How to take a city on noble difficulty

[cperry]

I cannot take an enemy city on noble difficulty level. No matter what I do, he endlessly defeats my troops and even after about 4000 years of sieging I am still sending warriors and archers to no avail. On cheiftain level I was able to take cities with a nice big stack. However on noble level I'm very frustrated.

Please, can anyone suggest a strategy for me?

[Velociryx]

1) Don't use warriors and archers. Swordsmen are great, Axemen/Spearmen should be included in your attack force, and if you don't have iron, then Horse Archers can easily serve as your main punch (and if you don't have Iron OR Horses OR Copper, then don't attack at all!)

2) Unless you're attacking *very* early, you've got, or will soon have, catapults. Send two of them in with your city assault stack and spend a couple turns bombing the crap out of the town. Reduce their defensive bonus to near-zero before beginning your attack.

3) Send 2-3 units per enemy combat unit defending in the city in question (better to have enough to take it and hold off the expected counterstrike than to not take enough and lose all hands involved).

-=Vel=-

[Crossfire]

You need to soften him up with artillery. Early on that means catapults. Then bring in your swordsmen. You did build a barracks early so that all your military is upgraded didn't you? Upgrade your catapults to do more collateral damage and upgrade your swordsmen to do more city damage.

[cperry]

I wasn't using artillery, and I guess I didn't anticipate how important it must be on higher difficulty levels. The reason I even began such a very early fight was that the opposing civ was right next to mine, so I figured I needed to wipe him out or forever be butting borders with him.

[vmxa1]

Always note the defense value of the town. It needs to be lowered, often to zero to allow combat on more less even terms.

Units with promotions and other defensive boost will still be an obstacle.

If they have units stronger than your, use collateral damage units to soften them. This means cats ealry, later cannons and arties. Tanks and Modern Armor with collateral damage promotions are very nice as well.

You just sacrifice some bombardment units to get damage on their troops. You could even get lucky and get a with drawal.

[acuoio]

Another strategy is to destroy the city's improvements. Starve them to death. Remember, the city can't harvest a city square that your units occupy. Take out his resources and soon his city will shrink...maybe he'll even send out units to attack you, then they are no longer fortified.

Don't forget defeated a city is pretty tough considering a unit has it's own strength + city defence + fortification + terrain bonus. An archer with 3 strength is much harder than appears with all those bonuses.

[Francis Xavier]

Siege weapons (catapults, cannons, artillery) are probably the best land-based units in the game for a long time for both offense and defense (well, in a counter-attack style of defense moreso than standing on their own defending) that you can use in warfare. The key to quick conquests I've found is to use at least 4-5 catapults combined with swordsman and Cho ko nu's (if you're playing china, they do collateral damage too). I like cavalry units (horse archers, knights, etc) for staying behind the army and being a counter attacking force for any enemy counter attacks while the siege weapons and infantry devastate the towns.

Just spend a few turns bombarding the city defenses to zero, then send in the catapults to cause as much collateral damage as needed (if they're on the same tech level of you probably going to need to use more than one or two), and then hit them with your infantry force. Axeman are pretty good on the offensive too.

[V3nom]

super early on 1)dont use any warriors 2)rush for bronze working, hope you have copper and build axemen.

if its later than that point then yes as people have said you'll need catapults. If it is that much later you shouldnt be attacking with warriors at all, you'll just be giving away free upgrades.

[joncnunn]

The main use of building warriors early on is they are cheap defenders and can be upgraded to just about anything. [With cash + techs]

On med difficulty levels, the warriors aren't even that good fighting animals, and even a damaged scout should run against an animal.

If your fighting a barbarian city, you probably don't need catapults, but I still wouldn't recomend an archer rush. I'd instead recomend a mostly swords+city raider with an axemen or two. (If your resources only permits one of those two types just use that one)

Against other civs cities, you probably need seige weapons unless you are very far ahead in techs. (Calvary vs pre-Gun powder units)

And I'd also wait for the target city to grow to at least pop 2 so you don't end up auto raizing.