How to use artillery effectively...

[Neomega]

Unless you use this strategy, how do you be able to get close enough to capture my 200 artilleries.

You will be in my cultural area, and only have a ring of one around the cities you just captured from me. Tanks and cavalry and artillery will be able to reach my old cities just fine.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Neomega
You will be in my cultural area, and only have a ring of one around the cities you just captured from me. Tanks and cavalry and artillery will be able to reach my old cities just fine.

You are dreaming. Do you think that I'm stupid enough to leave your roads intact? As I said before, it would be impossible for your tank and infantry to recapture your old city. Unless you use the settler, your intantries and tanks are useless. That would leave you with only cavalries, cavalries without artillery support won't be able to over come the infantry defenders.

 

[Neomega]

Interesting you have so much confidence, having never played an opponent that knew how to use artillery offensively. I guess letting a settler cross my border and live a turn would be my first mistake.

 

[Moonsinger]

Originally posted by Neomega
Interesting you have so much confidence, having never played an opponent that knew how to use artillery offensively. I guess letting a settler cross my border and live a turn would be my first mistake.

I don't know about the confidence thing, but I think it would be best for me to kill any settler that's trying to cross into my border. Otherwise, there is a good chance that my city will be completedly destroyed during the next turn. I think my stack of artilleries would come in handy for destroying any settler that's trying to cross into my border. That's the only way (I have come up so far) to counteract this strategy.

PS: Why do we need artillery to destroy a settler? Because that settler may be protected by a stack of infantries or something.

 

[jshelr]

The use of a Settler in attack mode is very effective in a number of ways. Lots of times you get stuck not being able to reach another AI city during a blitz when you have lots of tanks or MA left. Use the Settler to extend your border one tile and then continue your blitz. Same principle as the bombard idea featured here. Sometimes you can pick up immediate access to a lux or strategic resource via "Settler Capture" even before you have conquered the city that now controls the resource. Let your imagination run with this a bit. I think the power of the Settler to define who owns what is underused.

Every time you abandon a captured town you should consider moving the replacement settler away from the original city tile to a spot that is more useful from the war's point of view.

 

[Neomega]

it's not under used.... it's shady, and not in the spirit of the game.

 

[bbaws]

I've already posted about this before elsewhere. There is absolutely no need to have your settlers wasting time wandering about in enemy territory. Build outpost one on the border to make a salient. moce one or two settlers into the newly acquired territory. Disband the outpost and voila your settler(s) are standing in enemy territory without having expended a movement point, found another base and repeat until you have a corridor running through enemy land. This is most effective if you have a good culture lead over the opponent as you tend to get a 3x3 square no matter what. Doing it this way lets it all happen in the turn war breaks out.

 

[bbaws]

Spirit of the game my ass. War is not honourable you use every low down dirty trick you can find. This is just a way of capturing enemy railroads for your use, the fact that it happens to be implemented through settlers is irrelevant. Is it in the spirrit of the game to move workers with your carapults and cannon to build forts against that enemy cities walls? Or perhaps that just hadn't occurred to you either.

 

[Neomega]

Please. Name one instance in history where some settlers have captured 900 square miles of territory in a year, without so much as using a tank. Don't insult my intelligence, I have heard of the Army Corps of Engineers. Using slaves or workers to hastily erect fortresses, roads, pontoon bridges has been used many many times in history, and I see it as completely fair. Settlers in reality aren't supposed to be part of the "WAR" side of the game. It is against the spirit of the game. I agree that there are no rules to war, but wake up, this is a GAME... and it would be nothing without rules. But before you address this post again.... answer the question I presented you....
NAME ONE INSTANCE IN HISTORY WHERE A GROUP OF SETTLERS HAVE COME IN AND TAKEN 900 SQUARE MILES OF SETTLED, DEVELOPED LAND IN ONE YEAR WITHOUT A FIGHT. The spirit of this game is history.

 

[bbaws]

Hmm you really are a dufus aren't you. Name one instance in history where a bunch of people got together to found a new city without taking along any weapons for attack or defense. Not only that these people were too thick to use the tools for founding a new city as weapons when they were jumped. The whole point of this use of settlers is that you have already got the capacity to bombard your opponent into the stone age, so what is stopping your settlers?
As you say it is a game. Use your imagination, that's how I came up with the tactic in the first place.

