Late Game Recovery

[VilleDick]

OK, as per usual I end up going for a space race win. I was playing a few games on Noble and held the tech lead for the majority of the game. I was on a large map with 8 rival civs. I was America (Washington) and realized that the AI was catching up and would win the space race. Ghandi had overtaken me late and had more parts and was set to win. However Delhi was a coastal city so I decided to make use of the Navy Seal to raze Delhi and bury his space efforts. Well I bombarded defenses to 0 and Unloaded 4 transports of Seals with tanks ready to clean up after that. I did not take Delhi, but what made it worse is that I didn't even kill 1 unit. They killed 16 Seals and not one of their Infantry lost. How effective are you guys at late modern age wars? Obviously I was undermanned but I would've need about 20 transports of seals to make that invasion work. Any thoughts?

[Riothamus]

You should have used some Bombers or siege units to go for the collateral damage, afterwards your SEALS should have mopped up no problem.

[weimingshi]

Originally Posted by VilleDick

OK, as per usual I end up going for a space race win. I was playing a few games on Noble and held the tech lead for the majority of the game. I was on a large map with 8 rival civs. I was America (Washington) and realized that the AI was catching up and would win the space race. Ghandi had overtaken me late and had more parts and was set to win. However Delhi was a coastal city so I decided to make use of the Navy Seal to raze Delhi and bury his space efforts. Well I bombarded defenses to 0 and Unloaded 4 transports of Seals with tanks ready to clean up after that. I did not take Delhi, but what made it worse is that I didn't even kill 1 unit. They killed 16 Seals and not one of their Infantry lost. How effective are you guys at late modern age wars? Obviously I was undermanned but I would've need about 20 transports of seals to make that invasion work. Any thoughts?

bombard the defense is only first step, you need also use **** load of stealth bombers to strike down defending units strength first. Otherwise your navy seal stands nil chance against mech infantry.

[VilleDick]

Originally Posted by Riothamus

You should have used some Bombers or siege units to go for the collateral damage, afterwards your SEALS should have mopped up no problem.

Bombers would have been nice but I had nowhere to station them in range of Delhi. I landed a few siege units but since their movement is only 1 per turn they got smeared before they could be effective. Maybe I'm mistaken but there was no really good way to get collateral damage in there, I could have used fighters I supposed, but they're not all that wonderful for attack at least in my experience.

[weimingshi]

Originally Posted by VilleDick

Bombers would have been nice but I had nowhere to station them in range of Delhi. I landed a few siege units but since their movement is only 1 per turn they got smeared before they could be effective. Maybe I'm mistaken but there was no really good way to get collateral damage in there, I could have used fighters I supposed, but they're not all that wonderful for attack at least in my experience.

yes, fighter sucks at air strike, but if you can't get bombers to there, bring loads of fighter, that way at least it will give your seals a fighting chance.

PS. you can station bombers in AI city where you have open border agreement too and bomb from there.

[VilleDick]

Unfortunately Delhi was surrounded by the rest of India and Greece bordered them, and needless to say Alex didn't like me much. I did have open borders with Ghandi and had a +10 but the only way to keep him from winning was to take Delhi. Guess I was in a tough spot there but live and learn, I think my next game I'm gonna try and go for a conquest victory so I don't have this problem.

[alexti2]

Originally Posted by VilleDick

OK, as per usual I end up going for a space race win. I was playing a few games on Noble and held the tech lead for the majority of the game. I was on a large map with 8 rival civs. I was America (Washington) and realized that the AI was catching up and would win the space race. Ghandi had overtaken me late and had more parts and was set to win. However Delhi was a coastal city so I decided to make use of the Navy Seal to raze Delhi and bury his space efforts. Well I bombarded defenses to 0 and Unloaded 4 transports of Seals with tanks ready to clean up after that. I did not take Delhi, but what made it worse is that I didn't even kill 1 unit. They killed 16 Seals and not one of their Infantry lost. How effective are you guys at late modern age wars? Obviously I was undermanned but I would've need about 20 transports of seals to make that invasion work. Any thoughts?

