[vanilla] Amphibious Invasions

[marekb]

Originally Posted by Smoo

Do ranged attacks on a naval/embarked stack affect both units? Or just the naval one? I haven't gotten to a late game yet, but if the embarked are shielded, wouldn't an amphibious assault be super easy if you just bring, say, a battleship and a loaded carrier with a couple of embarked amphibious units stacked with them? Soften the city then take it with just one or two direct amphibious assaults. (Assume the opposing navy has already been dealt with.)

You can stack at most one embarked unit with at most one naval unit. It is the same mechanics which allows you to stack civilian land unit military land unit.

A naval assault is little easier, because melee naval units (like destroyers) can attack cities. So you can land and naval melee units, soften the city defence with ranged naval unit and then melee naval units and finally lunch an amphibious attack. Moreover, you can even capture a city with naval melee unit.

[Smoo]

Originally Posted by marekb

You can stack at most one embarked unit with at most one naval unit. It is the same mechanics which allows you to stack civilian land unit military land unit.

A naval assault is little easier, because melee naval units (like destroyers) can attack cities. So you can land and naval melee units, soften the city defence with ranged naval unit and then melee naval units and finally lunch an amphibious attack. Moreover, you can even capture a city with naval melee unit.

I think you misunderstood my question. Say I have one battleship with an amphibious infantry stacked with it, and one carrier loaded with bombers and another amphibious infantry. I have two questions in this scenario:

1) When the opposing city bombards one of my spaces, say the Battleship/Infantry space, does it just hurt the Battleship? Or does it damage both the Battleship and Infantry?

2) If the answer to 1 is "just the Battleship", then wouldn't this be the sleekest and safest invasion fleet? Safely soften the city with battleship and bombers, and then when it's weak your amphibious infantry take it easily.

I'm just saying, if this is all true, there's no more need for a massive landing fleet at all. Just a few guys stacked with the combat vessels.

[Veneke]

Originally Posted by Smoo

I think you misunderstood my question. Say I have one battleship with an amphibious infantry stacked with it, and one carrier loaded with bombers and another amphibious infantry. I have two questions in this scenario:

1) When the opposing city bombards one of my spaces, say the Battleship/Infantry space, does it just hurt the Battleship? Or does it damage both the Battleship and Infantry?

2) If the answer to 1 is "just the Battleship", then wouldn't this be the sleekest and safest invasion fleet? Safely soften the city with battleship and bombers, and then when it's weak your amphibious infantry take it easily.

I'm just saying, if this is all true, there's no more need for a massive landing fleet at all. Just a few guys stacked with the combat vessels.

A bombardment hurts the ship not the unit 'underneath', yes.

However, I don't think it's the best way to do it. Ranged + melee naval units is the way to go. Why bother micromanaging or increasing the production cost of the amphibious fleet by adding embarked land units to the mix when you can simply use ships? You can keep your naval melee units out of reach of the city's bombardment range and they can defend themselves better than embarked land units.

The exception to this would be, I believe, two-fold; resource raiding and taking on cities further inland. The ship-only strategy doesn't work if there are cities inland or if the enemy has a large land army. Also, if there are crucial strategic resources on or near the coastline then you'll need land units to pillage these.

[marekb]

Originally Posted by Smoo

I'm just saying, if this is all true, there's no more need for a massive landing fleet at all. Just a few guys stacked with the combat vessels.

That's true. Moreover, as Veneke said, you don't need any landing fleet to take a coastal city, but you may need it to defend taken city.

In G+K naval invasion are easier than in vanilla, but also it is much more important to have your own fleet to defend coastal cities.

[Callonia]

Even the largest of land armies will fall to the navy if they keep on charging the units to retake the coastal cities. AIs is unfortunately not intelligent in this regard. Its possible to smash the whole land army from AI using just your navy. Huns did it to me and lost their land army and their cities was easy pickings because of that.

AI lack the capability to plan how to retake their coastal cities from the navy and use the land army to defend the inner cities...

Naval assault would be alot harder if the land army refused engagement with my navy and force me to dig them out on land battles without naval support. If they manage to crush my land army engaging their land army then they have a new problem, how to retake the coastal cities from human player's navy. Depends on which era it is, those coastal cities is likely lost for good until late into game where technology advance to the point where rocket artillery can shell the cities safely and air force is deployed.

[atarihuana]

well the main problem is the AI only knows hexes. i doesnt understand, water,flatland,hill, mountain.

more "advandced" concepts like "in range" and "chokepoint" are far out of reach