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[GreatWyrmGold]

I don't see how you can say that with so much real life recent examples in the last ten years.

Examples of what, exactly?

I'd imagine any city has a garrison, city watch, police force, etc. (depending on the era) as well, if militias alone don't satisfy you.

And none of those are professional armies. Maybe they could provide a barrier to some underteched army, but not if there's enough of them to literally surround the cities, or if they are actually up to current standards.
(And the garrison is present in Civ V, except when it's been destroyed by the aforementioned army surrounding the city.)

And no, that's not how it's been working out. I say this from experience, with far more than a few units. Unless swordsmen are that much better than the pikemen and horsemen I've had access to?

Could you give specifics? You're complaining about having to move pikemen to make room for your slow catapults in one breath, and then claiming it's taking you dozens of turns to take a city in another.

You say that like they're contradictory.
Specifics? Well, it's been a while since I've played, but I remember surrounding cities with as many melee units as would fit adjacent to the city, adding as many archers around those as would fit, shuffling units to try and cycle the weak ones out but eventually deciding that it would be easier to just attack every turn and cycle new units in when they died. And it took a rather inconveniently long time to actually whittle the city's health down enough that I could take the city.
Also, I'm pretty darn sure I didn't have siege engines when that war happened. If siege engines are a requirement for wars to not be tedious, you should provide siege engines earlier.

The former sounds kind of trivial, like you're complaining about not being able to smoothly avalanche another empire away in one giant wave like you could in previous games. With the damage cities can do to attacking forces, I'm not even sure how the latter is possible unless you're cycling out (or maybe Branniganing and the replacing) just a handful of troops that aren't quite up to the task.

It's less "War is hard wah" and more "Okay, I've got enough troops to cover their countryside. The city is surrounded with waves of troops. This shouldn't take forever. Why is it taking forever?"
I suppose that's more or less what I was doing. Why, what else do you do if you can't get siege engines there, whether from lack of roads, distance, or not having researched them?

[forsaken1111]

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say you're misremembering because I can take a good sized city with just 2 archers and 3 melee units. Less if I rotate 3-4 archers in and out of range.

[umiman]

I'd imagine what's happening here is inefficient movement as well as incorrect assessment of risk.

Movement in Civ5 is extremely punishing relative to other civ games. One false hex and your one unit will be obliterated. Also, given how much more valuable each unit is in Civ 5, losing just the one can easily lose you the war.

A nooblet to the game will probably make these kind of mistakes often, and given that obviously he can't be making any mistakes, the game must be fucking wrong. It's clearly the logical answer.

Personally, I've taken cities with just two or three units and so has the AI.

Though I'm not really sure what's going on with this thread as this flamewar came out of nowhere.

[loose nut]

Yeah you can definitely sub in archers for siege and be able to take a city.

If the city is attacking a particular melee unit, just let him take damage until it's too risky – don't use him to attack the city in return.

If you play "soft" and give ground to the AI you can get them to overextend pretty easily and thus isolate and destroy their units – do this before trying to take cities (unless the city is itself isolated).

[WealthyRadish]

It makes sense for sieges to take years at some points in history from a realism perspective, since they were often won by attrition. But by 19th century tech with riflemen and cannons, one cannon volley and one rifleman unit should probably be enough to take a city without a garrisoned army in one turn with minor losses (from the local forces defending forts and what not). By WW1 tech, one infantry should be able to do the same with no losses, with cities by that point serving exclusively as a terrain modifier for defending armies. By WWII tech, taking undefended cities shouldn't even require a unit's turn to end. The idea that cities continue to have a health bar and effective fortifications without a stationed army into those periods is beyond silly, from a realism standpoint. But arguing realism in a game like Civ is also ridiculous, so to each his own I guess.

[Fikes]

It makes sense for sieges to take years at some points in history from a realism perspective, since they were often won by attrition. But by 19th century tech with riflemen and cannons, one cannon volley and one rifleman unit should probably be enough to take a city without a garrisoned army in one turn with minor losses (from the local forces defending forts and what not). By WW1 tech, one infantry should be able to do the same with no losses, with cities by that point serving exclusively as a terrain modifier for defending armies. By WWII tech, taking undefended cities shouldn't even require a unit's turn to end. The idea that cities continue to have a health bar and effective fortifications without a stationed army into those periods is beyond silly, from a realism standpoint. But arguing realism in a game like Civ is also ridiculous, so to each his own I guess.

Have you heard of the little country of Afghanistan?

Or the city of Stalingrad?

Or that whole conflict in Vietnam?

Point being that an armed populace, even if disorganized and with no official training, can put up one hell of a fight and the act of simply BEING in a city during armed conflict is incredibly dangerous. Remember in Full Metal Jacket when one female peasant sniped 5 or 6 soldiers dead?

Anyways, the whole time scale of civ games has always been way off. It takes 40 years to cross a ocean. It is a massive extraction of reality.

Civ 5 is the first game I ever really considered troop movement and positioning. Before it was just "Stack your catapult with like 3 spearmen and 2 swords men and walk up to the city." Now it is a dance.

At first I thought lower unit counts were going to be a terrible idea, but the way Civ 5 does it (units have enough health you can usually retreat) actually works very well.

Finally, I always have at least two siege weapons for cities, and I guard them with everything I've got. By the modern area they are massively powerful. I don't use many archers, maybe 2 or 3, and I always bring a ton of infantry to do the dirty work.

[scrdest]

I agree that stable capture times are rather silly. It's likely due to the fact that regular buildings do not become obsolete, so an average modern city will have Walls, Castle and the industrial age thing boosting their HP when they would be obsolete normally.

I think a fix would be to remove city attack penalty or even give a bonus to modern Infantry and give a huge penalty to modern armor, so that infantry becomes the primary capturing force whereas tanks become primary fighting force.

