How do YOU break into a continent?

[fuzzy_bunnies]

Just curious... I always have a huge problem with this and depending on how far I am from a peaceful victory condition I usually just restart.

Situation: Very late game, 2nd last techs in each line are fairly common (phalanxes, crossbowmen, etc), separate continents with fairly large civs generally at peace (so they have tons of units just wandering around).

How would you break into the civ to conquer it? Or just sail around the shores with a big fleet and raze coast cities?

 

[Schmoe]

One of two scenarios: A) You've built The Nexus, B) You haven't

A) Build up a city-buster stack and enough transports and escort ships, preferably with some Haste-casting adepts aboard. Park right outside cultural borders, preferably within one turn of movement from the shore. Move in, unload, cast haste, take city, all within one turn. Use the Obsidian Gate in the city to gate in massive reinforcements. Proceed.

B) Same as above, but include in the city-busting stack an acolyte (for eliminating civic unrest) and some way of rushing an Obsidian Gate (a great engineer, or a gold-rushing civic and enough gold to do so, massive numbers of Soldiers of Kilmorph and/or slaves). After capturing the city, pop the acolyte and rush the Obsidian Gate. You'll need a stronger initial army, as you'll need to withstand one turn of counter-attacks without reinforcements.

 

[Demus]

don't forget the GotN, it can greatly help to bring in additional city defenders in a hurry.

 

[nealhunt]

The easiest is to have open borders with a non-vassal neighbor of the target (or, obviously, land outside anyone's cultural borders, but that's really unlikely). Stage the invasion in the open-border land and jump on the target. Just make sure you move all units into enemy territory immediately so if the staging neighbor declares war on you, your units don't get teleported someplace funky.

Or if you're set up to use a Council of Esus surprise attack, stage right in the target's land.

For a sea invasion, I'll generally go for the best-defended city. I'm going to hammer it with mass damage so that hits the most units. Also, if you crack the toughest nut first, you have less counterattack to worry about. The AI will have huge stacks available while you have a limited force for initially. You need to minimize that counter as much as possible.

Actual technique varies a lot based on what is available. Generally, blast with area spells on the way in, hit with any siege weapons, then attack directly into the city. Once captured, move the ships into the city and dismount (which can be done even if the loaded units have no movement left). Haste is very helpful if you need to avoid the amphibious attack penalty, but not required. Summon support units with any remaining spells.

Nexus - Teleport huge numbers immediately.
W/o Nexus - Pre-position troops where they can gate in. Rush a gate in the foothold city.
Gates not available - Have a second wave of troops staged as close as possible so your fleet can get them quickly. If your land is too far, any neutral territory will work.

 

[MacGyverInSpace]

Nature 1 spell tree top defense is good for landing troops than instantly fortifying them *Needs to be in a forested tile. Also, you would do well to run RoK and research Arete at some point and building up some guerrilla two defenders to land on hills.

 

[Fafnir13]

In my most recent game wherein another landmass needed invading, I had the good, fun fortune of playing OO Lanun. I ran a fleet of ships up and down the coast with boarding parties, stygian guards, cultists, and a couple heroes. I'd typhoon the suckers, attack with my units, take the city, then abandon the city and move on to the next one. They'd come in and take the cities back, of course, but I didn't have to lose units defending anything and their troop level kept getting lower and lower.
I also had cultists and stygians guards on steady production rallying down to Hyborems section of the coast. Took them a while to get there, but it was well worth it when they became suitably amassed.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

In my most recent game wherein another landmass needed invading, I had the good, fun fortune of playing OO Lanun. I ran a fleet of ships up and down the coast with boarding parties, stygian guards, cultists, and a couple heroes. I'd typhoon the suckers, attack with my units, take the city, then abandon the city and move on to the next one. They'd come in and take the cities back, of course, but I didn't have to lose units defending anything and their troop level kept getting lower and lower.
I also had cultists and stygians guards on steady production rallying down to Hyborems section of the coast. Took them a while to get there, but it was well worth it when they became suitably amassed.

Ha ha yea, I had this same thing happen too, except I was trying to breach the hyborem/svart continent. I could *easily* destroy all the defenders of a coastal city but no matter how long I farmed the defenders they would just rush build a lot more. I tried a couple times to hold a city but they would swarm in gigantic stacks and kill everything. Eventually, I just started razing cities to try and drop them a bit (kill the last unit with an elemental). Even then, they'd rebuild very fast and I still couldn't get a foothold. That was like 0.32 though, and I'm a bit better now but its still tough.

What prompted me to write this was a recent tactic I used as the Kurio... a couple airships with archmages and some melee hopping from mountain peak to mountain peak next to cities. Dominating a pile of defenders then sending them back into the city to capture it. Works pretty well but, again, you need to rely on mountains. Inland lakes sometime work but dominated units tend to bounce to the nearby shore if you run out of space. No such problem on mountaintops.

 

[heisenberg]

don't forget the GotN, it can greatly help to bring in additional city defenders in a hurry.

This is still my top favourite before you tech all the way up to passing the ether.

