Invasion Plans

[Modo44]

Originally posted by joncnunn
Doesn't need to be all that big, just one more than the number of units flaged AI Offensive in the area + at least one of them fully healthy.

That is "huge" by my standards. It is the reason why I prefer to get in, and kill many conter-attackers on the first turn - before they counter-attack. Then the big AI wave comes in to retake cities, and gets clobbered as well. After this is done, it is usually safe enough to continue.

As vmxa noted, it is very level-dependant.

[joncnunn]

I've never had a game last into the several hunded units per player.

[UnOrthOdOx]

That's mapsize and difficulty dependent there.

larger maps and/or very high difficulty levels, I would think hundreds would be fairly norm. My typical Emperor/normal size maps get to 100+ units per by the end of medieval.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by joncnunn
I've never had a game last into the several hunded units per player.

All you need is to have a stack of 20 units versus their 30-50. Pretty common on huge maps, except maybe in the Ancient Age. The example of vmxa is a bigger version of this, simply because of a higher difficulty level.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by joncnunn
I've never had a game last into the several hunded units per player.

Like Uno said it is not a function of lasting, it is a function of level and to some degree map size.

The civs will have hundreds in late ancient age on an island map and not long after that on contients maps. It is common to see 80 per city before the middle ages and 100 per city in the middle ages on sid games.

They soon have nothing to construct, but troops and then they get to the point that they have all they can maintain.

Heck they start with 18 units, 2 settlers and 4 workers. They will have 8-10 cities up so fast and they will mostly be cranking out units after short time. They get double production, so it nothing for them to make 100 units.

Invading a civ with rails on sid is a sight to behold. Get yourself a book as the counter attack rages on. I have sit in my lazyboy watching the tube and glancing over to see if they are still going and when It will be my turn (sound off). Just shaking my head and going please end soon.

I used to count the battles, but I gave up and just count some of the stacks that are in plain sight and see how many are left after the turn ends. Most are replaced for the next few turns, depending on their road/rail network.

[Melboz99]

Hey Vxma, you ever have a game go into the modern era on Sid?

Do you ever manage to keep a tech lead?

I had a blast taking a ship of 4 modern armor and 2 mech inf into my captured city in the middle of of Portugal. I'd send one of those over every turn for about 5-10 turns, they were off the continent by that time.

I also had about 5 MA armies in there, with 4 veteran MAs a piece.

I lost 3 or 4 MA to calvary though, but I was impressed at how 6 marines could hold a city on their own against over 10 calvary.

I just can't imagine playing against an enemy with hundreds of military units in a city. Are they all good units, or are most of them obsolete?

IIRC, Portugal had about 40 pikemen, 30 riflemen, and 30 calvary. So, they had over 100 miltiary units, but there were only like 4 or 5 per city.

Dan O.

[vmxa1]

I played a few on conquest only to force it to the end. We even had a nuke fest once.

I never attacked a city with more than 50-60 units and that is rare. I let them attack me with most of the troops and after you bust two major cities loaded with troops, it is just a few in each.

I catch much of the defenders out in the open, but yes they have units of all types, just depends on when I show up. The first one I hope to catch in the early middle age and with lessor stuff.

I never have a tech lead, in fact I rarely do any research after the GL. It is too expensive for me.

[theDragon]

Wow, total score. Thanks alot guys, this kind of conversations is just what I was asking for. Personally, I am a major builder all the way up to Knights/Calvary, but as soon as I have a couple of boomboom sticks.. Its on.

When invading I tend to, when attempting to cripple and obliterate an enemy nation, sack as many of their out lying cities as possible, esp those close to me. I then use them as forwarding bases to assualt the rest of the little cities, and bombard the big ones and strategic resources.

I got into this strategic rut after many wars being fought for capitals and core cities and losing most of my fighting potential to gain those cities. I now almost completely ignore the core cities with ground troops. I still bomb them with planes, but I always attempt to take two spearheads (see columns in war dictionary) and attack from two sides of the nation. I make my way capturing every single little city I can. By the time the AI can count his cities, he has to count again, and he is basiclly crippled and it is only a matter of time after that when the capital will fall.

I dont use artillery as much.. I was wondering if there as any use for them after Flight. With bombers taking the heat to enemy cities en masse, why invest in arty anymore?

Also, a question that has ate at my thought, is there any strategic reason to capture an enemy's capital anyway? (i.e. does it increase WW or do anything to extensively cripple the enemy other than just another city?) AND! whats the point of capturing the capital if another capital pops up the next turn?

Thanks for the posts guys! Thus far it has been extremely interesting and I hope the posts keep coming!

