I love Tanks. :love: And while I know that the diehard warmongers would consider a game that lasts long enough to see them a disgrace, I'd still like to share some thoughts about how to make the most of these lovely, rolling implements of destruction. Experienced warmongers may view much of this as obvious implications of the combat system, but hopefully there will be a few tips useful for everyone.

Significance: The combination of two moves, collateral damage, and city raider allow one to capture enemy cities far more quickly than in previous eras. Conquering a city every other turn with only a modest battlegroup (i.e. 10-12 tanks) is easily possible, given the right tactics. This can have tremendous impact, whether you're a builder looking to demolish a rival or a warmonger looking for an early end date.

Objective: Conquer enemy cities as quickly as possible. At this stage of the game, IMO, losing an occasional tank is well worth cutting your conquest time by 50%-75%. The war weariness, supply costs, and wasted turns before victory are more important than a few hundred hammers. If you are significantly behind your enemy and are trying for a desperate late game power-grab, these tactics may not be appropriate.

Assumptions:

1) You are at least close to tech/power parity with your victim. It's fine if he has gunships and/or SAM's. If he's far enough ahead to already have Jets or MechInfs, then you're probably too late.

2) You have Flight and Radio (for Fighters and Bombers). Having Rocketry (for Gunships) and Robotics (for MechInfs) is nice, but by no means required. You also need Airports in your major military production cities.

3) You have a reasonable supply of Level 4 (10XP) units. Just having a military city with West Point is enough - you don't need a ton of Level 4 units. Having the Pentagon and civics such that every city can produce 10XP troops is obviously nice, but again not strictly necessary.

4) You're playing on Settler. Kidding... this works fine at least through Emperor, provided you can stay in the game well enough to meet the other criteria.

What you need:

Tanks: Well, duh. More specifically, you need several kinds:

1) Raider Tanks - your heavy hitters: You want 3 of these, 4 is better. These are the ones that really need to be Level 4 to be effective. Take Raider I, Raider II, and Barrage I promotions. Take Raider III at Level 5 if you get there.

2) Drill Tanks - cleanup crew: How many you need depends on how many troops you're up against. A number equal to the number of defending troops is safe. If you're in a time/production bind, you can reasonably count on blitzing for multiple attacks but make sure that the target city isn't on a hill (costs 2 moves to attack). Promote these with as many Drill promos as you can get.

3) Cover Tanks - protection: You want 2-3 of these, depending on how much you fear the enemy's counterattack. Promote either all Combat or Combat I/II, Ambush depending on whether you think a counterattack will be heavier on tanks or artillery/gunships. If you have Gunships, one of them can replace one of these. If you have MechInfs, use them instead. On the very first assault of a war, these will take a larger beating as the AI throws its extra troops at them. For the fastest conquest, keep two extras safe behind your lines and ready to move.

Non-Tank units:

1) Medics - Explorers are essential for this, because they'll likely be the only available 2 move unit that can take medic. You need two of them.

2) Bombers - The more the merrier, but 10 is probably enough. 15 can cut through even the toughest air defenses I've seen. More than that is overkill. Expect to lose about one for every other city and be ready to replace them.

3) Fighters - Two or three flying Interception within range of the target city. Only needed if the victim has Bombers himself, in order to intercept bombing runs against your approaching stack.

4) Worker pair w/cover - Very important. You need to be able to quickly build rails in conquered territory. In contrast to Civ3, the AI doesn't appear to be very keen on snagging covered workers. I tend to cover with only a single tough defender like a Combat I/II/Ambush Infantry. An extra cover unit would be safer. Having two pairs of workers is also nice, but not essential.

How it works:

In most situations, this will be a two turn process - one to approach and the other to attack. If terrain, culture, or a reliance on blitz necessitate an extra approach turn, you may want to hold off some or all of the bombers until turn two.

Turn 1:

1) Tank group approaches. Since tanks don't receive terrain bonuses, you generally just want the fastest path. But sometimes you can position yourself so that incoming attacks are across a river, which is helpful.

2) First bombing run - balance is key here. It's important to damage the units in the target city on this turn since the combat system significantly penalizes weakened attackers. You want counterattacking tanks, artillery, and gunships to come at you at no more than 75% strength or so. At the same time, your airstrikes won't be effective until you've lowered the culture defense, and of course you need to start softening them up for your approaching tanks anyway. Keep in mind that, at 15%/turn, it takes 7 successful bombing runs to completely eliminate enemy defenses. I tend to go about 60/40 %bombard vs. unit bombard on this turn. %bombard first, then unit bombard. If you have a surplus of air power, it's worth looking around at other cities near your target in order to weaken any responders there.

Turn 2:

1) Second bombing run - Finish what the first one started. You should really have enough bombers to both zero out the cultural defense and reduce all defenders to 50%. If that's impossible, go for a balanced approach. If the enemy has bunkers (which is pretty rare, in my experience), try to make sure that every unit takes a few hits but don't get hung up on it.

