Stealth Bomber Strategy

[snarzberry]

I'm in the middle of a deity game that looks like I will win by domination victory and I've used a strategy that is a first for me.

The idea I had was to set up a game in a similar way as when going for a science victory, HS PT ND, RA spam, GS spam but then I channeled the RA's to open up early Biology to reveal Oil and early Electricity to reveal Alluminium and used the stable of GSs plus Oxford and Scientific Revolution to chain bulb to Stealth.

I'm using Babylon as the first attempt, so things have progressed faster than they would have with other civs, but I did have to take a detour and pick up Refrigeration as my lands only contained Oil in the ocean so offshore rigs were required. Anyway, I got Stealth on turn 181.

I took Liberty and settled 2 quick extra cities in good production spots then slapped up libraries and the NC. After HS PT ND and universities I settled 3 additional cities around the gaps of my land to increase gpt and increase the chances of strategic resources later on.

My three core production cities all got a Barracks and Armory just before the bulbing session, getting bomber type units to logistics and air repair is a main priority as they then become beasts on the order of keshikness. I had access to 7 Oil at that stage so they all began building Bombers. Later on when I gained access to some Alluminium through a CS ally, and even later through conquering and trading with friendly civs, I upgraded as possible to Stealth Bombers.

I didn't initiate the wars of conquest until turn 200, so imagine the size of some of these deity AI's, just massive empires of 30 odd cities and military rating off the charts. Regardless Stealth Bombers just chew through everything and I'm surprised how fast, and fun, it is (torturous turn times notwithstanding) . It's now about turn 235 and I have 17 Stealth Bombers to go with 2 tanks and 2 paratroopers that are just zipping and parachuting around the place every other turn capping 1hp 100 strength cities.

SP's I took all of Liberty and the left side of Rationalism and am now taking Autocracy policies which I estimate is best for what I'm doing. It's fun taking Autocracy for a change as I've never made good use of it for a deity win before. There are some nice policies in there for this type of situation. Order would also have been good, I could use all the extra happiness but am managing ok.

Anyone else tried this type of deep modern era chain bulb to open up super early crazy powerful units? This should also work with going for even earlier Combustion and an upgrade of horse units to Tanks.

 

[JeanBaptiste]

Sounds like a lot of fun. I've speeded for nukes with Babylon once, I believe I got it around the same time at turn 180'ish and fortunately I had uranium within my own territory. I guess it is the same as with your strategy ie very resource dependent. No uranium, no oil, no aluminium and you're kind of screwed until the AI catches up and you can trade from them or ally CS's.

One question, can the paratrooper attack immediately after parachuting now or does it still have to wait a turn? Haven't really bothered using them for a long time because of that but if that's "fixed" they would be really nice...

 

[snarzberry]

No you can't parachute and attack on the same turn (would be a good idea for a unique promotion for paratroopers) but if they come from a city with barracks and armory you can give them drill1 and 2, drop them on a rough tile in range of the city and they usually survive till next turn. Even if they're down to 1 hp it's ok. Seeing as you clear out all visible units with the bombers then you're only up against the city attack and a possible ranged attack from the garrison.

Yeah it's resource dependent but I think you can pretty much always work it out somehow. For instance in this game I was nowhere near lucky with strategics, had a lousy 3 oil on my land and no aluminium at all. I was able to add another 4 oil with a rig, and that was enough to get things started. Bombers alone will suffice at the beginning of the attack and upgrades are fine to wait a bit. It'd be pretty rare to have 4 - 6 cities and have no oil or aluminium in range. Plopping a settler down to claim it is also an option if there's oil up in a crappy tundra or icy region. All in all I think you're pretty unlucky if you really get screwed by strategics, probably more likely to happen if you're relying on uranium.

By the way I played the game through today to turn 247 and it's a certain win now. Should be finished by about turn 270. Not bad seeing as the warring only started on turn 200.


lol thanks Paccy!

 

[Tabarnak]

lol epic peace deal!

 

[snarzberry]

that's what happens when you take on a runaway AI...and win

 

[Ruler]

Thats why its so important to build lots of unit in Civ 5, they give such an amazing peace offers.

