Maginot lines

[Starfarer]

Because I'm nice I went and did the search for you. *L*


"Old age and skill will overcome youth and treachery. "
*deity of THE DEITIANS*


His sig, minus his ICQ number.

[Lancer]

I'd love to see a WWI scn.

[Heraclitus]

Originally posted by Lancer
I'd love to see a WWI scn.

There was a pretty good one for vanilla civ. I’t would be great to see an updated version for BtS, especially the spying and quests mechanic could play very nicely into the WWI feel.

[Heraclitus]

Re: Maginot lines

Originally posted by Chemical Ollie
Do you use them? How, when and why?

I usually start to build them in the age of riflemen and grenadiers, at choke points or at my borders, to prevent sneak attacks or to simply keep the enemy out of my land during war. 2-3 units in each tile, of various types to provide combined arms, and upgrades to fit the type of terrain in the tile. I also build forts if the tile is outside my city limits.

The enemy usually sends his Stack of Doom(TM) to attack the weakest point of the line. But he usually suffers far more casualties than he can inflict, and with some reserves behind the lines, I can fill the gaps on the next turn.

Then I keep the line and send my Stack of Doom(TM) in front of it, to attack a city or to just rape and plunder all the enemy's improvements. If I gain territory, I may move the line forwards. That will normally screw up the unit specialisation (woodsmen, guerilla etc), but by then the enemy is normally weaker and won't attack my line anyway.

I actually did that in C3C once. The barricade or whatever it was called gave a 100% defense bonus, making the enemy break their neck even on my single sentry unit in the tile, and even better it forced them to stop at the cost of being degraded into a fort. My mobile forces were there quickly to dispatch the aggressor and leave another unit as bait.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by joncnunn
The only thing worse than one Maginot line is the Maginot polygon. If indeed only attacked from one direction it may be a few turns even with rails to relocate 1/2 your army from the wrong borders.

I might also mention even if an AI is on your side of the war against the enemy AI, sometimes the enemy AI invades you thru them.

I think I've misunderstood your post here, but it sounds like you are saying that you shouldn't look to place your army where you see the threat?

[Starfarer]

I think his point was that one shouldn't set up a long line of defense and expect it to turn back a large stack of enemy troops.

See, the thing is, there are two advantages to remember in any war. The first is the Defender's Advantage... he is closer to his supply centers, he can generally outlast you if he has comparable numbers, he can quickly reinforce, and he has the benefit of static defenses (forts, walled cities, whatnot).

Then you have the Attackers Advantage. That is, he can attack from any direction, with any disposition of troops he chooses. Thus, the defender must DEFEND from EVERY direction, or risk dire consequences.

In Civilization 4, however, setting up long lines of troops is a recipe for disaster. You will, unless you FAR outnumber your enemy by a factor of at least six to one, have fewer units in and individual stack than he does. Worse, you cannot move units from a defended position to reinforce or shore up your defenses that are taking a beating without opening another hole in your defenses that an attacker can then exploit. Thus, if you have twenty units in ten two-unit stacks defending a border twenty spaces long (with a single space betwen each stack and the next), the enemy can bring the same number of units, twenty, and punch a large hole in your defense by attacking either end of your defensive line. The time it would take you to reallocate troops to repel him could very well be significantly less than the time it takes him to attack a city, defeat its garrison, and heal his troops. This effectively gives him a defensible position to fight you from, a foothold into your territory, and access to facilities to produce more units from (albeit woefully inadequate ones). To retake the city is generally going to require you to spend an enormous amount of resources in terms of units and reallocation of defensive borders.

You can largely eliminate this problem with the use of choke points, but those aren't foolproof. And in the event you have a "perfect" defensive position (ie, a large continent with mountains surrounding it, leaving only one or two "holes" for ingress/egress), the likelihood of which I will not discuss because of its infintesmal chance without cheating, you are pretty much "locked in" as much as anyone else is "locked out"... and that's only a defense that's effective untul someone gets an air force and comes over your mountains and pounds your backside with air strikes.

The vastly more effective option tends to be garrison units in cities with roads connected to them so the garrison units can hop out and proactively attack whenever possible, as well as a mobile "defensive offense" of whatever attacking units you have available. Knights work exceptionally well for this purpose, once you get them, and since they're useless on defense anyway, you may as well use a few of them for the purpose. They have the side benefit of Flanking, so they'll attack siege engines that would otherwise reduce your defenses to rubble.

