Why not modern era warring?

[walkern]

I've read quite a few comments on this thread that state something along the lines of "you don't want war dragging into the modern era."

Why do so many people say this? Is it just because they want to have the game won by then? Is it too dangerous because the tides can turn so fast?

Like Vel, I enjoy mostly the non-combat aspects of the game, and using a civ's advantages to put them ahead of everyone else but maintaing a fairly strong, medium sized army that can fend off any attackers and take an important border city or two. I'm trying something for fun this time: I'm playing Mongolia on a standard Lakes map on Normal speed/Noble diff., and I used Vel's warmongering strategy for most of the game: just beat the tar out of people but don't finish them off and keep extorting money out of them. It's been quite educational in terms of all of the combat units, especially the modern ones, which I haven't played with much until now.

There's only about 75 turns left and I don't think anyone is going to finish the space race, but I could if I wanted to. I'm more interested in exploring what happens if I continue thrashing everyone. I'll definitely win on points if nothing else, but I have noticed that using a warring civ, I haven't maintained the very strong point lead I have with other games.

I have an absolutely unmatched army; enormous force of bombers and tanks and extremely mobile with railroads, and I'm at least a few techs ahead of England, the only other civ that can compete. I've dispatched Germany and Spain and I'm rolling over Persia. Elizabeth has been my rival in size and population most of the game but we have had friendly relations, which will last until I'm done with Persia and nuke every city they have in one turn, roll through and finish most of them off. I need to check but I may be the only civ with uranium at all.

I'm playing normal speed and India is still around too, with a large pop and lots of cities but way behind in tech. I'm considering the "nuclear diplomacy" option someone once suggested: nuke the population of the rest of the world and get yourself elected world leader. No one has the UN and I could build it in a few turns with buy rush.

Anyways, it's a lot of fun to play and if you've got a lot of money and the right civ, very doable, at least with my setup (Noble/Normal speed/Lakes). I'm just curious as to why people don't like modern age wars. Any insight?

NW

[wehrmacht]

I actually prefer wars in the modern age - as long as I have built the UN and have disabled nukes.

Without the temptation to "just nuke 'em" I am forced to engage in very entertaining conventional land wars. In fact, I prefer to take on the toughest enemy just so I have a good fight. There's nothing like the rush of stealth bombing the bejesus out of an unsuspecting enemy, then rolling him with modern armor. A strong AI's counter attack, with or without allies is fun because it makes the final turns of the game, with or without a space race, even more exciting.

On Noble/Archipelago/Epic/Chinese this is usually a rather challenging method of end-game strategy, since all the AI's that don't like you will join forces with a stonger enemy and attack you all at once. I usually play with lots of ocean squares, so transporting armies across large bodies of enemy-infested waters (especially with enemy subs around) is FUN!

-War, it's fantastic.

[Badtz Maru]

I like modern warfare if I'm in the mood for it, but it's much more complicated and intense than in earlier eras, at least if you play to get the most out of your units - you can use more basic war tactics and win if you can throw enough strong units at the enemy, but it's a lot harder out-maneuvering the AI when they have access to rails and airdrops, and if you want to do well you'll have to make full use of those capabilities and air power as well. If you 'let a war drag into the modern era' then you're probably going to be spending about 5 times as much real time per game turn managing your armies.

There are many factors that make modern warfare different than earlier warfare in Civ4.

1. Greater mobility - the ships move faster, there's fast defensive units (Mech. Infantry), there's terrain-ignoring attack choppers, and on top of all that you have rails and airdrops. In modern times it's harder to find weak points in the enemies defenses because any weak point can have most of his army there in one turn.

2. Air power. I was guilty of ignoring this in my earlier games that made it to modern times, and until I learned to exploit it I found warfare intensely frustrating. I'd lose my strategic resources and find myself only able to build SAM infantry as the modern armor approached. My invading armies were whittled down to uselessness by the time they reached their targets. I lost all my sea battles because the AI is good about softening up your ships before attacking with their equal units. You have to build fighters, and it really helps to have plenty of bombers too. There's no excuse to not have every aircraft at full or near-full health run a mission each turn, unless it's one of the cloud of fighters you should have on intercept duty near your front lines in every war. Remember that you don't have to wait until a city has finished it's revolt to rebase planes there - that should be the first thing you do when you take your first enemy city, fill it with fighters and bombers and go to work with them softening up the enemy. If you start using your planes effectively, you'll find it as easy to tear apart a larger, stronger enemy as it is in earlier ages. It just takes more time per turn.

