Maybe Palimpsest by Catherynne M. Valente? Her Orphan’s Tales have some interesting cities too, but that’s a bit of a stretch.
Again, not just one city, but take a look at Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino - it was a direct inspiration for Fallen London.
China Miéville might be worth checking out - go for either the City and the City or for Perdido Street Station.
My favourite tactic is based around Hunger of Hadar, a Warlock spell that creates a zone that a) deals damage to everything in it at the start and end of its turn; b) is difficult terrain (aka slows everything down); c) blinds everything in it; d) best of all, has no save. Plonk it down in the middle of the enemy team, use another control spell to slow everyone inside even more, use shove/repelling blast/whatever to push anything that’s made its way to the edge back to the middle. Wait for everything to die, rinse & repeat.
But the greatest cheese in the game must be casting darkness (or shooting arrow of darkness) on your own party. As long as you’re inside the cloud you are basically untargettable by spells and ranged attacks - and the enemies don’t seem to be smart ebough to be throwing Fireballs on just any weird clouds they see. On your turn you just need to step out, cast/shoot, step back in. The only way they can get you is if they come inside the cloud with you (aka in range of whoever is on blender duty, Lae’zel or Karlach like this posting a lot), and the AI gets a bit confused when it can’t see you so it’s not a sure bet that they’ll even try. It’s a thing of beauty.
Way less gross. Human and centaur are both intelligent, can communicate, and give consent, so it would be fine. With a horse (which has none of these things) the centaur would be committing bestiality.