Tactics: invading AI continent in Modern Age

[napalm010]

Using the Right Of Passage to get your forces into position for suprise attack is mentioned in the manual several times. Starting the suprise attack while the ROP is in effect is said to have serious effect on how other civs deal with/ view u. How much a effect "serious" means i personally don't know.

[Sevorak]

Only thing about the RoP stab is that you'll only be able to do it once. The AI's have about twenty-five different ways to tell you off if you want to try it twice. I especially like "I'll give you a right of passage agreement - to hell!".

As for amphibious invasion, if you want to be able to do some things immediately, the key is marines. Yes, the marines' amphibious attack actually means something now, since unloading is a full-turn action now instead of a single move. It used to be that Armor could step out of a transport onto flatland and make two attacks right away. Since they can't do that anymore, a transport full of marines becomes a great asset.

How does this work? Just bombard one of their coastal cities into submission. When they're at pop<7, with most improvements piles of rubble and with all defenders bombed down to 1 hp, send in the marines. Eight vet marines should be able to take the city. The important point is to CAPTURE the city, not RAZE it. Then move your tank/artillery/otherlandunit transports in, and hit Unload, selecting to Unload All. The benefit of unloading in a city is that your units activate in that city, during the same turn, with all their movement points. Instead of simply using your first turn to dump vulnerable units onto terrain somewhere, you can seize the one city your first turn, and strike outward from that city, maybe razing a few more cities if they're close enough. Just add a couple carrierfuls of bombers to sever important rail links, and the turn-advantage this gives you can be enough to wreak desired havoc before reinforcements arrive.

-Sev

[Superpopanz]

Originally posted by 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.....

Praise the lord, praise the lord! O4B plays civ 3, astonishing! When can we expect Sherriff and the Darqs? Do you miss the TC in civ c3? Did you try to wall goldmines yet?

[Zorkk]

OT4B & Maimin' Matty... lol!

I was lurker on those forums, and on the AOK heaven forums too! familiar names!

I love these strategies, but why not one more.

Rather than a RoP-sneak attack, and rather than landing a full invasion force, whynot pull a feint & attack somewhere else.

Using O4B's example, You could handle it like thus:

You want a city... for whatever reason, but you KNOW the AI has a huge army, and you'd rather not run into it. So pick a spot somewhere far away from your intended target to land your feint force... sometime like the 3 or 4 inf. Provided the computer does not have railroad, you need to make sure this initial landing point is far enough from your real target so that the enemy cannot move back in one turn.

So you land your distraction force on turn one, the AI will contact you, tell you to get out or go to war. Go to war. Once the AI engages the majority of his units at that location (usually in the next turn or two) then unload your boad near your actual intended target, and mow them down.

I've found this strategy can work very well, because once you land your second force, and attack a city, the AI will break off attacking your distraction force, to go deal with this new, and bigger threat. and you can either load em back up on the boat, and go garrison your newly won city, or move them on and try taking another. Either way, the AI should be in a bit of a quandry, since it now has 2 fronts, and not sure where to go. U on the other hand, have already gotten your original objective, and might just wanna think about a peace treaty. or whatever. I've found that this type of attack quite often opens the door for a large scale invasion, because all the AI units are mulling around.

If the AI does have railroad, then this get's a bit harder, but not impossible. You just need to find the right place for your Feint force. Somewhere where they'd have to leave the railroad to attack you, yet still somewhere that's threatening to them. Newly founded/conquored cities are generally the best bet.

Zorkk


Zorkk

[player1]

One hint:

Destoy enemy roads & railroads on strategic resources, by bombing them with bombers or battleships.

It's nice to have enemies use only riflemen for defense.

[Comrade Tribune]

Originally posted by Velociryx
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=-

This works, of course, but you destroyed your reputation. If there were some more opponents left, I would now expect them to ally against you!?

[CyberGnu]

There's an even better strategy in any age. Use the most fearsome unti of them all - the COMBAT SETTLER!!!

Load up a whole bunch of cavalry/tanks on transports, plus a settler for each city you want to take in the first turn. Move the transports to right outside the AI border. Next turn, move in, drop off the settler one or two tiles away from the city you want to take, and return to outside the border.

The AI will ask you to remove your unti from withing his border, and you tell him you will. Since the settler isn't considered an offensive unit, the 'move automatically' option doesn't pop up.

Next turn, declare war with the AI, build a city, and then move in the transport. Unload all, and you can attack right away.