3. Strong offensive units. Modern units are stronger compared to the equivalent defenders than in most ages, except maybe the early bronze era when axemen dominate. They have a number of abilities that make modern units distinctively powerful on the offense. First, there's the Barrage promotion available as a first promotion on all the tanks. Suddenly, big stacks are not so scary. Secondly, there's the blitz ability, which makes Modern Armor with multiple Barrage promotions much more useful for softening up cities than artillery (which I tend to use defensively more as I leave the late industrial/early mdoern times). There is also a commonly available unit that starts with Amphibious attack - I hardly ever built Marines until about the fifth time I had my "Unstoppable" invasion stack of doom shredded the turn I landed by every unit in the defending country attacking at once. The old "Rush in and land your troops, take the city next turn" tactic doesn't work unless your invasion force is larger than the defender's entire army. City Raider promoted Marines can get you the city on the first turn if you throw enough of them at it.

4. Lots of promotions. In modern times, you tend to have a larger percentage of units with promotions. This is because of the greater prevalence of buildings that provide experience (Barracks, West Point, Pentagon, Dry Dock, Red Cross) and because of old units that have seen action and kept around. The latter can be especially powerful if you fought a lot of wars in the past, because you can get promotions that are overpowered on modern units that are intended for eras where defenders are stronger - I'm thinking specifically of City Raider. I use a variation of this earlier in the game - when I get Chemistry I often fight an offensive war with Grenadiers with multiple City Raider promotions that I made out of my Macemen/Samurai/Axemen/Praetorians from my last war, and the war usually ends with a lot of them getting more promotions. I've ended up with several Mechanized Infantry with 5 promotions, and dozens with 3 or more. Mech. Infantry with City Raider 3, Combat 1, and Pinch are a damn fine replacement for Modern Armor. This makes modern warfare more complicated because you have more promotions to deal with - which is better to attack with, the Mech. Infantry with City Raider 3 or the Modern Armor with Barrage? Should you promote all your units at once, or keep some unpromoted in case the enemy promotes their defenders halfway through the war and City Raider is better than Barrage on your tanks?

Essentially, combat in Civ4 gets progressively more complex and detailed as the game progresses, and by the time you reach Modern Era fighting a war is a totally different experience from earlier in the game, and takes a lot more of your game time. Some people like the combat model in the game until the later changes, and then don't like it so much, and so they try to avoid fighting wars later in the game.

[SandMonkey]

I love modern warfare in Civ IV. I'm actually playing a game with a modern start and epic speed just so that I can fight a modern war for a very long time. I think that modern warfare gives you the widest range of options for dealing with a variety of situations.

Bombardment: artillery, bombers, or ships?
Collateral damage: artillery, bombers or tanks (w/ promotion)?
Destroying enemy resources: bombers, fighters, tanks, gunships?

And those are just a few examples of how multiple unit types can perform the same task. With all of these options, how can a modern war not be fun?

[johnmcd]

I avoid it as it takes so long to move and arrange units. Pre flight infantry are the last units are go to war with.

I do wish there was an 'auto garrison' button, where the city governers would evenly distribute your forces with the loose change going to border towns. It would save me deciding around tanks (industrialisation) whether or not I was going to win and starting again. I've played about a dozen games past there but stopped enjoying it.

[axisworks]

I also love warring in the Modern Era. The only drawbacks I've found revolve around the fact that there are usually a couple AIs that have amassed gigantic militaries by then, and warring with them can take dozens of turns (in some cases up to a hundred) depending on how you have things set up. This can get a bit tedious after a while.

[JackRudd]

Modern-era warfare is fun. So much so that I like turning off all victory conditions except conquest.

[Warmaker]

Against a competent opponent, modern warfare can be tough and very messy.

If you think those stealth bombers, jet fighters, artillery (sort of), mechanized infantry, modern armor, etc., are awesome when you declare war on someone, think of how those things can perform with a competent defender, especially with the proper terrain.