2) Raiders attack - This wave has two objectives - take out the toughest defenders and soften up the remainder for your drill tanks. These tanks will take damage, though hopefully not be destroyed. Do not use every raider tank you brought. Two is enough - the goal is speed, and the more damage you suffer the more time you spend healing. After two collateral damage hits from these the rest of the defenders should be under 50% strength, and it's time to move on. The third/fourth raider tanks are purely for backup purposes in case the other two get badly beat up by counterstrikes.

3) Drill tanks attack - This wave takes advantage of first strikes, letting your drill tanks sweep up defenders with a good probability of taking no damage. Nothing elaborate, just send them in. Don't blitz with a wounded tank unless absolutely required - not because you'll lose it, but because you want to minimize healing time. This wave should capture the city. If you've never tried this, expect to be surprised at how your tanks can go 5 for 5 battles or more without taking a scratch.

4) Move in to the city? - This gets tricky, depending on how the enemy countered your advance. If you have damaged tanks (from an artillery or air strike, perhaps) that haven't moved, you may want to leave them outside the city to get an extra turn of healing. Just make sure they're protected by one of your cover units, and keep one of the medics there of course. The AI doesn't seem terribly interested in picking off your stack provided that it's covered. Otherwise, move them in.

5) Fly in a garrison - You do have a garrison infantry waiting at a friendly airport, right? Your shiny new city can accept one airlifted unit each turn, even while it's revolting. Make sure you have another one for next turn, too. If you want a larger garrison, you can airlift to the nearest city and move it over via rails.

The result:

You have a new city and a bunch of tanks that need, at most, a single skipped turn to heal. After you've weathered the initial counterstrikes in a war, it's entirely common that only your lead raider tank takes any damage at all - let that one stay behind to heal up, and the others can start their next approach on the turn after the first assault. Typical losses are 1-2 tanks and 3-4 bombers for a sustained campaign taking 6-8 cities from an enemy of roughly equal power. If your unfortunate victim doesn't have any far-flung island cities, a tank campaign along these lines can eliminate an enemy civ in under 20 turns.


I think that's pretty much it. I hope these tactics prove useful in your conquests. Comments, questions, and improvements are welcomed.

Nice guide. It's thorough, but I think tanks come to late to decide the game. They just allow you to finish the game faster.

Well done article.

If you'll pardon a digression from a beginner, what do you find is the most reliable way of getting West Point & Level 4 units?

you get westpoint once you have discovered military tradition and you have had at least one unit with 17+ experience. Always build it in the same city as the national wonder that halves unit production.

You can get a unit to 10 exp by fighting barbarians alone (but no higher). So usually, I try to start an early war with a 10 exp unit, and do everything I can to have him finish off weak units (say 90%+ chace o' victory), and keep him alive. As soon as he is West Point Creation level, I try to get him home, and hang onto him, just in case (unless of course I really need him, then I'm out of luck, aren't I?).

Ah, yes. I like to think of such units as the "King in Dragonslayer". For those who didn't see the movie:
A. Go rent it, Peter McNichols is cool.
B. the King waits for someone else to kill the Dragon, then goes up and sticks his sword in the dead Dragon while all his subjects watch.
I once got a Chinese Cho-no-ku(hope i spelled that right), up to lvl 9 doing that. First Strike IV and Combat IV, he was truly impressive.
Here's another trick, Find a nearby barbarian city and then park an archer on a hill within its radius, he'll snag those 10 xp points in no time.

Nice guide. It's thorough, but I think tanks come to late to decide the game. They just allow you to finish the game faster.
I think that's usually true. But I can imagine situations where a speedy tank conquest could make the difference. Consider a large map, where you have one strong immediate neighbor and one big financial civ on a far off continent/island. Efficiency in conquering your immediate neighbor could be the difference between keeping up or falling behind the far off one in tech.

And in any event, an earlier win date never hurts...

Cool, although this is a guide for tank warfare, i'm glad you explained basics on using bombers. So far i've never used a bomber in a game of civ4! But this is probably because i pay noble-prince.

100th Post!!!!!!!!!!!:D :smoke: :band: [party] :dance:

you get westpoint once you have discovered military tradition and you have had at least one unit with 17+ experience. Always build it in the same city as the national wonder that halves unit production.

Or built your iron works there, which has the same effect only the other way round (I normally build westpoint and ironwoirks in one city, red cross and heroic epic in the other).

As for the defenders in the tank strategy:
Even if you already have mech. infs. it is really nice to have some gunships around. For one they have a nice bonus against enemy tanks, for the other they´re the only units which can move 4 tiles in enemy territory (which might come in handy if some secondary target comes into sight as your army approaches the city)

Great guide, I'll try this next time my game lasts long enough.

I try as much as possible to keep the peace until at least i get riflemen/redcoats since im usually england. So i can relate to this strategy, since usually war doesnt come until i get tanks and gunships. However, suppose that you're on the recieving end of one of your tank offensives.

1) Never counterattack tanks with tanks, its a waste of perfectly good units. Thats what gunships are for.

