Anyone tried a medieval amphibious cap rush?

[pi-r8]

Yeah I hardly ever use grenadiers in regular games, since they get owned so easily on open terrain by rifles, cavalry, cuirs, and maybe even knights. Actually, Stacks of CR3 macemen have the same problem By attacking with them amphibiously solves that issue.

I don't even think mil science/combustion would help the AIs much, since you can sneak attack them and either sink their ships in cities, or cap them in one turn. Machine guns would be annoying though.

 

[FlyingSwan]

@pi-r8.I've toyed with amphibious attack in the classic era using AGG civs that can bulb Theocracy-monty,alexander etc,its very situational though-archepeligo maps realy or a Pangaea where your galleys can reach an AI cap twice as fast as the troops could on foot.

Your thread is about medieval warfare though,we need astronomy(unless Portugal)so I can only see amphibious warfare working if you set up the spys in caravels beforehand to take down city defences to make this work.

 

[Nexlev]

I love amphibious attacks. I'm no expert on this game but here are some thoughts

- someone mentioned that the AI will often keep all or most their navy in one lightly defended city. Use caravels to find that city and then make it your first target.

- target piss-poor coastal cities (the AI builds plenty of them). After you've weakened the city to one defender, who's probably weak, use your least valuable unit remaining to take him out and then raze the city... move on to the next with the rest of your units

Some of the things that make amphibious attacks so powerful, IMO
- sneak attack. Amphibious is one of the only ways to reach an enemy city in one turn.
- they can't use siege to weaken your units before you attack
- after you've taken the city, if you keep it, you can move your wounded defenders inside to help defend.
- it's usually very easy to create a situation where the enemy is unable to retaliate so you don't have to worry about defense as much

 

[Sun Tzu Wu]

It occurs to me that Astronomy is not necessarily needed on cylindrical or toriodal water maps where two Work Boats can get the circumnavigation bonus. This would include primarily Archipelago maps.

One can _now_ use 3 MP Galleys to attack cities with. Use open borders get Galleys through target's culture to neutral shore plots near each of its coastal cities. Even 2MP Galleys might be able to do this, given desireable land plots sticking out from the city.

Sun Tzu Wu

 

[MarigoldRan]

Play an earth map as the Vikings. Test your theory.

(Earth maps are perfect for amphibious strategy. Just think of the snaky/Peninsular shape of Europe).

 

[pi-r8]

Bumping this thread after a long hiatus from Civ4...

I had the chance to use this strategy in a recent game, and it was great! Very effective, very fun, and very different from typical games. I highly recommend trying this at least once, if you're looking for something new to do with Civ4. I did it on a medium and small (with continents) map, but I think it would work on basically any map except Pangaea. I did standard size, standard speed, immortal difficulty, but I don't think those settings would affect it much.

In a nutshell, here's what I did:
-Ragnar of the Vikings
-Little early expansion, very fast early tech
-Tech Path after early stuff was Construction, Civil Service, Machinery, then I went directly for Astronomy, then Chemistry (going the south path through guilds, skipping paper/education). Manually teched astronomy (took forever), bulbed Chemistry.
-Regular land war with capapults/berzerkers against my neighbor. This gave me something to do while teching astronomy, more cities, and upgraded a lot of my berzerkers to city raider 2 or 3
-After Chemistry, it was one amphibious war after another. First with berzerkers, then upgraded them all to grenadiers after getting military science. I took their outer islands and best coastal cities, then capitulated the rest. Eventually won by conquest, some time in the early 1700s.

