Tactics: invading AI continent in Modern Age

Out4Blood · November 13, 2001, 16:09

Fighting a war on another continent can be a difficult experience. Here's a tip for making D-Day a little less tramatic by taking advantage of the AI's inability to wage war.

Once the AI has built railroads, he will respond to your invasion force IMMEDIATELY with almost every mobile unit in his entire arsenal. By fortifying your high defense infantry on a mountain with a railroad connection, you can pretty much wipe out his entire army in one turn. Make sure you are already at war with the AI, so he will attack your units on sight.

1. Split your forces in to 2 groups: Have a large invasion force ready - generally two full transports are necessary to be successful in modern ages. Also have a vanguard landing force - which is just infantry.

2. Make your large invasion force a large combined arms force: 1 part mech infantry (high defense), 1 part tank (high attack and speedy), 1 part artillery (bombardment). Make your vanguard just infantry (3-4 units, but large enough to withstand assault)

3. Drop the vanguard on the a mountain square, near an enemy town and one that is connected via rails (or roads, if no rail). Only drop your vanguard, in case he has too many units. You don't want to risk your artillery or high attack units.

4. The enemy will attack with almost everything he has. Since you are on the mountains, you will have a very high defense. Additionally, you will win may of the battles, and almost all of your units will reach elite status - you might even get a great leader out of it.

5. On the next turn, land your invasion force. The coast should be clear and you can now go on the attack without a horde of units coming after you.

Skeeve · November 13, 2001, 16:23

Wow! If that strategy works, it sounds almost too simple!
I will give this a try soon.

Dyrlac · November 13, 2001, 16:58

re: immediate attack of expeditionary force.

Entirely accurate. I now load up at least two full transports of mech infs/plain ole inf (gotta love the lowly spearman, which can be upgraded the whole way) alone. You have to be able to hold the ground. Armor is too precious with its double attack to waste in a non-offesnive capacity.

A deployment error in a recent campaign left a single mech inf fortified alone on a hill. The AI attacked with everything it had. My mech inf absorbed a massed attack of 8 tanks before finally dying as a hero.

ken01 · November 13, 2001, 17:08

I've done the same thing, but my strategy is a little different.

Drop off a few mech inf on a mountain against a nuisance civilization that keeps declaring war on you for no good reason (e.g. Zulu).

He'll attack your troops til he's all out. He'll also likely draft troops as well. This will weaken him and eventually he'll give up.

Demand peace, and bam no more war.

Repeat as necessary.

When attacking, I do the same thing, except I don't bring any artillery and instead just take one city asap. Move some bombers in, and viola! you have an easy way to decimate his entire civilization. As he's throwing everything at you, you destroy all his improvements (both terrain and city) and send him back to the stone age.

Taking over other civilizations is worthless in civ3. Its just too much work and too little fun. Damn Sid for not allowing fighter jets to attack and destroy ground troops!

jbird · November 13, 2001, 18:21

Good advice.

However, i'm actually fond of the fighters and bombers not being able to kill ground units, as it does reflect air power's ability to decimate but inability to secure ground. Now, bombers and fighters vs boats...

SerapisIV · November 13, 2001, 21:25

What game level are you guys playing at? I've only been playing at Regent and still on my first full game, but the AI seems pretty good about not wastefully attacking super-strong defensive positions which the fortified mountain-top mech inf. is the pinnacle of.

Out4Blood · November 14, 2001, 13:05

Deity level now - but it's combat AI works the same on all levels, from what I understand.

Kc7mxo · November 14, 2001, 15:10

This is a rather natural response. I'm somewhat surprised given so many other changes that firaxis allows ships to unload into mountains.

It would certainly be interesting if they changed the game so that wheeled and treaded units coudlnt' travers mountains either. Hmmm.

Fried_Onions · November 14, 2001, 16:14

Sorry OT but are you the O4B from AoE?

Out4Blood · November 14, 2001, 17:34

Yes I am the REAL Out4Blood :-)
(I normally make that statement as a sig - but then folks tease me making their sigs say things like - "who the hell is O4B" and stuff like that.)

