Post rifleman tactics

[FornaxTorak]

Hi

I've been playing Civ 5 for 30 hours or so now, and doing pretty well I guess. Beaten the game on King and gotten 40% of the achievements. All my games tho have usually been well and over after rifleman (infantry in my cultural Ghandi 3city win) has come into play.

Need some pointers on late game warring tactics, and as I struggle to keep up with science in the late game some pointers in how to build a better science infrastructure early on (tech trees, build orders etc).

Thanks

 

[Slowpoke]

as far as science goes, the best is simply build 6 size cities (hit avoid growth) everywhere with colosseums and libraries. Use maritimes to feed the scientists. Conquering helps too. Post rifling is definately go for artillery. I've never really had to go beyond artillery, but after that would probably be infantry, mech infantry (or panzers) and then fighters.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Depends on the terrain.
If attacking across an ocean, battleships ftw ... with destroyers (that were upgraded from earlier ships), submarine support if you can afford it, and ... a single melee unit to capture coastal cities with.

Personally, I don't care about taking the cities further inland ... 'cos ... if the AI is landlocked, they can't get across the ocean.

 

[Magic1264]

Been playing alot on large continent maps (Emperor + epic speed); after the horseman rush, which will usually clear my continent, I start growing forest heavy cities and trading post cities (usually the puppeted cities). I beeline astronomy, and actually skip over rifle/gunpowder tech for a long time, getting a lot of infrastructure tech, all the while building markets/banks and buying up all of the city states. Then, I'll lightbulb straight to steam power, getting that +1 hammer to lumbermills, and entering the industrial age, pick up infantry, and just go to town on neighboring continents all at the same time.

Because of the huge infrastructure that you built, you will have a huge lead over your neighbors in both economic and research terms, allowing your newly purchased/built infantry and your upgraded calvary to dominate. Research towards modern infantry while conducting your war, spamming happiness.

Honestly, even if the AI could keep up with your research, I highly doubt it could build an army that could deal with the brute force of infantry/ the mobility of calvary (which stay great until the modern era).

I don't quite know which social policies go with this strategy. Obviously the early general from honor helps your horse rush greatly, but after that, everything else seems pretty lackluster.

 

[Danceofmasks]

If you're grabbing a GG from honor, the 2x XP bonus is just .. horrendously good.
Personally, I like building a massive economy but have one production city focused on making troops.

That way, I can stack national wonders on it ... heroic epic, ironworks ... I just use my economy to rushbuy extra units from there, as needed.

The way I play, the rushbuy discount from commerce is obviously boss (and really nice if I can get Big Ben, too) ..
Recently, I've been considering autocracy for the additional discount .. however, I can't seem to be able to justify giving up the early game advantage of liberty.

 

[Rathelon]

Subs seem much more useful in this version, because their ranged attack is strength 60 (3 hex range, naval targets only). If your opponent has anything less than destroyers, subs will one-shot them. And even modern navies are gonna be hurt. Havent built any nuclear subs yet, so cant comment on those.

Another change is carriers can carry bombers and fighters, so you can have a combined air group or make fighter carriers and bomber carriers. Gotta have a lot of oil for these however, as each carrier requires one oil, and so does each aircraft (unless you have jet fighters and stealth bombers; then it's aluminum).

Mechanized infantry is definitely the most economical choice for land units, especially if you lack strategic resources for tanks or modern armor. Being an old tanker myself, it pains me to say that the tanks and modern armor in this version are not of much use since mech infantry is just as strong and doesnt require oil, and they both get penalties vs cities and on defense. I can agree they should have penalties vs cities, but on defense doesnt make sense. I can tell you from experience, serving on a tank in combat is one of the best places to be (offense or defense).

Paratroopers are also a bit more useful than they were in IV. They dont have to be airlifted from a city/fort, just anywhere inside your cultural borders. I modded my paratroopers in IV to have the same drop range as bombers (8 tiles), but in V they already have a bit longer drop range so that's nice too.

Unless they changed it in the patch, building artillery is problematic when you get Rocketry. This is because any pre-existing artillery that are upgraded to rocket artillery retain the set up before firing restriction. So if you really want to experience the rocket artillery's no set up before firing, you have to build them from scratch.

 

[aimlessgun]

If you're playing on King keeping up in science shouldn't be too complex. Just build Libraries and Universities early and often, and put scientists in the specialists slots. It sounds dumb and simple, but that should be all it takes.

 

[Martin Alvito]

Between Great Scientists from filling the Libraries and Unis and the Research Agreements you should be aggressively signing starting around turn 90-100, you should be able to stay ahead of the AI in tech.

If you aren't, you probably don't have enough Libraries, Universities and gold per turn. More cities faster would help with this.

As far as buildings go, you want to get Colosseums, Libraries, and Universities up quickly. As I work on pumping out a spaceship on Deity by turn 200, I'm discovering that having a few true production cities is essential. It's a good idea to have these include the cities with Gold/Silver deposits if at all possible, so that you can take advantage of Mint/Market/Bank synergy there.

Another thing I've learned is that what you really want to do is pack a bunch of small cities closely together, turn most of them into Library/Uni Science factories, and use only the ideal sites as production cities. That way, they are already fully upgraded with improvements and ready to rock around turn 120 when the Universities finish up in second-wave cities.

If you get and keep a tech lead, you don't really need tactics. Nothing will be able to knock over your front line defenders, Artillery will wipe the floor with attackers, and the game will end before anything Artillery can't handle is deployed.

 

[eric_]

One thing that really messed with my ability to keep up on King, and that brought me past the rifles-era, was an all-plains (fully encompassed my first 5 cities or so, on a crowded continent, and I was trying to avoid war), low-iron start as the Iroquois. My ability to war well (was inevitable due to crowding) was seriously limited by the fact that I couldn't grow both my economy and my population simultaneously like you can with grasslands all around. Production would've been decent early if I could've worked the tiles, but since I couldn't, horsemen were very slow to be trained. Science and Economy took a good, long while to get going (not really until I took over vast grasslands from the Siamese to my north).

All this goes to say, this is my first game where modern units have played a pivotal role (previously, games were over before infantry, or infantry just helped with cleanup). I held on by a thread to get here (fighting rifles with longswords, infantry with rifles, etc), but now I'm back at parity with my main continental rival (first time I've had any continental rivals past probably longswords!) and maybe pulling ahead as tanks come into play.

Successful tactics with Inf + Art aren't much different than Rifles + Cannons. It will be interesting to see how the game goes once I'm fielding tanks and planes, though (assuming Rome doesn't first pull off a win from the new world). I have to say, it's quite refreshing how unit placement, tactics, and use of strategic retreats, etc, can enable you to hold out against a technologically superior enemy.