Five Pillars For Success

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by Mapache
Catapults/Cannons are useful for people who enjoy the precision of using 10 units to kill one single opponent unit without accepting any degree of damage.

"Precision" can be very important in a tough combat. Remember, not everyone is in a winning position every time. I once had to take a city, fortified with infantry, but only had riflemen. Cannon made the operation successful. No number of riflemen could have taken that position. As it was, my men suffered great losses.

The "killer phalanx" does not exist for those with bombard capability.

 

[perryrutherford]

re: Mapache

Catapults in my game get used if I am being attacked at higher levels: if I capture a town in a strategic position as a despotism I whip out 1. barracks, 2. spearmen, 3. spearmen, 4. walls, 5. catapults. They play an important role if you want to stop your idiot neighbor until military tradition. They tend to throw a lot of production at thinking they can capture the city with numbers of troops, if you have like 3 forts like this they get stagnated and you will be able to take them out getting advanced well before them. This works great if you change to repuplic b/c the city above costs a lot less to maintain than the armies that would be need to take it, and if they do take it, it will be so costly they will likely offer a truce after taking it. If they do take it you aren't loosing too much, after all.

The time I use archers is to start a war with one of the warlike civs right off if they're on my continents and they're starting positions are weak. Better I conquor them than gaijin pouring over off triremes.

Generally an intact enemy is better than an eliminated one, while you're developing it's well worth it to trade for luxouries than do the work to take them by force. You can do that latter if you want, but other wise the dip you take in a medeival war is too much of a risk of invasion by gaijin.

 

[kcheung]

Yes, the AI cheats -- badly when you are on higher difficulty level. I urged everyone of you to try out the "multi.sav" cheat. Not for cheating, but to see how the AI works. I forgot which level (probably after Prince), the AI doesn't start with 1 work and 1 settler but a dozen of workers and warriors. Basically, by the time you have one warriors, the AI will already build 4 or 5 cities. That's why peaceful victory like diplomatic or cultural victory is more difficult in higher difficulty level.

Personally, I hate that. I don't like to be a warmonger and I was very happy when I learned that Civ3 has so many peaceful victory options but I am very disappointed when I found that peaceful victory is more difficult to achieve than conquest victory in higher difficulty levels.

A side note: I suspect that the chances your unit win in a battle has to do with your "power" -- your army's size as well as your technical knowledge. I notice that when I attack a less powerful civ, given all things equal, my unit has higher chance of succeed. Same thing applied when I attacked a powerful civ. In the beginning, it may take me 10 tanks to take out 2 samuris, but as I get more and more cities from the enemies and my power sugres, I have much better luck. Anyone has the same observation?

 

[willphase]

Catapults/Cannons are useful for people who enjoy the precision of using 10 units to kill one single opponent unit without accepting any degree of damage.

Interestingly this is what the US have been doing to Afganistan - and this is resulting in a very low war-weariness back in the US.

I wonder whether Civ 3 makes war-weariness depend on whether you're actually losing units in a war? If so - then I see the value of artillery units...

-Will

 

[Zachriel]

Originally posted by willphase
Interestingly this is what the US have been doing to Afganistan - and this is resulting in a very low war-weariness back in the US. . .

Actually, I was considering the Afghan conflict from a similar perspective. The Taliban is demonstrating the powerful defensive power of infantry. They are currently dug-in in the mountains and are proving very difficult to dislodge. The Allied infantry is advancing very slowly, but advancing and finding cover, advancing and finding cover. Even ten-to-one or more odds will not prevent casualties in this type of battle.

To compensate for the defensive advantages of infantry, the Allies are using bombardment. There is no significant use of armor. Not to minimize the true complexity of the operation, the current battle does show the basics of infantry-bombard warfare as abstracted in Civ3.

In order to stop the unreasonable effectiveness of fast units, they should be made less effective in rough terrain. (But imagine the screams from the tank blitzers, if they did that!).

 

[willphase]

Originally posted by Zachriel

In order to stop the unreasonable effectiveness of fast units, they should be made less effective in rough terrain. (But imagine the screams from the tank blitzers, if they did that!).

Yes. Civ3 does make an attempt at this by saying that you need to put roads on mountains and other 'impassable' terrain before artillery can negotiate it.

However, putting a road over a mountain would merely mean (in real terms) that the artillery can pass safely across the road, it doesn't (as you point out) mean that any infantry (e.g. guerrillas) lodged in the mountains can't take advantage of this and have an attack advantage.

