Subs are Boring

[greggbert]

I've been playing the new Civ III and I think that despite REAL bugs, all of the intended changes make the game much more challenging and fun.

Including the corruption, resources, lack of firepower, toned down lethality of air units. I like all of it and it makes the game more challenging.

Obviously these things were well thought out and are not bugs, so I hope they are not "fixed", however, I think that the subs are a little boring.

It would be more exciting to beef up the offensive power of the standard subs, so that they have an attack value of at least one ore preferably two points higher than the defense value of battleships.

In exchange, their defense value should be turned down two two points lower then the attack value of destroyers. And they should be fully visible to standard destroyers.

I think this trade-off would make the naval game much more interesting, since you couldn't keep your battleships just sitting around without destroyer escort (since the subs would catch up), you'd have to keep them moving. So on defense it would be fun to try to trawl for subs, or corner them and take them all out!

On offense, how satisfying would it be to sneak your sub up to a battleship that you have been tracking for like 8 turns with your slow-ass sub and finally blow it out of the water.

Any thoughts?

[Calorman]

They are fairly underpowered. The only naval unit of their era that they stand a chance against is the transport and even then it's only a 6/10 advantage.


I think that subs should have some kind of first-strike capability to better construe their hidden nature. They could make an attack and suffer no reprisal at first. Then combat would begin as normal.

I also think they should withdraw from combat when losing badly in a similar way to fast land units.

[Green Giant]

The only thing they are good for in my mind is launching surprise nuclear attacks.