Defending my coastline

[ajb]

I was on a continent with several other civs. Medium-late in the game, I was attacked by the French, who live far across the ocean. He landed a few ships (caravels, galleons, maybe a couple of frigates) with some stacks of units. He took one under-defended city and razed it. Then he started moving against my capital. I was slightly ahead technologically, so I had no trouble building enough riflemen to easily defend the rest of my cities. However, he was still an annoyance, and kept managing to land a few stacks and pillage quite a bit of my land before my units could get rid of him.

Since he was coming from one direction, I figured a few ships off my coast should take care of him. I built a few ironclads to start, and worked on the tech for destroyers. My attempt to blockade my coast failed, though. Unless I had a unit on every single coastal square, his ships would just slip right up the the coast and unload. Older versions had the 'zone of control', which helped- I could place my destroyers every 2 or 3 squares, and the enemy couldn't just slip by. The other problem is the 1-attack-per-turn restriction. His ships are no match for my destroyers, but since he stacks a bunch of ships, I only managed to take out a few before he would land some.

With enough destroyers pumped out and roaming the sea, I was finally able to take care of him. However, I'm wondering if there is an easier way. How do you control the sea near your cities?

[Arrian]

The only way is to kill his ships - which means you need a bunch of your own. 1 destroyer will take quite a while to deal with a fleet of frigates/galleons/caravels.

I typically build caravels to explore the world once I have optics, and once they're done with that, they return and fortify on top of my seafood resources. When I have the money, I will upgrade them to frigates. That in and of itself really helps, b/c the enemy will find it difficult to pillage my seafood. They can still land troops & blockade, though, so I will need additional naval units to deal with those threats.

Short answer: no easy way. Build a navy.

-Arrian

[Quillan]

The only way I've found is to build a lot of ships. Put a picket line out there, a few ships (type isn't important) spaced so there are no spaces between them which aren't in view. They are only there to give you warning of incoming naval vessels. Then pounce on the incoming enemy with a fleet parked near the coast. To keep them from landing, you have to be able to catch them at sea and destroy them fully before they get to your coast. The visibility you get from your territory isn't enough. You've got to have ships outside that to tell you what's coming in time to deal with it.

[Feyd]

Everyone here is on the right track. What I did in a similar situation in an Archipelago game I just played was I set a picket line of Flanking I/Sentry (+1 LoS) destroyers and submarines on sentry in the "choke points" between the islands. If they came through I just swarmed them with destroyers and subs. Buit up a lot of xp that way .

Don't forget though to check and see if your enemy has open borders with someone who can allow him to sneak past your pickets by zipping through an isthmus city!

Alternatively, if you have a long coast that doesn't lend itself to choke points then you can set some of the flanking I/Sentry ships at the point where they double your LoS that you receive from your borders. This is like 8 squares and so even if he's using transports he's unlikely to zoom right past before you get in a round of attacks.

Finally, if you have fighters you can build a few extras and dedicate some of them to recon the usual attack routes. Recon reveals a lot more space than CIV III. So much so that I used two carriers and four fighters on a large map and with recon I nearly circumnavigated the globe!

Hope that helps...

[Medic911]

My old, and hopefully good, idea

im not too good about navy, never have been. it seems worse for me in civ4 though. but one thing has worked in the past. sometimes, to defeat a good navy, one of the last things you need is a good navy. if you have enough people to defend your cities from the average landing party, then focus on 2 other things...

somewhere inland, or if on large continents, multiple places (pre-railroad) have extra "fast attack" units like cavalry or tanks in a city or a fortress, or even just a blank spot on the map. in the even of a naval landing, move the fast attack units towards the enemy, and hope that if they are far away, your defenses hold. next, you must do 2 things at once. attack and wipe out the enemy units with the "fast units" or at least contain them in a pocket until more forces arrive. then...

take what navy you do have, (hopefully advanced technologically), and sink as many ships as you can. you ships should be spread as you described before, every few tiles. a navy positioned like that can kill stupid human players who run out of moves, and also kill the cpu navy, after the drop-off of the troops. doing this, you can repel a seaborne invasion, and kill the enemy ships, thus delaying the next one.

Its not the best way, but it works if you can defend on the ground. But the best part, is the “fast attack base”, always have attack units in the reserves, away from enemy accessible areas, and guarded from planes.

[maholic]

What ive noticed with Ai ocean invasions is this

3 attack 3 transport

if ive captured an enemy capital city in my conquests, that will be the city his invasion will target, otherwise its some other city with good resources which they seem to fixate on taking over and over again, so if you station a fleet 10 squares off the coast, they will literally walk into you and you can mop up their invasion fleet time and time again...

i suggest using planes to damage the boats followed by subs/destroyers to mop up, 1 battleship might be a good idea for the collatereal but bombers are better usually.

the other thing to do is find his staging point city, usually a city on his border with another civ next to the ocean, just station your fleet outside of this... when he declares war you can sink his ocean fleet turn 1 of the war and take out a lot of mean units if hes similarly teched.

