Ra Mesh Strategy Guide: Conquering Your Enemy Abroad, Part 1

[The_Hawk]

Hello everyone! This is my first posting ever in the Civilization community. I have been a Civ fan since Civ I and have played Civ III since the first day of its release. I've waited until I've had plenty of experience before sharing my ideas. I don't know if they've been presented before, but here are my ideas on various warfare subjects...

WARFARE: Attacking & Defeating Enemy on Another Continent

You will find that war is a delicate science. How you proceed depends upon the shaping factors in your game. In this guide, i've been playing on Huge Map, maximum Civs (set to random). The specifics may vary depending upon what era you will wage the war. In this discussion, I will focus on wars waged during the modern era. I ALWAYS play as an Industrious Civ (Either Egypt or France) due to the insurmountable advantage of the Worker's production. These principles/ideas will work with any Civ.

What are your biggest challenges?

1. Established Civs. First of all, when fighting in the modern era, most of your competition is established. Most of the geography in the map should be fully occupied. Most borders have been established and your enemies have had time to develop their armies by now.

2. War Weariness. Most of your wars during this era are longer due to the Civs being established. The longer the war, the more War Weariness becomes an issue, especially if you have the Republic or Democracy as your form of government.

Penetration. You've got to get passed their lines of defense. It is even more difficult when you consider that you have to whether the storm of a serious counter-offensive whatever you do.

Culture/Nationalism. The worst thing is to spend money, time, and resources to capture an enemy city abroad only to have them defect due to culture from the surrounding cities, or revolting due to relatively large cities having large populations of loyal national citizens.

With all of this to contend with, why would one want to fight abroad in the first place? These wars tend to be longer than others and expensive. But, your strategy might be global domination. You might not like the enemy you're about to wage war against (someone may have been a thorn in your @ss and deserves a good annihalition). But the 2 most important reasons are:

(1) Resources. What's worse than discovering a new technology only to find that a key resource is NOT available anywhere within your empire??!!?? This alone may be reason enough to declare war.

(2) Booty. Did the enemy build a Wonder that you covet? Does he have bonus resources that make your mouth water? Consider what are some Booty you can come out with during your campaign.

(3) Competitive Position. Guerilla tactics always suggest that the key strategy depends on if you're currently #1, #2, or #3. If you're #1 in the world, you're attacking your weaknesses. You're always thinking "what would I do against myself to weaken me if I were #2?" In this case, you may be attacking #2 and/or #3 to make sure that they don't threaten your position. If you're #2, you obviously should target #1 in the world. You may decide to attack #3 if AND ONLY IF you feel that that would be less costly and that it would net in you having a better position than #1. If you're #3, then you're going after either #1, or #2 and you're trying to flank their position.

In either event there should be some sort of tangible gain for your efforts, even if that is seeing your nemesis beg for mercy!!!!

"If you fail to plan, then you plan to fail...."

What position are you in going into this war? Usually, I spend the entire game positioning to dominate the world. I say this being a player that is not a warmonger. I generally make a play for my own continent during the Ancient and Middle Ages, then leverage my Industrial strength for scientific supremacy (depending on the difficulty level) and diplomatic supremacy.

Things To Have Before War Begins

Here are some things you want to have in place before you wage your war:

1. Sufficient Cash Reserves. Because you may have to pop rush some improvements, or some military reinforcements, you want to have a considerable amount of cash reserves. I would suggest no less than 10,000-20,000 Gold in your treasury. I've had as much as 100,000+ Gold in my treasury before a campaign.

2. Infrastructure. Make sure that you've setup significant road infrastructures to your points of departure (see "Things To Do"). You also want to make sure your strategic resources are properly protected. If you completely own and control your own continent, then each strategic resource needs to have fortresses built on that tile. You don't need to have defensemen placed there, just make sure they are nearby enough to your resources if needed. If you don't own your continent, then your resources should be heavily defended with defensemen and artillery.

3. Wonders. Try to have built as many wonders to combat war weariness in your Civ. Teh more you have, the longer you can wage war without getting creative. Also, make sure that you have Temples, Cathedrals, Colleseums built in all of your cities. Where necessary and if possible, you may want to develop Communism so you can have the ability to build Police Stations to further combat War Weariness.

4. Decent Air Force. You should have a relatively strong air force. This means you should have a few Carriers (at least 2-3), and at least Bomber plains. Personally, I usually rush to get Stealth Bombers. This is because they go undetected and offset defense by Jet Fighters. If you can't get Stealth Bombers, then Bombers in volume are needed. At least 8 of your cities should have Airports built. Personally, I build airports in every city, due to their hidden strength as a transport (more on this later....).

5. Strong Naval Force. You should have a relatively strong naval force as well. This one is even more important than your air force. Imagine the time it takes to build and assemble a large army to ship somewhere. Now imagine that army being sunk on the way to its destination because you didn't have sufficient defense against naval attacks. OUCH!

6. Friends. At this stage of the game, everyone has friends and enemies. Make sure that if he pulls a few allies into the fray that you have a few key friends on your side as well. Wars in the late game are not always one against the other.

7. Kick @ss Army. First of all, your troops in the modern era should usually consist of Tanks, Modern Armor, Mechanized Infantry, Infantry, artillery and radar artillery, depending on what's available. Whatever it is, you want to have enough ground troops to make a significant penetration. Before you start the war, you should have enough troops to fill around 4-6 Transports. At 8 per Transport, that works out to around 32-48 units. Personally, i'm a planning freak, so I usually don't even ship until I have enough ground units for 2 points of attack, each with a minimum of 4 Transports. If you do the math, that's 64 units minimum. I usually break it down as follows:

8 artillery units (Artillery, or Radar Artillery since both have a 2-tile bombardment distance)
8 defensive units (usually Mechinized Infantry, although regular infantry will due also)
16-24 offensive units (ideally Modern Armor, or Tank as your primary offensives).

The idea here is not to be fair. When it comes to warfare, army size does matter. Depending on the strength of your opponent, you may want to have even more units. You may especially want to include another Transport for defensive and artillery units (4/4 splits).

