In my current game (playing on King) I'm at war with Caesar. I'm trying to limit myself to 3 cities for (1 science, 1 production, 1 gold) for fun. I was ahead tech-wise for quite a while but he recently hit Industrial and started pumping out artillery. I recently bulbed flight and am moving towards bombers.

Most of my army is artillery and infantry, his is artillery and riflemen, but I can't seem to whittle down his forces. Whenever my infantry try to make progress they are getting creamed before they can make it to attacking distance. It's not helping that the only approach is across a river and through open terrain. If I stay in place and wait for them to get closer I'm going to lose my city.

Should I be trying to go for cavalry or mech infantry? I think I just need more movement points to get in and out without getting shelled. How do you guys deal with well-positioned artillery?

If you position your infantry and artillery in defensive positions you can shell his troops as they try to get in range of your city. That should buy you enough time to get those bombers out.

You could also sue for peace then reengage once the bombers are ready to fly.

A screenshot of the situation would help.

In general it's almost impossible to go on offense against artillery when you've got nothing better than infantry and artillery. Especially if you have to go across a river and open terrain to do it. Just wait until you've got mechanized infantry. Or wait for the AI to blunder all its artillery up next to you and kill it.

Cavalry.

or hit and run with tank on the frontline so the artillery wont catch you

Normally, you might be able to use sheer numbers of mobile forces, even less strong ones like cavalry, and use multiple strikes to his few. But the river is likely your main problem as you probably don't have enough unique tiles for everything to swamp with numbers. Depends on the free tiles, how much money you have to purchase units per turn, how close you are to bombers, whether you're well linked by road behind the lines to bring forces up from the rest of your empire etc...

But if it's a choice between heading for cavalry and mech inf, then it's mech inf every time for me! Cavalry are half the price but mech inf are twice the strength. Cavalry can move after striking but mech inf can move further anyway. Cavalry use resources but mech inf use none.

I am not very good at this game, so read my suggestion with caution.

But the first thing that came to my mind was to use Great General to build fort at the spot where the AI units may try to attack. Then take defensive position and use a combo of your artillery and infantry to destroy their force. Once their forces are wiped out, go on the offensive. Hopefully by then, your bombers are also brought online.

I agree that the river is the real rub here. Generally, you can outmaneuver the AI with simply MORE artillery and I have also found that lancers are very helpful for scouting/picking off arty. The AI also makes bad mistakes that allows you free shots. However, the river makes movement points irrelevant. I still think it's possible if you mass enough artillery, especially on King, but the river is also a very good defensive position for you. Since you only plan on having three cities, I would just abuse that natural defense and build up XP on your artillery. Soon enough you should make it to +1 range and then you can move in for the slaughter (perhaps at mobile arty).

As an aside, I really find bombers to be pretty useless.... They don't upgrade from anything so you have to create them from scrath, they're expensive to rush, they get damaged way too easily by attacking, and worst of all their attack animation takes WAY TOO LONG. I swear if I replaced all my arty with bombers at that tech it would take 15 minutes just to wait for them to finish attacking.

As an aside, I really find bombers to be pretty useless.... They don't upgrade from anything so you have to create them from scrath, they're expensive to rush, they get damaged way too easily by attacking, and worst of all their attack animation takes WAY TOO LONG.

Yeah, the animation takes way to long. To speed up the game I switch to tactical view (F10) as soon as I give orders to a bomber and press F10 shortly after again to switch back to normal view.

On topic: I love artillery. They are indeed a pain if you attacking (especially if you want to expand onto another continent) but they also enable me to fend off much larger armies than my own.

Unless someone screws up, an infantry/artillery war is a stalemate.

Lucky for you, the AI should eventually screw up. You just have to dig in and wait :)

Your other option is to attempt a flanking maneuver. Without a screenshot I can't really say much beyond that.

And yes, once you get Mech Inf it's all over.

you could rush buy fighters, they cost something like 1100 gold. At the time of flight I usually have around 400 gpt (out of GA), so that means 1 fighter/3 turns. You should have spared money in advance.

3 fighters can kill on open terrain artillery/infantry, the only problem is sight. They can damage cities too (yesterday i had on emperor game where I fighted babylons and they can damage even cities with 70 strength)

I would beeline mech infantry instead of bombers though. Much better to make quick war with fighters + MI

Thanks guys. I did get a bomber out which is helping for now; mech infantry is next up to finish pushing through the line.

The terrain really screwed me on this one. Aside from the killing field I'm currently on (North, East), the Southern side is all mountains with 1-2 hilly passes. It'd take even longer to attack through than the field!

Unless someone screws up, an infantry/artillery war is a stalemate.

Lucky for you, the AI should eventually screw up. You just have to dig in and wait :)
Not always, but I've certainly seen the AI decide that the way to end an artillery waiting game is to push the artillery forward by itself with no infantry screening it.