2) An attacking force that doesnt have any Infantry to provide staying power isnt going to survive for long. Artillery is an extremely effective way of wiping out an enemy attack stack, even at the cost of 1 or 2 artillery. When promoted with all 3 barrage promotions, a couple artillery will lay waste to the largest attack stack.

3) Losses incurred even during a successful attack are going to be higher than those stated. No less than 2-3 bombers will be lost, as well as several tanks.

4) What ive noticed about later warfare is that its remarkebly close to actual WWI and WWII warfare. Bombers, Artillery, Infantry and Tanks. Gunships are the extra unit that balance out tanks and force you to use them in different ways than you would. Artillery are used to severly deplete attack stacks, and also defence stacks in cities. Infantry are almost always defensive units, whether defending your cities, or defending your tanks and artillery attack stack. Tanks should be used to wipe out defenders in cities only when they have been severly depleted by Bombers and Artillery, and also to CC-attack any counterattacking gunpower units. Gunships of course, are the premiere unit to use vs tanks, especially the first tanks. No tank can stand before a concentrated Gunship attack.

Im just trying to show what kind of defence could be used against this attack strategy.

You're talking about theory, I'm talking about practice. You also may be talking about multiplayer. The few multiplayer games I've played with friends don't last until tanks.


1) Never counterattack tanks with tanks, its a waste of perfectly good units. Thats what gunships are for.
Tell that to the AI. It never builds many gunships unless it's in "pillage mode" from a recent war. That would be a good time not to use the strategy I describe.

2) An attacking force that doesnt have any Infantry to provide staying power isnt going to survive for long.
You're missing the point perfectly. You don't need staying power, you don't need to survive for long. You need your cover tanks to provide protection to your stack for one turn. That's all, just one turn.

Artillery is an extremely effective way of wiping out an enemy attack stack, even at the cost of 1 or 2 artillery. When promoted with all 3 barrage promotions, a couple artillery will lay waste to the largest attack stack.
Thank you, I know how artillery work. But it just doesn't matter - I've had a tank stack take 4+ artillery hits from the target city and the nearby surroundings. Your cover tanks will, generally, hold. The rest will be still be sufficient to take the city once you've bombed it out. And once you've taken the first city, you will have a lot less artillery to worry about afterwards. But the longer you take to approach and to conquer, the more artillery and other responding forces the AI will bring to bear against you.

3) Losses incurred even during a successful attack are going to be higher than those stated. No less than 2-3 bombers will be lost, as well as several tanks.
Perhaps I was only imagining my results. Maybe dropping less acid before Civ would help.

I'm just trying to show what kind of defence could be used against this attack strategy.
Yes, and in doing so you're taking an overly defensive posture in anticipation of an intelligent counterattack the AI will never perform. I used to wage modern wars in the very deliberate, cover-all-your-bases manner that you seem to advocate. It boasted incredible force preservation - I would never lose a Tank due to all the defensive units I was toting around. But I needed twice as many units to get started and my conquests took 2-3 times as long. And that meant a lot more unit support and a lot more war weariness standing in the way of victory.

Geeze. . . talk about defensive!

:lol:

You're talking about theory, I'm talking about practice. You also may be talking about multiplayer. The few multiplayer games I've played with friends don't last until tanks.


Tell that to the AI. It never builds many gunships unless it's in "pillage mode" from a recent war. That would be a good time not to use the strategy I describe.


Like i said before, its a defence strategy to fight against someone who uses your strategy, i didnt say anything about AI. And of course this is assuming that the game lasts that long, no wonder.

Also, like i said again, modern war in Civ IV is very close to WWI, WWII, and other modern era wars. So the strategy i describe wasnt just made up by me, it was actually used through all of these wars. You dont see a tank division made completely of tanks, it always has at least 1 infantry regiment, albiet motorized infantry. And the same goes for light infantry, their not completely without vehicular support.

The strategy im talking about is a defensive strategy against a HUMAN opponent using your strategy, OF COURSE assuming that the game lasts until then, and it is a practical strategy if implemented correctly.

Tell that to the AI. It never builds many gunships unless it's in "pillage mode" from a recent war. That would be a good time not to use the strategy I describe.

It depends. If the AI has the required techs and sees a tank sweep coming, it will build some. At least that's my experience. A friend of mine and myself were playing an MP game on Noble. AI Roosevelt was our neighbor on our continent, and he was quite strong. After finishing Mansa and Huyana we were closing in on him, rolling masses of tanks and panzers to his borders. And boy, did he kick our tanks. He had 7 or 8 gunships ready which he had cleverly hidden outside his cities. It needed some time and some marines to mop them up, but we lost a bunch of tanks just because of his gunships. When we finally had done them in, the campaign wasn't much of a challenge any more - if two civs gang up on one AI and display the above mentioned blitzkrieg tactic in a determined way, the AI has no chance to withstand. Maybe Roosevelt was in this case just lucky - but he definitely had those gunships, and not from pillaging because he had fought no other war beforehand.

Regards,

Lord Timon

As for needing explorer medics...
This is assuming that you did not pre-plan your tactics. Cavalry are a 2-movement unit that CAN get the medic promotion. Additionally, if you use Napoleon (the fiercest warmonger on the map), his musketeers can move 2 and have medic. Musketeer medics are a perfect addition to tank assaults (assuming you want to have tank assaults for the fun of trying it).

