Rocket Man!

L2 rockets are absolutely worth it; not in their intended role as building destroyers, but just to kill stationary troops. They work miracles against refuelling planes and have a great range to do it. At L3, fleets also become valid targets.

Fleets? You mean an L3 Rocket can be used to target a fleet?

Yup, Level 3 and 4 rockets will damage ships.

Level 4 rockets will ignore fortifications, and that is invaluable against enemies with forts.

I haven't launched a level 1 rocket in a long time, if ever. Level 2 is adequate for most purposes.

I also don't normally target enemy buildings. I want to kill the units and capture the buildings as intact as possible. Although some enemy buildings like Nuke Reactors draw a few rockets.

Rockets build fairly fast, so I don't hoard them usually, although keeping some in my core is a common tactic of mine.

I do enjoy declaring war with rockets from time to time. There is nothing like eliminating 20 or 30 enemy units to begin a war.

The worst thing about rockets is trucking them around. This is why I tend to open the war with them, because rocket convoys can't keep up with a fast moving front, and having a pile of rockets sucking oil without having targets for them makes replacement of other units more difficult.

Thanks!

Definitely worth getting my rockets up to Level 4 early then. I'm up against an opponent whose strategy consists of retreating into his capital and building up a stack of 37 units in Lvl 5 fortifications.

MartinB wrote:

I'm up against an opponent whose strategy consists of retreating into his capital and building up a stack of 37 units in Lvl 5 fortifications.

MartinB wrote:

stack of 37 units in Lvl 5 fortifications.

37 units my rule of thumb would be one conventional level 4 rocket for every 3 to 4 units.

I would open with 10 or 12 conventional rockets in two or three groups

It might make another volley after that, depending on the X factor.

I think that for kills per tone of rares that conventional rockets outperform nuke rockets, providing you can actually hit the target with the conventional rockets. The blast radius of nukes is hard to beat though.

Thanks for the tips guys. Am building rocket after rocket now, actually kind of fun to be honest. At the same time, I am conquering all his territories, so he should soon be out of Food.

What happens if you run out of food for the maintenance of your troops? Do the troops still stay on the map and if so, is their fighting strength affected in any way by not having enough food?

MartinB wrote:

What happens if you run out of food for the maintenance of your troops? Do the troops still stay on the map and if so, is their fighting strength affected in any way by not having enough food?

This is what is called the "death spiral."

Relatively small food shortages are usually manageable by increasing production over a week or so, and supplementing existing food reserves with purchases from the commodities market. Big food shortages call for more drastic actions.

MontanaBB wrote:

There are tiered levels of food shortages, which impart increasing province morale penalties, which lead to further declines in food production, and ultimately rebellions in many of your ungarrisoned provinces. It gets really ugly when your food provinces start rebelling and defecting to other countries, especially if you lose one of your core food provinces.

MartinB wrote:

But from what you say, I can probably just wait it out and he will run out of food?

You can do the math if you know how many and what type of units he has -- and you can also calculate his daily civilian food consumption simply by adding up the collective population of his remaining provinces and dividing by 10,000. If you're sneaky, and you have some spare cash, you can also manipulate the commodities market to either buy up all the spare food or drive prices to force him to exhaust his remaining cash buying food.

Food shortages are bad. Big food shortages are really bad.

Most of his provinces are empty. Just landed some troops in North Africa and there do not seem to be any garrisoning troops.

If you can, take his remaining food provinces. If he has no food coming in, he will eat up his remaining food fast. Once he gets into a food shortage, his province's morale will drop sharply reducing his resource and cash production. As previously stated, if you can buy up most of the market's food, that also squeezes him. L4 or higher rockets and L3 art (range 70 km) are good. If you can bring up a rail gun and just let it bombard, it will have a psychological effect. Bombardment slowly lowers morale. A rail gun will outrange his artillery.

Lawrence Czl wrote:

If you can bring up a rail gun and just let it bombard, it will have a psychological effect. Bombardment slowly lowers morale. A rail gun will outrange his artillery.

That is often the case.