Units

[Roma]

still if you take anyland you are doing good because you can always build it back up ...... thus distorying a few extras in a city does do you good if you take out all there men too

 

[Norton II]

Not really--it's a waste of bombs, especially when you hit cultural buildings, which will all be destroyed anyway once you take the city. The only exceptions are walls, civil defenses, and maybe SAM missile batteries. Besides killing or damaging units (or taking out the improvements mentioned above), the only useful thing a bomber can do to a city is reduce its population, thus eliminating defensive bonuses for cities and metropolises and making it less likely to flip once you capture it.

 

[Pyrrhos]

Bombers are worse than artillery. I know I'm the only one that still thinks this, but it's true.

When you bomb a city, you're not trying to destroy it. You're trying to capture it. You might even want to keep it. As Norton II said, the bombers will hit buildings and population, while artillery won't.

The AI likes to build Flak and other anti-air things. You can't anti-air artillery. Trying to bomb a strong AI doesn't work very well. Artillery does though.

Artillery comes sooner.

Artillery is cheaper.

Artillery requires no resources.

And most importantly, artillery can be fired on the same turn that it moves. Bombers can't. They're so slow. I can't stand them. (Carriers are too expensive and totally not worth it)

Oh, and artillery upgrades to the totally awesome radar artillery, if you make it that far.

Ever tried to support your invasion by bombing the beejesus out of your opponent's other towns and communications with, say, a force of 30-40 bombers? Ever get these glorious messages:

"Cathedral of XXX destroyed" (meaning riots )

"Barracks of YYY destroyed" (meaning no more vet reinforcements from and quick heal in that town )

"Improvements destroyed" (meaning his units from afar can't attack you this turn )

Bombers!

 

[Gen. Rommel]

Ever tried to support your invasion by bombing the beejesus out of your opponent's other towns and communications with, say, a force of 30-40 bombers? Ever get these glorious messages:

"Cathedral of XXX destroyed" (meaning riots )

"Barracks of YYY destroyed" (meaning no more vet reinforcements from and quick heal in that town )

"Improvements destroyed" (meaning his units from afar can't attack you this turn )

Bombers!

Agreed! Taking out cultural buildings does have its positive aspects. And if the city is so full of units that you know you won't be taking it that same turn, you might as well stop all production in that city altogether so that at least no reinforcements are being pumped out additionally.

I also usually try to get the barracks destroyed as Pyrrhos said. I hate enemy veteran units. I much more like slaughtering off their conscripts and regulars haha!

One thing I do relent from doing is destroying improvements such as roads, irrigations, and mines. First of all, I hate having to rebuild them later on and secondly, if you can blitz your enemy's territories fast enough, you'll need to be getting units to the farther away cities faster. Ironically, exactly that which made your enemy's influx of troops slower, will be your own demise.

 

[Sashie VII]

"Cathedral of XXX destroyed" (meaning riots )

Capture the city in one turn and there won't be any rioting since it's now your city. (Lots of artillery).

"Barracks of YYY destroyed" (meaning no more vet reinforcements from and quick heal in that town )

Redline all, kill all, march into the city. Dead soldiers don't heal.

"Improvements destroyed" (meaning his units from afar can't attack you this turn )

And when you take the city, that's a few less roads for your troops to use.

Bombers!

And artilleries!

Get enough artilleries, and they'll start to overrule bombers. I use both, but artilleries are more flexible IMHO.

 

[Kool Keith]

Bombers > Artillery

I understand most of Tomoyo's arguments except for the whole speed issue. At that point in the game, I am usually using Cavs and supporting them with bombers. It takes a turn to rebase the bombers, but I only have to do that after I take three or four cities. With artillery, I have to wait 2 and sometimes 3 turns to get my stack of infantry/artillery from one city to the next. With bombers I can take at least one city almost every single turn. Once I get a stack of 20 bombers, the game is over within 20 turns, tops.

Now, I suppose that may change on the high levels, but as of Emperor level, I still seem to have better success with the bombers.

 

[Sashie VII]

For twenty bombers you can get 25 artilleries. And I don't start attacking with less than 60 bombers

Artilleries can be shipped over to the other continent. Bombers can be rebased, but then you need a city or airbase to do so. Carriers are impractical for a significant number of bombers. So for that, you need to get a beachhead. You need fire cover for the landers, to raze nearby cities (avoid flip of beach head city) and injure oncoming attackers while getting established. Say you land a settler with 6 workers, covered with an army. Then you found the town and push it past 7-pop. It takes another turn to rebase your bombers there before you get to shoot. But you could move transports in and unload the artys, and they'll start raining fire on AI soldiers and roads and anything else that same turn.

Or if you go amphibious and capture a coastal city as your beachhead, you can move in the artilleries and start firing immediately. Bombers need one turn to be rebased, and one turn might make life that much harder.

Defending with artilleries is much easier. You can choose how many to fire wherever you have rails and roads. Say a stacks of AIs come, and they're all over the place. You can coordinate your artilleries, and cover every tile in your empire. Bombers can work, but only in their limited range. What if that single SoD is just out of range, about to take a city and your units are used up? Artilleries can just move and fire.

Yes, I've done all-out bomber invasion with a lone cavalry razing city after city But you need to bomb everything to death. For that, you need lots of bombers. Which requires a lot of shields. Which could have been used to produce a bigger number of artilleries. Which would not bombard improvements over defenders.

And I've had success with either or both on Monarch and Emperor.

Just my 2c

 

[Aceman101]

Archers get a defensive bombard (IIRC).

What other units have defensive bombardment? Just curious.

