war co-ordination strategies

[bobbyboy29]

Hi guys, I was searching for a thread like this but couldn't find one so decided to start my own.
In my latest game (and in most others) I find myself fighting a war against a slightly backwards charlie with lots of land. I have the full contingent of rifles, cavs, grens and cannons but dont seem to be able to conquer his cities fast enough as i have to trudge through his territory and his cities have massive cultural defences. Also I find it extremely hard to coordinate my troops as i have split up my stacks a few times and have reinforcements constantly arriving with no clue where to go.

So far i find that the quickest and best strategy is to have two different approaches to capturing heavily defended (albeit with longbows and muskets) cities with high cultural defences. The first is to have a stack filled with plenty of seige, a handful of defenders to protect the seige and a bunch of cavs. Half the seige bombard the city, the other half attack to weaken the defenders and the cavs mop up using their extra movement point to go in the city on the same turn (assuming its not on a hill). The next turn the seige and defenders move on (including the injured seige who can still bombard) and the cavs heal up(with the aid of a 2 movement supermedic), due to their extra movement speed they will rejoin the stack full health before the defences have been bombed down.

My other stack is more city raider grens and rifles heavy and uses spies to create revolts, however i find this approach actually rather ineffective as either i have to wait too long for all my units to heal, or i dont wait and i have precious city raider 3 grens trickling in, open in the field waiting to be taken out by a couple of roaming knights.

So my question is, should i just be glad i'm winning this war and have some patience, or do you have any better strategies for me? I think everyone can benefit from knowing how others conduct these full scale wars.

 

[DaveMcW]

Group your reinforcements into stacks of 2 or more, and always have at least 1 defender.

 

[mirthadir]

1. Full scale two move warfare.

Use spies to revolt or ships to bombard. Use curis or Cavs to take the defenders apart. Pro LBs suck, but flanking cav have good odds. Against ong CGII LBs this is extremely quick. Yes your losses are higher but you can roll. Super medic is extremly useful as is going CIII/march for veterans. If you are in a big slog or are Imp, then using multiple GGs to get an ubermobility mash (Woody III/Medic III/Morale) is viable. The main advantage here is that the AI does not have as much reaction time to bring in reinforcements or whip new defenders.

2. Naval assaults. Works best with marines though CR troops can do decent; highly promoed units also work. Bombard the coast, take the city, drop in some very nasty CG units (DI/CGIII/Pinch machine guns being just about perfect). Unload the wounded and a medic and then hit the next city, lather, rinse and repeat. This only works for coastal cities, but that is enough to cap many an AI. Alternatively you may not be able to hold the city; in which case you can abuse a colony and get free defenders.

3. Air power. Cities are bombarded by fighters/bombers and they also wear down defenders. You can get 2 move warfare (more if paras are viable) and can roll an AI very quickly. Most of your losses will be fighters which are very easy to replace. With carriers, air supremacy is only a question of invested. If you have the tech and then you can use missiles instead (they tend to be less cost effective).

4. Nukes. Instant sunrise, easy take. Best if you can quickly leverage a nuke monopoly and irradiate all the possible U (sometimes everywhere in the world) before the target can reply in kind.

Further there are specific tactics which are generally applicable:

Get the AI SoD out of the way early. Best shot is to start an AI-AI war and then attack from the front furthest from the fighting. Otherwise stock up on flankers and CGIII units in a border city, send your SoD to the enemy's read (by water, OBs, or whatever), and then flank the siege and let the AI kill itself against the rock. Prioritize high production cities. Enemy caps tend to be a huge portion of their economy, particularly when they are running B. Taking down Maori, IW, and HE sooner make wars shorter. Flip the AI out of slavery/US/Nationhood. Spies or diplomacy works well. This degrades the ability of the AI to rush in new defenders making it fewer wounded soldiers per city and faster conquest. Use promo healing, not only should you not promote before attacking, but do not promote if you can take the place with good odds (i.e. >95% or so) - then at the next city you can single, double or triple promote to heal 50, 75, or 87.5% of the damage done to a unit.

