Flank Attack

[Tristan daCunha]

Screen your stack
<snip>
Keep your cannons back until the infantry are entrenched if possible. +25% defense bonus, and destroyed roads, is good.

Bah! What you suggest is tactics!

 

[Merkinball]

With 2 different 3-stack forces going into an enemies lands at 2 different points you should be able to get to the city and heal/bombarb without taking significant losses in any stack. - Azza

Impossible here. It was a four-5 tile wide island, with cities spaced out equally along both sides. For curiousities sake, I cheated, went back a few turns, and did the war again. This time I simply did a two prong approach with an infantry raid on another city, plus a similar raid on the same city. I accomplished my goal, but it was a painfully slow process because of all these defensive bonus' going on.

You need to rethink your war tactics for this era apparently. - Azza

Absolutely, positively, overwhelming numbers seems to be the only way.

Combat 2 Riflemen vs Combat 1/Pinch Cavalry is roughly 50-50, and Infantry would win more than they lose. You may have had some bad RNG luck. - Azza

I don't know promotion odds off hand, so I'll believe you with the 50/50. Even with that, cavalry now have a 60% withdrawal chance. Which means they will win 50% of the time. And of the remaining half, they will withdraw 60% of the time. Overpowered. Rifleman are supposed to be the counter for cavalry, let alone Infantry which are six points stronger. There is NO counter for cavalry.

Oh please. Infantry loitering in a forest or a forested hilltop will blow away Cavalry. Even a hilltop will give them great odds, despite any incidental airship damage. Sounds like you don't have a good enough medic--or any at all--or move around too much. Just march slowly and surely and pause if you just took a beating. - axident

I always keep a medic in the stack. Sometimes the CivIV Gods do no bless you with a forested hilltop. That was the case this time. The first volley of the war, I was at least sheltered in the woods, but no hilltop.

Or.... get him to fight someone else - axident

This is a long running grudge match. Mr. Cyrus and I have been at war on and of centuries. Cyrus isn't about to do anything for me. Nor is the rest of the world for that matter.

Or... pick on someone else. - axident

No. First, Cyrus must die. Second, Cyrus is at the bottom of the power graph. Third. I have piles of infantry! They should beat the pants of cavalry right? (not when cavalry retreat at 60%! And you gotta cross cultural borders!)

Or... don't lose your tech lead in the first place. - axident

I was introduced to seven players in the same turn by them declaring war on me. I was already at war with three other civs. I'm sorry, you can't maintain your tech lead with war weariness from 10 countries.

Change with the game! - axident

Oh, don't worry. I won't be declaring any more wars, at all, during this era.

You should try to kill the opposing cannons using your units. - Yakk

An impossibility. If I declare war, I will push into his cultural territory by one space. He can move his artillery pieces in from well outside my reach to do the damage he needs to cripple my assault in just one turn. I'll be able to take care of what's left, but the damage will already be done.

Screen your stack: an infantry all by itself can take a cavalry with it. - Yakk

Explain this math to me again? It's been explained by one to theoretically amount to a 50/50 match. Then on top of it, the 60% retreat odds. Which effectively means that the majority of his cavalry are going to hit, win or retreat, and then go back into safehavens, with more promotions, and be on the battlefield even stronger than ever. Cavalry are can't miss in this version of Civ IV.

The cannons are decimated by the enemy cavalry, even if your stack is protected. That means you cannot deploy mass cannons until after the enemy cavalry has been dealt with. - Yakk

They'll always spam cavalry. So long is there is a breath in their body, the AI spams cavalry. In my reply, Cyrus had three cities, I was perched atop a hill. I never really had a good, comfortable chance to take this city, and keep all my troops alive, so I'd leave the city with one unit for about five turns. Every turn, with three cities that Cyrus had, he was cranking out two units per turn. Typically cavalry. They're always there.

Now advance with cannons. Have a shield of infantry in front.

Code:
III
C

Add the cavalry aspect to this.

Okay, so how many units am I sacraficing for this? How many cavalry must be produced? This would mean that I cannot push my actual fighting units into enemy territory on the first turn of war. I must first push my cavalry in to pillage roads. It'd have to be a lot of cavalry. Perhaps a dozen and a half? Two dozen? This for just one or two cities? How do you take down a whole civ? How many cavalry pillaging units will you need. Also keep in mind that before you pillage roads, you must have time to pillage improvements too. If you're pillaging a town, it's gonna take two turns to get to the road.

