Re: newbie needs help capturing a city

Joseph J. Strout wrote:

> So, what am I missing?  Is defense really so much stronger than 
> offense?  Are the dice weighed in favor of the AI?  Is the app 
> misbehaving in some strange way on my machine (I'm running the 
> precompiled binary for OS X)?  Or should I really plan to spend 40-50 
> units or more for every dinky little city I want to capture?

Offense is stronger than defense in Freeciv, although certain things 
*are* imbalanced. Mountains (for instance) give a big defense bonus 
which is cumulative with river, fortress, and fortification bonuses.  So 
if you have a walled city on a mountain/river and have a warriors 
fortified in it, it has an effective defense of about 20 and can kill 
veteran battleships.  These rules are basically all taken from civ2, and 
will likely become more balanced in the future.

If you're having trouble attacking, use a little bit of strategy.  Use 
diplomats to bribe cities.  Accompany your catapults with fortified 
musketeers to protect them.  Ignore a well-defended city and attack a 
lesser-defended one instead.  Use ocean or air bombardments to soften up 
cities.  Aim for "aggressive" techs to get units like cannons to better 
enable you to attack.

-jason