Naval aspects

[rah]

Yes, an intercept option like for planes would be nice.

[Arrian]

I also wish that my sentried ships woke up if *anything* came within their field of vision. I've had excellent pickets almost fail b/c I simply didn't notice the little dots on the minimap. I was at war, but I've got the "show moves" off, and I like it that way usually. Luckily in that particular case I caught it in the nick of time and sank the enemy ships (subs vs. frigates ain't fair, is it? oh well).

Generally speaking, though, I do build and use a navy. I don't go for carriers, but I build plenty of other ships. The AI doesn't do very well, at least once you get past Triremes.

-Arrian

[Dis]

Originally posted by rah
Yes, an intercept option like for planes would be nice.

I mentioned that.

[Proteus_MST]

Of ycourse it is of less use if, like in allybhoys case, the AI only declares war at the moment its ships approach your seaside cultural border (and probably already have gotten past the picket line of your ships around the continent).

Maybe some kind of configurable message system would be good, where you could assemble conditions when messages should be shown.

For example:
"Notify me when " (Land Units/Ships/Planes/All Units) " From " (Montezuma/Augustus/.../Enemy Civs/Friendly Civs/All Civs) " get into visible range of my " (Land Units/Ships/Planes/All Units)

[sparkyal]

Naval warfare. Very complicated type of war. first of all, it really is not difficult to sneak an entire fleet past another fleet (for WWII example see the Battle of Coral Sea). Even in modern times it "can" be easy depending on a number of factors. It would not be too difficult for a somewhat creative and well armed enemy to hit a good port city like Boston with a huge invasion force. It wouldn't survive very long afterwards, but it can be done.

As for the messages, it would be nice after you build scotland yard that you get some intel updates like: Monty is mighty angry and and 10 TNR's just left one of his cities headed in OUR direction!"

IMHO, sentry should actually involve the ships moving just a little bit. If you ever played Warcraft, you remember you could sentry your ships to move back and forst to patrol an area. Something like that would be cool.

CV's: well, they should be faster and carry more then just 3 FTRs. Maybe 4 or 5?

BBs: bobmbard land units? Yup. the counter to these really should be the sub, BB's have very little they can do against them. Subs shoudl get +100% against them. Cruise missles are another good option.

Aegis: needs to come back, but I understand the DD's really take need away.

Nuke subs: need to come back. Maybe strength 30, +100% against BB's. +10% on attack. no costal bonus.

sparky

[Dis]

I think warning messages should come after all the popups for city maintenance. That's one problem. After I take care of all the city assignments, I miss the warning messages. Especially when there are lots of them, and things happen after the warnings (great persons born, oil discovered etc.)

[MikeH]

I love carriers for sneak attacks, you can bomb the hell out of the troops in a city before your land troops invade, bombard with your ships and you don't need as many slow moving artillery units.

And you can keep your planes on them so they don't die if the AI counterattacks and captures your first foodhold city (which hopefully won't happen).

[Virdrago]

Dis, if you're worried about missing a few popups, go to the log icon on the top left corner of the screen (there's a combat log and message log for MP all packaged together). Look at what's happened this year (or last, and if you're trying to find out exactly where the warning's telling you, click on the message. It'll centre it for you.

Of coursde, if you know all this, disregard me.

[MasterDave]

Against the AI, you do not need a large navy, that is true. However, in multiplayer games with continents, the naval war becomes a lot more important. In fact, if your oppoenent gets combustion long before you can, you are in huge trouble, as he can now invade you and you cannot hit back. Also, he can bombard your cities at will with destroyers that are nearly invulnerable vs. your slow moving ironclads or frigates.

I like building navies, and frigates on up are excellent ways to soften up enemy cities before your troops arrive.

I do agree with the original poster that naval power should be more powerful, and I have posted before that ships should regain the power they had in Civ3 to bombard units and improvements on land. Just pillaging fishing boats is not enough of a threat to make a navy a priority.

I'd also like to see privateers return in some form.

[Zahathustra]

Civ4 needs to be better in naval warfare. While already the Naval Units get a 10% bonus when defending a coastal tile, this is by no means enough to stop the enemy from unloading lots of troops just off your undefended coast.