[UnOrthOdOx]

Originally posted by theDragon


I dont use artillery as much.. I was wondering if there as any use for them after Flight. With bombers taking the heat to enemy cities en masse, why invest in arty anymore?

Typically I'll have 50+ by that point anyway, so further wouldn't neccessarily be needed. However, they are still usefull to move with your stacks as they cannot be shot down, for instance, and are great for weakening counter attacks

Also, a question that has ate at my thought, is there any strategic reason to capture an enemy's capital anyway? (i.e. does it increase WW or do anything to extensively cripple the enemy other than just another city?) AND! whats the point of capturing the capital if another capital pops up the next turn?

Well, culure to some degree. Culture flipping is dependant on closeness to capitol among other things. In some instances it's good to raise the AI capitol if you are wanting to keep some cities without worrying about the flipping.

Killing AI production is another. By taking the capitol, you can mess up their ranks and production. Not to mention it's typically their best city.

Killing the AI army. The capitol is typically the most defended. Taking it early in a war ensures you've destroyed most their defense allot of the time.

Finally, if you're attacking with archers like I do allot of the time, it's the only city that won't autoraze, as it has culture. Then wait for the city it jumps to to gain culture and take it too, then sue for peace for 3 more cities...poof...AI down to 1 city and you got 5 new ones for the price of as little as 6 archers.

[Melboz99]

[SIZE=1]

I dont use artillery as much.. I was wondering if there as any use for them after Flight. With bombers taking the heat to enemy cities en masse, why invest in arty anymore?

I didn't use to use arty much either, but lately I have discovered it's awesome power.

Even in the ancient era, you can have bloodless battles (bloodless for you at least )

Basically, all you need in the ancient era is:

1 Archer for every unit in his largest city.
4 cats for every unit in his largest city.
At least 2 spearmen for every city you plan to capture.
2 spearman to guard the stack


Now, here's why you need 4 cats for every unit in his largest city. Plan on missing his units 50% of the time. That leaves you with two hits per unit. If most of his units are regular, and usually they are, then that is all the hits those units will need to drop to one heath bar.

So, lets say you want to take a city with 4 spearman. Take at least 16 cats to the city, defended by 4 spearman and bring 4 archers to finish the job. (actually, it may be best to bring 6 just in case).

Then bombard the heck out of the city with the 16 cats. If all goes well, you should have about 8 hits. With those 8 hits you will have reduced every speaman down to one health bar. (red). Finish off the job by killing all the spearman with the archers. After the last archer takes the city, move two spearman into the city to defend it until you can move your cats safely inside.

Of course, I'm basing this off my experience on Warlord, so at higher diff levels you may want to adjust the quantities accordingly.

I fought a war with the Iroq in the ancient age. I started as soon as I had built about 20 cats, 8 archers, and 12 spearman. By the time I was in the middle ages, (maybe 40 turns) I had conqured about 2/3 of them, only loosing about 2 or three archers to their spearmen. I then bargained for peace, taking all the rest of thier cities as part of the deal. The only city they had left was their capitol, and I only lost 3 archers.

What I found was that
A) I didn't need that many archers.
B) I didn't really need that many cats
C) I needed more spearmen to defend.

That's how I based my above formula.

Once I made peace, I did some building, especially in the now vacant territory, and got engineering. Then I got Tzu's and upgraded all my archers to longbow and cats to trebs.

Within about 30-40 more turns the Koreans, the largest empire on the map were at about 1/3 the size, and had lost all their major cities including their capitol, and Leo's.

I on the other hand had only lost about another 2 or 3 Longbow to their pikemen.

Dan O.

[UnOrthOdOx]

Wow, I've usually teched out of the ancient before being ABLE to build that many cats. Course, substitute my tendency to build that many horsies and it would be possible.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by theDragon
When invading I tend to, when attempting to cripple and obliterate an enemy nation, sack as many of their out lying cities as possible, esp those close to me. I then use them as forwarding bases to assualt the rest of the little cities, and bombard the big ones and strategic resources.

One thing you are missing. Leaving their core intact will let them recover very quickly. Why hit the hand when you could cut off the head with just a bit more effort?

Originally posted by theDragon
I dont use artillery as much.. I was wondering if there as any use for them after Flight. With bombers taking the heat to enemy cities en masse, why invest in arty anymore?

Bombers die too often. To lose fewer you need to send Fighters first, and losses will still be big. This means you need to be building them constantly. Artillery needs to be build only once, and is just as effective. It leaves the buildings in cities, which is a plus for me. After you have those 50, you are done and those cities can turn to other builds.

