What are your Modern Era war tactics?

[Griffon0129]

I've been google searching about these strategies and found a useful guide that explains all the different units in the modern era and good uses for them: http://www.civfanatics.com/civ4/strategy/indmodconq.php. And I'm sure there are a few of you that will say "haven't you already won by the 1800s?" (I've seen a lot of those posts while google searching). I'm mostly talking about an advanced start game in Industrial Era or waiting for that 1st tank before going to war because I love the Modern Era units (especially nukes) and reenacting the World Wars (from defense packs).

What I remember doing in the past: make friends with a few civs then pay them to declare war on the enemies that I also declare war on, or make defense packs then make other civ so mad they declare war on me, then nuke them to death (that way not everyone is mad at me for using nukes).

Recent strategies that I have been using (since nukes basically destroys the cities and makes other civs mad) is use planes and artillery to cause collateral damage to weaken the units in the cities so my units always win (but according to the guide I just read, planes are a bad idea).

What about everyone else? (I'm curious)

(and if this is already discussed just tell me and point me to the post. Please don't be negative like I've seen on other forums; I'm new to posting here.)

 

[Tephros]

I never do anything except ancient starts, but sometimes I end the game with modern units, especially if I do a hemispheres 3-continent or archipelago map. Harder to have to invade another continent to get a non-space victory. Also I play BTS.

The basic sequence is you reduce defenses in a city to 0% with artillery/sea ships/maybe planes. Then you attack with planes if worthwhile, then artillery if worthwhile, then tanks or gunpowder units to capture the city.

I'm not sure why planes would be a "bad idea." How potent they are will depend on if your enemy has SAMs or aircraft of their own. If you have air superiority and the enemy doesn't have SAMs in the area, using aircraft is very powerful. If you have air superiority and the enemy has SAMs, it's still sometimes useful to use them since injured units lose effectiveness really quickly. Also, each SAM can only neutralize one plane per turn. Planes experience doesn't matter as much as other units, so just think of them as reuseable guided missiles, reuseable until they get shot down. Bombers are particularly devastating, but you must have air superiority to use them.

Planes actually matter more in naval battles for two well-developed civs, there just aren't a lot of ways for two forces to distinguish themselves since all the ships are pretty strong, and the bonuses with experience aren't all that large. Destroyers only have a 30% chance of interception, and battleships are helpless against fighters.

Planes, especially bombers, are a good way to deny your enemy resources like oil, uranium, etc. Denying them oil is a good way to maintain air superiority, not to mention depriving them of most non-gunpowder units. If you can't do it with planes, a combination of tanks and gunships makes a good tile-pillaging force - just keep in mind that you might be destroying stuff you're about to own.

As far as nukes, I mostly use them tactically against massive stacks of doom that threaten to capture a city or destroy my stack of doom. If they have no bomb shelters, it should take 2 nukes to kill them all. Worth noting that a sub loaded with tactical nukes can take out an enemy navy of any size.

 

[Griffon0129]

That's interesting, thanks, and if you read the guide from the link, that person said planes are a "bad" idea if the enemy has SAMs until you unlock the stealth bomber to avoid the SAMs I assume.
I really liked the part about naval battles, I never was good at building a navy. I almost always played Pandea or sometime terra and rush Astronomy to get a foot in the "new world" before others until I started playing Civ5 and enjoyed naval battles more.

 

[Lexicus]

Planes a bad idea? On the contrary, planes enable the human to concentrate power more quickly than railroads. Your planes can run into trouble when the enemy has SAMs but if you build enough fighters you can suppress his air defenses (since ground units that intercept can only intercept once per turn).

There are few feelings more satisfying than the one you get from using highly promoted fighters to sweep the skies of the AI's fighters, then sending in your bombers.

When using aircraft focus is essential for ending wars more quickly. Concentrate your bombers' collateral damage against the enemy stack, destroy it, then use your planes to reduce their city defenses so your stacks can attack on arrival rather than waiting for siege to bombard the defenses to zero. I like to use fighters to harass the AI units as they move between cities or sit on top of the AI's workers, as this will force them to spend a turn or two healing.

