Invasion Plans

[Melboz99]

Originally posted by vmxa1

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

Acutally, I find that I'm not dragging out the war because I'm not bombarding over and over.

I bombard and then attack on the same turn. As soon as every cat is done bombarding, the archers finish a the job.


As for WW, I find that this way generates less WW, not more.

The simple fact is that I have gone 30 turns of war without loosing a single attacking unit.

Can you say the same about your method?

Dan O.

[vmxa1]

Sorry I thought I was clear, but I guess I was not. I tried to clearly say that your way will work fine. I tried to say that in a game that was not on Warlord and was not using 4 civs, you may find it is problematic.

That is to say at Warlord, you will not have WW concerns, you have 4 content citizen to start. You will get a temple and a couple of lux before you have any action, so happiness is not an issue, case closed.

Now do know that you are getting WW even with a total whacking of the AI. You get a point for having a unit in enemy lands. You get 2 points for even being attacked and winning. It is just that it won't matter at Warlord. If it was at a level that gets only 1 content pop, you may still have issues.

You also have to deal with the fact that the Ai will much more robust and not quite as easy to push around. Add in a full number of civs and you get less land and less time to build those 16 cats, et al.

My real point was that it takes time to build lots of cats and support cast in the early game. This is hurting all other production considerations, including research.

You also have to have researched Math, this is too late in a game with the normal number of civs and a higher level.

These are the things I am thinking about and chosing to take a few losses to get to the ai sooner and have a shorter war. If my war last 10 turns, I do not have to worry about WW.

So in answer to your posit, no I do not have a method that is better than not losing any units. I said at the top that is fine. I merely attempted to point out some other factors in case you or others are in a tougher game.

So again I will say if you can get a 4 to 1 ratio of bombardment units to defenders, you will be in great shape. This will become very expensive and harder and harder to do as you move up and you may find you will have to take another tact. It is only for your consideration and you are free to ignore it.

Note I did not find any fault with your tactic, so no need to be defensive. It is merley an FYI

[Melboz99]

Gotcha Vmxa.

It sure is fun though, taking on cities with 4 pikemen and 2 spearman with 20 trebs.

You can kill all of them without loosing a single longbowman.

And artillery are a blast (no pun intended). The neat thing about artillery is you only need a ratio of about 1:2 against defenders, as long as they are behind a few techs.

Artillery get a bombard rate of 2, which means you get two rolls to see if you can make a hit. If both rolls are wins, then the enemy takes two hits.

I found that I only needed 4-6 artillery to demolish the defenses of a middle ages AI.

Do you ever use artillery of any type Vmxa, such as industrial era wars?

I found them to be invaluable, especially with calary and tanks, and you really don't need more than 4-6 for your average town. Maybe 8 for a capitol.


The thing is, I tried playing with just archers during the ancient era on Warlord, I got my ass kicked. I don't know if it was bad rolls or what, but my ass was kicked, royally.

I later tried to take on pikemen with Longbowman. I lost 8 of them trying to take a city defended by three pikemen.

Dan O.

[vmxa1]

Yes attacking pikes with LB is hard way to go. They can win, but you would want to have them damaged by bombardment first. I rarely use LB for anything. They are just upgrades of my left over archers normally. In the open field they are fine, but tend to not get that many oportunities.

Archers will really do poorly as they have only half the attack of a LB.

But yes I will take advantage of anything that makes sense at the time. I will use cats at times and cannon and all forms. Artillery is sort of late, so I tend to use them to defend invaders and shipping.

I will want a more moble attack force and be using horses, knights and armies as much as I can. A big consideration will be that I can't make enough cats early in the game and later I will have faster units. I also will often be invading from over seas and have a limited number of ships to bring units.

This means I need fighting units more than anything. I would love to have a large stack of cats (or whatever is current), but I do not want to get say 10 less defenders.

I am betting that say 10 cats will do less for me in holding the city than 10 pikes. This is because defenders will not have to fight as many battles and increase their survival.

Now this may be wrong, but it is what I tend to do until I find it is not optimal.

[vmxa1]

So to expain in some detail what I mean:

If I have 30 units landing and found a city and expect to see maybe 20 units attack and then maybe a few rounds of from 1 to 40 units hit me, I would rather have all troops and zero cats.