It is important to note that, if possible you can use armies, BUT USE SPARINGLY!!! Armies not only take up boat space, but ARE HIGHLY OVERRATED! We're talking modern era, so keep that in mind when I say this. Modern Armor can attack 3 times. If you place them in an army, however, they only attack once. So, if you have armies, use them for defensive units. Stack 3-4 Mechanized Infantries into an army. That will be almost impenetrable if you always stack with artillery.

Now, this may sound like a lot to have, but again, we're talking about your late game. You will need these things to ensure victory (in other postings I can share ideas on how to get great position during the Ancient and Middle Ages).

"Before you strike the first blow, your enemy must be defeated in his mind...."

I war is won in stages and it is one on several fronts. It is not just about guns blazing, kill or be killed. Your enemy needs certain things to fight and defend during war.

Things To Do Before War Begins

Here are some things you want to do to your enemy before you set foot on his land:

1. Cutoff Ties to New Allies. Before you declare war, setup Trade embargoes with as many other Civs as will cooperate. Some may need to be bribed, but you don't want him trading for key resources once war begins.

2. Assess Enemy Resources. You want to consider where his strategic resources are coming from. These resources may be resources he uses to build his key military units, but may also include happiness resources. Plan to pillage his resource squares if possible.

3. Economic Warfare. Who is he getting fat off of? When you get trade embargoes, a few of the other Civs will not cooperate no matter what you offer them. These Civs most likely are in bed with your target enemy. They may be getting science, resources, etc. from them. This is another reason why you should plan to attack resources. Not just to stop him from building key units, but also, to cut off his money. He can't trade a resource he doesn't have access to!

4. Weaken him. Does the target enemy have neighbors? Especially people who share the continent with him? They make for your best allies. Try to convince one of them to join you in a military alliance against your enemy. It may take you several turns to get to your enemy, but his neighbor can be there immediately. Let the neighbors battle it out and diminish his forces while you mobilize and amass yours.

"Let the Battle Begin...."

Attack the Head and Tail of the Tiger

You should never just attack from one point. You must assess his land and find 2 points of attack. The attack points must not be adjacent. They must be far enough from each other to divide his forces, but close enough so that when your campaign ends, the cities you conquer should be adjacent to each other.

Your first point of attack will be called the "Head of the Tiger." This attack site should be close enough to some large city. You want to pick an area of his border that is near something you want, and near something he will defend. If you can, this site can be close to his capital, or close to some large city (usually the AI builds wonders in their capital, or in large cities). You can also select your attack Head by his resource placement.

Your second point of attack will be called the "Tail of the Tiger." This attack site should be closest to your prize. Whatever it is that you've identified that you want to gain from this war, mark that place as the "Tail of the Tiger." It is your primary target, and your secondary point of attack. (More later....)

You will divide your naval forces, air forces, and ground forces for these 2 points of attack. Whatever, you do, MAKE SURE YOU HAVE ENOUGH GROUND TROOPS AT THE HEAD & TAIL!!!!

Phase One: Air & Naval Campaign

Your first order of business is to send your air force. This air force is not your entire fleet. You must always leave some Jet Fighters and Bombers at home to protect your borders. Instead, build 3 Carriers. Each will hold 2 defensive planes (Jet Fighters) and 4 offensive planes (Bombers, or Stealth Bombers). The other plane types are unnecessary. You don't need Stealth Fighters. Everything you need is covered by either Bombers or Stealth Bombers.

You want 2 carriers to accompany your ground troops at the Head of the Tiger, 1 carrier at the Tail. Your carriers must be escorted by heavy naval escort. I would suggest exclusively building Battleships and Submarines (pick your favorite). I know other forms of ships may be cheaper, like Destroyers. However, the sheer power, both offensively and defensively of a Battleship outweighs all other options. Even if you do not have the productive power to produce several of these, make as many as you can. 5 Battleships is always better than 10 Destroyers, etc. You want to have several Nuclear Submarines as well. I prefer Nuclear Submarines, even if i'm not carrying Tactical Nukes because they have an extra unit of movement.
I send my Nuclear Subs out first , about 2 squares ahead of my Battleships and Carriers. This is to serve as a potential warning against enemy submarines laying in wait. You also want to spot enemy Battleships and Destroyers before they see you in radar without them knowing you're coming. The element of surprise is key and must be preserved for as long as possible. (Remember, up to this point he you may not be at war yet. He may simply be mad at you for all of the economic embargoes.)

About 2 squares behind your Subs will be your 2 Carriers and 2-3 Battleships. The Battleships and Carriers will be stacked on the same tile always, to hide your numbers from the enemy. You will lose 1 unit of movement on your battleships because of the Carriers, but that is OK. The key is defending your Carriers in the open sea.

About 6 squares behind your Carriers/Battleships are your ground troop Transports, guarded by about 2-3 Battleships, ideally. Again, to hide numbers, they should all be travelling on the same tile. There is no loss of movement with Transports & Battleships. Both have either 5 or 6 depending on what Wonders you have. Usually, I wait a turn or 2 BEFORE sending my ground troops. This is because you want to give your Air Force a turn or 2 to soften your enemy.

Now, I forgot to mention the Tale of the Tiger. Depending on its location and proximity to the Head of the Tiger, you may want to mobilize the forces you have for the Tale first. These forces should be positioned close to the Tale of the Tiger site. That is, the point where you will land your ground troops. But they must NOT be too close to your enemy. Park them at least 8 tiles away from your site. You do not want your enemy to accidentally discover your surprise fleet. Don't forget - ELEMENT OF SURPRISE!

To conclude Phase One, begin your campaign with an air assault. You first target strategic resources. Cut off his access to his ability to build key military units. That is, target Aluminum, Iron, Rubber, Saltpeter, etc. Bombard these squares until the roads are completely destroyed. If the enemy places defensive units on the resource tiles it will not matter. bombard the roads around the resources! The key is the enemy needs a road to the resource! So, if you can't get the actual resource tile, then bombard the squares around the resources. Next, target the cities themselves. If you're fighting with Stealth Bombers and have the necessary technology, perform Precision strikes, exclusively. This will destroy his cultural and happiness infrastructure! He will produce less when his citizens are unhappy. Set your Jet Fighters for Air Superiority to protect your Bombers and Carriers. If Bombers are destroyed, Air Lift others to your Carriers and keep on attacking.

