Taking capital cities with mega artillery stacks of death

Anything related or not related to the project.
Post Reply
Haxaco
Posts: 48
Joined: Sat Mar 17, 2012 1:07 pm

Taking capital cities with mega artillery stacks of death

Post by Haxaco »

See thread title. One of the things annoying me to no end were the capital cities which were practically invincible. The AI stacks sooo much artillery that my units simply cannot even reach the fortifications. I've tried attacking will all sharpshooters or all light arty, but I can't succeed whatever I do :cry:

Image
Veneteaou
Posts: 280
Joined: Sat Aug 25, 2012 4:23 am

Re: Taking capital cities with mega artillery stacks of deat

Post by Veneteaou »

It's something that needs to be addressed in our game for sure. In Imp1, the options were:

- Turn off tactical battles, use multiple sappers, and send many more troops than they have stacked up in there.
- Send overwhelming forces turn after turn, and incur heavy losses on your side in order to break them down.
- Use mobile artillery units in small numbers to trick the AI into sending artillery and other units out of the fort in chase. Their heavy artillery can't move and shoot in the same turn, and your mobile artillery will out-range everything else except defending mobile artillery. You pick off units, which will surrender as the entrance to the fort is blocked by other units pouring out to chase you. You retreat before taking any damage, and repeat 5-10 times to clear out the province enough to invade successfully.

Tril had some ideas for a battle system that was quite a bit different from the Imperialism style, so I don't think we need to worry too much about these things until we see the new system functioning.
User avatar
Trilarion
Founder
Posts: 845
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 9:27 pm
Location: Central germany

Re: Taking capital cities with mega artillery stacks of deat

Post by Trilarion »

Haxaco wrote:...I've tried attacking will all sharpshooters or all light arty, but I can't succeed whatever I do :cry: ...
This is a lot of artillery. What I would do is coming with as many generals as possible and as much light artillery as possible. Then moving directly outside the range of the artillery of your enemy and then move the generals first, they will draw the defender's fire onto them and with some of your light artillery you will be able to make a hit. If you cannot strike anymore you withdraw and attack next turn with fresh forces again while healing your old forces so they get combat experience.

However my impression is that in such cases a better strategy is to occupy the provinces next to the capital and blocking the port and then wait for them to starve. I might be wrong but I think I remember that finally the AI couldn't afford such a military anymore and you could finally take the capital. And you could still win by governor council.

We have planned already three mechanisms to avoid these problems (=heavy concentration of troops in a province) in the remake:
  • Bonuses if attacking from several provinces / Penalties if a province is surrounded by captured provinces. This will also reduce picking of provinces and ensure a smoother front line.
  • Penalties for heavy concentration of units. I wanted to go more in direction of Panzer General where striking distances are smaller anyway. With only 3-5 hexes striking distance you can only have so and so much artillery in reach.
  • Military costs money and goods to support, they more provinces you have, the more military you can support. A single isolated province will starve and the local military will desert. We might also include support chains.
This might already be enough to smooth the issue out.
ForFunAndProfit
Posts: 30
Joined: Tue Dec 25, 2012 5:09 am

Re: Taking capital cities with mega artillery stacks of deat

Post by ForFunAndProfit »

The way I usually solved the problem was pretty gamey. I had to wait until I developed motorized/modern artillery and just have engineers lower the walls beforehand to make sure I could oneshot those artillery regiments from afar.

That implied that I could hold on around the city long enough, afford the new units and assume no other GP swept over the capital by committing a Soviets-on-the-Eastern-Front style of attack :|
david4k

Re: Taking capital cities with mega artillery stacks of deat

Post by david4k »

Have not tried your downloads, so the defending force composition looks strange to me. Playing on the original game, forces you might see for London or Berlin would even be bigger. Those forces would also include Militia, Rifle Infantry, etc. I don't remember the exact biggest Siege Artillery force, but I would bet that I have seen at least 9 at a time.

Playing in the strategic mode is clearly not a good choice. First thing you have to do is remove the wall. The Siege Artillery not behind a fort wall is a soft target and since the AI tend to have few medals, a Field Artillery will generaly give out a hit that chases them. If you have arrived at their capital, then your troops probably have participated in a lot of successful battles and so should have a lot of medals. I have not used Sappers in a long time and do not remember the results from them, using the Siege Artillery to clear the fort walls and then using them to control their remaining forces is how I have used them.

I enter the forces starting with the Siege Artillery, then Scouts, then Sharpshooters, then Field Artillery, then the rest. Move the Siege Artillery first, moving them to safe locations where they can hit the wall, move the rest of troops closer to them as space becomes available. Clear out the walls. Meanwhile, move Scouts close to the front, moving the Scouts with the most initiative closer to the two edges. As fort walls fall, you can move Siege Artillery back and move Scout, Sharpshooters, Field Artillery up a close as they can get. I would not use my four star General to draw fire, but might use an extra General for that purpose. Starting with the Scouts along the edges, move them until they are they about to be eliminated. The first two are along the edges so as to not block other units, of course, you may lose them. Continue with other Scouts or Generals in the same fashion. The rest of your troops should be in good order to get at the Siege Artillery. When you get to moving the Field Artillery, you should use their movement and range to plan out where you want to move each regiment, otherwise you might end up blocking youself.
User avatar
Trilarion
Founder
Posts: 845
Joined: Thu Jan 12, 2012 9:27 pm
Location: Central germany

Re: Taking capital cities with mega artillery stacks of deat

Post by Trilarion »

This is a good description of a successful tactic from the original game. Basically you sacrifize scouts in order to distract fire from the enemies. Yes it will work, even for much larger defending armies.
Post Reply