I found this combination of units pretty reliable when taking cities in war.

[Immortal Ace]

8 Modern Armor all with city attack promotion 1 & 2
8 Gunships all with drill promotion 1 & 2
8 Sam Infantry all with combat promotion 1 & 2
8 Artillery with collateral damage 1 & 2
8 Marines with combat 1 and the promotion that gives +25% against gunpowder unites.

That's a stack of 40 and I usually have 3-4 stacks identical to this. Note, this is my offensive force only. I have a whole army set as my city defenders and another to patrol my borders.

How would you all rate this stack and how could I improve?

 

[DigitalBoy]

8 Modern Armor all with city attack promotion 1 & 2
8 Gunships all with drill promotion 1 & 2
8 Sam Infantry all with combat promotion 1 & 2
8 Artillery with collateral damage 1 & 2
8 Marines with combat 1 and the promotion that gives +25% against gunpowder unites.

That's a stack of 40 and I usually have 3-4 stacks identical to this. Note, this is my offensive force only. I have a whole army set as my city defenders and another to patrol my borders.

How would you all rate this stack and how could I improve?

I don't understand why you have marines and SAM infantry in there at all. Wouldn't mechanized infantry be far better? Maybe a few SAMs just for the higher intercept chance, but eight?

 

[Harbourboy]

I should very hope that a stack of 40 would be "pretty reliable"! I have never used a stack that big.

How could you improve? Maybe by tailoring your stack to the forces you are likely to encounter, rather than having exactly the same one every time.

 

[axident]

That's a solid stack, but if you have armor, you probably have flight, right? Bombers can act as fast artillery, so your armor can go Drill-crazy and you can keep reusing them until they have godlike xp and godlike Drill + Combat stats. Plus you can airlift slow-moving reinforcements to the front lines with airports.

In defense of the OP's unit selection, the best defensive unit(s) available, whether mech inf or SAM + marines or whatever, are just whatever you have on hand. Sometimes you just haven't gotten to mech inf, in which case marines + SAM inf isn't that bad--and SAM inf even gets bonuses against enemy gunships and air units that are better than mech inf. I'll say one thing about mech inf though--get it ASAP, because until you do, you're going to be limited in speed; nothing defensive other than mech inf can keep up with a fighter/bomber/armor combo.

 

[Idlenessss]

That stack is unreasonably huge and expensive. I usually go with something like 1 tank city raider 2 and collatoral 2, 1 tank strength 3 bonus vs armor , infantry with heal 2 and maybe 1 gunship with extra vision and varied number of weakling cannon fodder artillery that is always replaced. This is totally sufficient for most situation. If he can bomb you then maybe throw in a SAM infantry, but just 1.

 

[Elrohir]

Why not just a modern armor and mech infantry stack with air support? You'll tear through the enemies land like lightning. Just bring up bombers to keep the cultural defense down and the defenders wounded, and garrison troops to keep the cities after you take them. Blitzkrieg is the way to go in the modern era.

 

[cabert]

I found a stack of 6 axemen (or 5 axemen and 1 spearman) to be pretty reliable.

I also found a stack of 8 catapults, 2 or 3 macemen, 1 spear to be pretty reliable.

 

[Solver]

What level is it at?

If you have 3 stacks of 40 units, there's something wrong going on. And rigid stack composition isn't good, it's better to look at what forces the enemy has. Finally, you don't really need a "whole army" as city defenders. The only cities which really need up-to-date defenders are your outer cities, and 1 or 2 defenders will be enough there. In the late-game, with railroads, what you really need for defense is just one mobile response force that you send to whereever needed in case of an attack.

 

[Stolen Rutters]

Wow, huge stack! Reliable... I can see why!

It's a pretty well balanced attack stack, definitely... especially if going in blind after an established enemy (i.e., didn't spy out their defenses ahead of time).

I agree with axident that using a small advance force of bombers pounding on city defenses will help reduce the need for a stack that large on most maps.

It depends on the situation how you would improve this stack. First off, I normally play at Emperor standard size map, normal game speed, so this stack is serious overkill in most of my games. There are a couple ways to get by without needing so many units.

To get by with a smaller army, use spies before the attack to identify their main unit strength and rebalance to defeat that (maybe they have no counterattacker units nearby, so you won't need as many drill gunships for example). Use bombers against the cultural defense, so the artillery can do their work weakening units right away instead of spending an extra turn at the entrance to the city. The more time you give them to reinforce, the larger your army needs to be so take the city.

Well, that's all I have. Until you get mech inf, those are the units you need to work with, I guess.

 

[Naismith]

I haven't gotten that late in many games. But when I do, it's bombers, bombers, and more bombers. Any artillery I have is obsolete, and is used to occupy the cities I take. Same with infantry, marines, or anything else that doesn't have a movement > 1.

I pretty much agree with everything axident says.

 

[slowcar]

I found a stack of 6 axemen to be pretty reliable.

until you play warlords that's true
i'd take the one with 1-2 spears in it, they make good medics, too.

my favorite is elephant+shock-mace. Get two or three of them on pillaging mission

and on OPs topic: modern warfare without air units is not recommended.

 

[Barney's_Soul]

8 Modern Armor all with city attack promotion 1 & 2
8 Gunships all with drill promotion 1 & 2
8 Sam Infantry all with combat promotion 1 & 2
8 Artillery with collateral damage 1 & 2
8 Marines with combat 1 and the promotion that gives +25% against gunpowder unites.

