Are garrisoned one-hex island cities untakable?

[Chandoraa]

So I was kicking Montezuma's butt as Isabella (really, he asked for it; twice.) and intended to take one of his cities to teach the bugger a lesson before conceding to his desperate pleas for peace. There was this worthless one-hex island city that seemed ripe for the taking, so I sent my powerful navy to tenderize it, then embarked a conquistador to go there and seal the deal. His answer? He went all cheap on me and sent an archer AND a trirreme there in order to defend it. He was chipping my ships' health off pretty fast, but it was only a matter of time before the city's hit points went down. So I came into a hex adjacent to the city with my embarked conquistador, but the option to disembark just wasn't there. I waited a turn to see if it was somehow necessary for the option to become available, and that's all the archer and the city needed to obliterate my helpless conquistador.

So what on earth happened? Couldn't I disembark because it was a city, because there were enemy archers (garrisoned? They wouldn't have been able to attack, then, would they?) there, or what? How am I supposed to take that city then, it at all possible? And it it's NOT possible, then how much does that SUCK?!

Playing vanilla, btw. I own both expansions and all DLC, but I'm trying to introduce them gradually (you know, learn vanilla first, then start getting used to the new rules the expansions bring about).

[:D]

Soften the city with ranged ships and take the city with any melee ships once the hp of the city is 0.

[mss73055]

You can move a melee unit into a coastal city. It works both with melee ships and troops on a boat.

Conquistadores make a poor attack unit in this situation. Being cavalry they get an attack penalty against cities and on top of that they're not amphibious. Even if the city got a sliver of red left the Conquistador will probably not make it.

And yeah fireships and archers in a city kick ass. Crossbowmen sink a Frigate without trouble.

[ThatFriendlyWarmonger]

if you really wanted to take that city, you should've sent two melee units, and the turn that you brought it down to zero health, put them within two tiles of the city. The next turn, the city would shoot down one of the melee units, your ships would lower the city's health back down to zero, and then the remaining unit would be used to strike and capture. A one melee unit attack strategy is cheap and somewhat effective, but is hard to work in many cases.

[KatherineFtw]

First off, each DLC changes the game DRASTICLY. It's better to lean the full game.

Second off, you need to capture it with ships, not land units.

There's two types of main ships, Ranged, and Melee. Ships follow the same rules as land units: Ranged can't capture cities, Melee have to capture it.

There's a third class, but, it's only one ship. The Caravel. It's a renisance era exporation ship. (Like a scout for the seas.)

(Note: This was written from an ALL DLC point of view, depending on the DLC you have this might be differnt.)

[Chandoraa]

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

Second off, you need to capture it with ships, not land units.

O.K., so that would explain my conquistador NOT BEING ABLE TO DISEMBARK AT ALL (no offense, previous answerers, but you should read the whole OP before replying; if it was as simple as softening with ships and taking with melee, I wouldn't be asking!). Anyway, you sure about this?

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

There's a third class, but, it's only one ship. The Caravel. It's a renisance era exporation ship. (Like a scout for the seas.)

So in what way are caravels different from any other ranged naval unit?

[jw]

I have found that Embarked units can not enter one of my city's from sea if there is a navel unit in the city. The Embarked unit is a navel unit too. The navel unit muset be removed for the embarked unit to enter the city and disenbark. They may or may not hold true for embarked units attacking city's that contain a navel unit.

[hopsblues]

Originally posted by Chandoraa:

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

Second off, you need to capture it with ships, not land units.

O.K., so that would explain my conquistador NOT BEING ABLE TO DISEMBARK AT ALL (no offense, previous answerers, but you should read the whole OP before replying; if it was as simple as softening with ships and taking with melee, I wouldn't be asking!). Anyway, you sure about this?

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

There's a third class, but, it's only one ship. The Caravel. It's a renisance era exporation ship. (Like a scout for the seas.)

So in what way are caravels different from any other ranged naval unit?

As stated before there are some ships/naval that can enter a city and capture it. Privateers are one example. So you can capture cities without land melee units.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

There's two types of main ships, Ranged, and Melee.

He said he's playing non-dlc first. Melee ships were introduced in BNW.
That also means he's probably playing vanilla. Which means that he can't stack embarked units and ships on the same tile. Which was just the absolute worst.

[j1465]

Guys he's playing vanilla, where all ships are ranged.

Embarked melee land units SHOULD be able to capture a city, though they suffer a combat penalty for attacking from water.

[gia]

you need to bring it to no hp at all

[Twelvefield]

Oy, vanilla. Today is the last day you play by the vanilla rules. If you can find a garrisoned one-hex city on the map, you have more than enough experience with the game to turn on the full ruleset. Besides, you'll learn some bad habits from vanilla that need to be unlearned in BNW.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by Twelvefield:

Besides, you'll learn some bad habits from vanilla that need to be unlearned in BNW.

For instance, in vanilla, crossbowmen upgrade to machine guns I think, which back then were a defense-only unit. Thanks to the 10 health system, crossbowmen are still useful at the end of the game because their attacks are guaranteed to deal 10% of the target's health. Therefore it was fairly wise to keep them unupgraded since their upgraded unit had nothing to do with their promotions, and it's still a 2 range unit that can deal 2 damage with logistics.

[KatherineFtw]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

There's two types of main ships, Ranged, and Melee.

He said he's playing non-dlc first. Melee ships were introduced in BNW.
That also means he's probably playing vanilla. Which means that he can't stack embarked units and ships on the same tile. Which was just the absolute worst.

Just let me quote myself.

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

(Note: This was written from an ALL DLC point of view, depending on the DLC you have this might be differnt.)

[KatherineFtw]

Originally posted by Chandoraa:

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

Second off, you need to capture it with ships, not land units.

O.K., so that would explain my conquistador NOT BEING ABLE TO DISEMBARK AT ALL (no offense, previous answerers, but you should read the whole OP before replying; if it was as simple as softening with ships and taking with melee, I wouldn't be asking!). Anyway, you sure about this?

Originally posted by Katherine~ <3:

There's a third class, but, it's only one ship. The Caravel. It's a renisance era exporation ship. (Like a scout for the seas.)

So in what way are caravels different from any other ranged naval unit?

Caravel is Melee. Play with all DLC. Civ V is pointless without all DLC.