Catupults never did much for me.  The beauty of artillery units are that they allow you to attack units coming into your territory either in a stack or the lone riflement they send along your mountains to pillage your resources.  They also work well to damage the naval units forcing them to return to base.  They are really a defensive unit for the most part, even with artillery.  if they send a stack after your city, you can bombard them on your turn and then every unit that attacks your city will also get bombarded before attacking. 

I think in civ 3, youre better off having 12 knights than 8 knights and 6 catapults when taking cities.  they just dont cause enough damage and they are slow to keep up with the stack.

One possiblility in a siege is to occupy all the productive tiles, erode the city strength down and hope the AI attacks you- but it is tough capturing a big city; note that even in WW II only Manila, Stalingrad and Berlin were major battlegrounds and the costs for the attackers was terrible.  Any ideas on the Grand Tactical approach to capturing a big city?

1). Catapults arent much good unless you hv 8 of them finring at the same target.  Now i would take those catapults and blow the heck of the city for 5 turns, hving the musket men fortify them so they dont get captured.

2).  After the fifth turn of bombardment i would send in the swordsmen, so that i didnt waste warriors gving making there units elites.  Now the 22 swordsmen would take care of about half of the musket men or they should.

3). send in Knights, a pretty reliable unit for its time, i would attack what was left of the musket men with them.  Then if there was any left that would be when i would send in the warriors.

4). by this point you should hv welly captured the city.  If not, well im not perfect and there is always next time.

P.S. I would also send the units that lived after their attack out of the territory to heal and then sned them back in again. as the saying goes "live to fight another day"

2 for 13 is about right for catapults depending on what you are targeting...  remember your building them to upgrade them, and only in your spare time.  The whole upgrade chain is cheaper than building the next level IIRC...  Stacks of Doom (several offensive fast units, several offensive slow units, many defenders, and artiliery...) are the only way to play Civ3 high level wars... 

So what the hell does that mean ?! A catapult is actually a non-combat unit ?????

Ovilir

Catapults are bombardment units. When was the last time you saw a group of catapults charge a line of infantry? 

Catapults are good only for bombarding.  Move next to the tile you want to bombard, and press the B key.  Then click on the tile you want bombarded. Note that there is a good chance that the bombardment will fail to have any effect whatsoever - therefore, to be effective, you need lots of bombardment units, so that you have enough to inflict lots of damage even if many of them miss. 

I enjoy creating my own Mods when I finally grow weary of dealing with AI cheating.  Like suddenly turning out droves of offensive units with 0 gold in their accounts, and no seeming penalty for doing so.  Either that or my spies are worthless.

If you feel like starting your own Mods, when editing the rules, becareful not to change the unit name files and resort to the help button, (lower right of rules editing screen).  Another cool effect with Catapults is allowing lethal land and sea bombardment.  Changing the rules in your favor isn't cheating.  I find I'm able to create a little more realism as far as one unit against another.  Why a Catapult isn't able to flatten a warrior is beyond me.  Oh, believe you can also change a Catapult to inflict collateral damage and craters if you so choose.

The simple fact that you can Mod a game to your choosing is one of Civilizations greatest strengths, and seemingly the least used.  Changing things can be intimidating.  But there's lots of help and expieriance on these Forums.