Intercontinental Astronomy Warfare

[TheMeInTeam]

I've always thought this to be borderline impossible, but I'm starting to rethink it, especially for charismatic leaders and ragnar in particular.

The concept would be to grab a beachhead that you can actually hold. The way to do this would be to hit a relatively lightly defended city with amphibious troops, then hold it with longbows/other garrison garbage. The easiest way to get the requisite experience (3 promos) would be on mounted troops. Barracks + Stable + vassalage + theo = 9 xp, which is fine for charismatic even without GG's (even one GG would allow any civ to do this, as only some of the army need be amphibious).

Frigates bombard culture D (the target city will probably not be extremely heavy on this, or chances are taking it with just mounted might be a tad costly). Once you've downed that, attack with combat 2 amphibious mounted troops (HA, knights, or even cavalry). The rest of your stuff will be some powerful garrison troops and normal offensive military. In #'s, this should be pretty effective, and combat II mounted units aren't exactly terrible for the ensuing land campaign either (especially elephants or knights).

This seems to make intercontinental warfare, while not ideal, at least possible at Astronomy. Of course, if you're ragnar just load up on city raider II or III berserkers and laugh your way to coastal dominance.

I can think of several games where I held of attacking across continents in the middle ages, and I think I kind of blew it there. As well as I do in some areas...it's only in the past 3-4 days that I discovered that amphibious comse after combat II, or that planes are not only good but essentially replace siege .

What do you all think? Do you engage in intercontinental campaigns prior to modern units?

 

[BalbanesBeoulve]

Any aggressive leader can easily get amphibious troops. Start with combat 1, barracks is combat 2, theo or vassalage is amphibious.



And no, i never bother attacking other continents before combustion, and i usually wait for industrialism and flight before i do it. Flight is vital to keep sending reinforcements to the front lines. and tanks and bombers make taking the inland cities too easy.

 

[Catan_Settler]

I don't often go for whole hog intercontinental wars with slow moving galleons and frigates, but they can be useful for punitive raids to put an AI down if it starts running away with a score or tech lead. Unless the other continent is fairly close that is, but generally ships are too slow to really sustain a full on land war overseas. Transports make it close to possible but not quite until Airports can you really sustain a real bloodbath overseas. I love the age of sail though, so I usually use it to pick off enemy cities on remote islands, or just go in and raze the city with apostollic palace. Usually overseas wars at this point in the game are just trying to maintain my score and tech position, not for outright domination... Unless, like I said, their continent is 2-3 turns of ship travel away. Then you can do it, with a crapload of galleons.

 

[OTAKUjbski]

And no, i never bother attacking other continents before combustion, and i usually wait for industrialism and flight before i do it. Flight is vital to keep sending reinforcements to the front lines. and tanks and bombers make taking the inland cities too easy.

QFT.

Galleons and Frigates are great for getting onto the beach head ... but everything after that is hell.

You really need a LOT of Galleons and Frigates (that gets really expensive really quick) to maintain an 'Astronomical' overseas war.

The exception, I guess, is an Archipelago or small islands map, where the majority of target cities are coastal.

 

[VenomKnight]

If you are not looking to wipe an AI out completely but just to knock em down for awhile would it not be best to use hit and run tactics?Take the city and raze.Wait for their stack of doom to get close to yours then load up ur galleons and head to the opposite side of the island(or have another fleet waiting) and repeat while their army cant protect the cities.Raze all their costal cities and boom you have taken a good portion of their trade out and really hurt their research especially if its fractal map with 2 or 3 continents.Granted they will rebuild but rebuilding 4-7 cities on a continent will slow them up.I like the age of sail also so this would be best time to use such a tactic but ofcourse if one of those coastal cities has a wonder u want then i guess you are sol.

 

[Hammurbabble]

There's a simpler way, if you're actually in the position of wanting to mount an intercontinental invasion that soon. Use a little diplomacy and get OB with your victim's neighbor. Then you can peacefully transport a whole lot of troops over there in multiple trips, and mount an invasion across the normal border. For resupply, just keep the boats running, and drop your replacements off in your friend's territory.

I almost never want to do that, not because it's too difficult, but because there are closer military targets that are more tempting. But I don't see why it couldn't be done if you really want to.

