Cruise Missiles Suck

[Gravity Happens]

Is it just me, or do cruise missiles suck in this game? They were really useful in Civ 2, but they just plain stink in Civ III. They have pathetic range, and they hardly do enough damage to be as useful as say, planes. If they had longer range that would make me want to use them. Maybe about 4 more bombarding power as well. I just use radar artillery, which is the same as cruise missiles, except re-usable. There needs to be something to make using cruise missiles worth the bother of building them!

[Greetings]

I know that there are some mistakes in the manual, but I'm looking at it right now and am seeing that cruise missiles and radar artillery are not the same.
Cruise Missiles have a B/R/F (Bombard/Range/Rate of Fire) of 20/3/5, while a Radar Artillery's B/R/F is 16/2/4.

I agree that Cruise Missiles aren't that useful though. However, I also think that Radar Artillery are useless. By the time you have these units, you have tanks or modern armor (and PLANES). I usually just let the planes do the bombing, rather than CMs and RAs. While they have less bombardment strength, their range is far more superior. Your offensive doesn't have to slow down to wait for the CMs and RAs with 1 movement point.

So, I think you're right about Cruise Missles being useless. (Perhaps they could be more useful if they could bombard from a naval unit.) But, I also think that Radar Artillery are useless, and planes can do this job better.

[Gravity Happens]

Sorry to be noobish, but what does rate of fire do anyway? I've always wondered...

[Arrian]

RoF are the number of "shots" a bombard units gets per bombard.

A unit with a RoF of 1 can only deal 1hp of damage per attack. It either hits, or it misses.

A unit with a RoF of 2, however, can deal 0-2 hp of damage. It can miss twice, hit once & miss once, or hit twice.

-Arrian

[Gravity Happens]

Oh! It seems like i would've noticed something like that. Thanks. Now i realize that the F15 is quite a bit better than the jet fighter (higher rate of fire).

[badams52]

While it's true that cruise missiles in Civ II are better, there's no other unit that can destroy upon bombarding (unless you make the edits). I usually don't use cruise missiles, but I have used them and use them much more often than planes to attack cities. I hardly build bombers at all since I hate to destroy land improvements for cities that will be mine in a couple of turns anyway. Once I have MAs (modern armor) though, artillery of all sorts isn't very important anymore till the AI get's his MI (Mech Infantry).

Oh, and if I remember correctly, cruise missiles attach units and ignore improvements? I forget if this is true, but if so, it will save you the trouble of building many of the non-cultural improvements once you take the city, though you'll still have the foreign pop to deal with.

[TheArsenal]

Never played Civ II so I can't speak to that. But since cruise missiles always do at least some damage, and often a lot of damage, but never miss out right, I find them useful for chasing away enemy naval units bombarding my coastal improvements. And by the time they become available on the tech tree, production in my many cities is so high, they can be built quickly in huge numbers and moved by railroad right to the problem coast.

[lmtoops]

The best thing about cruise missles is the animation. I like the misscle coming down and blowing the enemy apart. Other than that it's use is limited.

Some Good uses:
On coastal defense, they have a good use. If a transport get's through your Navy, it's nice to sink the entire army at once.

Missiles are relatively cheap. In a productive city, you can spit them out every 1 or 2 turns.

You can load missiles on a transport (I think this bug is still active). The "enter transport" arrow will NOT appear on the order screen. But if you position the transport just off the shore and enter directly...the missile will enter the transport. So loading a transport with a bunch of missiles and attacking a coastal city can be very nice (although I've never actually used the strategy).

[nbarclay]

I just thought of a potentially very good use for cruise missiles. When an enemy battleship or destroyer comes to bombard your coast, and assuming it's close enough, knock it down to one hit point with artillery and then attack with a cruise missile. That should be practically a guaranteed kill (rate of fire 5 against one hit point), and while I don't have the costs in front of me, I'm sure the cruise missile would be a whole lot cheaper than the unit it kills.

Of course if you have enough of your own ships on hand to patrol your coast, you can use them to kill off the last hit point. But given the relatively limited amount of area each ship can cover, it can take quite a few ships to defend a continent. In contrast, cruise missiles on rails can attack anywhere on the continent or near its shores, so it doesn't take a lot of them to cover a lot of coast.

This idea only just occurred to me, so I haven't tested it yet. Indeed, I've never even built a cruise missile myself, although I did capture a very small number of them in one game. But it seems like an idea that could be interesting to try.

Nathan

[Jon Shafer]

That is the only good use for Cruise Missiles...

To finish off units which you've already weakened via other forms of bombardment.

[Jaybe]

Stock Cruise Missiles have a B/R/RoF of 16/2/3 (not 20/3/5). (Edit: Cost 60 shields).

Cruise Missiles are VERY handy against coastal naval units when you don't have a navy nearby.

Cruise Missiles are also excellent against ground units in cities when you want to take the city without destroying its improvements. CMs target only the units, not city improvements or population. If you want the city intact, it is better to use CMs than losing assault units (important to a Republic/Democracy for war weariness purposes).

Cruise Missiles are a special-purpose unit and complement smart weapon. It's good to have 6-12 available for when you want them.

[vmxa1]

I have not used them much, but is it not hard to get them from location to another? I seem to recall capturing a few and trying to sheperd them along the road to a friendly city.

[Theseus]

Originally posted by nbarclay
I just thought of a potentially very good use for cruise missiles. When an enemy battleship or destroyer comes to bombard your coast, and assuming it's close enough, knock it down to one hit point with artillery and then attack with a cruise missile. That should be practically a guaranteed kill (rate of fire 5 against one hit point), and while I don't have the costs in front of me, I'm sure the cruise missile would be a whole lot cheaper than the unit it kills.

Of course if you have enough of your own ships on hand to patrol your coast, you can use them to kill off the last hit point. But given the relatively limited amount of area each ship can cover, it can take quite a few ships to defend a continent. In contrast, cruise missiles on rails can attack anywhere on the continent or near its shores, so it doesn't take a lot of them to cover a lot of coast.

This idea only just occurred to me, so I haven't tested it yet. Indeed, I've never even built a cruise missile myself, although I did capture a very small number of them in one game. But it seems like an idea that could be interesting to try.

Nathan

I've done this quite a bit... a little differently though, as I've played more late games with more recent patches, and the AI is a bee-yatch about using ships to bombard and then retreat beyond Arty fire. So I bombard with defensive picket ships and home security Bombers, and then take'em out with CMs.

I quite disagree with the initial premise... CMs rock the house.

Oh, and if you can find it, in Vel's Alamo scenario, CMs are critical for survival (AI 4xMA Armies!!).

[Jaybe]

Originally posted by vmxa1
I have not used them much, but is it not hard to get them from location to another? I seem to recall capturing a few and trying to sheperd them along the road to a friendly city.

No harder than artillery....

Against enemy cities, their use comes in when you decide that it's going to be a hard nut to crack (i.e., a metro on a hill, stacked with Mech Inf, and you don't want to use nukes). For such a target, you probably want to bring a dozen or so. Remember, while a Cruise Missile is a one shot deal, it has 1.5 times the value of Radar Artillery, and twice the value of Artillery or Bombers. And it's a killer!

An excellent investment of those low-production (10-30 shield) cities.

[badams52]

And with enough CMs, you can entirely wipe out the defense in a city and stroll in using a warrior!