Why didn't the humans in the Animatrix take out the Machines earlier?

Question

In the Animatrix, we see that the humans end up bombing 01 - the Machine City.

Why wouldn't they just make a direct assault on the Machine City with troops, tanks, etc etc? This would have been far more effective I think, or they could have used some sort of EMP bomb instead of nukes (I'm aware that nuclear weapons do have an initial EMP upon detonation).

The Animatrix sort of depicts mankind to be morons....I mean, as a species we are, but we're not as dumb as it makes us out to be. You look at human history and when our backs are against the wall, we're capable of doing some pretty incredible things.

Answer 1

You seem to be dramatically underestimating the resilience and intelligence of the machines.

We nuked 'em and we nuked 'em good

The prolonged barrage engulfed Zero One in the glow of a thousand suns. But unlike their former masters with their delicate flesh, the machines had little to fear of the bombs' radiation and heat.

Prolonged. Barrage. We hit them over and over again. And when they didn't die, we hit them again. Unfortunately, all it takes is a bit of hardening and an EMP will have little effect.

We attacked, but they attacked more

Thus did Zero One's troops advance outwards in every direction. And one after another, mankind surrendered its territories.

Note that this was a war of attrition. The machines factories were clearly capable of creating robots at a faster rate than we were able to destroy them and their soldiers were able to kill us faster than we can reproduce. The result was inevitable.

Backs against the wall, we innovated.

So the leaders of men conceived of their most desperate strategy yet. A final solution - the destruction of the sky.

Operation Dark Storm was an act of genius. Without power, the machines should have been screwed. Unfortunately, they innovated right back, developing fusion and using humans as a power source. They out-fought us, and ultimately they out-thought us too. Poor us.

Answer 2

Humanity celebrated the advent of artificial intelligence and the industrial prosperity a neigh limitless workforce of unpaid workers brought. In a few years the machines would have dominated manufacturing on a global scale, effective seizing control of humanity's industrial infrastructure. By the time the machines started requesting political representation at the United Nations (or whatever that summit was) humanity could hardly refuse.

They refused anyway.

An industrially crippled and politically divided humanity went to war with a well supplied, heavily entrenched, technologically superior, inherently more durable robot army that had practically limitless reinforcements. The only advantage humanity had was initially the number of troops, but biological, chemical and radioactive weaponry would have soon changed that.