You want to concentrate your attack at the Head of the Tiger. Don't bomb the actual cities if you can, and don't waste time with bombing military units at this time. YOUR FOCUS IS DESTROYING PRODUCTION POWER AND RESOURCES! If you need to, fall back a couple of squares into the ocean after your Bombers attack. This allows you to pull out of range of his artillery who may park on his border and take aim at your Battleships. At your next turn, move your battleships and Carriers back into position, wake up your Jets and Bombers and attack again. You can bombard with your Battleships as well. Just make sure you do not destroy all of his roads! Many people make the mistake of pillaging all of the enemy's roads. You fail to realize that these roads will soon be yours. Yes, its true that you cannot take advantage of your enemy's roads while he still owns them. However, once you capture a city, within that city's squares, those roads are now yours! You can then continue to move your forces forward at a much faster rate as you use your newly conquered roads! So keep your bombardments focused on key resources.

You also should bombard and destroy all land improvements related to production. I don't care if the enemy eats for now. I do care about how well his production is. So, bombard and destroy ALL improvements on Mountains and Hills. If he has any tiles in the area that give financial or production bonuses, bomb those as well. Don't worry about what the city will look like when you take it over. You will be pop rushing several of the things you need anyway, so you will have little use for their production value. Besides, your cities will not be too cooperative in the beginning, which negates the value of these production squares.

[The_Hawk]

Phase Two: Land the Ground Troops

Now that the Air and Naval forces has weakened his production capacity, bring in the cowboys!!! Again, you are still attacking at the Head of the Tiger. However, you should not begin to move your forces from the Tail of the Tiger into position. Still keep them out of range. Move them about 5-6 tiles away from your target point so that when ready, they can move and land in one turn.

Now, the key principle here as you attack the Head of the Tiger is to focus your forces at the point of attack. The first city you target should be near the border or 1 square away from the border.

Land ALL of your troops from ALL of your transports on one tile. Do not land on different tiles for offensive and defensive reasons. When you land your troops, you must realize that you will and must weather the first defensive stand on the ground. As soon as you land, especially if he has an established railroad network, he will send almost his entire ground force at you. That's the real reason why you brought the artillery. As his force attacks, they will first be smacked down by the automatic fire of your artillery forces. Your armies with the Mechanized Infantry will be attacked next. You may lose 1 or 2 defensive units here, but that's OK. Even if you lose all of the defensive units you shipped, their objective was to help you weather this storm. Your key is all the offensive units you brought with you for the Head of the Tiger. Once your turn begins again, attack first with your Air and Naval fleets. This time, focus on the cities you will be attacking! You want to try to weaken the units that will be there. Unlike before, they will not have time to heal this time. Upon completion of your air force attack. Move them down along the border to attack the area away from your point of attack. They will move up the coast line, destroying other key squares for your enemy as mentioned above.

Now that you've weathered his first ground assault, attack your target city, first with YOUR artillery, then with your offensive units. If you planned your attack with enough units, taking this first city will be relatively easy after the softening blows dealt by your Air forces. (NOTE: If you can, this first city can be a border city so that your Battleships can dock and heal if necessary. However, do NOT dock your Battleships until you have defeated the 2nd city at the Head of the Tiger. If the citizens defect too quickly, you may lose your Battleships!).

Phase Three: Attack the Tail of the Tiger!

SURPRISE! SURPRISE! Up until now you've been attacking solely on one front. Now, move in for the kill. Land your ground troops at the Tail of the Tiger and move your 3rd Carrier into position. Use your Bombers to attack scattered ground units and cities. If ther are any key resources that are worth attacking, do so. You will experience a softer resistence to this second attack site.

(NOTE: A key options you may want to use once you have landed your forces at the Tail of the Tiger is your espionage options. You want to view his Troop position! It is VERY expensive, but worth it if your spy is successful. You not only get to see all of his troops beyond your units' radar, but you also get to see City-By-City placement of those troops. This means you can note which cities are most and least defended and attack along least lines of defense.)

You should continue to attack aggressively along adjacent lines. You want to rush buying a Temple and a Colleseum as soon as possible (buy the turn after you capture it. Make sure that at least one production square has been used before you buy so the price can drop) You are now attacking on the ground from the Head AND the Tail. Your attacks are focused, concentrating your forces as much as possible. You will leave the artillery in the cities as defense. Your lines of attack should be such that your Head and Tail attacks are moving towards each other, sandwiching the enemy cities. Leave all of your artillery at the edges of your attack so that you are not hit from behind too fast. If possible this Phase should end with the Head and Tail meeting, which means that the 2 forces will conquer all of the cities between them leaving you with a chunk of cities adjacent to each other. Each city you take over you should immediately rush a Temple ASAP.

Phase Four: Bring in the Second Wave of Forces

Remember that first border city you attacked at the Head of the Tiger? After you conques the second city, you should do something interesting. You see, the question is this: after you rush the temple, what should you build next? More Happiness, like a Colleseum maybe? NO!!! you build an Airport! You remember how I always build airports in all of my cities? Well, once the airport is built on my enemy territory, I immediately airlift more units to this city! Each Airport I own on my continent can airlift one unit per turn. So, I can send several offensive and defensive units to this one city in one turn. In some games, I was airlifting 20 units every 2-3 turns! That's much faster than the shipping them. It takes too long. By air transporting the units, I can keep the pressure on and conquer more cities and penetrate even faster. With the units flying over, you should penetrate through his continent like a knife through butter. You can also Airlift bombers to this, or any conquered city and use them for defensive purposes. I like to airlift Jet Fighters to my conquered cities and run Air Superiority, because the enemy has a tendency of bombing you with his planes.

