Size of invation force

What size of invasion force do you use?

  • I can kick their butt with 5 units

    Votes: 3 9.4%
  • 10 to 20 does the job

    Votes: 10 31.3%
  • Around 50, l like to be prepared

    Votes: 11 34.4%
  • 50 to 100, death to that piece of donkey dung

    Votes: 5 15.6%
  • 1,000 modern armor and MI, I hate losing

    Votes: 3 9.4%

  • Total voters
    32

sappling

Chieftain
Joined
Apr 19, 2002
Messages
51
Location
Colorado
Just curious what size of invasion force people typically use. I know if depends on the situation and era you are in, but I imagine people have a number of units they like.

I typically invade an enemy civ with 20 to 40 units. This usually seems to be enough. I always keep a back up force of 10 to 20 units in case my initial wave start to fail.

If the enemy is really strong, I might take 100 units.
 
I tried attacking with 90 infantry once (against ONE CITY!). They all lost!!!! :crazyeye:

Although, in the modern era, I like to set up 8-10 units (tanks, mod. armor) outside of EACH city. I once fought a HUGE war against the Japanese that way. Had about 100 units within 5-10 turns. They had about 60-70 units in the field (for a small territory! mostly middle age units, and some infantry). I had about a 2-1 ratio in victories. Plus, their last city had 50-70 UNITS!!! (all severely injured)
 
It all depends on the size of the map and your empire.

In GOTM 8 for example, I had about 70 Modern Armor, but that was on a standard map. The other civs were smaller but had about the same number in Mech infantry.

On a large map I once played as Egypt, at one point I had a standing army of Modern Armor over 150! Alot of them didn't do too much though.

Now on a huge map I'm playing as Americans, I have a horsemen army of around 50. And I'm still producing alot of them. And they are all going to be upgraded to knights. And with knights I will produce even more because they are very cheap to upgrade to cavalry. So if there is still some powerful civ left I could well have over 120 cavalry. Now that's horsemen and generally in ancient age your armies and AI's armies are smaller than in Modern Age. Now if this game lasts with wars into Industrial and Modern age, i could well enough have over 200 Modern Armor. Ofcourse the AI would have a corresponding amount in mechs. But most likely I will have won the game by then.
 
Not really. I already have 5000 gold after upgrading 30 warriors to swordsmen.

Upgrading horsemen to knights is probably the most expensive upgrade in the game. It cost 80 gold per upgrade. With 50 knights it should cost 4000 gold. I have enough money with that.

Plus with dense build, I haven't built any improvements at all. No temples, libraries, not even marketplaces as yet. So I'm earning about 110 gpt with science at 0% and 1 scientist. Lux tax is 30%.

And the beauty of it all is that I'm expansionist so I got all the Ancient era techs=no research=alot of saved money and big tech lead.
 
I've actually begun an invasion with as few as 8 units (modern armor), as long as I had enough transports to bring support in quickly. It's amazing how much damage you can do with 12 bombers.

The above case is usually the same turn a civ declares war on you. They usually aren't that well prepared. If you wait to build up your forces, it gives them a chance to build up theirs as well.

If I invade before infantry, I usually have between 20 and 40 cavalry/knights, and swordsmen.

Once infantry arrives, I usually don't do much in the way of attacking until tanks. Or unless I have a ton of artillery/cavalry. Infantry is just too tough to knock out before tanks.

If I run into a city with more than 10 infantry stacked in it, I usually go around it, cut it off from supply so it can't do any more than make conscripts. This draws the infantry out of the city where you have a better chance of killing them. The AI usually attacks with them and your own infantry will most likely beat them. Then swing back with your cavalry and take the city.

It's the old armor spearhead pincering off areas with infantry holding the flanks.
 
Originally posted by God
Not really. I already have 5000 gold after upgrading 30 warriors to swordsmen.

Upgrading horsemen to knights is probably the most expensive upgrade in the game. It cost 80 gold per upgrade. With 50 knights it should cost 4000 gold. I have enough money with that.

Plus with dense build, I haven't built any improvements at all. No temples, libraries, not even marketplaces as yet. So I'm earning about 110 gpt with science at 0% and 1 scientist. Lux tax is 30%.

And the beauty of it all is that I'm expansionist so I got all the Ancient era techs=no research=alot of saved money and big tech lead.

How are you able to get a big tech lead with no research?
 
Totally depends on game but in the late age (i paly on huge maps btw and the full wack maps not those 1.21 ones) I tend to have an army of 500 or so about 100 of which are bombard and aerial units - I tend to attack with less than 50 to spearhead an attack on an enemy continent (4 transport loads and 4 carrier loads) and then bring in lots of other troops.
If on the same continent I attack with about 150 units.
The AI can be pretty damn annoting - ive been attacked with a stack of around 60 knights in the middle ages
 
I all depends.... sometimes, 4 Immortals can be an AIs bane, someimtes, I fly 60 units into a foothold per turn, keeping this up as long as 6 turns. Then BAM! there goes the Black Horse Cav!
 
