Naval aspects

[jbp26]

i know i can't be the only person who feels like pretty much the entire naval aspect of civ4 is a joke. even on a map with multiple continents, its really not necessary to ever build any boats aside from galleons/transports, since you can easily just park at an AI border, declare war and unload, without worrying about your ships getting sunk. carriers are marginally useful, but only until you capture your first enemy city. i find they cost much more in resources to build and protect then they're worth.

first off, i think ships on the coast should be able to bombard enemy land units. this already makes them exponentially more useful in both offense and defense.

secondly, they should be able to bomb land tiles. i get the impression a lot of people didn't like C3C, but i thought it really improved the naval game for precisely this reason. in that expansion, if you bombed a land tile enough, first you'd strip the improvement, then the road, and finally you'd damage the land itself and leave a crater. crater were like pollution in that htey couldnt be worked, but took even longer to clean up. so you could wage a devasting war on another civ without ever landing a single ground unit by turning their entire coast into mud and starving half of their cities.

the third improvement i was thinking of was the cargo capacity of most ships. 3 units in a galleon and 4 in a transport just means i have to waste more time building more transports. it seems too low to me.

what do you guys think?

dont even get me started on planes...

[Tattila the Hun]

I rather like to have a strong navy on continents/islands game... Prevents the AI from "parking at" you border, and declaring war...

Though, I'd love for naval units to have a zone of control/intercept zone. It feels stupid, to have the worlds strongest navy, parked outside you capital, and then someone lands few transports full of troops right under their noses...

[jbp26]

i forgot all about zone of control. i agree completely.

[Dis]

Tattila, you say you like a strong navy, but then you say it doesn't prevent them from parking at your border and declaring war and dropping off 3 boatloads of troops. And this is true.

The only reason to build a navy is to try to protect your fishing boats. Other than that it's useless.

[Dis]

I've touched on these issues before. But I'll go into them again.

First off you are right. Carriers are limited. In fact, I'd go so far as to say they are useless. At least until you take your first city on another continent. But I'd rather use artillery/ships to soften up the city defenses, not fighters.

This is unacceptable. Carriers do not show how it really happened. As battleships continue to be the best ship right until 2050. This alone is proof that the naval warfare game is a joke. As I said before Civ2 actually had more things right than this game. And even civ3c wasn't bad. I miss making craters everywhere.

First of all we need cruise missile back in the game. They are the battleship killer. Aegis cruisers have to make a comback as the counter. Carriers should give a bonus to other ships in the same tile that are defending. Nuclear subs need to make a comback. Regular subs should have the option to pillage trade routes (which aren't graphically represented as of yet, but perhaps this can be done). Pillaging would be different in that the victim civ loses significant amounts of trade/commerce. Privateers need to come back with the same option to pillage trade routes (the difference being privateers get to keep the gold pillaged).

I'm okay with the transport capacity though. Or maybe up it to 5. No more.

[Dis]

But then we still have the issue of enemy ships dropping off troops.

It would be nice if there was an "intercept" option for defenders. Naval ships on sentry should have a chance to intercept ships passing by. Things such as carriers with fighter should increase this chance. And fighters in the nearby city should also have a chance to "spot" incoming naval vessels. the advance of radio (radar) should increase this chance.

[Ming]

Granted, there is nothing you can do when war hasn't been declared... but in many games, some of the wars go on for a while... and if you have a strong navy with picket ships far enough off your cost to detect incoming transports (or waste the time to use planes to scout incoming approach vectors) you can use a strong navy to stop enemy transports before they even get close to landing...

[Dis]

Originally posted by Ming
Granted, there is nothing you can do when war hasn't been declared... but in many games, some of the wars go on for a while... and if you have a strong navy with picket ships far enough off your cost to detect incoming transports (or waste the time to use planes to scout incoming approach vectors) you can use a strong navy to stop enemy transports before they even get close to landing...

Yeah this did help me out one game as the vikings. I built tiremes for the first time (archipelago map). It was a long war, and my tiremes were already built, it just took a while to get into position. I was able to singk galleys before they could bring reinforcement troops.

But generally this isn't much of an issue, as the AI hardly ever brings reinforcement troops. They don't seem to know how. The AI has gotten pretty good at dropping off 2 or 3 boatloads of troops next to a lightly defended city. But They aren't good at bringing in more troops. I often see their stack of empty galleons/frigates just sailing around my continent doing nothing. So in that particular game, I didn't bother to build any ships. As I knew those galleons were empty.

[Will9]

Here is post of mine from another thread.

What about Coast Gaurd as a natioal wonder. It increases your naval units strength within your borders, and lets your coastal borders extend 4 squares. It would require Combustion.

[rah]

I wish they had a different message in the log when troops were landed from ships. I don't know how many times I didn't notice a landing because they've had a unit near my city so long that I start to ignore the normal message.
Something like 'THE spanish have landed gobs of units next to your capital, you moron, and I hope you have enough troops to respond to it'

But yes, I wish ship's played a bigger role then just protecting the seas.

[MoonWolf]

Agree. At least in Civ2 it was some strategy in it as damaged units got an decrease in movement. If you have e.g. a destroyer that get damaged now, it can move far away making it almost impossible to hunt down.

[Ming]

Originally posted by rah
Something like 'THE spanish have landed gobs of units next to your capital, you moron, and I hope you have enough troops to respond to it'

Yeah, I also wish there was a better system for alerts on enemy movement in your territory.

[Proteus_MST]

I agree with Ming,
that it´s just a matter of detecting enemy fleets early enough.

You can even take it a step further:
If, for example, your worst enemy is located on another continent east of your own continent (to be more precise: the shortest path across the ocean between your and the other continent lies eastwards of your continent) it is usually better to station most of your fleets on your east coast and not on your west coast
(unless playing against humans, they might surprise you by not playing along those rules )

[rah]

Yes, humans are more devious.
With continents, the ai will send they sod fleet to a city and after that, you can pretty much assume that the next fleet will come to the same city and the next fleet if they're using the same staging city. BORING AND PREDICTABLE.

And I swear they keep that one unit outside your cap (not just to obviously spy on what's in it) but to lull you to sleep on the "enemy spotted near" message, so when real troops move in you don't notice.

[allybhoy]

thing that annoyed me most was that I was playing continents, I ruled mine alone after a few early wars, built up my empire and a large navy on picket duty outside my oceans cultural borders, so that i could see any invading force from the other. I was at peace so I sent them to sleep. Kublai Khan sent 4 destroyers and four transports filled with troops past my picket (who never woke or alerted me) and then declared war and landed. My navy could have least of warned me of the armada sailing past so I could have taken steps in case war was declared