Cannot capture cities

[john.macgregor]

Is there a bug with the latest version of Civ 6. Over the last month I have played three games and each time I try to capture a city nothing happens. It just says that I have caused more damage to it even with both defences and health at zero. Grateful for any help provided. TYhanks.

[gimmethegepgun]

Are you using a melee range unit to try to capture it?

[john.macgregor]

No. In my last game I was using the Highlander unit which is a special forces unit in Robert the Bruce.

[gimmethegepgun]

Only melee range units can capture cities. Ranged attackers can't.

[Tok]

Really old post, sorry, but does this mean that giant death robots cant take cities?

[Stormwinds]

Giant Death Robots can most certainly take cities. They just have a melee attack in addition to their ranged one. Same goes for Persian Immortals.

Edit: Any unit with a melee attack can take a city so long as it uses its melee attack to do so.

[Tok]

Ah, cool, thanks. Guess there is a button for that then that I have missed?

[Stormwinds]

I thought Giant Death Robots used their melee attack by default just by right clicking on the target assuming that it is adjacent to the thing you want to attack. I know ranged attack is R. Not sure what the hotkey for melee attacking is.

[Aachen]

Use move mode to make melee attacks.

[Hamish]

There is even an achievement for taking a city with a fully upgraded GDR

[Tok]

How do you do move mode?
edit: never mind, think i found it.

[rjk894]

Move mode doesn't work with current version for arches or Sythian Horse archers. 4 units ringed City and each attack is always fighting some one. Wasted many turns getting warrior to site. Captured on city with just a scout ?!?!?. Why have fast mobile unit that can't capture a city like historical Mongols could!!!

[Cryten]

No those are ranged units. GDR is different as it has a melee attack. Cities specifically cannot be taken by ranged units.

[plaguepenguin]

The game simulates real world processes at some level, but game mechanics have to be abstract and simplified quite a bit from real world mechanics to make the game playable. Chess, for example, simulates medieval battles, but at an even higher level of abstraction than Civ VI.

Gamers have a justified expectation that the simulation will not violate historical reality too greatly. The game does present itself as quasi-historical, and correspondence of its mechanics to reality is important to making the game more intuitive. The game has so many mechanics that having as many of them be as intuitive as possible is important to letting new players learn the game by playing, without having to first memorize the Civilopedia and the Civ Wiki.

In this case, though, I don't fault the design for departure from intuitive play. After all, your archers and horse archers can fire at targets from what is, in real world terms, a hundred miles away. Combat is clearly highly abstracted to let there be ranged attacks at all in the game. The designers wanted there to be both ranged and melee attacks in the game to make combat more involved, and to actually simulate reality better, but only if you accept the rather ridiculous distances involved as a compromise with the real world being simulated.

To preserve the distinction between ranged and melee attacks, the design only allows units with melee attacks to enter defended tiles, if they destroy the defender of course. The Mongols you cite observed the same distinction. While their field armies were often almost entirely cavalry, they brought infantry and siege weapons to sieges. Even within their almost all-cavalry field armies, only some were horse archers, and most were heavy and light melee cavalry. In the game, heavy and light cavalry also could have taken the city in question, you didn't need to wait on the scout. The Scythians get to spawn horsemen as well as their horse archers, so even one of those on hand would have avoided the delay you stumbled into

It's a complex game, and the variance of its mechanics from some idea drawn from our understanding of history of what those mechanics should be to simulate reality, often creates little hiccups such as the one you describe. The game has a learning curve. I wish the situation you describe had been the worst nasty little surprise I had experienced in my learning curve.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by rjk894:

Move mode doesn't work with current version for arches or Sythian Horse archers. 4 units ringed City and each attack is always fighting some one. Wasted many turns getting warrior to site. Captured on city with just a scout ?!?!?. Why have fast mobile unit that can't capture a city like historical Mongols could!!!

At no point did anyone every capture cities with purely ranged forces. Your fast mobile units for capturing cities are cavalry or heavy cavalry.

[Hamish]

Originally posted by Lemurian1972:

Originally posted by rjk894:

Move mode doesn't work with current version for arches or Sythian Horse archers. 4 units ringed City and each attack is always fighting some one. Wasted many turns getting warrior to site. Captured on city with just a scout ?!?!?. Why have fast mobile unit that can't capture a city like historical Mongols could!!!

At no point did anyone every capture cities with purely ranged forces. Your fast mobile units for capturing cities are cavalry or heavy cavalry.

a melee unit of any kind works - anti tank, melee, melee boats, heavy and light cavalry, some heros in hero mode to name a few