Depends on the age really and the tech advantage, If I'm fighting a big tough civ I'll take a crap load of unit's but right now for example I'm using the Persians right now and am attacking Zululand along with my good ally Rome...who I shall stab in the back later. But anyways I have such a commanding lead over them I just sent in like 5 cavalry and a bunch of immortals, and I'll probably still beat them!
 
large and huge maps....
the early wars i like to make sure i have around 40 horsetype units (MW or knights). as i move from one opponent to the other i keep cavalry between 60-100. when tanks and mordern armor come around i usually have over 200 of them because it's never just a one front war.
 
Depends. On warlord (Thinking of taking this up a notch too. Germany, under a RoP, sent in hordes of infantry and calvary. Though they never attacked. I believe it was on account of the difficulty level. My calvary units were off in Persia trying to conquer them. Never worked. Well, it was, until they started moving infantry to combat my calvary. I realized a bunch of calvary could never stand up to a bunch of infantry, so pulled back, and made peace. RIght now I'm torn between making a bunch of factories and coal plants in my cities, making sure they're huge metroploises so that they can pollute the world and cause global warming.

If I can't have the world, may everyone be reduced to size 1 size 2 cities.
 
Besides, everyone's somehow ticked at me for some reason or another (I suspect I failed to to honor an agreement somewhere. Even though I've smartened up as a conqueror. Honoring RoP's is better than not. I think another reason they hate me is ebcause all the wars I've started).

But anyway, I disgress, much. Anyway. In my current game, I despot rushed (?) India with a few archers, I'd say 6-8, maybe less, and a few spearmen. The spearmen protected the archers, who got through pesky warrior defenses quite easily. It wasn't until I lost the spearmen that I had problems. Them lost, my archers were easily picked off. By the time I reached Karachi, all but 4 archers were slain due to the lack of spearmen (Some went into thecities as garrison though, which contributed to the shortage). I attacked Karachi, failed, discussed peace talks with Gandhi, who gave me Karachi and for peace and some gold. Mind you, I didn't do much building up beforehand. Not even when I attacked him again with samurai.

India's filth wiped from the planet, I statioend my samurai near the german city of Frankfurt. All 23 of them (Though I had done some more building up by then. eventually bringing me to that number). Breaking the RoP, I moved my forces from my territory to his, attacking Frankfurt on the first turn. Minimal losses, but soon after it flipped, so I took it again then burned it. German knights moved in to counter my attack as I proceeded to Germany to take out the roads to take out his resources. By a few turns I lost all 23 samurai, and then others that I built to keep the war going. I evetually declared peace, realizing the war was fruitless. All that it did was destroy Frankfurt. Nothing more.

Moving onto Persia shortly after, I attacked with about 16 calvary. Got a few cities, then they started pulling infantry in while I still had riflemen. Bummer, because I was doing so well that war too. Had they not had infantry, I probably would have taken more than 3 cities.
 
How are you able to get a big tech lead with no research?

God is using a version of Aeson's 'settler flood' technique.
Read Aeson's strategy article for details:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20422

There are also more details about this technique (with a screenshot) in the Civ3 Hall of Fame thread, and another thread titled 'Discussion of HoF Power Plays' if you want to do a search on that.
 
Bamspeedy answered the question. I got it mainly from Aeson, tried it and failed at first, because I didn't play expansionist to its fullest, but after seeing Bamspeedy's game, I tried it again.

Its simple. Playing on a huge map pangea, build 10-15 scouts. You should be able to get all the Ancient Era techs through goody huts and still have some huts remaining. Hold off on horseback riding, by researching it at 0%. Then build chariots between your settlers. Build densly so not so many turns are wasted movng your settlers, building roads, and lesser corruption. You don't need anymore than 4 tiles at the most in the Ancient Era. Then after 40 chariots, you should have tons of money. Reasearch horseback riding. You should be able to build some chariots during the research. Move them all to city with barracks and upgrade for 20 gold per unit. Cheap, because 50 units only cost 1000 gold which you should have alot of by now. Fight, conquer, and upgrade to knights later. Keep tech research at 0% with scientist. I built Great Library so I don't need to bother really at all, but in I don't want to wait for the AI to catch up.
 
Originally posted by Bamspeedy


God is using a version of Aeson's 'settler flood' technique.
Read Aeson's strategy article for details:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=20422

There are also more details about this technique (with a screenshot) in the Civ3 Hall of Fame thread, and another thread titled 'Discussion of HoF Power Plays' if you want to do a search on that.

Cool. I'll try this in my next game. It'll be Warlord so I can learn the mechanics of it.
 
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