Attacking advanced civs.

[huemeister]

I'm in an advanced stage in the game, where all civs have the best military equipment. I want to attack, but when I send out a column of tanks or other units, it gets thrashed every time before it can get to the enemy city.

Anybody have any ideas for a successful attack?

 

[shyuhe]

It sounds like you're missing air superiority and getting destroyed by collateral damage. Build more fighters to intercept their bombers.

If they don't have mobile artillery, you can send out gunships to pillage the railroads connecting the square you move your troops to. Then, artillery may hit you but won't be able to retreat into the nearest city. Alternatively, you can try to wait until they hit your territory (unless it's a naval invasion) and attack them then to build up their WW.

If nukes are an option, I'd definitely use them - send them at their cities that their stacks are waiting in. 2 will generally decimate the stack unless it has a bomb shelter (and/or SDI).

Drill tanks will last a little longer if you're getting slaughtered by artillery. Basically, you need very large armies to succeed in modern era wars because all civs will have huge production from factories + power.

 

[xanadux]

The key word here is attack.

Since tanks and modern armour do collateral damage, the attacker has a huge advantage. Equal forces, the attacker will generally win every time.

You must have absolutely overwhelming superiority of numbers to invade an equally advanced AI in the modern era. That is if you invade directly.

One of the biggest problems you have is enemy railroads. They can bring troops against you from a long distance all in one turn. You need to negate or diminish this advantage. You can use bombers to destroy improvements. Destroy rail (and roads) in a ring 2 squares away from your attack force, and the 2 movement units of the enemy will need a move to enter the pillaged square, then another move to move next to you (even though that square is still railed). Now you get to attack, and the AI has to defend. Advantage you.

Other options ...
Declare war and let them invade you. Now you have the advantage of mobility.

Invade from the sea. Drop culture defense with ships, damage the units with fighters, and the amphibious penalty is not bad. You can capture and raze, or just kill all but one unit then let them reinforce and repeat. You need to kill enough of the enemy army that your land invasion can survive. Once you do invade by land, take out the rail or have enough units and a medic 3 unit so that you can survive.

 

[shyuhe]

One of the biggest problems you have is enemy railroads. They can bring troops against you from a long distance all in one turn. You need to negate or diminish this advantage. You can use bombers to destroy improvements. Destroy rail (and roads) in a ring 2 squares away from your attack force, and the 2 movement units of the enemy will need a move to enter the pillaged square, then another move to move next to you (even though that square is still railed). Now you get to attack, and the AI has to defend. Advantage you.

Is this new? You didn't use to be able to destroy roads/railroads using airforce.

 

[xanadux]

I may have made a mistake. I thought for sure bombers could destroy improvements. I'll double check.

 

[Gooblah]

Bombers can destroy improvements, even in Vanilla.
This is my strategy for a modern war against a modern AI:
1) Have 10-20 (Stealth) Bombers ready
2) Have a (Jet) Fighter in ever city, set on Intercept mode
3) Have 5 Stacks of 20 Tanks
4) Have Transports filled with Marines, Artillery, and Gunships, guarded by Destroyers, and at least one Carrier Fleet (2 Carriers, 5 Destroyers, 4 Subs forming a "sonar net" around the convoy, and 2 Battleships)
5) Have Flanking I/Sentry I promoted subs form a "sonar net" around your land

Now that the preparations are complete, declare war.
1) Use the bombers in the first turn to destroy supplies of Oil, Aluminum, and Uranium. Use leftover Bombers to attack enemy stacks. Repeat every turn.
2) Send 1 Tank Stack per inland city, hitting the weakest ones first. Send some Artillery for some extra "oomph".
3) Mount Amphibious Assaults (preferably using the Sirian Doctrine), with 2-3 Transports per coastal city
4) Send the Transports back for more units, normally extra Machine Guns. Get these to the captured coasts ASAP, so the Marines, Artillery, and Gunships can spread out to remaining cities. Use the Gunships as extra Bombers.
5) Mop up the remaining defense forces with the Tanks. Send a few more MGs to the inland cities.
6) Capture the capital. Use every unit you got for the battle. It'll be bloody due to the huge amounts of Mech. Infantry and Machine Guns guarding the area.

 

[xanadux]

I was sure bombers (and fighters too) can destroy improvements, and they can, but roads don't count! Sorry about that. If you want to take out the roads, you have to do it with units.

