Civilization 4: Modern Warfare

[Gooblah]

Couldn't resist the CoD reference, sorry. I guess instead of CoDMW it would be C4MW or even C4BTSMW, but all three are lame, so let's just stick with Modern Warfare. I was tempted to add a "2" at the end since BTS changed a lot of strategies, but whatever.

Ahem.

So, modern warfare. Let's define it, for the purposes of this discussion, as:

Any warfare in unmodded Civilization 4: Beyond the Sword wherein the majority of units composing the attack force can only be built in the Industrial Era or beyond, and the opponent is at relative technological parity.

Let's not argue semantics here, please. Yes, this is "modern warfare" but we're including "industrial" units yadda yadda yadda...gimme a break, it works.

So, we're looking at scenarios when, for whatever reason, on any difficulty, both you and the AI are fielding any units more advanced than Musketmen (Grenadiers/Rifles/Cavalry/Cannons all the way up to Mech. Infantry/Stealth Bombers/Mobile Artillery/ICBMS), at roughly the same time.

The reason I'm starting this thread is because I, personally, have trouble managing the actual strategies and tactics in this era, and I feel a lot of good advice is out there and should be collected.

As a bit of a disclaimer, if any potential advice is "just wrap up your wars in the Renaissance" or "you should always have the tech advantage, otherwise you're doing it wrong" - that's not the point of the thread, although that advice is (probably) readily applicable in the myriad other threads in this forum. Industrial/modern wars at tech parity are (IMO) a lot of fun, and I will sometimes put off a potential conflict just to experience the whole grand battle flavour that I feel this era really brings out. This thread is for just hints, tips, strategies, and maybe a small anecdote or two with useful applications about modern warfare.

So, there's several components to modern warfare:

1) Production. How best do you set up your empire to handle the large hammer costs of just one of these units, let alone the dozens you'll need to effectively wage war? What Civics should you use? What improvements are best in which situations? How do you effectively balance commerce and production?

2) Unit choice. Which units do you build? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of each?

3) Naval warfare. Are there specific strategies to keep in mind? How do you keep on the lookout for an amphibious invasion of your core empire? How do you optimize ferrying around your troops or picking points to deploy them?

4) Tactics. How do you effectively utilize the strengths of Air and Siege Units? When should you Bombard with ships, siege, or bombers?

5) Conquest. So your troops are on the ground and taking cities. Now what? How do you group units together to quickly take city after city?

Note that these are five broad categories, and these questions barely scratch the surface of what's out there, so please ask and answer more. Saves and screenshots are always welcome, and hopefully this becomes a nice thread for this sort of information.

So...thoughts?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1) Production. How best do you set up your empire to handle the large hammer costs of just one of these units, let alone the dozens you'll need to effectively wage war? What Civics should you use? What improvements are best in which situations? How do you effectively balance commerce and production?

Every civic combo has potential. Most common are SP workshops, US kremlin rush buy (or kremlin whips), and simple farms/mines. Any of those 3 can work, and obviously HE and IW help. The big tech for industrial is assembly line, which with coal allows you to boost cities to 100% production; more than the cost increase from previous eras.

2) Unit choice. Which units do you build? What are the relative strengths and weaknesses of each?

1. Infantry/Arty ----> CR II arty will trounce almost anything in a city if you have good #'s (machine guns are poor direct defenders). Infantry can clean anything up and defend well in the field. If you need to beat tanks, sprinkle a few anti-tank. If you need to beat air/gunships, sprinkle SAM. This is slow but can get good kills:deaths and once you cut their SoD you can stack split to speed things up.

2. Tanks/Bomber ----> Very standard and powerful. Usage shouldn't be rocket science; bombers strip d and inflict collateral, then tanks own everything.

3. Marines/Fighter ----> On water or coast heavy maps, marines + massed fighters in carriers can strip everything defending most cities to 50% health and hit the next one rapidly. Marines with pinch will easily beat even mechinfantry this way, and they make competent defenders with CG.