Ground units become a lot less important, in my modern wars the major focus is typically on air action, as I destroy the enemy's air units and then damage his units and reduce his city defenses, my ground units simply follow up and exploit the damage my air units have done. The problem is when conducting an offensive campaign enemy cities don't retain their Airports on being captured, so you can run into logistics issues as your air support thins out. As such you will end up more reliant on siege units at the end of a campaign. Using slavery or US to rush airports the same turn disorder ends is extremely helpful as this also allows you to instantly airlift in reinforcements (you can only airlift one unit to a city without an airport).

You will find that experience is far more important on fighters than on bombers, as fighters will actually be fighting the enemy's air units. Combat IV and V fighters are extremely satisfying to use and rarely lose dogfights. The exception is if you have enough exp to give Bombers the Ace promotion which decreases their chance of being intercepted by 25%.

Finally, planes can be used to bomb the AI's improvements which can help force them to capitulate (I have had many turns where, at the start, capitulation was red but after bombing 10-12 tile improvements away they readily accepted my supremacy). I focus on resources (uranium, oil, aluminum, everything else, in that order) then farms, then cottages. Aside from its use I find this very fun, I really wish that Civ IV gave you the ability to destroy buildings in enemy cities through aerial bombardment.

As Tephros points out the main use of nukes is destroying enemy stacks that might otherwise annoy or even defeat your stack. It's best to catch them in the open, as this can get expensive rapidly if the enemy stack is in a city with Bomb Shelters and particularly if the enemy has SDI.

The other major use of nukes is as a terror weapon, as using them can cause the AI to capitulate. If the AI has not yet discovered ecology then blanketing his lands with fallout is basically a death sentence as he will not be able to scrub it.

Just remember that Tactical Nukes are generally preferable to ICBMs as they can evade interception and cost only half as many hammers.

One more thing, when I have reached Mobile Artillery and Mechanized Infantry I find it helpful to consolidate stacks composed of only units that move at 2, as these will be able to quickly clean up enemy cities after your air units have done their jobs. Slower-moving forces can follow up to reinforce garrisons and such.

EDIT: oh, by the way that guide is quite outdated, as you can tell from its reference to armored units getting the Barrage promotion. I also disagree with a lot of what he says about naval combat; not bringing destroyers is asking to have your Battleships shredded by withdrawing Subs. Part of this may be because the game mechanics are different in vanilla, but I can't remember what's in BTS and what's not.

 

[ikotomi]

The other big unit is the tank. I generally stop building seige weapons past cannons, and build planes to bombard cities. Tanks have better synergy with your leftover army of cavalry with 2 movement. If you're far enough ahead, you don't even need to bombard that much, just scratch the top defender with a plane, and kill with tanks.

 

[Tephros]

The other big unit is the tank. I generally stop building seige weapons past cannons, and build planes to bombard cities. Tanks have better synergy with your leftover army of cavalry with 2 movement. If you're far enough ahead, you don't even need to bombard that much, just scratch the top defender with a plane, and kill with tanks.

That's probably an efficient strategy if you have a big tech lead, or at least your enemy has no rocketry or artillery tech. Otherwise SAMs and antitanks would bog down your planes and tanks and cavalry would be too weak. I love gunships when I have a tech lead, especially blitzers who can kill 4 units per turn

 

[6K Man]

Funny you should ask, I’m in the midst of a late game war right now. Here’s my take.

Nukes are easiest and fastest. But if you don’t want to use nukes…

Planes aren’t useless. However, when facing an AI that’s your technological equal, you will lose a lot of planes to AI fighters. Bombers are sitting ducks vs Fighters, and especially Jet Fighters. Stealth Bombers can evade 50% of the time, which makes them very useful, but if they don’t evade, they’re usually dead.

