Break through walls

[German Economy]

Is there a more efficient way of doing that?
I ferl like whenever i bring something like tribok or cannonades they get instantly blasted by the citys plus whatever ranged unit they park there, making destroying something very annoying

Is there a way to protect them? Or just another, somewhat more efficient way of breaking walls in general? I feel like siege weapony should have more range then city garrisions, but maybe i am doing something wrong, quite new to the series

[Exemplar]

bombard can have +1 range with observation balloon or drone.

eventually, aircraft can hit cities, but bombers/jet bombers are most effective.

otherwise, eh, bring 3 and retire them away if they can't stay alive with promotions or medic/Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi, or if within 2 tiles of a coast bring the frigates/battleships, etc to add to the number of targets bombarding the city and take it by attrition

you don't need bombard units to take early walls. battering ram by city makes melee do full damage to walls, and a siege tower by the city makes melee skip walls and do damage straight to the city, but renaissance walls are immune to this.

[German Economy]

Originally posted by Exemplar:

bombard can have +1 range with observation balloon or drone.

eventually, aircraft can hit cities, but bombers/jet bombers are most effective.

otherwise, eh, bring 3 and retire them away if they can't stay alive with promotions or medic/Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi, or if within 2 tiles of a coast bring the frigates/battleships, etc to add to the number of targets bombarding the city and take it by attrition

you don't need bombard units to take early walls. battering ram by city makes melee do full damage to walls, and a siege tower by the city makes melee skip walls and do damage straight to the city, but renaissance walls are immune to this.

Thanks, ill be trying that out now c:

[guntoting_lawbreaker]

It helps if you have a great general with them, then they can move into range and shoot in the same turn.

[mrp8196]

artillery work
train em up to get def stats
terrain matter Some terrain won't allow you to shoot over
I never made an obs balloon
with enough lvling you get 3 range

[Solitus]

Move your melee blockers into range first. Wait a turn till the city targets your melee against the city, THEN move your siege units into range. That can confuse the AI and they will target your melee units first.

If there is a big enough technological gap between you and your enemies; and they still have not built renaissance walls; you can use siege towers to great effect and forgo the siege units all together.

[German Economy]

Originally posted by Solitus:

Move your melee blockers into range first. Wait a turn till the city targets your melee against the city, THEN move your siege units into range. That can confuse the AI and they will target your melee units first.

If there is a big enough technological gap between you and your enemies; and they still have not built renaissance walls; you can use siege towers to great effect and forgo the siege units all together.

I am not a fan of abusing flawed A.I., but still thanks :P
The balloon was quite helpful, having the bonus range makes such a big difference.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by FREIBIER:

Originally posted by Solitus:

Move your melee blockers into range first. Wait a turn till the city targets your melee against the city, THEN move your siege units into range. That can confuse the AI and they will target your melee units first.

If there is a big enough technological gap between you and your enemies; and they still have not built renaissance walls; you can use siege towers to great effect and forgo the siege units all together.

I am not a fan of abusing flawed A.I., but still thanks :P
The balloon was quite helpful, having the bonus range makes such a big difference.

This isn't AI abuse, this is literally how real siege warfare works. Exert pressure at as many points as possible, and the defenders can't concentrate on a single point without leaving themselves vulnerable.

[German Economy]

Originally posted by Lemurian1972:

Originally posted by FREIBIER:

I am not a fan of abusing flawed A.I., but still thanks :P
The balloon was quite helpful, having the bonus range makes such a big difference.

This isn't AI abuse, this is literally how real siege warfare works. Exert pressure at as many points as possible, and the defenders can't concentrate on a single point without leaving themselves vulnerable.

That may be, but this is a game, the siege weapon would be priority for any player if they can target that.
If the A.I. doesnt understand that or gets confused when i feed it a melee minion first then to me that is abusing a flaw, because the siege weapon is just that much more of a threat then melee units smashing their heads into a wall.

[Lemurian1972]

Originally posted by FREIBIER:

Originally posted by Lemurian1972:

This isn't AI abuse, this is literally how real siege warfare works. Exert pressure at as many points as possible, and the defenders can't concentrate on a single point without leaving themselves vulnerable.

That may be, but this is a game, the siege weapon would be priority for any player if they can target that.
If the A.I. doesnt understand that or gets confused when i feed it a melee minion first then to me that is abusing a flaw, because the siege weapon is just that much more of a threat then melee units smashing their heads into a wall.

As you will, but I'd just add from the AI perspective it may not be that cut and dried. They don't know if you might sneak a battering ram or siege tower up and turn those melee units into a deadly threat.

And for what it's worth as a player I've often ignored ranged attackers (even siege attackers) in favor of knocking out melee attackers the AI moved close. The simple reason being if they don't have any melee next to the city they can't take the city no matter how much damage they do to the walls. Killing melee also prevents them from setting up a siege lock that would prevent my city from healing between turns.

So no, still gonna say it's not AI abuse to make a play choice that causes the AI to change its decisionmaking. It's smart gameplay that increases your odds of victory.

[German Economy]

Originally posted by Lemurian1972:

Originally posted by FREIBIER:

That may be, but this is a game, the siege weapon would be priority for any player if they can target that.
If the A.I. doesnt understand that or gets confused when i feed it a melee minion first then to me that is abusing a flaw, because the siege weapon is just that much more of a threat then melee units smashing their heads into a wall.

As you will, but I'd just add from the AI perspective it may not be that cut and dried. They don't know if you might sneak a battering ram or siege tower up and turn those melee units into a deadly threat.

