On the Finer Points of Tank Warfare

[MENGW]

I read the guide and couldnt be bothered to set up invididual roles with different promotions,

so I grab a bunch of seige tanks, assign them into 10-14 groups each with 2 stacks of 5-7, (there are more groups if i have more), 10-20 bombers at cloest city, and bomb the city to 0% + all units at half strength with bmbers before killing it with as small a number of tanks as possible.

I have the wounded tanks + 1-2 healthy tanks guard the new city and have the rest move on, this method seems to enable me to conquer large empires in less than 10turns (on marathon) on prince, with most time spent on traveling rather than attack.

tanks must be paired with bombers imo, individually they are sufficent but not all powerful, with bombers, they are invincible against anything short of a gunship (that include modern armor, if attacking it).

ADD: Have infantry guard your territory helps, line them up along the boarder, once you know where the enemy is concentrating his force, move them together to encircle them, always keep a few bombers at home.
In addition, it seems attacking on a second front is very efficent in civ4. You can declare war on a civ, set up solid defense along the boarder and just slaughter the suicital attackers, while armies of tanks unloaded from transports on the other side can capture all the core cities without being targeted by any serious resistance.

 

[crocodiledundee]

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.

So true. If at all possible, do.

And I'll be one more to say great thread!

 

[pixiejmcc]

The combination of two moves, collateral damage, and city raider allow one to capture enemy cities far more quickly than in previous eras.

2) Drill Tanks - cleanup crew:

Make sure that the target city isn't on a hill (costs 2 moves to attack).

Just started reading this but all the above are revelations for me.

I don't often play late era, but I had no idea tanks could be promoted for collateral damage, that really is deadly. It's also very interesting to note that it isn't possible to upgrade tanks to medic. Evidently I need to have a look at what promotions are available for late game units.

Also it never really occured to me to promote a few units with drill so that they receive little or no damage against weak units. Very clever.

Also, unbelievably, I had never really noticed that if a 2mp unit attacks and kills (or retreats from battle), but doesn't go on to the hill (because there are still enemy units there it won't have any mp left. This is particularly valuable to be aware of for units with the blitz promotion, but it's useful to know anyway.

 

[pixiejmcc]

4) Worker pair w/cover - Very important. You need to be able to quickly build rails in conquered territory. In contrast to Civ3, the AI doesn't appear to be very keen on snagging covered workers. I tend to cover with only a single tough defender like a Combat I/II/Ambush Infantry. An extra cover unit would be safer. Having two pairs of workers is also nice, but not essential.

Yep. Very clever.

 

[pixiejmcc]

Typical losses are 1-2 tanks and 3-4 bombers for a sustained campaign taking 6-8 cities from an enemy of roughly equal power. If your unfortunate victim doesn't have any far-flung island cities, a tank campaign along these lines can eliminate an enemy civ in under 20 turns.

Clever use of units (especially siege units - which in many ways are replaced by planes late game) means it is entirely possible to take cities and empires losing very few units, even when you do not have a significant tech lead taht guives u superior units. Having said that, the amount of losses you describe sounds a little crazy and can probably be attributed to the stupid AI.

But this is a really good article and I very much enjoyed reading it.

 

[SS-18 ICBM]

I used panzers as artillery. 10 xp from pentagon, barracks, theo, and vassalage allowed me to have BarrageIII tanks to sacrifice. After, reducing defenses with planes and ships, they reduced units in a city to half of their health. Then my CRIII and DrillIII tanks would come in and take the city with minimal losses.
I had a city which produced Medic II units and transports(it had red Cross) so my tanks would heal faster. Then I used airports in my cities to move in medic infantry and CGIII infantry into captured cities.

 

[Vizzini]

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.

You have perhaps a notion of a tanks invulnerability that has no basis in reality.

A tank is an impressive machine, but within the tight confines of a city my money would be on the units with vastly superior close-quarters mobility ie, infantry and cavalry (Cavalry being nothing more than light infantry on a horse)

A tank has huge exploitable blind spots and once an enemy is in close the tank is literally helpless... a single infantryman with a grenade can turn any tank into nothing more than a heavily armored coffin, and more than one tank crew discovered this the hard way. This is not to say that the cavalry wouldn't take hideous losses - they would, but as the poster pointed out - if you have enough of them not even tanks can stand against them, and there's nothing absurd about that.

 

[Neville]

I haven't seen this mentioned but I really like an old Cavalry with the medic promotion upgraded to gunships. They are great for covering the armour and move even faster so with a few of them you can clear the way to the next city and keep your advance from slowing down.

 

[Mango]

I love the worker idea. I've used that from time to time with great success and I'm willing to say that the key to keeping an advance going is carrying workers along with you. Instead of waiting those extra 10 turns to build your army up you can attack early and then have your worker build rails so the supply line catches up with the attacking army faster. It also lets you move defenders into the captured cities faster, meaning the attacking stack doesn't have to keep leaving behind defenders as it pushes onward. I sometimes bring workers with me early in the game when cities aren't necessarily connected to their empire by roads yet. Early in the game most civs are still using rivers or haven't connected their outer cities. If you are forced to wax those outlier cities before moving into the main part of their empire then bringing workers with you becomes even more important.

