Tactics: invading AI continent in Modern Age

[Out4Blood]

Fighting a war on another continent can be a difficult experience. Here's a tip for making D-Day a little less tramatic by taking advantage of the AI's inability to wage war.

Once the AI has built railroads, he will respond to your invasion force IMMEDIATELY with almost every mobile unit in his entire arsenal. By fortifying your high defense infantry on a mountain with a railroad connection, you can pretty much wipe out his entire army in one turn. Make sure you are already at war with the AI, so he will attack your units on sight.

1. Split your forces in to 2 groups: Have a large invasion force ready - generally two full transports are necessary to be successful in modern ages. Also have a vanguard landing force - which is just infantry.

2. Make your large invasion force a large combined arms force: 1 part mech infantry (high defense), 1 part tank (high attack and speedy), 1 part artillery (bombardment). Make your vanguard just infantry (3-4 units, but large enough to withstand assault)

3. Drop the vanguard on the a mountain square, near an enemy town and one that is connected via rails (or roads, if no rail). Only drop your vanguard, in case he has too many units. You don't want to risk your artillery or high attack units.

4. The enemy will attack with almost everything he has. Since you are on the mountains, you will have a very high defense. Additionally, you will win may of the battles, and almost all of your units will reach elite status - you might even get a great leader out of it.

5. On the next turn, land your invasion force. The coast should be clear and you can now go on the attack without a horde of units coming after you.

[Skeeve]

Wow! If that strategy works, it sounds almost too simple!
I will give this a try soon.

[Dyrlac]

re: immediate attack of expeditionary force.

Entirely accurate. I now load up at least two full transports of mech infs/plain ole inf (gotta love the lowly spearman, which can be upgraded the whole way) alone. You have to be able to hold the ground. Armor is too precious with its double attack to waste in a non-offesnive capacity.

A deployment error in a recent campaign left a single mech inf fortified alone on a hill. The AI attacked with everything it had. My mech inf absorbed a massed attack of 8 tanks before finally dying as a hero.

[ken01]

I've done the same thing, but my strategy is a little different.

Drop off a few mech inf on a mountain against a nuisance civilization that keeps declaring war on you for no good reason (e.g. Zulu).

He'll attack your troops til he's all out. He'll also likely draft troops as well. This will weaken him and eventually he'll give up.

Demand peace, and bam no more war.

Repeat as necessary.

When attacking, I do the same thing, except I don't bring any artillery and instead just take one city asap. Move some bombers in, and viola! you have an easy way to decimate his entire civilization. As he's throwing everything at you, you destroy all his improvements (both terrain and city) and send him back to the stone age.

Taking over other civilizations is worthless in civ3. Its just too much work and too little fun. Damn Sid for not allowing fighter jets to attack and destroy ground troops!

[jbird]

Good advice.

However, i'm actually fond of the fighters and bombers not being able to kill ground units, as it does reflect air power's ability to decimate but inability to secure ground. Now, bombers and fighters vs boats...

[SerapisIV]

What game level are you guys playing at? I've only been playing at Regent and still on my first full game, but the AI seems pretty good about not wastefully attacking super-strong defensive positions which the fortified mountain-top mech inf. is the pinnacle of.

[Out4Blood]

Deity level now - but it's combat AI works the same on all levels, from what I understand.

[Kc7mxo]

This is a rather natural response. I'm somewhat surprised given so many other changes that firaxis allows ships to unload into mountains. It would certainly be interesting if they changed the game so that wheeled and treaded units coudlnt' travers mountains either. Hmmm.

[Fried_Onions]

Sorry OT but are you the O4B from AoE?

[Out4Blood]

Yes I am the REAL Out4Blood :-)
(I normally make that statement as a sig - but then folks tease me making their sigs say things like - "who the hell is O4B" and stuff like that.)

You still play AOE? I have been playing Kohan, which is a marvelous piece of work. I am trying out Galactic Battlegrounds, but it is very confusing for a former AOK player - all the hotheys are screwed up! I am too lazy to reconfig.... SIGH.....

[Fried_Onions]

Cool! I dont play aoe that much anymore. But I still have it installed. I was more into aok. I left aok a few weeks ago and then came to civ3. How come you and matty didn't get into aok as much as aoe? Was it the shooting buildings thing? I tried out the swbg demo. That was fun. I love the thing that makes techs and units build faster! hehe.

[Ozymandous]

Heh...

After frequenting (but not posting) Mr.Fixit's forum's I find it not surprising that one of the best players for AOE found an "easy" way to beat the combat AI in Civ3.

Good job Out4Blood, maybe Firaxis will fix it so only Marines can unload directly onto mountians and wheeled and treaded (is that a word) vehicles cannot use enemy roads to traverse mountians.

[Out4Blood]

Matty and I played quite a bit of AOK, in fact I was heavily involved in testing, both for AOK and AOK:TC. Matty was even interning at MS games during that period. Nice to see Fixit lurkers here, though.....

[Velociryx]

Hmmm...while I agree with this in prinicple, I have another idea which was recently tested and worked like a charm....

We all know that getting a Right of Passage Agreement give you use of the enemy's roads and rails, so what I did was....

Contact the Civ I had targeted for destruction.

Got a RoP Agreement with him for some money and luxuries.

Transported my army en mass into his territory (he didnt' mind at all!)

Used his rails to position my forces *exactly* how I wanted them.

Declared war and took 2/3's of his cities in a single turn, cut roads and rails to the few, fringe cities he had left so he could not reinforce or respond, and mopped up from there.

Piece of cake....

-=Vel=-

[SerapisIV]

A Firaxis poster (Soren, I think) said that the AI is programmed to watch for just such RoP betrayals and as a result the other AI's become much more difficult/less friendly to deal with and less likely to trust you (might even be mentioned in the manual). As an end game strategy it sounds fine, because in the end game who cares about reputation, but in the early game, this might cause later problems as you might end up on the wrong end of a big group of AI allies later in the game. Probably depends on difficulty settings and needs multiple game testings to prove if this AI behavior is a dominant enough feature to really hurt diplomacy.