Man archers are too damn powerfull

[Killazer]

Ok.. so at the start of the game if I start very close to another civ its almost impossible to take them out fast! Once they have archers forget it you need to get catapults at LEAST or get axe men and iron/copper but sometimes u cant accessiron and copper!! grrr! and u cant take the archer defender out!

So it turns into a stalemate meanwhile u are boxed in. Archers suck =/

[asleepathewheel]

swords or axes with cover are fairly effective, though you should still bring 1.75-2x the number of defenders.

[Solver]

You an do away with them without Catapults. Build Axemen or better Swordsmen and promote with Cover, that will be effective.

Or, build many Horse Archers - you'll suffer losses, but that works too.

[Arnelos]

Swordsmen/Axemen with raider (+vs cities) work pretty well.

Mounted units work very well if they have the right upgrades. Horse archers can be quite nice.

[Akaoz]

Heh, Horse Archers... Last game I played (Epic, Large, Terran) had NO horses in the old world. All the horses were in the "Americas".

Funny thing, when I finnaly got over there "South-America" had some very primitive barbarians (Axe/Sword vs. Rifle), but the the North had Rifle and Cannon...

[cal_01]

I'd say archers are about right, since most real life battles need a 2-3 to 1 advantage in order to win.

[Ellestar]

I tried Horse Archers+axeman for no effect, 8 attacking units vs 4 defending (3 archers+spearman) and i just lost everything.

Barracks are a must for attacking. Civics like Vassalage or Theocracy + barrack give 2 promotions, that's another big boost for units but it's even further away than catapults.

It's next to impossible to take a capital without catapults. But with catapults it's easy. You bombard defences and after that sacrifice 2 catapults with collateral damage 20% promotion, maybe 3 if unlucky. After that, all units in a city lose ~1/3 - 1/2 of their strength and you kill them almost without losses.

So, it seems that horse archers are good only for raiding. By the way, computer tries to defend important resources like Iron with one unit (on Noble difficulty, my first game). It's a good prey for horse archers.

[cal_01]

I'd have to say that catapults were easily the best surprise of this game. The game pretty much encourages combined arms warfare right off from the ancient era. (IE. Catapults/etc are pretty much the deciding factors of a successful siege)

My strategy for catapults/artillery so far is to bombard with two or three of them until the city defenses are down, then attack to cause collateral damage (great for archers by the way, since for some reason, it doesn't seem like the archers get much of a first strike against artillery). If they manage to withdraw, then that's even better.

[Addled Platypus]

make your problems go away...artillery with +30 collateral
and see the damage description to the right of the screen

I took a city defense down to 9%, went in with 1 MA,2 tanks.
AI had 2 grenadiers +2 ?. I still lost the MA


I love the auto shoot, yeah baby

[chumly]

Just slaughter all the improvements in the surrounding terrain. Their city is useless without the improvements, meanwhile you can keep expanding and growing.

I've seen them attack from the city in response to raiding, but only when the units got next to the city, and iirc it was the capital. In any case, since its easier to defend, that's still usually a losing strategy. It's a pity the computer doesn't cherry pick isolated units that are raiding improvements (or at least, I have yet to see them do it)

I haven't seen too many situations where I'd rather go after the city directly. I'm also having a hard time with mid-game warfare thanks to the lack of a useful military advisor - it's too much of a pain to figure out who might be even a viable target. If I go into wartime military production, I may wind up losing out to the fairly rapid tech advances and units of the midgame. A lot of stuff gets obsolete really fast.

[Fried-Psitalon]

One major change from C3C is that combat in the field is easy, but combat to take cities is a major undertaking. As soon as walls go up, or promoted defenders, or major cultural centers, "Field combat" stops.

It is fully intended that you have to SIEGE a town to take it - or bring overwhelming forces. Town captures are only trivial undertakings until the technology exists to defend them - then you have to bring the technology that exists to attack them: catapults and trained troops.

[Fried-Psitalon]

Originally posted by chumly
I haven't seen too many situations where I'd rather go after the city directly. I'm also having a hard time with mid-game warfare thanks to the lack of a useful military advisor - it's too much of a pain to figure out who might be even a viable target. If I go into wartime military production, I may wind up losing out to the fairly rapid tech advances and units of the midgame. A lot of stuff gets obsolete really fast.

Power graph, F9, leftmost dropdown. Also, spreading your religion into neighboring lands works for a preview of what they have. It's important to learn when the "sweet spots" are for major attacks. You have to beeline to a tech if you want to do a major incursion with it, or have a significant tech advantage. That kind of thing comes with time and practice, though.

[tezster]

I've only played the game for a day and a half (and my style of play isn't blazingly fast), so I haven't had the chance to evaluate how wars go in the mid-late game, but I do love the idea of having to use combined arms even very early on in the game.

Trying to take on a rival civ with the intention of capturing cities really does take a bit of planning and forethought.

One of my first wars was against a Greek neighbour, they *only* had 3 cities, so I didn't think it would be much of a problem - I ended up using 75% of my invasion force just to capture one city! After that little surprise, I brokered for peace to give myself some time to raise a proper combined arms force i.e. a few catapults, a few axemen for open-field encounters, and a bunch of swordsmen with the right promotions to take the cities.

Despite their size, the Greeks again surprised me by raising a decent sized stack against me: an elephant, phalanx and several archers (and this was after I sent my invasion force deep into their territory). For a couple of turns I was a bit nervous as I hadn't looked after my own defenses too well. They pillaged a couple of my tiles before I was able to muster together a small force to defeat them. I have to say seeing that elephant for the first time sent shivers down my spine as I didn't have any ivory at this point in the game. But the AI actually split their stack into two and left the elephant to wander around on its own, making it more vulnerable.

Something else I'm still trying to get a feel for is how borders are redrawn when a city is captured; when I caputre a city to gain resources to the nearby tiles, I find that the new city doesn't even get the standard 3x3 square to begin with. After I build up enough culture in 10-20 turns only then do the surrounding tiles change to my control.

Waging wars are definitely a lot different compared to C3.

[Buskerdu]

Hi there, long time reader first time poster!

I am still in the middle of my 1st full game and certainly agree with the opening post; the Archers are definitely a strong defending unit much more so than say Spearman in C3.

Catapults are requried no doubt about it. I have had some some success with 3-4 Cats bringing defense down to near 0 and then taking the city with War Elephants. Mind you the Archers STILL managed to take out at least 1-2 of my elephants each time. Not surprisingly Archers are a big pain in the arse versus mounted units.

Once I was able to produce Crossbowmen I had MUCH better results against the Archers. They seemed to peel right through them after a successful Catapult assault.

Also, with another civ on the same continent it appears INVALUABLE to launch a religion early. Without much missionary help at all it seems to spread fairly quickly to nearby cities giving you a huge bonus if you plan to launch an offensive. Seeing all of a city's defender's prior to launching an assualt is an awesome advantage.

My 2 cents...

[cal_01]

I also find that taking a few units into the opponents territory to destroy roads and various improvements tend to slow their ability to break a siege.