Some point on capturing a city

Hola!

I have taken a fair share of cities, and I have some shards of wisdom for others, I think.
Tonight I helped Darian, a smaller player, capture a city near me. I judged this city
worth taking, but not good enough for me, as I have 8 cities and have higher demands.
A city can be taken in less than 2 hrs, unless the player is active, in which case it's
very difficult. First you need to send a big attack, to kill the armies if the gates are
open. If gates are closed, you need to time a strong attack for loyalty 5. I have
failed two times to time this well, and I now believe I know why.
Basically, you need to bring the city down to loyalty 10 fast. This is done by sending
many attacks. 2000 archers (or equivalent) or more per attack, and say 10k archers
will bring it down 4 or something per attack. So, use all your heroes, send some ballista
attacks, 30 attacks of 10k archers will do.
The last 10 loyalty seems to not be reduced by your attacks. The loyalty is then
lowered by the grievance acting over time.
I believe this because I have failed to time the 5 loyalty twice, even though
I took extra care. It came sudden because there was time in between those
attacks. Also, the chance of a player hitting him in this time on both
occasions is very slim. This theory is also supported tonight, when
loyalty fell from 1 to 0 with no visible reason. It was just heavy grievance
working over time. This does not mean you should not attack, it just means
watch it careful, as the loyalty 5 and 0 can be hard to time.

Tonight I did all the work for a smaller ally, I killed the forces, grinded
the abatis down, timed it for him to send a 350 cavalry strong (or weak, it
depends... :-)) attack to capture the city. This force failed the first time
on loyalty 1, because it was too weak, I guess. But 2 hrs later, they attacked
again, and then the loyalty was zero, without any attacks to bring it down from
1.

So, tonight I handed a city to a smaller ally on a silver platter. He
was quite far away, 1 hour with cavalry, so it took many attacks from me,
and some timing, to make sure the loyalty was where it should be, and
the abatis gone (can be slow to kill the last few). It was a great
success, but it may have worked better if the smaller ally had a
stronger force than 350 cav. I could not attack at loyalty 1 myself,
since I would have captured it unwillingly then.

Cezton