Marines or tanks?

[zerocold]

And why should i bother with infantry?

 

[Ghpstage]

And why should i bother with infantry?

Well firstly they come earlier, they also:
-Get defensive bonuses while Tanks don't
-AGG and PRO affect Infantry and Marinies but not Tanks
-Infantry will beat Marines in the open field thanks to its inherent +25% vs gunpowder
-Tanks can't get medic (at least in the fully patched BTS)

I only use with Marines if I need to take cities on another island/continent and want to do it quickly, or if the enemy has lots of Machine Guns.

I find Tanks most useful if I have air support, as artillery just is too slow to keep up.
Without air support they will not be as cost efficient as Infantry/Artillery for city taking, unless your opponent is using outdated units or you know of a number of poorly defended cities they can't reinforce quickly (extremely rare at this point!).
Tanks also die very quickly against Anti-Tank units.

 

[zerocold]

Thank you, very interesting comment

Yes tanks die quickly

Marine can hold better the ground

What is "AGG and PRO affect Infantry and Marinies but not Tanks" ??

 

[btgwynn]

This post is equivalent to "swordmen or horse archers, and why should I even bother with axmen." The answer in any case is "the right tool for the job."

 

[btgwynn]

...What is "AGG and PRO affect Infantry and Marinies but not Tanks" ??

Aggressive and Protective traits give leaders with them free promotions for certain units. Aggressive gives combat one to melee and gunpowder units, Protective gives city defender and drill one to archery and gunpowder units.

 

[zerocold]

i agree, somehow, but the mobility on the late game is not that a big issue, becuse you get railroads

And the time between you get swordmen and axemen is far larger than the one inbetween infantry and marines

 

[Ghpstage]

i agree, somehow, but the mobility on the late game is not that a big issue, becuse you get railroads

And the time between you get swordmen and axemen is far larger than the one inbetween infantry and marines

Railroads can only be used by the defending civ, or units with the commando promotion. As a result moving fast in the modern era is often more helpful.

i.e. When sneak attacking a neighbour whos closest cities are 2 tiles away, your tanks and bombers could take it in one turn easily, whereas Infantry/Artillery stacks would need to contend with units from up to 10 tiles away moved the very next turn.

 

[zerocold]

Agree, but for a deep invasion, with all the forces attacking you at the same time, is better move a bit slower, and have better protection, than faster and without any defense, becuase most probably, the enemy will have railroads, your invasion will be under very, very heavy fire comming from everywhere

When you take a city, most likely you will left some neutral tiles, giving better speed for your units (since they can use the roads in such state)

 

[Wilphe]

And why should i bother with infantry?

In addition to everything else:
Because you can draft them


Tanks v Marines depends on the map.

Land maps push towards Tanks, but with coastal cities you may find Marines taking cities faster than tanks as sea movement in enemy territory is so much faster than land movement.

Sea maps push towads Marines, but to be used as Marines require sea control and a reasonable navy.

 

[Bigv32]

Or you could just wait and get mech infantry and have a rolling mobil force of tanks mobil artillery and mechs. Combine with air strikes against cities and your force will never need to stop bombard those cities.

 

[Jewman]

marines+a full navy (transports, carriers, battleships, destroyers, subs) + lots of coastline = unparalleled immediate destruction. you can completely obliterate an enemy with lots of coastline in one turn with a well planned sea invasion.
this is if such a scenario were to turn up.

tanks are great for the land maps, you got a close neighbor and you just make a lot of bombers and tanks and your set. Get em in one turn. Once you got tanks and marines you should just make them instead of infantry. Infantry are only good before you get tanks and marines because then you can rush their riflemen or machine guns with infantry and artillery. Its always good to have one pile of infantry and artillery tho.

you should build a few marines in a land war anyways because theyre good at defending your units stranded deep in enemy territory and can defend pretty well. plus you can leave them behind as good city defenders while the rest of your stacks of tanks plow ahead

 

[Sisiutil]

No one's mentioned it yet, but you can upgrade older units to Infantry; Marines (and Tanks, for that matter) have to be built from scratch. Upgrading costs a lot of gold, but in the late game it should be relatively easy to generate a goodly amount of spare change.

Upgrading provides two main advantages: (a) it preserves promotions, so it's best when used for your uber-promoted units; and (b) it can allow you to modernize your army very quickly, given enough cash.