 

[Catan_Settler]

You can also use an unsettled island of the enemy's coast for stockpiling troops. This has the effect that the first wave or two of reinforcements can get there quick, but is still usually not enough to support a sustained slugfest on another continent. But say if you want to destroy the Apostollic Palace and it's not on the coast, you'll need to grab a coastal city, heal up, land the reinforcements then push towards that city with a decent stack. Sometimes you see an island that's perfect for such a use, other times not. The main thing is its just damn tough to get the numbers you need to seriously challenge someone on their own continent, when you're shipping yours halfway around the world at 5 moves per turn. Open borders and allies are also good for this, but I'd be worried that I'm "declaring war on their friend" and they'd cancel their open borders, sending my stack from their territory to god knows where. I know the first thing I do when I see I'm being attacked through a 3rd party's land is demand they stop all trade agreements. Their troops getting punted out of my neighbour's land will buy me quite a bit of time, if not make the invasion totally impossible, depending on the geography.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I dunno...I've staged wars where the reinforcements needed were minimal indeed. Now granted, to ransack an enemy civ using only galleons as transports, I'd probably have to have 15 galleons or so, which isn't exactly cheap. However, this occasionally has the potential to end the game outright (even if I have to wind up shoving rifles onto those things), which is why I'm asking. I've done this successfully once without amphibious...it basically amounted to a DoW, landing a stack of like 40 units in enemy territory with a slight tech lead, and then blowing away their SoD and half their cities before they could get any functional military production of new units to oppose it. That was, annoyingly, my first attempt at a Prince domination victory a little over a month ago. I certainly took that entire continent, but miscalculated the land. I was literally .4% land short (I like how the game arbitrarily raises the winning % requirements over time?!), and was too backward to get (and hold) a beachhead on the new enemy land, which included a triple defensive pacted coalition of budhists.

IMO, a galleon based invasion is very situational, but if crushing that one civ means victory...Well, you better hope you figured out land % right!

 

[DragonHawk]

You are forgetting spies to drop the defenses of the beachhead cities. Naval (any for that matter) bombardment takes too much time. Bring siege for suicide attacks to soften up defenders (i.e. negate the "Attack from sea" penalty)

So for any over-ocean invasion, I usually:
1. Get an idea of a beach head, preferablly lightly defended city on a hill
2. Send a couple of spies ahead of your invading force / while building invading force and have them settled in the beachhead city (for mission discounts)
3. Get a mix of troops in galleon. Mainly attackers (mace, knights). Have at least 3 siege in the initial wave for suicide attacks.
4. On D-Day, have the spy do city revolt mission
5. Suicide sieges
6. Attack and take over city
7. fortify CG defenders in newly conquered city
8. Galleons return to pick up 2nd wave of attack
9. Troops defend against SOD as needed
10. Conquer more cities
11. Repeat step 8-10 until you are done or bored

What do you think ?

 

[TheMeInTeam]

You are forgetting spies to drop the defenses of the beachhead cities. Naval (any for that matter) bombardment takes too much time. Bring siege for suicide attacks to soften up defenders (i.e. negate the "Attack from sea" penalty)

So for any over-ocean invasion, I usually:
1. Get an idea of a beach head, preferablly lightly defended city on a hill
2. Send a couple of spies ahead of your invading force / while building invading force and have them settled in the beachhead city (for mission discounts)
3. Get a mix of troops in galleon. Mainly attackers (mace, knights). Have at least 3 siege in the initial wave for suicide attacks.
4. On D-Day, have the spy do city revolt mission
5. Suicide sieges
6. Attack and take over city
7. fortify CG defenders in newly conquered city
8. Galleons return to pick up 2nd wave of attack
9. Troops defend against SOD as needed
10. Conquer more cities
11. Repeat step 8-10 until you are done or bored

What do you think ?

I think I need to buy BTS soon.

 

[J4Ck]

Thats the spirit Dragonhawk
.. but i think they ruined the game with this "city revolt" spy mission in BtS.

