Beachhead

[ChicagoCubs]

I'll agree with others in the time is of the essence. Your limiting factor in the war is how quickly you can get troops to the other continent. You can either wait to have enough ships to tranport your entire army at once, or you have to weigh the time to ferry the units. Here are some options...

1. If there is still land available on the other continent (not likely by the time you can cross oceans), you can always build a city as a beachhead and ferry troops there during peacetime. This city's prodcution doesn't really matter. It is purely somewhere to let you stockpile troops.

2. You can always befriend someone on the other continent and get an open border agreement. Try to find someone that is not annoyed with you, but annoyed with your potential target. Usually, the smallest guy on the other continent is the best. Then your first target should be a coastal city or a city near the coast that will have cultural borders to the coast just in case you lose the open borders agreement.

 

[eric_]

Some things not mentioned:

1) See if you can get the two civs on the continent to war with one another. Ideally they'll be a few turns into the war by the time you get to your target's cultural borders and declare

2) Don't forget to leave your coastal cities on your main continent WELL DEFENDED!

 

[Quagga]

You can either wait to have enough ships to tranport your entire army at once, or you have to weigh the time to ferry the units.

My thinking is that you don't want to send everybody in the first wave. In the first wave, you want to send those units that are going to stand up to the battering they're going to get from the indigenous forces. These would be units like infantry that can get terrain bonuses. If the AI has airpower, it's going to include SAM infantry. If playing Warlords, then drill promotions help avoid some collateral damage. Bring artillery with barrage promotions and use them on your turn to weaken large stacks. Machine guns can be good in this role.

After you've stood up to the initial onslaught, bring your city raiders over in the second wave.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

My thinking is that you don't want to send everybody in the first wave. In the first wave, you want to send those units that are going to stand up to the battering they're going to get from the indigenous forces. These would be units like infantry that can get terrain bonuses. If the AI has airpower, it's going to include SAM infantry. If playing Warlords, then drill promotions help avoid some collateral damage. Bring artillery with barrage promotions and use them on your turn to weaken large stacks. Machine guns can be good in this role.

After you've stood up to the initial onslaught, bring your city raiders over in the second wave.

I agree with your concept, but it is still a function of time and what troop ships you have available.

If the beachhead is five turns from your land and you only have a couple troop ships, then that is ten turns until reinforcements can arrive, and ten turns of war weariness that you have to deal with while just "defending" the beachhead.

If you drop everyone at first from your large navy, you could have defended the counter-attack, captured a city, declared peace, and started bringing in reinforcements in those same ten turns.

On the other hand, if the enemy's territory is fairly close to yours, then I would forgo the large navy and just ferry units across.

 

[Winston Hughes]

One advantage of quickly taking a city on your opponent's continent is that you're able to upgrade your units there. This means you can start shipping units across the ocean before you get a new tech.

As long as you can find a weakly defended city to attack (and provided you've got enough cash for the upgrade - tech/map sales to other civs and great merchant trade missions are two ways to raise the cash without cutting your tech rate) you can take it just as you're about to get the new tech, move your troops in, and then on the next turn you can upgrade your army in readiness for the counterattack.

I recently used this tactic to devasting effect playing as England. I picked up Rifling the turn after taking a musket/longbow-defended city with catapults and maces, and then upgraded my various obselete units (including lowly archers) to redcoats. The Spainsh counterattack was easily repulsed by my newly upgraded troops, and soon the enemy cities were being hoovered up at a frightening rate.

One other thing. When choosing a target city for your initial attack, pay attention to the cultural power of surrounding cities. If you can take a city that won't have your opponent's borders pushed right up against it, you may find it easier to defend against counterattacks as this negates the enemy's road/rail advantage, allowing you to use the neutral roads/rails to launch defensive attacks against incoming enemy units. Using collateral damage units to attack enemy stacks, and then sending in your regular troops to destroy the weakened units, you can often neutralise the counterattacking forces before they get within 2 tiles of your new city.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

One other thing. When choosing a target city for your initial attack, pay attention to the cultural power of surrounding cities. If you can take a city that won't have your opponent's borders pushed right up against it, you may find it easier to defend against counterattacks as this negates the enemy's road/rail advantage, allowing you to use the neutral roads/rails to launch defensive attacks against incoming enemy units. Using collateral damage units to attack enemy stacks, and then sending in your regular troops to destroy the weakened units, you can often neutralise the counterattacking forces before they get within 2 tiles of your new city.

Amen to that. I refer to it as breathing room. If my goal is just to take a coastal city as a future launching pad, then it is time to raze a few other cities just to whack the culture down some.

 

[Gwil]

Make sure you keep a good 3+ ships close to your own coast to repel any potential landings - boath coasts!

Nothing worse than landing a large scale invasion force at the expense of your own defence, and noticing 2 or 3 enemy transports land on your now thinly protected island.

 

[Crighton]

if possible go with the blunt force method: OVERWHELMING force, both quality and quantity then just steamroll the guy.

 

[Winston Hughes]

If my goal is just to take a coastal city as a future launching pad, then it is time to raze a few other cities just to whack the culture down some.

I've taken to turning on the 'No City Razing' option to stop me using the 'genocide for cultural reasons' approach. I have the deaths of millions upon millions of civpeople on my conscience, and can no longer trust myself not to come over all "Burn them. Burn them all!!" every time I have an AI border come up against mine.

 

[Welnic]

I've taken to turning on the 'No City Razing' option to stop me using the 'genocide for cultural reasons' approach. I have the deaths of millions upon millions of civpeople on my conscience, and can no longer trust myself not to come over all "Burn them. Burn them all!!" every time I have an AI border come up against mine.