Let's again assume that you have three spaces of cultural border to penetrate before reaching a city. First you have to basically sacrafice a large number of cavalry. But what really concerns me with this strat, is that you give the rest of the units within the enemies territory the ability to mobilize closer to the conflict zone. All the while, they can just sit and wait. Keep in mind that the main problem is cavalry and airships. Airships don't see pillaged roads, so the vulnerability generated by them always exists. The airships will hit your pillaging calvary first, in come the rifleman/infantry. Half your cavalry are gone in one turn, your next turn of pillaging, they have dissappeared. With this extra turn to move remote cavalry from far away, to nearbye conflict cities, they will be within 3 tiles of your formation. Even if you have every tile pillaged completely, they will still get around the infantry and get to your cannons the first turn you are fully inside enemy territory, and they will kill your cannons anyway. All the while, the untouchable airships are hitting your infantry for 18%, until you're reduced to 70%.

You say "try to take more work than your enemy takes from you." What you describe here, is giving up an immense amount of work, for little gain.

I'm gonna try this theory anyway.

Keep units healed using medic units (possibly medic 3s). The enemy will have to burn more than 1 cavalry to kill 1 of your cannons. - Yakk

Medic promotions only go so far though. And they are moot when it comes to that initial crucial volley. In this scenario that happened to me, the medic was useless. I was basically destroyed in just one volley. The extra 10% in my units yelling "RUN AWAY!" was nothing. The damage had already been done.

 

[Yakk]

Let's leave the Cannons behind.
3 groups of 2 infantry + 2 cavalry. Each advances and double-pillages.

Now:
Any cannons that attack are stuck in the mud. You get to kill them next turn using reserves.

Cannons do far less damage to your stack than they do to a large stack.

Airships do the same damage.

Flanking doesn't do any damage.

The AI can overwealm any of these stacks -- but you'll note that is what happened anyhow.

But every cannon used -- dies. Every dead cavalry dies. Half of the retreating cavalry can't move away, so it dies.

...

But I sort of agree -- the existence of Infantry signaled the death-knell of cavalry.

 

[Duuk]

Flanking attacks are utter . .. .. .. .. .. .. .. . not due to the fact that they exist, but due to the fact that they are uncounterable and cause essentially killing-level collateral damage. Let the cav kill off 1 cannon extra on a win-or-withdraw, not 9.

 

[Merkinball]

Let's leave the Cannons behind.
3 groups of 2 infantry + 2 cavalry. Each advances and double-pillages. - Yakk

This is a group of 12 units. You're going to get hit by 8 airships in the first volley. That means that probably all but one unit will face damage. Let's say just one cannon hits each stack, that cannon will do lots of damage to one unit in the stack, including your 100% strength remaining unit.

The rest of your units are sitting ducks to any unit garrisoned in his cities. Particularly cavalry. Even if you have some units live, they will be in no shape to even make a counter attack.

You need MANY more units. Maybe that ratio, but you need an overwhelming force that can absorb the hits from airships up until you reach the city, as well as any attacks in the process. You need to ensure you have enough cannons to absorb loses from the flank attack and still have some left to take down defenses. If you're going to romp and stomp through a whole narrow continent of five cities like I did, you need tons of units.

Again, this tons of units is mitigated by airships, and paltry sums of alternative units.

 

[vilemerchant]

Regardless of convoluted tactics you can use to get your cannons into the action, it is still extremely stupid that cannons are COMPLETELY defenseless and the attacking cavalry will mostly either win or withdraw, taking your cannons out each time regardless. Just imagine trying to invade a multiplayer opponent in this era - it would be impossible and a complete waste of hammers.

 

[axident]

Another thing you can do is either beeline bombers or artillery, the latter being immune to cavalry flanking. Bombers + anything = win, unless they have mass anti-air. Try either 2-move units or paratroopers, as they are the only things that can keep pace with your bomber swarm.

