I'm currently in a game (Emperor, Epic, Standard) where I'm on a continent with the Inca. I'm the US (Washington) and I took out Asoka with an early rush and just finished off Wang. Anyway, I have a long boarder with the Inca and we are roughly equal in tech, he might be up on me by a tech or two. We both have infantry, and I have some veteran Inf/Artillary from the Korean War. I'm about 5-6 turns from Tanks and I'm pretty sure he'll have access at about the same time perhaps a turn or 2 sooner.

He's got one city right on my boarder that I can take, then I'm beelining right for his 3rd Culture city which is the next city in line. However these cities are on the Western side of the continent and it will require a fairly hefty stack. Probably at least 40+ units.

So my question is, what is the AI priority, will he go for my stack or will he go for a boarder city?

He could potentially move towards 4-5 different cities. So it would take a bit longer to build up a bigger army if I need to heavily defend all the boarder cities.

I'd like to try and move sooner rather than later. I do need some turns to regroup from the Korean War and to pump out some Armor, but I don't want to wait too long if I don't have to.

It's about 1800 and he's the biggest threat in Land, Tech, and Culture. The rest of the AI are struggling on other land masses.

Unless he's a few turns away from a Culture Victory, you don't have to go straight at that city.

Scouting is probably your best bet. Spies do a great job, so does any kind of air unit.

Get bombers if you can, they shouldn't be too far from your current techs. Get a 40+ stack and you're good to go most likely.

An option is to DoW and wait for HC to send his stack to your land where you blow it away. Then you can take out his cities.

Thanks.

Yeah, technically it can wait. The culture cities are in the 25k-30k range. I'm just a little worried about his empire's size. He could potentially start to really pull away in tech.

Although, that might be a good idea to wait to see where his stack comes in. I can go flight/radio right after Industiralism.

i havent played industrial war yet, been doing lots of restarts to get early game improved.. but one thing i think would be helpfull is if you want to wait for tanks, build more then 40 if your not going to use air or artillery. 40 macemen hitting equaled tech opponent dont last long.
use alot of air to bomb roads and stratigic recources and cut off the citys you want to hit. you could use them to bomb the walls and move your tanks in for the attak with infantry to hold the citys.

The best unit mix for warfare in my book is planes/tanks/paras perhaps toss in some cav.

Generally in the modern era you have enough mobility that you can can just keep a huge stack of defenders handy and use rails to stock up whatever city the AI threatens a turn or two before the real attack is launched (the AI loves to spend all game bombarding while you reinforce). Really though, if you can hit the AI at parity with fighters/tanks/paras you can steamroll it. Just abuse mobile doctrine and take the AI apart by either killing his SoD in the field (ATs just aren't strong enough to keep tanks for rolling over SoD in the open) or in a city (CRII arty after air collateral is a quick shot to kill units at a cheap exchange rate).

If you are really worried, use nukes. The AI is completely clueless about them and two nukes kill virtually all stacks.

Well, things didn't go so well.

I definitely need work on my late game warfare. It just gets too tedious. I'm definitely more of a peaceful builder player during the late game.
HC was a little more advanced than I had thought and was actually #1 in military too and his culture was really annoying pressing up on my boarders.

I ended up going to war about 20-30 turns after my initial post. I finished Industrialism and got Flight from Wang and then worked toward bombers.

Anyway, I took out 3 cities right away that were right on my boarder, raised one of them. Then the war just stalemated. He had tons of missles, bombers, and weakened my stack enough to where it wasn't going to be able to take anymore cities and I just had too much of a boarder to protect to really try to advance much. He never really came in with a big stack to whack. Never more than 5-10 units at once, but usually had a couple of those type stacks near multiple cities.

I would have preferred to wait until I had a bigger stack and more air power, but he was really pushing through the Tech tree and time was not on my side (culture or space). I think when I started the war his Culture cities were nearing 40-45K (early to mid 1800's).

Waiting for nukes would have been a good idea. But live and learn.

I probably should have taken Wang out or weakened HC earlier with Mace's/Trebs instead of waiting, but I got a bit too caught up in builder mode. The three of us were flying through the tech tree though. I've never had Armor prior to 1800 on Emperor. :)

After raising his 3rd culture city, you could have gone on a pillaging rampage and killed his economy. HC is usually a commerce heavy AI.

That was kind of my plan, but I couldn't get to it. It was an easy enough march but we really had a long boarder of about 5 cities, and the 3rd culture city I wanted to beeline to was way on the far Western side. If I sent everything initially I probably could have gotten there, but I probably would have lost a couple newly captured cities (from Wang) on the East. HC's culture was already at the gates of 1-2 of those cities.

Instead I decided to pick off 3 of his boarder cities, one on the way to the 3rd culture city, one that was built waaaay to close that was starting to steal Dyes but was also on the way to his 3rd culture city, and the third was a former Wang city that he dogpiled (on Wang) and stole from me before I could get there. I figured I'd counter his stack and then proceed to the 3rd Culture city, but he never moved in a giant stack, he just kept threatening multiple boarder cities on the East so I could never get the force I wanted out west. I eventually moved on the 3rd Culture city out West with about 25 units or so while, I played def on the Northeast, but after 2 turns of marching they were too weakened from his bombers.

Including his off continent cities, he was probably twice my size. Again that's my fault for not paying enough attention earlier and getting too caught up in builder mode.

I think if I took Wang with Trebs/Maces I could have tried HC with Cannons and Rifles (or vice versa) and had much more success, but we were really blitzing through the tech tree. Think I had Liberalism at around 700-800ad which is really good for me. Normally I get it around 1100-1200ad.

I really don't see any reference to air power in this thread :/ Air power is normally as important than land units in this time of the game ;)

im with rolo.. you have got to use air. as now you see what they did to you,
imagine what u could have done to him...