Cats is generic here. If I have no armies and it is say pikes and knights and they have the same and mabe a mix of archers,swords and a few horses to use. Probably some spears to cover.

I do not want 20 units and 10 cats as I get the bombardment and then I have only 20 units to survive all those fights. I would probably see many pikes die that could have take a few less battles with an extra 10 units.

Now if you could bring those 30 and 20 cats as well and face the same units, then you have a cake walk. At some levels and some games this will be possible, but often you will have to go with less than an over whelming force.

Now in my sid games, these numbers are scaled way up, but the concept is the same. I need all the defenders and attackers I can bring. In fact bombardment units are even less useful to me.

This is because I will maybe get 150 attacks the first round and have no chance of bring enough cats to do much good. I have brought along 10-20 and ended up wishing I had defenders instead. This also frees up my attackers to go on the attack after I survive the counter attack.

[Melboz99]

Hey Vmxa, about the atillery not being fast...

I find that I don't need them to be fast, the AI usually has plenty of roads for them to ride on.

What I do is:

Turn 1) Arrive on a tile, two tiles from the city. Unless the city has a lot of culture, this can often be done from the last conquered city in one turn via roads. IE, your newly conquered city had 0 culture, so one move on your road, one move onto theirs. Now you are within range of bombardment.

Turn 2)Bombard the city with artillery from two sqaures away. Then send in calvary/tanks to clean up the job.

Each calvary or tank gets three moves. Move one should be to get next to the city, move two should be attack. After attack, press "w" for wait.

End of Turn 2) Move all units with one move or more left into the city, except for two defenders to guard the already moved artillery.

This is easy to do now, because the roads are yours.

Turn 3) Move all units outside the city into the city until resisting is over. With a good sized stack, this should only be another turn or two.

Turn 4-6) Repeat steps 1-3



After I realized I was using too big of a stack, I divided my invasion force into two seperate invasion forces This meant I was taking two cities every 3 to 4 turns.

Also, the only calvary I lost were ones that went to take out other calvary, and were attacked while outside the stack. (they were picking off my workers. )



One thing I have not mentioned is that I only built half of my arty. The other half were captured.

As for taking arty across the sea, yeah, I didn't bother with that either. Of course, I had Modern Armor, and they had riflemen and pikemen, but anyway.

I did however learn just how important bombers are in overseas wars. I was able to use my bombers from across the sea, and walk right into an undefended city with my marines. By the time they brought in reinforcements I already had a 4x Mod Arm Army, four single Mod Arm, and 2 Mech Inf in there!

Dan O.

Dan O.

[Melboz99]

Originally posted by vmxa1
So to expain in some detail what I mean:

If I have 30 units landing and found a city and expect to see maybe 20 units attack and then maybe a few rounds of from 1 to 40 units hit me, I would rather have all troops and zero cats.

Cats is generic here. If I have no armies and it is say pikes and knights and they have the same and mabe a mix of archers,swords and a few horses to use. Probably some spears to cover.

I do not want 20 units and 10 cats as I get the bombardment and then I have only 20 units to survive all those fights. I would probably see many pikes die that could have take a few less battles with an extra 10 units.

Now if you could bring those 30 and 20 cats as well and face the same units, then you have a cake walk. At some levels and some games this will be possible, but often you will have to go with less than an over whelming force.

Now in my sid games, these numbers are scaled way up, but the concept is the same. I need all the defenders and attackers I can bring. In fact bombardment units are even less useful to me.

This is because I will maybe get 150 attacks the first round and have no chance of bring enough cats to do much good. I have brought along 10-20 and ended up wishing I had defenders instead. This also frees up my attackers to go on the attack after I survive the counter attack.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

I have never played above monarch though, and it's been years since I last attempted monarch.

What levels do you think my stategy would be applicable for?

Could I even use it on Monarch?

Dan O.

[joncnunn]

Yes, and actually the higher your level, the more useful artilerly type units are.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Melboz99



What levels do you think my stategy would be applicable for?

Could I even use it on Monarch?

Dan O.

It will work on any, it is just that it gets harder and harder to pull off.

[vmxa1]

Originally posted by Melboz99
"Hey Vmxa, about the atillery not being fast...

I find that I don't need them to be fast, the AI usually has plenty of roads for them to ride on."

