maybe i'm just a girl but why can't i win a battle?

[mimi]

i've played a few games on noble. AI eventually declares war and i can't win a single battle against them unless I'm defending. Just now I sent 14 guys (6 sword, 2 spear, 2 catapult, 2 axe and 2 mace) and the message along the side said the city's defences were down to 10% so I attacked and all my guys died trying to kill a single maceman (after 8 of mine died it switched to a war elephant which killed the rest of my guys, but AI didn't lose any guys)

This is not the first time. I tried to take a barb city with 7 archers and 2 warriors and lost all of them. Actually, the only time i kill any AI is if i'm defending.

I don't understand what I'm doing wrong? Or should I be losing 14-1?

[Shr3dZ]

"(6 sword, 2 spear, 2 catapult, 2 axe and 2 mace)"

Use the catapults first to bombard the city defences, then use them for collateral damage, use best unit with promotions and such from yer mace, axe, sword units, then use spears to fortify city - unless of course they have mounted units in the city, then use your spears to attack.

When your unit is standing right next to an enemy unit, right click and HOLD the button over the enemy to see your odds (in the bottom left), if you dont see yourself with a few points higher than your opponent dont bother attacking, go pillage instead and come back later - stick to defence since you said yer already good at it.

[Bhruic]

It seems to be a case of using the wrong units. Macemen get a bonus against melee units, and you went up with an extremely melee-heavy force. Unless you got lucky with your macemen (and their side had major defensive bonuses), it's unlikely the majority of your units could damage their Macemen much.

Of course, if they had an elephant, that means they would have had good anti-Cavalry defense as well. Your best bet would be mass Catapults. They aren't as strong as other units, but enough of them will ensure the defenders have taken a lot of collateral damage. That would have weakened them enough for the rest of your force to move in.

Bh

[John-SJ]

I think the key may be collateral damage. You are attacking with melee and macemen have a +50% bonus against melee. So even your swords are fighting 7.5:6, which is not good odds. If the city you are attacking is on a hill (is it maybe?), then that maceman has a 25% defense bonus that can't be bombarded away.

I would probably take 4 catapults and bombard the defenses down to 0%, as you did. But then, before I attacked with any melee units I would use my catapults for attacking. I may get lucky and knock out one of their units (thus saving the cat) but even if that doesn't happen I will do considerable collateral damage and hopefully make it much easier for my swords to take out that maceman and whatever else he may have defending.

Hope this helps.

Oh! I have adopted the mindset that catapults are pretty much throw-away units, so I produce LOTS of them!

[Shaka II]

The same thing happened to me in my first game mimi. The archer defense is much stronger than previous Civ versions. If there are only a few archers, it's enough to use a unit with a bonus against archers, such as chariots or swordsmen with the city attack upgrades, but if there are a lot of defenders, such as you'll find in an enemy capital, it's time to rely on catapults to first take down city defenses and attack with two to four cats for collateral damage, to make light work for your attack force. It works. Cats have a 25% withdraw chance, so you'll usually retain 1 or 2 units, and likely will only lose 1 or 2 other units, maybe none.

I'm not quite sure what the best upgrade sequence for catapults, canon, artillery is. I usually do city attack upgrades first, followed by first strike, and then collateral. I think cats start out with 100% collateral damage. But collateral damage is tremendously powerful. Also, if the AI has catapults, avoid huge stacks of units, break them into smaller groups (~5) of mixed units. Another thing I like to do is give the medic upgrades to one or two members of each stack, so that my stacks heal faster in the battlefield. Especially important when you've been hit by catapult or cannon fire. Sit at the front gates, heal in a few turns, and let them have it.

[Odin]

Four words:

Catapults. Are. Your. Friend.

[Bobby Chicken]

ONE WORD: catapults

[Raion]

Did you build a Barracks in your cities or the city that produces military units?

Other than that, units in cities are pretty tough to defeat in this game, especially if they are getting promotions that give them added defenses.

Additional promotions will help your units also, I have not tried them all, usually I am just going for more Strength as of yet, but there are other promotions that may be used for just city defense.

One of those Promotions for your units is making that unit a -- City Raider. That will help any unit that attacks a City.

Different units for different places and a combination of units to attack.

Some things may have to be changed -- so the game is moddable and such, with xml and python programming, so, some of it may be changed to help balance the game out more.

It is always a question whether the game is tweaked enough yet, and other players will be thinking about how to make the game better.

Playing Noble is harder also, as of yet, I am still losing on Warlord Level, so expect higher difficulty levels to be more demanding -- so the player really has to know how to -- well -- win the game using those Leadership Skills.

Some players do not get that far -- as their attention span does limit them to not expecting a computer game to be so difficult to defeat. Yet, older Civ Veterans are all use to that -- and have played the game -- many times --- just to finetune their Art of being Good Enough to Defeat the Game.

Having a couple of Outstanding Units may help also with backups of Regular Units to help out - and Healing Units to Heal while Attacking anything.

Things may change to allow more unit building also in the game -- by making the turn-length longer as some players have already done in the Modern Age by slowing down the Tech Research -- and making building the Units (military) take less time (number of turns)!

Look in the Mod Section for some that already have been done.

I am still playing the Vanilla Version of the game - just to see -- what the game does.

So it is a process of evalution - patch overhaul if needed still -- and then further tweaking of the game by players if needed -- then when the SDK (software development kit --- Editor for short) comes out -- then Scenarios built by the players and other mods coming out -- to add to the game.

