Modern Age Blues

[MosesPresley]

In my games, at the moderate level, I do very well up until the modern age, at which point all of my hard work gets rolled back by the relentless ai.

Could one of you strategy gurus take a look at my game film and tell me where I am going wrong. I think I may be using my air force inefficiently, but I am not sure that is the entire problem.

Any help would be much appreciated.

[MosesPresley]

I see 6 downloads. Does anyone care to comment? It doesn't have to be detailed, a general statement would do.

I'm beginning to suspect my choice of units. The game is modeled on the rock, paper, scissors style of play. I think the AI is answering my rocks with paper, and I'll answer with scissors. I'll forget about the battle for a disasterous moment, attending to other matters, minor skirmishes, as the AI builds more rocks to destroy my scissors.

I hope the analogy makes sense.

[Harpoon]

economy wins over military

Anyways, yes, modern is harder than the other ages. Things change real fast and the units are very powerfull.

Don't build too many times of units, its difficult to micromanage them. Have a control group of tanks and a control group of machine guns. Tanks are bad against anti-tank units, but are powerfull enough to take out everything else, even if they don't have specific bonouses to them. Machine gunners can take out bazookas and helicopters, the tank killers. Just make sure the control groups are effective, and move your anti-armour out of danger when incountering non-armoured units, and vise versa. And you should have never large amounts of resources stockpiled unless your saving for something, they dont help you. Bind your barracks to keys so you can quickly queue up troops for reinforcements. Learn your hotkeys. If you can do everything fast then you have a big advantage.

And remmber, the AI on Moderate and onward is alot more efficient and counters and stuff than most human players.

[nihilocrat]

I haven't tried looking at your save yet, but it might help to know that I usually attack the ai starting with the gunpowder age. Depending on how blitzkrieg-like your attack is, you can paralyze their research as the computer seems to divert its resources to other things (I remember a 2v2v2 game where a player I was attacking for quite awhile had gotten stuck in the Industrial age as everyone else was in Information).

What I wanted to point out though, is the speed doesn't matter too much in single player, you have a pause function . Use it to your advantage, use it to slowly plan out a certain build order or take a break from a battle to improve your economy.

[Madine]

I downloaded it but haven't looked at it yet =p

[MosesPresley]

Thanks Harpoon.

nihilocrat: I have been pausing a great deal, and attacking as early as I can muster enough troops. I'm not much of a rusher. The modern age is so hectic, I get lost in the details.

Thanks for the help.

[V'ger]

Hi,

Well, I haven't looked (or downloaded) yet either, but I have two suggestions: Nukes and Cruise Missiles. I love both of them in Modern and Info ages.

One Cruise will take out a missile silo, so they work as a direct counter. (BTW, the hotkey for silos is X, so you can cycle through every silo you have.) And 1-2 will take down any troop/vehicle building. Airports take 3-4. Forts take 3, as do Flak emplacements. (I know that last is an expensive way to do it, but sometimes blowing open a small hole in their air defense can let you ram a huge wedge of choppers/bombers through to make a killing strike.)

Now, nukes are something all to themselves and are part of a Schwerpunkt final attack on a nation. Sometimes I'll carpet nuke my way to the capital. Trying to drop as few nukes as I can, I'll take out only the cities and infrastructure directly in my path, though sometimes I'll spend one on those clumps of unit factories the AI loves to build.

I drive up near a city, nuke it, take it, move to the next and repeat. Usually, if you take everything you've got and just order it to the capital (and order a nuke strike there at the same time), you can take it and hold on until the timer runs out.

Following that strategy, I'll save nukes for use on defenders who respond. Just make sure you've taken their silos out first. The AI loves to lob nukes.

[MosesPresley]

V'ger, I'm well aware of the AI's penchant for nukes. You would think that they were modelled on Harry Truman. If I can't crush the AI before they develop nukes -- fuhgeddabout it. They will nuke me into oblivion. It is very annoying.