How to use artillery effectively...

[Moonsinger]

Artillery is great! However, it can move only one tile per tun inside enemy territory. Well, that's no good! If you do that, you could tie up your entire tack of artilleries at least one turn before you can use it against enemy city. If you have a tack of 100 artilleries, we are talking about loosing 100 chance of bombardment. Plus, I want my all my artilleries to be extremely mobile and stay far away from the frontline until they are needed.

1. First I move a settler three tiles away from the enemy city. Don't forget to include at least four infantries to defend your settler.

 

[Moonsinger]

2. By the next turn, you should be able to build a temporary outpost and use it as a base to attack the enemy city. In this case, the enemy capital city of Zimbabwe is the target. Immediately build the railroad and move your stack of artilleries into position. I also move on a cavalry unit next to the enemy city so that I can see if my artillery hit its target.

 

[Moonsinger]

3. Now, start bombard the enemy city to dirt. In this case, Zimbabwe is defended by six infantries. You need to reduce all defenders hit point to 1.

 

[Moonsinger]

4. After taking the city, I disband my outpost and get ready for taking the next city. Any artillery that didn't get a chance to fire, I just move them against another city. With this method, my stack of 100 artilleries, I can take at least three heavily defended cities in every turn. The war can start and end very quickly for the enemy. Artillery rocks! Artillery and cavalry are my #1 units. By the time I get tank, I usually already control the whole world.

 

[Lawrence]

Good strat!

And I found it dull to watch 100 artillery fire in one turn individually, so I always turn 'animate war' off when I use my stak of artilleries.

 

[joespaniel]

Thats really sick and twisted.

I love it!

Good one Moonsinger.

 

[Moonsinger]

Oh, I forgot to mention one thing: After I liberate/capture a city, I would normally use that city to rush produce more settlers or workers. The good thing about producing settlers and workers in a recently captured city is that we don't have to pay for their upkeep. If you produce a worker, that worker will be treated as slave worker (work twice as slow as normal worker). If you produce a settler, that settler will have your former enemy's nationality; therefore, you don't have to pay upkeep for them. I normally have a stock of at least a couple dozen settlers without having to pay for their upkeep. Beside, you want to reduce the number of foreign citizen in your city anyway. The less foreign citizen, the less likely they do a culture flip...and producing settlers/wokers is a best way to reduce them.

When war is declared, I would send an average of three of these foreign settlers into enemy territory in every turn; if the enemy manage to destroy one of my settlers, I would still have many others to play with. Therefore, they can expect their city to be under bombardment in every turns.

 

[RufRydyr]

Great idea. Wish I'd thought of it! I've been a big believer in arty for a while, tho some don't like it. I like to get the city down to size 12 or better yet 6 to reduce the defense and hurt the defenders. For the really big cities, nukes are so much fun!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Moonsinger: you're mean! And you could even consider abandoning the enemy towns if your outposts are better situated. No more Culture flips, and lots of instant slaves if you raze the newly captured

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
And you could even consider abandoning the enemy towns if your outposts are better situated. No more Culture flips, and lots of instant slaves if you raze the newly captured

I prefer to keep the enemy cities because they usually already built market, bank, courthouse, policestation, among many other improvement. Of course, my artilleries usually mis-fire and destroy most of those improvements, but most of the time, the bank or market does survive. Within 1 turn, I could start rushing settlers from those city to reduce foreign pops to size 1, there is no chance for those cities to flip. Of course, I use those foreign settlers to build more outposts. Because I usually build outposts by using foreign settlers, these outpost could also get flip too; therefore, it's best if I disband them and keep the cities instead.

PS: If I the liberated a town of size 5, I can rush 5 slave workers or 2 slave settlers and a slave worker. If I raze a town of size 5, I would get 1 slave worker. Therefore, I get a better deal by not razing it. And if I liberate a dozen cities of size 12 or above, I would have plenty of slave workers and slave settlers.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Moonsinger: I usually get more than 1 Worker from razing, unless the city is size 2. but aside from that: I'd also only raze if the old placement sucks (i.e. move it two tiles and you can build ironworks, or 6 cities all 1 tile away from the river

 

[Moonsinger]

I think the formula is 4 to 1. For example, if you raze a town of size 4 or below, you get zero worker, size 5 will give 1 worker, size 8 will give 2 workers, size 12 will give 3 workers, size 16 will give 4 workers, ... and so on. This doesn't include the workers that already in the city before the raze. And yes, location is everything; if a city is right on the grassland and there is a hill next to it, I would raze/disband it and rebuild it on the hill (because I don't like wasting grassland like that).

 

[Solver]

Gonna try it, good idea! Except that I will, to my invasion force, add a Transport with Settlers, and a Transport with Workers, just in case.

 

[Zouave]

Originally posted by Lawrence
Good strat!

And I found it dull to watch 100 artillery fire in one turn individually, so I always turn 'animate war' off when I use my stak of artilleries.

That reminds me. How come we don't have stack bombardment?
That sure would kill the tedium.

BUT, stack bombardment would be optional, as we would always want some artillery ready to utilize the new friendly roads to move quickly against the enemy.

 

[Richard III]

Fantastic article!! I first started reading and thought, bla, bla, bla, but then, suddenly - hey! WOW!

Good work.

Will use it tomorrow.

R.III

 

[MightyMac]

This maybe the breakthrough that I'll need to win the current world war that i'm in.

Thanks

 

[smallstepforman]

I dont like the idea of using a settler to build a temporary outpost. Big deal if my campaigns last 1-2 turns more per city, my democracy (with increasing luxury rate) can take it. It gives time for my cavalry to heal and reinforcements to arrive and settle in. I only use 20-30 artillery instead of 100 - think of the support costs.

After a while, I disband some artillery/cavalry to rush manufacture temples and courthouses, in order to minimise culture flip.

 

[ainwood]

One thing I'd add, is not only do you want to reduce the hitpoints of the defenders to 1, it is also a great benefit to reduce the city population - turn a metropolis into a city, or a city into a town to reduce the defensive bonus of the troops stationed there.

 

[Jon Shaw]

I'm no expert at civ3, but it does seem a little long winded maintaining all those artillery (as someone said above) and planning ahead (founding new cities- the settler has to crawl over enemy terriotory at one square per turn- an attacking cavalry unit could cover 3 squares per turn). If it is so difficult to kill an infantry unit with cavalry, I prefer to simply wait for tanks rather than massing huge armies of cavalry and artillery and planning complex campaigns turns ahead.

Also, I thought that if you built a settler with a foreign citizen the settler formed a new city with that same foreign citizen still. I havent checked this for several patches though.

However, to each his own!

 

[ainwood]

Even with a veteran tank against veteran infantry in a metropolis, the odds of the tank winning are only around 35%. If you bombard first to reduce the HPs down to 1, then the odds improve to 90%. If you can bombard the metropolis down to a city as well, then the odds improve to around 94%.

It also works for mech infantry too.