Tanks, does anyone use them?

[Gus_Smedstad]

It seems like most of the land units have their place in once circumstance or another, but I find I never use tanks, and I've fought many Modern Era wars. The prerequisites for Combustion are pretty stiff, and you need Biology to find Oil as well. If I haven't had a really pressing need for Rifles, it's often far easier to just research Electronics for Mech Infantry, which are better in many ways than Tanks, even if they can't move away after attacking.

The only thing that keeps me from dismissing them entirely is my awareness that I avoided Horseman for so long. On paper Horsemen looked bad to me, particularly since the AI tends to spam Spearmen just to have something stronger than Warriors. Once I played with them, of course, I learned that 3 early Horseman are much, much stronger than Swordsmen since they can dance away from counterattacks, and Horses are trivial to find compared to early Iron. Which makes me wonder if I'm missing something with tanks, which have a similar attack-then-run ability.

I've been playing on Emperor, and on this difficulty at least, I find I often don't care about defense with Mech Infantry. When Mech Infantry arrives, I'm often facing rifles or at most infantry, and City ranged attacks aren't a threat to Mech Infantry even when the city is strong, unlike Swordsmen and cities in the ancient era.

So, is there something I'm missing, or am I correct to dismiss tanks?

 

[Soronery]

The AI loves to spam anti tank guns. I'm not sure how much of a bonus they get vs tanks though.

 

[wurstburst]

No, I never build tanks. Mech infantry is usually enough to get it done, and I always have lots of infantry to upgrade to mech infantry. Tanks require a fresh build and that takes too long to get many even if you want them.

Recently started playing with a mod that (among other things) allows cavalry to upgrade to tanks. That was nice and gave me something to do with horse that would otherwise become obsolete. I'll probably keep playing with that mod. I hate the idea of some units becoming obsolete while other late units are not upgradable from early units.

 

[Gus_Smedstad]

The fresh build is certainly an issue, though buying them for cash can help with that. I'm kinda-sorta OK with Cavalry being a dead end, since it means there's a tradeoff to going with Horsemen over iron. Horsemen and knights are typically much better choices than Swordsmen and Longswordsmen unless you're up against Germany or Siam late enough for them to spam their anti-Horse units.

 

[Nunya]

You can get to Mechanised Infantry about as quickly as you can to Tanks and by then you probably already have some promoted Riflemen, some of which might allready have Blitz. Mech Inf with Blitz > Tank.

 

[DaveGold]

Mech infantry are much better at attacking cities, holding ground, and imposing zones of control with no downside. When all units move fast there is less value in attacking and retreating. Tanks also suffer because the AI always bombards tanks first, so it's hard to evaluate how good they could be because they're always healing up.

Since tanks are poor the whole anti-tank line is poor too. Since aircraft always start unpromoted they struggle to make a telling difference and this makes the AA units less useful. Well promoted artillery and mechanised infantry do fine for me.

 

[Battle Rattle]

I don't use tanks a lot, it depends how much oil I have available. I like the Mech Inf better because it isn't resource dependent. Reference a related topic, anti-tank guns; I didn't think much of them using them on offense until a CS gifted me a couple and I used them against an enemy city (very effective, and can actually take a city unlike some units that cannot actually capture a city).

 

[Gus_Smedstad]

Since aircraft always start unpromoted they struggle to make a telling difference and this makes the AA units less useful. Well promoted artillery and mechanised infantry do fine for me.

I hate to derail my own thread, but... I've found artillery rather iffy. I started out liking it, but now I'd rather run bombers. Bombers may start off without any experience, but they have a much higher attack strength, and an enormously longer range and movement. Bombers can keep up with Mech Infantry, whereas even rocket artillery slows down the mech infantry front, especially if they've been promoted from prior eras and thus have the must-setup bug. I often don't bother researching artillery, and plan on supporting my modern forces exclusively from the air.

