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.

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).]

[cavebear]

I happen to like submarines. I can plant a few in open ocean as scouts, I attach a few to a battleship stack for quick attacks (in defense), and I like to post a few in sheltered spots just off shipping lanes if my opponents are doing too much oversea trading.

I think of them as sea-catapaults. Just as a catapault on a mountain defended by a vet pike is hard to get at, so is a battleship with a sub or two.

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[ravagon]

That battleship/aegis bug, where the defending unit was calculated before the x2 aegis bonus, was fixed in about patch 1.11 or somesuch.
I remember this one rather well as I installed the patch in a great hurry, wanting to continue a rather good game, and neglecting to check the list for other fixes. Does anybody else remember the bug with the NONE cities coming up after founding about 60 or so cities? This had the great advantage of creating NONE units as well as supporting said units in demo/rep with no support/unhappiness.
Anyway, what I didn't realize was that this bug was also fixed, and, as I'd set almost all of my offensive air/land/sea units with a homecity of NONE, when I reloaded my saved game my cities were no longer NONE cities and my units were all affiliated to a city with about 8 shields.
I lost about 120+ battleships/aegis cruisers/stealth aircraft/tanks before I could say boo!
Never again will I install a patch without reading the list of "fixes".


[Edit: Technically the patch did stop my battleships from being missiled to death but only because they were all disbanded, along with my aegis cruisers! ]
[This message has been edited by ravagon (edited October 29, 2000).]

[Kestrel]

An Alternative - Get Test-of-Time, then get my "3-D" scenario (amongst others) in which subs can dive to the DEEP OCEAN, provided that the Sub is not in shallow water over the continental shelf.

Subs, when submerged, can thus escape attack from surface naval units or air units, they can only be harassed by other subs !

Of course they can only attack shipping if they surface.

[Fiji]

I've found that against some of the mass shipbuilding civs, a sub with 1 nuke and 4 or 5 crs missles can really hurt.

I remember this one game against the French, English, Zulu armada.
Something like 50+ combat vessels (with many BBs amongst them) + 4 or 5 transports were heading my way. They ambushed a destroyer of mine and I didnt have any surface vessels in hte region.
so out came 3 subs with 1 nuke each and a total of ~12 crs missles. the handfull of ships that survived the barrage (a few AEGISs and a couple of destroyers) had to deal with the subs themselves. the 2 destroyers who survived that were just in range of my shorebased bombers.

offensively, i sometimes add a sub with missles (or several subs, if recketry hasn't been developed yet) to an invasion fleet.

Also, if my enemy's primary shipyards are in a semi-lake, i sometimes park a wolfpack just outside the entrance to the semi-lake (usually, there are 3 subs in a wolfpack, with one on the way)

[drake]

Subs should only be used like a stalking predator in the wild. Stay low, stay quiet and pick off the weakest members in a pack. If you can find a transport that has a weak escort (or none at all!), you should be able to sneak in and sink it. This will most certainly mean death to your sub from the escort, but if a ship full of units that are crucial to your enemys attack are now on the bottom of the ocean, it was well worth it. Subs are definetly a unit of opportunity to me. Stick to picking off weaker units and the subs usefulness will be realized. Dead units = lost money = good for you.....

quote: and I like to post a few in sheltered spots just off shipping lanes if my opponents are doing too much oversea trading.

Thank you cavebear, this is a perfect example of what I am talking about..........a sub won't win the war for anyone, but it can throw a good wrench in your enemies gears.........

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On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore
[This message has been edited by drake (edited October 30, 2000).]

[Chainsaw]

IMO, subs who have no escort are doomed. They don't survive long enough to make real damage. Every AI unit seems to find them, no trace of stealth. The only chance for the sub to escape is the abscence of another enemy ship nearby the one the sub has just sunk. Only nice in stacks. As posted out above.

[BlackJack]

I like subs. With Magellan and nuclear power they're like really formidable - and really cheap. What I do is use them in groups of 3 or 4, 3 or 4 spaces apart, and find the AI's favorite routes for approaching my coast, and deposit them there. The thing is to spot the enemy before they can get to you - keep 'em like +8 spaces from the enemy coast and move them up 3 or 4 spaces and then back 3 or 2 spaces. Attack with a trailing sub first so that when you spot the other enemy units - that are always just beyond view - the lead sub can get at least one of them. And the 4th sub, inside and behind is always the one with missiles.

And my vet subs sink non-vet unit, vet Aegis is about 50/50 and vet battleships alway win - I wish I could identify vets before I attacked 'em.

And relative to the Aegis/cruise missile them, it might be just a vet/non-vet thing. My vet Aegis takes on any air thing first, they're great in port with SAM when the AI looses bunches of stealth bombers. Use a 2 Aegis/1 battleship combo a turn ahead of your main force to soak up the enemy cruise missiles - they can absorb like 20 of 'em.

[Bereta_Eder]

Subs. So cheap to make
So easy to lose..

I generally don't trust them to defend my shores due to movement limitations. And once they get out of my defensive sea peripheral of battleships and Aegis they get sunk in no time...

The only time I had any use of them was when I was completely broke after a war with some pretty excited extremely powerful Russians, the naval forces of my tiny state were at the bottom of the sea courtesy of the russian offensive and I had to have at leat a pretext of presence at sea. The sub was the cheapest and the only solution. But then again it was sunk in the nex two turns ...

I guess that they could be a cheap alternative for first nuclear strike when there is sustainable peace so they can get close to targets.

Christos

[Andromeda]

I will always associate subs with the most exciting and challenging game I have ever had.
At the end, there were just two superpowers left, myself and the Babylonians, and, given the quantity of nukes between us, it was obvious one of us was going to go out in a blaze of glory !
At the heart of the Babylonian empire were six megacities, massively defended and loaded with nukes.
So, just outside his air range, I assembled 6 or 7 subs, with a nuke on each. On my turn, sent all subs in, launched their nukes at his cities.

After that, it was just mopping up !

[jcarkey]

I think I remember reading in the CIV2 manual somewhere that in early versions subs with missiles are capable of being seen. I can't remember what version was bugged by this.

Subs can't do much without an escort or missile. They are cheap units that can't do shore bombardments. I use them for blockades.


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What if the Hokey-Pokey is really what its all about?

Contact me at cpoland@mail.win.org

[Hawkman]

One interesting way to use subs with missiles (although not very realistic) is to send the missiles out as "scouts" and if they don't hit anything then you know there is nothing there and the missiles return to the sub. Although missiles have very limited sighting capability, they can see surface ships in adjacent squares. If the missile spots something, you can hit it then get your sub out of the area very quickly.

[drake]

HM- cruise missiles are a great scout from cities too....
[This message has been edited by drake (edited November 01, 2000).]

[drake]

After thinking about it I like the idea of using cruise missiles from subs even better. If you stick those subs well out of the path of normal travle routes, you could pick apart a good fleet without them even knowing you're anywhere close........

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"On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore"
[This message has been edited by drake (edited November 01, 2000).]

[The Capo]

Early on, Subs can be very devestating like the German U Boats were. Later on they are best utilized to transfer nuclear missiles accross long distances, namley the polar north and south areas. The sea with usually little to no activity (on world map anyway) is the pacific ocean, therefore on a world map there is sort of a connection from the north to the south.

On non world games I think subs are the best to use, because the world is usually a littering of islands which creates intricate pathways, and a sub can easily coast through there, nuke a city and exit almost without being noticed.

[drake]

As usual, thank you for the history lesson Capo....