A combined arms force is optimal for your offensive operations, but it is even better for a defender. With a large reliance it seems by players to airpower and stealth bomber attacks, what if the defender has heavily invested in jet fighters and SAM units?

A decently set up modern defense is practically impregnable. A competent defender will set his best defenses away from a city if he can, since cities actually can have worse defenses than other forms / combinations of terrain, i.e. forested / jungle hilltops.

A proper modern defense can hold off far more attackers than any other era.

[uberfish]

Modern war is fine. What I find irritating is invading other continents - I can't stand micromanaging shipping all the troops and reinforcements around.

[PaganPaulwhisky]

I think the disparaging comments about modern warfare applied to emperor level or above. On these levels if you dont dominate early, the massive production bonuses and tech advantages will probably overwhelm all but the best of players. The AI will probably have better units and more of them which will make things extremely difficult even with sound military strategy.

On lower levels its easy to beat the tar out of everyone by ignoring space race and beelining to modern armor. On Prince level I can often fight 3 opponents at the same time and rocket myself to domination in the modern age. Monarch gives a pretty good challenge in the modern age and the wars can be very long and strategic as the AI will have units on par with you. On emperor I usually get ground into dust particles well before the modern age or just give up in frustration.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by uberfish
Modern war is fine. What I find irritating is invading other continents - I can't stand micromanaging shipping all the troops and reinforcements around.

Yeah, transports should be for thirty units and have huge movements, destroyers and the like should intercept them like planes, not have to sail up and attack.

[greenday_234]

Ahhh modern wars, where I really shine. Of course people will disagree with me but I love to launch massive invasions of continents in the late game. My basic strategy boils down to this in the late game,

1. if you don't already own the conintent you wish to invade and there are two countries on it, usually there are for me in the Conitents map I play. Invade the weakest one first as to setup a base of operations.

2. MASS BUILD stealth bombers, about 75 percent of my invading army is stealth bombers and jets. With the stealth on the front lines, of the poor civ I just invaded, with strong defenses, really strong defenses. Otherwise, in my current game, I could fatally lose 100 stealth, not going to happen I then place the jets on carriers surrounding the country I'm preparing to invade. At this point I have TOTAL air coverage.

3. Prepare boots on the ground. I usually go with 3 seperate decent sized armies comprised of mech for defense of captured lands and modern armor for attacking. (I usually have a great deal of permotions on these units because of the Pentagon)

4. Shock and Awe. This is the first turn of war. Given my massive air superority usually the AI won't have an airforce of much conciquence. My first move is to take out his commerce, every town,village etc. must be destroyed and I can usually accomplish that in one turn. Commerce is key because this (against a sizable foe) can cause units to be destroyed without firing a shot. The AI with disband them because it can no longer afford them Next I take out resources, then farms to starve there cities.

5. turn 2 bomb down there military defenses and move my 3 army groupings in, and take 3 cities in one turn more shock and awe. This worked out great in my current game because the first 3 happened to be the best 3.

Now this kind of army of scale comes with some drawbacks. You have to reduce science funding to support such a large military and you have to have a decent number of cities to give some support to said army. I personally haven't had to reduce science (much) because my permanent ally supports the cost in exchange for pretection. This has worked wonderfully so far for me on noble difficulty.

[greenday_234]

Ahhh modern wars, where I really shine. Of course people will disagree with me but I love to launch massive invasions of continents in the late game. My basic strategy boils down to this in the late game,

1. if you don't already own the conintent you wish to invade and there are two countries on it, usually there are for me in the Conitents map I play. Invade the weakest one first as to setup a base of operations.

2. MASS BUILD stealth bombers, about 75 percent of my invading army is stealth bombers and jets. With the stealth on the front lines, of the poor civ I just invaded, with strong defenses, really strong defenses. Otherwise, in my current game, I could fatally lose 100 stealth, not going to happen I then place the jets on carriers surrounding the country I'm preparing to invade. At this point I have TOTAL air coverage.

3. Prepare boots on the ground. I usually go with 3 seperate decent sized armies comprised of mech for defense of captured lands and modern armor for attacking. (I usually have a great deal of permotions on these units because of the Pentagon)

4. Shock and Awe. This is the first turn of war. Given my massive air superority usually the AI won't have an airforce of much conciquence. My first move is to take out his commerce, every town,village etc. must be destroyed and I can usually accomplish that in one turn. Commerce is key because this (against a sizable foe) can cause units to be destroyed without firing a shot. The AI with disband them because it can no longer afford them Next I take out resources, then farms to starve there cities.

