Wolf, I'm sure it works great against AI (who doesn't know how to defend worth a hill of beans) or against isolated cities, but there exist flaws in your attack that I would exploit.
Firstly, you have to have air superiority, otherwise fighters will shoot the crap out of your troopers and your bombers. It sounds like you aim for air superiority, but if you haven't already achieved it, your stack of paratroopers is dead.
The great flaw to exploit, however, is during that one turn that you have to wait to attack the city. If you landed two dozen paratroopers next to my city, they would never survive to attack. Maybe a handful of badly damaged units might.
The steps to counter:
1. While your para's wait to kill the damaged units in my city, it becomes my turn to damage your stack of para's. This can be done many ways. Guided missiles, fighters, bombers, artillery, Marty (if I have these, you're done for). There are too many ways for me to damage your troopers. I'll find a way to do it.
2. It depends on what era of units were talking about, but if I have any fast attack units, I'll be able to rotate dozens of those in on my rails from my supporting cities and attack your already now softened stack. And hell, if I have mech inf (and this is what my defenses usually revolve around), I'll attack with those. They'd slaughter your stack. Mech inf with c2 and c3 promotions against damaged paratroopers...say goodbye.
3. After I've done those two things, and if you've got any surviving troopers, I simply rotate a massive defensive force into the city. Most easily this can be done with rails, but it can also be done by airlifting from far away cities that can't reach by rail.
This defensive stack would be so large that your bombers might not be able to damage all of them enough to allow your damaged paratroopers to be victorious.
There are many situations where your tactic would work great, that is, if you have achieved total air domination AND your target city is isolated from both reinforcement and the ability to counter-attack from backline cities; or if your opponent simply doesn't possess enough military units within its entire civilization to fight back (which, if this is true, any kind of stack or strategy whatsoever will finish them off quickly).
It's that one turn of waiting though man. I'd never let 'em live to attack. And the more advanced your opponent is, the more useless your paratroopers are (especially if they have the fast moving and powerful mech inf).
Personally, I find Paratroopers the least effective of all the modern units. Of course, in certain situations, they can be very useful. But generally against an intelligent defender you won't get much out of them.
I will often simply send them as scouts in advance of my main force, hoping to draw out the defenders from their cities. I'll plant them, as someone else said, on a hill, and hope the defender wounds themself trying to kill it. When I make paratroopers, they're simply throw-away units designed to annoy or harrass the opponent. To obligate them to come out of their city to prevent me from pillaging. They can also cut-off retreat, or slow down the influx of reinforcements too, but that's about all they're good for.
I think a more effective use is to be teamed with helicopters, because if chopper units kill off all the defenders in a city, then a paratrooper can get in before the defender can react. In that scheme, however, you only need a handful of paratroopers but a ton of choppers.
Really, to be effective in combat you cannot rely solely on any particular strategy, you must truly be well-rounded in every aspect. And then from there, you can exploit a weak link in your adversaries tech path or missing resource.
Now, I can imagine that Wolf's attack strategy is usually quite powerful, but there is a foil to it.
Adopting adaptive strategies is more essential to military success than any formula.
Firstly, you have to have air superiority, otherwise fighters will shoot the crap out of your troopers and your bombers. It sounds like you aim for air superiority, but if you haven't already achieved it, your stack of paratroopers is dead.
The great flaw to exploit, however, is during that one turn that you have to wait to attack the city. If you landed two dozen paratroopers next to my city, they would never survive to attack. Maybe a handful of badly damaged units might.
The steps to counter:
1. While your para's wait to kill the damaged units in my city, it becomes my turn to damage your stack of para's. This can be done many ways. Guided missiles, fighters, bombers, artillery, Marty (if I have these, you're done for). There are too many ways for me to damage your troopers. I'll find a way to do it.
2. It depends on what era of units were talking about, but if I have any fast attack units, I'll be able to rotate dozens of those in on my rails from my supporting cities and attack your already now softened stack. And hell, if I have mech inf (and this is what my defenses usually revolve around), I'll attack with those. They'd slaughter your stack. Mech inf with c2 and c3 promotions against damaged paratroopers...say goodbye.
3. After I've done those two things, and if you've got any surviving troopers, I simply rotate a massive defensive force into the city. Most easily this can be done with rails, but it can also be done by airlifting from far away cities that can't reach by rail.
This defensive stack would be so large that your bombers might not be able to damage all of them enough to allow your damaged paratroopers to be victorious.
There are many situations where your tactic would work great, that is, if you have achieved total air domination AND your target city is isolated from both reinforcement and the ability to counter-attack from backline cities; or if your opponent simply doesn't possess enough military units within its entire civilization to fight back (which, if this is true, any kind of stack or strategy whatsoever will finish them off quickly).
It's that one turn of waiting though man. I'd never let 'em live to attack. And the more advanced your opponent is, the more useless your paratroopers are (especially if they have the fast moving and powerful mech inf).
Personally, I find Paratroopers the least effective of all the modern units. Of course, in certain situations, they can be very useful. But generally against an intelligent defender you won't get much out of them.
I will often simply send them as scouts in advance of my main force, hoping to draw out the defenders from their cities. I'll plant them, as someone else said, on a hill, and hope the defender wounds themself trying to kill it. When I make paratroopers, they're simply throw-away units designed to annoy or harrass the opponent. To obligate them to come out of their city to prevent me from pillaging. They can also cut-off retreat, or slow down the influx of reinforcements too, but that's about all they're good for.
I think a more effective use is to be teamed with helicopters, because if chopper units kill off all the defenders in a city, then a paratrooper can get in before the defender can react. In that scheme, however, you only need a handful of paratroopers but a ton of choppers.
Really, to be effective in combat you cannot rely solely on any particular strategy, you must truly be well-rounded in every aspect. And then from there, you can exploit a weak link in your adversaries tech path or missing resource.
Now, I can imagine that Wolf's attack strategy is usually quite powerful, but there is a foil to it.
Adopting adaptive strategies is more essential to military success than any formula.