 

[Tomoyo]

Ever tried to support your invasion by bombing the beejesus out of your opponent's other towns and communications with, say, a force of 30-40 bombers? Ever get these glorious messages:

"Cathedral of XXX destroyed" (meaning riots )

"Barracks of YYY destroyed" (meaning no more vet reinforcements from and quick heal in that town )

"Improvements destroyed" (meaning his units from afar can't attack you this turn )

Bombers!

You know what works even better than bombers in taking barracks, improvements, and cultural buildings? Capturing the city.

Bombers > Artillery

I understand most of Tomoyo's arguments except for the whole speed issue. At that point in the game, I am usually using Cavs and supporting them with bombers. It takes a turn to rebase the bombers, but I only have to do that after I take three or four cities. With artillery, I have to wait 2 and sometimes 3 turns to get my stack of infantry/artillery from one city to the next. With bombers I can take at least one city almost every single turn. Once I get a stack of 20 bombers, the game is over within 20 turns, tops.

Now, I suppose that may change on the high levels, but as of Emperor level, I still seem to have better success with the bombers.

It's more of an annoyance than anything, but it's simply easier to be able to attack something the turn you decide to attack it. Artillery can't reach it in one turn? Build a city. Still can't reach it in one turn? Build another city. Still can't? Disband the first one and build a third.

As the levels get higher I grow even more wary of using bombers, since those production-happy AIs will have tons of flak and fighters. (Well, any flak beyond the fourth doesn't matter much, but still...)

 

[MAS]

What other units have defensive bombardment? Just curious.

Bowman, Javelin Thrower, Longbowman, Guerilla, Tow Infantry.

And of course all artillery units, provided they are defended by an other unit.

Tow Infantry is actually a pretty darn good defensive unit because of this, maybe even better than Mech Infantry.

 

[Sashie VII]

You know what works even better than bombers in taking barracks, improvements, and cultural buildings? Capturing the city.

Hm, took me so many sentences to say this and Tomoyo does it in two.

 

[Aceman101]

Bowman, Javelin Thrower, Longbowman, Guerilla, Tow Infantry.

And of course all artillery units, provided they are defended by an other unit.

Tow Infantry is actually a pretty darn good defensive unit because of this, maybe even better than Mech Infantry.

Thanks MAS .
I also saw an Ironclad knocking off a hitpoint on one of my enemy naval units when it was in a stack with my battleships.

 

[Tomoyo]

Yeah, all ships that have bombard can also do defensive bombardment.

 

[Aceman101]

Ah yeah. That's good then .

 

[Desertsnow]

What other units have defensive bombardment? Just curious.

In addition to archers, the others are longbows, any artillery-type unit, and if I'm not mistaken, Guerillas.

 

[Aceman101]

I'll remember that. It's very useful sometimes .

 

[WackenOpenAir]

I was told by a friend and by the war thing in here that you need to have different units. Like instead of an army of 35 swordmen you have 10 swords 10 horses 10 archers and 5 cataplutes. Why would you do that since swordmen fight as a 3:2:1 and all the other units are weakers.(I can see why you would include catas)

This is different per strategy game. Many people think a mix is good just because it is supposed to be in a balanced game. Those are often wrong, most games are not so balanced. It is very different per game of game situation.

In civ3, the 2 most used methods of war are the following:

-Only fast units. No diversity at all. Just build only horses/knights/cavs and conquer the planet. You do not mix in slow units because that would defeat the whole purpose of the speedy units. You don't need any defenders for your cities. You use the fast moving units for agressive defence. This is the best method if you want fast victories (like world conquest around the year 0 on standard size maps) or just fast conquest (also usefull for other victory conditions)

-A mix of 20% defenders, 20% attackers, 50% bombardment, 10% fast movers.
The bombardment units(catapults, trebs etc..) can redline all opponents. The defenders prevent the catapults from being captured. The slow attackers (Swords, longbows etc..) take down the redlined opponents in a stack or city. The fast moving attacker takes out the last redlined unit in the open field and can then retreat back into your stack, protected by the defenders.
If you have an army, that can replace all your defenders since the AI will not attack an army.
This uses cheaper units, but you need a lot of them and they will conquer very slowly. You will however barely suffer any losses since you are fighting redlined units only. It will be tough in the beginning to get your force going, but since you don't lose any of them, it will only grow. This is best in games where you have difficulty gathering the production for the more powerfull fast mover army. This is the games on a difficulty level where it really is a struggle for you to win.

 

[Desertsnow]

I tend to use both methods, myself, sometimes attacking with only fast units, and sometimes with combined arms. It works for me.

 

[darski]

Ok, I have to ask this...
What am I doing wrong with my land bombard units? it doesn't matter whether they are cats, cannon or artillery; my hit ratio is about 1 in 10 and of course the defenders heal and I start the same thing tomorrow and a hundred tomorrows after that.

It is so very, very, very annoying to fight with them. When I get fed up and use knights; they die like snowballs in July against piddling defenders.

When people say you MUST have cats (and up) I am thinking they have a lot more patience than I do.

 

[MAS]

you have to kill the units you hit, if you don't kill them, they will just heal in the inter-turn.

But the same is true also if you don't use artillery, if you sacrifice a unit hurting a defender, but don't kill that defender with an other unit, your sacrifice was for nothing.

Always make sure you will take the city you want to take before you start your attack on it.

UPDATE: and in case you wonder, how do I gather enough units to be so sure of my victory #1 When at war, build units, not temples. #2 concentrate your forces, don't build X number of units y for each city. Bring units to the front.