How strong should your Navy be?

[Jawa Jocky]

I almost always avoid building Navies. I just don't need a Navy.

Exception #1) I build 2 galleys if I need to try and find other civs off the main continent. (This is my entire Navy for most games)

Exception #2) If I need to invade I'll build a quick Navy from scratch. (a few transports and cover ships).

I think that corruption has killed the Navy. Islands are so corrupt they are useless, so why bother taken them unless enemies are making their bombing runs from them. Also, they AI cannot launch a credible overseas attack. I let them land and kill them all without much effort. The AI is very good at sinking my ships, so I find that it is much easier to build land units instead and let them land.

[planetfall]

Your survey question is too broad without fuller explanation.

What is your world? panagea? continents? islands?

I always play with continents. I find a navy important. Yes you can play without much of a navy but it is more fun to work to coordinate land-sea-air strike.

Only 2 galleys? That means you have to lose the resource claiming race to the AI's because they will find remote islands and continents before you do. Thus you will have to conquer instead of just planting a city and claiming resource. I have found the game often pulls oil or other key resources somewhere other than the continent where you start.

For the most part, until the modern era all you need to have the strongest navy is:
4-6 caravels
2-4 privateers

In modern era, you can upgrade to
2-4 transports
2 carriers
4 BS
4 Destroyers

Then you can launch multifront campaigns with
air softening resistance. The AI is good about anticipating a direct land attack, but
does not anticipate a two prong attack from
the front land position and a side assult from the sea. You don't need marines, just land on a hill.

Often the placement of the AI capital is way too close to the sea. Good strategic bombing will remove all strategic resources from the capital by clearing the 8 tiles around the capital. No rubber, no oil equals no enemy tanks facing your forces.

[Jon Shafer]

I love island hopping.

Something I like to do when playing on my Europe map is to play Britain, and build a huge galley navy and go around colonizing valuable land. In addition to that, it gives your army great flexibility, being able to land and embark whereever you want, or retreat quickly in case a large enemy force shows up. However, that's on maps where there's lots of water.

[Andrew Cory]

A navy is important for expoloration. Being the first person to discover the other conitinent (on a continenal map), or other islands (on island maps) will give you a crucial edge in tec. and trade...
Also, durring war, Sea troops let you open up extra fronts, and that can often mean the difference between me invading him, and him invading me...

Durring Later wars, carriers are the ideal way to move bombers around. I love being able to smack my opponent's infrustructure around with bombardment...

Ultimatly without sea power, my game is no where near as strong as it might be...

But then, I never play on pangea maps, so my perspective might be scewed...

[Jethro83]

Depends on how much water the map has, as well as the size of my initial landmass.

On island maps, I'll be going for an island-hopping approach, and build a large navy to grab the islands quickly.

On continent maps, it depends on the size of my "continent". Smaller continent means that I'll be building a sizable navy. Larger continent means that I'll be building a small navy that's just large enough to transport enough troops to carry out a D-Day landing, or to transport enough settlers and defenders to gain a sizable amount of territory before others get to the unpopulated landmass.

As for Pangaea maps, I don't bother with a navy at all.

[Captain]

Navy is very important, you need to explore to find other civs so you cant rade for those extra luxuries. In my latest game i've got 6 on my own, but the others are not on the continent, so I had to go overseas to get them. with marketplaces and other improvements, the last few luxuries makes lots of extra happy citizens so I make sure I get them. It's worth shelling out lots of cash for them.

About the corruption, how does that formula work? I also find my overseas "colonies" almost useless even with courthouses and all that other stuff. I find myself having to rushbuy the first ten improvements before they get self-sufficient. It makes overseas invasions very unattractive, as no doubt, they are IRL.

I do keep a navy to interdict invading forces though. they can't invade if they can't land.

also, before railroads, navies can help with shortcuts for long land routes. (btw, I increased sea movement in my mod)

[Jaybe]

On a large-continent map, even if you OWN 1 of 2 continents, you'll want a navy to use as pickets so you have advance warning to an invasion. And some heavy naval units too.

If you share the continent with others, it at least helps to use your navy to scout out the shoreline of any conflict that's going on.

BTW, I am referring to large maps (or LARGER).

JB

[Zylka]

I like my subs long hard and full of seamen

[Zylka]

Too true

[nato]

Even though I don't find them super useful, I always build a few ships. I find them very fun! They are units I enjoy having ... battleships are kind of prestige units.

The purpose of a navy is to keep the seas open for your transport, and to close the seas for your enemy's transport.

For keeping the seas open for yourself, a large navy is unnecesary. This is because, in Civ, there are very few of your ships using the seas. Unlike all the merchant shipping and supply shipping in the real world, in Civ there is only your stack of transports. Thus generally all you have to protect navally is your stack of transports. This means in the entire world, all you have to protect is a single tile of ocean. If it is a very long voyage, and you have more than just a single stack of transports, then you have more tiles to protect. Also, sending ships for surgical strikes to hit resources near the coast adds more tiles to protect ... still, this will only be like 2 or 3 stacks, so only 2 or 3 tiles to defend. So for this purpose you only need a few ships, like 2 to 6.