Conclusion: Finishing the Campaign

Continue to send over troops. Focus your citizen placement on food production and happiness. You can let the governors manage happiness and emphasize food and production over commerse. You want the city to grow eventually, so that you can have some of your own citizens in the city. That way, there is less of a chance of defection. You may lose a city here, or there and some money with it, but your enemy cannot withstand the full force of your campaign using this strategy. March through his continent until you own the whole damn thing. You may want to leave him with one city left just to enjoy his weak, furious behind for the rest of the game. Sometimes, he bails ship and sails to someone else's continent to seak shelter. Whatever, you have just masterfully destroyed your enemy in a campaign abroad and turned this Tiger into a purring Kitten!

I welcome all comments, suggestions, improvements whatever. I am just so excited about this game I can't wait to hear what everyone thinks.

(Next up, The Impenetrable Defense)

[Theseus]

Well done!!! And welcome here!!!

First comment, and more to come as I digest, I love the head / tail concept... is there a way to combine that with an adjacent city capture?

PLEASE jump around here in the Strategy fourm... I'm sure you will have lots to contribute.

Totally OT: I guess you are military, a cop (the whole spectrum), or some kind of project manager.

Welcome, again.

[cumi]

Hi,

it is really nice to read strategies like this. You can not find things like this in the manuals.

I am also planing and (also) executing my military campagnes like you. But such a big army - ground, naval, air -, with a lot of money, wonders, etc - I find it a bit too optimistic. I am doing the same thing, but when I am playing at easyest level.

On warlord level I failed a few times.

Once, I allready eliminated (the way you described) one of my four opponents (on tiny map - smallest). Then I attacked the second one. I used ICBMs, at least one per his cities and about 40 Modern Armors (we were on same continent)...and I couldn't finish the offensive. I destroyed about 8 (the biggest, including his capital) out of his 14 cities. But he was filling and filling his remained cities with mechs. On the end I had to pull back my army, because I had no reinforcements left...My last opponent was also figthing against me, but all I could see was some improuvments destroyed and a few nukes, which were shout down by my defense sys.

And, you often don't have time to finish with the preparation. You have to build city improuvements, too. If you are playing in huge map, you can produce your army in 10-15 cities, but your opponent has also a lot of cities.

Imagine, you are preparing for a big offensive, and suddenly -someone other than your target civ - attacks you. He can be weak, but stil it is pain in the @ss to take care of him. And you will never finish you preparations. There are also examples from real word (especially in Europe) - WW1 and WW2...

Or, some of your friends beginns a war and the whole situations goes out of controll. Once I experianced it: me and 2 other civs against 5, because we had MPP and the other 5, too. I think nobody wanted a world-war except one (don't remember who decleared a war whom first) and that is it...

So, I think your detailed desription is very nice and useful. I can only gratulate you, nice work. But sometimes it is very difficult to execute. I think you can also tell us about failed aggressions.

...or maybe I have to practice more.

Keep the nice work...

[jshelr]

Thanks for the very thorough post, which I found very helpful.

First of all, here's a quote I've been waiting to see. "It is important to note that, if possible you can use armies, BUT USE SPARINGLY!!! Armies not only take up boat space, but ARE HIGHLY OVERRATED! We're talking modern era, so keep that in mind when I say this. Modern Armor can attack 3 times. If you place them in an army, however, they only attack once. So, if you have armies, use them for defensive units. Stack 3-4 Mechanized Infantries into an army. That will be almost impenetrable if you always stack with artillery." I completely agree but most others don't. I think this is a very interesting issue and wonder if there has been a thread devoted to it??

"As soon as you land, especially if he has an established railroad network, he will send almost his entire ground force at you." That one is not true if you convince the AI it can't win against your stack it its current location. For example, if you land a large stack including good defensive units and bombard units on a mountain, the AI will leave you alone. I often look for a city on a coast by a mountain as a great entry point to a neighboring continent. What the AI should do is wheel up all its artillery and bomber force in order to blast the stack immediately. That is not done, in my experience, and will have to await MP.

Generally, the next point is true, but sometimes a riskier strategy can be appropriate. "Land ALL of your troops from ALL of your transports on one tile. Do not land on different tiles for offensive and defensive reasons." For a counter example, if the map produces a peninsula and the AI has a city on the end, you can wall off that city from reinforcement and make it easier to take out the beachhead city on the second turn.

You might consider using a ROP. If neighbor B is not too fond of target civ A, you can land in neighbor B and attack A across the whole boarder between A and B using the RR network of B. It's very powerful and often you can get the ROP for next to nothing.

[jshelr]

Sorry, this was a duplicate post.

[alexman]

Originally posted by The_Hawk
Armies not only take up boat space, but ARE HIGHLY OVERRATED! We're talking modern era, so keep that in mind when I say this. Modern Armor can attack 3 times. If you place them in an army, however, they only attack once. So, if you have armies, use them for defensive units. Stack 3-4 Mechanized Infantries into an army. That will be almost impenetrable if you always stack with artillery.

Armies now have the blitz ability, which means that MA in armies attack up to three times per turn, if there are no slower units in the Army. For this reason, cavalry armies are extremely powerful, as they result in a 3-move blitz unit in the middle ages!

Theseus, I can't believe you read this post without defending your armies! You better redeem yourself by giving a summary of the benefits of mixed-unit Armies!

[The_Hawk]

Hi,

Theseus: Thanks for the compliment, but no, I'm not a cop or military guy. I just eat Civ3 and AI opponents for lunch, breakfast and dinner. The head/tail strategy can work for adjacent city attacks as well. However, it is most effective for sweeps. Again, whenever I attack my opponent, I always want to take a chunk of cities and then fortify. Otherwise, the culture/nationality issue comes into play. I target a specific area and then approach from 2 directions. Always. When working on adjacent cities, like attacking an opponent on your continent, one of the most important reasons for the head/tail approach is CONTAINMENT. I find that one you go to war, especially as the aggressor, the enemy will come at me from different directions and angles. I attack to end up with adjacent cities conquered and to contain the enemy during my sweep. If a few of his offensive units are spilling between the head/tail attacks, they are eliminated, [I]even before I take new cities.['I] I want to dwindle his counter-offensive ability AND fortify my position as well. If you're taking more hits than anticipated, then settle for less cities.

