Positioning to conquer a city

[Campo]

I'm looking for advice on how to handle this situaiton:

I'm on a conquest trek, with musketeers and cannons against the AI's pikemen and knights. It's no problem conquering a city once I get positioned to attack.

However the AI cities are strung out along a fairly thin strip of land, and I'm having trouble with the next one in line. It's surrounded by plains and grassland, and as soon as I move a unit within two squares of it, an AI knight comes out of the city and kills it. The knights beat even my vet musketeers.

I could defeat the city if I could get next to it, but I can't survive the knights' attacks. So I have an overwhelming army three spaces away from the city but unable to attack it.

I tried bribery but it would cost about 4 times more gold than I have.

I could maneuver around the city but that would be slow (one-move units on unroaded terrain) and they'd be susceptible to continued attacks. I could ferry them around with ships, but again that would be slow -- and for all I know the next city in line might have the same problem.

I don't have engineers yet, so I can't build instant fortresses.

Any other suggestions?

[pandj]

Try moving multiple musketeers onto the same square, that way if the knights kill one or two of your units, you still have some that much closer.

If you wish to spend just a little time to spare, you can disband some of your musketeers, so that you canbuild some dragoons. There movement is 2, so you should be able to move, then fortify in the same turn.

[Smash]

pre work a settler.Problem solved.

[debeest]

If there's no road in the square, a pre-worked settler still has to spend a whole turn moving into it, right?

If you move multiple musketeers onto the same square, they'll all die at once, right?

At this point in the game, you may find that crusaders are much more powerful attackers than musketeers, if you don't have dragoons yet.

My recent inquiry about early conquest got some answers that you may find useful.

[Xin Yu]

If you have access to road then it is easy. Move several settlers via road to two squares from the target city then build a city. Add the remaining settlers to the city then move your attacking force into it. The city will be able to endure several rounds of attack without being destroyed if you have enough setters added to it. Then the next turn you can launch an attack with 2/3 of strength from cannons. However if you don't have road access then you should choose another landing spot. Build a couple of coastal cities and rush build ships in them. Ferry your forces to a place which has access to road then start from there.

[Smash]

You move in with a cease fire.The ai is easy to do this to.MP, just forget it.Bypass.Its just too easy to defend in such a situation.

There is no simple solution for stubborn cities.Bribing is easiest but not always possible.You'll watch lots of dragoons lose to muskets if they are vets and/or walls with barracks.If the city is on a river....well...even cavalry will have a tough time.You need to tear down the walls and/or use cannons.

Spys can be useful with such a city with repeated sabotage and poisoning...but thats not until Espionage.

[Campo]

Thanks for the suggestions. As debeest indicated, I don't think the first couple will work. Without a fort, stacked musketeers would all be killed together. Unless you meant I should move units in different squares all around the city, hoping that the AI wouldn't have enough knights to kill them all. That might work, though it would be costly. And with no road adjacent to the city a pre-worked settler would be killed before it could build a fort.

Xin Yu's idea should work, though that will be costly too. I think I'll try Smash's cease-fire suggestion if the AI will accept it. I'll just have to be sure I break the cease-fire before the AI or I'll lose a big stack of attackers. Seems a little underhanded but then again the AI breaks cease-fires all the time.

(Edited to correct the spelling of "debeest". Where does that name come from?)

[Six Thousand Year Old Man]

Having no 2-move units in your attack force kind of limits your options. Naturally, unless the AI has an unlimited number of knights, moving 2 or 3 musketeers onto different squares should eventually give you the chance to fortify one. But if you have dragoons or crusaders, why not use those to pick off the knights when they venture out of the city? If there's no road (which was my impression), the AI knight will use one movement point to leave the city and another to attack, leaving itself exposed...

Of course if the AI knight is moving on a road, well, then you're going to have to suck up some losses... move 3 or 4 musketeers into position, fortify them on separate squares, and then build fortresses under the fortified units... you know the rest.