 

[Neomega]

Boy... I told you what to do and you didn't do it, maybe its the pompous brit in you, so turn your nose down to read the screen, and I know it's hard because it is written in American English, but I'll try and put it in words you understand:

In history, (that is what we call written records of events that have happened in the past, (you following me student?)), name an instance, where a country, and since this discussion is about artillery and railrads, we'll discuss industrialized nations, (you lost yet little boy?) used a group of settlers, (these may also be known as defenseless civilians (note the 0 attack and defense in the civ III rules) opened up an offensive by siezing the railroads, roads, and farms of a hostile, (the way you are reacting to a critique of an exploit you seem to think of as genius and your own creation) nation so the Armies of their motherland could march through quicker.

Now listen up child, don't answer my question with another question. Answer it with simply a name of two nations, and the date of which time this occured.

If you choose to answer me with a question or insults, I shall simply no longer let you drink from the vast wealth of my knowledge, and treat all you have to say as the rantings of a very angry little boy. And believe me, I am laughing already.

 

[bbaws]

The clear point being that while the prime function of sttlers may be to found productive population centres, they also have a secondary function as a base for military units from which they can control surrounding territory. Every logistical tail of every army in history has HAD to control the territory that it passes through. THe fact that the only way to implement this in civ3 is through settlers is lost on you as you don't seem to be able to get past the nomenclature.
They SETTLE the land thus giving you control of it, they act as a nexus of transport and trade. I never claimed to be the sole or original user or discoverer of this use for settlers. As for insults you seem to be doing a good job confirming your blinkered limitations.

 

[Neomega]

Answer it with simply a name of two nations, and the date of which time this occured.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Since when did assaulting troops not use existing roads? If the road exists and your General is too stuck up to use cause it's not in the spirit of war, well you can be sure your General missed a class or two before his patronage appointment.

 

[Neomega]

And what about railroads? The south had different gauges than the North during the civil war. Genrals avoid roads until the territory is already conquered. If a General were to use roads in hostile territory he would be a sitting duck. Remember Lexington and concord? There were some Generals who thought they could use enemy roads. If only they had some SETTLERS to build outposts along the way first, then British culture would have prevailed, no resistance would be met along the roads, no scouts would be hovering around to report their movement.... Why didn't they think of that? In fact, why didn't the Germans just send in a settler before they crossed the Ukraine? Could've saved a whole lot of pain and agony. In fact, Blitzkrieg, HAH, Hitler was a fool, he wasted his time building tanks, he should have built SETTLERS, and had them just build culture pockets towards Moscow, THEN attack Moscow itself!!! It would've worked all in less than a year too, No resistance along the way no nothing, in fact, Silly Stalin would probably be foolish enough to have his borders defended, and leaving very little in actual Moscow. Forget all that storming through Poland nonsense, why waste his time.

In fact, I think Ill post a thread, how to take the AI capital with 15 settlers, 10 artillery and 6 cavalry every time.



Let me put it this way, in MP, if I ever catch anybody settler border expanding during a game, I'll quit right there, and never play them again. What is the point of having borders if someone with five settlers can walk his happy donkey straight to your capital without resistance along the way? This is an exploit, it is not how the settler was intended to be used, and if Firaxis could stop it, I am sure they would except that would basically mean scrapping the entire culture border/expansion aspect of the game, which is one of the neatest new aspects of the game.

I understand the WAR is hell concept, I am an avid Total Annihilation player, and I never play with "rules", however, this game is different, and the culture expansion was not intended to be used as a way to build a tunnel to your enemies capital..... why even have roads in enemy territory be unusable?

 

[bbaws]

Aww diddums.
I'm sure Firaxis will change the rules just so you can win every time you grace the mp community with your august presence.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

Ahh, the "You built a city where I don't like, so I quit!" defense, yep, that's how war works.

What about "You attacked me before I was ready, so I quit!",
or "Wait, I thought you were going to attack where I had prepared my defenses."
yes MP will be fraught with this type of behavior and in the end will prove that the AI is superior to alot of those types of players when trying to play a "game".

Glad you brought up "Blitzkrieg", I didn't have the heart to mention it but in MP maybe just getting that far into the game without quitting will be reward enough for some. Of course that's if they aren't all ready on the "Whiners and Quitters" list.

 

[Cartouche Bee]

One more note about "Settlers", the unit defies it's "union classification". In Civ2 these units were called "Engineers" in the later part of the game. Instead of focusing on the name of the unit, focus on what it does. Some may even refer to these as "Specials Operations" later in the game, since there function clearly allow them to secure an area for military/domestic operations.

 

[Neomega]

Aww diddums.
I'm sure Firaxis will change the rules just so you can win every time you grace the mp community with your august presence.


And how would you settler rushing losers manage to play if they did? Do you have any real skills?

 

[Neomega]

In Civ2 these units were called "Engineers" in the later part of the game.

There were no culture boundaries in civ II, so bringing it into this discussion is irrelevant.