Marine Corpse

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by Longasc
Their job is to take a city... allowing Tanks, Modern Armor and Mech Infantry to unload there and fortify immediately there and/or start attacking immediately.

This is the value of the marine, right here. Attack, take a city, move transports in, unload, continue the attack inland. I posted some really detailed thoughts on my version of these tactics in an older thread, Strategies for Modern D-Day. If you want all the details you can read the earlier post. The basic scheme of maneuver has 3 parts:

1) Take a coastal city with Marines
2) Unload additional units inside the city
3) Secure that position, and press the attack inland on the same turn.

Note that Marines don't have the greatest defensive value. Aside from taking isolated island cities, you don't want an entire invasion force of Marines... just enough for the tip of the spear. Follow them up with units that secure better (infantry) or hit harder (tanks) and you can really do a lot of damage on the first turn of a war.

 

[Jawz II]

about marines in armies,i built one,but someone mentioned that if put in armies they lose their amphibious assault powers

i made that army mosly as novelty thing,but this sounds right,so tacticly putting marines in armies is a misstake,although that army is a long way from being useless there are better options for armies if u dont have that many of them

heres one use of marines,chopper transport them
after MI is available marines r the only offensive air droppable units around

i have many cavalry units left that ill use in that role but when i run outta those and guerrillas ill defenitly make more marines

 

[Pfeffersack]

AFAIK, marines only loose there ability to perform amphibious assaults if you mix them with otgher untis inside an army.An army which contains only marines should still have the ability.

 

[Jawz II]

fair enough,ill go find out for myself

absolutely right,they can make amphibious assault in armies

in PTW anyway!

 

[enigma_sigma]

i use marines 2 capture choke points. dont use them sigularly but use them 2 open a second front while the majority fight conventional war . a well place marine assualt can split an empire in 2. bommber artillery and ship are essential for this to be pulled off

 

[Wakboth]

Originally posted by The Last Conformist
The trick with Marines is to send them against a city only after BBs and bombers have redlined the defenders.

Well. I put in my 2 cents in the "D-day invasion" thread already. I still have a problem with using marines in an assault in preference to any other method.

Your tactic is valid. The problem is that unless the city you are taking is across a very short waterway, odds are you'll have to build carriers to get your bombers to hit it, and battleships are pretty expensive to use for just that task (you need *alot* of bombardment to redline any significant number of troops in a city).

I still say you get the same results much cheaper by just dropping your landing force next to the city and attacking from there. Artillery is vastly cheaper then bombers and battleships, and are generally more effective at this.

I just feel that any strategy that plans ahead of time to use marines to take a city via amphibious assault would require enough specialized foreplanning that it could have been planned and executed cheaper by using a more traditional assault method. I only use marines when I'm hitting an island city and can't land anywhere next to it. For a continental invasion, I've always found that just landing a force anywhere near where you want to attack and moving them to the target works better in the long run.


But if you want the fun of using marines, by all means go for it! It's your game. They do look cool...

 

[Civman2004]

longasc alluded to a marine strategy that is probably worth expanding on, namely that marines can sometimes take a city where other units will be slaughtered on a beach-head. This in itself is not that useful - chances are if you don't have enough units to hold a beach-head, you're going to have trouble defending your city against an AI counter-attack, especially if there are railroads everywhere, which there usually are by the time marines arrive.

But there are occasions (quite limited) where sometimes it is of immense strategic advantage to take a city on your turn, knowing that you will lose it the next anyway.

1) longasc already mentioned. Capturing the AI capital, even if only on your turn to lose it on the AI's turn, destroys their spaceship. Both forces will be wiped out on the AI's turn, but the difference is the marine force destroyed the spaceship before it was killed.
2) You have wiped the enemy off your continent and want a foothold on theirs. By capturing an enemy city and then suing for peace (hopefully with favourable terms) you can turn your focus to holding that city, building cultural improvements, etc to stop flip, rather than having to defend it. There is a good chance you would have lost the city next turn on counterattack, but you don't, because the fact that you captured the city makes the AI more willing to sign peace. Then, 20 turns later after you've airlifted millions of men into the city, the next wave comes through.

Both examples assume you don't have the required force to land and then capture. In both cases you achieve your strategic goal, something which ordinary forces would not have achieved as they would have been wiped out on landing.

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by Civman2004
longasc alluded to a marine strategy that is probably worth expanding on, namely that marines can sometimes take a city <snip>

I apologize right now for this shameless threadjack, but it's an on-topic threadjack. In the original "D-day thread" referred to above I posted some stuff on using Marines. (As a matter of fact I think Longasc was part of that original discussion...) Recently I took the old post, cleaned it up, and re-posted it as an Article on Marines. If you haven't already read it, and think Longasc's tactics are worth expanding on, have a look.