STYOM

[-Jrabbit]

This thread addresses a nearly identical issue to one I faced last night (MGE, deity -- the only level I've yet to win at). I already have a city 3 spaces from the enemy city, which is at a chokepoint, forcing me to attack one at a time. No engineers yet (about 1100 AD). Built several diplos but can't afford to bribe the city. Looks like they're dumping Knnights into the city from behind, so I don't think I can overpower it. (I have crusaders and catapults as best offense.) Now, a couple questions --

1. What's an Instant Fortress and how do you execute that? (I suspect this is one of my missing keys to winning at deity.)

2. Should I go ahead and build another city between mine and theirs? I don't have a lot of settlers to spare...

3. Better to build a fleet of triremes to circumvent the chokepoint? I'm thinking the cities supplying those knights might be far easier to take. But again, it's a lot of resources to dedicate to a Maybe....

4. WHAT'S A PRE-WORKED SETTLER? How do you create one and what's it good for? This sounds like another Missing Concept in my game knowledge.

Thanks for any sagacious hints you can supply.

[Campo]

There aren't any roads adjacent to the city, so you're right that the knights are exposed after they kill my musketeer. I don't have any two-movement units with me (probably a mistake on my part, but I had to ship my army across an ocean on caravels so I went with the best defenders and attackers).

Anyway I don't think a two-movement unit would help in this case. The city is surrounded by a one-square ring of grassland and plains. Around that (at least on the sides I can get to) is a ring of forest and swamp. Even if I had a two-move unit behind a musketeer it would only be able to make one move onto the swamp/forest square, still unable to attack the knight. And then the knight would kill it the next turn.

I guess the cease-fire or multiple-square musketeer sacrifice strategies are the only options for this city. Either that or I ferry around this city and hope the next one has an adjacent hill.

[Cyrion]

Jrabbit, about the Pre-worked settler:

you assign a task to a settler (or engineer) and you interrupt him just on the turn before he is finished. The next time you make him do something, the turns already done (aka pre-worked) will be taken into account.

And now about the instant fortress : suppose you did pre-work (as above) a fortress by a engineer (2 moves...): you can now on the same turn move him into place (in this case next to the city) and finish the "pre-worked" fortress (if the movement rate of the terrain allows for it, of course). And you could do it with a settler as well on a river, a road or RR.


And for your other questions, well... it depends...

Hope this can be of help...

[Campo]

Like Jrabbit, I believe the city I'm trying to take is getting reinforced with knights from the cities behind it. I could sacrifice a lot of musketeers because of that. I guess I should at least ferry a couple around to the other side to try to block that.

Jrabbit - I had started to answer your settler/fort questions but I see that Cyrion beat me to it.

There's a great thread on settlers and engineers somewhere around here. You really should read it. Does anyone know the link?

[-Jrabbit]

Found the Time 2do Tasks thread for engineers and settlers in the Great Library (under Engineers) while poking around. I knew it was there, but didn't know what it was good for.

I think I've decided to flank them with ships and probe for an underdefended city on the other side of the landbridge.

I always figured the work stayed on the square, never imagined it could move with the settler/engineer!! Is this considered a design feature or a programming error??

Now I have even more reason to build move settlers than previously seemed necessary. They're Seabees!

[Campo]

Jrabbit:
I always figured the work stayed on the square

That's the reasonable assumption but not the way it works. It makes settlers/engineers a powerful military support unit. All my invasion forces include a few to lay down forts.

I don't think it's a programming error, at least not in the sense of it doing something the programmers didn't intend. I suspect it was a programming shortcut -- they had to retain info about each unit anyway, so might as well hold the "work" info there.

In any case it's widely considered a feature. There's been plenty of discussion about various techniques and very few people consider it a cheat.

[Smash]

I think of it as a tactic.Defense is pretty easy so an attacker needs all the help they can get.....especially in MP.

It takes time,
..resources,
there is risk

not my definition of a cheat.