Can Civ ever overcome its pro-land strategic bias?

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
You didn't read the italic text?

Okay, I WILL comment on that:
I disagree completely! I do NOT like the idea of multiple enemy frigates coming into my waters, particularly if they were to stay and bombard or pillage.

Perhaps my problem is that I always react aggresively to such threats and don't see what the AI does (or doesn't do) with it. If they DON'T do such things, then I am glad I don't know it (I suffer from "any excuse to think the AI is more competent than it really is" syndrome).

[dregor]

Expanded Barbarian State to incorporate more of a naval presence would be a good reason I think. Perhaps have them able to spawn Pirate Coves or something, sort of like forts either on small islands or perhaps even at sea to represent tiny islands too small to be represented by a full square of land. Have several ships fortified at it, and it spawns other ships to go out raiding. Destroying said base would give you a small bit of coin.

[Lancer]

Paying off pirates was the way of things for ages. One could pay a 'pirate tax' to decrease the likelyhood of attack. The pirates get greedy of course, and when they demand too much...

Send in Decateur

[johnmcd]

I'd like to see navies working to develop trade. You can have small trade routes anyway, but if you defend them with navies they should be worth far more. The difference the East India Company made with the British Navy behind it...

[The Priest]

Simple - allow ships to pillage ('raid') land plots.

All the stuff about trade is all very well, but many of us aren't really that focused about which city is benefiting from which trade route, and the loss if an intercontinental trade route is blocked and thus replaced by land based one never seems that important.

What gets my attention more is when a blockading fleet stops me working sea plots, and my city goes into starvation.

So lets take it one step further, and allow all combat ships to have a pillage operation which pillages an improvment from a neighbouring land plot if it doesn't have a combat unit on it ('sending in raiding parties'). In Civ 3 you could bombard improvements in coastal areas - this would be a bit like that though it couldn't be done if there was a combat unit there, and could be done by all combat ships (e.g. triremes onwards). To avoid this being too devastating and allow some defence, the pillage would require the ship's full move so you can't sail in and pillage on the same go. (You could also lessen it by giving only a % chance of the pillage working).

Suddenly, I would need a navy to protect my coastal lands from attack (or troops providing coastal defence) - a bit like Britain needed against saxon, viking and other invaders for much of the first millenium. No coastal defences or navy = unimprovved coastal plots = a seriously underperforming city. That would get my attention.

And of course, add to it navel pirates spawning throughout the game, and even if I am at peace with the other civs, I need the navy to defend my coasts against the pirates. With a good navy you are ok - they move in to the coast, can't pillage that turn, so you have a chance for your navy to get to them and destroy them. No navy close though, and your lands are raided.

[Indalecio]

Originally posted by johnmcd
I'd like to see navies working to develop trade. You can have small trade routes anyway, but if you defend them with navies they should be worth far more. The difference the East India Company made with the British Navy behind it...

I like this idea. I think someone mentioned an option earlier where you could park ships in front of your own ports and have them guard your trade routes. If the ship had an option where it could do this specifically, it could increase the value of your trade routes.

A merchant would naturally favor places that were secure to trade.

[Modo44]

Originally posted by joncnunn
BTS has introduced the blockade mission, this can cut off intercontential trade entirely against opponents without an adequate navy.

I just used this in my last game, but with privateers.

Found places where I could blockade 2 or more cities at a time, and picked AIs that didn't have frigates yet. Voila, free cash every turn (ranged from 3 to 12 per blocked city on a huge map). Plus (maybe more important?) it made the AI build many offensive ships (dozens of caravels, later upgraded to frigates), which doesn't seem to happen otherwise. It was mostly for kicks, but I think the high-trade cities I blocked made the privateers at least pay for themselves (even discounting the production and upkeep cost for the AI anti-privateer fleets). And it was fun without having to do an all-out war.

[joncnunn]

As the Prist mentioned, I forgot to include that under a blockade none of the tiles can be worked by the victim. Agreeded that this is the more substantal part of a blockade.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by Jaybe

resigning yourself from the prospect of naval dominance ... NEVER! On a continents/fractal map, that would mean too many seafood lost, too many cities with blasted defenses. Actually, dominance is not required, but rough parity IS.

