Blitzkrieg - armoured columns and mobile and positional warfare

[Mercantile]

Trade at home, easily the best way to go unless you have a small powerful rival close by. Civ encourages Mercanilianism (probably not a word) as supply and demand change when you are travelling all over the world with your goods. Besides my people tend to be somewhat egocentric, so we look at competition and neighbors as slightly inferior (even though we are usually the ones behind in tech in MP)

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Do you shovel snow in your birkenstocks?

[Gatekeeper]

Everyone:

I do not think howitzers are too strong. Heck, they're the only combat ground unit really capable of cracking an AI city that's sitting on a river with a wall surrounding it.

Air power? It's still a bugger when the AI city is defended by veteran fighters *plus* veteran APCs backed up by SAM missile batteries.

Coastal attacks? Two words: coastal fortresses. Combined with veteran defenders, they can sink a battleship w/o losing anything themselves. Plus the AI tosses cruise missiles like there's no tomorrow ... so one can be fortunate to even get a battleship w/i range of an AI city.

Returning to the matter of ground units, I've had to make artillery capable of ignoring city walls in order for the AI to really conduct a massive conquering campaign either against itself or the human player. Otherwise gunpowder units in a walled city on a river can pretty much stop anything, even armor (unless one is willing to sacrifice four to eight divisions).

If anything, railroads should enable one to move only six to eight times. That would put something of a damper on all-out railroad blitzkriegs (that was one of the few things CTP did right).

CYBERAmazon

[SandMonkey]

quote: Originally posted by East Street Trader on 11-10-2000 07:36 AM What happened in Spain, by way of contrast, is that they simply used the huge amounts of gold that came in from the New World to fund a higher standard of living and dynastic empire building. It is argued that the long term social effect was to create over-weening pride and to stiffle entrepreneurial spirit. So, when the gold ran out, the country went into a loooong decline (from which it has perhaps never really recovered). I suspect that being fought over (and mercilessly pillaged) for years in the Napoleonic wars probably didn't help but the arguements are still persuasive.

quote: Many American textbooks point to The Spanish Armada as "the beginning of the end" for Spanish worldwide influence. The first (of many) large military naval losses to Britian which tipped worldwide dominance to England. King Phillip bankrupted the Spanish treasury in attempt to build the Armada and was subsidizing Dutch efforts around the world to act as a counterbalance to France.

I learned just what you guys said: the beginning of the end for the Spanish was when the Dutch revolted in 1556 with the abdication of Charles V. When Phillip II took the throne as Holy Roman Emperor, he appointed a female (can't rememebr her name...), who raised taxes and brought the Inquisition to the Netherlands. This didn't sit too well with the Protestant Dutch, so the revolted, finding great leadership in William the Silent. The Spanish poured incredible amounts of money into the war, thus adding somewhat to the Price Revolution. The English were also supporting the Dutch, so Phillip sent the Spanish Armada, with the backing of the Papacy (who wanted Protestant England to come back to Catholicism), to attack England. Actually, the first task they were supposed to do was to sail to the Spanish Netherlands (Belgium today) and pick up a land army to invade England with. Well we all know what happened... Drake sailed behind the Spanish fleet, broke up the poorly supplied Spanish ships, and the whole Protestant wind thing... but yeah, there's your connection the the Spanish Armada and the "beginning of the end" for the Spanish.

And CYBER, if your comment about air superiority was directed at my comment, note that I said I would attack units that were outside of cities, not in them.

[Shogun Gunner]

quote: Originally posted by East Street Trader on 11-10-2000 07:36 AM What happened in Spain, by way of contrast, is that they simply used the huge amounts of gold that came in from the New World to fund a higher standard of living and dynastic empire building. It is argued that the long term social effect was to create over-weening pride and to stiffle entrepreneurial spirit. So, when the gold ran out, the country went into a loooong decline (from which it has perhaps never really recovered).

Many American textbooks point to The Spanish Armada as "the beginning of the end" for Spanish worldwide influence. The first (of many) large military naval losses to Britian which tipped worldwide dominance to England. King Phillip bankrupted the Spanish treasury in attempt to build the Armada and was subsidizing Dutch efforts around the world to act as a counterbalance to France. In civ terms, the Spanish spent a lot of gold with rush builds for Frigates and Galleons for the Spanish Armada and spent a lot of gold appeasing their Dutch ally with gold.

[Gatekeeper]

SandMonkey:

Hmm ... nope. My air power commentary was basically directed at no one. Just my personal observation from past experience .

CYBERAmazon