I always have an objective when I am the aggressor. So, let's say I have targeted a few cities that I want in my Civ and that I don't think i'll get throught he culture Borg assimilation. I ammass a large stack of my fastest offensive units. Horsemen/Charriotts in the ancient era (although, you've got to be carefull using charriotts because they can't go over mountains and other types of terrain, so you've got to analyze your enemy's territory before building them), then Knights, then Cavalry. These I attack with at the head, because the key is speed. I also like to have my best defensive units ready as much as I can at the back end so that I can easily defend the city. At the tail end, if I can afford it, I attack with speed as well, but a stack of artillery, defensive units and some longbowmen (maybe, I usually don't waste time with longbowmen because horsemen can retreat in a newly captured city and keep the pressure on) will do the trick. The key to the tail end's attack is containment. You're defending flanks, fortifying cities as you march on, plugging holes. Don't forget, the enemy will send counter-offensives, and the Head is making fast sweeps, so there is a tendency, if you're not careful, to leave some cities undefended, if you're not careful. That's all that I can think of right now. I hope I answered your question.

cumi: I play on Monarch or Warlord also, which is why I try to take more time preparing for my campaigns. I have a whole focus on my defensive strategy as well, which I can share soon. But you said something interesting:

Originally posted by cumi
And, you often don't have time to finish with the preparation. You have to build city improuvements, too. If you are playing in huge map, you can produce your army in 10-15 cities, but your opponent has also a lot of cities.

Imagine, you are preparing for a big offensive, and suddenly -someone other than your target civ - attacks you. He can be weak, but stil it is pain in the @ss to take care of him. And you will never finish you preparations. There are also examples from real word (especially in Europe) - WW1 and WW2...

Personally, even when an opponent has waged full war on me and I had not been the aggressor, I have found that my defense is impenetrable. Period. I've built my armies as I described earlier, while withstanding an assault that lasted as long as 200 years! My key is that I ALWAYS wheel and deal and make as many friends as possible. So, when someone picks a fight, he is not fighting me, he is fighting me and his neighbors as well. Let's say that someone picks a fight and he has some key friends of mine as his neighbors, or even better, sharing his continent. I then make my rounds to EVERY nation, cutting off his financial ties to as many as possible. I sign military alliance packs with his strongest neighbor and donate some technology or resource to help their cause. You've got to assess carefully, because if they're not true friends, they'll send a little boat, offload some outdated warriors and call it day! But, I pull as many people into the fray as I can. That way, it takes him longer to get to me and when he does, He comes up against my impenetrable gambit. If the nation that picks a fight with me while i'm preparing for my target is not a real threat, I don't bother with it. I don't really have the war weariness concern, because he's the aggressor. After some time, he may even come back and want a quick (and embarrassing) peace treaty without touching a hair on my back. If he IS a formidable opponent, then I switch my target The nation I am targeting usually doesn't have a clue that I am out for his neck because of my diplomatic relations. I kiss @ss, play humble, trade fairly, and lure them into a false sense of confidence (just so that I can setup the element of surprise ).

Originally posted by cumi
Or, some of your friends beginns a war and the whole situations goes out of controll. Once I experianced it: me and 2 other civs against 5, because we had MPP and the other 5, too. I think nobody wanted a world-war except one (don't remember who decleared a war whom first) and that is it...

I don't know about you, but I NEVER sign MPPs until it is extremely advantageous to me. It just is too unpredictable and usually, you end up being dragged into war to fight someone else's crazy religious crusade! I don't think so. I've had MPPs where someone attacked one of my friends since the ancient era and I had to declare war against them! So, usually, when I do an MPP, its right before I go to war. If a nation that I need on my side doesn't want to do an alliance with me, I might lure him into an MPP. Then, i'll dump some brave, loyal, Kamikaze citizen looking for a quick ticket to heaven on my enemy's territory and let them have their way with him. Usually, i'll select some outdated unit that I haven't disbanded, like longbowmen (did I mention those worthless things before?). That usually gets them into the war rather easily. Just make sure the enemy attacks your longbowmen BEFORE your longbowman attacks or even pillages something. So, you've got to be careful with MPPs.

[The_Hawk]

jshelr,

I agree with your assessment about a ROP with an ally who is not too fond of my target enemy. My ideas were just in general regarding a late game. The key to me is the question: What is the point of least resistance? Sometimes, I might come across an enemy who doesn't share a continent. Then what? But, if you get that kind of cooperation from his neighbor that's a great idea. Just be careful, though. Usually when you use that strategy, the cities you take are somewhere along the middle of the continent. At the very least, you have your target enemy cities ahead and your ally's cities behind you. That's 2 cultures you have to contend with. It also means that you are attacking straight ahead and don't have the beach at one of your fronts as a possible defense. This strategy might work if you use it for either the head, or the tail, especially the tail. I can see a focused beach attack for the head and have the tail sneak through the ally's backdoor! That could spell doomsday for real!

[Theseus]

Hawk,

In another thread, I wrote about the benefit of 2-city captures. What I mean in the context of Head / Tail, is have you considered capturing two 2-city adjacent pairs as your opening gambit. This protects against the risk of flipping, and seems to merely accelerate your plans.

And I agree about Armies for MAs, as giving up 8 attacks is just crazy. I will do it for Tanks, however, to get the extra punch to take on a well-defended MI. I'll also add an MA to a 3X Tank Army, as well as my "historic" 2X Cav + Tank Armies.

For a later age forward defense, however, 3 and 4 unit Armies are indispensable.... and you bet, adding 1 MI to a 3X Infantry Army is the greatest!!!

