Why doesn't the AI build destroyers?

[MudDuck13]

In my game on regent mode, the AI just builds battleships, NEVER destroyers. Destroyers are my favorite ships (to sink) so this is a major disapointment. Has anyone had AI's that actually build destroyers?

Also, I'm in the modern age and have all strategic resources except uranium, but can still build swordsmen and longbowmen. Why? I don't want them on the build list. Ironclads and privateers should also be removed from the list. Is this the same with everyone else?

[Kekkonen]

Do _you_ build destroyers? I think I've only built one, just to see what it looks like. The unit is a bit redundant; I think it has the same requirements as a battleship but it's nowhere near as powerful. Their upkeep costs are the same and I think they appear at the same time. By then, you're likely to have at least a few high-production coastal cities which can build a battleship in a resonable time, so you don't even have that excuse to build a destroyer.

Now, if a destroyer didn't need oil, you might have a reason to build one occasionally. As things stand now, I really don't see the point.

[MudDuck13]

That's the whole problem! Destroyers are made useless in the game because they have the same movement as battleships. They should have 2 more moves than battleships and battleships should be more expensive. Don't you understand, destroyers are my favorite ship and it bites that they play no role in the game. Also, what happened to normal cruisers? Why couldn't they be put in as a mid level ship between destroyers and battleships. I love naval battles, but this game is lacking compared to CivII. Please tell me they will patch this or something.

[Kekkonen]

I agree. Destroyers should be small, nimble and fast. The speed increase alone would make them worthwhile as sort of "fire squad" units (to e.g. protect your small island settlements if you find yourself in a war you didn't prepare for).

[FrankBullit]

That's what happens when they let Ernest Borgnine do the naval programming! Just another design decision that I totally fail to understand.

[Fredric Drum]

You may then want to change destroyer speed in the editor.. after reading this, I think I will.


Fred

[Sevorak]

You might want to note as a realism thing, if you're at all concerned about that, that battleships are faster than destroyers. Modern destroyers aren't anywhere near small either, the new DD-21 for the USN being projected to 14 000 tons displacement (which in WWII would have been termed a heavy cruiser or battlecruiser).

-Sev

[Akka]

Destroyer should be faster, and they should have the ability to see submarine. After all, they are the submarine hunters, and this would make them useful.
I suggest giving submarine a bonus when attacking any ship but a destroyer or an AEGIS cruiser.

About the warriors and Longbowmen still in the production queue : it's because they can upgrade to nothing, so the game think they're not obsolete. To patch this, I simply changed them in the editor so they are made obsolete by riflemen, and then can be upgraded and do not show anymore in the build queue. Should be put into the official patch I think.

[Venger]

The AI in my game built two of them, came up to my coast, and got a mouth full of artillery from my shores...

The naval units, alas like other things, are BROKEN!

Destroyer has a 12 attack, the same as the battleship defense? Huh?

I got battleships the very next tech from Destroyers...huh? Who's gonna bulid a destroyer when I can get a battleship?

A destroyer has the same move as a battleship? Huh? WW2 era machines (seeing as the battleship went bye bye in that war) the destroyer is noticeably faster than a battleship (note - an american nuclear carrier will likely outrun nearly every ship made - interesting tidbit. Speed is classified but I hear WELL in excess of fourty knots.)

I want to have some time to enjoy destroyers before getting the battleship. Gameplay testing, GAMEPLAY TESTING!

Did ANYONE making Civ3 play Civ2 and use their naval units?

Venger

[Sevorak]

Venger,

Interesting statistics you may want to know.

Modern Destroyer (Spruance class DD) - about 30-31 knots
WWII Era Battleship (Iowa class BB) - 33-35 knots

Nuclear powered aircraft carrier - between 30.6 and 33 knots - NOT forty - the numbers have been declassified - read here. The key is to not believe Tom Clancy, who is overly fanciful in nearly all of his books

Anyway, I treat Destroyers as modern destroyers (since they look like it) and since a modern destroyer would wreck any battleship just by lofting in missiles from well beyond gun range, I don't see a problem with it.

-Sev

[Venger]

Originally posted by Sevorak
Venger,

Interesting statistics you may want to know.

Modern Destroyer (Spruance class DD) - about 30-31 knots
WWII Era Battleship (Iowa class BB) - 33-35 knots

You are comparing out of era models - plus the most advanced battleship made. Your typical same era destroyer was tiny compared to today. Most battleships were in the low to mid twenties.