4. Nukes/Paras ----> Once again, not a hard concept. You nuke everything out of the city, paradrop and take it. This is the most powerful combo in the game, and enough tactical nuke + para in transport can take out an AI in a single turn (or more commonly, 2-3 since nukes don't kill missionaries/executives/workers in practice and those block you from taking the city after a paradrop).

5. After you kill their stack, just stack split as you feel comfortable to take cities faster.

More modern stuff is same as above except replace the updated version. For naval, bring a battleship + destro combo (destro for subs/some AA) and some subs of your own for tac nukes.

 

[s.bernbaum]

3. Naval: I agree with TMIT about marines and fighters. Include enough destroyers/battle ships/cruisers in the the fleet to defend it and to destroy the defenses of the coastal city in one turn, before sending in the fighters. After taking the first coastal city, rebase bombers there to help on the next one.

4. Tanks/Armor: excellent but I also include some gunships in tank stacks to defend against enemy anti-tank units, enemy gunships, and enemy tanks/armor.

I actually prefer the modern era for warfare. If I decide to go for a domination victory, I mostly wait until then, unless someone attacks me first, but I like long games.

 

[Dirk1302]

I'm talking about really tough wars, not a way to finish wimpy Ais as quickly as possible
1.
Build factories and plants. Rush buy with the Kremlin is very powerful. Just building with many workshops/watermills is ok too.

As for civics,
Column1: Probably HR or US when rushbuying, police state is a good possibility later on as well
Column2: Depends, vassalage is often a good one for pure war, Nationhood/espionage too
Column3: Slavery or Caste with workshops
Column4: Mostly SP
Column5: Theo

2.
Tanks/bombers is a standard combo. However air combat can be tedious as you need many fighters too neutralize enemy fighters. Mobile artillery is the real killer and Laser a key tech. Mobile sams are great too as we can defend captures cities with them.is Gunships are great as well as you can pillage roads around your captured cities and return safely same move. Ais can't reach you in 1 turn with 1 move units this way and it sucks with it's 2 move units.

3.
Tanks>>Marines. Higher base,CR promotions and no -25% against infantry make them better than marines even in naval warfare. Marines are pretty useless.

4.
1 move units don't cut it in modern warfare so pre mobile artillery bombard with bombers (after killing enemy fighters with you own fighters!). Coastal cities can be bombarded with destroyers/battleships. Fighters and bombers weaken defenders in cities and tanks finish off.

I have never used nukes, obviously these are effective as well.

5.
If you're taking city after city you're winning, anything goes.

 

[GGracchus]

Have you looked through the war academy here? There are some good reads on modern warfare.

For naval strategy, a naval defensive grid could be set up with a couple of lines of SD's/destroyers to cover all ocean squares(flanking+sentry) in a straight line to detect enemy ships, and offensive units to kill them.

 

[Dirk1302]

You can also scout the waters with bombers.

 

[GGracchus]

You can also scout the waters with bombers.

Or carrier-based fighters, possibly more effective on water-heavy maps

 

[Gooblah]

Have you looked through the war academy here? There are some good reads on modern warfare.

For naval strategy, a naval defensive grid could be set up with a couple of lines of SD's/destroyers to cover all ocean squares(flanking+sentry) in a straight line to detect enemy ships, and offensive units to kill them.

That's a pretty high cost, though, right? Flanking + Sentry + Optics gives ships a 3x3 radius they can look into, but even so, you'd need something like a dozen on a Standard map, even more on larger ones. And those are hammers which you're not putting towards the war effort (i.e not directly taking on the enemy).

You can also scout the waters with bombers.

This would be less costly, but at the same time has the drawbacks of the opportunity cost (Bombers Reconing are less Bombers...bombing), and (IMO) the annoyance factor of setting them to recon every turn XD

 

[GGracchus]

That's a pretty high cost, though, right? Flanking + Sentry + Optics gives ships a 3x3 radius they can look into, but even so, you'd need something like a dozen on a Standard map, even more on larger ones. And those are hammers which you're not putting towards the war effort (i.e not directly taking on the enemy).

