Ok, I'm looking for a little advie here... invasion time....

[a2b2c3]

Well we have Americans (me), Iroquois, & Aztec all on the same continent, we are pretty much good buddies. Then we have a french island to the east, also good buddies. Now then, there is a Persian, Zulu, English, & Babylonian Island to the west. Persians and Zulus got mad at babylonians and killed em off. help me get control of a small babylonian island. My problem is this: I have no oil, my allies have none to trade, no excess at least. I've tried countless times to take cities on that Zulu/persian continent. I have a world war going on right now, me aztec, iroquois, & french vs persia and zulu, english are a minor threat. Problem is though, i can't invade their continent. i have 2 carriers & 4 fighters/bombers each. i've been usuing the bombers to bomb surrounding roads to slow down their troops, but each time i land i instantly have 30 cavalry in my face. last time i sent in 9 marines and 7 infantry. they didn't even last one turn. i need asdive for invasion....

[Sarxis]

Build up your invasion forces more. Also, create an army if you can and put defensive units in it (at least 2). When you land, try to get to high ground, such as mountains or hills; this will help you in your defense at the beachhead.

Then, try to deny him his resources. If you see any strategic resources on his map, try to destroy the roads to it. Also, just do some general pillaging. If you do this correctly with a lot of defensive units, you should slow down his economy some. Try to spread out your pillaging raids so that at any one time, the enemy has several targets to choose from.

Besides this, it sounds like you are just outnumbered. Hey, even Normandy wasn't easy!

[David Floyd]

Land no offensive units at first...only defensive units, and MAYBE a couple of arty for bombards...massive numbers of infantry should go in the first wave, hopefully 20-30 pieces, followed up by your more offensive units...

[Simpleton]

Here's what I used to do in Civ2 if I couldn't make in roads into the computers empire.
I would set up my main attack force and then create a smaller diversionary force. I then would land both forces at the same time. This usually caused the computer player some problems as it tried to cope with a two front war. Most often my main force would survive to assault the objective I had in mind and give me a beachhead to work with.
Of course, that was Civ2 and this is Civ3.......

[Grunthex]

Do NOT neglect to bombard yourself at least a 2 square radus around your target landing point free of all transportation. Assuming this is modern, the enemy will be totally railroaded, and will throw every singly unit it has at you until you fall. My first attempt to invade the Aztecs in my last game had me land 16 Tanks, figuring they'd do fine. They managed to kill off about 40 units, but they were simply overwhelmed.

My second invasion was more serious. I did the bombing, so the ONLY units that could attack my landing force of 8 mech inf and 8 modern armor were the Aztec cavalry (state of the art for him). I killed over *100* of them before they ran out, and there about 50 ground units that had started rushing in.

I killed off about 20 on attack (got 2 great leaders out of it!) and retreated, because they were going to overwhelm me. I would have had them in 4 or 5 turns, 16 more Modern Armor ready to go, most of their forces down, but the save game ended up being corrupt. C'est la vie.

I'm not sure I would have won that game anyway by any method but Diplomacy, it was 1970ish, I was only at Space Flight, and 8 turn techs (had to go communism, my democracy was collapsing under war weariness). The Aztecs had such an overwhelming score advantage that I suspect even crippling them wouldn't have tilted the odds in my favor (I like the time-averaged histograph, no more end game rushes)

[Eli]

Send cheap suicider units to pillage his roads. In my first Civ2 Deity game I lost over 70 horsemen but I managed to isolate many of his cities(didnt help me to win). This way he will also be busy with killing off your cheap fast suiciders instead of attacking your invading army, thus giving you more time to set them up in good defensive positions.

I'm not sure how implementable it is in naval landings though.

[Ecthy]

No No No No No!!!

you want to keep his roads for quickly approaching his inner country!! pillaging roads is what you should do in order to keep an invading army away from your capital1!

[Grunthex]

Originally posted by Ecthelion
No No No No No!!!

you want to keep his roads for quickly approaching his inner country!! pillaging roads is what you should do in order to keep an invading army away from your capital1!

EH?! You can't USE his roads. the only one they're benefitting is HIM. How much Civ 3 have you played? Even if you take a city, your borders will only be 1 radius, and outside of that, you STILL can use the roads!

[Eudaimic]

I'm currently in sort of the same situation, although I'm the agressor. I positioned my rather immense fleet around the egyptian shores, bribed the 3 other civs into going to war against egypt (they wouldn't trade with me the entire game!) and launched a large scale assault.

My main concern was to dethrone them as being a threat to my victory. So I started by launching 5 ICBM's at their largest cities, obliterating a LOT of people and detroying all the roads going in and out of them.

I then used my some 15 battleships to bombard their costal cities, putting emphazis on the ones that I intended on conquering first (two on the same coastline).

Using my carriers with F-15's, stealth fighters and bombers and regular bombers (about 5 carriers fully stocked) I bombed roads leading into every aluminium and rubber resource that I could see. I was unable to reach his uranium resource, so that's still a threat to me.

I then landed my ground troops, 16 modern armours, 16 mech infantries, 8 marines and 8 artillery. I managed to capture 3 of his workers that I loaded onto my transports and moved back to my mainland where I also had more armours and mech infantry waiting for pickup (these would open my second front a few turns later).

The bombardment of his coastal cities had proved fruitful and when I attacked it I lost 2 armours, the rest poured in there and fortified themselve the best they knew how.

