Capture vs Raze (Siege troubles)

[dochockin]

I'm struggling with taking cities that are walled. I'm playing as Rome; I've got all the latin cities, Sora, a couple of Volca (sp?) cities and a couple of the Veii cities. I'm trying to pursue the 'wipe them out' missions (where you conquer all of the Veii cities (which keep growing in number, now they have 12 cities?). I guess it's still early game... bordering on mid game?

I can field heavy hoplites, but I have yet to research siege damage or stance. When I took cities before, they didn't have walls so I razed them down to level 1 then captured them so they were easier/cheaper to colonize.

Now I'm facing cities with wooden walls, I'm unsure of the best strategy. For example, Tarchna as a level 5 city. Razing takes too long and my units rout. Capturing also takes too long, though I get closer, yet my units still rout. I'm sending 2 heavy hoplites. Spearmen and Leves are useless for this, they rout so fast. With too much routing, I'm looking at huge recruit shortages in my home cities, so I can't return to reseige the city soon enough.

Am I missing something? Any strategies other than building up more hoplite units and sending more in at once? Is there a way to raze first then capture walled cities?

Thanks!

[Stabby]

Sieging a well fortified city that can continue to feed itself is unlikely to succede. You should be trying to block it's food supply so that it will starve during the siege. A large city is much harder to siege due to it's large supply zone. So razing/ capturing, nearby farms and keeping the weaker brigades in the field to just cut off the supply will help.You can also build a nearby fort to help keep your troops supplied as well as allowing you to rotate troops off as they take losses.

[Jim]

It's all about food and recruits.

Attack the food resources near the target city. If you can isolate the city going into winter, it will eventually run out of food and the city moral will fall. A city without food is so much easier to besiege.

Have reinforcements close by to counterattack any sortie from the city garrison. Ambush them and hit them hard. If you can flank them their moral will drop and they will rout, while your losses can be minimized.

The Hunter upgrade can be very helpful. Your troops will consume food more slowly and they are less visible to the enemy, which works well with the ambush stance.

Build a camp close by and set the stockpile target (in the trade tab) to pull in the maximum food.

Make sure that you have enough recruits to replace your unit losses. You can reset the home city of a unit in the Asset List to a city with more recruits, but this only works if the new home city can support the unit type. An easy way to concentrate recruits, is to recruit workers, open your Asset List and reset their home to draw recruits from other cities and disband them to add the recruits to the chosen city.

Send your toughest units to attack the enemy walls, but make sure they approach with as much food as they can carry. Plan to pull them back to resupply when they are down to roughly 1/3 to 1/4 of their food capacity. If they run out of food, then they will rout.

If you have a cavalry unit in reserve, it can charge in to help defeat any sortie that will come when the garrison gets desperate.

Combined arms is important; cheap spearmen and levies to attack resources and ambush sorties, heavy infantry to conduct the siege and cavalry for rapid response charges and quick flanking.