It's a theory, I haven't actually used it before. I usually play standard pangaea, so the water is less important to me. I was simply throwing it out there.

 

[m00n]

moved

 

[CHEESE!]

I think you're in the wrong thread, m00n.

 

[m00n]

Very much so. Sorry.

 

[nfw]

Airships are better for pure scouting purposes, they can spot subs.

 

[Arond]

One tactic that I use whenever possible in modern warfare is to try and destroy the AI's aircraft while they are on the ground. Frequently they will cluster their fighters & bombers in a single city and if you can take it (amphib assult?) in a turn it will wipe out their air force and leave you with control of the skies. Once you have air superiority, modern warfare is much easier.

Also, keep an eye on when the AI rebases their fighters and bombers. You might be able to get a turn when none are on intercept missions and plan your attack then so that your bombers can bound their city defenders.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Tanks>>Marines. Higher base,CR promotions and no -25% against infantry make them better than marines even in naval warfare. Marines are pretty useless.

CR doesn't beat the amphibious tag until 10 xp (even worse if comparing tanks to aggressive or protective marines). If you're planning on continuing a campaign inward, consider tanks, but tanks are objectively inferior in strict naval raids. Basically, when you're not pushing inland, tanks < marines.

Remember, tanks get no defensive bonuses and as a result are quickly overmatched by marines as defenders, ironically even against infantry in some situations but hands down vs anything else (mounted, other tanks, siege, etc). Marines also cost less.

I have never used nukes, obviously these are effective as well.

Nukes are ridiculous. If you catch an AI before it gets SDI, you instantly eliminate its stack and its ability to ever reproduce one and you can do this in a single turn. Nothing in civ IV is comparable to the speed and amount of devastation possible with nukes. Of course, you better hit hard, lest they retaliate...unless they don't have them . Nuking uranium is a good idea in these wars, unless you're going for the great 1 turn KO.

 

[MarigoldRan]

Depending on the size of the map, mining corp for production.

 

[nfw]

One tactic that I use whenever possible in modern warfare is to try and destroy the AI's aircraft while they are on the ground. Frequently they will cluster their fighters & bombers in a single city and if you can take it (amphib assult?) in a turn it will wipe out their air force and leave you with control of the skies. Once you have air superiority, modern warfare is much easier.

Also, keep an eye on when the AI rebases their fighters and bombers. You might be able to get a turn when none are on intercept missions and plan your attack then so that your bombers can bound their city defenders.

You can do the same against naval or even land SODs sometimes. If you see a port city with a bunch of destroyers and transports, and he's planning for war, chances are his SOD is loaded on those transports, take out that city with an amphibious and you can walk all over him.

 

[coanda]

You can do the same against naval or even land SODs sometimes. If you see a port city with a bunch of destroyers and transports, and he's planning for war, chances are his SOD is loaded on those transports, take out that city with an amphibious and you can walk all over him.

Wait what?! The AI just leaves ships fully loaded sitting at the docks?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

Wait what?! The AI just leaves ships fully loaded sitting at the docks?

Seems so. When I was still a relative rookie I used to wonder what happened to the AI stack after I sunk its entire navy in port...staying in the beachhead city with defensive troops for several turns against an AI with rails and seeing nothing attack me .

I'm not sure why it does this, either; it's not like it provides a material advantage in the vast majority of cases (usually the shipping requires more than a single turn of naval movement)...seems leaving them unloaded should be the default behavior, but what do I know...

 

[vranasm]

Wait what?! The AI just leaves ships fully loaded sitting at the docks?

happened to me once too... I guess the AI is not the only one who is dumb as hell ;-).

but yeah..it's pretty bad design. When in port the units shouldn't be on ships ... ever. I did it just due to more micro (but pressing 1-2 more times the button isn't exactly big micro)...

what is a bit annoying is loading units into transports. If you do it in port you have to choose the ship everytime you press the load button, the obvious workaround moving ships and loading on water, but that costs you all move points, so it isn't best if you can make sneak attack from port.