I’ll often try to use Carrier-based fighters to neutralize AI defenses when doing a transcontinental invasion, but when the AI has Mobile SAMs and Jet Fighters, I lose a lot of Carrier-based Jets. Like, half of them. It really helps to have a couple of production cities dedicated to building Jets, just to replenish your Carriers each turn. Attack at the start of your turn, and after you have lost several planes, fly in new ones to use the next turn.

Air combat and sea combat are very similar in that because bonuses are hard to come by (no terrain or big bonuses like CR, CG, Pinch etc), you tend to lose about half your battles. Destroyer vs Destroyer, Fighter vs Fighter, are pretty much even. Consequently I don’t try to build high-XP planes, because even if they win their first battle, they’ll tend to die in the second one. Even Jets with the Ace promotion seem to die a lot.

So - If you’re on the offensive, an obscenely large stack of Mobile Artillery works better than even Stealth Bombers if the AI has AA units or Jets. Sure, you lose some MA, but you lose more Stealth Bombers the other way, and MA at least can defend half-decently and don’t take collateral damage from AI siege. However, take lots of Mech Inf or Mobile SAMs with you or AI Gunships will flank you to pieces in the field. (They may flank you to pieces anyway, due to high withdraw chance)

Other tricks:
- Get other AIs to close borders with your enemy, if his or her empire is divided. I’ve managed to isolate AI superstacks that way, while my own stack ravages the AI heartland.
- Use a GA to get a border pop, not to try to steal territory from the AI (that never works as well as I would like) but to create a territorial buffer quickly so that AI units can’t run around the land you conquered, while you wait for the ~10 turns of anarchy to end.
- If you’re using nukes, paratroops and Commando units are great for seizing cities that have lost all their defenders to nuke attacks. If you are fighting a conventional war, there’s less need for these units, because you’ll be capturing cities with your offensive stack
- Move through the territory of friendly or neutral AIs to get close to enemy cities, rather than trying to walk through enemy culture.

 

[Tephros]

Funny you should ask, I’m in the midst of a late game war right now. Here’s my take.

Nukes are easiest and fastest. But if you don’t want to use nukes…

Planes aren’t useless. However, when facing an AI that’s your technological equal, you will lose a lot of planes to AI fighters. Bombers are sitting ducks vs Fighters, and especially Jet Fighters. Stealth Bombers can evade 50% of the time, which makes them very useful, but if they don’t evade, they’re usually dead.

I’ll often try to use Carrier-based fighters to neutralize AI defenses when doing a transcontinental invasion, but when the AI has Mobile SAMs and Jet Fighters, I lose a lot of Carrier-based Jets. Like, half of them. It really helps to have a couple of production cities dedicated to building Jets, just to replenish your Carriers each turn. Attack at the start of your turn, and after you have lost several planes, fly in new ones to use the next turn.

Air combat and sea combat are very similar in that because bonuses are hard to come by (no terrain or big bonuses like CR, CG, Pinch etc), you tend to lose about half your battles. Destroyer vs Destroyer, Fighter vs Fighter, are pretty much even. Consequently I don’t try to build high-XP planes, because even if they win their first battle, they’ll tend to die in the second one. Even Jets with the Ace promotion seem to die a lot.

So - If you’re on the offensive, an obscenely large stack of Mobile Artillery works better than even Stealth Bombers if the AI has AA units or Jets. Sure, you lose some MA, but you lose more Stealth Bombers the other way, and MA at least can defend half-decently and don’t take collateral damage from AI siege. However, take lots of Mech Inf or Mobile SAMs with you or AI Gunships will flank you to pieces in the field. (They may flank you to pieces anyway, due to high withdraw chance)

Other tricks:
- Get other AIs to close borders with your enemy, if his or her empire is divided. I’ve managed to isolate AI superstacks that way, while my own stack ravages the AI heartland.
- Use a GA to get a border pop, not to try to steal territory from the AI (that never works as well as I would like) but to create a territorial buffer quickly so that AI units can’t run around the land you conquered, while you wait for the ~10 turns of anarchy to end.
- If you’re using nukes, paratroops and Commando units are great for seizing cities that have lost all their defenders to nuke attacks. If you are fighting a conventional war, there’s less need for these units, because you’ll be capturing cities with your offensive stack
- Move through the territory of friendly or neutral AIs to get close to enemy cities, rather than trying to walk through enemy culture.