Field Marshall Gen. Rommell and his Afrika Corp versus Field Marshall Cleverhandle Montgomery in a public duel.

Will Monty's overwhelming force bring about another El Alamein or will it all go Market Garden.

Rommel only lost Al Alamein because he was way undersupplied, since Hitler gave precedence to the Russian theatre, and pretty much discounted the North African theatre as inconsequential. Rommel was understrength in tanks, alot of his infantry divisons were down to a third of their autherized strength. Montgomery was never anything more than an adequate field commander, he only showed as anything because he wasnt helpless like the other british commanders of WWII. When you think of all that Rommel did, counting that he was always at the short end of the supply lines, getting whatever was left that didnt go to Russia, and on the other hand, Britain was giving all it had to North Africa, he truly was an amazing commander.

My comment was meant 'tongue in cheek' so to speak, a joke if you will.

It's just that I noticed the temperature rising between Gen.Rommell and Cleverhandle and couldn't resist making a comment. Please excuse me.

I agree that Monty was very average and that his forces were overwhelming compared to those of Rommell at El Alamein. I also agree that Rommell was quote 'a truly amazing commander'.

As I am sure you will know 'Operation Market Garden' was one of Monty's plans. It was a **** plan from the start that ended up costing the allies very dearly.

However, victory at El Alamein did give the British their first victory in WW2 and as such was very good for moral.

Rommel only lost Al Alamein because he was way undersupplied, since Hitler gave precedence to the Russian theatre, and pretty much discounted the North African theatre as inconsequential.

AFAIK Rommel was also undersupplied, because GB deciphered the enigma, so always knew where the realy precious supply transports were. It was even to the extent that Rommel suspected treachery.

Carn

This is similar to the strategy I use with tanks, except that I only use barrage on my attacking tanks, and never city-attack. I find that the first couple tanks usually die regardless: better to have as much splash-damage as possible.

A couple of combat-promoted tanks are of course helpful for defense. They can also be used for cleanup of open-field units after your barrage tanks take the city.

What's essential to this strategy above all else is the airpower. It is exactly blitzkrieg - to the point that without the air forces, the tanks suffer massive losses. Airpower is the whole ball game here, and it can't really be substituted with naval firepower or land-based artillery. The flexibility of aircraft is what enables the speed of this strategy.

That having been said, it really does work if you're pushing for a late domination or conquest victory.

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I got absolutely slaughtered trying to do this in one game. It's possible that I just wasn't agressive enough, but still ...

I basically had about 10 tanks, 2 mech inf, and 7 machine guns holed up in one city near the chinese border. I knew the Chinese had a large standing army of cavalry and cannons, so I wanted to see if I could withstand the counter attack first while sitting in a somewhat defensive position of a city. The biggest problem I guess is that the city itself is right on the border and has railroads piped right to it.

The first turn I declared war. and bombed what units I could see. I had my options set to quick attack, but I came out victorious anyway. My units were fairly damaged, so I let them sit a turn to recouperate ... but the next turn, even more units came and wiped me out completely, taking the city.

I dont' think tanks get a terrain defense bonus, so is there someway to reduce the damage I take from a counter attack? Especially if the enemy has a large number of seige units and horseback units? It was just simple attrition. With the railroads, they got a large number of troops from many locations to one point and attacking in less than a turn. With cannons, they were giving my units plenty of collateral damage to worry about. With wave after wave of cavalry, they eventually worked over my tanks.

I saved the game, so I can play with the tactics, but how should I approach this? Should I wait until I have more Mech Inf there to defend?

What's funny is that I got worked even quicker the first time. Both Russia and China jumped on me at the same time, and I lost three cities quickly. After a reload, I had Germany jump on Russia a turn before I declared war on China, and it reaped me one extra turn before China took over a city. :p

I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, but I got absolutely slaughtered trying to do this in one game. It's possible that I just wasn't agressive enough, but still ...

I basically had about 10 tanks, 2 mech inf, and 7 machine guns holed up in one city near the chinese border. I knew the Chinese had a large standing army of cavalry and cannons, so I wanted to see if I could withstand the counter attack first while sitting in a somewhat defensive position of a city. The biggest problem I guess is that the city itself is right on the border and has railroads piped right to it.

The first turn I declared war. and bombed what units I could see. I had my options set to quick attack, but I came out victorious anyway. My units were fairly damaged, so I let them sit a turn to recouperate ... but the next turn, even more units came and wiped me out completely, taking the city.

I dont' think tanks get a terrain defense bonus, so is there someway to reduce the damage I take from a counter attack? Especially if the enemy has a large number of seige units and horseback units? It was just simple attrition. With the railroads, they got a large number of troops from many locations to one point and attacking in less than a turn. With cannons, they were giving my units plenty of collateral damage to worry about. With wave after wave of cavalry, they eventually worked over my tanks.