 

[snarzberry]

Yeah. this is where the AI's deity bonuses work against them big time... So much money and I can actually put it to use, unlike them. The amount of Incan units that I killed during this war was obscene, like every turn I use 17 - 25 stealth bombers, many of which can attack twice per turn, to kill every visible unit and bombard every visible city down to 1hp. Then when the turn ends there's a big rush of enemy units that come in from the fog to fill up the hexes that have just been vacated, mec infantry, artillery, anti-air you name it. Then they all die in the next turn and that was repeated every turn until his war machine finally ran out of gas.

Stealth Bombers are stupefyingly powerful .

 

[Schalke 04]

Haha, that really sounds like a lot of fun!

SP's I took all of Liberty and the left side of Rationalism and am now taking Autocracy policies which I estimate is best for what I'm doing.

What do you think? Would Honour have been a worthwile alternative retrospectively (in comparison to Rationalism)? With the Honour finisher you get gold for every unit that you kill. You're saying that you've killed plenty of those.

I guess it's a tradeoff between earlier upgrades / rushbuys (gold from killing) and earlier techs (Rationalism science boost). Whats's your evaluation?

 

[The Pilgrim]

Oh yeah! The murderous stealth bombers!

Extremely OP for late conquest.
With Militarism and Big Ben, IIRC, stealth costs 680g a piece or something close. If you manage to squeeze in Mercantilism too, less. You don't even need to hard-build bombers. Maybe just a few to kill one AI, to get a favorable peace treaty and to rush buy another 20 with its money and kill everybody else. Game is over before you notice. I feel like a cheater doing this. And to add more cheese to the plate, you can 'clean' the area around the city with 2 nukes and guarantee an easy survival for your paratrooper on turn 2 of the assault. Thanks to fallout enemy units won't be able to reach him next turn. Not that there is real necessity.

AI is totally defenseless in modern era, IMO. Maybe I'm slightly biased (I've never been nuked myself , but I do not play deity often). I feel the stronger units in play, the more obvious human superiority appears to be. At least in earlier eras AI has enough cannon fodder. Which doesn't matter later on.

What do you think? Would Honour have been a worthwile alternative retrospectively (in comparison to Rationalism)? With the Honour finisher you get gold for every unit that you kill. You're saying that you've killed plenty of those.

I guess it's a tradeoff between earlier upgrades / rushbuys (gold from killing) and earlier techs (Rationalism science boost). Whats's your evaluation?

I'm pretty much sure you'd better rush buy everything. But you don't need extreme cash for the first bunch, after that you just sit and watch AI paying for your air force.
I'm talking from immortal experience not deity, though. On deity probably earlier bulbing is even more important. You really want to get most of the things done before AI has tons of fast units. Assuring paratrooper (or any other single unit you're capturing cities with) survival is the hardest part in the whole story.

 

[w a i n y]

Snarzberry, would you consider doing an LP of this strategy? If not, I definitely will - it sounds fabulous!

 

[DabigQuack]

Huge fan of the Lets plays.

This would be a really Solid watch... DO IT!

 

[snarzberry]

Haha, that really sounds like a lot of fun!



What do you think? Would Honour have been a worthwile alternative retrospectively (in comparison to Rationalism)? With the Honour finisher you get gold for every unit that you kill. You're saying that you've killed plenty of those.

I guess it's a tradeoff between earlier upgrades / rushbuys (gold from killing) and earlier techs (Rationalism science boost). Whats's your evaluation?

If I did have the honour finisher then it would have been worth truly massive amounts of gold you're right, though gold is now no longer an issue after that peace deal .

I think the trade off is simple and it all comes down to speed. I feel in this type of game the most important thing is just pulling off the beeline in the fastest possible amount of turns, while completing the required infrastructure to carry out the tasks that you have in mind once you unlock the key tech. I knew that I wasn't going to have enough money, with a pretty small empire at turn 180, to do much rush buying (actually I did none) and I have hard built every one of my bombers. I'd prepared my three core cities to be able to do this reasonably quickly and once I'd declared war these cities did nothing but build bombers for the rest of the game.

While I don't doubt that honour policies would be great to have in this spot, by not taking Rationalism you miss out on significant base science output bonuses, miss out on extra science from RA's and miss out on the 2 techs from Scientific Revolution so we're talking quite a serious amount of turns added to the beeline here. I guess that it would be so much of a delay to begin conquering that it's not worth it, nice as those bonuses would be.

