I'm currently finishing up a continents game with some democratically elected atomic bombs before I'm democratically elected leader of the U.N. by the generous and surviving civilizations of the world. However, during this peaceful and democratic exercise, certain nations were in need of some freedom which I was happy to supply. Unfortunately, these nations were on other continents, at which point I ran into a problem: I really can't seem to do an effective naval landing to start conquering cities.
I have naval superiority, that's not a problem. Two or three ships park offshore of the city, shelling the crap out of the city and anything that moves along the shore. They get some kills, wound the city, and eventually it's time to make a full landing of my ground forces. Except, I can't because the city is so well defended (up to and beyond 100 defense with a bunkered artillery during my second expedition) that I can't take it from the water without losing the unit, even when its at 1 HP. Fine, I'll land next to the city, then attack it from land to avoid the penalty. Suddenly I'm surrounded by Mechanized Infantry and Artillery, which promptly blow the crap out of everything that dares to land. I can't even get my first units off the shore line so the next units can land. If I move my ships closer to shore to deal with the enemy units further inland, the artillery starts shelling them, I lose ships, and it turns into a meatgrinder (which is suicide against an AI that can outproduce you).
I finally got around the issue when I kept poking at weaker cities, capturing, liberating, and razing as appropriate, until the other Civ surrendered and gave me every remaining non-capital city (Hiawatha you wuss). This conveniently clumped his entire - and still quite sizable - military into one city's cultural influence when they were expunged from all his other cities, thus the imminent democracy nukes. I still feel like there should have been some way to directly deal with these hardened coastal cities though. I tried for the Amphibious promotion on my city-capturing units to avoid the vulnerable turn sitting on land, but the unit that had it kept getting sniped by Fighters (which was incredibly rage inducing, let me tell you), so I don't know how well that would have actually worked. Was that my best option to dealing with these hardened cities (and I should have grabbed a Missile Cruiser or two to cover the amphibious units), or is there something I could have done to handle the swarms of Mechanized Infantry and Artillery that came crashing in around my landing units?
I have naval superiority, that's not a problem. Two or three ships park offshore of the city, shelling the crap out of the city and anything that moves along the shore. They get some kills, wound the city, and eventually it's time to make a full landing of my ground forces. Except, I can't because the city is so well defended (up to and beyond 100 defense with a bunkered artillery during my second expedition) that I can't take it from the water without losing the unit, even when its at 1 HP. Fine, I'll land next to the city, then attack it from land to avoid the penalty. Suddenly I'm surrounded by Mechanized Infantry and Artillery, which promptly blow the crap out of everything that dares to land. I can't even get my first units off the shore line so the next units can land. If I move my ships closer to shore to deal with the enemy units further inland, the artillery starts shelling them, I lose ships, and it turns into a meatgrinder (which is suicide against an AI that can outproduce you).
I finally got around the issue when I kept poking at weaker cities, capturing, liberating, and razing as appropriate, until the other Civ surrendered and gave me every remaining non-capital city (Hiawatha you wuss). This conveniently clumped his entire - and still quite sizable - military into one city's cultural influence when they were expunged from all his other cities, thus the imminent democracy nukes. I still feel like there should have been some way to directly deal with these hardened coastal cities though. I tried for the Amphibious promotion on my city-capturing units to avoid the vulnerable turn sitting on land, but the unit that had it kept getting sniped by Fighters (which was incredibly rage inducing, let me tell you), so I don't know how well that would have actually worked. Was that my best option to dealing with these hardened cities (and I should have grabbed a Missile Cruiser or two to cover the amphibious units), or is there something I could have done to handle the swarms of Mechanized Infantry and Artillery that came crashing in around my landing units?
. Some sort of isthmus where you can land your mech infantry in a forest or on a hill and land behind them to beach your rocket artillery has served me well in recent games.