If you really wanted to give your conscience a workout you could leave that option turned off and still not raze the cities.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

If I'm still literate, and IIRC, the original question was something on the order of "How do I do D-Day with caravels and Galleys?"

We digressed into later age invasions and strats.

A save would be helpful if you want specific commentary.

There's some famous quote about war being the business end of economics. I'm too lazy to actually find that quote.

For those of you not familiar with me, I'm genuinely psychotic; I add that prelude for what follows (this is know as foreshadowing in the literary world) just to warn everyone.

When invading another continent, the object is not to establish a beach head in the weakest city; the objective is to kick the AI in the nuts where it hurts.

there's been lot's of discussion about overwhelming force. I agree to an extent. Yes, take a city, but technology compensates for size (hi whomp, tell holly). If you've got rifles, those horses ain't doin' a thing. If you've got grenadiers, them rifles gits attacked before they attack you. and mg's or inf vs. other less advanced stuff? fogetta about it.

before i ramble on too much, here's the plan. develop your combined arms force (a varied mix of units to counter whatever the AI counters with). Pick the city that will be most hurtful to the AI; one strat I luv if the entire continent is a religious monopoly it to take the shrine. the next most favored is to take the city with the best resources. next is a good wonder city.

taking the shrine deprives the invaded civ of money. taking the resources helps your happiness, health, etc. taking wonders is self explanatory.

resist the temptation to attack without enough force, bring on the reinforcements first. In the modern era, think airports. Just take that one great city, fortify and let the dumbass AI send in waves of sacrificial lambs.

so take one good city, dig in, reinforce and enjoy.

to paraphrase, "No bastard ever won a war dying for his leader. Kill them all and let rik sort it out"

sorry for the spam.

 

[Old School]

hi all

interesting subject
most people are giving advice on a modern invaision when puglover had only reached optics
my advice would be to wait
build your continent, industry, and reseach
wait for the ais on the other continent to go to war

now my problem

i lost every thing attacking after the ai had completed a railroad network
enabling him to throw everything at me on initial landing
not giving any week places
attacking on two fronts did not help
he had even greater advantage of being able to move his units were needed
while my forces were split

i had more cities and production but was behind in reseach and was attacking trying to prevent the ai from launching the ship
lost this one

please give advice or sympathy

 

[Winston Hughes]

If you really wanted to give your conscience a workout you could leave that option turned off and still not raze the cities.

Without preset rules my inner megalomaniac takes charge, leaving my ethically-inclined self to shout meaningless slogans from the touchline while my strategically-minded self pretends to be Gandhi's friend and then murders half his people just to claim a rice paddy and a couple of gold mines.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

Without preset rules my inner megalomaniac takes charge, leaving my ethically-inclined self to shout meaningless slogans from the touchline while my strategically-minded self pretends to be Gandhi's friend and then murders half his people just to claim a rice paddy and a couple of gold mines.

can I use this in my sig?

@old school, all I was trying to say was dump a stack of doom and let them impale themselves. hope that made sense.

 

[cabert]

the good time for invasion is when you can afford to send enough ships with enough troops.

Against an "island" where there is room for foot troops, you just need 2 galleys. Fill'em up, deliver 4 troops, move them to defensive terrain while getting reinforcements.

Against a "continent", you have no other choice than waiting for astronomy, since you simply cannot cross oceans with galleys and cannot load troops in galleys. Since you need a "late" tech, it's usually better to wait for chemistry too : frigates protect your galleons and bombard the city.
With 3/4 galleons full of grenadiers and catapults (cannons are better of course), and 8 frigates, you can start conquering the other continents.
Don't unload your troops.
If you fight "inferior" troops, the grenadiers can swallow the 50% penalty, and it's much faster this way.
If you fight "superior" troops, you don't want to face a preemptive attack using colateral damaging troops.
So you just don't unload the troops.

Turn 1 :
you move your entire stack next to a coastal city.
You bomb the cultural defense with the frigates,
you send
- colateral damagers if needed
- assault troops
You capture the city.
You move in the galleons, click on unload, and fortify everything you can.
If you have some CG 2 or 3 grenadiers, they should give you breathing time.
You heal in the city while counterattacking troops come your way, and send a few (all if the medic isn't one of those) galleons home for reinforcements, while the frigates bomb away cultural defences all around.

Waiting for late game units is a losing move :
- WW climbs higher in the late game
- units cost more
- opponents have more time to prepare

 

[Welnic]

An invasion is a great time to use a Great Artist to put some of your own civ around the city that the enemy forces now have to slog through. If you have it on a transport that you move into the city you can do that on the same turn that you capture it.

 

[Quagga]

An invasion is a great time to use a Great Artist to put some of your own civ around the city that the enemy forces now have to slog through.

I did this in a recent game, but it didn't have the effect I had hoped. After the GA culture bomb, I still was surrounded by enemy tiles. I did get some tiles of my own, but they were not adjacent to the captured city. I had to capture some nearby cities to fix the problem.

 

[ChicagoCubs]

I found that it is best to let the city's revolt end before dropping the culture bomb. Granted if you are late in the game where the other city's built up some culture, then you will have a hard time beating back the borders without some selective razing.

 

[thefais]

The best way I find in the early sailing ages is to get galleys taking the quickest route to the enemy continent (of the civ you want to attack) and going from there. Preferably closer to your start, so the units you create as reinforcements will be closer to your uploading point. Then use Frigates to patrol your waters, keeping an eye on everywhere (or patrol their coast, offense>defense).

In the industrial/modern age, flight helps a huge deal. Take one city, buy/whip an airport, and airlift. Then you have a great staging ground for your army.

 

[Admiral Kutzov]

not disagreing with anyone, but airports make up for lots of deficiences in the late game.

granted, I'm an idiot, but I rarely build more than 6 troop transports.