[The_Hawk]

One thing I think is important to mention here is that I ALWAYS make a play on my continent. PERIOD. It may take me hundreds of years of planning, but i've never gone into the modern era without owning my own piece of sacred land, save for a few persistent cities from enemies who insist on building on desert land. I leave those guys alone, because they usually succomb to the Borg effect—my culture! But, it is important to be able to build up a superior infrastructure and leverage that to your advantage. To that end, I don't think I will get up the guts to try a Civ that doesn't have the Industrious attribute. It is just too important. I don't care what it is combined with, scientific, commercial, religious, military, whatever. The speed of those workers building your infrastructure and altering the landscape to your cities is so important to them being productive and quickly. I always have good position in my games due to properly leveraging this attribute. I usually play with either Egypt or France and soon will play with China (Industrious/Scientific). But I just can't imagine having a Civ and have my workers take forever to develop my geographic infrastructure. Your cities, science, money, etc. pay the price, because you are always behind the eight ball in productivity, city size, whatever. I can endure having more expensive religious improvements (a slight pain when I first tried the French) or having more expensive science improvements (when I try the Chinese) but I can see no way around the Industrious attribute. If you're militaristic, what do you do when you conquer new cities? Take forever to build them up? I just don't get it. It would be interesting to hear from people who have tried using a Civ that doesn't have the Industrious trait to hear how they work around this.

[The_Hawk]

That's exactly it Theseus, especially when I am attacking on my territory. I'd love to read your thread on 2-city captures, though. Could you post a link if you get a chance? Thanks.

[vulture]

Agree mostly with what you say, but really disagree on the subject of armies. I've just finished the Babylon and on game (thread elsewhere in the strategy forum), where I employed similar tactics to you for my invasions. In my final invasion of America I had 10 armies of 4 modern armour each, and about 30 individual MA. The invasion force featured a fair number of these intially (and since it was a 1 turn sea crossing I shipped over reinforcements at a huge rate until I got the airport online). The radar artillery are great for attacking the initial city (I had a stack of 30 bombarding one city) but once you start going through the civ in a blitz they usually can't keep up. To get through a civ quickly you really need armies. EAch one can attack 3 times, and they can have up to 20 hitpoints. When trying to attack mech inf in a metropolis with radar artillery in the city for defence, you're going to be losing a lot of MA normally (or you wait for you artillery stack to catch up and do some serious damage, if you have the time). With armies, the chances are that you'll take the city without losing a single one. In the Babylon game, the speed advantages of armies were clearly the difference between winning and losing. But you need a lot of them - just one or two and you won't really notice the difference, except for using them to breakopen particularly tough targets. With 10 or more, nothing is going to slow you down apart from moving over mountains.

[The_Hawk]

vulture: If what alexman said is correct and armies now have the blitz capability with the newer patch, then I can retract that statement. Currently, I have the 1.17f patch (I'll install 1.21f once I finish my current game) and I still do not have blitz capability. I've inserted 4 MAs into an army and it only attacks once per turn. Also, under the patch i'm using, I have this nasty problem of having the army leader forget where its army units are. The units will be one place, the army leader in another. Major pain in the @ss! So I stay with using them for added defensive ability. If they maintain their blitz ability, though they would be overwhelming. I usually take my most productive city and build Iron Works. Once that city gets a Factory and Mfg Plant, I can spit out an army every 4 turns! That's overwhelming to an AI Civ with a problem with me. But, the non-blitz thing was a pain, so I use my armies for defensive fortification.

Another thing to point out is flexibility. In an army, your bigest advantage is that 3-4 units fight till the death and have a better chance at beating an opponent. However, if you tend to concentrate your forces (a key attack strategy) and attack in stacks, you get the same benefits. I find that when I keep the units separate, I have the FLEXIBILITY to divide my stacks if necessary, for offensive AND defensive purposes. Let's say that based on the lay of the land during an attack, I decide that i've got to split my stack to take 2 cities simultaneously. Can't do that with an army. CAN do that with individual units. I'll have to try your point of using several armies during a campaign. Again, i've had games where I dedicated my most productive city to JUST build armies. But, I found that I didn't need them as much, especially under the topic of attacking on foreign soil.

And even so, what do you do about the shipping issue? I transport holds 8 units. If you have the pentagon, your army takes up 5 seats. Depending on how many armies you're sending over, you can have several boat seats taken up by an arrogant guy who sits there during battle singing (Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho). What do you do, send and army and 3 units? How do you maximize that?

[vulture]

Originally posted by The_Hawk
vulture: If what alexman said is correct and armies now have the blitz capability with the newer patch, then I can retract that statement. Currently, I have the 1.17f patch (I'll install 1.21f once I finish my current game) and I still do not have blitz capability. I've inserted 4 MAs into an army and it only attacks once per turn. Also, under the patch i'm using, I have this nasty problem of having the army leader forget where its army units are. The units will be one place, the army leader in another. Major pain in the @ss!

All fixed in the 1.21f patch. The units in armies getting lost happened when you moved non-army units of the same type from the same square using the stack movement (j) command, and this has been sorted out now. Blitz capable armies really are strong.

So I stay with using them for added defensive ability. If they maintain their blitz ability, though they would be overwhelming. I usually take my most productive city and build Iron Works. Once that city gets a Factory and Mfg Plant, I can spit out an army every 4 turns! That's overwhelming to an AI Civ with a problem with me. But, the non-blitz thing was a pain, so I use my armies for defensive fortification.

Agreed. Pre 1.21f, when armies only had 1 attack, I didn't really bother with them. But as you say, 1 attack armies are best for really strong defensive units to take the punishment when an AI stack attacks your invasion force.

Another thing to point out is flexibility. In an army, your bigest advantage is that 3-4 units fight till the death and have a better chance at beating an opponent. However, if you tend to concentrate your forces (a key attack strategy) and attack in stacks, you get the same benefits.

Almost the same benefits. Often you can see an army losing 10 hitpoints to a single defender. If you'd attacked with 3 MA, that would be two of them dead, and needing replacing. With armies you still have all 4 MA alive in the army, and the two replacement MA that you've just churned out and flown over increase your force rather than just maintaining its strength. It's like the difference between retreating and non-retreating units - it makes the retreat-capable units significantly stronger for the same stats under most circumstances.