You still play AOE? I have been playing Kohan, which is a marvelous piece of work. I am trying out Galactic Battlegrounds, but it is very confusing for a former AOK player - all the hotheys are screwed up! I am too lazy to reconfig.... SIGH.....

Fried_Onions · November 14, 2001, 22:09

Cool! I dont play aoe that much anymore. But I still have it installed. I was more into aok. I left aok a few weeks ago and then came to civ3. How come you and matty didn't get into aok as much as aoe? Was it the shooting buildings thing?

I tried out the swbg demo. That was fun. I love the thing that makes techs and units build faster! hehe.

Ozymandous · November 15, 2001, 12:04

Heh...

After frequenting (but not posting) Mr.Fixit's forum's I find it not surprising that one of the best players for AOE found an "easy" way to beat the combat AI in Civ3.

Good job Out4Blood, maybe Firaxis will fix it so only Marines can unload directly onto mountians and wheeled and treaded (is that a word) vehicles cannot use enemy roads to traverse mountians.

Out4Blood · November 16, 2001, 11:20

Matty and I played quite a bit of AOK, in fact I was heavily involved in testing, both for AOK and AOK:TC. Matty was even interning at MS games during that period. Nice to see Fixit lurkers here, though.....

Velociryx · November 16, 2001, 11:30

Hmmm...while I agree with this in prinicple, I have another idea which was recently tested and worked like a charm....

We all know that getting a Right of Passage Agreement give you use of the enemy's roads and rails, so what I did was....

Contact the Civ I had targeted for destruction.

Got a RoP Agreement with him for some money and luxuries.

Transported my army en mass into his territory (he didnt' mind at all!)

Used his rails to position my forces *exactly* how I wanted them.

Declared war and took 2/3's of his cities in a single turn, cut roads and rails to the few, fringe cities he had left so he could not reinforce or respond, and mopped up from there.

Piece of cake....

-=Vel=-

SerapisIV · November 16, 2001, 15:11

A Firaxis poster (Soren, I think) said that the AI is programmed to watch for just such RoP betrayals and as a result the other AI's become much more difficult/less friendly to deal with and less likely to trust you (might even be mentioned in the manual). As an end game strategy it sounds fine, because in the end game who cares about reputation, but in the early game, this might cause later problems as you might end up on the wrong end of a big group of AI allies later in the game. Probably depends on difficulty settings and needs multiple game testings to prove if this AI behavior is a dominant enough feature to really hurt diplomacy.

napalm010 · November 17, 2001, 22:24

Using the Right Of Passage to get your forces into position for suprise attack is mentioned in the manual several times. Starting the suprise attack while the ROP is in effect is said to have serious effect on how other civs deal with/ view u. How much a effect "serious" means i personally don't know.

Sevorak · November 17, 2001, 23:43

Only thing about the RoP stab is that you'll only be able to do it once. The AI's have about twenty-five different ways to tell you off if you want to try it twice. I especially like "I'll give you a right of passage agreement - to hell!".

As for amphibious invasion, if you want to be able to do some things immediately, the key is marines. Yes, the marines' amphibious attack actually means something now, since unloading is a full-turn action now instead of a single move. It used to be that Armor could step out of a transport onto flatland and make two attacks right away. Since they can't do that anymore, a transport full of marines becomes a great asset.

How does this work? Just bombard one of their coastal cities into submission. When they're at pop<7, with most improvements piles of rubble and with all defenders bombed down to 1 hp, send in the marines. Eight vet marines should be able to take the city. The important point is to CAPTURE the city, not RAZE it. Then move your tank/artillery/otherlandunit transports in, and hit Unload, selecting to Unload All. The benefit of unloading in a city is that your units activate in that city, during the same turn, with all their movement points. Instead of simply using your first turn to dump vulnerable units onto terrain somewhere, you can seize the one city your first turn, and strike outward from that city, maybe razing a few more cities if they're close enough. Just add a couple carrierfuls of bombers to sever important rail links, and the turn-advantage this gives you can be enough to wreak desired havoc before reinforcements arrive.