 

[snarzberry]

Snarzberry, would you consider doing an LP of this strategy? If not, I definitely will - it sounds fabulous!

Thanks man,

I play on a laptop that seriously struggles to do put in one modern era turn in like two minutes so it would end up being a pretty boring LP with me having to entertain everybody in between turns while we wait for the stupid game to load I don't think I would trust myself to keep everyone interested with witty small talk for that amount of time

Of course feel free to use the strategy in one of your LP's, I'll look forward to catching it.

 

[Noatz]

I have yet to see a LP of a long term science strat in general, they're normally exclusively domination.

 

[MadDjinn]

Thanks man,

I play on a laptop that seriously struggles to do put in one modern era turn in like two minutes so it would end up being a pretty boring LP with me having to entertain everybody in between turns while we wait for the stupid game to load I don't think I would trust myself to keep everyone interested with witty small talk for that amount of time

Of course feel free to use the strategy in one of your LP's, I'll look forward to catching it.

Having Stealth exactly 2 techs from Radar is what makes this sooooo powerful. Likely that should be changed up a bit. A fast moving unit can also do the work to take cities, instead of Paratroopers, though sometimes the terrain requires the Paratroopers.


The Americans would make this strategy a 'fun' LP.

As per recording: If you've got severe lag between turns, just stop the recording before you hit next turn, which will keep the LP short, though your game will be long.

 

[Vo01985]

I have not necessarily planned for this strategy but whenever I try to win on Domination I usually go to Stealth because they are just so powerful. If you manage to get Brandenburg Gate in one of your cities and all the 3 Military buildings your Bombers will have Repair when built. Put a melee unit next to your attacking city with the upgrade units adjacent heal 1 extra per turn, and you're good to go. Stealth bombers > Keshik, their range is just insane.

 

[w a i n y]

As per recording: If you've got severe lag between turns, just stop the recording before you hit next turn, which will keep the LP short, though your game will be long.

--> This. I already do this for most of my games, even with a decent rig.

 

[Buccaneer]

It does sound like a lot of fun. Haven't seen Stealth in my games, so what kind of damage do they do per run?

 

[snarzberry]

Having Stealth exactly 2 techs from Radar is what makes this sooooo powerful. Likely that should be changed up a bit. A fast moving unit can also do the work to take cities, instead of Paratroopers, though sometimes the terrain requires the Paratroopers.


The Americans would make this strategy a 'fun' LP.

As per recording: If you've got severe lag between turns, just stop the recording before you hit next turn, which will keep the LP short, though your game will be long.

--> This. I already do this for most of my games, even with a decent rig.

yeah, I was surprised that Stealth doesn't have a few more prereqs and it was inadvertently realising this when involved in a science game that made me decide to try and specifically get Stealth as early as possible to use for a domination game.

America's a great civ to play like this, the extra sight even comes in handy revealing more hexes that the bombers can target, let alone the free promotion on the B17. With Barracks and Armory they come out of the gate with Siege 2 and Logistics with their first upgrade Air Repair in no time. So that's pretty damn strong, I agree people who are looking for a non-Babylon civ to try this with should play as America.

Ah so you guys already switch off the recording during turn times, I see. Still balls in your court w a i n y good luck with the game if you get around to recording it. It'll be quite a long slog in the early game waiting for the beeline to be completed. And in real time the last 50 turns will dwarf the first 200

Do you guys agree Autocracy is best to take after Scientific Revolution?

 

[snarzberry]

It does sound like a lot of fun. Haven't seen Stealth in my games, so what kind of damage do they do per run?

They have ranged CS 80 with a 20 hex range, they take damage when they attack.

Promotions go along a city siege specialist line or a land bombard line, then there is logistics for an extra attack and air repair which is the unit heals on a turn even if it performed an action. Seeing as every SB ends it's turn in a city this means air repair promoted units always heal 3hp pt.

If you get them as early as in the OP then they are monsters, pretty much one-time any unit out there which you can do twice in a turn and take less than 3 hp to be fully healed next turn. The siege promoted SB reduce city hp faster than anything else I've seen in the game.