Well... it's only a game I suppose - they can't cater for the whole sphere of military tactics and strategy. They tried their best

-Will

 

[perryrutherford]

Something I think Civ3 kinda neglects is the diminised usefulness of non-modern units, viz. 'Cavalry', in modernity owing to the land mine. In my imaginary better version Marines and Paratroopers -- the least useful units as is -- would get at least twice as much fortified bonus. They can dig in and or setup mines with precsion. Those 2 * million * million dollar aircraft can give the mujahadeen-infantry bombard dammage from '32 squares away' sure, sure, but they can't control the ground, still need the infantry to do that, and the thing is, the AUS isn't going to make any headway preventing saudi 'agents' from running sabatoge missions in the homeland by fighting a long war in afghanistan -- the armpit of the world -- the graveyard of armies since alexander the great -- I find the situation there bonkers because we setup the mujahadeen to block the soviets and pakistan (our ally in the region) setup the taliban. Furthermore, the reduced war weariness has a lot to do with the fact that 9-11 was so dramatic, and the media is cooperating with the propaganda planning wholeheartedly, calling the mujahadeen 'al-queda'. This is nonsense, that's like al-jazeera calling fort benning a 'CIA' compound.

 

[Sullla]

I don't think a lot of people are still reading this thread, but here's my take. A lot of people have been disregarding the use of artillery in favor of direct combat units. Let me say that nothing, nothing could be further from the truth in higher difficulty levels. While I agree that catapults and cannons are of questionable value, artillery combined with rails forms a powerful combination that allows a human player to survive against the massive AI advantages of Emperor/Deity. With a mobile attack force of Cavalry/Tanks plus artillery on a rail network, a human can first defend against a numerically superior enemy force and then go on the offensive to cripple and destroy much larger enemy cities. It's important to keep in mind that numbers are what matter with artillery; 1 does nothing, 5 do little, but 30 massed together can reduce a city from a booming size 25 to one with no improvments at size 1 in just a few turns. Anyone who doubts this should examine the Infantry succession game in the stories and tales forum, where a group of players have been taking out mechanized infantry with no offensive unit better than marines, thanks to immense artillery and bomber support. The only thing to watch out for is the increased war weariness of excessive bombing.

 

[Arenar]

In the game i just stopped playing i was the Russions with the Romans and Egyptians on my continent and i had no iron left. I was planning an attack on the romans wherein i'd send a nice collection of 8 spearmen to their iron supply and cut off ALL roads (while i pillaged the roads that were outside of their territory with my scouts) and then move in between their weak cities to take Rome with one prong of my attack, and charge down from the north with the other, hopfully removing 1/3 of their empire before they could fend off my units.

Right when i was about to pull out the stops and send my units in, my scouts stumbled upon 10 Legionaries (3.3, as compared to my best unit, 2.1 [the archer, since i had no iron left]) and i just decided to screw it and go after the egyptians.

 

[xIcemanx]

You said something about civ attributes...

I think that Militaristic is totally awesome. The ability to make Leaders faster and promote faster gets you a HUGE advantage in warfare. It's certainly better than Religious.

As a result, my favorite civs to play are Chinese, German, and Persian (in that order).

Re: artillery, I have to object. Stacks of Artillery is the fastest way to take out Mech Infantries (or Infantry) with Modern Armor (or Cavalry). It also helps when someone attacks you. Stealth Bombers, when you have enough, can turn a huge metropolis into a barren little village. And of course, Battleships are devastating.

Yes, it takes a while to build. BUT:

1: You should be preparing for war, I don't think you're warring every second of the game and desperately need more Modern Armor.

2: Mobilization helps a lot.

3: Artillery and Bombers are cheap, and you ought to be building Battleships ANYWAY, even if you are playing on Pangea.

4: Artillery and Bombers are great disbands.

Catapults are dumb, I agree, considering you don't have much production at that stage of the game, but Artillery and Radar Artillery can win battles for Cavalry/Modern Armor with NO casualties.

 

[ltcoljt]

I don't know what game some of you are playing. Yeah, cats and cannons are pretty useless.

But if you are playing the harder difficulties artillery is one of the most important military units in the game.

You get certain opportunites to have a military advantage over the AI. These come and go. Getting cavalry quickly is one of those, but soon the AI gets nationalism and using cav versus riflemen in metros (size 12 or larger) is like a dead end.

But look at the tech tree. You can get replaceable parts only three techs into the industrial era tech tree. Tanks are something like 15 techs in. Since the AI is not too fast to get to replaceable parts and some of them won't have rubber you can have a long time to produce and deploy large artillery stacks that can reduce AI core cities to mush. Then your cavalry is useful again. By carefully using proper map positioning, settlers and workers to place towns and rails where you need them, you can smash AI realms with massed artillery, a few covering infantry and your leftover cavalry long before tanks are an option.