You don't even really need that. The minimum is really just a good air force and a couple of ships, and then when the AI blockades you, you just hit his fleet with your airforce and then start picking him off with your one or two frigates/destroyers/battleships (depending on the level of tech) which then retreat back into your cities and heal after each battle. Sure, he can blockade you for a while before you kill him all, but you can sink his entire navy and only lose a few fighters, which more then makes up for the turns you get blockaded.

[One_more_turn]

If you don't have naval superiority, there is nothing to prevent the AI from appearing with 70+ units SOD one turn away from your coastal capital!

[Starfarer]

Originally posted by One_more_turn
If you don't have naval superiority, there is nothing to prevent the AI from appearing with 70+ units SOD one turn away from your coastal capital!

Untrue. You do not need naval superiority. You merely need a defense fleet capable of counterpunching the fleets the AI ususally will send.

Thus, you don't need 2 frigates for every 1 of his... honestly, for a good defense all you really NEED is about three or four good ships of varying types at the highes tech you've got available at or near each port, and that's for a HIGHLY EFFECTIVE defense rather than a BARE BONES defense which would be maybe one or two ships of your highest attack power roving your coasts.

In essence, unless it's a 1 on 1 game, the AI will never send their ENTIRE fleet. In my experience, they keep a substantial percentage of their fleet at home. Land units, yes, they'll send nearly all of them, but they load those all up on those deliciously conspicuous transport-vessels, and all you need to have is enough ships to punch through their screening blockers (which they rarely have many of) and counterpunch the fleet. You don't have to kill all of them, just enough to make the Stack of Doom more managable.

If your military is such that you can neither stop their transports nor fight off their invasion on land, then yeah, you're screwed, but not because you didn't have naval superiority, but only because you neglected to build any military.

One unit as "basic garrison" is only acceptable in cities that will not be attacked by an AI. That is to say, inland cities surrounded by your empire. Any city that might be attacked, especially those closest to the enemy borders, shoudl have at least two or three defenders.

Three defenders of mixed types is much more than three times as effective a defense. Remember, on any given attack, the BEST defender defends. This means that if your "best" defender is damaged and someone else has a better chance of winning, they come up instead. Thus, two Archers and a Spearman is much more effective than three Archers if your enemy is using ANY cavaly at all, and since you can't assume they won't, it'd better to play it safe.

I agree that naval superiority is desireable, but it's not a necessity, and to be perfectly truthful, it's rarely worth it to have a navy capable of msashing anything and everything in its path. You cannot directly attack cities with ships, you cannot take territory. Ships (other than carriers and transports, both of which are merely venues for other units to attack from, or subs with missiles on board) are effectively invasion-denial, coastal bombardment, and blockades. All three of these things are important, but none of them will win you the game. They might stop you from losing, but you cannot WIN by bombarding cities or attacking transports.

Ideally, you should have a navy sufficient to watch for and kill transport vessels inbound. That is not the same thing as superiority, because the former requires a much smaller amount of resource allocation than the latter.

You can have 50 ships on your side to their 30, sure, but there's not much point to it unless it's an archipelago or something.

Building a little more than you need is good, it provides a "safety net". Building a LOt more than you need is wasting an investment.

[Yosho]

Originally posted by One_more_turn
If you don't have naval superiority, there is nothing to prevent the AI from appearing with 70+ units SOD one turn away from your coastal capital!

Well, in theory, sure. But hopefully if you don't have naval superiroity, you've got a lot of land forces, especally in major costal cities, and hopefully you've got a good network of railroads. You can fight and win a defensive war without a navy. Granted, if you don't have a navy OR an army, you're probably in trouble.

Also, relying too heavily on a navy is also quite risky, as it's usually not hard to sneak some transports full of troops past even the strongest navel defense in Civ IV. The best you can usually expect to do is to sink the transports (or even just some of the transports) after they've dropped off the troops, but if you've got an underdefended costal capital like you're talking about, it's probably already too late for that to help much.