Ra Mesh Strategy Guide: Conquering Your Enemy Abroad, Part 1

[The_Hawk]

Almost the same benefits. Often you can see an army losing 10 hitpoints to a single defender. If you'd attacked with 3 MA, that would be two of them dead, and needing replacing. With armies you still have all 4 MA alive in the army, and the two replacement MA that you've just churned out and flown over increase your force rather than just maintaining its strength. It's like the difference between retreating and non-retreating units - it makes the retreat-capable units significantly stronger for the same stats under most circumstances.

I see. Great points. I guess I've got to wait and get the 1.21f patch. I love concentrating forces and if the 1.21f patch fixes this, lookout. The key here is if you have a stack of armies, that would actually be wonderful. I always stack like units in an army, especially when it comes to movement rates. I would hate to slow down my cavalry by stacking them with a rifleman, or something....

Question though. Can you Airlift an empty Army? I thought that GLs and Armies couldn't be airlifted. That would mean that if I load them on foreign soil, then I would have to ship them there all the time. What have you done when you've attacked someone light years away? I've had some campaigns where I had to sail for more than 13 turns before I got to the enemy. Imagine having to make a return trip to bring more armies? Have you had this experience? What was your approach?

[Theseus]

vulture,

That is just such an overwhelming force that you can't go wrong. But you ARE giving up 80 (!) potential attacks by putting 40 MAs into Armies.

Hey, I like Armies as much as the next guy (ha!), but MAs are too powerful individually to degrade this way. I am, of course, in love with adding an MA to a 3X Tank Army.

Hawk,

The 2-city attack is here:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=55071

[vulture]

Theseus:

That is just such an overwhelming force that you can't go wrong. But you ARE giving up 80 (!) potential attacks by putting 40 MAs into Armies.

When fighting large numbers of Mech Inf, you are vastly improving the survivability of your armour though. And in the MTiv game, so much of the terrain was massed mountains that in practice I wasn't giving up any attacks at all. There were places where no matter how many MA I had to play with I was only going to take one city per turn cimply because you can only move one square per turn on mountains that aren't in your territory. In other circumstances (especially when attacking an opponent without MI) MA are proportionally more powerfully individually. In those cases I sometimes just use armies of 2 or 3 MA just to root out hard to dislodge defenders.

But to be honest, once you've got 70+ MA hanging around, you may as well stick them into armies if you have them, since the chance of them all getting to use all their attacks in one turn is minimal. OTOH when you don't have an overwhelming force, the extra attacks can be useful (I got a lot of utility from individual MAs hoovering up lots of workers and taking out the isolated calary and riflemen that modern age AIs still seem to have around in fair numbers, and 4 individual MA are vastly more useful for thta kind of job than a single army could be).


The_Hawk:

Question though. Can you Airlift an empty Army? I thought that GLs and Armies couldn't be airlifted. That would mean that if I load them on foreign soil, then I would have to ship them there all the time. What have you done when you've attacked someone light years away? I've had some campaigns where I had to sail for more than 13 turns before I got to the enemy. Imagine having to make a return trip to bring more armies? Have you had this experience? What was your approach?

Empty armies can't be airlifted either (never tried with a GL - don't know if they can be helicoptered either).

I've never actually fought a war against an opponent requiring that much sea travel, or at least not under circumstances where reinforceements were needed. I tend to go for the overwhelming concentration of force approach. F'rinstance to capture two Russian cities defended by infantry, I landed 8 artillery, an army of 2 MA, 8 MA and 5 MI. Complete overkill, but you never know when things are going to go apallingly badly.

The only times I've fought an opponent that far away, much of the journery has been overland. Someone else's land initially, but I tend to stick to conquering opponents by order of ease of reaching them (unless there are pressing reasons not to). So in the Babylon game, when I wanted to invade Germany, I'd already taken out the island of China, and the Indians who were on the near side of the continent. The crossing from my island to China was 1 turn in a transport at the nearest point. The crossing from China to India was less. Well organised use of transports meant that it was just about possible to produce a unit in babylon and shift it across two passages of water and two continents, and have it fight the same turn it was produced. I've never yet played on a map where it took a long time to get units to the front, as long as I chose which civs to fight with that in mind. But them I've never played on (e.g.) huge maps with archipelago and 80% water...

[Catt]

Originally posted by Theseus
But you ARE giving up 80 (!) potential attacks by putting 40 MAs into Armies.

Hey, I like Armies as much as the next guy (ha!), but MAs are too powerful individually to degrade this way. I am, of course, in love with adding an MA to a 3X Tank Army.

Nowadays, I pretty much listen very closely to what Theseus (rpodos) says about armies.

I don't like putting MA into armies. On a blitz attack, oftentimes enemy cities are one enemy tile away, and oftentimes two tiles away. Three modern armour = six attacks in the "one tile" circumstances, three attacks in the "two tile" circumstances; an army of three MA equals two attacks in "one tile;" one attack in "two tile." Even if you don't use all six available attacks, you retain the final movement point and therefore the ability to either (i) use a wounded MA as a garrison, or (ii) use a wounded MA as a disband (for shields).

OTOH, I love putting tanks into armies. A two or three tank army is a guaranteed (just about ) winner against infantry foritfied in a metropolis on a hill across a river. Save those tank armies for the really tough nuts-to-crack. When Computers come along, throw an MI or two on top of the tank armies -- you've now got the best defense on top of a strong offensive weapon that is still useful against fortified MI and all of which is a two-move unit; very nice .