 

[Catan_Settler]

See I find if you're already in a tech lead, you may as well hold out for destroyers and transports. The only time it's really *necessary* to go to war with sailing ships is when you're behind in techs, and need to put the brakes on the tech leader. In my experience if someone has a good 4-5 tech lead on you now, they will be up by 10 or more techs in 100-200 years, which means hitting them as early as possible is your only chance. A recent game I played as the Ottomans I was in exactly this situation, but I was so backwards I was hitting Mansa Musa and his Riflemen with Jannisaries, and meanwhile my spies told me he was already researching assembly line! His navy was destroyers and transports vs my Galleons and Frigates. Through the course of the war I was losing galleons and frigates left and right to his destroyers, but eventually through some espionage and tech trading I managed to get physics and the airships helped a little, as did Steel and Grenadiers. I wasn't able to pull the score lead as the Persians were also ahead of me, but with some careful island hopping I managed to knock the Malinese back down to 3rd place, and extort several techs from them. The main benefit of this war, as my spies revealed, was that simply being at war slowed down his tech rate significantly. It was a pretty ugly little war though, let me tell you... Being on the receiving end of destroyers vs wooden ships, infantry vs muskets & grens and by the end of it he was sending fighters after my stacks of airships. Well it's quite a different thing than the usual steamrolling that occurs in most games, where I'm able to get a solid tech lead and crush the AIs with superior troops. Now I was overwhelming the AI with swarms of glorified cannon fodder. It was pretty funny seeing all these blimps attacking destroyers, carefully planning my fleet movements to always end turns in ports. If my ships had a longer trip to make to the next target, I'd have to load the stack up with suicide frigates for the express purpose of "taking one for the team" so the loaded galleons could get to the next island and unload their cargo. It was an interesting challenge to be sure, as normally I just give up if I get so far behind.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

See I find if you're already in a tech lead, you may as well hold out for destroyers and transports. The only time it's really *necessary* to go to war with sailing ships is when you're behind in techs, and need to put the brakes on the tech leader. In my experience if someone has a good 4-5 tech lead on you now, they will be up by 10 or more techs in 100-200 years, which means hitting them as early as possible is your only chance. A recent game I played as the Ottomans I was in exactly this situation, but I was so backwards I was hitting Mansa Musa and his Riflemen with Jannisaries, and meanwhile my spies told me he was already researching assembly line! His navy was destroyers and transports vs my Galleons and Frigates. Through the course of the war I was losing galleons and frigates left and right to his destroyers, but eventually through some espionage and tech trading I managed to get physics and the airships helped a little, as did Steel and Grenadiers. I wasn't able to pull the score lead as the Persians were also ahead of me, but with some careful island hopping I managed to knock the Malinese back down to 3rd place, and extort several techs from them. The main benefit of this war, as my spies revealed, was that simply being at war slowed down his tech rate significantly. It was a pretty ugly little war though, let me tell you... Being on the receiving end of destroyers vs wooden ships, infantry vs muskets & grens and by the end of it he was sending fighters after my stacks of airships. Well it's quite a different thing than the usual steamrolling that occurs in most games, where I'm able to get a solid tech lead and crush the AIs with superior troops. Now I was overwhelming the AI with swarms of glorified cannon fodder. It was pretty funny seeing all these blimps attacking destroyers, carefully planning my fleet movements to always end turns in ports. If my ships had a longer trip to make to the next target, I'd have to load the stack up with suicide frigates for the express purpose of "taking one for the team" so the loaded galleons could get to the next island and unload their cargo. It was an interesting challenge to be sure, as normally I just give up if I get so far behind.

That's a huge tech deficit. I didn't even think winning that way was possible. Doesn't WW kind of cramp your style that way? I try to fight at parity at least.

I've quit some games that maybe were winnable, considering you won like that. Kudos. Also, frigates "taking one for the team" is pretty comical .

I almost always beat monty, but man, does he have #'s. I thought rifles would walk all over knights, and yet when there's like 30 knights floating around...!

 

[UncleJJ]

Intercontinental warfare with galleons is great fun and very profitable. It does depend on the opponents and their diplomatic situation. I combine it with privateers and frigates for naval superiority. Here are a few tips I have discovered.