-Sev

Superpopanz · November 18, 2001, 18:21

Quote:

Originally posted by Out4Blood
Matty and I played quite a bit of AOK, in fact I was heavily involved in testing, both for AOK and AOK:TC. Matty was even interning at MS games during that period. Nice to see Fixit lurkers here, though.....

Praise the lord, praise the lord! O4B plays civ 3, astonishing! When can we expect Sherriff and the Darqs? Do you miss the TC in civ c3? Did you try to wall goldmines yet?

Zorkk · November 18, 2001, 19:20

OT4B & Maimin' Matty... lol!

I was lurker on those forums, and on the AOK heaven forums too! familiar names!

I love these strategies, but why not one more.

Rather than a RoP-sneak attack, and rather than landing a full invasion force, whynot pull a feint & attack somewhere else.

Using O4B's example, You could handle it like thus:

You want a city... for whatever reason, but you KNOW the AI has a huge army, and you'd rather not run into it. So pick a spot somewhere far away from your intended target to land your feint force... sometime like the 3 or 4 inf. Provided the computer does not have railroad, you need to make sure this initial landing point is far enough from your real target so that the enemy cannot move back in one turn.

So you land your distraction force on turn one, the AI will contact you, tell you to get out or go to war. Go to war. Once the AI engages the majority of his units at that location (usually in the next turn or two) then unload your boad near your actual intended target, and mow them down.

I've found this strategy can work very well, because once you land your second force, and attack a city, the AI will break off attacking your distraction force, to go deal with this new, and bigger threat. and you can either load em back up on the boat, and go garrison your newly won city, or move them on and try taking another. Either way, the AI should be in a bit of a quandry, since it now has 2 fronts, and not sure where to go. U on the other hand, have already gotten your original objective, and might just wanna think about a peace treaty. or whatever. I've found that this type of attack quite often opens the door for a large scale invasion, because all the AI units are mulling around.

If the AI does have railroad, then this get's a bit harder, but not impossible. You just need to find the right place for your Feint force. Somewhere where they'd have to leave the railroad to attack you, yet still somewhere that's threatening to them. Newly founded/conquored cities are generally the best bet.

Zorkk

Zorkk

player1 · November 18, 2001, 19:24

One hint:

Destoy enemy roads & railroads on strategic resources, by bombing them with bombers or battleships.

It's nice to have enemies use only riflemen for defense.

Comrade Tribune · November 26, 2001, 20:04

Quote:

Originally posted by Velociryx
Contact the Civ I had targeted for destruction.

Got a RoP Agreement with him for some money and luxuries.

Transported my army en mass into his territory (he didnt' mind at all!)

Used his rails to position my forces *exactly* how I wanted them.

Declared war and took 2/3's of his cities in a single turn, cut roads and rails to the few, fringe cities he had left so he could not reinforce or respond, and mopped up from there.

Piece of cake....

-=Vel=-

This works, of course, but you destroyed your reputation. If there were some more opponents left, I would now expect them to ally against you!?

CyberGnu · November 26, 2001, 20:10

There's an even better strategy in any age. Use the most fearsome unti of them all - the COMBAT SETTLER!!!

Load up a whole bunch of cavalry/tanks on transports, plus a settler for each city you want to take in the first turn. Move the transports to right outside the AI border. Next turn, move in, drop off the settler one or two tiles away from the city you want to take, and return to outside the border.

The AI will ask you to remove your unti from withing his border, and you tell him you will. Since the settler isn't considered an offensive unit, the 'move automatically' option doesn't pop up.

Next turn, declare war with the AI, build a city, and then move in the transport. Unload all, and you can attack right away.

Do this with five or so cities in one go, then sue for peace. Wait a few turns to consolidate your new conquests (or jsut raze them... since you have a nice newly built city), then do it again.

Due to the poor game mechanics in Civ 3, the AI will never realize that you use your settlers offensively... and due to even worse game mechanics, establishing a city even smack down in the middle of enemy territory instantly gives you a one tile border. And since the AI usually builds his cities four or five tiles apart, your one beachhead city can usually launch an attack on two cities at once.