5. turn 2 bomb down there military defenses and move my 3 army groupings in, and take 3 cities in one turn more shock and awe. This worked out great in my current game because the first 3 happened to be the best 3.

Now this kind of army of scale comes with some drawbacks. You have to reduce science funding to support such a large military and you have to have a decent number of cities to give some support to said army. I personally haven't had to reduce science (much) because my permanent ally supports the cost in exchange for pretection. This has worked wonderfully so far for me on noble difficulty.

[greenday_234]

Ahhh modern wars, where I really shine. Of course people will disagree with me but I love to launch massive invasions of continents in the late game. My basic strategy boils down to this in the late game,

1. if you don't already own the conintent you wish to invade and there are two countries on it, usually there are for me in the Conitents map I play. Invade the weakest one first as to setup a base of operations.

2. MASS BUILD stealth bombers, about 75 percent of my invading army is stealth bombers and jets. With the stealth on the front lines, of the poor civ I just invaded, with strong defenses, really strong defenses. Otherwise, in my current game, I could fatally lose 100 stealth, not going to happen I then place the jets on carriers surrounding the country I'm preparing to invade. At this point I have TOTAL air coverage.

3. Prepare boots on the ground. I usually go with 3 seperate decent sized armies comprised of mech for defense of captured lands and modern armor for attacking. (I usually have a great deal of permotions on these units because of the Pentagon)

4. Shock and Awe. This is the first turn of war. Given my massive air superority usually the AI won't have an airforce of much conciquence. My first move is to take out his commerce, every town,village etc. must be destroyed and I can usually accomplish that in one turn. Commerce is key because this (against a sizable foe) can cause units to be destroyed without firing a shot. The AI with disband them because it can no longer afford them Next I take out resources, then farms to starve there cities.

5. turn 2 bomb down there military defenses and move my 3 army groupings in, and take 3 cities in one turn more shock and awe. This worked out great in my current game because the first 3 happened to be the best 3.

Now this kind of army of scale comes with some drawbacks. You have to reduce science funding to support such a large military and you have to have a decent number of cities to give some support to said army. I personally haven't had to reduce science (much) because my permanent ally supports the cost in exchange for pretection. This has worked wonderfully so far for me on noble difficulty.

[greenday_234]

Ahhh modern wars, where I really shine. Of course people will disagree with me but I love to launch massive invasions of continents in the late game. My basic strategy boils down to this in the late game,

1. if you don't already own the conintent you wish to invade and there are two countries on it, usually there are for me in the Conitents map I play. Invade the weakest one first as to setup a base of operations.

2. MASS BUILD stealth bombers, about 75 percent of my invading army is stealth bombers and jets. With the stealth on the front lines, of the poor civ I just invaded, with strong defenses, really strong defenses. Otherwise, in my current game, I could fatally lose 100 stealth, not going to happen I then place the jets on carriers surrounding the country I'm preparing to invade. At this point I have TOTAL air coverage.

3. Prepare boots on the ground. I usually go with 3 seperate decent sized armies comprised of mech for defense of captured lands and modern armor for attacking. (I usually have a great deal of permotions on these units because of the Pentagon)

4. Shock and Awe. This is the first turn of war. Given my massive air superority usually the AI won't have an airforce of much conciquence. My first move is to take out his commerce, every town,village etc. must be destroyed and I can usually accomplish that in one turn. Commerce is key because this (against a sizable foe) can cause units to be destroyed without firing a shot. The AI with disband them because it can no longer afford them Next I take out resources, then farms to starve there cities.

5. turn 2 bomb down there military defenses and move my 3 army groupings in, and take 3 cities in one turn more shock and awe. This worked out great in my current game because the first 3 happened to be the best 3.

Now this kind of army of scale comes with some drawbacks. You have to reduce science funding to support such a large military and you have to have a decent number of cities to give some support to said army. I personally haven't had to reduce science (much) because my permanent ally supports the cost in exchange for pretection. This has worked wonderfully so far for me on noble difficulty.