 

[shyuhe]

That's what I thought Nice to know I'm not completely out of it yet. Gunships are the best pillagers but if you're trying to pillage towns all the way down, it takes a very long time so it's better to bomb it down to just a road/railroad before pillaging with a gunship.

 

[Belisar]

I'm in an advanced stage in the game, where all civs have the best military equipment.

Don't wait that long.

 

[HiroHito]

invite them in your territory, entrench, slaughter and then counter attack before they can replace their units.

 

[Antilogic]

Don't wait that long.

Great advice. Unless you like fighting in the Modern Age, the sooner the better for conquests.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

The key I've found is a combination of air power and super defenders from my WP city. It goes like this:

Bomb target city - fighters first if they have air power. Fighters and bombers from at least three of your cities concentrate on one of theirs - they shouldn't have enough air defenses to stop your attack. Results in a city stripped of cultural defense and wounded units in city.

Tanks roll up next to city or attack from sea. First attackers have the CR and collateral promotions. Rest are drill tanks. City falls.

Do not move your tank army into the city. Instead move no more than three of your best possible defenders into the city. Protect your wounded tanks with more defenders if they aren't on a ship.

Marines are great for this as they can get CG promotions and slaughter artillery. Machine guns are good too if used before the enemy has tanks because they are immune to collateral. Mech infantry are always good. CG promotions on the best defender and drill on the others. A mix is also good so you can get some specialist defenders in - eg a drill gunship will be great if enemy armour attacks, otherwise the CG Marine will fight.

I like protective leaders for late game warring - when a CG3Drill2 Marine digs into a city they take a LOT of dislodging.

Typically the AI will now counterattack the city. The three defenders will die, but they will usually kill 10-15 attackers first. The AI will then pile on the defenders into the city - plus leave alot of wounded units that withdrew from the defenders. Your city raiders can then repeat the process and get a very high kill ratio.

Only when the hordes of attackers stop arriving do you actually try and hold the city seriously. And once that happens the war is effectively won.

The key is to fight battles in situations where you win much more often than your opponent:

- When attacking opponents wounded by collateral damage
- When a small number of elite defenders are attacked by a horde of attackers. Note a large number of elite defenders isn't a good idea - the later defenders are often wounded badly by collateral damage and aren't elite any more.

Sometimes you can't attack an enemy city in the first turn - in which case I would either wait for their army to come to me if I thought they outnumbered me, or simply march a huge stack along defensive terrain (forests/hills) and use a GG medic to keep health high enough.

 

[Morgrad]

Huge, massive stacks of diverse troops. Lots of mech infantry, lots of modern armour, lots of gunships, at least one medic III, and a pile of airforce to back it up.

To fight a modern AI, you have to be able to counter massive numbers of any one troop type with your stack, and still have enough left over to counter-attack. One of the things I like to do is declare war, hammer any city within range (that has the AI stacks) with bombers, then let him come to me, wipe out his stacks, then move in while my bombers continue pounding infrastructure.

Of course, the way I *really* like to do it is to bribe a neighbor to attack, or my target to attack a neighbor - wait 3 or 4 turns while they smash stacks against each other, THEN attack.

 

[Civfan333]

Here's what you need to do.

1. Build lots of stealth bombers
2. Build lots of Modern Armor
3. Build lots of Artillery.

Bomb the cities defence's with the artillery. Then air strike so the bombers bomb the units so they're super injured. Invade the city with the Modern Armors.

You probably should use a different strategy if this is for a BTS game since I don't own it.

But it should work in Warlords

 

[Antilogic]

The AI are better at using combined arms, especially the aircraft. The fact is, it comes down to a fight of production--you have to kill him at the rate he kills you or better, and then let attrition take its course. With airlifting, railroads, planes, and fast ships, there are not as many opportunities for taking advantage of an out-of-place AI in the Modern Age as there is in the earlier periods of the game. Therefore, the best strategy is to have a well-mixed force and wear him down.

 

[xanadux]

I really like InvisibleStalker's method. This takes advantage of by far the most powerful promotions, CR and CG. Also the AI tendency to try to recapture a city.