It's hard to fail with this strategy, since the AI never gets a chance to respond.

As an unnecessary illustration, check out this screen shot:
www.nd.edu/~joxgaard/Extra/civ1.jpg

Those are my ten tanks and six or so mech. Inf. The city contains about 10 artillery. (Almost forgot about that... Additional bonus by having your own borders, your artillery can now move two tiles and shoot, since artillery has a two tile range... )

Hopefully this will get fixed in a patch...

Kc7mxo · November 26, 2001, 22:57

Um. i was under the impression that you couldn't build cities in enemy territory? guess i was wrong. hmm.

Roytheboy · November 27, 2001, 07:55

Yep the Combat settler works really well. See the thread Aggresive Use of Settlers I started last week for other aggressive uses of the settler (denying resources, gaining choke points and forcing enemy to attack you etc)
Never invade without a good supply of setlers

CyberGnu · November 27, 2001, 14:57

Kc, you can, but it is an act of war.

Roy, yeah, the stealing of resources is a really bad one... and one more thing the AI doesn't figure out.

martin3393 · December 5, 2001, 02:38

Hey, I recently achieved a science victory in Regent mode in 1802, but kept playing the game so that I could learn how the contemporary units work (I keep winning before I complete the tech tree). After building up a pretty good army (8 radar artillery; 10 modern armor; 10 mechanized infantry; 8 marines), I invaded my neighbor (who was technologically far behind); everything was going swell until cities started deposing me.

I was conquering size 10-12 cities, getting 5-6 resistors, garrisoning plenty of units, quelling resistance in the second or third round, but then being ousted (after the resistance is over!) shortly thereafter.

What is really disturbing, of course, is the fact that I had about two dozen units (mainly bombers, transports, and healing offensive units) in the city at the time. I'm losing far more units to being deposed than I am to enemy action (five citizens evidently carry the day against an immense army)!

I'm wondering how people are dealing with this issue. Should I just be razing all my conquered cities and replacing them? That seems a waste. Should I just refuse to keep very many units in conquered cities? That seems inconvenient. What are my alternatives? Am I missing some sort of espionage option?

Thanks for the advice.

Martin

vmxa1 · December 5, 2001, 05:52

I mostly raze the cities as they are not worth much anyway. The corruption make you end up with 1 shield or 2, you can get that from a new city. I will hold them if they have a wonder or I need an outpost. Either way I bomb them (art or planes) down to size 3 or less. If they are larger the I will put most of them in as entertainers and let them starve down if need be. I will then rush in a temple as soon as the they settle down. Razing them prevents them from taking them back by force and you will not have to reduce your armies to defend them. It also cuts down on their use of roads/rails as they are no longer theirs. If I need a few turns to soften them up, I will destroy the improvements to prevent them from running in troops and it cuts down on their income and food. This especially true if you are on a continent that is not where you palace is, as you can not get any benefit from it.

rugbyprop3 · December 5, 2001, 13:07

Does anyone know if you can bombard with artillery that are on transports? Cuz if you could you would have 8 bombardments possible from a ship that have range and power that = > than the battleship.

Just a crazy brainstorm while at work away from the game.

Padmewan · December 5, 2001, 16:04

I've been doing some experimentation and found that starving high-culture cities will often keep them from reverting. You must be vigilant every turn to turn everyone into taxmen (the best use for them) until the city is, I dunno, half its starting size.

As a bonus, bring in workers and supplement the native people with yours.

I found this works by reloading whenever a city reverts and trying the starvation route... it's worked for me every time (only thrice, I admit).

martin3393 · December 5, 2001, 17:08

Starving them does work, it seems. I've been replaying my little invasion and with the following tactics, and I've taken six cities and not yet been deposed once.

1) I take the city and garrisoned a number of troops equal to the resisters. When the resistance is quelled, I make sure that virtually no units remain in the town (except one I don't mind losing); instead I establish my defensive lines outside the city.

2) Then I keep the town starving by setting most of the citizens to entertainers or other specialists. Of course, this means that the town is not in civil disorder either.

So far, this is working very well.