I saved the game, so I can play with the tactics, but how should I approach this? Should I wait until I have more Mech Inf there to defend?

What's funny is that I got worked even quicker the first time. Both Russia and China jumped on me at the same time, and I lost three cities quickly. After a reload, I had Germany jump on Russia a turn before I declared war on China, and it reaped me one extra turn before China took over a city. :p

Well...a battle of attrition is always won by the combatant with the most manpower, all other things being equal. And if a combatant is outclassed in terms of weaponry or morale/training, he or she can still be victorious through overwhelming numbers, as you have found.

Tanks are not defensive units. The game simulates incredibly well the fact that if you don't have mechanized infantry, even large numbers of covering tanks will not be sufficient to guard a column of armor dedicated to the acquisition of territory.

Let's think about the tank as a unit in Civ 4. Its entire strength is dedicated to mobility. It has a movement of 2, an organic blitz ability, and gains no defensive bonuses whatsoever. It does have a strength of 28 - which would be hard-core if only there were some bonuses to be gained.

Think about it: Marines will get 5% each turn they fortify, even in open terrain. That's 1.2 strength every turn they dig in. If they are on any sort of favorable terrain at all they get the 25% bonus, giving them 30 strength and having them win battles against unupgraded tanks attacking. Machine guns get 22.5 dug in for 5 turns, but if you use them in a decently cultural city (lets be conservative and say 50% bonus) and give them only a single city defense promotion (also unlikely in a real war), they get an amazing 36 strength as opposed to tanks' 28. This doesn't even count their resistance to gunpowder units.

It's quite possible, indeed, that you're not aggressive enough. There's no way to reduce the damage from a horseback attack...except for combat promotions, which are formidable in tanks, and which the original poster of the thread notes is good for your cover squadron. But the main point I'd like to illustrate is that this sort of "tank" warfare is actually tank-aircraft-fast medic combined arms warfare, and is to be used principally for the capture of enemy territory. Were I facing a numerically superior but technologically inferior enemy, or one with, say, greater MFG. GOODS on the demographics charts, I would be leery of producing tanks until I had blunted the assault with numerous Marines, Machine Guns, and, if possible, Mechanized Infantry.

It seems also like you're the one declaring war in this situation. In this case, I would hesitate to declare until you have the full tank corps with medic, support tanks, covering units, air force and garrisons. This is more of a strategy issue, but I really think that being ready to take two or three cities straight from the get-go is essential to warfare in Civ 4. Even the loss of outlying and backwater productive capacity can be crippling to an AI.

Would you mind posting a game save? I could see what I could do.:scan:

once you start winning a war just build tanks. Bombers will help but mostly tanks.Also loosing a city is not that bad.

if you think about it your borders will go right up to the city letting you attack and then retreat in a single turn. As soon as the AI captures a city it will pump it full of troops, however those troops have no fortification bonus and no city culture bonus. This makes them easy picking for tanks, so attack them with city raider tanks (which is another good thing with this tactic, as it gives you more strenght bonus than combat promotion). Also barrage tanks are very useful as their troops are concentrated. However be careful not to capture the city AND dont forget to retreat out of the range of counter attacks. You'll find that next turn the city will be full of troops again, so you can repeat this many times. If you work out the figures you'll realise that this is the easiest way to kill large, but not very advanced armies(who will be able to puch on from the captured city).

I tried this out inadvertently on one of my games against the incas and it worked brilliantly.

I'm not a specialist in modern warfare, but to me, the initial article sounded like basic red army battle-plans for a war in West Germany in the sixties and seventies. Dozens of T-72/T-80 regiments without any infantry covering the advance, just rock and roll!

actually, like it was said by a previous poster, its a lot more like the blitzkrieg which uses fully mechanised divisions and air suport to quickly over come enemy cities before they are properly defended and then using your enemies infrastructure against him. The russian tactic was more of a 'steam roller' approach where you advance slowly raising everything in front of you.

Tanks alone cannot win a battle against an equal or superior foe for a few simple reasons.

1) Culture Barriers. By the time tanks start rolling around in large numbers, cities have matured a lot, having barriers going 5 or more tiles. Try slogging through something like that 2 tiles at a time, or slower if the enemy terrain is forested or hilled. And guess what? Even though you're suffering the movement penalty on that terrain, you don't get the defence bonus! By the time you hack your way through those barriers, you'll have been hit several times by who knows what the enemy can muster (bombers, gunships, other tanks... etc). You need coverage from infantry or mechs, or it'll be a bloody trip through.

2) Transport Infrastructure. The enemy can their own road and rail system, while you can't. What this guaruntees is that your troops will be on the defensive while you're slogging through those culture barriers. Again, you're going to be needing infantry coverage. An alternative solution to this is to use bombers in front of your force to bomb the enemy road structure. This is particularly destuctive though, because you need to destroy the other improvement on top of the road first. It'll also turn the land you're trying to capture into a barren waste, but hopefully the enemy will expend his troops in this kill zone you've created, making more such terrain destruction unecessary.

