What's the Deal with Paratroopers?

CedricTheAwesom

Chieftain
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Aug 30, 2015
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I know that paratroopers are supposed to be able to "paradrop" into a distant square, and I have done that in a couple times, but never into combat. Is that option always available or is that something they can only do once? It's possible I'm just overlooking it.
 
Paratroopers can't drop into any tile that contains an enemy unit (even workers and probably spies), and they can't attack after they drop. After they drop, they have I think half a movement point they can still use, but not to attack. Really defeats their purpose IMO.
 
The best use for Paratroopers is to use them as defenders who can keep up with Tanks.

It's not really very reflective of their real life role, but they're more useful than Marines imo who have pretty much no useful role.
 
ozza000 said:
It's not really very reflective of their real life role, but they're more useful than Marines imo who have pretty much no useful role.

Well, I've actually found Marines/Paras to be useful during the period when I have Infantry but not Mechanized Infantry. The AI tends to build large numbers of them and they're rather hard on Infantry.

But as you can promote Mechanized Infantry with Amphibious you don't really need to use Marines for your amphibious operations.

Does anyone know if Paratroopers can attack on the same turn they land if you give them Morale?
 
The main use for paratroopers is in nucular warfare. Double-nuke city, paradrop next to city, walk on in.
 
but can paratroopers do the drop thing every turn or just once?
 
Evert turn they are starting in own city. Personally I changed paratroopers to be able to attack after drop, but also increased the drop movement cost (my mod have different movement points). That makes them more fun imho.
 
Paratroopers can't drop into any tile that contains an enemy unit (even workers and probably spies), and they can't attack after they drop. After they drop, they have I think half a movement point they can still use, but not to attack. Really defeats their purpose IMO.

Just look at every real life example where paratroopers dropped directly into combat and you will see why they can't attack on the same turn.
There purpose is to seize and hold important terrain untill your regular army turns up.

If your opponent has a interlocking carpet of cities Civ III style like Chin or Mansa often do paratroopers will be able to threaten multiple cities and then pick off the weakest

Wow! if you cant parachute onto spys that is a great way to stop sitting bull poisioning your wells yet again.

On using marines I find they are good for attacking cities that have defending machine guns or counterattacking against artillery.
They are also one of the strongest units in the game and usually arrive a little before any stronger units.

An assault ship/Chopper carrier you could paradrop from would be great for a Modern war Mod
 
I use both marines and paratroopers as stack defenders until my army is fully able to move 2 spaces. Against anything that isn't gunpowder, they do better than infantry. My enemies tend to us a crap-ton of cavalry, so it works out well. Paratroopers have been useful as a mobile defense force when I'm rapidly advancing. So I can use airports to put one unit in, but then paradrop as many paratroopers as are in range... This is nice when the enemy has railroads. A single defender, even a good one, is unlikely to cut it and I don't want to leave my stack of doom there for more than a turn. Then once the city is no longer in revolt I can move the paratroopers away to defend the next city, and move them back if it becomes threatened. I also use paratroopers for resource denial: Paradrop onto their oil/uranium, pillage it, fortify there until it's no longer in their borders. Works better than bombers because the enemy can just use all their workers to rebuild unless you have a unit parked on it. Paratroopers are also great on archipelago maps where they can island hop without using ships.

The only way I've used marines that is more effective than paratroopers is when I'm attacking a single tile island defended by a machine gun. If it's not a single-tile island, then you just use artillery first.
 
If Paratroopers cam Pillage on the turn they drop it makes them the ultimate resource denial tool untill you get Nukes.
Just the ability to be six tiles inside your enemy's culture on the first turn of declaring war has many uses.

Saw a video using a cross Andean parra-drop in a earth 18 game to achieve surprise against Montezuma who had deployed all his troops to the coast to await Hyuna Capacs naval invasion.
looks like they airlifted to Hyuna's Andean city's and parra-dropped over the same turn.
 
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