The Modern War

[Gooblah]

Assuming that you've delayed destroying a Civ until the Modern Era, and your neighbor who hates you is on tech par with you, what do you do?

This is a tough question. In my opinion, the Civilization should have died on turn 50, by hordes of Axes slicing Bows in half. But once in a while, there's the exception: No Iron or Copper, or the enemy's too far away, etc. So this is more of a thread designed to help the lil guy (and me!) with The Modern War.

I have a couple ideas already:
Keep a fleet of Bombers and Fighters ready. A strong Air Force will help your war go a lot smoother. Have major production and research cities guarded by at least 2 Fighters on Intercept mode. Keep Bombers ready to destroy Mines, Workshops, Watermills, and defensive bonuses. Soften up the enemy's resources and prevent them from building stronger units until their Mines are back online; then rinse and repeat.
Have a strong Navy. I can't tell you how many times, even if I have Modern Units slicing through Longbows, Galleons slip past defenses and land amphibious assaults on my shore, even though my enemy and I are on the same continent. IT works in reverse, too. A surprise landing of even small numbers of troops close to crucial targets can change the tide of the war (*cough*D-day*cough*huge amounts of troops*cough*).

So, feel free to post tips and critique!

 

[InvisibleStalke]

Modern war is all about mobility. Here are a few tips of mine:

- Railroads through your own territory are essential to mobilize defenses quickly.

- A stack of destroyers plus transports filled with marines can be devastating vs coastal cities. I've played games where I sailed a fleet along their coastline destroying a coastal city every turn. Pretty soon they can't even build ships let alone challenge you for the seas.

- I don't generally go for a defensive navy unless nukes are in play. Instead I'll use low cost units like caravels and subs to find their invasion fleets so I know where to muster ground defenses. However if nukes are an option you need a strong defensive navy.

- If you have air superiority - ie first to flight - then you can punish them hugely. Effectively you can suppress their troops to 50% of their normal strength. Thats a big advantage.

- If you have gunships then they can tear down opposing railroads. Taking a city and killing all the railroads around it so the counterattackers land one square away and can get hit by your artillery is huge.

- If you can't tear down railroads then do not advance far into enemy terrain. I like to throw my tanks etc at a city and either leave it with its last defender, or take it and put a handful of highly promoted CG units in it to soak up the counter attack. The sad fact is that in the modern era there are a lot of collateral damage units around and the advantage is the attackers. You don't want to put your huge stack in a captured city and then get hit by every artillery and tank unit in their entire empire next turn. Let them take the city back and recapture it until they run out of troops.

- Be prepared for massive war weariness. Police State is very useful.

- Spies are very useful if you can find and destroy your opponents only oil source. Take out uranium too. Another nice option with spies if you have Cristo Redentor is to change their civics to Pacifism the turn you declare war.

- Do maximum damage on your first turn. I love to raze their capital in the first turn of action. Any coastal capital is vulnerable to this.

 

[gallego]

Beeline to composites, then turn science to 0% and buy an army of modern armors and bombers with universal suffrage. If you have a strong commerce base, you should get 1000-2000 gold per turn. Hurry the production in the weakest production cities, so you have 4-6 coming out every 1-2 turns since your high production cities can make their own. That's all you need, plus some SAM infantry for defense.

 

[kakitadairu]

Okay, from my experience:

Your two biggest issues are fighting through your opponent's massive cultural borders and artillery. Even if you have Mobile Infantry, Artillery + City Raider will shred your defenders. You cannot hold a city even with a large stack of Infantry/ Mobile Infantry.

You must, therefore, pillage all roads/ railroads into any city you take, or take the city, pillage it and get out of there.

Build Airports EVERYWHERE. This is by far the greatest advantage in modern warfare. You can airdrop a fresh reserve from your homeland to your newly conquered territory FROM EACH Airport!

Flight is good, but expensive. The enemy will inevitably have SAM Infantry that's going to make any action with your fighters hideously expensive.

Marines aren't too useful. They're ok suicide troops, but Mobile Infantry or Tanks from a boat are much stronger even without Amphibious. Instead of Marines I like Paratroopers. Paratroopers help move through enemy cultural borders, very useful.

Mobile Infantry is overall better than Tanks. The only stickler is Tanks are your only unit that gets City Raider, so they are your suicide units in the late era.

Late game war is mostly just building lots and lots of Mobile Infantry/ Sam Infantry/ Mobile SAMs, establishing a foothold in enemy territory then airdropping your army into your opponent's backyard, pillage the roads with your commando units to stop artillery.

I don't have too much opinion of gunships. They're pretty strong, but to get them I think you need to research to Advanced Flight which is way, way down on the priority list. Your priority should be Robotics. And even when you get them, Mobile Infantry > Gunship. As noted though, Gunships are great pillagers if you can't get units promoted with Commando.

This is also where Financial trait really shines as a warmongering trait. You will need all that extra commerce to afford your dominant empire.

Cheers,

Dai

 

[duende29]

Tanks and Airplanes is probably all you'll ever need against AI.

 

[seizer]

As I see it, there a several "sweet spots" or stages where I like to wage a modern war.

The first stage is when you have Infantry and Cannons. I use a mixed stack of CR III and drill/strength Infantry, with the cannons for bringing down city defences. Usually half the AI's cities will still be defended by rifles at this point, but even if they have Infantry of their own the odds are still very favorable, though you might have to suicide a cannon now and then.

The second stage is Paratroopers and Bombers. Use the Bombers to bring down city defenses, cause collateral damage and use the Paratroopers to mop up. The big advantage is that you can bring in a huge amount of reinforcements by airlifting into nearby cities and paradropping to the spot that needs reinforcements. This stage ends when the enemy starts to use fighters on intercept missions in their cities and all your Paratroopers and Bombers get shot down.

The third stage is Artillery and Tanks, with Infantry as stack defenders. This works a lot like stage one, with CR III tanks getting very decent odds against pretty much anything the AI can put up.

The fourth and final stage is Modern Armor and (some) Mechanized Infantry, Mobile SAMs and Mobile Artillery. This stage pretty much relies on CR III Modern Armor being able to kill pretty much anything. As an example, a CR III Modern Armor has 70 modified strength when attacking a city, while a fortified CG III Mechanized Infantry has just 64. And, generally, you're not going to face much CG III city defenders.

Like I said, these are the stages where I prefer to wage wars in the modern area. I'm not mentioning nukes as I find nuke wars get too messy for my liking, but I acknowledge that they can be very effective.