Do this with five or so cities in one go, then sue for peace. Wait a few turns to consolidate your new conquests (or jsut raze them... since you have a nice newly built city), then do it again.

Due to the poor game mechanics in Civ 3, the AI will never realize that you use your settlers offensively... and due to even worse game mechanics, establishing a city even smack down in the middle of enemy territory instantly gives you a one tile border. And since the AI usually builds his cities four or five tiles apart, your one beachhead city can usually launch an attack on two cities at once.

It's hard to fail with this strategy, since the AI never gets a chance to respond.

As an unnecessary illustration, check out this screen shot:

https://www.nd.edu/~joxgaard/Extra/civ1.jpg

Those are my ten tanks and six or so mech. Inf. The city contains about 10 artillery. (Almost forgot about that... Additional bonus by having your own borders, your artillery can now move two tiles and shoot, since artillery has a two tile range... )

Hopefully this will get fixed in a patch...

[Kc7mxo]

Um. i was under the impression that you couldn't build cities in enemy territory? guess i was wrong. hmm.

[Roytheboy]

Yep the Combat settler works really well. See the thread Aggresive Use of Settlers I started last week for other aggressive uses of the settler (denying resources, gaining choke points and forcing enemy to attack you etc)
Never invade without a good supply of setlers

[CyberGnu]

Kc, you can, but it is an act of war.

Roy, yeah, the stealing of resources is a really bad one... and one more thing the AI doesn't figure out.

[martin3393]

Deposing and assorted problems . . .

Hey, I recently achieved a science victory in Regent mode in 1802, but kept playing the game so that I could learn how the contemporary units work (I keep winning before I complete the tech tree). After building up a pretty good army (8 radar artillery; 10 modern armor; 10 mechanized infantry; 8 marines), I invaded my neighbor (who was technologically far behind); everything was going swell until cities started deposing me.

I was conquering size 10-12 cities, getting 5-6 resistors, garrisoning plenty of units, quelling resistance in the second or third round, but then being ousted (after the resistance is over!) shortly thereafter.

What is really disturbing, of course, is the fact that I had about two dozen units (mainly bombers, transports, and healing offensive units) in the city at the time. I'm losing far more units to being deposed than I am to enemy action (five citizens evidently carry the day against an immense army)!

I'm wondering how people are dealing with this issue. Should I just be razing all my conquered cities and replacing them? That seems a waste. Should I just refuse to keep very many units in conquered cities? That seems inconvenient. What are my alternatives? Am I missing some sort of espionage option?

Thanks for the advice.

Martin

[vmxa1]

I mostly raze the cities as they are not worth much anyway. The corruption make you end up with 1 shield or 2, you can get that from a new city. I will hold them if they have a wonder or I need an outpost. Either way I bomb them (art or planes) down to size 3 or less. If they are larger the I will put most of them in as entertainers and let them starve down if need be. I will then rush in a temple as soon as the they settle down. Razing them prevents them from taking them back by force and you will not have to reduce your armies to defend them. It also cuts down on their use of roads/rails as they are no longer theirs. If I need a few turns to soften them up, I will destroy the improvements to prevent them from running in troops and it cuts down on their income and food. This especially true if you are on a continent that is not where you palace is, as you can not get any benefit from it.

[rugbyprop3]

upgraded Battleship....... Sorta

Does anyone know if you can bombard with artillery that are on transports? Cuz if you could you would have 8 bombardments possible from a ship that have range and power that = > than the battleship.

Just a crazy brainstorm while at work away from the game.

[Padmewan]

Starve the Resisters

I've been doing some experimentation and found that starving high-culture cities will often keep them from reverting. You must be vigilant every turn to turn everyone into taxmen (the best use for them) until the city is, I dunno, half its starting size.

As a bonus, bring in workers and supplement the native people with yours.

I found this works by reloading whenever a city reverts and trying the starvation route... it's worked for me every time (only thrice, I admit).

[martin3393]

Starving them does work, it seems. I've been replaying my little invasion and with the following tactics, and I've taken six cities and not yet been deposed once.

1) I take the city and garrisoned a number of troops equal to the resisters. When the resistance is quelled, I make sure that virtually no units remain in the town (except one I don't mind losing); instead I establish my defensive lines outside the city.

2) Then I keep the town starving by setting most of the citizens to entertainers or other specialists. Of course, this means that the town is not in civil disorder either.

So far, this is working very well.