You glossed over the spy-revolt method of tearing down walls. In my current game I realized that I was way too wall-phobic... but luckily I got impatient for my bombers to arrive and attacked anyway. I used only 2 turns of a single treb to bring down cultural defense to +54%, and he had lots of promoted pre-cavs (cussiaiers or whatever, I don't use them) and promoted, fortified muskets. Despite the promos, fortification, and +54%, my promoted Infantry all had 85%+ odds on the first attack, after which I paused to heal for a turn (with a medic 2 of course, and it was even in my territory thanks to my immense cultural output in the region) and to let my treb knock away a bit more +%. Then my very first bomber finally arrived to put a bigger dent in the +%. Another round of bleeding his army and healing later, and I captured his city, with reinforcement CG2-promoted Infantry already arriving. The point is that Infantry is pretty buff against anything up to and maybe even including Riflemen, as long as you get that +% down a little. You might not even need much collateral damage... I did fine with zero collateral damage and +54%.

If you got declared on by like 7 people it sounds like you have diplo problems, probably AP-related. I usually try to keep myself no higher than no. 2 on the AP owner's hit list--if I don't own the AP myself, that is!

 

[azzaman333]

Cavalry only have a withdrawl chance of 30%, not 60%. If they are at flanking II, Combat I and Pinch you've been letting them get too much experience.

 

[Yakk]

This is a group of 12 units. You're going to get hit by 8 airships in the first volley. That means that probably all but one unit will face damage. Let's say just one cannon hits each stack, that cannon will do lots of damage to one unit in the stack, including your 100% strength remaining unit.

Each cannon will be damaging 4 units instead of 8 in your original case. So the cannons will be much less effective, and will die regardless.

The rest of your units are sitting ducks to any unit garrisoned in his cities. Particularly cavalry. Even if you have some units live, they will be in no shape to even make a counter attack.

Cavalry from any place other than the nearest city will be out of movement points and damaged. A sitting duck if it wins or loses.

The flanking attack won't do any damage to your cannons, massively reducing enemy total damage. If you properly swing your army away from cannons and towards field units, this places you at an advantage.

You need MANY more units. Maybe that ratio, but you need an overwhelming force that can absorb the hits from airships up until you reach the city, as well as any attacks in the process.

You don't need to absorb airship hits, you need to heal them.

You don't need to be able to ignore all cavalry attacks -- you just need to be able to kill enemy cavalry at a production ratio sufficient that your army will live.

Yes, if the enemy has many more troops than you do, and is producing troops faster, he will win.

You need to ensure you have enough cannons to absorb loses from the flank attack and still have some left to take down defenses.

Once again, if the enemy has insane numbers of cavalry, don't expose your cannons to flank attacks along the approach. This means you have to clear roads and minimize your cannons exposure to attacks -- that is what your field army is for. The cannon will be exposed to flank attacks at the city itself -- but if you have a position strong enough to survive against enemy counter attacks (fortified, healing, good terrain), the enemy will have to sacrifice cavalry to kill your cannons. And if you expose 1 cannon at a time, you will win the production war.

[quote[If you're going to romp and stomp through a whole narrow continent of five cities like I did, you need tons of units.[/quote]

Yes, if you want to just blast through the enemy without doing any kind of tactics, you need overwealming force. Good for civ4.

 

[Lt. Bob]

I tend to agree that the flanking is overpowered. From the standpoint of realism it's a good idea that it's there, but I would've limited the flanking to damage the artillary units, not killing them.
I was playing a game fighting a war against a guy with fighters and his vassel with cavalry. I had mechanized infantry and mobile artillary. I moved forward towards my main target's city (the guy with fighters) up onto a hill with a stack of maybe 8-10 experienced mechanized inf and 5 mobile artillary. As soon as I end the turn the cavalry guy comes flying across his master's railroads and proceeds to slam my mech's with wave after wave of cavalry. I killed TONS of cavalry but when the battle was over ALL of my mobile artillary were dead while most (not all) of my mech inf were alive (but badly damaged).
If my artillary can only do __% damage to a unit before they retreat shouldn't flanking work in a similar manner?

 

[The Great Apple]

A lot of the strategys people are mentioning seem far too slow for a normal speed game. By the time your split stacks pillaging as they went reached the enemy city, the enemy will have be advanced enough to be able to hold you off. You also have WW to deal with.

