How do you deal with Riflemen?

[MeteorPunch]

I'm looking for the way to always wage effective war throughout every age of civ. In the ancient age an early archer rush or a combo of horses, swords, or catapults are effective. In middle ages, knights are good vs. pikes, and cavalry vs. muskets.

When the industrial age begins, it seems like the war effort hits a brick wall - rifles. It's certainly true that enough cavalry will take down rifles, but I never seem to have enough at this point to be effective.

Another option is to eliminate the most powerful civs before they get to riflemen. I've heard it said, "Sir Pleb never had to face a rifleman in his life." Obviously an exaggeration, but it makes the point well to defeat enemies before this becomes an issue.

A third way I can see would be armies, although given the RNG I usually have about three or four by this point in the game. There's probably ways to get this number up though.

Comments/tips appreciated.

 

[ThePrankMonkey]

bombardment, cannons and artillery.

 

[BobCW]

The Russian and Ottoman UU's can save you some cav manpower. I don't like ranged units much, so I'll often just mass cavs, most through upgrading knights. I play on Monarch, though, so I don't have to worry too much about enemy civs being able to replace units much quicker than I can kill them.


I don't fight many "wars to the death" in the industrial age, anyway. It takes too long before tanks to wipe out a large civ with rifles or infantry. If you have to kill someone, I'd recommend just nibbling away at their cities until they're gone. It doesn't take that many cavs to take the average size 7-12 non-wonder city.

 

[Stephan Hoyer]

Generally I'll wait until Infantry and Artillery to push my attack. I spend the early IA railroading and building factories and other essential infrastructure where necessary. I'll usually research/trade along the lines of Steam Power -> Industrialization -> Electricity -> Replaceable Part. Replaceable Parts is one of if not the best technologies in the game, with some of the best units and a very useful double speed boost to workers that makes finishing up your railroad network easy.

If I'm fighting when I start hitting rifles, I'll keep pushing on with my cavalry and whatever cannons I have but I'll usually take a bit of a break from war mongering about that time.

You can get to replaceable parts very quickly (I usually get it before even picking up nationalism) and at that point massed artillery are just so great that you can even launch successful attacks against infantry with a good sized cavalry stack.

 

[SJ Frank]

I don't have an answer either.

I hate dragging cannons around during this era. They just don't seem to be as effective as the trebs before them nor the arties after them.

I usually just game plan around cav vs. rifle wars -- if I think I can rush to cav before my target reaches rifle, then I start building horses or knights and get ready for a war; if I don't think I can get to cavs in time, then I don't build cavs at all, and delay my war until after factories and rails, during the infantry+arty era.

 

[Stephan Hoyer]

I hate dragging cannons around during this era. They just don't seem to be as effective as the trebs before them nor the arties after them.

Me, too. When cavalry are so fast, my cannons never seem to be able to keep up.

I usually just game plan around cav vs. rifle wars -- if I think I can rush to cav before my target reaches rifle, then I start building horses or knights and get ready for a war; if I don't think I can get to cavs in time, then I don't build cavs at all, and delay my war until after factories and rails, during the infantry+arty era.

Don't you need Cavalry then, too? Infantry lack the retreat and 3 movement.

 

[majk-iii]

Whats wrong with dragging cannons around? They'll do the job.
Often i play the scandinavians... and a bunch of frigates, some patience and perhaps even an ironclad or two... can really do some damage to riflemen, wich in turn gives the berserks a little extra time to shine.
Infantry is harder to hit i belive, but riflemen doesnt really bother me enough to change my midevil coast-razing tactics and become a modern nation until Rep. Parts.

 

[MeteorPunch]

What are some good tips for using cannons during this period? I often find them too slow to lug behind, so is there some strategies for effective cannon movement? For example, moving stacks of cannons and musket/rifles to the enemies' core cities, while your cavalry take out pereperal and weakly defended ones. By the time the cannons reach the core cities, the cavalry has knocked out other cities and can take down the cannon-bombed core.

 

[Jazzmail]

I agree. Artillery is too slow (cannons are ineffective against fortified infantry so upgrade). I use artillery only occassionally on cities that are not too far from the border(railroad).
For the rest I just mass cavalry and later tanks with only a handful of infantry.

 

[Rik Meleet]

A different strategy is to allow the AI to have Nationalism (rifle-tech) but not enough gold to upgrade to rifles. That way you'll only face 1 or 2 rifles in cities, next to a handful of muskets, pikes and even spears. Cavs can handle them. Of course the AI can draft, but they are only 2/2 so should not be a real problem.

But to be honest; the early industrial age is no age for warfare. You have rails to build, factories + hospitals to construct and ToE to aim for.