(Tactic used with the implied permission of of the mixed army guru, rpodos/Theseus).

Catt

[Theseus]

Thanks Catt... yeah, throwing an MI into a 3X Tank Army is a gamestopper... the AI can't deal with it at all (think of Norman in one of the Harvey Mudd episodes of the original Star Trek... cannot compute, cannot compute), and I believe it'll be a standard concept in MP.

Hawk,

I haven't played MTiv (cool convention, BTW), and if it's as mountainous and slow-moving as you report, I can see the hp advantage of an MA Army being meaningful. I buy that... the Nutcracker (Bismarck being the Mouse King, for me at least... I hate that guy). But otherwise, MAs are just too good individually to pack into an Army... that's one of the reasons I love adding them to a progressive mixed-unit Army, as they are the first to fight in each of the blitz battles.

In a way, you're talking about the end-result of UP (tm). Seriously, against the AI, 70+ MA, whether individually or packed into Armies, is game over. The most I've had is maybe 125, although I've seen references to 200+... at this point we're not talkin' serious strategy, but rather experimentation.

Sounds like you had fun though.

[Solver]

As much as this is an excellent post, I do see a few problems with what you mention, and I've done invasions in a fashion a bit different. I'm now off to play Civ, then write one strategy article, and then return here with comments .

[jshelr]

I started out doubting the wisdom of MA armies a couple of days ago, but have changed my mind for some circumstances due to the arguments presented here and the "Babylon and on" game.

If you can blitz an inferrior opponent, which is the circumstance we normally face, don't use MA armies, since they give up to many movement points.

If, like the Babylon game, circumstances present you with cities full of MI and arty, then you are not going to blitz and MA armies radically increase unit survivability.

I followed a different strategy in that game from Vulture, taking more time and moving large stacks of radar artillery within two squares of each target city over 12 pop. Worked great, but was too slow, and I ended up in 2050 an eyelash short of the domination win. Heartbreaking. One of Vulture's keys to winning, IMO, was that he retained the speed of MA and created the needed survivability via armies. (Babylon was a small country and could not overwhelm the AI with massive MA production.)

[vulture]

jshelr:

I followed a different strategy in that game from Vulture, taking more time and moving large stacks of radar artillery within two squares of each target city over 12 pop. Worked great, but was too slow, and I ended up in 2050 an eyelash short of the domination win. Heartbreaking. One of Vulture's keys to winning, IMO, was that he retained the speed of MA and created the needed survivability via armies. (Babylon was a small country and could not overwhelm the AI with massive MA production.)

I'm inclined to agree, especially having read your comments about losing 35 (or so) MA whilst failing to take Berlin. I took it with 5 MA armies without losing a unit (IIRC). Different games, different situations, admittedly, but it was still a big town on a hill with MI and artillery defence.

But, it all depends on the game circumstances. Sometimes MA armies are a waste.

I think defensive artillery is a big factor here. Radar artillery are very likely to knock at least 1 hp of an attacking unit. If that takes a veteran MA from 4 to 3 hp, that actually dramatically lowers its chances against the defending MI (when I get to my laptop I'll have a look at what it does to the odds). It could easily make you the underdog in a single ocmbat rather than the likely winner.

And just in case this begins to look like a thread-jack, I'll get back to the point by repeating that chosing the makeup of your invasion force (especially in regard to how many armie to include) depends quite severely on the type of terrain you will be travelling over. In hills and mountains you need more armies and/or artillery. In open terrain, MA is king, and lots of individual units is the way to go.

Sounds like something from the 'Art of War' (thread or book) - much of the victory is won by planning and good intelligence gathering.

[jshelr]

I think maybe it was Deep0 who was battered in Berlin. In my game, Berlin was Indian and a pussycat by the time we arrived on the scene. I diid have a disappointing experience in the first turn after taking a beachhead city in America though, teaching the same lesson -- apply enough of the right kind of power.

[The_Hawk]

Vulture:

And just in case this begins to look like a thread-jack, I'll get back to the point by repeating that chosing the makeup of your invasion force (especially in regard to how many armie to include) depends quite severely on the type of terrain you will be travelling over. In hills and mountains you need more armies and/or artillery. In open terrain, MA is king, and lots of individual units is the way to go.

Great point and I agree with your assessment about MAs in open terrain. Don't forget, my initial premise is starting with the beach head and proceeding from there. I generally tend to prefer to have my first wave of forces be enough to sustain a cluster of adjacent cities. As Theseus mentioned in his piece and did I, campaigns tend to work best when you attack on adjacent lines. However, I always try to position myself to land and attack from the square I land. That way, I only have to endure one wave of undefended assaults from the enemy. When including slow moving units like infantry to maybe defend cities or escort artillery, it becomes more imperative. Otherwise, if you have to travel too much BEFORE you attack, then your chances of success dwindle with each tile.

(NOTE: I once had to defend against an attack from the Persions where they had a stack of like 120 immortals and like 30 spearman! My scouts and spies spotted the impending assault about 4 turns from my nearest city. I slept on them, because we had just had a military alliance to destroy Babylon. However, because of their slow movement rate, I was able to speed my own stacks of Knights to the scene. Through some creative tactical maneuvers and the attack/retreat capabilities of my knights, I weathered the storm without losing a single city!)

So, while I agree with your point that more armies may be benefial in Modern Era warfare, when travelling across mountains, I do tend to think that the flexibility factor is favorable when trying to penetrate a well defended AI. Once you get your Airport, its pretty much about who can produce the quickest and I always try to influence and diminish his production capabilities during my campaigns (see above).