Crack a less defended coastal city and land some... say 4-5 defenders. Next turn you get 10 defenders (5 mercs)... the next turn on you get 20...
Build up your treasury first should you want to try this method, but I find it by far the most efficient, instead of carting over boatloads for a D-day invasion.
(Eisenhower turning in his grave "What? You didn't tell me I could build the Guild of the Nine?")

Str 7 mercs (with iron) may be only slightly weaker than your str 8 champions you probably have at this time, but I believe its mainly the national units that really matter shipping over--the rest can be just slightly weaker, but in much greater numbers.

 

[the343danny]

I had a game where I landed my troops, then vassalized Falamar as the Khazad, then I used my portals to send in troops. Then, I declared on everyone (about 5 others) and used all of my national and world troops to kill them. It took a while though, although it was on a low difficulty.

I ended up making the mithril golem that game because the AC was going way up due to me razing cities. Bad news was mostly everybody was good/neutral and they had order or something. Basium was created by Kardith, and he just had a huge stack of angels in his city, and I didnt know it was so massive, so I collected my army and put it on a wooded hill there after crushing it with my druids. Then, the angel army completely healed back up and just threw itself at my army. Ofcourse, my army lost, but after finnaly killing Basium, Kardith vassalized.

 

[zup]

Or av Alexis vs order Cardith/Basium, Hannah and Sabathiel. Just about everything I killed grew wings and then came back to knock on my doorstep.

 

[Pyr0mancer]

If I don't have Pass through the Ether researched, then I usually don't bother trying to take and hold land on the other continent. I just sail around with a large fleet with Archmages/Liches, Heroes, and possibly Immortals. Ideally one of said heroes is a Command-III/IV with the Crown as well.

Dominate as many city defenders as I can, kill off the rest, and park a few summons or a couple Immortals in the city. Ideally, I laugh as the AI loses a fair number of units retaking the city, while I move on to the next one. Eventually, I'll have stolen enough strong defenders to survive the counterattack and establish a foothold. Best-case scenario is I have multiple Combat-V-Drill-IV Immortals that can take out dozens of counterattackers before going down.

With the Nexus, it's easy. Take a city with a summon or expendable unit, gate in a ridiculous number of Mithril-wielding Champions or Longbowmen with CGII/III, Flaming Arrows, and Iron, and watch the corpses pile up. Usually by the time I'm attempting a serious intercontinental invasion, I've got at least 2 or 3 cities capable of producing a Champion or Longbowman every 1-2 turns, so once the initial stack-of-doom is defeated it's just a matter of cleaning up.

 

[Valerarren]

You can also just go OO religion and build a fair amount of priests (plus your more powerful water walkers + stuff on ships). Choose a city, use the priests + tsunami to reduce everyone's power, and then kill all the defenders. Do this for a couple turns. Then take the city and leave a weak unit / summon in it. Let them take it back / reinforce it. Repeat with all your tsumani's, wipe out whatever new they send to the city. Do it a couple times / move on to another city. Quickly they run out of their tire-4 units (they'll build a few more, but not enough).

Now land your troops, they have no real stack of doom left (it was wiped out by the tsumanis). Now march inland.

 

[Annex]

I always play Pangea, so I Never have this problem.

 

[slowcar]

having some acolytes helps a lot as it denies the AI the possibility of a direct attack with its 1-move troops. add in fixating spells and some AoE like maelstrom or tsunami and you can kill whatever advances on you. destroying some roads is also a big help - as it was in vanilla.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

having some acolytes helps a lot as it denies the AI the possibility of a direct attack with its 1-move troops. add in fixating spells and some AoE like maelstrom or tsunami and you can kill whatever advances on you. destroying some roads is also a big help - as it was in vanilla.

Acolytes? Why is that? Any particular type of acolyte? The biggest problem right now is that they run right up to my newly captured cities because the roads are intact or they have mounted units.

Any suggestions on pillaging roads without killing off 8 units? (1 unit each direction, 1 turn to pillage the road, it gets killed immediately afterwards)

 

[CruelDwarf]

Any suggestions on pillaging roads without killing off 8 units? (1 unit each direction, 1 turn to pillage the road, it gets killed immediately afterwards)

Use cavalry for pillaging.

 

[FireBlaze]

With haste of course =D

 

[cabbagemeister]

Acolytes? Why is that? Any particular type of acolyte?

I think you need Unyielding Order to end resistance, then sac an acolyte to expand borders.

Acolytes can't expand borders while the city is in resistance, can they?

 

[zup]

One option is to get Brigit. Give her all items you find and get her to some 500 xp (easy) and build a ton of fire nodes. She can butcher dozens alone and if they manage to beat her, well she will be back. Losha Valas will not get the affinity but she gets renewable immortal promotion so it does not matter if she goes down. She will be back too. And getting her 500 xp is even easier than Brigit.

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

One option is to get Brigit. Give her all items you find and get her to some 500 xp (easy) and build a ton of fire nodes. She can butcher dozens alone and if they manage to beat her, well she will be back. Losha Valas will not get the affinity but she gets renewable immortal promotion so it does not matter if she goes down. She will be back too. And getting her 500 xp is even easier than Brigit.

!! ok how do you get a unit to 500xp? I've never had a unit above 140 xp. Ever. (standard size maps though). after 100 xp your heroes only get like 1 or 2 xp per kill right?