 

[FlyinJohnnyL]

or i dont wait and i have precious city raider 3 grens trickling in, open in the field waiting to be taken out by a couple of roaming knights.

This is your biggest mistake. Never send in a reinforcement on his own! Set your waypoint to a "safe" place near the battlefield, and when a mini-stack of reinforcements is ready, THEN you send them in. Sending in reinformcements peacemeal (is that the word I'm looking for, too many beers tonight after that slam dunk contest) is a big mistake.

Spies and mounted units are definitely the quickest wars you can fight. On the one hand, you probably end up with a few extra losses and higher WW, but since the war is over sooner, the WW isn't as big of an issue. Plus, when I'm fighting a war at this point, I go all-out. I could give a damn if my people are pissed off, that is what the culture slider is for.

 

[Gwynnja]

I am a monarch level player. At prince and noble I tended to axe out an early civ or two, then build a stack o death consisting of 1/2 seige and 1/4 melee city raiders to be promoted to rifles later on and 1/4 stack protectors, garrison units. Mounted units would tag along to steal workers and take out stray units outside the city limits. The problem as the op suggests is it's just soooooooo sloooooooow. But this allowed me to dominate prince, but struggle on monarch.
I decided to try something new. I've begun to ignore seige entirely. My armies have been strictly mounted: horse archers for the initial land grab, then cuiriassers and cavalry for the grand finale. Flanking II allows an immediate 50% survival rate amongst the frontline units, allowing them to gain xp then quickly retreat to the medical unit's tile for a quick heal. This method has allowed me to dominate 3 games in a row on monarch, each time with a higher score than the last, my highest being around 250K. I don't know if it will work on emperor and above, a tech lead is fairly important for the grand finale. Taking military tradition with liberalism usually works.
The speed of the mounted units coupled with the ability to withdraw and survive makes mounted units amazing.

 

[UncleJJ]

Hi guys, I was searching for a thread like this but couldn't find one so decided to start my own.
In my latest game (and in most others) I find myself fighting a war against a slightly backwards charlie with lots of land. I have the full contingent of rifles, cavs, grens and cannons but dont seem to be able to conquer his cities fast enough as i have to trudge through his territory and his cities have massive cultural defences. Also I find it extremely hard to coordinate my troops as i have split up my stacks a few times and have reinforcements constantly arriving with no clue where to go.

So far i find that the quickest and best strategy is to have two different approaches to capturing heavily defended (albeit with longbows and muskets) cities with high cultural defences. The first is to have a stack filled with plenty of seige, a handful of defenders to protect the seige and a bunch of cavs. Half the seige bombard the city, the other half attack to weaken the defenders and the cavs mop up using their extra movement point to go in the city on the same turn (assuming its not on a hill). The next turn the seige and defenders move on (including the injured seige who can still bombard) and the cavs heal up(with the aid of a 2 movement supermedic), due to their extra movement speed they will rejoin the stack full health before the defences have been bombed down.

My other stack is more city raider grens and rifles heavy and uses spies to create revolts, however i find this approach actually rather ineffective as either i have to wait too long for all my units to heal, or i dont wait and i have precious city raider 3 grens trickling in, open in the field waiting to be taken out by a couple of roaming knights.

So my question is, should i just be glad i'm winning this war and have some patience, or do you have any better strategies for me? I think everyone can benefit from knowing how others conduct these full scale wars.

Overall you seem to be doing as well as you can in this era although there is room for improvement. I think you might be expecting too much. It is always going to take an average of 3 or 4 turns for a stack to take a city when moving through enemy culture if you include healing time. As others have mentioned you have basic three options at this time. These move 1, 2 or 4 tiles per turn in enemy culture and limit the speed of your conquest.

