I have caravel..now what?

[larsenex]

My game is now in the 1700s. I am on a coninent and I am sandwiched between Catherine and Cyrus. I have kept open borders and have Excellent relations with both. I am actually loath to go to war with either since I have developed my Civ with strong infrastructure and culture rather than military might. Other civs are on other Continents and JUST now I got Caravels. Can Caravels Carry troops, and if so how? Do I just send my caravels out to bump into other civs? Is it best to build a strong navy now? What does a Galley do in time of war? How would I go about having a war across a large ocean? I am diligently working on guilds>Knights>gunpowder!

Anyway any advice is most welcome..

Thanks way in advance.

[Quillan]

Caravels cannot carry troops; they can only carry the small units: Great Persons, scouts/explorers, spies. I'm assuming you don't have Astronomy yet, which is what you need to build Galleons. Send the caravels out to explore. Once you have Astronomy, you'll be able to trade across the ocean with the other civilizations you discover.

As to waging war across the sea, it's a difficult process. A galleon can only carry 3 units. Later on, transports carry 4. It is possible to storm straight off the boat, but unless the unit has the Amphibious promotion, they're at half strength doing so. The only unit that has Amphibious by default is Marines, so you're best off taking one turn to unload the boat, and then attack. Don't go with one boatload of troops. If you're invading, bring tons. You want offensive troops to take a coastal city, defensive troops to hold it, artillery and workers. The workers don't have to be in the main landing, and in fact they probably wouldn't be able to do much until after the war is over (or moved on to another area). But, it's very difficult to take a city because of the defenses. You'll need several artillery pieces (catapults or cannon) to bombard the city defense rating down to 0%, and if you have extra you can use a few of them trying to damage all the defending units in the city. Once you take a coastal city, if you can hold it, then it becomes your beachead for carrying on the war. From that point it's basically a land war. You build units in your homeland, ship them over to your forward base, and proceed from there. Your enemy will have a tremendous advantage, because he can get units there much faster than you can.

[Jerh9e1k5]

Invading another continent requires a lot of management and planning, but it's a lot of fun!

I haven't played Civ4 yet, but a strategy I used in Civ3 could come in handy here. If the continent you plan on attacking is large there are probably more than one civilization on it. Get the civilizations on the continent you want to attack to fight each other before you land. By doing this many of the troops that would be counter attacking your newly taken city will be busy fending off the other AI.

[Silencer]

The only problem is that low number of units carried by transporter, carrier - common - 4 units?? 3 fighters?? How can we flood the enemy with units :P

[alms66]

Get an Open Borders treaty with one of the civs on the big continent, and ferry lots of troops there. When you've built up a good invasion force, move in. This does take some time though.