Maybe Im wrong, but everyone seems to think that you have to wait for marines to be able to attack these cities! You *DONT*.Nothing before marines can attack right off a transport - its true - but the key word here is attack. If the city is empty then you can just stroll a unit right in off a coracle (or whatever).
So, the question is how to empty the city. Since you cant do shore bombardment with anything before a battleship and waiting for a battleship is as bad as waiting for marines there has to be a better way! This is the other trick mentioned in the topic.
***All units can attack into squares that they cant move into.*** This includes fire triremes attacking cities as well as tanks attacking units on mountains. If they win the attack then they dont move into the square as usual - they just stay put - but the enemy units are destroyed.
This means that you can attack a 1 tile island city with a stack of fire triremes and empty the city then walk in a hoplite off a coracle and take it. Easy.
Of course, its trickier if you allow the enemy enough time to put tanks into the city. Pretty much no stack of ships (including battleships - i tried) will destroy 5 fortified tanks in a city and believe me, marines are useless. In cases like this there is just no substitute for *many* stealth bombers 
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