Miscellaneous thoughts:
-With an amphibious force, you can choose any war target you want, and I always aimed for the tech leader. Getting far away cities and vassal states doesn't help your economy much, it just hurts theirs. My own tech pace was pretty slow, but the AI's was even slower because I kept kneecapping the tech leader. So I always had an edge in military technology, and I generously shared it with all my vassals so they could help out a little too.
-I liberated all cities on the other continent, even the really good ones. This created 2 free units for defense each time, and saved me all the upkeep costs. So I didn't have to build any stack defenders and hardly any city defenders, mostly just city raiders and naval units
-Aggressive City Raider 3/amphibious grenadiers are amazing. They almost don't care whether they're fighting longbows, musketmen, or rifles, they get 90%+ odds against any of those! Eventually most of them got pinch, too. Even though I wasn't using siege, my losses were extremely low. But you really need that third level of City Raider- against gunpowder units it's a whopping 40% bonus! With everything together, my grenadiers had a 95% bonus against gunpowder, 145% against rifles, or 170% with pinch!!! Effective strength 32.4- That's better than marines! But if you don't have all those promos then protective civs with hill cities can be tough to crack.
-Defending cities is much harder than taking them. Sometimes I held off on taking a city, just leaving one unit there, hoping the AI would move in more units to defend it. Especially their swarms of knights were an issue.
-I never got too many cities of my own (maybe 15 in the end?). I just vassalized everyone and won a conquest victory.
-My overall production was quite low because I had so many coastal cities, so most of my units just came from one heroic epic city, plus some occasional rounds of whipping. But I hardly ever lost units, and liberating cities gives free units, so it almost didn't matter.
-Despite constant whipping, I never had an issue with happiness, because of the extra vassal happiness.
-I didn't get the Great Lighthouse, and that was a mistake. The Great Lighthouse would have been amazing with this strategy.
-It feels wrong to manually tech Astronomy. It's an expensive tech with no "arrows", so the research is slow. But you can't bulb it without skipping Civil Service, and I wanted to get both bureaucracy and berzerkers ASAP. I still think it's the right choice for this strategy, but I'd like to compare against bulbing Astronomy.
-I stayed in Mercantilism all the time, since you can still get trade routes with your vassals, and it helps slow down the AIs even more. Conquering the pyramids to get representation would have helped.
-I never got many towns except in my capital, so Free Speech seemed pointless. Not sure if Bureaucracy or Nationalism would be better. I put off researching liberalism a long time, but if I could have gotten the Kremlin earlier it would have been extremely useful.
-I sent a few privateers out early, and they really messed up one AI, who built a ton of caravels but never attacked. It might be worth delaying frigates and just building a bunch of privateers at first. Even if you're not planning an amphibious invasion, getting privateers when no one else has astronomy is powerful.
-After I got Military Science, I backfilled for all the medieval/renaissance techs that I'd skipped. I think that was a mistake. I should have just pushed straight on forward for airships or rifles, trading with vassals for missing economic techs. I was building things like Oxford University, observatories, the Statue of Liberty, and Ironworks because I didn't realize how quickly the game was going to end.
-Nice side effect of Military Science- military academies! With a military academy in my HE city, I could one-turn most units there.
-CR3 grenadiers can kill almost anything, but airships and rifles also help a lot, and I'm not sure which is more useful. Ships of the Line were surprisingly useful too, doing more bombardment damage and easily beating frigates.
-The title of this thread should be renaissance, not medieval. You do need renaissance military tech, at least for frigates.
-Gotta love the Viking navigation bonus plus circumnavigation. My ships were all moving at a speed of 6! So even though I was fighting across the ocean, it didn't really feel all that far away.

Sorry for the wall of text. TLDR: get frigates and City Raider3 amphibious grenadiers, kill everything, capitulate everyone.

 

[pi-r8]

Some pics:
First: beating a full strength, fully fortified, City Garrison, Guerilla2 Rifle on a hill, at 90% odds.
Second: crushing a fortified, CG2 musketman on a hill at 99% odds.
Third: GNP graphs. My own GNP was nothing special, but look how my opponents flatlined. First Wang, then Mao, then Tokugawa, as soon as they started to become a threat I stopped them. Instead of the exponential growth you usually see, it was almost a flat line.
Fourth: Unit lost stats. This is sorted be highest first. In other words, the most I lost was three rifles, three berzerkers, two grenadiers, and two catapults. I just... didn't lose units this way. On a conquest victory!

 

[pi-r8]

Doing another game with this strategy, and it continues to impress me.

This one was a lot "messier", I keep getting dragged into unexpected wars because of AI bribes or vassals. For a while I was at war with 4AIs at once and fighting all around the world simultaneously. But it doesn't matter, the CR3 amphibious grenadiers and navy doomstack annihilates everything.

Once you've got a colony on the other continent, you can endlessly liberate them cities and they get two free units each time. Kinda cheesy but it's really powerful, and you don't even suffer war weariness from what their defenders kill.

Told my first vassal to research towards rifling, while I went for physics. Then traded with him, so my vassal state hugely helped my research. Once you have both, you can stage airships in the cities that your colony gets with free rifles, so even the toughest defenders go down easily.

I conquered the pyramids to get representation, and conquered the great lighthouse. No need to research constitution or economics. Or education, for that matter. The research rate isn't great, but there's so many techs you just don't need with this strategy, it's amazing. Straight on for combustion now, to end the game.

 

[dankok]

Doing another game with this strategy, and it continues to impress me.

This one was a lot "messier", I keep getting dragged into unexpected wars because of AI bribes or vassals. For a while I was at war with 4AIs at once and fighting all around the world simultaneously. But it doesn't matter, the CR3 amphibious grenadiers and navy doomstack annihilates everything.

Once you've got a colony on the other continent, you can endlessly liberate them cities and they get two free units each time. Kinda cheesy but it's really powerful, and you don't even suffer war weariness from what their defenders kill.

Told my first vassal to research towards rifling, while I went for physics. Then traded with him, so my vassal state hugely helped my research. Once you have both, you can stage airships in the cities that your colony gets with free rifles, so even the toughest defenders go down easily.