I find that when I keep the units separate, I have the FLEXIBILITY to divide my stacks if necessary, for offensive AND defensive purposes. Let's say that based on the lay of the land during an attack, I decide that i've got to split my stack to take 2 cities simultaneously. Can't do that with an army. CAN do that with individual units. I'll have to try your point of using several armies during a campaign.

With 10 armies and 30 MA, flexibility isn't a problem. You're only attacking 2 or 3 cities each turn anyway. With only one or two armies, they are better used as a reserve force for breaking open particulary well defended points.

And even so, what do you do about the shipping issue? I transport holds 8 units. If you have the pentagon, your army takes up 5 seats. Depending on how many armies you're sending over, you can have several boat seats taken up by an arrogant guy who sits there during battle singing (Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho). What do you do, send and army and 3 units? How do you maximize that?

Once approach is just to build shed loads of transports. A more plausible one is to transport the armies over empty, and load up with airlifted units when you get to the invasion continent. Each army then takes up one space. But as you say, you only need to take one (or two) cities before you can rush an airport, and even four transports with 2 armies and 22 indivudual units should be enough for that job, so including a few fully loaded armies in the beach-head force is quite plausible. And very useful for taking that first city. One army is quite likely to take out three defenders without dying. 4 MA (or even 5) would be hard pressed to match that I think.

[The_Hawk]

Almost the same benefits. Often you can see an army losing 10 hitpoints to a single defender. If you'd attacked with 3 MA, that would be two of them dead, and needing replacing. With armies you still have all 4 MA alive in the army, and the two replacement MA that you've just churned out and flown over increase your force rather than just maintaining its strength. It's like the difference between retreating and non-retreating units - it makes the retreat-capable units significantly stronger for the same stats under most circumstances.

I see. Great points. I guess I've got to wait and get the 1.21f patch. I love concentrating forces and if the 1.21f patch fixes this, lookout. The key here is if you have a stack of armies, that would actually be wonderful. I always stack like units in an army, especially when it comes to movement rates. I would hate to slow down my cavalry by stacking them with a rifleman, or something....

Question though. Can you Airlift an empty Army? I thought that GLs and Armies couldn't be airlifted. That would mean that if I load them on foreign soil, then I would have to ship them there all the time. What have you done when you've attacked someone light years away? I've had some campaigns where I had to sail for more than 13 turns before I got to the enemy. Imagine having to make a return trip to bring more armies? Have you had this experience? What was your approach?

[Theseus]

vulture,

That is just such an overwhelming force that you can't go wrong. But you ARE giving up 80 (!) potential attacks by putting 40 MAs into Armies.

Hey, I like Armies as much as the next guy (ha!), but MAs are too powerful individually to degrade this way. I am, of course, in love with adding an MA to a 3X Tank Army.

Hawk,

The 2-city attack is here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=55071

[vulture]

Theseus:

That is just such an overwhelming force that you can't go wrong. But you ARE giving up 80 (!) potential attacks by putting 40 MAs into Armies.

When fighting large numbers of Mech Inf, you are vastly improving the survivability of your armour though. And in the MTiv game, so much of the terrain was massed mountains that in practice I wasn't giving up any attacks at all. There were places where no matter how many MA I had to play with I was only going to take one city per turn cimply because you can only move one square per turn on mountains that aren't in your territory. In other circumstances (especially when attacking an opponent without MI) MA are proportionally more powerfully individually. In those cases I sometimes just use armies of 2 or 3 MA just to root out hard to dislodge defenders.

But to be honest, once you've got 70+ MA hanging around, you may as well stick them into armies if you have them, since the chance of them all getting to use all their attacks in one turn is minimal. OTOH when you don't have an overwhelming force, the extra attacks can be useful (I got a lot of utility from individual MAs hoovering up lots of workers and taking out the isolated calary and riflemen that modern age AIs still seem to have around in fair numbers, and 4 individual MA are vastly more useful for thta kind of job than a single army could be).


The_Hawk:

Question though. Can you Airlift an empty Army? I thought that GLs and Armies couldn't be airlifted. That would mean that if I load them on foreign soil, then I would have to ship them there all the time. What have you done when you've attacked someone light years away? I've had some campaigns where I had to sail for more than 13 turns before I got to the enemy. Imagine having to make a return trip to bring more armies? Have you had this experience? What was your approach?

Empty armies can't be airlifted either (never tried with a GL - don't know if they can be helicoptered either).

I've never actually fought a war against an opponent requiring that much sea travel, or at least not under circumstances where reinforceements were needed. I tend to go for the overwhelming concentration of force approach. F'rinstance to capture two Russian cities defended by infantry, I landed 8 artillery, an army of 2 MA, 8 MA and 5 MI. Complete overkill, but you never know when things are going to go apallingly badly.

The only times I've fought an opponent that far away, much of the journery has been overland. Someone else's land initially, but I tend to stick to conquering opponents by order of ease of reaching them (unless there are pressing reasons not to). So in the Babylon game, when I wanted to invade Germany, I'd already taken out the island of China, and the Indians who were on the near side of the continent. The crossing from my island to China was 1 turn in a transport at the nearest point. The crossing from China to India was less. Well organised use of transports meant that it was just about possible to produce a unit in babylon and shift it across two passages of water and two continents, and have it fight the same turn it was produced. I've never yet played on a map where it took a long time to get units to the front, as long as I chose which civs to fight with that in mind. But them I've never played on (e.g.) huge maps with archipelago and 80% water...

[Catt]

Originally posted by Theseus
But you ARE giving up 80 (!) potential attacks by putting 40 MAs into Armies.

Hey, I like Armies as much as the next guy (ha!), but MAs are too powerful individually to degrade this way. I am, of course, in love with adding an MA to a 3X Tank Army.

Nowadays, I pretty much listen very closely to what Theseus (rpodos) says about armies.

I don't like putting MA into armies. On a blitz attack, oftentimes enemy cities are one enemy tile away, and oftentimes two tiles away. Three modern armour = six attacks in the "one tile" circumstances, three attacks in the "two tile" circumstances; an army of three MA equals two attacks in "one tile;" one attack in "two tile." Even if you don't use all six available attacks, you retain the final movement point and therefore the ability to either (i) use a wounded MA as a garrison, or (ii) use a wounded MA as a disband (for shields).