If you lack air superiority, probably good to prioritize taking oil away from the enemy and keeping it away from them, and also having a few intercept promoted SAMs in your stack or whatever your best interception unit is so you don't suffer from air raids much while also whittling them down. The AI seems to be overly aggressive with their air power most of the time. Also, it seems like intercepting fighters have an advantage (do they?), so given equal planes I might let them attack first until I have the upper hand. There's no way I lose half of planes against even equal planes if I only attack with full strength planes though... often the battle ends with with one plane being 50% damaged. I know I've seen the mechanics worked out.

Also something we haven't discussed is the use of planes for recon. Recon units don't get intercepted. Over the ocean, airships are the best option since they can see subs, I sometimes give repeated orders for them to just keep an eye on the ocean where an invasion force might come. If an invasion force comes, air power in general gives your navy a huge advantage, as you've alluded to coming from the other side. If you hit their navy with your fighters/airships, then attack with flanking subs, even destroyers can easily mop up the rest. Jet fighters will have better range.

 

[Lexicus]

So - If you’re on the offensive, an obscenely large stack of Mobile Artillery works better than even Stealth Bombers if the AI has AA units or Jets. Sure, you lose some MA, but you lose more Stealth Bombers the other way, and MA at least can defend half-decently and don’t take collateral damage from AI siege. However, take lots of Mech Inf or Mobile SAMs with you or AI Gunships will flank you to pieces in the field. (They may flank you to pieces anyway, due to high withdraw chance)

That's quite true; artillery is more reliable than air support. I generally will use my massed artillery to take out the enemy's main stack, all bombers in the area having plastered it before the attack.

 

[Griffon0129]

Also something we haven't discussed is the use of planes for recon. Recon units don't get intercepted. Over the ocean, airships are the best option since they can see subs, I sometimes give repeated orders for them to just keep an eye on the ocean where an invasion force might come. If an invasion force comes, air power in general gives your navy a huge advantage, as you've alluded to coming from the other side. If you hit their navy with your fighters/airships, then attack with flanking subs, even destroyers can easily mop up the rest. Jet fighters will have better range.

I've never thought of that before for some reason. I never really seen a use for the airships. Even if they are very early air units I always saw them as useless since they were so weak in air combat (combat of 4 when a fighter is 12). I also just noticed that they have a bigger range than a fighter (range of 8 and fighter is a 6). It might be useful to build a few of them before getting flight tech so you have a few sub detector air units.

 

[Lennier]

Airships are great when combined with cavalry. Airships knock down the top defenders in a city and greatly increase the survival rate of your cavalry (until you're battling infantry.)

 

[6K Man]

If you lack air superiority, probably good to prioritize taking oil away from the enemy and keeping it away from them, and also having a few intercept promoted SAMs in your stack or whatever your best interception unit is so you don't suffer from air raids much while also whittling them down. The AI seems to be overly aggressive with their air power most of the time. Also, it seems like intercepting fighters have an advantage (do they?), so given equal planes I might let them attack first until I have the upper hand. There's no way I lose half of planes against even equal planes if I only attack with full strength planes though... often the battle ends with with one plane being 50% damaged. I know I've seen the mechanics worked out.

Good advice, but I think a lot of it presupposes you are attacking from a superior position. My opponent (Joao) in my current game had 40 cities to my 47 when the war started, and 80% of his cities were spread out over a large continent. Taking out all of his Oil was logistically difficult – he had several sources, and I was also busy trying to keep Uranium out of his hands. The range on Jets is huge, so if an AI has 2-3 per city, their coverage will overlap and you might wind up facing 8-10 full-strength Jets in the first turn you attack.