I conquered the pyramids to get representation, and conquered the great lighthouse. No need to research constitution or economics. Or education, for that matter. The research rate isn't great, but there's so many techs you just don't need with this strategy, it's amazing. Straight on for combustion now, to end the game.

How big is the navy doom stack? This seems fun to try. I did something similar with Dutch on Archipelago long ago. Going kind of off tangent but East Indiaman is just overpowered on water maps. Definitely a situational UU but an absolutely behemoth with 6 strength instead of regular 4 and 4 cargo space instead of 3. Willem totally controls the seas until the enemy can build Frigates. But yea Ragnar is a master of amphibious assaults. Financial makes coastal cities pretty good. Add GLH and maybe even Colossus. Navigation on ships, free Amphibious on Bersekers. Never thought of using Grenadiers but they are fantastic and can work straight through until the AI's have Infantry.

 

[pi-r8]

How big is the navy doom stack? This seems fun to try. I did something similar with Dutch on Archipelago long ago. Going kind of off tangent but East Indiaman is just overpowered on water maps. Definitely a situational UU but an absolutely behemoth with 6 strength instead of regular 4 and 4 cargo space instead of 3. Willem totally controls the seas until the enemy can build Frigates. But yea Ragnar is a master of amphibious assaults. Financial makes coastal cities pretty good. Add GLH and maybe even Colossus. Navigation on ships, free Amphibious on Bersekers. Never thought of using Grenadiers but they are fantastic and can work straight through until the AI's have Infantry.

It is really fun once you get it going. I started the invasion with 8 Ships of the Line and 10 Galleons (about half upgraded grenadiers, half other stuff), and then you just contuously build more. At some point I split it off into smaller groups so things got really chaotic.

Funny you mention Willem, I was fighting him this game and he was kinda annoying, since two East Indiamen can kill a frigate or ship of the line (or even kill it with just one if he gets lucky). But you shouldn't start the invasion until you have frigates so East Indiamen aren't that useful here for a human.

 

[dankok]

It is really fun once you get it going. I started the invasion with 8 Ships of the Line and 10 Galleons (about half upgraded grenadiers, half other stuff), and then you just contuously build more. At some point I split it off into smaller groups so things got really chaotic.

Funny you mention Willem, I was fighting him this game and he was kinda annoying, since two East Indiamen can kill a frigate or ship of the line (or even kill it with just one if he gets lucky). But you shouldn't start the invasion until you have frigates so East Indiamen aren't that useful here for a human.

Well a strategy with Willem can be to beeline Astro and then attack with East Indiamen and Berserkers for a true medieval attack. Bombardment is an issue but I guess you could use spies. Frigates are probably more efficient than spies and in that case EIM are weaker because you don't need them for combat but still good because you can save hammers and build fewer because they have more cargo space. 4-5 fewer ships means 4-5 more Grenadiers.

EDIT: I just saw that you posted this earlier in the thread.

 

[AcaMetis]

You can't have EIM and Berserkers at the same time, though, they're UUs of different civs . You could play Unrestricted Leaders and play as Ragnar (or any AGG leader) of the Dutch and get Combat 1 -> Combat 2 -> Amphibious Melee/Gunpowder units if you can get them 5xp right out the gate, but than you'd be a long way from getting ranks of City Raider.

 

[dankok]

You can't have EIM and Berserkers at the same time, though, they're UUs of different civs . You could play Unrestricted Leaders and play as Ragnar (or any AGG leader) of the Dutch and get Combat 1 -> Combat 2 -> Amphibious Melee/Gunpowder units if you can get them 5xp right out the gate, but than you'd be a long way from getting ranks of City Raider.

Meant to say Maces.

 

[pi-r8]

Well a strategy with Willem can be to beeline Astro and then attack with East Indiamen and Berserkers for a true medieval attack. Bombardment is an issue but I guess you could use spies. Frigates are probably more efficient than spies and in that case EIM are weaker because you don't need them for combat but still good because you can save hammers and build fewer because they have more cargo space. 4-5 fewer ships means 4-5 more Grenadiers.

EDIT: I just saw that you posted this earlier in the thread.

Yeah, I started this thread years ago and bumped it a few days ago, so my thinking has changed a lot. I think the Vikings are way superior for this strategy. The problem is, if you're not using Vikings/Berzerkers, there's no practical way to get the CR3/amphibious combo that really makes this tick. I guess with GGs you could get one or two, but with Vikings you can build as many as you want. Using 3 EIM instead of 4 galleons only saves you 80 , the equivalent of one macemen, but having CR3/amphibious makes them almost twice as strong at attacking cities- it means attacking with 90% odds instead of 10% odds. You don't need a lot of grenadiers when you can win almost every battle.

edit: of course you don't *have* to attack amphibiously, you can land first and then attack normally, and any civ can do that. But that really slows everything down.