And for what it's worth as a player I've often ignored ranged attackers (even siege attackers) in favor of knocking out melee attackers the AI moved close. The simple reason being if they don't have any melee next to the city they can't take the city no matter how much damage they do to the walls. Killing melee also prevents them from setting up a siege lock that would prevent my city from healing between turns.

So no, still gonna say it's not AI abuse to make a play choice that causes the AI to change its decisionmaking. It's smart gameplay that increases your odds of victory.

I didnt mean the battering ram with my post tho, the ram you can just pair up with melee units and they are safe.
I did mean stuff like tribok and anything above that, which you cant pair up. The "Wallbreakers" if you so will. I just meant to question what ways i had to use them better, and the balloon is pretty much what i hoped for, cause my siege weapons get quickly killed by archer plus garrison if the AI does well, making me stand awkwardly around without doing anything. Ram and siege towers are no problem.

[Lemurian1972]

You're missing my point. You protect your bombard-class units by moving them in with other melee and ranged units in a combined assault. You call that AI abuse, I call that smart gameplay because that's how it's designed to work best. You're not taking advantage of the AI being dumb any more than any other of a thousand other choices human players make do.

When you chose to argue the point, I simply explained to you there are logical reasons for an AI to choose hitting melee over other bombard units, and it's not always a case of the AI being dumb.

Feel free to wait for observation balloons, but they come in the late middle of the tech tree with Flight, and that leaves several eras where you're not fighting and you could be.

[plaguepenguin]

Conquering AI cities is so beneficial to any sort of victory that they have to design the game mechanics to make it difficult, or this game would be too easy and straightforward. The only strategy any human player would ever need to follow would be "attack, attack, attack!".

Walls and their ranged attacks, encampments, and powerful ranged units make up half of how the game makes conquest difficult. The AI can't really think strategically, so using these tools it still can't keep you from taking its cities forever unless it has a hefty tech advantage, but it can delay you.

Delay is all the AI has to do, though, because of the loyalty mechanic. For successful conquest you not only have to take their cities, you have to take them quickly enough that the first ones you take don't have time to rebel before you can take enough of their other cities that the loyalty pressure is switched enough in your favor that it lets you keep the whole slice of conquered territory.

The game sets up an arms race between you and your potential victim AIs over which of you stays ahead in tech enough to conquer or defend successfully. It's not overall tech lead that counts, and you or the AI can get ahead in the arms race by beelining to the key conquest and defense techs (and civics, at least once you get to the civics that unlock corps and armies).

Before your victim has walls, you can get by with a warrior/archer or a swordsman/archer rush. You need a swarm so that you take the cities quickly by means of more attacks on them every turn from more units, and so that some of them are uninjured enough that they don't have to sit around healing before they are available to capture the next line of cities.

After they get ancient walls, you generally have to move on to rams, then towers once they get medieval walls. Swarms of melee and anti-cav are still nice, for the same reason, that you still have to keep the process moving at the quickest tempo possible.

You also get siege units a bit after walls. As long as the rams and towers work they are generally your mainstay, but they stop working at renaissance walls, and siege units become the only way to crack walls. They get ranged attacks, so they don't take damage from attacking, but as you have found, their inherent flaw is that they are fragile. Add to that the fact that they need all 2 of the usual movement allowance to fire, so they have to move into range and let the AI fire at them before they get their own first shot off. In the siege environment, however much you can protect them from melee attacks because they can stand off with their two-tile range, the AI is going to have as many as four ranged attacks available to take advantage of the fragility of your siege units. You can build catapults before you need them, back in the ram and tower era, so that you can get the first promotion on them, which makes them somewhat less fragile by the time you do have to rely on them.

Exemplar has already mentioned the strategy of swarming with your siege units, so that even if one of them has to withdraw to escape death without even getting in a single shot, the one or two others that moved in range the same turn get to take their shots before AI counter-battery fire forces them to withdraw as well. The other nice strategy at this point in the arms race is to have a great general (and/or, much later, a supply convoy) give your siege units an extra mvt point, allowing them to move one point, then still have the 2 points they need to shoot first, before the AI gets a shot at them.

The next step, as Exemplar also mentions, is to get stand-off range for your siege units, so that they don't have to get within the range of the city attacks at all in order to get their own attacks in.

The siege line of units does have a promotion that lets you do this by giving you an extra range point, but it's a late promotion, ranged attacks don't get you as many XPs as melee attacks, so even if you make war so much that your melee units have late promotions, your siege line is not going to find it so easy to get late promotions. You have to start with catapults even before you need them, then stay at war a lot, to have any hope of getting the promotion that gives an extra range before you get other means to the same benefit of stand-off range.

The other means you are mostly dependent on are observation balloons and then drones.

The arms race still isn't over, though, because "steel walls" are tough, tough enough to slow progress to the point that you can't keep up the tempo you need to overcome the loyalty mechanic. Bombers and jet bombers have an inherent stand-off ability, their range allows them to be concentrated on the next victim city quickly, and do better at taking down walls quickly, so they are the next step on your side of the arms race.

After that I don't have tons of experience with the next steps in conquest, GDRs and nukes, or, for that matter, the AI putting up air defenses that do much at all to limiting your bomber attacks. The AI is not going to get to a point that you need any of this unless you play at Deity, which I haven't done a lot, and when I do, I always plan a strategy that doesn't require really late game conquest. The earlier you get conquest done, the more beneficial it is to your efforts to win any victory type.