Nuclear powered aircraft carrier - between 30.6 and 33 knots - NOT forty - the numbers have been declassified - read here. The key is to not believe Tom Clancy, who is overly fanciful in nearly all of his books

Uh, this isn't from Tom Clancy, this is from people who are in a position to know. Note the 30+ knots listed on most carriers, and as far as I know, the top speed of both carriers and all our subs is never released with an exact number...

Anyway, I treat Destroyers as modern destroyers (since they look like it) and since a modern destroyer would wreck any battleship just by lofting in missiles from well beyond gun range, I don't see a problem with it.

So why do you get destroyers before rocketry? I'd rather not live in Civ3 Combat Fantasyland...

Venger

[dexters]

The realism debate enters the fray again.

Realism for its own sake is pointless. It's about gameplay. I agree with the sentiment here that the Destroyers can be a bit redundant but their chief advantage is for you to field a relatively large fleet faster and for less.

You can have three destroyers patrolling your coasts before you get your second BB out.


But yes, Civ 3's naval units needs a little more tweaking. They may want to consider giving Subs the ability to load cruise missles. I would have preferred a token upgrade for the ironclad to something like an advanced frigrate in the industrial era and leave destroyers for the modern era. I prefer mass producing small cheap ships for coastad duties, and ironclads are too whimpy to be of much use.

[player1]

Destoyer stats 12/8/5 cost 120
Battleship stats 18/12/5 cost 200
As you can see for a price of one Battleship, you can buy almost 2 Destroyers.
2 Dest. are better force then one battleship (esspecialy if you consider a combat system, no FP, weaker yout can beat stronger, etc...)

Plus two destoyers can bombard twice, compared to one battleship.
If you ask me, I would build Battleship only in high Ind. cities & Dest. in all other cities.

[Venger]

Originally posted by player1
Destoyer stats 12/8/5 cost 120
Battleship stats 18/12/5 cost 200
As you can see for a price of one Battleship, you can buy almost 2 Destroyers.
2 Dest. are better force then one battleship (esspecialy if you consider a combat system, no FP, weaker yout can beat stronger, etc...)

Plus two destoyers can bombard twice, compared to one battleship.
If you ask me, I would build Battleship only in high Ind. cities & Dest. in all other cities.

Can't the battleship bombard twice?

The destroyer should be something in the neighborhood of 8/8/7, not 12/10/5.

Venger

[player1]

No they can't!
Still battleships have range of fire 2, while destoyers 1.

I thnik that Destoyers are usefull this way.
But if you make them more powerfull, they could be to much usefull.

Still considering the cost, AEGIS Cruiser (160), with similar abil. of Destoryer look pretty weak.
But considering that it has radar and that it can see subs, it's ok!

Only naval units that bother me are Privateer (they should have attack of 2) & Subs (they should have attack of 10).

[Sevorak]

Venger,

Read the article, and the contributor biography below. Stuart Slade is also in a position to know, and he offers lengthy proof as well as an explanation as to how the 40 knot myth got around.

Going by unit graphics, that IS a Spruance class destroyer, and that IS an Iowa class battleship. Yes, you get the destroyer before the battleship, but that's because there are too few naval units. Ideally, we'd at least have Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship, Carrier, Missile Destroyer, AEGIS Cruiser, Supercarrier, and Antisubmarine Frigate, but since they have decided that a destroyer is a destroyer regardless of time, that's what we're stuck with. As for Civ3 combat fantasyland - aren't we already there?

-Sev

[Venger]

Originally posted by Sevorak
Venger,

As for Civ3 combat fantasyland - aren't we already there?

-Sev

Can't argue with that...

Venger

[FrankBullit]

In the Fascism patch (unofficial!) for Civ2, the Dreadnought unit was added as a step between the age of sail and the modern era. This unit successfully reflected the world as known in the Imperialist Age and really added alot of fun as England, Germany, and other sea powers peaked at the height of coloniol expansion.
Maybe the present destroyer unit could be redesigned as a 'dreadnought unit' to precede the battleship and another destroyer unit at lesser value could be also designed.

[The Andy-Man]

i was pissed when i saw (ages ago) that they only had Destroyer, Ageis and battleship.

I mean, i even though Civ 2 missed out on naval units, but 3 is a bit pants. Waht about steel cruisers? Drednaughts?

plus, i this the stats (still aint played game )are a bit out of context, i would have thought they got the balance right with Civ2, to me these destroyers look to powerful compared to Battleship and Aegis to week...... (in civ2 a Vet Aegis was about 10times mopre usful then ANY other unit (except howie)....