OTOH, I love putting tanks into armies. A two or three tank army is a guaranteed (just about ) winner against infantry foritfied in a metropolis on a hill across a river. Save those tank armies for the really tough nuts-to-crack. When Computers come along, throw an MI or two on top of the tank armies -- you've now got the best defense on top of a strong offensive weapon that is still useful against fortified MI and all of which is a two-move unit; very nice .

(Tactic used with the implied permission of of the mixed army guru, rpodos/Theseus).

Catt

[Theseus]

Thanks Catt... yeah, throwing an MI into a 3X Tank Army is a gamestopper... the AI can't deal with it at all (think of Norman in one of the Harvey Mudd episodes of the original Star Trek... cannot compute, cannot compute), and I believe it'll be a standard concept in MP.

Hawk,

I haven't played MTiv (cool convention, BTW), and if it's as mountainous and slow-moving as you report, I can see the hp advantage of an MA Army being meaningful. I buy that... the Nutcracker (Bismarck being the Mouse King, for me at least... I hate that guy). But otherwise, MAs are just too good individually to pack into an Army... that's one of the reasons I love adding them to a progressive mixed-unit Army, as they are the first to fight in each of the blitz battles.

In a way, you're talking about the end-result of UP (tm). Seriously, against the AI, 70+ MA, whether individually or packed into Armies, is game over. The most I've had is maybe 125, although I've seen references to 200+... at this point we're not talkin' serious strategy, but rather experimentation.

Sounds like you had fun though.

[Solver]

As much as this is an excellent post, I do see a few problems with what you mention, and I've done invasions in a fashion a bit different. I'm now off to play Civ, then write one strategy article, and then return here with comments .

[jshelr]

I started out doubting the wisdom of MA armies a couple of days ago, but have changed my mind for some circumstances due to the arguments presented here and the "Babylon and on" game.

If you can blitz an inferrior opponent, which is the circumstance we normally face, don't use MA armies, since they give up to many movement points.

If, like the Babylon game, circumstances present you with cities full of MI and arty, then you are not going to blitz and MA armies radically increase unit survivability.

I followed a different strategy in that game from Vulture, taking more time and moving large stacks of radar artillery within two squares of each target city over 12 pop. Worked great, but was too slow, and I ended up in 2050 an eyelash short of the domination win. Heartbreaking. One of Vulture's keys to winning, IMO, was that he retained the speed of MA and created the needed survivability via armies. (Babylon was a small country and could not overwhelm the AI with massive MA production.)

[vulture]

jshelr:

I followed a different strategy in that game from Vulture, taking more time and moving large stacks of radar artillery within two squares of each target city over 12 pop. Worked great, but was too slow, and I ended up in 2050 an eyelash short of the domination win. Heartbreaking. One of Vulture's keys to winning, IMO, was that he retained the speed of MA and created the needed survivability via armies. (Babylon was a small country and could not overwhelm the AI with massive MA production.)

I'm inclined to agree, especially having read your comments about losing 35 (or so) MA whilst failing to take Berlin. I took it with 5 MA armies without losing a unit (IIRC). Different games, different situations, admittedly, but it was still a big town on a hill with MI and artillery defence.

But, it all depends on the game circumstances. Sometimes MA armies are a waste.

I think defensive artillery is a big factor here. Radar artillery are very likely to knock at least 1 hp of an attacking unit. If that takes a veteran MA from 4 to 3 hp, that actually dramatically lowers its chances against the defending MI (when I get to my laptop I'll have a look at what it does to the odds). It could easily make you the underdog in a single ocmbat rather than the likely winner.

And just in case this begins to look like a thread-jack, I'll get back to the point by repeating that chosing the makeup of your invasion force (especially in regard to how many armie to include) depends quite severely on the type of terrain you will be travelling over. In hills and mountains you need more armies and/or artillery. In open terrain, MA is king, and lots of individual units is the way to go.

Sounds like something from the 'Art of War' (thread or book) - much of the victory is won by planning and good intelligence gathering.

[jshelr]

I think maybe it was Deep0 who was battered in Berlin. In my game, Berlin was Indian and a pussycat by the time we arrived on the scene. I diid have a disappointing experience in the first turn after taking a beachhead city in America though, teaching the same lesson -- apply enough of the right kind of power.

[The_Hawk]

Vulture:

And just in case this begins to look like a thread-jack, I'll get back to the point by repeating that chosing the makeup of your invasion force (especially in regard to how many armie to include) depends quite severely on the type of terrain you will be travelling over. In hills and mountains you need more armies and/or artillery. In open terrain, MA is king, and lots of individual units is the way to go.

Great point and I agree with your assessment about MAs in open terrain. Don't forget, my initial premise is starting with the beach head and proceeding from there. I generally tend to prefer to have my first wave of forces be enough to sustain a cluster of adjacent cities. As Theseus mentioned in his piece and did I, campaigns tend to work best when you attack on adjacent lines. However, I always try to position myself to land and attack from the square I land. That way, I only have to endure one wave of undefended assaults from the enemy. When including slow moving units like infantry to maybe defend cities or escort artillery, it becomes more imperative. Otherwise, if you have to travel too much BEFORE you attack, then your chances of success dwindle with each tile.

(NOTE: I once had to defend against an attack from the Persions where they had a stack of like 120 immortals and like 30 spearman! My scouts and spies spotted the impending assault about 4 turns from my nearest city. I slept on them, because we had just had a military alliance to destroy Babylon. However, because of their slow movement rate, I was able to speed my own stacks of Knights to the scene. Through some creative tactical maneuvers and the attack/retreat capabilities of my knights, I weathered the storm without losing a single city!)

So, while I agree with your point that more armies may be benefial in Modern Era warfare, when travelling across mountains, I do tend to think that the flexibility factor is favorable when trying to penetrate a well defended AI. Once you get your Airport, its pretty much about who can produce the quickest and I always try to influence and diminish his production capabilities during my campaigns (see above).