Tweet
The only frustrating part about late Industrial war is the two move limitation of tanks. This typically means that they have to spend a turn in enemy territory, exposed to counterattack, before reaching their target. While the tank, assuming you're in good shape in the tech race, is a formidable unit defensively, it's obviously best on offense, and that's how you want to use it, rather than absorbing attacks from cavs or even other tanks. The problem is that those attacks, even from cavalry, can whittle down your column to unacceptable levels. The effects of this are that, to avoid either a near-run, gut-tightening victory, failure at the city gates ($1 to Baghdad Bob) or out and out retreat before you even reach your target, you wind up sending in way more units than you have to, to ensure that enough do make it to carry the day. Also, when you get there, if you're maxing out the speed of the tanks, you don't have any artillery support, and are therefore battling full-strength units, unless you've got enough of an air force to pound the city defenders down. Even then, bombers are at best a 50/50 proposition against fortified infantry, so you're still taking a soaking on the unit count when you factor in the artillery that you can't use without slowing down your attack.
The way to avoid those problems lies not in any tactic, but in recognizing the right situation that will allow a tank blitz. Simply follow a civ that has just annexed another AI civ, or at least a large part of it. While the original territory of Civ A will still have the normal pitfalls, the newly conquered cities will still have one-tile culture borders. Most of them will also be connected by railroad.
Use any 4xCav or 4xTank armies you might have on the cultured cities with an eye toward punching a hole, if necessary, through Civ A's original territory to get to former Civ B territory. As soon as the proverbial waters are parted, use the railroads and concentrate your tanks on the former Civ B cities, while your 3 and 4 movers go to work on Civ A's organic cities. With one tile culture, not only can your tanks move in and attack on the same turn, but you can move your artillery close enough to pound the defenders down first (even better if you have radar artillery, obviously, since you can then tuck them back under a defender, rather than having to assign a defender to each firing position). Once you enter Civ B territory, the AI's loose city spacing isn't holding you up anymore. Effectively, you've let Civ A do your dirty work, and you've won two wars at once, a lot quicker, and with more unit efficiency, than you could have takeing on both civs individually.
An additional bonus is that you've effectively conquered Civ B without them ever even realizing it or getting mad about it. They'll even stay gracious, if they were already, while you paint their cities with your colors.
The way to avoid those problems lies not in any tactic, but in recognizing the right situation that will allow a tank blitz. Simply follow a civ that has just annexed another AI civ, or at least a large part of it. While the original territory of Civ A will still have the normal pitfalls, the newly conquered cities will still have one-tile culture borders. Most of them will also be connected by railroad.
Use any 4xCav or 4xTank armies you might have on the cultured cities with an eye toward punching a hole, if necessary, through Civ A's original territory to get to former Civ B territory. As soon as the proverbial waters are parted, use the railroads and concentrate your tanks on the former Civ B cities, while your 3 and 4 movers go to work on Civ A's organic cities. With one tile culture, not only can your tanks move in and attack on the same turn, but you can move your artillery close enough to pound the defenders down first (even better if you have radar artillery, obviously, since you can then tuck them back under a defender, rather than having to assign a defender to each firing position). Once you enter Civ B territory, the AI's loose city spacing isn't holding you up anymore. Effectively, you've let Civ A do your dirty work, and you've won two wars at once, a lot quicker, and with more unit efficiency, than you could have takeing on both civs individually.
An additional bonus is that you've effectively conquered Civ B without them ever even realizing it or getting mad about it. They'll even stay gracious, if they were already, while you paint their cities with your colors.
Comment