The Invasion Fleet (help!?)

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Dominae
Has anyone else noticed this behaviour, or are all your megastacks always left alone?

Different behavior here. Sometimes they don't even try to attack. But there are exceptions. I once landed 2 transports full of mechinfs with the goal to pillage and deny uranium. That's not what I would call a megastack, but the best units my enemy had were cavalries and riflemen (no rubber, no oil). They were fully railroaded, and on the next turn threw all cavalries and knights they had at my stack. I stopped counting somewhere around the 50th unit. They had badly beaten up my force, succeeding to kill 4 mechinfs and leaving others with only 1 hp. With the remaining force I could forget the razing goal. On the following turns I lost more of the 1 hp mechinfs to longbowmen and the remaining cavalries. Three of my units made it to the uranium, pillaged the road and fortified there. Overall it was a disaster for me.

IIRC this was with 1.17 or even 1.16. I don't know whether the AI behavior has changed, as I had no invasion with 1.21 yet.

[Arrian]

Ralph,

Impressive response by the AI there. I wouldn't call it a disaster, though, since you did pillage the uranium and kill a TON of units. For the cost of what, 13 mech infs?

-Arrian

[Kc7mxo]

I just played a nice invasion out today. Initial force was 65 tanks, 15 infantry, and 8 artillery. Reinforcements of 8 more units landing every three turns for quite a while. Naval escort was 8 bships and 2 destroyers. I'd been preparing the invasion for thirty turns or so, (building tanks to upgarde to modern armor) andthen Iroquois declared war cause i wouldn't give em espionage.

Needless to say, the Iroqouis felt my wrath. And then the Germans felt my irratition at their coloninization efforts. And then I sacked the Japanese upside the head for refusing to sell me ivory for anything short of 5 luxuries, 3 resources, and 700 gold. Greedy buggers.

I like your invasion force, its got character.

[spy14]

I just wiped out the zulus with 24 modern armor with air support, Shaka decided he could do without a navy though which made my life a lot easier when it came to sending reinforcements. And it all happened because he asked if I wanted his eldest son with my other demands... The navy thing though, anyone else noticed the computer not bothering to build one?

[Txurce]

In my relatively few invasions, the AI tends to throw everyhting at me, although sometimes it waits one disastrous turn. The "combat settler" tactic verges on an exploit, but I guess it could be rationalized as a seabee operation. Arrian, your instant transfer of your entire air force does indeed make things simple. I love it. All of these threads lead me to think that an invading force could well be better off with a really powerful defensive base against which the AI will destroy its offensive units, after which a relatively small offensive force could have its way with what's left, pausing periodically to heal.

[Theseus]

Thanks for all the thoughts. I put up a lengthy post that includes the conclusion to the invasion in General.

Couple of responses here:

I highly recommend a lot of Artillery for the invading uber-stack. Both the free shot on defense, and softening up units before attack, are invaluable at preserving the invading force.

I also kept a small contingent of Arty at home, as well as one or two Bomber wings at key locations... got watch that sneaky AI.

Overall, the invasion was a lot of fun... but next time I am going to do it earlier, for the metagame.