Hard City Taking - Or is it just me?

[PJNagrom]

I'm still slow picking up the changes in the battle methods but I'm having a tough time with early tech city taking. If I do get a monster pile to attack a city I can't hold it from re-capture.

Once the enemy has a couple of longbowmen on defense it just takes a tremendous amount of power to knock it out. And then if you don't have a ready backup of occupying longbowmen you give it right back.

I still can't get used to the idea that units like catapults are not especially weak on defense. I have trouble thinking in the terms of the new unit strengths.


What are some of your strategies for early stage city conquests?

[Sirian]

The first strategy is usually not to bother attacking with warriors and archers. Going against other warriors and archers, which both have city defense boosts, the extremely early rush is a dicey affair.

Resource denial is a key element of success. If you can deny an opponent horses and metals, while you can get yours hooked up, you can hit them before they get to Longbows, and before catapults come out, and before their city defenses build very high.

Also helps to be Aggressive and/or have an early UU for some extra punch.


- Sirian

[snoopy369]

Cats are quite weak on defense. They don't have defensive terrain bonuses, while nearly any other unit (non-horsed) gets some defensive bonus from terrain. Not to say that they'll immediately fall, but I don't think i've lost a city attack because of losing to a catapult. (I did lose a city attack because of having to beat a catapult, as I ran out of units, but that's different.)

Basically, you need a good combination of units, as different units have different strengths. Defensive units such as longbows, offensive units such as knights and macemen. Also, promotions matter A LOT - the +45% a level 3 maceman can have against a city makes a huge difference.

Don't forget to use catapults, cannons, and other 'collateral damage' weapons, too. I found the easiest time I had was when I was doing a ton of collateral damage against units. I might lose that first battle horribly, and even lose several cannons (didn't use cats, sadly, my mistake there) - but it softened them up significantly for the real assault.

[Simplicity]

Cats *are* good at city defense. You just have to *attack* with them when the enemy stack approaches your city. I'm not sure the AI uses stacks of doom as much as human players tend to though.

[vmxa1]

Cats are good, if they manage collateral damage, otherwise not so good.