This might be tough if you can't get to the first city quickly though. Having your cultural borders allowing tanks to attack first turn would be a big advantage. It's a foothold situation though ... you need to get a defensible situation for your army, with the primary goal not to take cities, but to kill as many of the AI units as possible. Amphibious assault is great for this. Use the boats to take down defenses, then attack with tanks. The collateral damage does wonders, and the amphibious penalty is not as bad as exposing forces to enemy artillery and tanks. I never tried it this way though ... moving in a handful of CG units. I usually just raze all the coastal cities and sacrifice the unit that captured the city.

 

[InvisibleStalke]

I really like InvisibleStalker's method. This takes advantage of by far the most powerful promotions, CR and CG. Also the AI tendency to try to recapture a city.

This might be tough if you can't get to the first city quickly though. Having your cultural borders allowing tanks to attack first turn would be a big advantage. It's a foothold situation though ... you need to get a defensible situation for your army, with the primary goal not to take cities, but to kill as many of the AI units as possible. Amphibious assault is great for this. Use the boats to take down defenses, then attack with tanks. The collateral damage does wonders, and the amphibious penalty is not as bad as exposing forces to enemy artillery and tanks. I never tried it this way though ... moving in a handful of CG units. I usually just raze all the coastal cities and sacrifice the unit that captured the city.

Most of the time by the time I am in a late game war I am either attacking from an ally or vassal with open borders (and they usually have at least one close opposing city that isn't standing up to their culture too well) or attacking from ships. Usually I would have dealt with opponents on my own continent before a modern war. If I hadn't dealt with opponents on my own continent by then I probably wasn't pursuing a military victory.

Advancing under fire is more of a problem for me in the renaissance age when your fleets aren't so strong and you don't have air cover. But in that case you don't have railroads to worry about and you aren't going to get so many cannons hitting you at once. Big stacks and good terrain defenders are the answer there - a couple of rifles with forest 2 and guerilla 2 promotions really help, as do formation cavalry and rifles - the AI tends to hit you with a lot more cavalry since they move to you more quickly.

Once you get to the modern age I would rarely expose my stack to counter attack - particularly at the beginning - its just too vulnerable if they throw everything they have at you. I prefer to set a battleground of my choosing - either attacking a city I can reach in one turn, by sea, or by waiting until they attack me and killing them in my land where I get the mobility advantage.

 

[Antilogic]

Most of the time by the time I am in a late game war I am either attacking from an ally or vassal with open borders (and they usually have at least one close opposing city that isn't standing up to their culture too well) or attacking from ships. Usually I would have dealt with opponents on my own continent before a modern war. If I hadn't dealt with opponents on my own continent by then I probably wasn't pursuing a military victory.

Advancing under fire is more of a problem for me in the renaissance age when your fleets aren't so strong and you don't have air cover. But in that case you don't have railroads to worry about and you aren't going to get so many cannons hitting you at once. Big stacks and good terrain defenders are the answer there - a couple of rifles with forest 2 and guerilla 2 promotions really help, as do formation cavalry and rifles - the AI tends to hit you with a lot more cavalry since they move to you more quickly.

Once you get to the modern age I would rarely expose my stack to counter attack - particularly at the beginning - its just too vulnerable if they throw everything they have at you. I prefer to set a battleground of my choosing - either attacking a city I can reach in one turn, by sea, or by waiting until they attack me and killing them in my land where I get the mobility advantage.

I find earlier war much easier...I just add a medic to the stack, and while my siege equipment is bombarding city defenses for all of two turns or so, my main army fortifies and heals.

 

[Brownie]

If I have enough time, when seeking to attack an advanced civ on another continent, I try to do something I call rape of belgium. First, I make peace with my vic, as it will take a little time to set up. Then I find the tech weakling on the other continent, making sure he isn't vasselized to anyone on the continent (usually he is in artic cities). I send out a strike force sufficient to take 4-5 cities with access to a civ that adjoins my vic and will sign an open border treaty. I roll him, and use my airports to import hugh quantities of tanks/Modern Tanks and Infantry/Mech infantry (at 4-5 a turn, it does take some time. I sign open border with any AI's between me and my victim, and when I attack, I find an cultural access point that will allow me to capture at least one city on turn one of the war. If you are keeping your vics cities, you can send reinforcements there. You may ultimately not need the other cities, because they tend to be far from the front. If not, you want to hold them for reinforcements. Usually, if I have a modern vic, he has irked the people on his continent as much as me, so dop piles do happen, which are just fun.