Mind you, if you DO happen to outnumber potential enemies by gross margins, and you do not wish to attack them nor do you wish to disband large amounts of your military, a Maginot Line can be used. But as the Germans proved with the real Maginot Line, it is not a foolproof defensive plan, since you can always go around it.

And honestly, if you have enough units to build a Maginot Line defense, and can do so along all possible borders, you have obviously built an army that is fully capable of either taking offense or splitting itself into small brigades for mobile defense. It is simply more effective that way.

The real-world Maginot Line was used in WW2 as a method for France to defend against German invasion. Its purpose was not truly defense, but early-warning and delaying. It was an elaborate system, and had the Germans attacked it head on, it might have slowed their advance.

The Germans pretty much went around it. Although it should be mentioned that the places they DID attack it, the Line held up fairly successfully as it was intended.

So, to summarize:

A Maginot Line defense can be effective if you have the army to pull it off, but other methods are universally MORE effective in EVERY instance that this poster can think up.

[joncnunn]

Johnmcd , I believe Starfarer has the weakness of the Maginot Line in Civ IV stated perfectly.

[johnmcd]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Johnmcd , I believe Starfarer has the weakness of the Maginot Line in Civ IV stated perfectly.

Yes, clearly it's a useless tactic, I've no interest in it and never have done. My point is that the alternatives all demand careful consideration of where you do put your defensive troops, and that should be where you are most exposed to your most dangerous opponents.

[Tattila the Hun]

A question, if I have a fort, line of them or not, and it's defenders are defeated, and enemy occupies the spot, will he get the benefits of the fort?

[Starfarer]

Originally posted by johnmcd


Yes, clearly it's a useless tactic, I've no interest in it and never have done. My point is that the alternatives all demand careful consideration of where you do put your defensive troops, and that should be where you are most exposed to your most dangerous opponents.

I'm with you there, but I wouldn't suggest piling the vast majority of your units near one end of your empire unless you've got a small empire or enough railroads to make moving from one end to the other a task two be in in no less than three turns.

Although if you've got railroads and an empire with circular enough borders, you can probably stick all your units in the center of your empire and then rapid-shuttle them to wherever they need to go. The center of your empire being the spot where it is as equidistant from all borders as possible.

Lacking railroads, the best thing to do is generally to never EVER forget to have a decent garrison in ALL of your cities. I've noticed that without a MINIMUM of two units of or near your best defensive techs (archers, longbowmen, etc), you're pretty much screwed in an invasion of any magnitude and the AI knows it.

I've lost five cities to an AI blitzkrieg when I was off fighting another war on the other side of my empire before. The typical manner of it begins with a perfectly friendly AI, no negative modifiers at all, and then all of a sudden, I've got twenty or thirty units landing on one of my shores, taking a broad swath of five or six cities, then bunkering in and either bringing up reinforcements or asking for peace.

This typically happens most often with colonies of mine on distant continents, or when I have a broad seacoast that I haven't defended adequately.

NEVER trust the AI. Even the most peace-loving flower child leader can turn on you in the blink of an eye if you neglect military. That 50 turn Market might sound nice, but it won't do you any good if you needed those 50 turns to churn out 10 units and didn't.

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Tattila the Hun
A question, if I have a fort, line of them or not, and it's defenders are defeated, and enemy occupies the spot, will he get the benefits of the fort?

I have experimented for this. No, it benefits only the cultural owners. Solely physical possession does not give defensive advantage.

I don't think you benefit even if you are in a fort who belongs to a defensive pact partner.

[joncnunn]

There is one group of AIs you can completely trust: Your submitted vassals. And the voluntary ones are a pretty close second.

Size Matters as Ethopia Japanese-Aztec was a classic case of bait & switch + Killing fields defensive tactics for me. This was post setting up a good rail network. I concentrated the city defenders in border towns along all borders, with extra concentration in the east since those towns were closest. I had stationed reaction forces in two locations due to the extreme long length of that border, an eastern one and a western one. I was quite pleased when the AI chose to come up a central path, cultural boundary was thickest at that point so it was marching in territory. I then started the troop relocations. Basically my western force took out half of his force; he then took out that western force on his turn and back again on my turn my eastern force took out his survivors. From there it rapially transited to me being the one attacking his cities.