Well roads mean nothing if they are in the enemies borders as you cannot use them. So it is the same as if the road does not exist for you.

"What I do is:

Turn 1) Arrive on a tile, two tiles from the city. Unless the city has a lot of culture, this can often be done from the last conquered city in one turn via roads. IE, your newly conquered city had 0 culture, so one move on your road, one move onto theirs. Now you are within range of bombardment."

Same as no roads.

"Turn 2)Bombard the city with artillery from two sqaures away. Then send in calvary/tanks to clean up the job."

Ok, to me if you have tanks and they don't, you are free to do what ever you wish.

"Each calvary or tank gets three moves. Move one should be to get next to the city, move two should be attack. After attack, press "w" for wait."

Tanks only get two moves, MA's get three.

"End of Turn 2) Move all units with one move or more left into the city, except for two defenders to guard the already moved artillery.
This is easy to do now, because the roads are yours.
Turn 3) Move all units outside the city into the city until resisting is over. With a good sized stack, this should only be another turn or two.

Turn 4-6) Repeat steps 1-3

After I realized I was using too big of a stack, I divided my invasion force into two seperate invasion forces This meant I was taking two cities every 3 to 4 turns.

Also, the only calvary I lost were ones that went to take out other calvary, and were attacked while outside the stack. (they were picking off my workers. )"

"As for taking arty across the sea, yeah, I didn't bother with that either. Of course, I had Modern Armor, and they had riflemen and pikemen, but anyway. "

"I did however learn just how important bombers are in overseas wars. I was able to use my bombers from across the sea, and walk right into an undefended city with my marines. By the time they brought in reinforcements I already had a 4x Mod Arm Army, four single Mod Arm, and 2 Mech Inf in there! "


Basically that tactics is the norm. The only issues is that civ stronger than you or weaker than you. In games were the Ai has no bonus (chief/warlord/Regent) you tend to be stronger and have more culture.

As you move up these are less and less likely to be the case and the culture could be very much in their favor. This means you do not want to capture cities as you will have to sit on them a long time. That stops the progress of the war.

In that case you will maybe bring along a settler and even workers to raze road/rail and found. This is the way you gain access to the road/rails and do not have to leave a ton of troops sitting on a captured city.

So what becomes apparent is that they are many ways to skin a cat as it were.

[Bragelonne]

AS my tactics, in Civ2 I used to produce a lot of bombers and mech infantry. Bombed their cities from the air, then captured them without finding any resistance.

In CivIII, air bombardment appears to be ineffective, without considering possible enemy defenses which can simply shoot your planes down. Land and Sea bombardment also uses to be silly till the very late ages, were you can build powerfull howitzers and battleships.

SO, in ancient or medieval combat, I wonder how many cannons (or catapults) you MUST build (and use) to effectively support an invading land army (when army is not a single leader-units-into-units but multiple soldiers).

[vmxa1]

Well as we have been saying, or at least I have, you don't need any. You would like to have as many as you can get, if they can be kept in the action.

So if your goal is to get the job done and not lose any troops, you need to have enough to drop defenders to 1 hp. If your goal is to get it done quickly and you have the troops to do it with no support go for it.

[Bragelonne]

SO no air, no naval, no artillery units... Creepy, they should have been made more powerful than what they actually are.

[vmxa1]

Well navy is another matter. We have been talking about ancient or ealy middle ages mostly. At that time, you have no bombardment ships.


Air units are so late, but bombers are lethal in C3C. That makes them very useful. Sinking that ship that you clipped with arties or are too far away to reach.

They have situational values as well.

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by vmxa1
So to expain in some detail what I mean:

If I have 30 units landing and found a city and expect to see maybe 20 units attack and then maybe a few rounds of from 1 to 40 units hit me, I would rather have all troops and zero cats.

...

This is because I will maybe get 150 attacks the first round and have no chance of bring enough cats to do much good. I have brought along 10-20 and ended up wishing I had defenders instead. This also frees up my attackers to go on the attack after I survive the counter attack.

Don't those numbers imply an incredible amount of WW? Each defensive battle costs 2 and each time an attacker loses it costs another 2.

Assuming tech and overall unit count parity (not true at Sid, I know), wouldn't you suffer less WW with a large, slow stack bombarding?

I'm also curious if your opinion changes if you don't have horses.