How do you defend against stacks with lots of artillery?

[Shylock]

Difficulty: Chieftain

I DOW'd on Saladin and by extension Cyrus. I am intending to invade by sea in the north and overland in the south.

I moved my stack of tanks, infantry with two GGs, a cannon and maybe a Marine. Sally countered with a stack of Cuirassiers and artillery.

The artillery softened up my troops and despite the tech imbalance the stack was destroyed. I know this is the intended use of that unit. How do I best defend against people using lots of arty?

I think the best way is to distract them with a couple machine guns as they don't take collateral damage so I can soften them up with bombers in my turn.

How you guys deal with this?

 

[GGracchus]

How does he have cuirassiers and arty??

He would have cavalry or something. Use some of your own to flank the artillery, but to beat the Chieftain AI all you need to do is build 1.5 workers per city, build enough defense, get some good cities, and tech up for space. Build cottages, build buildings, don't even need to attack. Just tech for space.

 

[Capellan]

The best defensive counter to any kind of siege unit is siege units. They're immune to collateral damage, but are included as potential targets for the collateral damage (so if half your stack is siege, half the collateral damage of your enemy will be wasted).

But if you're playing at Chieftain and you don't have a massive technological advantage - and tanks vs artillery is definitely not massive - then you have some fundamental things to work on in your game. I recommend subscribing to Foundation and Empire, which has stacks of good advice.

 

[Higher Game]

Artillery is nasty, and presumably the AI has railroads everywhere by then. This era usually calls for bomber/tank action, and some use of amphibious attacks, so you can get priority over him. It's that weird era just before nukes that has some of the most interesting tactical possibilities.

 

[s.bernbaum]

You need to attack his artillery before it attacks you. If you have bombers, then you should have bombed his artillery on the turn when you declared war. The AI usually will withdraw damaged artillery into cities to heal, rather than use it damaged. That lets you attack and take the city, while destroying the artillery.

 

[enKage]

I usually dont have this problem as my late wars are mainly bombers + more marnes than tanks.
Attack first with tanks -> killing infantries or other ground units, then make your opponent very happy with marines crushing his artilleries without any damage taken. Then heal tanks, take first 1-3 cities with bombers + marines while tanks are healing, the rest of the cities with already healed tanks

Remeber marines has a bonus when attacking! So if your opponent will get you before u will get him, haave some siege units for defense (machine guns/artilleries)

 

[Archon_Wing]

Use more bombers and tanks, with all that damage being done every turn you can easily take him out.

Later on, you can use gunships to easily destroy all of this. Not unreasonable at chieftain.

 

[AutomatedTeller]

another way to deal with it is to declare and let him invade you. That way, you get to destroy his stack before his arty can hit you.

 

[Ataxerxes]

another way to deal with it is to declare and let him invade you. That way, you get to destroy his stack before his arty can hit you.

This has to be stressed. When there are stacks of siege being used (never saw AI Arty on Settler) railroads make a huge difference. If you go into his territory he can get siege initiative on you. He uses his rails to get the troops where he wants. Once he invades, you have the advantage of your rails to get troops to the right place at the right time. Also, all 2+ move units can attack and go back to a nearby city to heal in the same turn. He can't counterattack unless you leave units there.

Of course if you have Bombers, use them. After I get bombers I consider artillery to be largely obsolete. He can't hit you back effectively, so you get the collateral damage without losing your units.

 

[WelshGandalf]

Machine gunners are immune to collateral damage, I always like to bring a few along, they can really help in situations like this.

 

[Gumbolt]

I didn't know the AI built large stacks on Chieftain level.

I would agree something is wrong if the AI has a larger stack than yours on this level. The cards are heavily stacked in your favour on this level. That is before you consider how poor the Ai are at war.

In any case you should be scouting out the AI stack before you declare war on Sal. Even then you should consider letting his stack enter your land so you can crush it.

If you are worried about the Ai destroying your stack with art you could always split it assuming you have 1-2 times more troops then than his stack. I assume you did not declare on an Ai with a stronger military than you??

In all serious by this time in a game you should have 20-30+ cities and should be rolling out 5-8 new tanks a turn with your taxes at almost 100%.

Not seen the game but do some more research.

 

[Puhi]

I agree strongly with what Automated and Ataxerxes said.

Before invading, scout your target's land and find their stack. Use spies and aircraft if you don't have open borders, or any unit if you do.

If your target has a lot of siege units, then declare and wait for him to bring that siege into your territory. Then use the initiative to destroy all his siege. Sometimes, it makes sense to use flanking units (cavalry, knights, etc.) to destroy siege. Sometimes it makes more sense to use your own siege. If you have bombers, that is always a nice method.

But the key point is scouting and knowing what units your target has and where they are located.

 

[oldskald]

Backing up what others have said - intel to locate his forces, bombers to splat them. And then send in the ground forces to mop up. Another thing to remember is that you can always use some fairly obsolete units to do this if you want to use modern units to do the real damage (taking his cities is far more important that bashing up his army). If you have some Cavalry knocking about they can do a perfectly good job of finishing off a collateralled stack with minimal loss. Just like he did to you...

 

[AutomatedTeller]

best way to deal with a stack with artys on chieftain? Invade them with horse archers and don't let them get beyond, say, education

 

[NihilZero]

another way to deal with it is to declare and let him invade you. That way, you get to destroy his stack before his arty can hit you.

One more vote for this approach. Sometimes the only way to take the initiative from a big stack of arty is to get the bad guys to move first and make themselves vulnerable. I'm in the middle of a Deity game at the moment and I had to deal with a gigantic Shaka stack of artillery, so I DoWed and let him capture a bad border city (peviously captured from Huayna, it only had a few tiles in my culture so it was never good to start with) and then I was able to vaporise his stack in city on the next turn and recapture it. If I had gone on the offensive and entered his territory he would have been the one vaporising my stack.

 

[coanda]

You must run him out of ammunition by sending waves of troops at him.

Alternatively, kill his artillery before his artillery hits you. Anything that lets you do that works. In order of increasing absurdity...
Bombers, defensive war, amphibious assaults to kill his main stack as soon as you declare war, nukes, bribing someone else to war him first so his stack is mostly dead when your attack starts, splitting your stack up, sacrificial pillaging 2-move units spreading out ahead of your stack to destroy railroads and roads, very large numbers of commando units, excessive overuse of spies to cripple his economy until he has to disband units.

 

[jmas]

^^Since you specified "In order of increasing absurdity", using Amphibious War Elephants should have made the list (at the end).