Civilization II Hints

Defending Yourself

• If you can't defend your cities, your lands, and your units then you will be destroyed. You need to have a strong defense so that while you are off conquering other lands or researching Space Flight no one comes into your cities unwelcomed.  Always use the units with the highest defense available to defend your cities.  The best defenders throughout the game are as listed below. (Defense factor increases through the list.)
  
  Phalanx
  Musketeers
  Riflemen
  Alpine Troops
  Mech. Infantry
  
  What follows is a series of strategies that I try to use to defend my civilization.
  
  --> BUILD CITY WALLS!
  --> Build SAM sites and coastal fortresses in cites which are often attacked by air or sea, but they are not needed in every city.
  --> Increase the number of units defending each city as it grows.  In most situations you will never need more than three defenders.
  --> Station one high mobility/high attack unit in your cities to take out low defense units which come to attack you and to pick up barbarians and their leaders.  Fighters are ideal for this purpose.
  --> Develop a defensive perimeter within three squares around each city.  Build forts on mountains and hills with overlapping zones of control and put high defense units here.  Connect these forts to their cities by roads (or railroads) so that you can move the troops quickly from one to the other if needs be.  This also helps keep barbarians from pillaging your lands.
  --> You may want to use a similar tactic to the one above to create boundaries for your land.
  --> Defend strategic terrain locations such as isthmuses.  Build forts and connect them to cities with roads for quick reinforcements.
  --> Build SDI defense in all major cities once the enemies' nukes become a serious threat.
  --> Defend newly captured cities immediately.  Quickly buy a high defense unit if you can, but wait one turn so that you have at least one resource to cut the cost in half.  A way around this is to disband one of the attacking units which helped to capture the city (preferably a damaged one). This will give you some shields and cut the cost of buying a defensive unit more than in half.
  --> Upgrade all obsolete defensive units as soon as possible.  (Leonardo's Workshop!)  Disband old ones inside your city to help speed up this process.
  --> Defend narrow channels of water with highly mobile powerful ships.
  --> Use submarines or AEGIS cruisers to patrol frequently attacked shores. Take out transports before they even get close because they don't have much of a defense and you can effectively kill nine birds with one stone.
  --> Carriers depend on an offensive defense - so be sure to keep a fighter or, even better, a helicopter on every carrier.  Helicopters can see subs and so they are great for carrier protection.
  --> Escort your transports with powerful ships, preferably AEGIS cruisers because of their extra defense against cruise missiles.
  

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