5-7 cavalry/dragoons
8-9 artillery/cannons

Now the deal here is to secure the immediate terrain around the city, providing safe operational room for your big guns. Use your cavalry/dragoons to destroy any units that may be within the city perimeter. Afterwards, have your big guns surround the city (at least one terrain square away) but within the protective perimeter of your mobile units. The job of your mobile units, now, is to make sure NO enemy units from other cities reinforce the garrison or inflict any damage on your fragile artillery/cannon pieces.
Having achieved this, on one turn, have every square around the city occupied by one of your guns. Thus all 8 squares should have an artillery or cannon unit. I can't stress how important it is to make sure this is done in ONE turn. Then let the CPU do his thing against your guns. You usually lose about 2-4 guns but that's about it. That's leaves you with about 5 guns to punish the city garrison with. Believe me, the AI won't stand a chance against such a pounding. And since all of your resources are focused on your army (Not the NAVY) losses are MORE than affordable.

If you wish to launch a trans-continental invasion, things do get risky but it can be done without a solid navy. What it involves is building a core amount of transports to carry the bulk of your troops. After you have those built, build a number of "decoy" transports. About 4-5 will do. When everything is set up, have your decoys always screen in front of your troop carriers. Their job is to spot potential threats and draw them away from your vulnerable troops. One does tend to incur heavy losses now and then in terms of transports but it's MUCH cheaper than building a fleet of Battleships and AEGIS cruisers to protect a couple of transports. A much better gamble in the end game anyways.

Oh, don't ever build marines. EVER. They are totally useless. Their the poor man's version of the tank. Honestly, it doesn't pay to launch amphibious assaults. Just use 8 tanks, land them beside the city and use their two movement points to pummel the helpless defenders. Higher attack value PLUS an extra hitpoint. A better bet on any day of the week.

oh well. anyway - to continue...

'Having achieved this, on one turn, have every square around the city occupied by one of
your guns. Thus all 8 squares should have an artillery or cannon unit. I can't stress how
important it is to make sure this is done in ONE turn. Then let the CPU do his thing against
your guns. You usually lose about 2-4 guns but that's about it.'

We can post in off topic whatever does not belong in the on topic forums (i.e. general material, but not on-topic civ2 strategy!!!). And then only stuff that doesn't go against the rules of the off topic policy.

If I would have been moderator I would have moved the thread immediately. As I am not, I merely state that this thread SHOULD be moved.

But if the originator of the thread would start a similar thread after the first one was moved, then you do qualify for a vacation in my opinion.

You're supposed to post about civ2 strategy matters in the civ2 strategy forum, and topics which are not covered by any of the forums in the off-topic

An off-topic thread in the civ2 strategy will be moved here, and vice versa

this isn't an issue of free speech, this is an issue of having an order in the forums and not mixing discussions. people who visit the civ2 strategy expect to see civ2 strategy discussions and the same goes for all forums including the OT

and to respond directly to MWHC "The OT was created for anything you want to talk about", the OT was created so that on-topic forums dont off-topic threads. I dont see why we should do the opposite...

this thread moved to civ2 strategy

I do think that 6aMan needs to refine his strat a little bit, though. Maybe we should take a poll on OT to see if suggestions should incorporate racism, creationism, banning Ming or US vs EU rants???

6aMan - I noticed in your thread to MarkG that you said no one posts in the strategy folder... seems like we get about 30 a day, and AH even stops by once in a while!

Here is what I would recommend to refine your land attack style. I am usually wrong on about 50% of what I recommend so take it with a grain of salt...

a) After railroad...take engineers with you when you attack a new continent. Use one to build a coastal city that connects to the AI's rail network and land all of your ships there. Preferably have that city within a one turn move from your transports so that you never need escorts. With strategically placed railroads and ports you can move those artilery pieces from production to battle field in one turn without using any movement points.

b) take partizens, or alpines with you to block city squares without roads if you want to cover them all to prevent guerillas.

c) on a related topic take spies or partizens with you to move through ZOC that you may need to block out squares.

d) don't worry about enemy units inside the city radius, once you kick the city, those units will either disappear or become your units!

e) in the cannon and pre railroad era, MWHC's technique of building an adjoining fortress with settlers or engineers and stacking all of your units in there is the best way to go by far. If you have a preworked fortress (or even a vet alpine on a hill while the fort is being built) you can attack with impunity from counter attacks while you are massing. My personal favorite is landing on a mountain from the water and building your port there (takes two turns, but makes a helluva forward base)

f) ALWAYS attack walled cities with artilery type pieces, tanks don't ignore city walls and are very expense fodder. Also using a dip to tear down the walls seems silly to me when you are going to be in possesion of the city at the end of the turn and having walls becomes a good thing.

g) Use a dip or spy to investigate a city to see how many difficult defenders are in position. Use artilery on those; use other stuff to take out dips, caravans, cruise missles, bombers, etc.

Note: I totally agree on not building Marines, though MWHC posted a while back that attacking with them and then withdrawing the injured in the transport to the cover of a capital ship made a lot of sense to me. I also never build big navies, unless I need to cross twenty squares of ocean to the nearest land and when does that ever happen??

I should go nominate you since you had to read an AH thread!

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anyone lived in a pretty how town
with up so floating many bells down

Paradroppable howitzers all the way. Nothing can withstand your artillery division if it can be moved by aircraft.