I knew he was going to hit back hard, which is why I made sure that my mech infantry were the first units in there. And he did, I lost a few units but survived the overall onslaught pretty well. The ICBM's must've done their job.

That's when he started counterattacking (I must admit I should've seen this coming... but didn't). 5 ICBM's headed toward my shoreline and most productive cities!! Luckily only 2 of them hit home, the others were shot down by my star wars project (that IS what it is ).

And his ships and subs started heading towards my shores, but I was ready for that one (phew!). My AEGIS cruisers managed to take out quite a few of his submarines and ironclads (What is up with keeping these around you ask? Well one of the damaged veteran Ironclads managed to take out a fully operational Elite AEGIS cruiser!! Fluke I guess, better not happen again!

But he still had several battleships, transports and carriers heading towards my shores. He was going for a landbased invasion and disruption tactic!! THE NERVE!

Good thing I had built a batch of some 10 cruise missiles. BAM, that hit him hard. In two turns I managed to wipe out any significant naval activity on his part, allowing both my units and the units of my new comrades in arms to move in on all his coastal cities. (BTW, is there a way to move a cruisemissile to a different continent, or perhaps load it onto a sub?)

When I broke free of my first city with my armours and a few mech inf. I hit the second city hard (after having bombarded it even harder!). I got in, fortified.

In the same turn I landed my troops a little north of there to take one of the cities in-land. Everything was going according to plan. The next turn I got that city.

That's when HE pulled a stunt on me and actually got back the other city I had taken right before...!! DAMN.

And that's where I am now. I've been spending a few turns just running bombing missions on all the major railroads that I consider a threat and as soon as my allies get their asses into gear and actually launch some more ground assaults I'm staying where I am.


So anyway, advice on attacking and invading:

1 - Have a LOT of troops. In general when I was in the armoured infantry a few years back the rule was that you attack on a 3 to 1 scale a MINIMUM. More will not hurt you!

2 - Soften him up by bombing the living daylights out of him first. Do this with ships and planes. Hold off the landbased invasion until the last possible moment. Go for his resources, take out the roads connecting his cities (if possible) and in general cause as much confusion as you can. Cutting a continent in two is good.

3 - Bring a versatile and powerful land force. Have a combination of offensive and defensive units, and consider whether or not you're attacking to invade and hold or just to disrupt. Invading and holding is a lot harder than you'd think, as the AI will be cutting off your supplies and destroying the roads around the cities. So you have to make sure that your units can go without reinforcements for a little while. And also make sure that if you're using the sea to bring in units that you're not leaving any holes open for one of his subs or other seabearing units to come in and hit you in the back.

4 - Protect your own coastline. I could've fielded more battleships, subs and cruisers to use in the offence, but I'm glad I didn't as I would'nt have been able to stop his counterattack at me. Also, cruisemissiles are GOOD (that's modern times of course... )

5 - And finally make sure that you set yourself a goal, lay down a plan and follow it. Don't let the AI dictate in which way the war is to be fought. I wanted my conflict to be landbased and totally disruptive to the egyptians. So I made sure that I was out in force and ready to deal with seabased threats in no time. Nothing would suck more than having your entire battleship, transport and carrier group be taken out by a couple of stray subs that you didn't see because you forgot to include subs yourself


Phew... that's about it for now. I've got some more bombing runs to do before I hit Cairo. Then I think I'll call up and see if they're willing to cut a deal. Considering the AI so far I'm guessing no...

[a2b2c3]

Update

ok, now for an update.... War vs. Zulus and Persia over, Damn war weariness caused half my cities to go into civil disorder, had to increase my luxeries to 30%, ned of the golden age didn't help either. But here's the really annoing part. I saw an empty oil spot near an english city that was destroyed, so i decided to send over a settler to claim it. Before i got there, the iroquois built a settlement which was quickly lost to the english so i moved my settler back, added it bak to the city.

Next turn i notice something new. It seems a new supply of oil had opened up on one of the squares where the babylonians used to live. There was still a little room to colonize so i went for it. Dang zulus came close to taking it. they colonized a spot for another resource right next to it. Anyways i got my settler over there. had to build next to the spot because a zulu worker was trying to build a colony.

So i get the city, get the airport, & get the oil. But here's the annoying part.... Bet you can't guess what it is..... Next turn, a new supply of oil was discovered right outside Philly. You don't know how annoying that was... all that work... oh well, now i can build my navy again, get some mechanized infantry, get some tanks, and use my city as a base of ops for the next great war...... hehehe life can be annoyingly good.

[Grunthex]

Originally posted by Eudaimic
(BTW, is there a way to move a cruisemissile to a different continent, or perhaps load it onto a sub?)

Can you not re-base them like you do bombers onto carriers? I never got to missiles, but I thought that was how they worked.

[Ecthy]

Originally posted by Grunthex
EH?! You can't USE his roads. the only one they're benefitting is HIM. How much Civ 3 have you played? Even if you take a city, your borders will only be 1 radius, and outside of that, you STILL can use the roads!

I don't have the game yet, as you would know had you followed the threads... but I would have thought that roads give some kind of... movement bonus... don't they? silly!!!

There have been so many wars in which a good infrastructure of a country allowed the enemy to approach big cities quickly.... and why did the Soviets destroy their infrastructure when the Germans arrived?