Submarines...useful or useless?

[Shogun Gunner]

I know a lot of you all have figured out that some units are worthwhile to build or others are not. Usually the argument is a cost effectiveness argument. For example, howies make more sense to build versus tanks just as powerful - cheaper to produce.

Despite that, in some games, I will build all the different variety of units for fun.

The difficulty I am having is using submarines effectively. When air power is discovered I find that subs are close to useless. They end up just hiding out in ports which seems directly opposite to how they are used in real life.

When I try to deploy my subs to the deep blue waters, random enemy helicopters, fighters and bombers (all those non-landing, non-refueling cheating AI air units ) find my subs so easily and destroy them routinely. I can't stack an AEGIS cruiser because that defeats the advantage of the subs' steath.

Any ideas? I hate hiding my subs in the sub pens just waiting for the oppportunity to race out and sink a battleship that strays to close to the port. That's boring.

[Sean Leitzinger]

Subs can carry an unlimited amount of cruise missles and I think they can carry nuclear missles too. I haven't used them in years though so I don't know. And it might have been in the original civ2 that it was unlimited. Either way they still carry missles though.

[SandMonkey]

If i build a sub, it's to use it in a city, or I will stick it in a small cubby somewhere, and just wait for enemy ships to pass on my. A vet sub is very powerful unit, and if you have Megellan's, it has decent movement, too.

[Shogun Gunner]

Yes, they can carry nukes. If you are at peace and about the wage nuclear war, then subs could be very powerful. Only with first stike nuclear war. I can't say I have ever tried that.

The cruise missle idea is interesting. I have never tried that either. Thanks.

[ColdWizard]

i've used subs to carry cruise and nuclear missiles. i'd then park the subs off of the coast of the civ i was about to attack. i'd then use the missiles to soften up the defenses for my ground attack

[Gatekeeper]

Shogun Gunner:

Submarines are okay military units — most of the time I'll use them as a screen in front of a flotilla of battleships, AEGIS cruisers and transports filled to the gills with land divisions. During the rare times when I build a carrier, I'll sometimes also use one to three subs as hidden escorts/defenders.

Tell you one thing, though: It really BITES to have a cruise and/or nuclear missile laden sub sunk. So if you're going to invest in mobile nukes, keep only a few aboard a sub or stockpile them on a carrier.

CYBERAmazon

[Builder]

The only time I used them, I lost them.

For me, they are totally useless.

[Chainsaw]

I sometimes use them in combination with AEGIS-Cruisers. The combination Battleship-AEGIS is useless, because in case of a missile attack, the battleship ALWAYS gets hit first (I expirienced that a zillion times, and always p*sses me off, why can't the d*mn ship with SAM-ability defend first?!? AAAARGH!!!) If they attack with more than one missile (almost everytime), the second, third etc. missiles hit the cruiser. But by then, the battleship has taken damage, and can't keep up with thew undamaged, quicker cruisers anymore. So you've got to send it back to a port with one or two escort cruisers... It doesn't matter how many battleships and cruisers you stockpile, your stack will melt down like butter in the sun. So, unless I don't want to attack strong land units, I'd rather send many smaller sub-AEGIS-combos. Cheaper, better in attack (subs with two/three missiles each against battleships). Disadvantage: Works ionly with magellans, best with fusion.

[Scouse Gits]

I have found subs of limited use as they are unable to make coastal bombardments. They seem only worthwhile if Megellans is available and if they are vets.

They are useful in conjunction with ironclads! If another civ has ideas about building a navy, a vet sub is a certain ironclad destroyer.

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SG (2)

[Smokey tha nuke man]

da smokes says:


subs are good anti navy ships cause they're invisible. and they can carry cruise missles (don't know about nukes) but theyre pretty useless in shore bombardments. but if ya like missles and the other civ has a good navy, da smokes says, build em, but always have a few normal trasports so you can land and go ig pimpin on there armies and cites.

[Gatekeeper]

Chainsaw:

What you describe is quite odd — whenever I have a battleship-AEGIS cruiser-transport stack that gets hit by missiles, my AEGIS *always* takes the blows first. Only after the AEGIS has been worn down do the battleships begin to sustain damage.

Do you have the PC version of Civ II? If that's the case, I have a Macintosh version and it's quite possible a bug in the PC version got fixed during the Mac port.

CYBERAmazon

[rah]

That is strange. The aegis cruiser always takes the hit first for me too. Never seen the battleship take the hit until the cruiser/s are almost dead.

RAH

[Paul]

Chainsaw, do you have the latest patch? From the patch.txt file:

Vversion 1.07 changes
=====================

* Aegis cruisers will defend their stacks against missile and air attacks as they should. Before, the Aegis ability was often overlooked when determining which was the "best" defender for a stack.

[Julius Brenzaida]

I don't use submarines very often. Only when I got Magellan and some naval superiority.
What I find interesting, and I don't think it has been said before, is that the AI uses them "fairly" well.
How many times one of my damage ships has been sunk by an AI submarine ... I think the submarine is an unit for the AI ! He's quite smart at handling it. Same cannot be said on many other units.

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Oh Man, when will you understand that your greatness lies in your failure - Goethe

[Chainsaw]

CA, rah & Paul: I used V1.02 (stop laughing, please ). Now, I have the 2.42 patch, and since I got it a few months ago and never played too much civ since then, I can't say if the bug still exists. But I'm pretty sure that there is/was a bug in my older civ version. REALLY drove me nuts...
[This message has been edited by Chainsaw (edited October 29, 2000).]