a) A basic stack of cannons and other troops moving at 1 tile / turn through enemy culture. This is standard and can defeat anything the enemy throws at you, if it doesn't work then you aren't strong enough to attack. The stack moves next to the city one turn, bombards the defences and then uses some cannons to soften the defenders and then attackers.
b) A stack of cavalry moving 2 tiles across flat terrain for first move (but not hills or woods) and these can be supported by spies (revolt city) or frigates to lower defences. Cavalry and cuirassiers will beat longbows and muskets, with some casualties, if the city defences is lowered. If there are a lot of hills or woods then guerilla 2 and woodsman 2 promotions can give other 2 move troops.
c) Galleons to carry troops through culture at 4 or 5 tiles and then land next to a coastal city. Frigates bombard defences to zero while the galleons land the troops and then again before the attack next turn. That means you only need a few assault cannons and attackers. After taking the city load the troops on the galleons. Another galleon can bring replacement cannons and a garrison. Troops can heal on the galleons. It still takes about 3 or 4 turns to take each city but you can avoid awkward terrain and counterattacks. Against very weak defenders it is possible to attack in one turn from the galleons despite the -50% amphibious penalty or with the amphibious promotion.

With option a), the way you manage your cannons can make a big difference to the overall speed of progress. Seldom will you have too many cannons . You might be trying to hurry too much if you are not bombarding the defences to zero or maybe you need to wait until all your assault cannons are healed. I have two types of cannons, those that specialise in bombarding and they are usually CR1, accuracy and those that are assault specialists with CR promotions (these need replacing frequently). I try to operate them separately but sometimes they get used for the other task. That allows any damaged assualt cannons to heal before moving on to the next city or if lightly damaged 1 turn of not moving or bombarding will heal them back to full stength.

I am not sure why you are operating a stack of CR rifles and grenadiers independently with spies. I would combine those with cannons and use the CR troops to kill the best defender and save a cannon or two. CR troops following cannons will probably do not need to heal so you only need to replace the sacrificed first cannon or two. Spies can move 3 tiles along enemy roads (commando promotion) and go best with fast moving troops of option b).

 

[bobbyboy29]

Thanks for all the advice guys i guess i'm just a little impatient, still i dont think my last war was too inefficient, Charlie and his vassal Mehmed DOW'd me with twice my power rating, within twenty turns they were both my vassals

It is always going to take an average of 3 or 4 turns for a stack to take a city when moving through enemy culture if you include healing time. As others have mentioned you have basic three options at this time. These move 1, 2 or 4 tiles per turn in enemy culture and limit the speed of your conquest.
.

I guess what i really want is the ability to paradrop in cannons and rifles. Although I have found the quickest offensive unit, combat 4 commando cavs RULE, worker steals FTW, also if the enemy has railroads, any city defended only by 1 unit within 20 tiles of me is in danger, talk about a sneak attack!

I am not sure why you are operating a stack of CR rifles and grenadiers independently with spies. I would combine those with cannons and use the CR troops to kill the best defender and save a cannon or two. CR troops following cannons will probably do not need to heal so you only need to replace the sacrificed first cannon or two..

I don't normally do that, this just kind of happened as i was a bit underprepared for the war and my veteran CR troops were separated from most of my seige, I am beginning to see the use of the spies, cavs combo just used it to surprise attack Ghandi and nab a city with a few wonders . Next game i'm gonna try get a stack of commando cavs and see if I can nab an AI core city in the first turn of war!

 

[Skallagrimson]

I usually go with a 1-move stack and a 2-move stack.

The 1-move stack has the full complement of city raid melee or gunpowder units, siege, stack D, etc. This stack gets used for the most obnoxious, heavily-defended cities. The more lightly-defended cities (usually back cities) get taken down by the 2-move cav/spy stack.

In the paratrooper era this becomes a 3rd stack: paratroopers stack up in a frontline city while bombers bombard away city defenses and soften the city garrison. When it's nearly time to do the raid, the paratroopers land on the best defensible tile adjacent to the city they can drop onto (or drop 1 away and then move onto). Then the paratroopers finish off the defenders and some garrison the city as well (CG line). The "air stack" is for those cities not as heavily defended by fighters and SAMs.

And then when the unit-pumping really gets crazy, the 4th stack comes up: Marines for coastal raids. (Marines also supplement CGs for cities on a river, for counter-attacks across rivers.)

 

[futurehermit]

Sounds to me like you may not be bringing enough units to get the job done. In a typical renaissance war, I will start with around 60 units or so. Either 1 large stack or 2 stacks of 30 depending on the layout of the enemy empire.