[Wrong_shui]

Ive never seen th ai throw out a decent sized navy, so the lack of ships doesnt bother me.

[dexters]

Wrong, what difficulty level did you play?

[StevanVB]

I agree with those who say naval units are "broken" or at least unrealistically depicted in Civ III.

First off, a frigate, man o´war or ironclad doesn´t have a snowball´s chance in hell to hurt, not even mention sink, a WWI-era DESTROYER, I won´t even go into battleships and cruisers. Their iron cannon-balls would simply bounce off the destroyer´s steel skin ineffectually - IF they could even hit it, given the latter´s vast speed advantage (~36kn vs. ~10kn). Instead, the old crates would be ripped apart by the destroyer´s grenades and torpedoes.

Therefore, modern naval units (destroyers, battleships, subs, AEGIS-cruisers and carriers) should have substanially higher stats than their predecessors.

Secondly, those modern ships´ stats need some serious re-balancing, too.
This is a bit complicated, since battleships and destroyers have changed quite a bit through the century, due to the advent of missiles, computers and modern sensors.
Nevertheless, the general rule, that a battleship -given the same technological level- could beat a destroyer hands down holds true (you have to compare a Gulf War era, modernized battleship to a contemporary destroyer, not a WWI battlewaggon!).

Thus, the battleship should be powerful enough to take on two or three destroyers at once and survive (my fully edited civ3mod currently uses 18 for DD attack vs. 50 for the BB, all other units edited as well, ofc.), but also be extremely expensive to build, so losing one should really hurt (same for carriers, esp. with full airwing). Also, it, (&maybe the destroyer as well) should see 2 spaces, given that BBs were the first military units to be equipped with radar and have the ability to carry cruise missiles (the Iowa´s carried 32 of them back in the Gulf).

Destroyers, on the other hand, should move faster (at least 2 spaces/turn, though ship speed needs to be increased through the panel), see subs and be EXPENDABLE, i.e. cheap, since it is this feature that really distinguishes them.
Destroyers (&modern frigates) are the backbone of the fleet. It is their duty to protect the mission-critical capital units (carriers, assault ships, transport convoys etc.) down to the point when they put themselves in the path of missiles or torps aimed at the capship.

Speaking of expendable, transports are much too expensive in the standard rules. If those things had taken anywhere that long to build in real life we´d have lost the war (both wars, actually).

Finally, subs, both conventional and nuclear, really need to be beefed up.
Their attack ratings are FAR too low. It shouldn´t be much of a problem for a sub to sink any ship, up to and including CVs and BBs. On the downside, a detected sub should go down in no time when attacked.
Furthermore, conventional subs (WW2 era, as depicted in the game) were rather cheap to produce, giving lots of bang for the buck, which is why the Germans, bombed and low on resources could chugg them out at a decent rate even late in the war.
Modern nuke subs, however, are a totally different story.
Basically they´re capital units these days. Not only do their guided torps, anti-ship missiles and TLAMs give them tremendous offensive power, but they are also fast (30+, CONSTANTLY, since they can´t run out of fuel, they can keep up their max speed almost infinitely), dive deep and do this extremely silently.
The flipside is their price and that they take rather long to build.
Again, some serious editing needed here.

Anyways, I don´t think it makes sense to bother Firaxis with these issues, though, as those people didn´t, it seems, give much on this board´s and its fanbase´s opinion in the first place, I´d be surprised if they did now.
Rather, each of us who dislikes the rules as they are should take some hours off and edit them.


Regards,
Steve

[GePap]

Lets start by answering a question:
Venger-as is BB's, like all other ships bombard once, only diff is that they have range 2. If you edit them and give them the bility to blitz (attack more than once) then you get to bombard as many times as you have movement points.

As to BB vs destroyers: Ladies and gentlemen, this is a very difficult case and a game like civ 2 could never model it perfectly realisticly, so we should not even try. Remember a few things- the BB's main battery would really rarely hit the DD, which is moving too fast and is too small. It could use its secondary batteries but these have a shorter range, the sane as the DD. One thing not modelled are torpedoes, which dertoyers do have (or did in WW2). One of the most important tactics of DD's were torpedo runs, in which DD's would charge the line off BB, launch torperdoes and then turn back. This was done in Jutland with little effect, but was far more effectively done by the US at Leyte Gulf. The last BB vs. BB battle took place between a force of old US dreadnaughts (including Pearl survivors) and the southern Japanese taskforce, which included 2 BB's. If you read up on this you will see that while the US BB's did fire many rounds, few hit the Japanese, but the Japanese ships were advancing through a narrow strait, so their ships could not manuever. Several US DD's carried out tropedo runs and it was mainly the Torpedoes that sunk the Japanese. The point of the history lesson is that while a DD would generally be unable to sink a Battleship alon, it is not impossible and it would be very hard for the Battleship to sink the DD's either. More reason to bring back Cruisers....