 

[Mango]

You have perhaps a notion of a tanks invulnerability that has no basis in reality.

A tank is an impressive machine, but within the tight confines of a city my money would be on the units with vastly superior close-quarters mobility ie, infantry and cavalry (Cavalry being nothing more than light infantry on a horse)

He's obviously never seen Indiana Jones.

 

[Neville]

I used to do the worker thing in civ2 where it was even faster. You could build and use rail roads in enemy territory and then once the worker was upgraded to the engineer you could build rails in one turn with 2 units. Then rail your howitzers (attack twice) up, hit the city once and retreat back to a safe place. empty out the city with multiple attacks, then if you have enough howitzers you could do it to as many enemy cities you could reach by rail. With enough howitzers and or tanks you could empty out many enemy cities then even retreat back behind your own boarders and leave their cities empty. It was enough to make me laugh diabolically.

 

[Myth5]

Cleverhandle:

this is a great guide! I used to just send tanks in to attack, and I lost a bunch, but now, I'm a free man! Many things I didn't even think of doing in this guide

 

[UncleJJ]

Sorry, but this guide is seriously out of date. It was written for vanilla in Dec 2005 and the game has changed a lot in Warlords and even more in BtS. Espionage has been introduced, air warfare is different (limited to 4 per city plus 4 with airport), forts have been made useful, paratroopers can strike faster than tanks combined with gunships and fighters. Tanks are still good but are not the only way or even the best way to rapidly conquer a weaker civ.

 

[Yesod]

Sorry, but this guide is seriously out of date. It was written for vanilla in Dec 2005 and the game has changed a lot in Warlords and even more in BtS. Espionage has been introduced, air warfare is different (limited to 4 per city plus 4 with airport), forts have been made useful, paratroopers can strike faster than tanks combined with gunships and fighters. Tanks are still good but are not the only way or even the best way to rapidly conquer a weaker civ.

What do you use to conquer weaker civs? I use drill units and siege to this day. And paratroopers? Maybe I just need to give them a try.

 

[Bandobras Took]

Paratroopers are much faster than tanks. What tanks really bring to the equation is blitz and city raider.

 

[UncleJJ]

What do you use to conquer weaker civs? I use drill units and siege to this day. And paratroopers? Maybe I just need to give them a try.

I find that cavalry and paratroopers are good enough to rapidly conquer weaker civs if you have the support of fighters. You don't have to wait for tanks. The paratroopers provide stack defence against rifles as the cavalry move through enemy territory. You can use fighters (based on carriers if in range) to reduce the defences or spies for revolt, then fighters to reduce the strength of the defenders. A pinch cavalry can easily beat a 50% strength rifle. For coastal cities you can just use destroyers, carriers and transports.

It all works together very well. You need Combustion and Flight for inter continental invasions, and you need Police State for avoiding the WW that big battles give. Flight gives airports for rapid reinforcements and carriers for convenient use of massed fighters. So paratroops are an ideal fast moving troop that you can get much earlier than tanks, marines and battleships (all of which require Electricity and Industrialism). Once you have adequate air support I find that tanks don't add much, my old cavalry (already well promoted) can do the job against rifles and machine guns.

 

[PlayerGuy08]

AFAIK Rommel was also undersupplied, because GB deciphered the enigma, so always knew where the realy precious supply transports were. It was even to the extent that Rommel suspected treachery.

Carn

true, they they tried to resupply Rommel by air, but Britain had filled Malta (correct me if I'm wrong) with about 300 spitfires. Earlier it was advocated that the Fallschirmjagers should take Malta as well as Crete, but someone in the German command (I forgot who) objected, it proved fateful.

Never understimate the power of an island base!

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Hmmmmm, since this was raised from the dead anyway I'll point out that nowadays a strong alternative if you get to industrialism + combustion fairly quickly is CR (barrage doesn't work now) tanks and spies, with a couple combat tanks for stack D. There really isn't much in terms of city defenders that hold up well against even plain CR II tanks, unless they have mech infantry or gunships. There's a pretty big window between tanks and those though...even bigger than the OP describes because of the BTS tech changes and the fact that you don't need flight to mow things down with tank/spy.

I prefer cuirassers and/or cavalry using a similar approach in the renaissance, but sometimes you'll need to tech up to tanks if earlier wars prevented a tech lead, and tanks are money then!

 

[Roxlimn]

Anti-Tanks would hold up pretty well, actually, for the hammer investment. Ambush Protective Infantry, too. Not much, as mentioned, but you gotta watch out for those.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Anti-Tanks would hold up pretty well, actually, for the hammer investment. Ambush Protective Infantry, too. Not much, as mentioned, but you gotta watch out for those.

This would be true vs humans. The AI doesn't really adjust well though. It's the same reason you can own whole continents with horse archers...or in the renaissance cuirassers and spies.

CR II tanks are pretty beefy though - and some cities can probably get them to CR III to take care of anything too difficult initially.

Since the AI fails at concentrating its forces and selecting units based on probable attacker troop mix, tanks can pretty much take everything before it can get more than a few units, if you have enough EP and spies.