able to tackle it once you wipe out cultural defence. bombard then suicide your cats against it (expect them all to die) and mop up what's left. whatever survives the assault should fortify there, expecting counter attack.

if you don't have cats.. you might make do with a spy. get him there and cause a 1 turn disorder, which wipes out the defence %. but you have to attack immediately.

if the catapults knock defence to 0% or the spy causes rebellion, the walls and castle won't matter.

hope that helps

NaZ

 

[yavoon]

I don't know how taking forever is going to be effective, all cities should be taken in one turn. I'd recommend pumping military hard, taking ur not ready SOD and taking out other cities. then when u have enough march back and pound him.

anything above 30% initial chance should be doable effectively w/ about 2.5 times his troops. atleast 2x in main units and the others can be counter units for possible cleanup.

 

[Bjorn190]

Yea take the other cities first, then use catapults/trebuchets on that hard nut to crack.. CG 3 lonbows with drill 1 on a hill.. uhm.. its gonna cost u!

 

[silver 2039]

Just use catapults to take down his defenses and then use a bunch of suicide catapults to cause a load of colletral damage and attack with knights.

 

[justkilled]

Catapults wont take the defense Bonus down (at least in a reasonable time), iirc an regular catapult only chops of 2% of a castles defense bonus now in BtS. so getting the spy there and paying some hunderts of EPs should be cheaper than to bring dozens of cats for the bombardment.
After stting bull lost his castle bonus taking the city shouldn't be that difficult. Like the others have pointed out cats, trebs and flanking mounted units are the way to reduce the strengh of the longobows. Afterwards you hit them with your strongest unit to wipe them out (knights, curassiers, maces, musquets, elefants will all do the job). You will still need big numbers, so plan for it.

 

[Scaphism]

Convert to Taoism - get him to attack someone else. Join in. Make friends.

 

[silver 2039]

Hmmm.....in my games I always have a stack of 10-12 catapults at hand. In my opinion you can never have enough siege weapons. If you have that many siege weapons you can take anything. And I mean anything....

 

[justkilled]

yeah ussually its true. But taking castles pre cannon is a a real pain this days... in warlords a handful of accuracy cats would bring down any defens bonus to zero in no time. But now you need dozens of cats if you want to archive these.

 

[Virulent]

I'd say either take down his other cities and see if he'll capitulate or sue for peace and wait until you have canons and gunpowder units.

I can see Sitting Bull + Longbows + Hill City being an absolute nightmare to take. I only had Sitting Bull in one of the games I've played and I took him out via in early rush so I didn't have to face situations like this later down the road.

 

[futurehermit]

There's no situation a pile of siege units can't solve. Of course you now need sufficient numbers of mop-up units as well.

 

[Gnarfflinger]

What about a spy to cause a revolt in the city? That will reduce the cultural bonus. The tile and the units there are another problem...

 

[xfactor99]

I had copper in my fat cross as I was playing with Peter earlier today, so I decided to go for an axeman rush. Eliminated Asoka, but when I get to Sitting Bull, he has two archers with City Garrison II and Drill II promotions, plus two Dog Soldiers (+100 vs. melee units)

Needless to say, I was extremely frustrated. Curse you Sitting Bull

 

[aronnax]

Try to tech for Riflemen, your best option

 

[NaZdReG]

aronnax,

you don't need to wait THAT long if all you are seeing is longbows. enough cats and axes WILL do the job.. it will just cost a lot.

knights will run a city like that over.. immune to first strikes so if you can take out the cultural defence its a pretty even fight. add flanking 2 and most of them should even survive it.

NaZ

 

[aronnax]

aronnax,

you don't need to wait THAT long if all you are seeing is longbows. enough cats and axes WILL do the job.. it will just cost a lot.

knights will run a city like that over.. immune to first strikes so if you can take out the cultural defence its a pretty even fight. add flanking 2 and most of them should even survive it.

NaZ

Thats why Riflemen seem so much better, get my knights and maces to take down some other fool while I research for Rifling

Ussually I beeline for it the moment i hit machinary

 

[NaZdReG]

seems more passive than my tastes. but thats the beauty of this game you can play it ultimately however you want. I just put up the examples to let you know that there are options waaaaay before rifling that will level that city. if you focused you could have it in the next 20 turns, regardless of wherever you are on the tech tree.

NaZ

 

[ds61514]

seems more passive than my tastes. but thats the beauty of this game you can play it ultimately however you want. I just put up the examples to let you know that there are options waaaaay before rifling that will level that city. if you focused you could have it in the next 20 turns, regardless of wherever you are on the tech tree

It's not just about that one city.

How many hammers does it cost to take the city? Furthermore, what is the opportunity cost for building a cat?

How many hammers will it take to make the city productive (which can mean either vassaling the civ or wiping it off the map)? The later the war, the greater the culture

How will the WW affect your tech rate? Will you miss any wonders or great economy civics?

I've found that quick tech to rifles is killer against Emperor-below AIs.