Galleons are nearly as good as transports for lifting and transporting an army. Basically they move 4 versus 5 tiles and carry 3 versus 4 units, which really is not that different considering they become available much earlier. A transport costs 125 hammers and a galleon only 80 so they're very comparable in terms of their cost to carry troops. It is possible to increase the speed by +1 by winning the circumnavigation race (high priority for this strategy), upto +2 with navigation promotions (needs 10 exp = Drydock and +6 from GG and civics) and a further +1 with the Refrigeration tech. In my current game some of my galleons can move 8 tiles since I have Refrigeration (I've held off on Combustion to keep the whale resource for a bit longer) and all of them move 6.

If you want to gain a few cities on the other continent and they are fighting among themselves, choose one side and get open borders with them. Then send some troops across and build up a decent SoD on friendly territory. It might take several trips with your galleons. Then declare war and capture a few coastal cities using your SoD and make peace. Now you have your own bridgehead on the other continent without the problems of amphibious assault (50% penalty) or of a massed counterattack.

Have to go now, more to follow:

 

[gsfgf]

I do this all the time. You just have to be friends with a neighbor. In fact, it's really easy if you get your friend to DOW on the target civ.
1. Build army and navy
2. Get friend to start war
3. Friend fights while you sail
4. Target SOD destroyed, friend loses cities which you can then take
5. Profit

 

[NintendoTogepi]

I hate intercontinental warfare.

It's so troublesome and difficult.

I've never won a intercontinental war...

 

[Catan_Settler]

That's a huge tech deficit. I didn't even think winning that way was possible. Doesn't WW kind of cramp your style that way? I try to fight at parity at least.

I've quit some games that maybe were winnable, considering you won like that. Kudos. Also, frigates "taking one for the team" is pretty comical .

I almost always beat monty, but man, does he have #'s. I thought rifles would walk all over knights, and yet when there's like 30 knights floating around...!

Yeah I've found that being behind in tech definitely does not mean the game is over yet, all you need to do is pick on someone who's ahead of you to the point that they start caving in and giving you techs to make you stop hitting them. Take the 10 turn peace treaty and get ready for another big island hop, hit them again, burn a few more cities down, take another peace treaty. In this particular war I made 3 "false" peace treaties with Mansa, as it was the only way to keep some of my ships alive to make the hop to the next island. And of course with casualties like that it took quite a bit of work keeping the numbers up. But yeah, it made me realize quantity can in fact overwhelm quality... 12 cannons + 12 rifles vs 6 infantry, the 24 units win every time. Of course there is only 8 of them left for the next city, but that's where the naval combat gets interesting... You've got to ensure its frigates getting sunk, not full galleons, so you figure out paths you can take where the galleons can end their turn in a port, or just count up how many destroyers are in the region and that's your "frigate buffer" count... He has 3 destroyers in this area, so I need 6 frigates with the galleons if they will spend 2 turns in the open. I guess it was a little tedious making it all come together, but highly educational. I won't be afraid of tech leaders nearly so much in future.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I hate intercontinental warfare.

It's so troublesome and difficult.

I've never won a intercontinental war...

I find it difficult with just astro...especially after switching to BTS and getting smack down on monarch repeatedly...but once you hit modern times it's not bad at all. Battleships just crush culture D, and marines can then attack straight off the transport (as I learned recently, carriers with fighters can definitely soften naval base D with collateral). This can lead to some very FAST city captures, and you fear much less retaliation than in earlier times against your own land (basically park defense on your seafood resources, and if they're promoted the AI will struggle to hurt you at all). All you really need though, is a mass of transports + marines, and enough escorts to protect them. Well-promoted marines can beat infantry, though I suggest some CG infantry of your own once you land. This gets really easy and ugly if you find some hapless idiot with rifles though .

Looks like for Astro warfare the easiest route is through an ally...which in most cases will work for me!

 

[Ian Kognitow]

I routinely plan my second major war (or even first if options for ancient/classical war were limited) with getting astronomy and the success of that war is usually the one that creates a solid lead toward victory. This does generally have some major assumptions:

(1) I typically play on Nobel so I'm not quite sure how well this would all work at higher levels. While I have won victories at higher levels, the reason I prefer nobel is that while I'm fine with health and happiness penalties and AI prod. bonuses, I absolutely hate the AI getting free upgrades. And that would be a definite problem in this scenario as far as it requiring a long-term war plan.

