Yes they are important

[SirJosiah]

Marines are very important in the early modern era. Yes they are expensive but so are paratroopers. It is the cost for specialests. Every Unit has a task to fulfill a fool urejects one that is does not seem important. Think of D-day.

 

[ElephantU]

There are other ways to handle landing problems, though. A few hits with a Battleship will clear most beaches, then land an Engineer and build an instant beachhead city, connect to the AI RR lines, and bring in the laden transports! A whole civ can be taken down in one turn with some good planning.

 

[funxus]

Many seldom build any of the specialist units (like marines, paratroopers, partisans and helicopters) because there aren't many situations where they are needed and because they are quite expensive. I'm personally fond of the paratrooper/stealth fighter combo when playing archipelagos, and wouldn't say no to a free partisan or marines, but I wouldn't go as far as saying they're important to the game (despite some of these being important in real wars). They can be used to solve some situations smoother though than the none-specialist units.

 

[Other]

Thet are usefull sometimes but not very important.

 

[The Mass Leader]

Marines are an important unit to make a slow but safe advance on land. The great advantage of the marines is that they are less expensive than armors but have the same 8 points of attack.

If you go short on money but must launch a land attack through railroads, just build a mariner. It will solve most of the cases.

I usually don´t use many marines. I get some from cities taken by subvert, but I often don´t build them.

If you want to know what is really effective on taking a city in another continent, here goes the scheme:

- Build many helicopters.
- Place them near (not one square adjacent, just near...) cities you want to take.
- Throw nuclear weapons. Destroy all defenses in one turn.
- Take the cities with the helicopters.
- After your enemy nation surrenders, or disappears, anyway, build many engineers and start the cleaning work.
- If you are planning a long campaign in enemy soil after the takinof the first cities, send engineers on transport ships so they will clean up the pollution before the world get s a global warming.

That´s it. Remember: Nuclear weapons, helicopters, and a bunch of janitors to clean everything and get it like no one has ever thrown anything there. - Bomb, take, clean. bom, take, clean. Done.

 

[funxus]

The Mass Leader, armors have an attack of 10, defense of 5 and movement of 3, which means that for 20s you get two more very valuable movements and 2 more in attack.

 

[Ace]

Another reason for not building marines is that Cavalry has the same attack factor with a movement of 2. A very strong unit, relatively early in the game, and comtempory with the marine unit. Except for their ability to attack from a ship, marines are just cannon with a better defense factor!

 

[Other]

In the end of the game i'm seldom using other tactics than 1) buying the cities with spies or 2) using spies do destroy the walls and then attack with armor or cavalry.