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Quillan
The only way I've found is to build a lot of ships. Put a picket line out there, a few ships (type isn't important) spaced so there are no spaces between them which aren't in view. They are only there to give you warning of incoming naval vessels. Then pounce on the incoming enemy with a fleet parked near the coast. To keep them from landing, you have to be able to catch them at sea and destroy them fully before they get to your coast. The visibility you get from your territory isn't enough. You've got to have ships outside that to tell you what's coming in time to deal with it.

Or, as soon as you disvover the tech for flight
build some fighters or bombers,
station them at your seaside towns and send them on recon duty to certain ocean tiles every turn as far away from your coast as possible.
Planes have a large sight range and therefore are able to see much more as your ships can which means that you need fewer planes to see an approaching armada than you need stationed ships (and the planes, in contrast to ships cannot be attacked if on recon duty).

Helped me to detect several incan fleets which wanted to attack my homeland as revenge for attacking their continent and led to the loss of several enemy battleships, destroyers and transports (with around 20 land units on board, which could have caused some havoc if they had been successful in landing) but only minimal losses of my own, as the bombers stationed at my seeaside towns helped to weaken the enemy fleets before my own battleships and destroyers attacked

[Hauptman]

Actually, Ive found it real easy to deal with that threat. in the pre-emptive way.


i had a few destoyers patrolling off a RIVALs coast. i saw he had a transport fleet with attack units sitting, ready in one of his cities... So i moved the remainder of my navy closer and declared war.

he imediatly sent those ships out, and i sank them after about 3 turns... BEFORE he could ever use them to sneak up on me. Course that was after the romans had just snuck a 3 galeon stack in on me, wasnt gonna let it happen again! And ever since Ive been watching the other AI's making sure they dont have one of those fleets sitting around.

[dschur]

I really wish there was some way to have automated recon. I also go with the staggered picket of destroyers, and I have strategically placed carriers with 4 fighters each to do nothing but recon. After multiple turns of sending out the fighters I usually get tired of doing it, and eventually get a whole mess of invaders showing up.

Carriers + Recon makes it pretty much impossible for anything to sneak through, but only if you are diligent about the patrols.

Land based bombers + Destroyers seem to be the most effective defense. Battleships are too slow, and once the bombers soften them up, destroyers do what their name says very well. If they do sneak through, let them go back to their launching city, but follow them. Wait for the transports to reload before you sink them. Muc more painful that way

[Addled Platypus]

thanks for the great info all

thanks that I have not expereinced this yet

[maholic]

as far as naval surprises go i find even ai's who are very friendly towards me will randomly declare war on me if ive recently taken an enemy capital with insane ocean food bonus's.

i also notice that civs i have open borders with which allow my units to get to this ocean city/whatever city the other ai has plans on taking, will randomly cancel the open border so i can't resupply the city, nasty ai coop going on.


its almost as if the turn i take the uber capital water city, they change government start up their invasion fleet towards that capital i took, then when they get to my border, declare war and drop 12 units next to my city, which only has 1 defender (14 str riflemen) he dropped like 3 catapults, some elephants and rest were grenadiers. The funny thing is, with universal suffrage and draft and upgrading i managed to go from that 1 14str riflemen to 3 20 str infantry in 1 turn

and what do you know, all 12 units suicide on the city and die.

their fleet did lurk around and pillage all the food though till i rush bought a destroyer to slowly kill his stack of 6 ocean units (galleons/frigates)

I find in this game if you have a tech lead, dropping research back a fair way, like to 50-70% range and using all that spare cash to buy improvements/upgrades / emergency units etc to be fairly decent bonus compared to a few more turns better research. (long term better off as prod/research/$/military all improve with rush buying using kremlin/suffrage)

but i only play on noble still (im a sucker for the 18 civ huge map games which i only manage to get 3-4 cities before im squashed and forced to take over a neighbours cities)

still on my first marathon game, tanks in 1730 is sweet (mech inf about 60 yrs away though, god those end techs cost a lot, 30,000 bulbs!)

[Hauptman]

you mean cities like this?

[Hauptman]

This makes it look so much nicer....

[mutax2003]

I have an idea for a building to be mod in, a sea-scanning radar station, allow for 20 tile all around visibility (maybe available after satellite). The only way for the enemy would be to have a spy sabotage the building prior to the invasion, but the player wouldn't get the notice until two turns later. Also, there should be an option to put planes on auto reconnoissance missions. BTW, I am in favour of bringing back coastal fortress, it will has 75% chance of damaging enemy bombarding navel units.

[Urban Ranger]

Once you get sats, other players should not be able to sneak up on you.