I actually think the design was intended to be a rock-paper-scissors, with infantry and cavalry beating siege engines beating cities beating infantry and cavalry.

[WealthyRadish]

Have you heard of the little country of Afghanistan?
Or that whole conflict in Vietnam?

Guerrilla warfare isn't siege warfare, and I'm unaware of either of those examples having any cases where an invading force moved in to occupy a hostile city without a defending army, and was either repelled or suffered significant losses. Fighting in the jungle/mountains against guerrillas, sure, occupying cities over long periods against guerrillas, sure, but not relevant to sieges.

Or the city of Stalingrad?

Again, don't see it as a relevant example. Are you arguing that the one million Wehrmacht/buddies troops would've had difficulty taking Stalingrad if there hadn't been one million Soviet soldiers defending it? Sure, the Soviets utilized civilians out of desperation/sovietness, but without the Red Army being there, the city would've fallen like any other in hours.

How many hundreds of cities and towns in WWII were occupied without the invaders firing a shot?

[Mephansteras]

Yeah, but you also have a single city in Civ 5 effectively taking up, say, the Entirety of France. So it can represent the resistance of the area as a whole, not just the specific city combat.

[Fikes]

How many hundreds of cities and towns in WWII were occupied without the invaders firing a shot?

I hate trying to justify game design with realism arguments. Scale is thrown out the window. You could argue that occupying a town is like walking through farmed tiles.

How about this. Take the 10 largest cities in the worlds largest countries and try to occupy them without firing a shot. You would run up against a huge resistance even if that countries entire military was off on the other side of it or invading a foreign land.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I'd imagine what's happening here is inefficient movement as well as incorrect assessment of risk.
Movement in Civ5 is extremely punishing relative to other civ games. One false hex and your one unit will be obliterated. Also, given how much more valuable each unit is in Civ 5, losing just the one can easily lose you the war.
A nooblet to the game will probably make these kind of mistakes often, and given that obviously he can't be making any mistakes, the game must be fucking wrong. It's clearly the logical answer.
Personally, I've taken cities with just two or three units and so has the AI.
Though I'm not really sure what's going on with this thread as this flamewar came out of nowhere.

Two considerations.
1. I've surrounded cities to the point that I can't get new units in. I'm pretty sure that "inefficient unit placement" isn't the issue.
2. If unit placement is so important to warfare, why is there nothing giving us hints on how to do it?!?

If you play "soft" and give ground to the AI you can get them to overextend pretty easily and thus isolate and destroy their units – do this before trying to take cities (unless the city is itself isolated).

The units were destroyed before my attempted siege.

It makes sense for sieges to take years at some points in history from a realism perspective, since they were often won by attrition.

Older-era turns are individually longer than any historical sieges.
And sieges generally require fortifications of the kind that aren't needed to make capturing cities a real pain in the neck.

Yeah, but you also have a single city in Civ 5 effectively taking up, say, the Entirety of France. So it can represent the resistance of the area as a whole, not just the specific city combat.

Even ignoring how such things should be represented with units in the area rather than just making cities impossible to take over in a reasonable amount of time, I haven't seen normal (ie, non-city-state and non-early-game) civs without a few cities.

How about this. Take the 10 largest cities in the worlds largest countries and try to occupy them without firing a shot. You would run up against a huge resistance even if that countries entire military was off on the other side of it or invading a foreign land.

Well, that depends. How many troops are you invading with? And what, exactly, qualifies as "huge resistance"? Is it enough for them to try, or would they need to drive off your army? (Not to mention that citizens having good weapons relative to the military is a pretty new thing, discounting pre-military times; a peasant with a pitchfork is no match for an armed, armored knight or even footsoldier. And, of course, modern citizens' firearms are outclassed by a variety of military technology.)
And why does this apply to even little 1-Pop burgs?

[GreatWyrmGold]

For specific subjects.

[Fikes]

Honestly, if you don't like it, don't bother playing it. I have no problem taking cities.

I'd imagine what's happening here is inefficient movement as well as incorrect assessment of risk.
Movement in Civ5 is extremely punishing relative to other civ games. One false hex and your one unit will be obliterated. Also, given how much more valuable each unit is in Civ 5, losing just the one can easily lose you the war.
A nooblet to the game will probably make these kind of mistakes often, and given that obviously he can't be making any mistakes, the game must be fucking wrong. It's clearly the logical answer.
Personally, I've taken cities with just two or three units and so has the AI.
Though I'm not really sure what's going on with this thread as this flamewar came out of nowhere.

Two considerations.
1. I've surrounded cities to the point that I can't get new units in. I'm pretty sure that "inefficient unit placement" isn't the issue.
2. If unit placement is so important to warfare, why is there nothing giving us hints on how to do it?!?

I am pretty sure there is some tutorial about unit placement... regarless.

You have to soften cities up a lot before you ever match infantry into them. This means siege and archers. Rather than having 8 infantry try for 4 infantry 2 archers 2 siege.

Put your infantry in good positions. Make sure they are on hills or in forests and that they don't have to cross a river to attack the city. Don't attack with them right away, get the city really low before you move them in. Don't attack when the outcome is major defeat.

Pow. You win the city.

[GreatWyrmGold]

I haven't had eight infantry, I've had maybe half a dozen plus a dozen archers. I don't remember exactly, since it's been a while.

I'd like to play Civ V, but it's pretty near unplayable because...well...everything's either boring or tedious, and I'm trying to figure out how to make the tedious things plausible.

[Shadowlord]

(Not to mention that citizens having good weapons relative to the military is a pretty new thing, discounting pre-military times; a peasant with a pitchfork is no match for an armed, armored knight or even footsoldier.)

Crossbows. Your argument is invalid.