That's a stack of 40 and I usually have 3-4 stacks identical to this. Note, this is my offensive force only. I have a whole army set as my city defenders and another to patrol my borders.

How would you all rate this stack and how could I improve?

Sounds powerful, but what do you do until you have access to all those units?

...



You don't need that many unless your opponent is some crazy AI.

 

[bardolph]

For modern-era wars, I usually have a single stack of 10-20 drill-promoted armor, and a handful of gunships for pillaging and to counter enemy gunships.

Everything else is air. Use fighters to counter enemy fighters, and bombers to destroy city defenses and for collateral damage.

After conquering a city, I'll airlift more armor into that city while damaged units heal, then I'll airlift 1-2 gunpowder units in to garrison when the armor is ready to move on.

Damaged planes will rest and heal (though it's not always necessary to heal your air units!). Undamaged air units re-stage to the conquered city (when necessary).

Units with 1 move (infantry, SAM, marines, and artillery) are just too slow to keep up with the blitzkrieg, unless they're on boats. Otherwise, they're only good for city garrison duty.

If I've gotten to Mechanized Infantry, the mech infantry can keep up and are also great counters to gunships. The march ability also lets them heal on the move, so they can often beat armor to the front. However, I'm not waiting for Robotics before declaring my first modern-era war. I'm usually doing it as soon as I have a few airports up.

Using this strategy, I can usually conquer a civilization with almost no losses (assuming I have air superiority). It's amazing how fast this happens. Basically, it's one city every 3-4 turns if you don't split your stack; faster if you do.

Without air superiority, I'd expect some losses in the air, and city bombardments can certainly take longer. I might even get a chance to use artillery in this scenario, but it hasn't happened in any of my games yet. I've actually found artillery to be a near-useless unit, but that's usually because I don't tend to fight industrial-era wars without planes.

You can even take out civs on distant continents using this strategy, since you can rely on airlifts to replace your losses once you take your first city. Only problem is, you can only airlift 1 unit in per turn, so if your victim can launch a strong enough counter-attack to repulse you within a couple of turns, your attack is over.

One strategy I've considered is to bring a settler as part of your offensive force. Then you can raze/settle/rush-buy an airport, and poof! Unlimited airlifts on the other side of the world!

 

[axident]

until you play warlords that's true
i'd take the one with 1-2 spears in it, they make good medics, too.

my favorite is elephant+shock-mace. Get two or three of them on pillaging mission

and on OPs topic: modern warfare without air units is not recommended.

By the way, what happens if you have NO OIL? I recently finished a Monarch game I had where I had NO OIL = no tanks, no modern armor, no fighters, no bombers, and not even destroyers/battleships until I finally backtracked and researched Fission. I was going to jump the Goliath of the map--my neighbor Mansa Musa--with a huge cannon-based army, but 2 other guys declared war on me and stalled me so much that I figured I'd just beeline for mech inf and build a huge quantity of artillery in the meantime.

Despite having no oil, I won, not with the stack of the OP or even my preferred modern-era armor/fighter/bomber/mech inf rush with airlift support... but with a MASSIVE amount of artillery and mech inf, the 2 best units I could build without oil, and airlifting reinforcements in ASAP after each city conquest. I also had some great generals from my initial early wars which I put to work as military academies at my Red Cross/Heroic Epic combo and West Pt/Ironworks combo. The extra +2 xp isn't worth the quantity of artillery spam that you give up by using a general as an instructor, especially if you already have the Pentagon. Good thing I was right next to the Goliath of that game, though; if I had been overseas or a lot farther away, I'd have gone for a space race victory.

So if you ever find yourself without oil and unable to make a more balanced attack stack, I'd recommend artillery + whatever defensive unit you can build instead.

 

[bardolph]

No oil? That's rough. I'd set my priority on either getting oil ASAP, or just sitting tight and hoping for space/cultural/diplo win.

 

[Fuzzz]

my favorite is elephant+shock-mace. Get two or three of them on pillaging mission

You're first one I see on CFC who also favors War Elephants. I like to combine +- 5 of those trampling elephants, 1 medic axeman, +-5 horsearchers (just to be sure, or for pillaging), and a whole lot of catapults (some to knock the defenses down, the replaceables for collateral dammage) and then rampage into enemy territory.

 

[Storminator]

I've been playing Tokugawa, and I'm loving stacks of Grenadiers with CR3 (with cats). O!M!G!

PS

 

[svv]

In a slightly earlier era, I like a few grenediers mixed with a lot cannon. Add a pikeman or two to fight off the cavalry, and maybe a cavalry or two to fight off grenediers (though I often won't bother with the tech for a while unless I'm the Russians). Add a couple machine guns when you get that. I typically don't bother with riflemen or infantry.

The cannon are both the siege weapons, and the main attackers. Fix 'em up with as many city raider promotions you can. The ones that just bombarded the last city (and are therefore undamaged) can go forward and start on the next city.

 

[axident]

No oil? That's rough. I'd set my priority on either getting oil ASAP, or just sitting tight and hoping for space/cultural/diplo win.

All of the oil was either far, far away in the heart of the other continent, or deep in the heart of the enemy at my doorstep, or on offshore platforms.. I had not a drop of oil within a dozen squares of my borders, except some guy's offshore platform. I did have the entire world's supply of coal, though. But yeah, if I weren't right next to my big nemesis so that I could blow him away with 2 stacks of 35 artillery each + some cover/support, then I'd try for a space victory.

 

[Nikis-Knight]

Mech infantry don't require oil? hm, I thought they did. I guess those are solar powered humvees.