About flanking - I too believe it is a bit overpowed. I like the concept, but it needs a nerf. Maybe, as above, making it non-lethal as with bombardments.

I also agree WRT airships. At the time they come there is no counter, meaning they are indestructable, and given the damage they can pump out at such a low cost to build you'd be a fool not to build as many as you can. My solution to this would probably be to make them require oil - there is no way you could get an airship to pack that much punch using the wind for a power source.

 

[Bjorn190]

There is a very easy counter to cavalry Play as russia!

Cavalry has nothing on cossaks.. and cossaks are the most efficient troop against cavalry until machine guns start showing up and they possibly are better than those as well 15+50% = 22.5 wow that beats the 15 of a pinced infantery and the 14 of a pinched rifle man

If you say the AI spams cavalry, then you definately have to be russia to counter it I would suggest peter or stalin, depending on how early you want to go to war, and if you like wonders and supercities, or vast empires of GP farms. Wouldnt reccoment catherine

 

[The M'Hael]

You make no sense,

A: you can only have 4 airships in a city. You are claiming 8. Unless there are 2 cities really close by, which is unlikely, you are lying

B: Airships can do damage to 1 unit. Thus if you had 12 units, 4 units would remain at full health.

C: I have never seen airships to 18%, At most 10%

D: I will go into civ right now and test Cavalry against infantry. In fact, I will make a mini war. 4 Cavalry 8? Airships, and a couple cannons, vs. 12 infantry and the rest cannons.

Results. Airships did 10% followed by 5%.

you can have more than 4 airships in a city.
They did damage to one unit.
My 12 infantry were able to easily defend against the 6 cavalry I gave him. and on the next turn, took the city.

This guy is obviously a troll. Stop feeding him...

 

[Merkinball]

Each cannon will be damaging 4 units instead of 8 in your original case. So the cannons will be much less effective, and will die regardless. - Yakk

Not necesarily. Cannons withdraw too. Given your numbers, the AI will mop up whatever is left after airships and cannons.

You don't need to absorb airship hits, you need to heal them. - Yakk

Medic one heals 10%. Airships do much more damage than that. You have a three turn trek to get through the borders. By the time you reach your target, you're sitting at 70% anyway. Impotent. You need many units, or else your 10% medic isn't gonna do jack.

On top of that, you need to SURVIVE the initial penetration. Which, with the numbers you gave, will not happen.

Yes, if the enemy has many more troops than you do, and is producing troops faster, he will win. - Yakk

With the way cavalry are, there's no need to have many more troops. Cavalry plus a full load of airships means stagnation. You could have three times as many units as he has on the continent and still not take a single city.

Once again, if the enemy has insane numbers of cavalry, don't expose your cannons to flank attacks along the approach. This means you have to clear roads and minimize your cannons exposure to attacks -- that is what your field army is for. The cannon will be exposed to flank attacks at the city itself -- but if you have a position strong enough to survive against enemy counter attacks (fortified, healing, good terrain), the enemy will have to sacrifice cavalry to kill your cannons. - Yakk

I don't know about you, but that is a sacrafice I'm willing to make. I went back and checked again, all the cavalry that were faced had 60% withdrawal rates against infantry. You better believe, that if my cavalry is at 2, that I'm gonna try and get that withdrawal chance, just to kill all those cannons. The AI isn't stupid. It's worth sacraficing those cannons, because so long as the cities defenses are up, and you have airships, you're never gonna touch that city without a huge numbers advantage.

As you've eloquently pointed out here, at some point your cannons are vulnerable. Even with all the roads pillaged, if they are in the formation you described, they are vulnerable. Covered by infantry, they are still vulnerable.

A: you can only have 4 airships in a city. You are claiming 8. Unless there are 2 cities really close by, which is unlikely, you are lying - M'Hael

Airship units have a range of eight. Cities that are parallel, or placed properly, will throw forth at LEAST two cities worth of airships. Possibly three. Particularly when you are right on top of the city. You could potentially be facing 16 airships.

C____C
|
|
|
|
C____C <---aprroach of troops
| target city
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|
C____C

You're within the range of those cities on an open continent.

