promotions for siege weapons (and in general)

[self biased]

what's the best combination? i started off by just cranking up as much city attack as i could muster, but after discovering the wonder that is first strike while playing as the chinese, i've come to rethink things.

anyone have any thoughts?

[Dinner]

A good question. I'm just starting to get back into Civ4 after years of not playing so I'd like to know as well.

[rah]

The best promotion is the one they will need so it's best not to promote them till you know what they'll be doing.

City raider if they'll be attacking cities. Barrage if they'll be used in defense against an enemy SOD.
Going up he first strike promotion path can have some benefit but has some shortcomings. Getting enough strike promotions to reduce colateral damage is meaningless since they're already immune to it. Most mounted units have bonuses against seige units so they will be defending or attacking so the first strike isn't useful there. But if you know you'll just be fighting axes and spears then first strike can be sweet.

[DirtyMartini]

Even attacking cities, with catapults, I usually go with barrage on the first few then go to city raider once the retreat odds increase and start approaching 50%. That makes sense to me intuitively, but I don't know the game mechanics well enough to know if it really works better than just CR on them all.

[Supr49er]

... City raider if they'll be attacking cities. Barrage if they'll be used in defense against an enemy SOD. ...

This.
However I will hit a city with Barrage Siege initially to wreak some collateral damage on the defenders.

[chequita guevara]

I used to go straight barrage, but now I combo city raider with barrage.

[Jaybe]

City Raider, followed by Accuracy (reduce defenses faster) or more City Raider. Except for those for use in MY territory, which get First Strike & Barrage

[Krill]

I used to go straight barrage, but now I combo city raider with barrage.

It's better to just keep 2 different sets of cats (or rather don't promote until needed). That way each unit is better when needed instead of just being generall purpose and generally crappy.

One thing that is overlooked is that acuracy cats are necessary to beat hte snot out of those cities with walls. When casttles come around you generally need about 10 accuracy trebs just to bombard them down in a reasonable time frame.

[rah]

Especially now that the AI whips so much better. Those extra turns to bring the defense down usually means a few extra defenders and a few extra turns to fortify those units that arrived recently. But I still seem to ignore the acuracy promo and just bring a few more seige units.

[Theben]

Cats get barrage + accuracy, trebs city raider. A treb with CR II or III has a good chance of beating any medieval or earlier defender. Cats w/ accuracy get the walls down quick and are much cheaper.

[self biased]

what about gunpowder units with Drill?

[rah]

Again, it depends on the unit and how you expect to use it.

Orama warriors, sweet. After drill II and mounted I just keep loading up on drills. The pluses that add on on the higher levels make unstopable units. Which just get better as they're upgraded.

If the unit is just going to sit in a city, there are better promotions.

I'm appreciating drill more these days.

But if your opponent is mostly mounted units.......drill is minimized somewhat.

[self biased]

yeah. i had a case of drill being more useful versus macemen (on riflemen as the chinese). half a dozen of them held off some obscene amount of troops. i want to say 20+, but that's a figure out of my ass.

[rah]

If you are protective, it's not a bad way to go.

[chequita guevara]

I'm loving when my melee units get the automatic drill promotion from the horde of swordsman event.