So if you feel any emotion while playing the game -- well -- that is Civilization IV -- and you may want to end up somedays just turning off your computer -- or starting the game over.

This is normal during any playing of a Civilization game since it first came out.

Some Civilization will be better at Military style playing then others --- depending on which Civilization you are playing. If you are playing a Religious Civilization then military is not your answer to winning the game and using Missionaries and such is the answer for your Civilization.
If playing someone that is military like the Romans, then know that they are a military Civilization and as such -- attacking those Civilization will take a stronger commitment to enhancing your weaker Civilization military units -- so more units may be needed.

Crumbling of Civilization is something that is done in the game -- any number of ways -- and also -- Being the Best Civilization over the years -- is -- well -- how you win the game -- in the end.

This will take some time -- so expect to be emotional over all of this!

[Arrian]

Melee units attacking macemen fortified in a city = misery, pain and death.

Catapults can help by reducing the city defenses to 0 and also by being used to attack (and perhaps die), causing collateral damage. If you use enough catapults, your units will be facing severly damaged enemies and will likely win most of the time.

Also, if you know you will likey face a bunch of axemen/macemen (which have a large bonus vs. other melee units - 50% I think), try to use either lots of the same (bonuses negate each other) or something that does well against melee (crossbows - 50% versus melee, but not a melee unit, so the Cbow gets the bonus and is now a 9 instead of a 6, notwithstanding any other bonuses/promotions).

-Arrian

[Dis]

girl

[Enigma_Nova]

Catapults.
Crossbows.
Unfortunately, starving a city down to size 1 doesn't make it any easier to take in cIV, so perhaps go light on the pillaging.

[marvinkosh]

Most importantly, evaluate the odds of success before jumping into battle. You can do this by selecting one of your units, holding Alt, and mousing over the target tile. This may give you vital information that you might not have taken into consideration - for example, there might be a river between you and the city tile, so it's a better idea to cross the river first and attack from a different angle.

Some losses on your side may be necessary in order to weaken the defenders sufficiently, just make sure that any victors on the enemy side don't survive else they might be even tougher when you attack next round.

[Diadem]

Very important to know what kind of units you have, and what kind he has, and what bonusses each side has.

Hold the right mouse button over the enemy. Basicly like if you would attack, but don't release the mouse. A little screen will pop up giving you the relative strengths of the units, as well as a breakdown of bonusses.

If your strength is lower than his, you'll probably loose. And if you want to know why, give those bonusses a good look.

A city has defence from walls and culture. You can bombard that away with catapults, but with only 2 that takes a good while. And this defence bonus can be truly huge, over 100% with ease.

Even with that bombarbed away, a city is still though. On a hill it gets 25% def bonus. Some units gets a natural bonus when defending a city, and there are promotions that give bonusses to defending acity as well. Also units in a city will typicly be fortified, adding another 25% defence. To make matters worse, the enemy maceman he had a 50% bonus against the units you sent against him.

All in all, the maceman was probably 2-3 stronger than your guys. That means he'll suffer very little damage each time. You can still take him out, but you'll need a lot of units.

Also you should do it quick. It won't work to throw a few units at him, then a few turns later a few more units, etc. He'll have time to heal, and you only give his units free experience.

The best way to attack a city is with catapults (or the upgraded versions, cannons and artillery). Ohters have that said as well, but I'll repeat it.

First, bombard away a cities defences with your catapults. They don't have to attack to do that, just put them next to the city (well defended by other units, of course) and press the bombard key. Do this until the little % indicator on the city is gone. The city will have no extra defence anymore.

Then, throw a lot of catapults at the city. Most of those will die, but that's what they are for. Promote them with the collatoral damage upgrade if you have barracks. Each catapult will injure 4-5 or so units. Injured units are a lot weaker. With a few catapults most of his units will be beaten up pretty badly. Then you can finish them off with your own troops.

Be sure to bring enough units though to finish the job. There's no sense in suiciding a lot of catapults if you can't finish the job

[Tommar]

Yeah, do the right click and hold thing to see your odds. If you don't like the odds, don't release until back on your units.

As others have said, it's not easy to take out defenders in a city. You have to have overwhelming odds. Units that destroy city defenses, then units that do collateral damage. Or vastly superior numbers and fire power.

I'm a builder type, so my preference is to overwhelm them culturally, scientifically, AND with numbers.

"Just a girl?" What a moronic thing to say whether you are one or not.

[Jack Frost]

Perhaps also - there were more than one maceman in the city when you attacked, and they were rotating.

The defending unit will ALWAYS use the unit that has the best chance of winning - so lets say there are two axemen and a spearman in the city - and you attack with 2 swordsman and a horseman. The first time you attack with the swordsman, one axeman will defend (because axeman gets bonus vs melee). He takes some damage, your guy dies. The next time you attack with another swordsman, the fresh unhurt axeman will defend, and probably kill your other swordsman. Next you attack with the horse archer - this time the fresh spearman will defend (he gets a bonus against mounted). The result - all 3 of your guys died. His only got lightly damaged, and will be healed in a turn.

When you attack - make sure you have overwhelming odds, and make sure you are attacking in a logical and effective order. I find that more or less you need to spend at least one round hurting each of the enemy units, then maybe you will start killing them. I generally save up my good units for mop up - since sending them in initially is often suicide unless you have a nice tech lead.