Attacking unconnected continents...

[Neekirul]

I was wondering how people usually go about trying to attack civs on faraway continents? I can't easily keep a good naval presence due to continually having to retreat and repair, and whenever I land with troops they get absolutely swarmed with nearby production.

Any strategies for this?

[Dominae]

For inter-continental invasions, I do the following: approximate how many units you're going to need (land and naval), then only go in when you have double to triple that number. This is the most important "strategy" that I can think of.

Some other tips:

Landings are best done with (not unrealistically) Infantry, and onto Mountain or Hill tiles. Make one or two big stacks, bring along a whole bunch of Infantry, and just watch the AI squirm.

Do not expect to capture many cities very fast, unless you're vastly more powerful than your target (primarily in tech). Thus, be prepared for major WW when fighting wars on another continent. More than once I've been force to give it all up because my people were angry.

Before attacking any cities, make sure the brunt of the AI force has depleted itself on your invasionary force. Since the AI does not always attack a well-defended stack (Infantry on a Mountain), it is sometimes necessary to move your troops into less defensible terrain such that they will appear to be better targets.

Once you secure a town or two, do not be afraid to spend some serious cash to rush-buy improvements like Harbors and Barracks on the new continent (or cultural buildings, if things calm down and you fear flips).

Good luck!


Dominae

[eewolf]

Here is one way, if you have the resources and techs:

use infantry, marines, battleships (ironclads or destroyers, too) and cavalry (tanks if ya got em). find an enemy coastal city built on hills and use the battleships to pound the defenders. then attack with the marines from the transports (bring at least a transport full, maybe 2). when the city is taken, bring transports full of cavalry or tanks into the city and they can attack on that same turn. You might be able to gain another city or two in that first turn. then weather the counterattack and pillage everything in sight (bring arty, too, if you can). you should be able to broker a city or two with a peace treaty. if you destroy their road/rail system, they will not be able to recover before the 20 turn peace treaty ends. but you will probably have brought in boat loads of military and workers by then.

eewolf

[DaveMcW]

Attack at two points on the continent. The AI will commint all their forces countering your first landing, leaving the other side undefended.

[Theseus]

Overwhelming force. Bombardment. Attrition.

I don;t do it that often, as it can be laborious, but a major, combined arms intercontinental invasion can be a lot of fun every once in a while.

[Neekirul]

I give up with attacking other continents. Too many neighbors to piss off.

[Konquest02]

As Dave said, attack on two points. But I shall add: attack on two points, but not simultaneously. Let a turn or 2 between your landings, more if the opponent doesn't have railroads. This force should e composed of some infantry, but mostly mobile units, to take a few cities rapidly...

Size DOES matter!

--Kon--

[nbarclay]

One trick for attacking another continent is to find a weak civ to hit first. If one is available (and doesn't have a MPP with a major power), you can probably bring in enough forces to take them out (or at least their core) in the first wave, and then you can use that civ's former territory as a staging area to bring in most of the rest of your forces to take on the larger, more powerful civs there.

Note that after you get Flight, if you build airports in several of your home cities and rush one on the other continent, you can airlift in several units per turn without having them subject to enemy counterattack in transit. That lets you keep your newly built forces flowing into action about as quickly as the enemy can get their newly built troops into action. Getting that first city and quelling its resistance so you can rush build can be a bit tricky if you have to take on a major power to do it, but if you can find a small, backward nation, the rest of the war is little more difficult from fighting at home.

The other main time I'm most likely to attack another continent is if I have a tech lead around the beginning of the industrial era. Until an AI gets Magnetism, it has no really effective warships to attack caravels or galleons with, so the only real problem shuttling troops back and forth is time. Couple that with the advantages of my having cavalry and my opponent's not having anything better than musketmen to defend with and a pretty good romp is possible. But it takes a good tech lead to build up and land such a force before the AIs are ready to counter it (although large numbers of horseman or knight upgrades can speed up the process).