[Sevorak]

StevanVB,

A Gulf War remodernized battleship differs from the 1945 version by:

16x Harpoon missiles in box launchers with an inadequate targeting system,
4x Phalanx CIWS that are effectively useless,
32x TLAM (note: not TASM!) in ABL's as well.

In modern ship to ship combat the guns are useless so we ignore them.

The modern destroyer perforce carries:

2x Phalanx CIWS that are effectively useless,
8 cell Sea Sparrow SAM,
21 missile Mk 49 RAM (anti cruise missile),
61 cell Mk 41 VLS, which can be assumed to hold 8 Harpoons and 53 SM-2 SAMs, but could be part TASM, part SAM as well)

So when they spot each other, each fires their missiles. The is firing them out of ABL's with inadequate targeting, so it does so slowly. The destroyer fires off its ABL missiles in quick succession as the VLS also fires off its anti-ship missiles.

As the missiles bear down on the battleship, its Phalanx CIWS uselessly spatter the air with bullets. The missiles start slamming into the battleship, and it starts taking serious damage.

As the missiles bear down on the destroyer, it engages its anti-missile defences. Its Phalanx are equally useless. However, it engages its Sea Sparrow, its RAM, and also starts firing SAMs out of the VLS boxes.

Chances are, the destroyer (which actually HAS antimissile defence) will live rather than the battleship, whose designed defence was always the armor (and against modern warheads, that's a no-go).

I would wager that as technology advances, the destroyer gets better and better and the battleship falls more and more behind. Naval guns are outdated, and if you want more missiles, get an AEGIS cruiser and pack the VLS full, it will ALWAYS carry more than some old battleship.

No one uses battleships (even remodernized ones) any more, because all a battleship really is nowadays is sea-borne artillery. Yes, it is useful in that respect, but air power does it so much better that there really is no contest. I do not expect Civ to model this, however, since a large, expensive unit that does a job a less expensive unit does better that is in a game tends to not get used.

As for your naval theories, destroyers may be smaller, but that hardly makes them expendable. Yes, they do practice drills where they fling themselves in front of a torpedo, but that's ONLY to protect the supercarrier. Supercarriers are not adequately represented either - currently, the CivIII carrier isn't that expensive and carries only 4 units. Anyway, destroyers don't practice ramming torpedoes for the fun of it. They are some of the most valuable and versatile parts of the fleet.

GePap,

If we're talking WWII, pre missile era, yes, the battleship (assuming Iowa class) runs down the destroyer and pounds it with its secondaries. If the battleship's not fast enough, the result is inconclusive as neither can really do serious damage to the other, but leaning towards the BB and a lucky main gun hit (which shatters the DD like a toy).

-Sev

[player1]

Just one note:
Destoryers, Battleship, AEGIS Cruiser maybe have unrealistic stats, but I think that they are pretty nice gamebablanced (considering their costs).

But, I don't think same for Privateer & Subs.

[dexters]

Subs are a tremendous waste of resources for their cost, they can barely do anything and from reports, it would seem the AI can see them without Aegis

[player1]

If AI won't see them & they have 10 attack, they would be OK!

Since then, only they will attck & 10 attck is fine for sinking destoryers & maybe Btalleships & AEGIS (still this one could see it).

[CyberGnu]

I actually build almost entirely destroyers... Since the AI inists on churning out ironclads and galleons like they were going out fo style. If I can build three destryers in the same time as two battleships, that's one more ironclad I can kill for the same production value...

Besides, seeing my battleship getting sunk by a trireme made me so depressed I didn't feel like build any more of them...

[Dev]

Sevorak, what makes you think the Phalanx system is useless ?

I doubt you're right about your BB stats since the US based entire battelgroups around their modernzied IOWA BBs which would be rather stupid....
(Pure speculation from my side though).

/dev

[Altuar]

Yeah, I'd like to hear more on the alleged uselessness of the Phalanx as well.