This second advantage can be extremely beneficial. As soon as you have Assembly Line, you can, potentially, upgrade a large number of Riflemen and Grenadiers (or even older units) to Infantry. That's a big boost in unit strength (14 or 12 to 20) in just one turn. And if they're mostly highly-promoted units as well, then you're just going to pwn the opposition.

A proper amphibious force, in contrast, takes many, many turns to build. If you're facing a reasonably modern enemy, then you need more than just Marines. Your Semper Fi boys will probably need a large amount of supporting units (Transports to carry them, Destroyers and Battleships to protect the Transports, Carriers loaded with Fighters to cause collateral damage before the Marines attack). That's going to take a while, since almost everything will need to be built from scratch.

As for Marines versus Tanks, why not both, if the situation calls for it? I'll use a combination of Tanks, Paratroopers, and Bombers for land-locked cities, and the amphibious force mentioned above to capture coastal targets.

 

[Zubbus]

If you researched marines before infantry then it's kinda awkward because infantry would be much weaker than marines. But if you got infantry first then infrantry has potential because they can be upgraded to mechanized infantry whereas marines cannot.

Also, armored units can take City Attack whereas gunpowder untis can't. Add Blitz to that and tanks is the choice for taking cities. All 3 free promotions from AGG and PRO won't make up for the difference. Obviously, I pack gunpowder units (and machine guns for guarding the tile the tanks are sitting on.

 

[Ai Shizuka]

Infantry has no hard counter until mech infantry, so the sooner you get it, the better. Even at the highest levels you can catch a couple AIs still defending with rifles (the builder types love the sci meth - mass media line and prioritize it over AL). Pinch infantry vs rifles isn't pretty. You can attack early with inf+cannons and research artillery for the following war.

 

[Wilphe]

No one's mentioned it yet, but you can upgrade older units to Infantry; Marines (and Tanks, for that matter) have to be built from scratch. Upgrading costs a lot of gold, but in the late game it should be relatively easy to generate a goodly amount of spare change.

Another good point, but you don't have to solely build an amphibious force from stratch.

You can upgrade a wooden navy to get Destroyers and Transports, I'm not denying that that is more expensive on a per unit basis than infantry but:

Upgrading all your ships <costs less than< Upgrading all your land units

 

[AfterShafter]

Infantry has no hard counter until mech infantry, so the sooner you get it, the better. Even at the highest levels you can catch a couple AIs still defending with rifles (the builder types love the sci meth - mass media line and prioritize it over AL). Pinch infantry vs rifles isn't pretty. You can attack early with inf+cannons and research artillery for the following war.

Mech Infantry is a "hard counter" to regular infantry? I always thought that, based on unit cost and the tech route required to get to it mech infantry was actually not all-that VS infantry. Infantry gets a 25% bonus VS mech infantry, but not the other way around, which makes their respective 20 and 32 not that far apart - especially when you count in a whopping 140 VS 200 hammer differential in cost. Mech Infantry have more bells and whistles of course (march, 2 moves), but in raw power when they're faced against each other, mech infantry actually leave a lot to be desired for unit cost. They certainly do better against tanks/modern armor/almost everything else, but against infantry, they don't do spectacularly.

So, yeah, I don't really get why you're calling them a hard counter - I don't see them as a counter at all. If anything, they could stand to do a lot better when fighting their less advanced counterpart.

 

[Zubbus]

Or look at another aspect of it. If you beat Infantry with something that requires a big bunch more techs and hammers, then what you're doing is more like "getting (way) ahead" than "countering".
Being like 10~15 techs ahead will counter most things...

 

[zerocold]

Tanks do wonders against small foes, but against huge enemies and well into the enemy lines they dont do it nicely

I would use tanks to take and raze cities, then run, but as deep conquerers they always have fail me

Takes a lot of time to investigate mechainfantry, and with nukes the things become very nasty

I still see infantry near as useless to avoid a nuclear war with a fast enough invasion

 

[zerocold]

Always have failed me

 

[Ai Shizuka]

I mean there's a pretty big window to capture land with infantry. Infantry vs rifles is no contest. Infantry+artillery is still a viable option to capture more land, even at tech parity.

Following military techs are industrialism, but apparently the AI doesn't like tanks or marines. Than nothing until the modern stuff. That's what I mean by "no hard counter". The way the AI uses it (CG promos), mech inf is the first suitable unit to stop mass infantry.