I’d be interested to see what the code is for air-to-air battles. If I have a Combat 1 Jet attacking a location that is defended by a Combat 1 Jet, I would have thought that I’d be looking at about 50% odds. Thus – lose half the battles. Stealth Bombers and their evasion chance are a godsend, but you need a toehold to base them on first. Before that, all you have is Carrier-based Jets.

 

[The7Sins]

I ICBM the Hell out of everyone.
To understand why and how you must know I mod the game. Some of the changes include a change to SDI making it a world project so only 1 AI or me will have it. Thus usually making it a non factor vs me.
Nukes also now are changed. For both ICBMs and tac nukes they now automatically lower a cities' population by half rounded down. If they hit a size 1 city it is auto razed. As for units directly hit by nukes they all automatically die unless they are in a city with a bomb shelter. If a bomb shelter exists the units (not navy) go through normal game damaging processes as if the game was unmodded. However if that city with the bomb shelter is size 1 the city gets razed before the shelter protects the units so everything dies.
Also third party spies in that tile and having the nukes target directly bordering friendly territory no longer prevent nukes from being launched on that tile.

So basically I build 50 - 100 ICBMs and hopefully get SDI and then I win.

 

[s.bernbaum]

Good advice, but I think a lot of it presupposes you are attacking from a superior position. My opponent (Joao) in my current game had 40 cities to my 47 when the war started, and 80% of his cities were spread out over a large continent. Taking out all of his Oil was logistically difficult – he had several sources, and I was also busy trying to keep Uranium out of his hands. The range on Jets is huge, so if an AI has 2-3 per city, their coverage will overlap and you might wind up facing 8-10 full-strength Jets in the first turn you attack.

I’d be interested to see what the code is for air-to-air battles. If I have a Combat 1 Jet attacking a location that is defended by a Combat 1 Jet, I would have thought that I’d be looking at about 50% odds. Thus – lose half the battles. Stealth Bombers and their evasion chance are a godsend, but you need a toehold to base them on first. Before that, all you have is Carrier-based Jets.

FWIW, in a recent game, I attacked an AI with higher tech level than I had. We both had jet fighters. He also had stealth bombers. I went in with 10 carriers full of jets, 30 total. I put 6 on intercept and attacked with the other 24. My intercept jets all had Combat 3 or 4. My attacking jets mostly had Combat 2 or 3. He also had mobile SAMs and mobile infantry in his cities and destroyers in his ports. Two turns later I had lost 4 or 5 of my attacking jets, which I replaced with reserve jets from the home bases. He had lost his entire air force and the port city that was my first target. My expeditionary force was halfway to his inland capital. So, if you have lots of planes, you win the contest. The AI does a lousy job of managing air cover.

 

[6K Man]

YMMV. When you're facing an AI that's halfway done a Spaceship, has better production than you, and equal tech, there isn't always time to build 6000 hammers worth of Carriers and Jets, on top of the 20000 hammers worth of Mobile Artillery, Mech Infantry, Mobile SAMs, Modern Armor, and the Transports to carry them in.

Combat 3 or 4 on Jets? If only. My city with all the settled GGs was building M.Artillery.

 

[lindsay40k]

I tend to favour a Stalingrad strategy. Have a load of CRIII in a rough terrain fort next to a friendly city, bait the enemy army to capture, and make it the hill they die on. Do not actually garrison the city upon recapture; the trick is to bait the AI to dribble reinforcements in that get vaped by your elites. This enables you to send a second army attacking on another front, without the enemy building a SOD again.

The only drawback is it causes a lot of War Weariness, so get Jails and Rushmore and maybe consider Police State if needs be.

Also, keep an eye on enemy armies. If a large navy or air force is in a vulnerable coastal city, a relatively small investment in Marines can be devastating. Three or four subs worth of guided missiles will soften up the defenders.