You needed to bring some of your own infantry to counter their infantry. Promotions to choose for them is combat I + Pinch. Assuming that Ghandi has some air power, you needed to bring SAM Infantry to counter their gunships. If you've thought of saving up few machine guns from the previous era you could bring them too (they work well vs infantry). Together with your SEALs that would make defensive part of your army. For the offensive part I prefer to bring Artillery. With couple of city raiders promotions they have decent firepower and they deal collateral damage as well. You can also use them to destroy city fortifications if you can't reach it by air (or don't want to bother to build bombers). If you want to have your army fit in 4 transports, I would suggest something like 3-3-3-7(artillery) split. That force would have realistic chance to take the city, but more would be better. The issue you're dealing with is as soon as you land, AI bring units from all around by railroad to attack you. So your first goal is to survive the initial assault without much losses. If you can hold your own, you'll be able to take their cities.

You also said that the city was coastal. Why did you unload SEALs? You would have better chance by just attacking from the ships after bombarding off defenses.

[Geostrophic]

Originally Posted by VilleDick

OK, as per usual I end up going for a space race win. I was playing a few games on Noble and held the tech lead for the majority of the game. I was on a large map with 8 rival civs. I was America (Washington) and realized that the AI was catching up and would win the space race. Ghandi had overtaken me late and had more parts and was set to win. However Delhi was a coastal city so I decided to make use of the Navy Seal to raze Delhi and bury his space efforts. Well I bombarded defenses to 0 and Unloaded 4 transports of Seals with tanks ready to clean up after that. I did not take Delhi, but what made it worse is that I didn't even kill 1 unit. They killed 16 Seals and not one of their Infantry lost. How effective are you guys at late modern age wars? Obviously I was undermanned but I would've need about 20 transports of seals to make that invasion work. Any thoughts?

siege weapons or bombers are pretty critical for that situation. the capital city usually has a ton of culture (ESPECIALLY with gandhi), meaning that they get a huge bonus to defense. artillery is critical to get rid of that bonus, and then to do collateral damage so you actually have a chance of taking the city. a nuke or two can also help soften up the defense, although that's pretty impractical most of the time.

but yeah, like other people have said, there's not really any way to get around heavily fortified defensive units like that without some form of siege weapon. do what you gotta do, I guess.

[picus]

Sounds like bombers weren't an option - in that case it's time to suicide some artillery. It's a bummer, but it works.

[MyOtherName]

Can't you just bombard the city's defenses with ships to get rid of its defense?

[Beamup]

He did get rid of the defense bonus (though it's easy to miss in a quick read of the OP, I admit). What he needed is some collateral damage followup to that.

[VilleDick]

Originally Posted by alexti2

Why did you unload SEALs? You would have better chance by just attacking from the ships after bombarding off defenses.

I didn't unload the seals, I attacked from the boat. The problem I ran into is that my landing army (siege, and infantry) couldn't survive long enough to do the collateral damage. It was a bummer but live and learn. I was curious what strategies other people use in that situation and if people have been successful doing it. I'm pretty crappy at modern age warfare since I'm usually focused on building space ship parts and boosting my economy.

[MyOtherName]

I should preface this by saying I haven't had to do this yet, but if I were to try a modern era naval invasion (against modern era forces), I would:

Bring a few destroyers / battleships to bombard the enemy defenses.
Bring a few carriers with fighers to weaken the defenders.
Then, ideally, launch an attack with amphibious promoted units.

If amphibious units aren't an option, I suppose I would bring some extra fighters to tear up the railroads around my beachhead, to protect my stack from reinforcements.

[Ray Patterson]

Originally Posted by VilleDick

The problem I ran into is that my landing army (siege, and infantry) couldn't survive long enough to do the collateral damage.

You could have tried using your artillery from the ships... the 50% extra defense means they would not have done much damage, but collateral damage doesn't have to be very big. Don't know if it would have saved you, but if you never intend to conquer the rest of the country but only raze a coastal city, I think you'd best keep your attack amphibious altogether.

[weimingshi]

Please people, before give any advice understand the situation first. His problem is he need to take a coastal city in enemy continent where he cannot land any land units on it, because when you unload them on land, they can only move the next turn, during that time, those units will be destroyed by AI. So his only option is to make an amphibious assault from transport with navy seals. and no, artillaries cannot fire from a boat.