[greenday_234]

sorry gentlemen, computer problems. Moderator please delete excess copies of the same post. My apologies once again.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by greenday_234
Ahhh modern wars, where I really shine. ... This has worked wonderfully so far for me on noble difficulty.

Sounds like you definitely need to step up the difficulty.

[wehrmacht]

I agree with johnmcd...If you can have an army that large, and roll the enemy that quickly and easily, you need a higher difficulty level!

[greenday_234]

I totally agree with that and I do plan on increasing the difficulty. And certainly my post wasn't meant as a strategy for others more so it was just more an explaination of what I love about modern era wars. Some things to note though on the explaination of my mass amounts of cash at hand.

1. I have a massive empire as I am an early warmonger

2. I run State Property which MASSIVELY reduces maintance costs, combine that with courthouses and maintance on cities is almost insignifigant

3. I usually don't fund future tech above 60 percent and I run it on average at about 30%. My culture is usually o.k. by my standards and so I usually don't set that above 20%

4. I've greatly increased the # of turns in the epic game for personal preferances because I like having plenty of time as my war planning can consume anywhere from 50-100 turns to get everything in place. So thats why I have so much time in the modern era to do this

5. I also build cottages early on to a tremendous degree, (maybe even to a fault) So always have an economic powerhouse by the late game.

6. Also permanent alliances are huge. As a matter of fact you guys are right in the sense that I would be dead broke with such a large military but my permanent ally finances it. Right now my ally is Germany who finances to me about 650 gold per turn. I pick my allies based on GNP rating, the total sum of their city sizes, mean city size, median city size. and a few other items of interest and then put that on a point value scale. I total up all points for possible allied candidates and take the one with the highest score. Which has worked brilliantly cause you always end up in an alliance of value.

So while I do agree that I must bump up the difficulty as things are becoming too "systematic" for me, I just felt it necessary to give deeper detail of where all that money comes from. Also not included in here where the obvious Banks grocers etc. etc.

[Shaka II]

Badtz Maru.

Originally posted by PaganPaulwhisky
I think the disparaging comments about modern warfare applied to emperor level or above. On these levels if you dont dominate early, the massive production bonuses and tech advantages will probably overwhelm all but the best of players. The AI will probably have better units and more of them which will make things extremely difficult even with sound military strategy.

Yes, this is mainly the reason I prefer not to let it "drag out into the modern era", playing emperor. It depends on what type of victory condition you're playing for, but this remark is aimed at domination or conquest play.

When the AI gets biology, there is explosive growth in population, military and science via specialists. If one or two of the AI's break away with this exponential growth, it's too late to fight them. You have to wait for parity in the modern era. The next opportunity is with mech infantry, artillery, gunships, fighters, SAMs, marines. If you fail, then it goes to the next step which is modern armor, jets, stealth bombers.

I've played a number of games into the modern era, and it is fun. I really get into it. But after having done it a number of times, I find it's more fun to end the games before the modern era, with at most infantry, but more often grenadiers and cannons. Marathon speed allows you to do this, since the unit costs are a bit less, and you have more turns to move them, which are the main limitations on the faster speeds.

If you're playing normal speed, at emperor, then it's more difficult to end the game early. Also, on a large or huge map, it's harder to end the game early. Lately, I've been winning by domination by 1300AD or shortly after on a standard/pangea/marathon/emperor. That gets you 80,000+ points, which is one of the reasons for ending early. It makes a contest out of it. But the main reason is that it's more fun. Marathon speed lets your units march right across the world, attaining numerous promotions in the process, without becoming obsolete, and then upgrading eventually to city raider III grenadiers and city raider III cannons. But the slower ancient, medieval, and rennaissance units, without rails or flight, offer a chess-like experience, which is what I like the most about civ.

If you're mainly a builder, then the modern era is essential, but not so for the conquest type player. Marathon speed allows even huge maps to be won on domination or conquest, though probably at a later date than on a standard map. In the end, it's about what provides the most fun experience. I never get tired of exploring those early maps, settling down to build my civ, and working my way up the technology tree. But the ancient and medieval periods are the most fun for me, followed by the renaissance and industrial eras, but I prefer to end it before the modern era.

