How to win Aircraft/Naval warfare on Deity

[Deau]

Hi guys, been a while I haven't played (~10 months) and i picked up GnK on friday and finding the changes quite enjoyable.

After a few games, I figured spying had a huge potential as a mean to overcome the deity gap so I went ahead and played with England. As I expected, I got to catch up to the best 2 civs tech-wise somewhere between turns 130-150 after 2 waves of succesful tech steals (so 4 techs). At the same time I was tearing Incans appart with longbows so the game appeared quite winnable.

Now as I get out of my war with the incans in around turns 190-200, I figure I'll go hit Polynesia who's my 2nd closest neighbor and likely my biggest leftover threat for a science victory/the other civ holding enough CSs to counter a diplo.

There is a carving bay inside the Pangaea seperating 2 allied CS and polys' major cities so I figure I'd make a ship of the line small float to help while I move my land units (rifles w/o much exp, bunch of gatlings with +1 range/march/blitz/3*terrain and 6-8 artillery).

My first issue is between travel and dodging the bay, I can't progress worth crap versus waves of Great War Bombers

My second issue is, by the time I get a decent float of Ship of the Line, I'm already teched for battleship and the upgrade cost is outrageous without honor yet Poly has submarines so my UU gets torn appart.

So I guess here are my various questions going w thread title

Is there a soft spot in the tech line where offensive warfare is guaranteed lost (aka impossible to progress due to aircraft spam)

Is it viable to opt into industrial/modern naval warfare without lots of older ships to upgrade/tons of gold at hand to do so/honor tree filled.

Can you somehow march towards an enemy city defended by Aircrafts before teching for anti-aircraft gun (and if so could you describe army setup).

I mean I understand not to expect to go 70 turns of warfare with hardly any loss as I got to do due to longbows but given I'm fighting at even tech with fairly well upgraded land units, it is really feeling as though there is nothing I can do to help myself against Poly's Air units and I am probably 30-35 turns away from building enough air units to put up with it.

 

[LostInTime]

double post, delete please

 

[LostInTime]

Is there a soft spot in the tech line where offensive warfare is guaranteed lost (aka impossible to progress due to aircraft spam)

Depends, if you expect to conquer with minimal losses, thats gone when the AI gets bombers. You will lose units unless you are blitz capable. (as England that means enough ships to wreck a city and capturing it with a caravel or something in 1 turn) Your mistake might have been not focusing on galleasses sooner, so you had a bunch of them reasonably upgraded and ready for the naval war.

Is it viable to opt into industrial/modern naval warfare without lots of older ships to upgrade/tons of gold at hand to do so/honor tree filled.

Well if you want to conquer, you can't go wrong with right side of honor tree. (don't bother with the left side, no matter how tempting it looks ) It's not impossible, but you will need a strat where you have high production cities and or lots of gold for buying ships fast when you get the appropriate tech.

Can you somehow march towards an enemy city defended by Aircrafts before teching for anti-aircraft gun (and if so could you describe army setup).

High strength is all you need. Triple drill or shock infantries do the job just fine and takes some time to kill. Riflemen seems too weak to do that though, but you might be able to if you have enough of them, and already have cleaned up most of the AI army from range.

There is a carving bay inside the Pangaea seperating 2 allied CS and polys' major cities so I figure I'd make a ship of the line small float to help while I move my land units (rifles w/o much exp, bunch of gatlings with +1 range/march/blitz/3*terrain and 6-8 artillery).

6-8 artillery AND ships of the line? Way too much ranged power. Get more backbone in your army. That amount of ranged is suitable for a two pronged attacked on the AI, and either way you need more basic infantry and stuff

Also going for artillery slows down your flight/infantry beeline, artillery is mostly just useful for a timing attack on a whole continent/pangaea, and going for the upper path as well (ships of the line) slows you down the artillery path as well. I would pick one of them, not both.

 

[Deau]

Well if you want to conquer, you can't go wrong with right side of honor tree. (don't bother with the left side, no matter how tempting it looks ) It's not impossible, but you will need a strat where you have high production cities and or lots of gold for buying ships fast when you get the appropriate tech.

The issue is I generally prefer an "open strat". On pangaea/deity, I don't really expect to never warfare but I generally don't shoot for domination victory from the start. Thus I generally either go 4 city tradition opener or "ICS style" liberty. As such, I won't have honor tree open. Or rather won't have 4 spare points to get the upgrade reduction feature.

But I guess I get your point. I should probably have considered that seeing how my game was going instead of opening rationnalism after I got 2 pts on left side of patronage.

Edit

Also with regards to the rest of your post. I guess having thrown in a SS of the map would've helped understand the numbers I depicted. there was only a 2 hex wide path to their city so I couldn't swarm with rifles or whatever the name of the 50 str melee one is(for which I got the tech as I was closing on their land, thus the lack of upgrade - although there were a few that ended up in the crew later on)

I mean I probably had 15 rifles/10 longbows leftover/12 2 range gatling/12 artillery that I could've spared for a multifront war(leaving at least 1 weak unit to defend every city)

But yeah I guess the bigger key would've been planning much farther ahead for honor and a 10 or so unit naval float to wreck their 2 coastal cities which were really the only cities I care for in their whole empire

 

[Deau]

Also, on a completely different topic

How do you handle the absurd gold sink created by AI spamming election rigs on all of your CSs.

I mean when Augustus (the other better civ) offered peace I figured I'd take it and take that change to spam sell lux/bribe him into war vs poly to get some distraction...but it ended up a bigger gold sink than gold gain just to how he kept turning my CSs over between spying and absurd riches.

Like to the point where it cost me more than the 8 or so different luxuries I could sell to him on a 30 turn basis.

 

[LostInTime]

Also, on a completely different topic

How do you handle the absurd gold sink created by AI spamming election rigs on all of your CSs.

I mean when Augustus (the other better civ) offered peace I figured I'd take it and take that change to spam sell lux/bribe him into war vs poly to get some distraction...but it ended up a bigger gold sink than gold gain just to how he kept turning my CSs over between spying and absurd riches.

Like to the point where it cost me more than the 8 or so different luxuries I could sell to him on a 30 turn basis.

I'm by no mean an expert on CS and diplo victory, (I kill them off when the flipping gets annoying) but I figured out an strat that worked when I needed to counter an AI diplo victory with more gold than me.

Find low influence CS (AI influence obviously), put a spy there and keep giving just enough for 80% coup success (look at the ally icon to see how much is needed), and keep flipping them. The AI will keep throwing gold at it, and you can reduce his stack somewhat doing this.

At the same time, select a few key CS that you flip, then pump loads of gold into (influence 150-200+). They should be safe from AI flipping then unless they have totally ridicilous amounts of gold.

Doing this, you should be able to get control somewhat over CS.

Also with regards to the rest of your post. I guess having thrown in a SS of the map would've helped understand the numbers I depicted. there was only a 2 hex wide path to their city so I couldn't swarm with rifles or whatever the name of the 50 str melee one is(for which I got the tech as I was closing on their land, thus the lack of upgrade - although there were a few that ended up in the crew later on)

I mean I probably had 15 rifles/10 longbows leftover/12 2 range gatling/12 artillery that I could've spared for a multifront war(leaving at least 1 weak unit to defend every city)

You don't swarm with rifles when you are behind on military tech. You use them to crush AI units caught in open terrain, and hold key squares and take city/bomber fire. Your ships/artillery/bombers will get the city down properly so you can take it with minimal losses.

If the city is too hard to take straight up, focus on other cities instead. (unless it is a key capital/wonder city or something, then you probably have to eat some losses)