Early Industrial Railroad Intrusion

[privatehudson]

Using Steph's mod (PTW version) I did something similar in style to this Playing as the English I managed to take out the russian civilisation of 24 cities in two turns. They were on the same continent as me and had yet to develop railroads, their best defensive unit being a rifleman. I had aquired Churchill tanks and with their 3 movement and 100+ workers it was relatively easy.

It probably would have taken 1 turn but for the fact that there was a big desert on the border of our nations that slowed down my advance in turn 1 to taking just 2 cities. The tanks couldn't cross it AND make an attack to capture the city beyond. Turn two though saw me take all the rest

Good thing about it was also that the Russians sent most of their offensive millitary (cossacks mainly IIRC) bunched up and tried to counter-attack into my land, so all I did was bypass them and take out the cities, upon which the 40 odd units he'd sent dissapeared when the civilisation crumbled.

It wasn't industrial era I grant you, but it was sure fun I'll be trying it again sometime soon with earlier units as you suggest

 

[fret]

Glad you like it privatehudson!

For your next attempt, you might want to try the Ottomans, unquestionably the best civ to do this with. The Industrial/Sipahi combo is a marraige made in heaven for this

 

[privatehudson]

One thing I meant to mention was when I tried it later in the game against the Spanish. When I came to do this I had Modern Armour units (in Steph's mod they look like M60's), the spanish had WWI infantry and Geurilla troops. When I attacked the spanish disaster struck when I hit the first and only accesible city as he'd thrown something like 50 odd geurilla units into it!

Which gets me thinking... would that be likely to occur with a Civ's other offensive formations, ie would they be likely to be stacked in one or two cities ready to attack the enemy en masse? If so these cities, if you're unlucky could stop the strategy in it's tracks. Though the Geurilla's were no match for my tanks, it took me the best part of 40 modern armour units to chew through just those! Considering I began that war in the area with barely 50, plus additional units it kind of stopped the invasion dead.

Not sure how that would work, the spanish by then did after all have an extensive railroad system, so a lack of that may affect their placement of offensive formations. The other unfortunate thing is that Geurilla's are invisible and me being dumb forgot to bring some handy commando units to spot them. Therefore I merily battered away at inivisible units wondering just how many he could have there!

 

[fret]

What level was the Spanish game? I presume it must have been Emp at least for the AI to stack so many units....or, because it was late in the game and they had rail infrastructure in place.

Thats probably the biggest restriction with this, its more or less Monarch and easier levels only.... unless, you have tech parity and strike with it as soon as (ie that turn) you get steam power. Ive tried it on Emp doing this and its doable - you just need more cav's to take out the riflemen, but its a lot more work and stress which I find detracts from the fun aspects of it.

 

[privatehudson]

Well being the same game as the Russian one, and neither empire being that much bigger than the other, I would venture to suggest that it would relate more to railroad and the modern era. That may well suggest that the strategy has some limits, ie either before the enemy gets railroad as you suggest, or only on an enemy whom you vastly outnumber enough to chew through the heavy defenses.

Also IIRC (the game was played nearly a year ago now...) the Russians and Americans had just been in a long protracted war, towards the end of which I smashed the Americans into the middle of next week and opened the way towards the Russians figuring that taking them out would be easy. I guess they were probably already weakened by the US war when I hit them. Spain on the other hand had not been.