Interesting use of Cruise Missiles

[player1]

In Conquests, air units when bombarding, try first to take out enemy planes, before ground troops.
Now here is the idea.

If there is enemy city heavily guarded by fighters, you can try to take them out with Cruise Missiles.
It's probably the best way, since all other options, like using Bombers or Jets are less optimal because of interception chance when defender gets advantage. Also, unlike Cruise Missiles, planes don't always target units.

Even if Cruise Missile doesn't take out the target, it will be weakened so you could try bombing it with conventional planes with much lesser chance of getting your bombers damaged.

[alexman]

Good observation.

Since ships also target planes before other units (except other ships), ships can also be used in the same way to damage enemy planes without risk (but not kill them like CM, and only in coastal cities of course).

[player1]

So we have a combo!
Bomb with ships, destroy with cruise missiles.

Although planes could be used too, since I doubt that 1hp units can intercept anything.

[Solomwi]

I used this exact tactic for the first time last night, and it worked beautifully. A similar tactic to consider is that CM's and bombers keep those 4xCav armies viable well into the modern era. If the AI is defending with 4 vet infantry, a handful of CM's and good bombing campaign (or just the bombers, if the city doesn't have air cover), can strip the defenses bare, allowing the 4-move cav army to slide right in and claim it.

I've been using this to great effect in rough terrain, where tank armies or MA just wouldn't quite be able to get there. That's not a big concern in the no WW governments, but I'm always conscious of ending with units in enemy territory while warring in Dem or even Rep. Since 4xMA armies are fairly limited in number for a while, I'd rather use the ones I have against key hard targets. Using bomers/CM and cav armies lets me do that without completely passing by those irritating pocket cities that have to be cleaned up later anyway.