Civ 5

[Chad32]

I prefer normal or quick speed, continents mostly but some random map occasionally.

What difficulty are you playing? And what strategy are you using when trying to take a city?

Catapults/trebuchet to soften the city defense while letting melee units withstand the city's attacks is usually a working strategy early on. Of course it depends on what kind/how many units the opponent has. Early sige units are pretty much defenseless in the beginning so you need to protect them with other units.

Sorry if this is too basic, it's kind of hard to give general advice without knowing the skill of the player. I'm no Civ expert myself - played alot but I'm still on King/Emperor

I'm not expert either. I play on easy/normal. Back when I took a city without walls, I had two ballistas (roman catapults), and two archers. I took the city pretty quickly, and had a couple of legions to make the final blow or defend the ballistas. With a walled city that had other protectors around it, I had a hard time just setting up safely.

I guess it's best to try to scout out how many defenders there are around the city, and take them out to isolate it before really getting to work, but I still have to move my siege weapons into the city's firing range and the walled city can take down a siege weapon about as easily as anything else. Having a catapult that can fire from three spaces away may seem overpowered to some people, but it is realistic and siege weapons are about the only thing that doesn't get a penalty when attacking cities.