Fighting at 2/3 Strength

[BaseballJones]

I was playing a game on a small map and it came down to me and the Russians. They had railroads throughout their civ except for right next to most of thier cities (they had roads there instead) , thus making me fight at 2/3 strength every time I wanted to use marines, artillery, etc. This isn't a bad idea to actually use. Any thoughts?

 

[Sodak]

Nah. Just build a quick fortress next to the city. Fill it with bad guys that turn, attack the next at full strength. The most it should do is slow you down a bit.

 

[allan]

Yep, find some "difficult" terrain square (hills, forests, mountains, etc.) next to a city (there is usually at least one such square), and move a good defense unit in there with an engineer. Build the fortress (take two engineers and it'll be done next turn), and preferably build a road/rail into that square too, then move your attack units in. Hopefully, the AI was attacking your good defense unit while you were building your fortress (and of course, hopefully your defense unit survived), thus reducing the number of units you'll need to kill to take the city.

I do this kind of thing ALL the time....

 

[BaseballJones]

They had Artillery and bombers and my best defensive unit was alpine troops or marines so i could never build a fortress

 

[Duke of Marlbrough]

If you use two engineers on the same square and have both of them building the fortress, it will be done 'instantly'.

What I would have done is use your engineers to build the last square of railroad needed (along with the fortress) and then you wouldn't have to attack at 2/3.

If you didn't have the railroad tech yourself, then you should have used dips to steal it from who ever did have it.

That way you could attack on the same turn and have all your units in a defended stack, so that you should be able to handle the counter-attack fairly well.

 

[allan]

And like I said, try to build that fortress on difficult terrain next to a city (if there is any), like a forest, swamp, jungle, hill, or mountain. Remember, fortresses double defense, and the terrain type can further increase defense. So a vet Alpine would start with 7 defense, which would go to 14 in a fortress, and if that was in a forest it would be 21, on a hill 28, and on a mountain 42! Now against air there is no fortress-doubling (although fortresses still assure only one casualty per attack), but I believe the terrain still modifies. So against air that vet Alpine would have 10 (I think) in a forest, 14 on a hill, and 21 on a mountain. Still not bad!