Cruise Missiles

[diablovision]

I'm quite disappointed in the lack of manueverability of Cruise Missiles in Vanilla Civ III. They cannot be loaded onto Transports, or any other naval vessel. They cannot be airlifted. And their attack range is only 2.

What a crock!

In real life, cruise missiles can be loaded onto Cruisers, Destroyers, Carriers, Subs, and are small and can be airlifted anywhere. Their range is hundreds of miles (4 or more Civ3 squares by my estimate).

In my current game, I have an entire continent to myself. What the hell am I going to do with all my Cruise Missiles now?

Oh, and Nuclear submarines should be allowed to carry more than one Nuke! In real life, they can carry something like 16 Titan ICBMs that can hit almost anywhere on the globe!!

Grr.

I just want to nuke the **** out of the planet on the cheap, but I have to build way too many subs!

[bobbo008]

well, assuming they have deadly bombard, you could kill weakened naval vessels or any attacking land units... so, in other words not much

[vmxa1]

This not real life, they have to do some things to try to keep the game in balance. Cruise missiles can be shuttles anywhere on the map in rails with no lost of movement points.

Anyway who even needs them?

[Dis]

yeah, if this game were to mimic real life, spearman would not be able to defeat tanks

[ChaotikVisions]

Well, I just used over 100 cruise missiles in my latest game to wipe out the Dutch. Playing using Conquests though, so they have 4 range. I used them in combination with bombers to take 5 cities on the first turn of the war with no casualties. And i've taken 2 other cities since with my core cities pumping out 9 more cruise missiles per turn. They're half the price of Radar Artillery or Bombers while being just as effective(at least for that bombard).

Their main use seems to be if you don't have a navy, or want to wage a fast war. With them being able to use the rails you can quickly get them to a position to attack the enemy after you've driven into his land. And since its one use, you don't have to worry about guarding them once they fire. So they have a use, just not a very big one.

[vmxa1]

100 MA could take out 5 cities and still be around to take out a few more each turn.

[ChaotikVisions]

100 MA=200 Cruise Missiles though. The cities i'm taking are size 12+ ones and are defended by MI. Meaning i'd probably take heavy losses capturing the cities. Now with my industrial output I could makeup for the losses, but its really a waste of units when I can do the same with bombers/cruise missiles. Its also alot easier to take out radar towers using cruise missiles, rather then having to drive after some fortified MI with your MA.

In a long drawn out war against a larger enemy i'd probably want more MA rather then the cruise missiles. But for waging a quick war in the modern era CM do the job nicely. Can annex a weaker neighbor quickly with no fuss or weakening my offensive army greatly.

[Solomwi]

Cruise missiles are great for keeping down WW. Where those 100 MA are going to lose a few units, adding to WW points, the CM allows you to wipe out defenders without any risk to your own troops. Basically a one shot stealth bomber that can never be intercepted, never hits an improvement and never lowers population, for 60 shields. Also, if handled properly, they never cost upkeep, even in democracy.

[vmxa1]

Alright 50MA and I am not worried about WW.

[vondrack]

I used cruise missiles quite successfully in a very interesting PBEM (DON aka The Doughnut Game). Their key "feature" is their low cost. In a modern war, you are going to have a bunch of secondary level cities ~30spt unable to crank out MAs or MIs fast enough (the whole war takes under 10-15t), but can contribute a cruise missile every other turn, or even every turn.

I agree that against AI, they may not look attractive or useful. But against a skilled human, in a desperate war where every single turn matters, they are a unit as fine and useful as any other - under the right circumstances.

[gunkulator]

Originally posted by Solomwi
Also, if handled properly, they never cost upkeep, even in democracy.

How is that? Although I rarely use democracy, I thought it provided no unit support at all.

[Solomwi]

I does provide no unit support. The best way to use cruise missiles is to build them the same turn you fire them. IIRC, unit support is deducted from the treasury at the beginning of the production phase, meaning that new units don't cost upkeep until the first turn you can move them. Remember also that the production phase happens after the movement phase. To give an example:

Movement, 1950: 1 turn left on CM, upkeep at 100 g, no other new units being built (for simplicity's sake).
Production, 1950: 100 g deducted from treasury (almost unnoticed, since it also does the other empire wide financial dealings).

Movement, 1951: Unit support now at 101 g. You fire the cruise missile, and unit support is back down to 100 g before it's deducted again.

The key is simply never having a CM in your arsenal while in the production phase. This works for 1 or 100 of them.

vmxa: I know you aren't worried about WW, but some are. I'm not portraying the CM as a one size fits all solution, at least not meaning to, but pointing out that there are benefits and times when it is the best solution.

[vmxa1]

Yes most of the tools have a use, just some are more useful than others.

[Solomwi]

Back to diablovision's original question...

Position a transport in a coastal tile and manually load up your CMs by just moving them to the transport. Or, you could play C3C, where they were fixed, and can now be loaded into transports, but not airlifted, and have a four tile range.

[diablovision]

Hey thanks Solomwi! I didn't know that you could load cruise missiles onto transports on the coast. Now I can actually use the ones left over from taking over my continent!