Armadas, fleets, in a word, sea power question

[Timmer]

I've always enjoyed building vast fleets in any CIV
incarnations, and they've always been different.

In CIV I : Uber powerful in the later game, a fleet
of battleships spelt doom for the AI.

CIV II : Usefull. Having a fleet was excellent to
defend from any invasion.

CIV III : Useless, but pretty.
No matter how large a fleet you had, by the
time you actually reached the enemy coasts,
most ships would be destroyed or crippled by
enemy bombers. And ships were useless for
the AI too. Any transport, escorted by one or,
at the most, two destroyers/battleships it send
was easely dispatched by a Battleship wolfpack.

So, anybody tested how usefull having a fleet is
in IV ?

Also, on a related note, I loved being able to
rename units in CIV III (can't help having a carrier
named the Enterprise, even if I was playing as
the germans). Will this be in IV too ?

[Edgar Newt]

That's three words....

[Timmer]

Not in my native language...

And none of you Flemmish/Dutch posters DARE correct
me.

OK, how about "navyquery" ?

[Lambiorix_be]

Originally posted by Timmer

And none of you Flemmish/Dutch posters DARE correct
me.

euh twee woorden... sorry kon het niet laten nadat ik de rode smiley en de hoofdletters zag

I am sceptic that sea power will be much different then Civ3. Maybe the guys who previewed or tested it can tell more....

[Fried-Psitalon]

Why are you skeptical when you have absolutely no knowledge either way to feed that feeling? Do you enjoy this pessimistic viewpoint on the world?

[Maniac]

zeemachtsvraag

Originally posted by Fried-Psitalon
Why are you skeptical when you have absolutely no knowledge either way to feed that feeling? Do you enjoy this pessimistic viewpoint on the world?

We haven't heard any changes to make navies more useful, so the default position would be one of pessisism, ie things are the same as in previous civ games.

I doubt pillaging naval terrain improvements is a good enough reason to invest heavily in navies.

If only there were trade routes running over the map...

[Fosse]

Originally posted by Maniac
We haven't heard any changes to make navies more useful, so the default position would be one of pessisism, ie things are the same as in previous civ games.

We've been told that having ships in an enemy's waters will prevent nearby cities from harvesting anything from those sea squares, which is a much neater blockade idea than Civ III had.

Having a fleet in your own waters to prevent that seems reasonable, and another detachable fleet that can threaten enemy waters would certainly qualify as usefull.


I am not certain if naval units present in enemy waters will shut down harbors that are operating trade routes. If so (please be so!) then that, combined with the relatively fewer coastal cities we can expect would make it quite easy to block sea trade to an enemy. It would seem odd to be unable to harvest from the water but still receive cargo ships, but I don't know what the feature is.

[Lambiorix_be]

Originally posted by Fosse


We've been told that having ships in an enemy's waters will prevent nearby cities from harvesting anything from those sea squares, which is a much neater blockade idea than Civ III had.

Having a fleet in your own waters to prevent that seems reasonable, and another detachable fleet that can threaten enemy waters would certainly qualify as usefull.

That would be cool. I 'm sure that will all become clear in a week when the game is released in the US on 26 Oct. So I'll be very well informed when it is released in Belgium on 3 Nov

[Maniac]

Let's hope you're right.