3) Gunships. You're severly underestimating the effectiveness of gunships. As the most mobile ground combat unit when roads and rail are not relavent, they can blow up your tanks and retreat, even if you've torn up their roads. Heck, I still run from gunships even if I have modern armour. They're very cost effective at disposing of tanks (and MA).

4) Air force. Enemy bombers WILL decimate your attack stack. SAMs are good, but fighter cover is almost essential. In one SG I played, our Modern Armour attack force would've been severly crippled were it not for fighter backup protecting them from a whole fleet of enemy bombers.

5) Artillery. I dunno how big your stack was that got hit by 4 artilleries and stayed in good condition, but Artillery are LETHAL, especially to damaged tanks. If you've been bombed, your tanks stand to take massive damage from shelling, and collateral can drop below the 50% of bombers.

Don't get me wrong. Tanks are excellent units, and I especially love Germany's Panzers, but using them on their own is throwing away an extremely expensive investment.

I don't know what level you were playing on, but on this noble SG I played, FS-1, we got behind, and even though we had Panzers, we had to use a combined arms approach to take down the technologically superior enemy. I can't imagine being able to use pure tanks on anything but an inferior level of AI.

If you want to look at some comined arms tactics from FS-1, the link is http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=140618&page=10

Tanks alone cannot win a battle against an equal or superior foe for a few simple reasons....[/url]

Are you addressing this to the original poster? There are quite a few c/a advocates even among the thread posters.

Sorry. Addressing the original poster. I saw the combined arms advocates, but they seem to be being countered.

2) Drill Tanks - cleanup crew: How many you need depends on how many troops you're up against. A number equal to the number of defending troops is safe. If you're in a time/production bind, you can reasonably count on blitzing for multiple attacks but make sure that the target city isn't on a hill (costs 2 moves to attack). Promote these with as many Drill promos as you can get.




A discussion in the "combat explained" thread, has led to the result, that Drill is just worth 7.5% bonus on average. Why do you use drill tanks?

Carn

I dont' think tanks get a terrain defense bonus, so is there someway to reduce the damage I take from a counter attack? Especially if the enemy has a large number of seige units and horseback units? It was just simple attrition. With the railroads, they got a large number of troops from many locations to one point and attacking in less than a turn. With cannons, they were giving my units plenty of collateral damage to worry about. With wave after wave of cavalry, they eventually worked over my tanks.




Tanks getting defeated by Cavalry - that is absurd.

I'd love to a company of Queens Hussars charge a division Tiger II, my money is on the tanks!!

A discussion in the "combat explained" thread, has led to the result, that Drill is just worth 7.5% bonus on average. Why do you use drill tanks?

Carn

Because these tanks, if you read the entire article, are facing defenders with vastly reduced HP due to:

1) An intense 2-turn bombing campaign, and
2) 3 shock tank units that have taken out the toughest defenders and had their barrage promotions causing collateral damage to the rest of the defenders.

Victory is basically assured in these cases but what Drill promotions do is reduce the damage sustained by the tanks to a minimal amount. They clean up the units left by the Raider 1/2/3 + Barrage tank units. Do you suggest a different promotion to keep these tanks' health up? Because they can't march, and high level combat promotions, while allowing healing, won't keep damage from being assigned like first strikes can.

It's exactly the difference between focussing on attack power and focussing on reducing casualties. One prefers casualty reduction training for multiple-engagement ground elements if one can already make sure enough attack power is applied by air and by shock elements (which the original poster has suggested in the form of Raider and barrage promotions). If tanks could get the March promotion, it might be better for casualty reduction having come from Combat promotions, but I personally like that you can't give March to tanks in Civ 4. A tank needs shells, armor and gas, and tankers need beans. You can't really regroup "off the land" with armored units in the way you can with infantry.

Of course, you might find the c/a armor tactic would work better with multiple-engagement tanks beefed up with combat promotions. I don't. I think that taking full advantage of the Blitz promotion really requires a couple of units with Drill. Only a few divisions of your total armored force are in the spearheads of a true blitz - most of them are sewing up the rear, wreaking havoc with a bunch of mechanized infantry.

Tanks getting defeated by Cavalry - that is absurd.

I'd love to a company of Queens Hussars charge a division Tiger II, my money is on the tanks!!

Right, but here we're talking about three or four corps of cavalry against some infantry with heavy weapons and a regiment of Tigers. Even cavalry elements had some grenades. The tin can hasn't yet been made that is unopenable. Ask U.S. Grant - just about any military problem can be solved if you throw enough meat at it.

/\
the eastern front of the first world war proved you wrong.

/\
the eastern front of the first world war proved you wrong.

Did it? If you have an infinite amount of meat, you can take apart a 90-mile wire line on escarpments cross-knit with pillboxes, covered by Apaches and watched by satellite-coordinated JDAM-chucking joint strike jets, armed only with wooden spoons. Is there infinite infantry anywhere? No, but we'd like that.

Yes, there were command problems on the Russian side, but frankly, I consider that a divided command which couldn't put its hands on the right amount of men in the right places.

