So Modern Armor rush is basically getting to Modern Armor and steamrolling the AI's? Does it have bonus vs cities? I think I have never built this unit, lol.
all armor units can be used similarly landship/tank/modern armor - swarm the AI making huge
of pillaging (planes cannot do), killing AI units (if honor finisher) and capturing cities (even better for Songhai) .. Which one I would use depends on a balance between my tech rate, social policies & infrastructure finished or not in my cities , and gold pile reserve..
This type of play depends on quite a few autocracy policies ( core are the rush buy discount & lighting warfare, the XP building happy often a necessity, Clausewitz' legacy also very nice to get ), mercantilism in commerce and big ben .. Plus the gold buildings (stock exchanges in every city, all XP buildings in all cities, very often castles in every cities for Neuschwanstein, opera houses for hermitage if culture deficit(poor culture CS play/social policy detours), public schools if tech deficit, happy buildings if happy deficit, factories, religious buildings if piety play .. ) .
This game my growth was pretty poor (many cities - poor map (luxuries + strategic wise) - lots of unhappy periods due to not having enough gold to constantly bribe neighbors and ally enough city states and buy critical buildings, Research Agreements and buy luxuries at triple price ). Thus production was low - thus took me a long time to put all the "infrastructure" (buildings, culture and gold pile) in place. By that time I've managed to reach modern armor and used it to steamroll the map ..
I think all armor units have some sort of bonus vs cities ("ignore defensive structures" - citadel/fort ?). They don't have penalty vs cities.. And they can (move in,) attack city, (move to pillage heal) (and even be able to attack again if blitz) .. Only ways to increase their strength vs cities are great generals (Chinese one are the best) , discipline (strong honor bonus for tanks), statue of zeus (honor wonder) and Clausewitz' legacy (autocracy lvl 3) , golden age for Persians .. Morale promotion (heroic epic national wonder) and lightning warfare (autocracy lvl 2) don't work vs cities.. When you get all those bonuses (and they each add a lot due to the big base unit strength ) tanks can melt even very high defense cities .. When most of this bonuses are missing or not enough critical mass of tanks you can use them as meat shields to block enemy units while you get artillery/bombers/ranged ships in rage to do the damage to the cities .
Using modern armor to do it is not very common since usually I can get the pre-requisites in place by the time I reach combustion (tank) ..
There is also a bug involving tanks - crossing rivers will end movement as per usual - attacking over rivers will not.. It might be a consequence of "can move after attacking", I'm not sure about the cause - but it sure helps when attacking cities from all sides ..
(I've have had games where I've gotten stealth faster than T250 and stealth bombers can clear the map faster than modern armor) with modern armor (and some bombers, AA guns and battleships for support. Lets see how long it takes to roll over the map.. Might be a bit since I don't have a lot of happiness reserve ).. Not enough $ to start rolling in 2 directions but perhaps burning down some cities might yield enough to start army number 2 ..