I tend to shun all war to the extent I can from the time rivals get riflemen to the time I have tanks. (Exception: if I'm playing the Ottomans, riflemen don't bother me anywhere near as much.) I have no love at all for cavalry-vs.-infantry or infantry-vs.-infantry slugging matches even on my own continent, and going after another continent where enemy warships can attack my troop transports along the way is worse. Going up against riflemen isn't as bad as going against infantry, but it's still not my idea of loads of fun (aside from the aforementioned Ottoman exception).

Nathan

[Datajack Franit]

Why don't you just nuke the whole place?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Datajack Franit
Why don't you just nuke the whole place?

Because of self-imposed rules of war:
Only use nukes against a metro defended by MI, and then only if it can be attacked in the same turn by your ground forces. Nukes are to be utilized only when all other significant powers are also at war with the enemy (so they don't declare war against YOU for initiating nuclear warfare).

Usually, nukes are better as a potential to use rather than to actually use them.

[MoonWolf]

I normally attack a city that are on the other end of a chokepoint if possible. This way I can easy make some buffer zone. I usually attacks before marines are available, so I would need a great force to survive the first wave of AI-soldiers (Unless I'm attacking a weak civ of course). Also bringing in some workers to add to the newly taken city or to make a fortress in one turn at the chokepoint, can be useful.

And like others have pointed out, build harbor/airport/barracks/ cultur quickly

[MrWhereItsAt]

Throw the continent into diplomatic chaos if you can first up - if there are multiple civs there, get them at each others' throats. Then either pick off the winnner's core (all his troops are at the front), and be prepared for massive counterattack, or just raze the lot of it; or take the loser's remaining cities when his back has been broken.

[minke19104]

One word: Bezerkir...

Seriously, if you have PTW, Bezerkir is really a powerful unit to use. They have 5 attack and 2 def ( i think). All throught middle ages in my game, I have only 1-2 knights for defensive purpose (they're fast) only in my continent. Meanwhile I have massive bezerkir army in Galleons waiting to trash other civs around.

Scandinavian is a way to go. Their early Marine-like attack city from galley invasion capability is awesome. With 5 attack you can basically kill any defender up until Musketmen (fortified riflemen might give you some trouble though). Too bad they upgrade to Guerilla instead of Marines

[Jawa Jocky]

Take one city with a massive naval invasion. Rush an airport. Airlift the rest on your units.

[Japher]

Jawa I did that, eventually.

I started the invasion without the airport, and was constantly moving troops around.

A good thing to keep in mind as your building Galleons is to make sure to give your town a harbor and/or barracks so that you can upgrade your Galleons to transports as soon as possible.

[CerberusIV]

One refinement that is worthwhile if you are worried about that first captured city culture flipping back is to pound it down to a small size, capture it, move a settler in on a transport, move the transport back out (very important ), disband the city and build a new city with your settler, all in one turn.

Hey presto, a city with no residual culture and no foreign citizens so much less chance of flipping (no chance at all unless it has a tile overlap with an enemy city).

You do need to reduce the target city to a small size first in order to be able to disband it immediately but I would do that anyway to reduce the defensive bonus to help my marines.

This isn't strictly necessary but I feel it does give me a more secure base on the other continent.

[minke19104]

Or...

with PTW, when you capture the city with marines just abandon it. This way you'll get free slave workers. Use one of your worker to make an airfield terrain improvement.
Your worker will dissapear and turn into an airfield but who cares.... After that immidiately in the same turn send your Mech Infantries and Tanks by airdrops.

This is much cheaper than a rushed airport, since the worker that turned into an airfield is not evenr yours. The main drawback is that there wont be any fortify in city defense bonus. However if you by chance get 2 workers from the abandoned city, make 1 into an airfield and another one into a radar tower. Make sure u defend it though..

[Centauri18]

I usually capture a large city, then build an airport. First you use your forces to occupy the cioty until the resistance has worn itself out and to defend against enemy attacks, then once the resistance is over, rush build an airport, build a few defensive units, then attack. You can build offensive units in your homeland, then airlift them over to the enemy continent. The only problem is you can't airlift workers to start building railroads and such once the enemy is taken care of. I guess you just start building said workers or raze a few enemy cities, and put the population to work.
Well, that works for me, anyway. I never use nukes.