Countering Archer Stacks

[Simplicity]

Okay, so now that we played a while, one obvious military strategy is showing up: Archer stacks in cities.

My question to the apolyton community: What trumps it? What is the best choice of units to fight these archers (supposing the opponent had no other units in the city).

Any answer is obviously going to include catapults + X. But what is the best X for the early ages?

[alexman]

Swordsmen get a bonus against cities.

[ayronis]

One or two catapults with several swordmen should be able to take just about any city, but be careful, if the defender counters with axemen you could be in trouble. Taking a combined defensive block will be challenging without a large number of catapults, but it takes a long time to prepare such a defense.

The beauty of this combat model is that you need to plan ahead and recon is a must.

[Atahualpa]

Swordsmen + City Raider I and II
There is also an Anti-Bowman promotion

Catapults are useless for a collateral attack against cities once your enemy gets longbowmen. You don't have much chance against 6 +25% and maybe another +20% for city defender I. That's 9 (+city defenses) vs 6 (if your catapult took city raider I promotion). At least I didn't dare to attack with that odds, but chose to reduce city defenses.

[Mogling]

id go swordsmen, then later giving them the city raider promotions and upgrading them to graniders to take out thoes pesky riflemen

[Killazer]

yeah I like to clobber civs that start too close to me but it isnt that easy if they have archers. You have to either attack very very quickly with a bunch of warriors or you need at LEAST to have axe men to have any chance of reasonably taking their city.

[Solver]

Cities with Archers only are easy. Build Swordsmen and promote them with City Raider I immeiately - for Aggressive civs, promote with Cover. 3 Catapults to take down city defenses and the Swordsmen will take cities easily.

However, you'll not be seeing such Archer-only cities. If the city has Axemen, on defense or countering your stack, then you're in trouble with your Swordsmen.

[alva]

Horsemen are pretty good against archer too as they don't suffer first strikes.


Do they have a retreat bonus, just as chariots do? I can't really remember, maybe someone could help me out here? Sirian...you perhaps???

[Strollen]

I agree a couple of Catupults + swordsman can take out archer or even longbow men defended city. You need to spend a couple of turns bombarding the city.

However prior to getting construction even swordsmen with city raider promotions will get slaughtered killed attacking a city with a modest defense body and archers with city defender promotions.

[Solver]

Swordsmen will only take out Longbowmen under lucky circumstances - assuming no promotions for the Logbowmen and the city not being on hills and, of course, having defenses down to 0.

[Cabbagemeister]

Cities with archers don't scare me. Cities with 2-3 axemen and 2-3 spearmen are almost IMPOSSIBLE to crack. Your swordsmen die horribly, and your horse-archers don't even make a dent (unless all your units have like three promotions). Seriously, even with catapult help, what do you do against that, except maybe wait for elephants?

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Solver
Swordsmen will only take out Longbowmen under lucky circumstances - assuming no promotions for the Logbowmen and the city not being on hills and, of course, having defenses down to 0.

You will probably be using Mace by the time LB is in the field. Well you better at least have maces.

[Atahualpa]

Originally posted by Cabbagemeister
Cities with archers don't scare me. Cities with 2-3 axemen and 2-3 spearmen are almost IMPOSSIBLE to crack. Your swordsmen die horribly, and your horse-archers don't even make a dent (unless all your units have like three promotions). Seriously, even with catapult help, what do you do against that, except maybe wait for elephants?

Axemen, Longbowmen and catapults?
Catapults should weaken all units. Longbowmen should kill axemen and axemen should kill spearmen. You certainly need some of them though.

[Cabbagemeister]

Can you get longbowmen that early? Hmm, maybe I've been going down the wrong tech-tree paths...

[Solver]

It's possible to get Longbowmen before maces are around, although I don't attack the enemy if he has Longbows and I don't yet have Maces.

You can, in fact, get Longbowmen rather early if you go for them. The Oracle also helps greatly, if you want to. It's a pretty valid strat - go for early Logbowmen and then you're basically safe from any early attacks.