(1) that astronomy is obtained first, or at least that the civ being attacked doesn't have it. Besides Galleons being able to defend themselves, assuming Frigates cannot yet be built, the enemy obviously can't carry troops across the same space and mount some sneaky counteroffensive in home territory.

(2) That the invasion is planned well in advance of actually getting astronomy in the first place and that it is planned as an offensive war, quite possibly against a previous friend or of the same religion. To whatever extent possible galleys should be assembled and cash generated so they can be upgraded immediately with the tech discovery so that not as many new galleons need to be waited on/whipped out.

Now as far as establishing a beachhead, my primary tactic is actually to aim for two beachheads. Assuming that boats are sailed in advance just beyond cultural borders, it's likely that a sneak attack will find a typical city (without a long history of war) with maybe about two longbowmen (with some upgrading) as its best defenders, with maybe some knights/macemen thrown in. Muskets would obviously be harder but not prohibitively if one is also bringing muskets/knights/CR maces. So:

1) look for two relatively undefended coastal cities, with strong preference for at least one to not have walls and that they not be on hills. I don't see the necessity of going amphibious--better to use upgrades on powering up knights or city raiding maces. The enemy will still be limited by road movement so it can't necessarily bring up all its troops en masse like with railroads. Also, by dropping two stacks at two different cities the AI would have to split forces or bring the whole weight of reinforcement against one stack. Even if its the latter and the AI succeeds in defending one city, the other attack should be easy and that army given time to entrench its position.

2) Still, the point is to take both cities. If frigates are available too, great. They can bring down defenses capably on non-walled cities. Assuming the cities probably have about 40% cultural defense, 3-4 trebs should suffice to kill their defenses. If the first volley doesn't bring them down entirely, the AI still would probably not have had time to bring up enough reinforcements such that it is quite possible to go one more turn before full attack. It could take maybe one more treb to bring down the defenses, allowing 2-3 left to attack (hopefully only 1 or 2 get fully destroyed). Attack with what's left.

3) In addition to the 3-4 treb, a typical successful stack might have at least 1 pikeman to deal with counterattacking knights, 3 maces or muskets, at least 1 longbow to eventually hold the city after victory, and maybe 2 knights or cuirassier. For 2 stacks, that's around 20-25 units. So that would need a relatively modest 7-8 galleons.

Assuming both attacks were successful, here is where the double-beachhead can really pay off. Now you can create a pincer movement to grab a potential third city inland. It will likely be lightly defended since the AI would have used its troops as now-dead reinforcements. If the trebs can be escorted by a still healthy pikeman and mace/musket (or 2), redirect them immediately to the third city without letting them rest--they are only needed to bring down cult. defenses as soon as possible. Meanwhile, let the knights heal:

1) By the time the trebs make it over to the third city it may be something like 6-8 turns after the DOW. It is quite possible that those Galleons would have been able to make it home and back with your own fresh reinforcements to secure the original two cities.

2) Further AI reinforcements are likely to only be a random catapult suicide against your stack, which would get adequately killed by mace/musket or a knight, which would stupidly attack against your pikeman (who is naturally parked w/stack in forest or on hill). There mights also then be 1 or 2 newly whipped out defenders. But newly healed mounted units can then be brought up quickly, trebs can suicide if they're not totally damaged. If first attack isn't succesful at this point, there's a good chance that the living mounted units will receive promotions, allowing them to still attack next turn and by that time it's also possible that new mounteds from the second galleon wave woulc have had time to catch up. It may take an extra turn or two to hack down defenders clinging to life but the AIs own reserves should be exhausted so it's just a matter of time.

In the end, off a surprise attack, that's roughly about 10 turns to take 3 cites in a nice triangulated arrangement so that there's space to create your own cultural pocket and solid position on the new continent.

 

[tycoonist]

if you want practice, i suggest continent and islands map (look in mods: map scripts)

choose massive continents and island chains + high sea levels, and you get one large continent with 70-90% of civs on it. conquer your continent and then go for the quick conquest: it is a load of fun!