To give you an idea of what I mean by dragging on into the modern era; game on normal speed/pangea/standard size/emperor/Romans, I made it into the modern era with one significant civ left, except he had a science lead on me and a huge army, twice the size of mine (Capac). Though I had enough land area to qualify for domination, I didn't have enough population. So, I spent 100 years from 1860 to 1960 building my army, while researching to composites. When I reached parity to his army strength (limited probably by support cost), I declared war and took five or six cities in about 15 turns to gain me the domination win. It was a fun game, but the earlier wars were more fun.

So the trick is not to let the AI get too powerful at any point past the medieval era, to use diplomacy and tech bribes to get the AI leaders to fight, but if one becomes too successful at it, then it's necessary to go after him, with more tech bribes, until you're strong enough to take him on. Rinse and repeat.

[Termilyn]

I'll join the modern warfare fan club. I play on prince and occassionally Noble (if I have suffered too many defeats and just want to beat something).

Even though I post most of my games on CivFanatics HoF, where speed of victory is a big factor, I'm content to play the whole game and not just to Calvary( or Preatorians). The thing I found most different from earlier armies is you have to group your units to compliment each other. Early on you can get away with a less diverse group. The best way to lose a tank is run it out without SAMs and/or MEch Infantry for cover from gunships. Also the more stacks you can break into the better, The AI using artillery to decimate a killer stack really bites.

[Shaka II]

It's true that combined arms are more important in the modern era, but part of that is due to the mobility afforded by rails and air, and to some extent water. If you leave your tanks exposed, a gunship mayl come from 6 tiles away and destroy it. Because of that, you lose some of the close interaction that you feel in a good chess game, e.g., you see an opponents move, you counter it. In the modern era, pieces come from many tiles away at times, whole artillery stacks can come by rail 10 tiles away and annihilate your stack. So, you have to keep stacks smaller than about 5 and mixed arms like you say.

But even in the ancient era, you'll want to add some axemen to take care of melee units, spearmen to take care of horse archers, horse archers to take care of catapults, and swordsmen and catapults to attack the city. Combined arms. It's there for all eras, it's just at a more tangible level in the premodern eras.

[Spiderjeru]

Never underestimate the power of spies in modern warfare. The AI has not once used them defensively in a game I've played, and with enough of them out and spread all over your opponent's territory, you've got a complete picture of his deployment of forces. That's a huge advantage, and it frees up fighters you might normally have used to scout. Just a thought...

[snafuc4]

Originally posted by Spiderjeru
Never underestimate the power of spies in modern warfare. [..] That's a huge advantage, and it frees up fighters you might normally have used to scout. Just a thought...

..Except for the huge amount of resources it takes to build the NW that allows spies, & then dedicating that city to producing them (& nothing else), & allowing spies to sabotage but do little else, you may be right..

IMO spies should be able to steal beakers towards tech, maps, & should be available to build in any city within your civ (maybe not with the bonuses that the NW city gives). They should also have promotions enabling them to carry out the above, & should be introduced /much/ earlier - as they were in RL

Fomenting riots (a good thing) & sabotage (a bad thing) are something else I'd have to consider..

[uberfish]

Building spies and using them to sabotage the enemy oil is very effective against a modern civ at tech parity or even one that's slightly ahead. Easily worth the expense, as without oil they can't put up much of a fight against tanks and bombers.

I really miss the civ 2 diplomat, guess it was overpowered though!

[Badtz Maru]

Originally posted by Spiderjeru
Never underestimate the power of spies in modern warfare. The AI has not once used them defensively in a game I've played, and with enough of them out and spread all over your opponent's territory, you've got a complete picture of his deployment of forces. That's a huge advantage, and it frees up fighters you might normally have used to scout. Just a thought...

Problem with using them for scouting is you're only allowed a limited number at a time - I think it's 3, though this may go up on bigger maps, not sure.

[Spiderjeru]

Originally posted by snafuc4

..Except for the huge amount of resources it takes to build the NW that allows spies, & then dedicating that city to producing them (& nothing else), & allowing spies to sabotage but do little else, you may be right..

Honestly, by the point in the game where spies are active I usually buy rush the wonder. If I can't afford to do that, my Ironworks city can usually put out either SY or Red Cross, and SY comes first.

You're right about spy abilities needing a boost though. Stealing techs is sort of what spies should be all about...ah well.