Attacking with Combined Arms

[Znabel15]

I cant really see why "everybody" is talking about combined arms and how good it is. The reason is that if you attack a city that has different kinds of defenders, you`d be better off attacking it with seige weapons and then using only one kind of unit when mopping it up. Of course your first couple of units will get pretty beat up\killed, but after that, their units will be poorly matched against yours. Otherwise there is a good chance that all your units will be matched up against a superior unit and get beaten. The only reason I bring along different kinds of units is to protect my stack against counterattacks. I dont reccomend that you only build one kind of unit, but that you for example attack one city with only axes and another with only swords. (Example: If you only build horse archers your opponent will churn out lots of spears).
On the other hand, defending with combined arms is all good.

Any thoughts?
Anyone disagree? (Stupid question...of course there are!!)


I play on prince btw.

 

[synthboy]

From my limited experience I'd agree with this and even go so far as to only follow one promotion path as well. It's incredibly annoying to produce an archer-killer, a melee-killer and a mounted-killer only to find that you're not able to use them on their intended target. I seem to remember there being some sort of unit/ability in Civ3 Conquests that allowed you to select which unit you wanted to target in a stack. I think that would be a nice addition, possibly through the promotions route.

Comments?

 

[genjiboy]

As it is now, varying units and their promotions is much more effective for defence than it is for offence.

Being able to choose what units in a stack would have its good points, yet is still problematic. I'd always go straight for the siege units, for example, which are usually weaker than the rest of the stack. Or go for the unit with the Medic promotion. Or the unit weakened by earlier combat. The whole point of stacks, in my opinion, is that the stronger units are there to defend the weaker ones.

 

[cleverhandle]

I think that's mostly accurate. Siege weapons plus city raiders are almost always the best call. But there are occasions where some more subtle opportunities present themselves. One pretty typical one is where you have a couple of horse units that are holding off an attack because of a spear unit lurking under the stack. Sometimes you can play tricks with unit choice or promos to "pick off" that spear and let your horses attack freely. For example, maybe your mace (with an available promo) has 90% odds on a pike, but only 75% odds on a longbow - the longbow will auto-defend. But if you then promote that mace with cover, you may be able to put the odds against the longbow over 90%. Now the pike auto-defends, you kill it, and the horsies gallop in to clean everything out. Not a very common scenario, but worth watching out for.

I dont reccomend that you only build one kind of unit, but that you for example attack one city with only axes and another with only swords.

This part doesn't really make sense to me, though. Usually, you'll want to do any sustained conquest with troops that don't have an immediately available counter - e.g. Axes or Maces. Attacking with different groups of units is not only a waste of hammers, but also wastes XP by spreading them out amongst different units.

(Example: If you only build horse archers your opponent will churn out lots of spears).

Yeah, but that's really just a problem because horse units in Civ4 are a niche unit rather than your main force like in C3C. Better just to pick a unit that isn't so easily countered.

 

[Znabel15]

Yeah, but that's really just a problem because horse units in Civ4 are a niche unit rather than your main force like in C3C. Better just to pick a unit that isn't so easily countered.

Well. It isnt a niche unit if you dont have any metals around.
Then they`ll probably be the mainstay of the army you send out to get access to those metals. But then again you would`nt really have much choice about what units to build in that case. But I see your point.

A good example of what I was trying to explain happened in one of my first games when I only built tanks and bombers. Seeing that tanks was by far the "best" unit available. I was looking forward to steamrolling that nasty Alexander .
A few turns into the war I realized that he had 6+ choppers and the same number fighters and SAM- infantry (+ the regular defenders infantry, artillery and so on.) in most of his cities.
Needless to say, attacking his cities was like running into a brick wall

 

[Wodan]

Combined arms are good on defense, not offense.

(Combined arms are good on offense if you don't have Cats yet. They're also good to optimize your attack even with Cats... there comes a point where you have to decide, "ok, barrage with another cat, which willl probably die, or are they at the point where my knights can reliably win? Oh wait, if I send in some macemen then they'll do better against the pikemen; even if the pikemen are at half strength now, they'll hurt my knights.")

Wodan

 

[Rain]

Seems to me the best option for attack in most scenarios is to have a good core of city raider units that you keep around and up grade and a large stream of disposable seige weapons. Use the siege weapons to bombard and then strike with. Yes they have a high attrition rate but they are cheap to make and a few of them survive even horrendous odds. Then you mop the defenders with your core units. I always carry a mix of units on the attack if i can not from the point of view so much for using combined arms to take a city. But from using combined arms to protect the attackers from counters and counter siege.

 

[majk-iii]

I cant really see why "everybody" is talking about combined arms and how good it is. The reason is that if you attack a city that has different kinds of defenders, you`d be better off attacking it with seige weapons and then using only one kind of unit when mopping it up.

...Well, aren't you then COMBINING seigeweapons with cityraiders? And doing so while on offence?

 

[Znabel15]

...Well, aren't you then COMBINING seigeweapons with cityraiders? And doing so while on offence?

I don`t consider seigeweapons as units.
As far as I`m concerned they are ammunition...
They are the slow moving cruise missiles of CIV4.

 

[Mathemagician13]

Wodan got it right, of course:

Specialization of units is for defense, generalization is best for offense. You want a few specialized units with your stack to defend it in the field, but when you're actually doing the attack, you want most of your units to be as strong as possible against as many units as possible. You still want a few specialized units for those nice cases when you've stripped the defenses down to units of one type, because then you can exploit the enemy's stack's weakness.