Sometimes Putting many NUs next to your coast maybe useful but it takes a lot of time to produce many of them to defend all your coast line (BTW usually the coastal cities are not much good at Production) but once you make it on a continent or island - with you the only civ in that continent - the enemy can hardly unload it's troops in that land. You are in a Deadlock if your enemy does this and you can do nothing to reach it's shores EVEN IF you have more and better Land Units and neither you can hurt it easily (The idea of using long range Missiles against the ships is needed here).

It is very good to have a Patrol Stance and/or Intercept Zone or the idea of Missiles, but it will also make it more fun and realistic if we also could have - If Attacked With ...THEN Counter With ... Rule - (which may need to add more nu types to the game) OR as the Civ game is based on unit upgrades as a mean to make them more effective, Why not have more Professional Upgrades specific to different types of NUs in the game? Then this will make the navy more useful and effective and puts some more interesting ideas into work and makes it further COOL .

With this in game, as we have a National Wonder like Heroic Epic for the Land Units, then there could be another one dedicated to the NUs as one cleverly mentioned this earlier or a wonder that better specializes the NUs we create .

[Jaybe]

Naval units blockading a port city (unblocked zones of control blocking all access to sea) should reduce the port's trade income to the equivalent of an inland city.

[Strudo]

How about reducing the movement rate of transports to 1 inside enemy borders, say to reflect traveling through a minefield or trying to avoid enemy coastguard. Not suggesting have a coastguard unit, but assume that the coastguard in there and enem ships would want to avoid it. That would stop people parking outside the boarders, and in one turn declaring war and dumping troops, which would give the player fleet a chance to respond. Of course this would only help if your borders extend sufficiently off the coast. This could only apply to transports as galleons wouldn't be in the same era as coastguard or mines, or this effect could be triggered by a national wonder or tech (say radio)

Another option might be to only allow dropping troops on the first move of the galleon/transport. This would mean moving the ship to the coastline in the first turn, and landing the troops in the second turn, again giving the defending party's navy a chance to respond. Perhaps this restriction wouldn't apply to units with the Amphibious promotion.

Subs need precision strike back! Nothing better than taking out a transport of troop in one attack and leaving the 3 battleship escort to just go home. Subs are about sneaking and attacking the critical targets, not about being able to go under ice.

Cruise missles I never used in previous civs. But maybe a cruise missle unit could act like an air unit. Set it to either attack any or attack transports. If set to attack any, it would launch at any ships in range as soon as they are detected. If set to attack transports, it would only launch against transporting ships and has a chance of collateral damage to transported units. Would it be possible to have this triggered as soon as a ship came in range, rather than at the players turn? This would allow damage to ground units before they disembark.

I think these would be good additions to the game.

Simon

[Foxhawk]

Give naval units a ridiculously powerful bombardment features and allow them to use it on everything... tiles, cities, other ships, etc. at range.

[Dis]

I never used cruise missiles, but I felt they worled well in civ2 in knocking out the effectiveness of my battlships. As it is right now, battleships are useful up until 2050.

And yes, subs need to be able to choose their targets. Not being able to do so is just plain silly. Probably the stupidest design desicion in civ4. Yes I know game balance and all that crap. How is it balanced to have a useless unit?

[sparkyal]

I agree with subs being able to choose.

As for slowing TRN's down, I disagree. One of the coolest things about amphibious warfare is the ability to strike anywhere at anytime. This is the way of that type of warfare. I would suggest that costal cities are well defended

now, it would be nice if say things like forts could be upgraded to radar towers and such that would give additional view over land/sea. That would be cool.

cruise missles? Well, truthfully, there really are only a couple of cruise missiles that are super accurate. Even the very excellent tommahawk ASM can't tell the difference between a DD and a TRN. Most ASM's are fired an you hope they get in and don't get chot down. The slower ones can easily be taken out by a BB. Even the Mach 2 ASM's can get snuffed by CIWS. and against Aegis, forget it, pratically nothing gets through. (there is a really good game called Harpoon that models this very well.)

sparky