I use Bombers to destroy tile improvements in places I plan to leave unconquered. Since the AI mostly positions fighters where you bombed last turn, this can often be done without worrying abut being shot down. A secondary use is to kill off any enemy units that enter my territory. Most important - removing the pesky buggers that walk over Mountains, and could cause losses to my units.

Originally posted by theDragon
Also, a question that has ate at my thought, is there any strategic reason to capture an enemy's capital anyway? (i.e. does it increase WW or do anything to extensively cripple the enemy other than just another city?) AND! whats the point of capturing the capital if another capital pops up the next turn?

At the beginning of the game, most other cities will get autorazed, because of zero culture. Later on the AI capital will most often host a bunch of Small Wonders, and perhaps even a Great Wonder or two. While early warfare seldom happens to me, I learned to count on the AI to produce wonders for my glory.

[vmxa1]

Well the lower the level and the larger the map, the slower the tech pace. If you have a small number of civs in the game and are a low level, it will take some time to research techs, especially if the map is larger.

The also leads to running into a less robust civ. In the main, while it is true that having those cats is swell, I would rather have skipped the 4 cats per stack and had more attackers.

Cats and archer cost the same and you cannot kill any units with a cat, nor hold a city with it, but you can with archers.

So that city with 4 spears that is being attacked with 16 cats 4-6 archers and I guess some spears came along, could have been conquered sooner with say 10-12 archers.

It will take a long time to build those 16+6+2 units (24), twice as long as the 12 archers.

[Melboz99]

Originally posted by vmxa1
Well the lower the level and the larger the map, the slower the tech pace. If you have a small number of civs in the game and are a low level, it will take some time to research techs, especially if the map is larger.

The also leads to running into a less robust civ. In the main, while it is true that having those cats is swell, I would rather have skipped the 4 cats per stack and had more attackers.

Cats and archer cost the same and you cannot kill any units with a cat, nor hold a city with it, but you can with archers.

So that city with 4 spears that is being attacked with 16 cats 4-6 archers and I guess some spears came along, could have been conquered sooner with say 10-12 archers.

It will take a long time to build those 16+6+2 units (24), twice as long as the 12 archers.

Vmxa, the problem with going with mainly archers and fewer cats is that archers die easily when attacking spearmen at full health.

So, I built 16 cats, but none of them ever were killed. In fact, I upgraded them to trebs, cannons, and artillery. Each upgrade cost about 15 gold per unit, one of the cheapest upgrades there is. So, for about 250 gold I then had 16 trebs, for another 250 gold I had 16 cannons. I think artillery cost 30 gold to upgrade, so about for about 500 gold I had 16 artillery.

At each stage of their upgrades I fought a war and won easily. I fought the Iroq with cats, the Koreans with Trebs, the Ottomans with Cannons and Atilllery, finished off the Koreans and Iroq with artillery.

Then end result was that building those 16 cats gave me artillery that I could use throughout the course of game and were upgraded cheaply.

I never lost a single arty. Can you say the same about Archers/Longbowman/Calvary?

I lost 2-3 during each war on a bad roll while attaking a spearman or pilkeman. How many would I have lost if I hadn't been using arty?

Dan O.

[vmxa1]

Yes it is true that you can use them all through the game, bit it takes too long to build them. Yes you will lose some archers, that is why you brought along 2 or 3 times as many as defenders expected.


Now the reason we want to think about doing it that way is the time. In a std map you will need so much time to crank out those hypothetical 24 units, that the AI could have gain strenght and tech.

You want to end the war quickly, so spending time bombarding over and over will drag out the war and cause WW.

These are not concerns at lower levels as the AI will not be doing all that well and you have so many content citizens. If you are playing ay even Monarch level, it is not so easy.

The AI will gain better tech and units, have a production boost and can build units better. You have to get to a non WW governemnt or face WW.

Frankly I won't be building 12 archers, unless I have no resources. Same for those 16 cats. I will go with horses or swords. But if I did do it that way, I would expect to spread out and take down several less well defended cities, before going against one with 4 spears.

The ai will only have 4 spears in the capitol or one or 2 others. It is stupid and will send out its defenders to either attack me or aid the other cities I am putting under pressure. Now after I have dealt with those cities and the units out and about, it will have little left.

Truth is, I will probably have an army to deal with that last bastion with 4 spears. I will be very sad to not have manage one mgl while busting the whole empire. See I will be arriving with vets and elites.

So what I am saying is that what you say is true, but other considerations may come into play. The greatness of the game is that many strategies work, but some are less rewarding than others in a given situation.

The level and the map settings are critical to tactics and timing. So I am not presenting a case that says don't do it your way, but rather there are many factors and others need to be aware of them and adapt.