Air combat can open up interesting variants on deep insertion. We've all sat an Archer on a forest hill next to the enemy Copper. Well, a modest fleet with well promoted defenders can carry a half dozen planes and prevent the enemy getting their Oil online.

Plus, there's always nukes. You don't even need to follow up with city capture, they're a great giant killer. Once on an Earth map, Russia was running away at a Culture victory. Not when I burned all their Towns and Cathedrals, they weren't. If my biggest enemies have coastal capitals, there's going to be a sub loaded with nukes hiding under the nearest ice.

Sushi Specialist Economy and weaponised Global Warming. Fill the atmosphere with smog and fallout and chop everything. Your economy is based on fish supporting loads of scientists and engineers, whereas everyone else finds their Towns turning into deserts. Works brilliantly if Toku is landbound; he'll refuse to negotiate passage for his army and you can just turn his land into an irradiated climate change petri dish. Even better if you can win before Computers and have the religious wonders.

 

[Macksideshow]

Some good strategies here, I can't add much as I will quit games destined to reach modern warfare. However, I will get close to modern warfare if playing a continents types map. (eg, Marines, Fighters, Carriers, Destroyers, Tanks).

I have found in these situations if you control the seas you win but with the AI's production boosts and limited means to force hammer effective combat in naval battles this is the greatest challenge for me.

My approach is to identify and raze the enemies high production coastal cities and hopefully their naval stacks if they are dumb enough to keep them in a city, which they often are. Best done with a multiple surprise attacks on the first turn of war. Destroyers remove city defense, Fighters soften defenders and marines do the invading. All of this is fairly standard/obvious though I imagine and not exactly modern combat.

If this doesn't capitulate them straight up, it gives me the naval production advantage and I can control the seas and take out weak targets until they do capitulate. Then I land/fly tanks into their territory and open up a land front on their neighbor(s). I think tanks and planes work quite well myself.

 

[Colon]

I always seek complete air superiority. It's not just that it help you decimate enemy stacks and help you take their cities, it also protects your resources while you can destroy theirs almost at will. I usually play standard map and few resources are out of reach. And when there are no more resources to target you take out other improvements. After a while their economy is completely crippled and they have little resistance against your stacks.

 

[dutchfire]

I have the impression that if you're fighting a naval invasion war, and you raze all of the cities you meet, the AI has trouble getting its stack of doom to the right place, since it doesn't have a clear city to attack. This way, several smaller stacks of yours can survive, since they only need to overcome the local defences and not the huge stack of doom.

 

[Testhero]

Submarines
Another tactic to use is as soon as you have Radio start building a large number of submarines in your port cities and preposition them near your target for sneak attacks on their coastal infrastructure and anything floating basically. Don't worry too much about dispersing on the first turn. Rapidly sink anything undefended and then concentrate into wolfpacks (the technical term for sub. Stacks of Doom) and go after the enemy subs and destroyers then heal up any damaged units before going after the big boys (BB's -battleships).
As the AI rarely prioritizes subs you can usually wreak havoc disproportionate to the hammers you spent.
Don't keep producing subs once the enemy switches production. Build up your surface ship combatants instead and seek naval dominance.
Some of your surviving subs (typically any that received promotions) join the fleets as scouts and defenders the rest can blockade any ports that have only one or two coastal tiles and mop up any remaining sea resources.

Miscellany
If you are forced into or adopt a naval strategy it can be one of the few times that the Red Cross is cost effective to build as your navy will most often be outside support range and having a large number of ships and subs with a free medic promotion can be greatly beneficial (the {four} necessary hospitals to build the Red cross can go into your cities that you may use as naval stations to speed the repairs of damaged ships).
Once your enemy nations gain ICBM's and Tactical nukes having MedicII promoted units let your fleets disperse against being nuked some while still healing.

Hiding your ships in neutral or allied ports can be very beneficial as the enemy won't attack them (or nuke them once nukes are available) and even if your ships get blockaded in port like the A.Graf Spee you will still tie up enemy ships in the picket forces (and perhaps nuke them).