For closing the seas to your enemies, more ships would probably be needed, if their route is not obvious. Although nothing gives a bigger reward than sinking a transport full of troops, I don't think I would try to intercept transports. The coast is too big and the sea to open ... it would require too many ships to really catch transports. So I still wouldn't build many ships. However, I could be wrong on this point; I almost never have to fear sea invasion ... instead I'm the one doing it.

Other than this there aren't any reasons I would build ships. Bombardment is not worth the cost of a large navy to me. Exploration is always done by buying world maps for me.

Navies are a lot of fun to me. They are cool units. But for serious purposes, all I think I need are a few ships to cover my transport stacks. So total seriously needed navy is around 2 to 6 ships for me ... but somehow I always manage to build some for fun!

[Cyclotron]

In the industrial and modern age, when my productivity is high, I find it is easier to stop seaborne invasions at sea than at land. I utilize ironclads, then later battleships, to provide a defensive screen and ward off enemy fleets. A navy is also a necessity because the AI usually has a habit of massing frigates off my shores and blasting all the improvements of every coastal tile... so I usually end up in pitched naval battles around the early industrial age to push them off my shores. Fortunately, I often get ironclads by the time their attack force reaches me, so I have the upper hand in power if not in numbers.

[BillChin]

The uselessness of navies is my biggest remaining complaint against Civ III. A powerful navy without an army to match gains a player nothing. Even if the enemy has 30 battleships, a landing escort of five combat ships is probably enough to land a massive D-day style invasion force of ten transports. Why? Because, the ocean is large and the enemy can not mass all their ships where you choose to make the landing. If they look like they may, a player can choose a new landing site. Soon the enemy will be bored of waiting for the invasion and send their fleet to bombard your roads and opening their shoreline to invasion.

I have several suggestions:
1) Piracy: allow ships to pirate gold when adjacent to enemy cities. Implement this with a new button, similar to the pillage button. Coastal Fortresses can repel pirates with a successful shot. Submarines can pirate without fear of Coastal Fortresses. Privateers can pirate under hidden flag. Piracy by ships other than Privateers is an act of war (like pillaging). A successful pirate mission steals 1 to 10 gold from the enemy treasury. This may be painful once the Wall Street wonder is available (right around the time Privateers come on line). With one bold stroke, navies become a way to get gold and Privateers, Submarines and Coastal Fortresses, become useful instead of useless eye candy.

2) Blockade: allow combat ships to blockade movement with a command.
When an enemy ship enters the zone of control, do some sort of check based on combat values and experience. If the blockading ship is successful, maybe have two levels of success, the best is the enemy ship ends it turn in the adjacent square, a lower level means an extra movement point is used up. If the blockading ship is weaker or less experienced, the odds of success are lower. Blockading in an enemy culture zone is an act of war. Blockading in open seas or friendly territory or with Privateers is not.

3) Increase the movement of modern naval units by one or two. Once railroads are built, navies are ploddingly slow.

4) Disrupt fishing: allow combat ships to disrupt ocean food production in enemy cities to starve out enemy cities. Piracy and fishing boat poaching are much more realistic than bombarding roads and mines and will make a powerful navy mean a lot more.

I realize that this is too much to expect in a patch, but perhaps in the expansion pack.

[Jon Shafer]

Again, the simplicity of Civ III strikes again. Warfare of all types is incredibly ... not complex. I could go on for ages about how they could/should change things to make it more realistic, but I won't bore you all.

[Andrew Cory]

Originally posted by BillChin
The uselessness of navies is my biggest remaining complaint against Civ III.

A navy is a tool with limited utility, but utility nonetheless.

The way to make a navy _really_ usefull is to give it somthing to do at all times. The way to do that is to make piracy possible at all times. The suggestions you make are good ones, but I don't know if they go far enough. For instance:

First, durring trade negotiations, make the two sides assign actual trade routs: Ships leave City A and go to City B, then hit City C, where the goods are taken possetion of. Make this Trade rout visible to both trade partners, as well as somthing learnable with spies/diplomats. Any time a designated pirate unit (either player or Barbarian) crosses this line, (weather they know it or not), the unit can roll to see if it is successfull. Odds go up if the pirate knows that the rout is there.

Voila! Now you need a navy to protect sea commerce...

[Harovan]

I always build a defensive navy, i.e. a bunch of battleships to fight this annoying bombardement of my resource tiles and coastal roads by the AI. They also fight the transport/defender shuttles that bring sabotage units to my land (I refuse to call this an invasion).

I build an offensive navy (transports, carriers, more battleships), when I play with continents and plan to invade, otherwise not. It is usually concentrated in a few navy bases, with the appropriate landing troups available via railroads.

I try to settle and take all islands within bomber range from my land. If I plan to invade, I also try to take such islands near other countries and continents.