 

[MeteorPunch]

A different strategy is to allow the AI to have Nationalism (rifle-tech) but not enough gold to upgrade to rifles. That way you'll only face 1 or 2 rifles in cities, next to a handful of muskets, pikes and even spears. Cavs can handle them. Of course the AI can draft, but they are only 2/2 so should not be a real problem.

no gold strategies are something I have no skill at. I know of Moonsingers "banker" strategy, but don't really know how to do it.

But to be honest; the early industrial age is no age for warfare. You have rails to build, factories + hospitals to construct and ToE to aim for.

Very true. build factories to build military and rails to get the military to the war quicker.

 

[Fried Egg]

I think the time between the advent of Riflemen and until the advent of tanks reflects the reality of warfare in our history. Just look at the American civil war or WWI. Both wars grinded along slowly due to entrenched riflemen/infantry and cannons/artillery. It is a time when our defencive technology overtook our offensive technology and it took tanks to re-address this imbalance.

Therefore, this era is not a good time for waging war. It is a good time for going on the defencive and building up your infrastructure (rail, factories and hospitals).

 

[Rik Meleet]

The Banker strategy is not what I was referring to. Just selling techs for all their gold + gpt to drain them of that.

The Banker strategy is something different; it revolves around you helping 1 civ, when 2 civs are at war, financially, giving gold for gpt. Then turn around and do the same to the other warring nation. They capture eachother's cities (reducing cultural buildings) and you fill up the freed up land. By getting gpt; you won't loose money. - This strategy is actually the opposite; I suggested to make sure the AI have no gold; the banker strategy is about making sure the AI does have (a lot of) gold.

 

[Zorn]

In unmodded C3C I really hate this timeperiod.
In order to have a fair chance, an attacker needs to have an attack value that is higher than the defensive value of the defender, to make up for the boni the defender gets.
When riflemen appear, the next such attacker is the tank, wich is far, far away.
Funnily, throughout the game there are "pairs" of most common defender/attacker that "match":
Spear / sword
Pike / knight
Musket / cav
Tank / inf
Modern armour / mech inf

Just the rifle is there, breaking the pattern.

What makes the situation even worse is that there are three other factors wich even increase the rifles dominance:

-Hospitals become available, drastically increasing the defensive bonus.

-Rifles need no ressources, so there is no way to stop their appearence.

-Draff becomes available, so whenever your cavalries sem to succeed, there will be conscript. The usual combat will be like this: Cav attacks, takes one HP of the conscript, will not retreat because there is only one HP remaining, and die. This promotes the conscript, giving him back one HP. Rinse and repeat until elite.


I usually stop all agression until I get artillery. I hate early industial.

 

[Drakan]

I've heard it said, "Sir Pleb never had to face a rifleman in his life."

Very good one, I hadn't heard it before. But then, he's probably one of the best if not the best.

Cavalry Armies can take care of rifleman. Heck, they an even take out infantry !

 

[eldar]

I have two strategies I use:
1. Wait for Infantry/Artillery! If I'm ahead in tech, I'll often get there before the AI have too many rifles anyway.
2. Cannon/Musket/MedInf/LB SoD, marching towards a selected target. As mentioned elsewhere, my Cavs will be picking off lightly-defended targerts on the periphery, and will converge on the SoD in time.

 

[Tesuji]

I thought this for a while as well. But I now found it's quite a good era for combat, the waiting kind. Build a good number of cannons and some cavalry. Now you prefereably pick a civ without either horses or salpeter, or cut him from this resource. This way he'll only build lots of riflemen. Now declare war (if you didn't need to do that already to cut his resource) and watch the riflemen run into your cannons. With enough cannons you'll lose maybe 1 cavalry against his 5 riflemen on average. You farm armies in the meantime. If you stay within your own borders and are careful to lose few cavarly to pick off red-lined riflemen, it takes a long time for war-weariness to take much effect. It won't be long until you'll see the run of rifflemen slow down to a trickle, the AI will completely go bust trying to build more riflemen. Once you have some armies, the cities will become easy pickings and it's time for offence. Or you can declare peace and pick another victim.

Note: cutting the resource is much easier once you already have an army, preferably of cavalry or another fast unit. They just stroll in and pillage everything around the resource in just a few turns.

 

[dwarrior]

I still use cavalry against riflemen, plus a few armies of cavalry and you can plow thru any city. The slow down comes from when Infantry come out and you still only have cavalry to attack with.

 

[Obormot]

I deal with rifles using just cavalry, cause cannons are too slow and the AI does not have any rails at that time yet. The losses are heavy, but it still seems to be faster then using cannons.

When RP are researched and rails are built i start using arty and war settlers. The AI has rails by that time and artillery has better range.

But the best way is, of course, is to kill everybody in the MA