Tweet
Here's an invasion I staged today. Babylon dropped off a knight on one of my offshore islands and declared war. Unfortunately for him, I was just discovering Motorized Transportation when he did, and also had just begun building my Marine Corps. So, after a few turns of building up an invasion force a la the Allies in England, I launched. This screenshot is from the end of the initial turn of invasion.
Since I wasn't importing any luxuries from the Babs prior to the war and all of their luxuries are further inland (no port close enough to the Samarra ivory to make it an attractive immediate target), I went for their core, as you can see. Nothing like having the enemy first set foot on your continent and take your capital in the same turn.
Normally, I want to take the shortest route to the enemy's luxuries or resources, especially in an overseas invasion. On my own continent, I want to take whatever path will get me the most cities the quickest, obviously unless I'm going to war for a specific resource or luxury. Early on that tends to mean cities with an influence of one or two that are connected to the enemy core by roads. In the middle ages, it often means cities surrounded by flat terrain.
In the cavalry era and beyond, I'll send eight attackers at a time at a city, unless I can stage them in either my territory or neutral territory and meter out units until the city falls, then use the rest for a second city. In ancient warfare, I'll typically assemble a fearsome slow-mover stack, and have a couple of horseman stacks as complements, to pick off what towns they can so as not to divert the stack from doing its damage among the enemy's major cities. If I get into the core and see that my stack is truly overwhelming enough, I'm not averse to splitting it into two smaller, but still strong enough to take a city, stacks. I've employed both divide and conquer and "moving border" campaigns, and am comfortable with both, but ultimately what I want to do is have to defend as few points as possible at the end of the turn. I'm a big believer in two major principles to that end:
1) Distance is it's own defense. Obviously, if they can't reach a city, they can't attack it, and if they can't attack it, I don't need to thin out my defenders by garrisoning it.
2) The best way to cover an exposed flank is to launch an attack in that direction ($1 to Temujin). If there's an otherwise unimportant enemy city that can provide a staging area for an attack on one of my cities, I'll dispatch a fast-mover detachment to take care of it. This works on a larger scale, too. If my war plans for Germany in the east may leave part of my empire vulnerable to a smaller Arabia in the west, I'm attacking Arabia first.
Since I know this screenshot is going to have Theseus drooling on himself, I'll see if I can't dig up a few more invasion memoirs from my history folder.
Since I wasn't importing any luxuries from the Babs prior to the war and all of their luxuries are further inland (no port close enough to the Samarra ivory to make it an attractive immediate target), I went for their core, as you can see. Nothing like having the enemy first set foot on your continent and take your capital in the same turn.
Normally, I want to take the shortest route to the enemy's luxuries or resources, especially in an overseas invasion. On my own continent, I want to take whatever path will get me the most cities the quickest, obviously unless I'm going to war for a specific resource or luxury. Early on that tends to mean cities with an influence of one or two that are connected to the enemy core by roads. In the middle ages, it often means cities surrounded by flat terrain.
In the cavalry era and beyond, I'll send eight attackers at a time at a city, unless I can stage them in either my territory or neutral territory and meter out units until the city falls, then use the rest for a second city. In ancient warfare, I'll typically assemble a fearsome slow-mover stack, and have a couple of horseman stacks as complements, to pick off what towns they can so as not to divert the stack from doing its damage among the enemy's major cities. If I get into the core and see that my stack is truly overwhelming enough, I'm not averse to splitting it into two smaller, but still strong enough to take a city, stacks. I've employed both divide and conquer and "moving border" campaigns, and am comfortable with both, but ultimately what I want to do is have to defend as few points as possible at the end of the turn. I'm a big believer in two major principles to that end:
1) Distance is it's own defense. Obviously, if they can't reach a city, they can't attack it, and if they can't attack it, I don't need to thin out my defenders by garrisoning it.
2) The best way to cover an exposed flank is to launch an attack in that direction ($1 to Temujin). If there's an otherwise unimportant enemy city that can provide a staging area for an attack on one of my cities, I'll dispatch a fast-mover detachment to take care of it. This works on a larger scale, too. If my war plans for Germany in the east may leave part of my empire vulnerable to a smaller Arabia in the west, I'm attacking Arabia first.
Since I know this screenshot is going to have Theseus drooling on himself, I'll see if I can't dig up a few more invasion memoirs from my history folder.
Comment