Here is the scenario

Here is where you can see the range of airships, which shows that I would have been vulnerable to eight airships. It also shows a withdrawal chance of 40% to the cavalry shown. Another promotion, which most of the cavalry had, puts withdrawal at 60%.

B: Airships can do damage to 1 unit. Thus if you had 12 units, 4 units would remain at full health.

Yeah...then enter the three cannons.

C: I have never seen airships to 18%, At most 10%

They were in the field. If you attack a city garrison, it'll be around 10%. If you are attacking in the field, it's about 14-18%.

Here's a shot that show's that it's not "at most 10%".

My 12 infantry were able to easily defend against the 6 cavalry I gave him. and on the next turn, took the city.

This guy is obviously a troll. Stop feeding him... - M'Hael

So let me get this straight. You hit the stack with eight airships, then three cavalry, then went in with your cavalry?

 

[paintchip]

I think you are way overestimating the cavalry. I play as Russia and I will personally tell you that cav is not that good for much of anything EXCEPT for knocking out cannons because a pikemen with city defend 2 that Rengar (personal experience) has promoted further will make your cav look like a joke even after you knock down the city defence. as people have tried to explain to you get some good defenders and make them come to you, also try units with first strikes so you can get them before they can run

 

[Uberness]

Remind me again of how pikemen can get city defense... might want to learn the game abit before you go commenting on it.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

One point, as this is the WWI era, perhaps Machine guns would be worthwhile... they don't suffer from the Pinch promotion of Cavalry, and don't take Collateral Damage from Cannons (and they are effectively safe from enemy gunpowder units)

 

[Seras]

the key here is to send in a first wave of mixed infantry('mixed' meaning with different promotions) to clear out the open land between the border and the enemy's actual cities...only move up your siege and support units once you've establish a perimeter and forced the opponent to cower in his cities =)

but don't forget to escort your siege units...and keeping them in a few spread out stacks is always better than putting all your artillery eggs in one basket

 

[Yakk]

Here we have what looks like the attacking stack:
http://www.pbase.com/cjgoulet/image/83417316

Too many cannons, not enough field units. Cannons get slaughtered by cavalry. Second, note the highly promoted state of enemy cavalry -- newly produced cavalry won't be nearly as strong as the old veteran cavalry. Those are L 5 and L 4 cavalry -- are you claiming he is pushing them off of the line that experienced?

Here is a picture of part of your war:
http://www.pbase.com/image/83417221

Um, why are you right in the middle of the enemy empire? Did they just overrun the defenses at ecbatana? If so, fighting defensively gives you all of the advantages you claim the AI has...

You had 12 infantry. That's 1680 hammers.
You had 14 cannon. That's also 1680 hammers.

Half of your force was cannons, which the cavalry are extremely good at killing. In effect, your spam of cannons was worthless -- more infantry, fewer cannons.

  C  
XIIIX
X C X
X   X

The cannons cannot be attacked as they approach without opening themselves up to counter-attack if everything from X on in has been pillaged.

A L 3 cavalry with 1 combat 2 flanking has is 16.5 power and 60% withdraw.
A L 3 cavalry with 2 combat pinch has 18 power and takes 25% off target infantry, but only 30% withdraw.

A L 3 infantry with 2 combat and .. formation? .. has 29 power against cavalry, or 24 power against pinch cavalry.

A L 3 machine gun with 3 combat has 23.4 power against both pinch and non-pinch cavalry, and has a free first strike. (and really should have +50% vs mounted)

The machine gun is, as a bonus, 10% cheaper than the infantry.

So how much damage does your infantry need to have taken to have a 50-50 chance against even-skill cavalry?

Against the L 3 super-retreat cavalry, the cavalry has 43% less power than the infantry.

Maybe your problem was you where up against super-elite cavarly?

Or maybe you where just up against a . .. .. .. .tonne of cavalry -- I mean, going from 12 down to 4 infantry, even with a 50% chance of killing an infantry per attack, should take on the order of 12 to 20 cavalry charges.

20 cavalry is 2400 hammers worth of troops. Which means the enemy's field army is simply larger than your own -- 3000+ hammers, vs your field force of 1680 hammers.

 

[Big J Money]

What about possibly giving machine guns the ability to negate retreat? Would that make MGs OP?

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