I've done the exact same thing in my game. what I did was I brought along 4, or was it 5 carriers?. so that would be 12-15 fighters and 12 marines to assault a coastal city with 3 mech, 3 sam inf in it. I used fighters to do collateral damage, fighters don't do much damage, but at least gave my marines a fighting chance. lost about 4 or 5 fighter in the attempt. I upgraded marines with combat and +25% vs. gunpowder. I finally captured the city with my last marine. But then I made the huge mistake of not bring with me some gunships and didn't destroy the railroads leading to the city and was constantly attacked by enemy artillary and mordern armor. The city was recaptured by AI 3 turns later, I had 12 mordern armor, 5 mech, 8 marine in it, all died. SO make sure you brought some gunship to destroy the railroads.

[alexti2]

Originally Posted by weimingshi

Please people, before give any advice understand the situation first. His problem is he need to take a coastal city in enemy continent where he cannot land any land units on it, because when you unload them on land, they can only move the next turn, during that time, those units will be destroyed by AI. So his only option is to make an amphibious assault from transport with navy seals. and no, artillaries cannot fire from a boat.

So the answer to his problem is to bring the right units so that he won't get destroyed by AI after the landing. Generally, when AI is attacking you there is a positive thing, because he suffers much heavier losses. Fortunately, unlike human players, AI doesn't stash 30 artilleries just for such a case, so there isn't much they can do again the landing.

[VilleDick]

Originally Posted by weimingshi

Please people, before give any advice understand the situation first. His problem is he need to take a coastal city in enemy continent where he cannot land any land units on it, because when you unload them on land, they can only move the next turn, during that time, those units will be destroyed by AI. So his only option is to make an amphibious assault from transport with navy seals. and no, artillaries cannot fire from a boat.

That was indeed the problem, it was to capture and raze Delhi (Indian capital) to destroy the spaceship. I wish they only had 6 units in it but it seems like they knew I was coming and had about 15 SAM Inf and Inf in there. It looks like I underestimated air power in my strategy, I didn't expect to go to war and didn't focus on building an air force. Clearly that was my only shot here. Maybe I'll reload and build up some fighters to see if how much that would've helped.

[magerain]

Some fighters won't work. Some bombers from allied city will. Several suicide artillery will. If you use fighters, use as somebody stated previously *** loads of fighters. Good luck!

[Thalassicus]

One option that works for making landings is if there's a forest or hill tile adjacent to the city, land a half dozen defensive units there with Woodsman II or Guerilla II. They can soak up a huge amount of the units the AI throws at them. Keep landing defensive units there until their assaults seem to wane, then land your assault force. I've used Woodsman II + Guerilla I mech infantry on a forested hill in this manner to great effect.

If you don't have forests or hills next to the city it just requires overwhelming numbers of fighters to soften the defenders.

Or, check if there's an allied city near Ghandi that you can rebase your aircraft to. Make sure that if they also have open borders with Ghandi, he can't send units to the city to kill your bombers (ships can also kill units if they're stationed in allied coastal cities).

[weimingshi]

Originally Posted by Thalassicus

One option that works for making landings is if there's a forest or hill tile adjacent to the city, land a half dozen defensive units there with Woodsman II or Guerilla II. They can soak up a huge amount of the units the AI throws at them. Keep landing defensive units there until their assaults seem to wane, then land your assault force. I've used Woodsman II + Guerilla I mech infantry on a forested hill in this manner to great effect.

If you don't have forests or hills next to the city it just requires overwhelming numbers of fighters to soften the defenders.

Or, check if there's an allied city near Ghandi that you can rebase your aircraft to. Make sure that if they also have open borders with Ghandi, he can't send units to the city to kill your bombers (ships can also kill units if they're stationed in allied coastal cities).

Landing defensive units strat don't work this late in game. The Ai will bomb the hell out of your forces with bombers and sucide artillary. your defenders will be lucky if they got 40% hp left before waves of modern armor and mech infantry charge. The problem with over sea invasion is the units you can bring along with you is limited and reinforcement takes a few turns to arrive at least, while the AI can call up loads of units from surronding city in 1 turn because of railroad.