Now and then I've run into a Civ advanced enough to field AA guns, in which case I may have to either take them out from the ground or field an artillery piece or two. But 90% of the time I end up overrunning Civs who have no defense against air attacks. If the bombers are based on an offshore carrier, there's no issue of defending them against counterattacks for the initial beachhead, either.

Again, I'm playing on Emperor, and your experience may vary at other difficulties.

 

[Guardian_PL]

Yeah, I've built tanks maybe twice to see how they look. There's simply no point in building them if you can upgrade high exp Infantry into Mech Infantry, and with MechInf you can pretty much steamroll any AI in no time...

 

[aimlessgun]

Never used tanks. Modern Armor are pretty beastly though, but I've only used those in a game where I deliberately waiting to get them before attacking the AI ><

 

[Gus_Smedstad]

Modern armor's another story, since it's the strongest unit in the game until you get GDR's, and it's required to get GDR's. Whether you manage to build / buy many before Fusion depends on your science infrastructure - following Martin's guide to spaceships, you end up with 800 or so research a turn by that point, so GDR's are pretty close behind. Still, I don't think there's any question that Modern Armor has its uses provided you manage to get any to the front before the war is over.

Tanks, on the other hand, usually take at least as long to research as Mech Infantry, so I was wondering if someone, anyone out there had figured out some tank-centric strategy that worked better than just spamming mech infantry. I'm questioning whether even the German unique unit variant is worth it.

 

[alpaca]

The problem is that you can usually get Mech Inf faster and can upgrade a couple level >=4 units into it. That makes it a lot stronger than new tanks with maybe level 2. If the tech tree wasn't so damn fast I might use a few of them, though.

 

[John-SJ]

Almost done with a game right now, playing ICS as Arabia. When I uncovered oil, I had 4 wells in my territory, which was double as Arab, so I have more oil than I can build tanks.

I never worried about build time as my happiness is currently in the mid-30s anyway, but I am making nearly 400 gpt, so I just buy what I need, as production is super slow anyway.

But tanks are working just fine for me. Next time maybe I'll go the inf/mech inf route, and see how that works.

 

[John-SJ]

DP, sorry

 

[Surgeon]

Personally I never use tanks. Don't really know why tanks arent discovered well before mech inf but hey, whatever. The probelm with modern units is mech inf are just too darn good.

 

[gaiko]

Along with tech tree positioning, another problem with tanks, especially in comparison with horsemen, is they get penalized attacking cities. That means tanks are best for clearing the field on approach to a city, but since the AI is pretty bad at holding the field, the use for tanks is limited.

A cavalry -> tank upgrade path would help here, killing two birds with one stone: 1) something other than suiciding your high promoted cavalry into the late game AI; 2) high promo tanks at the get go. Think Mongol tank army...

Strange that horsemen should be city killers but not tanks, though I agree with nerfing tanks in this respect (they were too OP in civ4 in this regard). Just extend this to horsemen.

 

[Gus_Smedstad]

Because the combat modifiers add, the tank / modern armor penalty for attacking cities only really matters for recruit-level tanks with no general nearby. The odds screen doesn't mention the benefits from Shock or Drill for some reason, but they definitely apply, though flanking doesn't. So Shock II or Drill II (whichever is appropriate) completely offsets the penalty. 70 (50 + 40%) is still preferable to 50, but 50 is still enough to get the job done, whereas 30 (50 -40%) is often a bit too weak by the time you're fielding Mech Infantry or tanks.

 

[Varanid]

mech infantry are cheaper, don't require a resource and do fine 99% of the time.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Well, I'll make tanks in preference to mech infantry if I'm making new troops.
But most of the time, I'll have silly upgraded mech infantry running around.

"Oh me? I used to be a Janissary, and I have blitz ... I can 3 hit combo stuff and end my turn on full hp"

 

[Slowpoke]

Tanks are pretty awful. On idea I have is to buff them a whole lot, but give oil resources a single amount of oil.