On the Finer Points of Tank Warfare

[siroxo]

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.

[Chillaxation]

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.

[Excl]

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.

[Chillaxation]

Originally Posted by Excl

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.

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.

[Lord Olleus]

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.

[heljik]

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!

[Lord Olleus]

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.

[S.ilver]

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/showth...140618&page=10

[Chillaxation]

Originally Posted by S.ilver

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.

[S.ilver]

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

[carn]

Originally Posted by cleverhandle

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

[fung3]

Originally Posted by Excl

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!!

[Chillaxation]

Originally Posted by carn

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.

[Chillaxation]

Originally Posted by fung3

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.

[Lord Olleus]

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

[Chillaxation]

Originally Posted by Lord Olleus

/\
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.

[Excl]

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.

[Thalassicus]

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).

[fung3]

Originally Posted by Chillaxation

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.

[carn]

Originally Posted by fung3

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