I like to go for bombers in this situation, you can clear out the units in the field easily and then you can bombard the city down to the red, march the infantry up and take the city in 1 turn.

Have you thought about possibly getting workers to build roads over the river in acouple of places, this should build some bridges and therefor you dont loose movement points, Presuming you have a couple of gpt to spare it could help you rush quickly and then you just destroy the bridges afterwards.

Have you thought about possibly getting workers to build roads over the river in acouple of places, this should build some bridges and therefor you dont loose movement points, Presuming you have a couple of gpt to spare it could help you rush quickly and then you just destroy the bridges afterwards.

Ya know, that's a pretty good idea. I also wonder if it would trigger the AI to move out and try to capture the worker, letting me bombard their approach. Maybe they'd even try to capture it with artillery after running out of riflemen. That may be a bit exploitative though.

I've already broken through their line now thanks the bomber but I'll try this out in another game.

The best way to deal with this is to approach from a different side. Can you embark a bunch of units and do a landing somewhere else in their empire? Keep him in a stalemate on this border with a few artillery and infantry, then attack elsewhere. In a typical scenario, he'll have the bulk of his troops up near you and will be ripe for an attack elsewhere.

Have you thought about possibly getting workers to build roads over the river in acouple of places, this should build some bridges and therefor you dont loose movement points, Presuming you have a couple of gpt to spare it could help you rush quickly and then you just destroy the bridges afterwards.

I have a discussion elsewhere about movement points... but here you say that bridges eliminate the movement costs for crossing rivers... but I haven't seen that especially in my current game... I just assumed that it was because my entire unit is being forced down to a thin line to cross over the bridge that I was losing my movement...

But I shouldn't be stuck once I cross the river is what you are saying? :confused:

Hmmmm....

Thanks guys. I did get a bomber out which is helping for now; mech infantry is next up to finish pushing through the line.

The terrain really screwed me on this one. Aside from the killing field I'm currently on (North, East), the Southern side is all mountains with 1-2 hilly passes. It'd take even longer to attack through than the field!

with a few promotions bombers can be quite effective. get the -50% damage and logistics promotions on them and they'll make mincemeat of anything short of mech inf. It's not even cheesy anymore, either, as I've seen the ai build many air units since the patch.

@kyroshill: are you getting into the enemy's zoc after crossing the river? once you have construction roads over rivers automatically act as bridges as well.

Yeah, unless you're in the enemy's ZoC or landing on a tile with 1mpt (marsh, forest, hill), there is no 1mpt penalty for crossing a river once you have a road across it + construction.

To be clear about having bridges over the rivers once you've researched Construction. There has to be a road in the tiles on both sides of the river. Cities count as road tiles and later railroad tiles once railroads are unlocked.

Since you have to have roads on both sides for the bridge to be there, then the only thing that can stop your movement as soon as you cross the river is you ran out of movement points.

An enemy's ZOC doesn't suck up all your movement points when you move into it form a tile outside the ZOC. The only time ZOC sucks up all the movement points is when you move from one ZOC tile to an adjacent ZOC tile.

you could rush buy fighters, they cost something like 1100 gold. At the time of flight I usually have around 400 gpt (out of GA), so that means 1 fighter/3 turns. You should have spared money in advance.

Having only 3 cities, it'll be a feat to get 400 gpt.

The way to win battles, and any war is to hit the enemy where it is weakest. Speed and mobility are crucial. I'd recommend reading Sun Tzu's Art of War - some advice can even be applied in business.

"Know yourself. Know your enemies. A thousand battles. A thousand victories." - Art of War

Tactically, the way to beat artillery is to concentrate your artillery on their flank. Destroy that unit, reposition, and repeat.

Promotion wise there is the "cover" series which gives some resistance to ranged attacks.

The AI will not attack or damage a worker though they will attempt to capture them if the opportunity presents itself. You can use a worker to build a fort and ultimately a line of forts to the point where you wish to attack from. Have a military unit ready to retreive a captured worker.

Seige warfare and artillery bombardments are some of the easiest ways to rack up experience and promotions. One game I was at war against russia. I built forts outside st pete and moscow and rotated my crossbowmen through until each was over 800 xp. At that point I rotated some of my melee troops through also.

Bringing in roads has another advantage. I've had instances where I transported a siege unit via roads and still had enough movement points to set it up an fire. If you can do that you'll have the advantage. As previously mentioned if the sea is nearby, you must get control of it. You can bombard from the sea while at the same time controlling it to get your units ashore from the water.

Laying siege to a city is no easy task especially if there is a choke point they can blockade to hold you off. And moreso, if they're empire has similar tech and production capacity, they can spit out units of equal strenghth that may get friendly territory bonuses from policies or wonders.

Good luck.