In my current game; on the "donut map", pre war as the Arabs the Protoguese counter-clockwise were my vasals (peaceful) while the Holy Roman Empire clockwise were not (and had a huge stage of units to boot on one of their border towns) and so my defensive deployment was a few extra defenders on the coast and the internor most one on the HRE side and the rest of my forces in the central city along the HRE border. But it wasn't the HRE that attacked, but instend Hanibal (and his Incan vassal) who opened it up by attacking and taking one of my vasals cities. So my forces were quite out of position but the war was in my vassals territory instead of my own. So the early stages of my arrival was a counter attack to take back that town (and hand back to my vassal). It then followed a rush units out to the other city they were threatending. Since my units were coming in peace meal initally they came into his city and tanks with colaterial damage picked off a few units on an attack, followed by him attacking and after losing a few units killing my units. Their high point was taking the town the same turn the major forces ran out of MP one tile away and they took the town. They should have raized it, but didn't so that next turn I moped them up and returned the town to my vassal. From there I was on the offensive and never looked back.

[One_more_turn]

This is a very interesting discussion.

On larger maps, it's especially difficult to defend an entire border. Sometimes I will create "sacrificial cities" that serve as baits for invading enemy SODs, and have huge amount of siege units and city raiders nearby. Once these cities have been taken by the AI, they will be completely engulfed by my cultural borders with 0 defenses. My experience shows that the AI will put MOST of its SOD units in those cities to heal and to defend from counterattacks, and that's where I move in to destroy enemy field armies.

An even better way to destroy SODs is to engage in "foreign interventions": when AIs fight among each other, there will always be SODs bogged in recently conquered cities, and I often use those opportunities to cripple the militarily stronger AI civ.

After dispatching those SODs, it will be my turn to send those siege units and city raiders into the offensive.

[Saygame]

Agreed, great thread!

More fun thoughts:

I like and sometimes practice the concept of One More's combined with Jocn's. I Line the border with giveaway towns (pop 1 or 2 with no infrastructure) just inside my cultural borders just before war (saves on maint costs) that are basically indefensible but give me time to rally the prebuilt siege units. If I have excess workers, I'll use them as AI bait to bring the enemy towards my preferred path. Usually the AI will stop, deploy his siege guns and use them to barrage cultural defenses until they are almost obliterated. Gives me extra turns to put my planned defensive offensive position units in place out of enemy reach but within mine. I can then pull the trigger on counterattacking when my strength and HIS terrain warrant.
The ealier post about cav, knights and flanking, having been pre-built with intention, allows me to stock obsolete horsemen for killing multiple SOD seige units once their stack units are sufficiently reduced (using that "killing fields" methodology). With pop and chop in emergencies, there are few SODs that can get thru to my heartland towns. No risk to all that culture I've built.
Obslolete units, above warrior rank (and even them sometimes), are never useless. When you need quantity and the SOD units are down to 4 strength and lower, they are great for moping up. So are my wounded units. It's then that you need quantity to kill them all in one turn to prevent any from getting out alive. I call those fun times "free experience points". I think the US Navy called it the "Mariana's Turkey Shoot" in WWII.

Another side comment that may be helpful. As long as you don't need your siege units at full strength soon (and you might) to continue the offence into HIS territory, keep firing ALL your siege arty units at 90% odds and higher until the game stops you. I LOVE to build up catapults on EP to City Attack 3's at virtually no suicidal risk. Later I really WILL upgrade those CA3 siege guns along with the City Attack 3 spearmen, axmen, macemen and swordsmen. All of a sudden when artillery, riflemen and infantry come along, I have built a most competent army from junk.

Saygame


PS- Historical aside-I studied the Maginot, its history and visited much of it in some detail in the 70's under the tutelage of members of "On'est Passe Pas", French veterans of the Maginot. The only place I found it penetrated was a small company section, The Germans had to knock out all covering surrounding gun positions first. Then the Germans pulled up massive direct artillery hub to hub and fired for two full days at a small area of concrete underground hallwayed bunker and blasted holes in the reinforced rebar concrete. They lost massive casualties putting man by man thru the small hole. The French had machine gun positions WITHIN the fortification, planned for just such breaches. The positions and hallways were an instant "killing field" inside. So they stopped and threw gas grenades inside. The French had foreseen THAT possibility with internal generators that created high air pressure that forced any gas back out. They had learned from Verdun. The company surrendered only when the Germans brought up more powerful generators and threatened to pour in lethal gas under higher pressure. They offered the French a last chance to surrender and the company did indeed finally surrender. Nickel knowledge!

[Tattila the Hun]

No wonder they are called "surrender monkeys". Should have fought to the last bullet!