defending artillery rush

[revelation216]

How do you do it in MP games?

Seems like melee units get chewed up a lot so can't effectively block paths into my cities from cav.

 

[consentient]

I have very little experience for MP but surely the best way to defend against this strategy is to out-tech and out-conquer the Artillery player and build Arty of your own?

 

[revelation216]

I have very little experience for MP but surely the best way to defend against this strategy is to out-tech and out-conquer the Artillery player and build Arty of your own?

One would think.

However since I had artillery first it seemed this wasn't completely true.

I placed my artillery with one in the city (mountain, hill, lots of rough terrain ahead the enemy occupied) and three behind it, and somehow the player managed to force my units back by bombarding them and bombard my city and move to take it with cavalry. He also managed to put a citadel down to starve my city and remove my friendly lands bonuses.

I think it had something to do with conceding the space ahead of my city. But if i put any units inside that area, he would focus fire on them and kill them. I couldn't move a lot of units inside that area to overcome this because of the rough terrain.

How comes you don't play MP? It's a whole different ball game.

 

[consentient]

Are you telling me that you had 4 units to defend a main assault with?

I don't play MP for a host of reasons, the chief one being that the coding for the MP 'part of the game' doesn't actually work.

 

[revelation216]

Are you telling me that you had 4 units to defend a main assault with?

I don't play MP for a host of reasons, the chief one being that the coding for the MP 'part of the game' doesn't actually work.

Yeah I had 4 units there and some other units elsewhere. I was using my experience of rough terrain being horrible to attack into as a good reason for that, but apparently it wasn't enough. Combat seems to change when artillery come into play.

 

[vanatteveldt]

... rough terrain... Combat seems to change when artillery come into play.

That's a bit of an understatement . Because arty have indirect fire and range 3, they can just clear a path in front of them and advance 1 row whenever it is clear(ed). Especially on rough terrain it is difficult to flank them, and their disability to move+shoot is shared by normal units. A cavalry needing to cross 3 hills before attacking an artillery will feel like a GWI with Haig breathing down his neck. This is of course compounded if the attack is from (citadel-captured) friendly territory.

If you have equal firepower and no airpower is in play, you will probably get a proper WWI style standstill at distance 4, and whoever moves first is blasted to pieces, but I've not actually seen that happen.

 

[consentient]

In real life, militaries use The Rule of Three to determine how many troops they need to defend with. So if they expect an attack from 1500 men, with their entrenched position and adequate arcs of fire, they usually feel that 500 men is enough to repel the attack.

In Civ 5, I think if you're thinking about sitting in your cities and defending, you're making a mistake. You need to have units at and beyond the edge of your borders to kill anything that comes near. A great example of defence is Acken repelling Monty in his LP of DCL 12, The Maya


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[revelation216]

I got the impression that defenders get the advantage because getting them into the city's range helps out a lot especially because you can sit a unit inside the city which is invulnerable to damage. I think what he ended up doing was, recognising that, declaring war and sitting on my border with crossbows (like 10+) til artillery. I couldn't get into that position because they would kill anything that came into that area.

Difficult to describe what happened exactly without a screenshot. I can say that my city was located like coast, city state, mountain, city, two tiles, mountain, 1 tile, coast, so my city was the only way through without a naval embarkation.

I get what you were saying though, take the fight to them, don't play defensive.

 

[revelation216]

That's a bit of an understatement . Because arty have indirect fire and range 3, they can just clear a path in front of them and advance 1 row whenever it is clear(ed). Especially on rough terrain it is difficult to flank them, and their disability to move+shoot is shared by normal units. A cavalry needing to cross 3 hills before attacking an artillery will feel like a GWI with Haig breathing down his neck. This is of course compounded if the attack is from (citadel-captured) friendly territory.

If you have equal firepower and no airpower is in play, you will probably get a proper WWI style standstill at distance 4, and whoever moves first is blasted to pieces, but I've not actually seen that happen.

That is essentially what happened and I underestimated how much units I would need to defend because I overestimated the strength of the city attack and garrison.

 

[revelation216]

Here, I made something in paint to give a pretty good idea.

But I also want to know how to change my approach to wars when artillery comes in.

Stars = unit
Triangle = mountain
Circle = city
Green hex = jungle/foresty terrain
Oval=Grass hill
Squiggly line = road
Red line = my border

 

[consentient]

Far too few units. End of. Try double that number next time and see how much easier it will be