 

[bonscott]

Uhhhhh, using combined arms *means* using seige untis, as well as air power if you have it.

Let's take an early game example of attacking a heavily fortified city:
If you have cats you'd obviously bombarb down city defenese to 0.
Then you might suicide a couple.
Then you attack with 2 or 3 Swords with city raider upgrades.
Then follow that up with Axemen or Horse Archers.

Now you could use Axemen with city raider instead, then regular Axes with melee and/or combat upgrades. This in itself is a combined arms in that you have specialists even within a unit class you're taking.

 

[Roland Johansen]

The defender has the advantage that always the best counter unit is used, so defensively combined arms is good. But the attacker also has an advantage. He can choose when to attack and with which units. This not only allows the attacker to use the collateral damage of artillery type units and planes, but it also allows the attacker to choose the order in which he uses certain units.

If the defender has one spearman and lots of archers, then you want to attack with a stack of horse archers. Yes, the first horse archer will lose to the spearman, but the second one will probably win and then the horse archers will only face archers.

The advantage of initiative, the advantage of being the attacker and choosing to attack or not, choosing the units which you are going to use for the combat is the largest advantage you can get (in my oponion).

 

[vlar]

As stated earlier, sacking cities is easy when combining seigeweapons and city raders, but you have to clear the field with other troops before you get to a city . In short, you need to maintain seperate forces, i.e. one army for open combat and one for sacking cities. Unit promotions should be chosen according to the army they're assigned to.

 

[ZippyRiver]

"ok, barrage with another cat, which willl probably die, or are they at the point where my knights can reliably win?

and

Yes, the first horse archer will lose to the spearman, but the second one will probably win and

Except now, damaged units can hit back with full strength. So if that spearman defeated the first horse, it stands a good chance of defeating the second too..... and the 3rd, ect...

 

[Beleg Strongbow]

Picking which unit to attack wouldn't be a bad promotion actually. It might need to come towards the middle or end of the upgrade lines to keep it balanced, but it would be a good solution which would allow for combined arms on both ends.

 

[punchandpie]

As a side note to this thread, is the medical promo worth it? I am not quite sure how this promo works, any thoughts would be great.

 

[HitAnyKey]

It's always a good idea to have at least one unit with the Medical promos in your stack. And have that unit travel with the attacking force, but never attacking itself. This way your forces that were weakened can heal faster when waiting to be able to attack a city again.

 

[jhas015]

I just finished a price/standard/conts. as Cat getting a Domination victory (just can't bring myself to raze those valuable towns). Finished sometime around 1990-2000. Other nations were; Romans, English, Japan & Germans. At the end of the game Caesar & Tojo were left.

Having no iron until i took out my nearest enemy i was forced to use Horse archers/catapults as my main offence until i got to gun powder.

The real fun started once i had cossacks though.

I'd move a stack of cannons in and a unit to defend them. Hang the cossacks back from the city. Suicide the cannons and them mop up with the cossacks. These were all give first strike promos to minimise damage.

I used this again later once i got tanks too but used a combo of collateral tanks and first strike ones. Once i had a decent number of bombers then i phased out the collateral tanks in favour of first strike. The only other land units that i had were gunships and a few explores with medic. Also at this point most of vicky's cities were on the coast. Battleships made short work of her defences. Captured cities where given initial defence by an air dropped infantry.

I found that combined arms worked best in the early to mid sages of the game. Once you get air superiority and a decent armour backbone the enemy is toast. Didn't focus on wonders at all until late game where i made sure i got the pentagon, Kremlin and gorges dam. had crap production towns(but one with west point) so all were purchased after 1-2 turns building.

 

[ZippyRiver]

As a side note to this thread, is the medical promo worth it? I am not quite sure how this promo works, any thoughts would be great.

I try to do my military build-up in batches to take advantage of civic choices (producing 8 exp usually). Of course the big producers are making the best troop choice. I like to use one of the smaller producers. Like one with 20 HPT. Not good for producing 140 hammer infantry for sure. I will put that city of "medic duty". I use the explorer. It is not a unit likely to get involved in battle, but I don't want my medic fighting anyway. It starts out with two terrain bonuses, just in case. And the two promotions are combat one and medic. This eliminates the need to waste a promo on a strong unit for medic, making them even stronger.

At first I didn't want to make too many of them, but wanted one in each city, at least in the core cities. I have yet to obtain that goal. I find them quite usefull scouts for enemy positions (and their cheap). And in a large war, having one in each captured front city is nice. Along with the one you have for each stack. (try for medic two on those)

If the medic get killed, so what, their cheap. But if you lose your medic you probably have sustained more dire losses that require immediate attention. (unless it was scouting)

 

[Roland Johansen]

Except now, damaged units can hit back with full strength. So if that spearman defeated the first horse, it stands a good chance of defeating the second too..... and the 3rd, ect...

After fighting and probably defeating the first horse archer, the spearman is at half its hitpoints (expected to be at 54 out of 100 hitpoints). The spearman will have half the normal chance to hit in the next battle and will only have half its normal hitpoints. It will do the same damage as a full hitpoint spearman, but with the reduced chance to score a hit and the reduced hitpoints it will probably lose the next battle.

This doesn't mean that it will never win two consecutive battles. And when the spearman has a number of defensive bonusses the picture will also be different. But in the general case that I stated, my observations describe the expected result.