In the case above, Excl's post indicated to me that the enemy had roughly several corps of cavalry to some tank regiments and entrenched infantry with some mechanization. If that's what's on the ground, and I'm the enemy, and I've got to take that position/city, then I may decide to feed you a whole lot of meat, watch you choke, and have the aides write the letters to our glorious cavalrymen's mothers. I'll repeat this: show me a tin can, and I'll show you a tin can that can be cut open.

Like Chill was saying ... it's the sheer number of troops I was going against, and the fact that they had a cultural border advantage with railroads piped directly into the city where I was staging my attack. The artillery quickly weakened my forces to below 50%, while wave after wave of cossak eventually wittled my tanks down to nothing.

When you declare war with a civ that still has standing armies around (not at war with anyone else), first fight a defensive war while they send all their spare troops at you. Once you've killed those 20 cavalry on your own turf, you can freely go on the offensive with little to no worries (other than artillery).

I use very similar strategies to this article when going on the offensive in the industrial/modern age against an equal-level or weaker opponent. Against stronger opponents you obviously have to fight a pillaging war instead (the AI really needs improvements in that regard).

If you have an infinite amount of meat.

In the real world nobody has an infinate supply of 'meat'.

I still think the concept of Cavalry defeating tanks is utterly absurd, almost as absurd as the notion of infinite supply.

In the real world nobody has an infinate supply of 'meat'.

I still think the concept of Cavalry defeating tanks is utterly absurd, almost as absurd as the notion of infinite supply.


That's the problem of whether the tech advancement should be realistic or smothed.

Realistically cavalry cannot stand against tanks, but relistically there was also no relevant military improve between use of iron/horsebackriding/bow and rifles/cannons.

Civ3 depicted this rather precise, the resource effectiveness of horsemen/spearmen/swordsmen was similar to the effectiveness of anything up to cavalry, with a huge jump happening with infantry/artillery and tanks.
In Civ4 military advancements continuously improve, big jumps were avoided.

Carn

I read the guide and couldnt be bothered to set up invididual roles with different promotions,

so I grab a bunch of seige tanks, assign them into 10-14 groups each with 2 stacks of 5-7, (there are more groups if i have more), 10-20 bombers at cloest city, and bomb the city to 0% + all units at half strength with bmbers before killing it with as small a number of tanks as possible.

I have the wounded tanks + 1-2 healthy tanks guard the new city and have the rest move on, this method seems to enable me to conquer large empires in less than 10turns (on marathon) on prince, with most time spent on traveling rather than attack.

tanks must be paired with bombers imo, individually they are sufficent but not all powerful, with bombers, they are invincible against anything short of a gunship (that include modern armor, if attacking it).

ADD: Have infantry guard your territory helps, line them up along the boarder, once you know where the enemy is concentrating his force, move them together to encircle them, always keep a few bombers at home.
In addition, it seems attacking on a second front is very efficent in civ4. You can declare war on a civ, set up solid defense along the boarder and just slaughter the suicital attackers, while armies of tanks unloaded from transports on the other side can capture all the core cities without being targeted by any serious resistance.

I really think that being ready to take two or three cities straight from the get-go is essential to warfare in Civ 4. Even the loss of outlying and backwater productive capacity can be crippling to an AI.

So true. If at all possible, do.

And I'll be one more to say great thread!

The combination of two moves, collateral damage, and city raider allow one to capture enemy cities far more quickly than in previous eras.

2) Drill Tanks - cleanup crew:

Make sure that the target city isn't on a hill (costs 2 moves to attack).



Just started reading this but all the above are revelations for me.

I don't often play late era, but I had no idea tanks could be promoted for collateral damage, that really is deadly. It's also very interesting to note that it isn't possible to upgrade tanks to medic. Evidently I need to have a look at what promotions are available for late game units. :D

Also it never really occured to me to promote a few units with drill so that they receive little or no damage against weak units. Very clever.

Also, unbelievably, I had never really noticed that if a 2mp unit attacks and kills (or retreats from battle), but doesn't go on to the hill (because there are still enemy units there it won't have any mp left. This is particularly valuable to be aware of for units with the blitz promotion, but it's useful to know anyway.

4) Worker pair w/cover - Very important. You need to be able to quickly build rails in conquered territory. In contrast to Civ3, the AI doesn't appear to be very keen on snagging covered workers. I tend to cover with only a single tough defender like a Combat I/II/Ambush Infantry. An extra cover unit would be safer. Having two pairs of workers is also nice, but not essential.


Yep. Very clever.

Typical losses are 1-2 tanks and 3-4 bombers for a sustained campaign taking 6-8 cities from an enemy of roughly equal power. If your unfortunate victim doesn't have any far-flung island cities, a tank campaign along these lines can eliminate an enemy civ in under 20 turns.


Clever use of units (especially siege units - which in many ways are replaced by planes late game) means it is entirely possible to take cities and empires losing very few units, even when you do not have a significant tech lead taht guives u superior units. Having said that, the amount of losses you describe sounds a little crazy and can probably be attributed to the stupid AI. :D

But this is a really good article and I very much enjoyed reading it.

