[Freeciv] newbie needs help capturing a city

["Joseph J. Strout" <joe@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I just downloaded FreeCiv recently, and for the first time, got to 
the point where I have lots of units and need to start picking off 
these piddly little cities the AI keeps plunking down in my 
territory.  But I frustrated by my apparent inability to capture a 
city, no matter how many units I throw at one.

The AI has about the same technology as me, or slightly less; I have 
gunpowder and am attacking mainly with catapults, riflemen, and 
legions.  He seems to have mainly archers and horsemen.  The city I'm 
attacking is size 3 or so, and does not have walls.  At one point, I 
threw about 20 units (including at least half a dozen catapults) at 
this city, and as far as I can tell, I didn't even make a dent.  Many 
of my units were killed as soon as they stepped up to the city, 
before they got a chance to attack.  The rest died, invariably, when 
they attacked.

Even outside the city, it seems hopelessly unbalanced towards 
defense; my catapults (attack 6) died attacking settlers (defense 1) 
more than once.  I recall this happening *occasionally* in Civ 1, but 
unless I just had an awful string of bad luck, it seems far more 
routine in FreeCiv.  The percentages shown when I center-click on the 
unit I'm about to attack say things like "98%" yet I'm losing WAY 
more often than 2% of the time.

All of this leaves me much less than eager to continue playing.  It 
seems as though your best strategy is to never attack, since 
attackers almost always lose.  But if I don't attack, I have no way 
to stop the cursed AI from plopping its cities right next to mine -- 
and it also makes for quite a dull game.

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?

Thanks,
- Joe

-- 

Joseph J. Strout
joe@xxxxxxxxxx