I used panzers as artillery. 10 xp from pentagon, barracks, theo, and vassalage allowed me to have BarrageIII tanks to sacrifice. After, reducing defenses with planes and ships, they reduced units in a city to half of their health. Then my CRIII and DrillIII tanks would come in and take the city with minimal losses.
I had a city which produced Medic II units and transports(it had red Cross) so my tanks would heal faster. Then I used airports in my cities to move in medic infantry and CGIII infantry into captured cities.

In the real world nobody has an infinate supply of 'meat'.

I still think the concept of Cavalry defeating tanks is utterly absurd, almost as absurd as the notion of infinite supply.You have perhaps a notion of a tanks invulnerability that has no basis in reality.

A tank is an impressive machine, but within the tight confines of a city my money would be on the units with vastly superior close-quarters mobility ie, infantry and cavalry (Cavalry being nothing more than light infantry on a horse)

A tank has huge exploitable blind spots and once an enemy is in close the tank is literally helpless... a single infantryman with a grenade can turn any tank into nothing more than a heavily armored coffin, and more than one tank crew discovered this the hard way. This is not to say that the cavalry wouldn't take hideous losses - they would, but as the poster pointed out - if you have enough of them not even tanks can stand against them, and there's nothing absurd about that.

I haven't seen this mentioned but I really like an old Cavalry with the medic promotion upgraded to gunships. They are great for covering the armour and move even faster so with a few of them you can clear the way to the next city and keep your advance from slowing down.

I love the worker idea. I've used that from time to time with great success and I'm willing to say that the key to keeping an advance going is carrying workers along with you. Instead of waiting those extra 10 turns to build your army up you can attack early and then have your worker build rails so the supply line catches up with the attacking army faster. It also lets you move defenders into the captured cities faster, meaning the attacking stack doesn't have to keep leaving behind defenders as it pushes onward. I sometimes bring workers with me early in the game when cities aren't necessarily connected to their empire by roads yet. Early in the game most civs are still using rivers or haven't connected their outer cities. If you are forced to wax those outlier cities before moving into the main part of their empire then bringing workers with you becomes even more important.

You have perhaps a notion of a tanks invulnerability that has no basis in reality.

A tank is an impressive machine, but within the tight confines of a city my money would be on the units with vastly superior close-quarters mobility ie, infantry and cavalry (Cavalry being nothing more than light infantry on a horse)


He's obviously never seen Indiana Jones.

I used to do the worker thing in civ2 where it was even faster. You could build and use rail roads in enemy territory and then once the worker was upgraded to the engineer you could build rails in one turn with 2 units. Then rail your howitzers (attack twice) up, hit the city once and retreat back to a safe place. empty out the city with multiple attacks, then if you have enough howitzers you could do it to as many enemy cities you could reach by rail. With enough howitzers and or tanks you could empty out many enemy cities then even retreat back behind your own boarders and leave their cities empty. It was enough to make me laugh diabolically.

Cleverhandle:

this is a great guide! I used to just send tanks in to attack, and I lost a bunch, but now, I'm a free man! :) Many things I didn't even think of doing in this guide :D

Sorry, but this guide is seriously out of date. It was written for vanilla in Dec 2005 and the game has changed a lot in Warlords and even more in BtS. Espionage has been introduced, air warfare is different (limited to 4 per city plus 4 with airport), forts have been made useful, paratroopers can strike faster than tanks combined with gunships and fighters. Tanks are still good but are not the only way or even the best way to rapidly conquer a weaker civ.

Sorry, but this guide is seriously out of date. It was written for vanilla in Dec 2005 and the game has changed a lot in Warlords and even more in BtS. Espionage has been introduced, air warfare is different (limited to 4 per city plus 4 with airport), forts have been made useful, paratroopers can strike faster than tanks combined with gunships and fighters. Tanks are still good but are not the only way or even the best way to rapidly conquer a weaker civ.

What do you use to conquer weaker civs? I use drill units and siege to this day. And paratroopers? :confused: Maybe I just need to give them a try.

Paratroopers are much faster than tanks. What tanks really bring to the equation is blitz and city raider.

What do you use to conquer weaker civs? I use drill units and siege to this day. And paratroopers? :confused: Maybe I just need to give them a try.

I find that cavalry and paratroopers are good enough to rapidly conquer weaker civs if you have the support of fighters. You don't have to wait for tanks. The paratroopers provide stack defence against rifles as the cavalry move through enemy territory. You can use fighters (based on carriers if in range) to reduce the defences or spies for revolt, then fighters to reduce the strength of the defenders. A pinch cavalry can easily beat a 50% strength rifle. For coastal cities you can just use destroyers, carriers and transports.

It all works together very well. You need Combustion and Flight for inter continental invasions, and you need Police State for avoiding the WW that big battles give. Flight gives airports for rapid reinforcements and carriers for convenient use of massed fighters. So paratroops are an ideal fast moving troop that you can get much earlier than tanks, marines and battleships (all of which require Electricity and Industrialism). Once you have adequate air support I find that tanks don't add much, my old cavalry (already well promoted) can do the job against rifles and machine guns.