Air and Naval Power, is it worth it?

[Dodgy Geezer]

Having been playing CIV3 almost continually since it came out, at all map sizes and all difficulty levels up to Deity, I have never had a great use of either ships or aircraft.

Sure I have built a few squadrons of bombers for a laugh, and have tooled up on battleships to get rid of pesky bombardments, but they never really made a difference. And after I learned that you can use artillery/railroad as an effective defence against ships (you can't kill them, but when they get hurt they go back to port) ships seem even less important, apart from the odd ones to help protect your transports or get a settler to another island etc.

So here is the question. Has anyone used Air or Naval power as a major part of strategy? And if so, was it effective?

[Spec]

Originally posted by Dodgy Geezer
So here is the question. Has anyone used Air or Naval power as a major part of strategy? And if so, was it effective?

Yes, and no it sucks. The only reason why I use ships is to protect my transports when I make massive drops to invade a civ.

Spec.

[planetfall]

What an interesting question. Is it possible to play without sea and air power? I have only played a few games and not at the higher levels and not with the patch yet, so may not be the greatest authority, but have never played without strong air force and navy.

Is it worth it? Probably not, but does make the game more fun. In retrospect, air and sea is primarily used to reduce land forces in ending a won game. By the time the air force and navy come into play you usually know the outcome of the game. My father was a B17 bombardier so I have a fair idea of their capabilities. In my games I usually end up with 5 to 12 fully loaded carriers. They do effectively limit ground problems and ground forces needed.

In one game I used normal bomber range but it did not match with even the range of a B17. Stories about hit value not changing during missions has not shown to be valid in my games. In present game changed range to maximum of 8, but now think that may be too much of an advantage to air. Going to try with range of 7.

My last game is a good example of the way my games develop. 3 civs, standard map, game started with 3 island continents and one civ on each continent. As I as I discovered I was along on my continent, it was very important to develop navy. I emphasize a builder approach to the game and try to come close to matching AI build and expansion through the first 2 Eras. Grog only wants tanks. I want
the full load: tanks, inf, carriers, transports {not as important, as old one are still useful, but can you image the poor quarter master trying to load 2 Abrams on a galley?}, and bombers before I am ready to pursue warfare. I was happy just building my empire on my continent. I used galley to export the perimeter of the other continents and managed to land settler pairs on both ends of one continents, and the far end of the other continent. I hoped I would have a secure empire when I was able to safely transverse the sea between my continent and the small contingent on the other continent. My goal was to have a small cluster of cities before the AI discovered me. I used privateers, losing several to distract the AI and block its expansion on my continent. In front of my clusters I put first a floating defense as front line blockers and slowly added forces {1 city culture, 1 worker, 1 military, repeat loop until solid land lind}. Since all our scores were within 100 points of each other by the time they found my clusters, no one had the power to do anything to force the issue. I thought I was safe and forgot the Japanesse were military. I had no air tech yet and only galleys and a few privateers. Suddenly the Japanesse attacked. Quite effectively, they captured the hub city of my cluster of seven and then asked for peace. Yeh, right. Although the score was very close, they had only a few hundred gold each to my 5-6,000. I also had captured most
great wonders and filled most of my cities with the culture improvements. With a builder philosophy of play, obviously I was not ready for a short war. So...a long war. Americans--here are some juicy trades and deals. Non-aggression pacts were not necessary. When war weariness set in just move up the entertainment slider. For the duration, cut science to 10-20%. Won't fall too far behind then. I was lucky and was a few turns from getting flight.

Thus was fairly easy. First, defense: legionnaires pushed in remaining cluster cities. A few infanty just to make the AI think more. Switch all my continent to military except those working or great wonders. Start moving galleys in position for two front war. Push pop a few battleships and carriers in my continent. Survive Japanesse attack on other cities, allowing improvement destruction but keeping cities. Adjust city governers to manage happiness but nothing else. Checking on F11 approval fell from 80% to 55-60%. With infrastructure, could continue at that rate for a very, very long time. It just meant I could not advance as much as wanted. Ships take forever to move. Some have suggested increasing their movement ability for game play concerns. I haven't done that yet remembering the British and the Farralon Islands. By the time my ships were close to position I had flight. I put 2 airports {pushed naturally} in city cluster,
one close to front and one at safe end. I only had 2 carriers and 2 BS, so I only pushed 10 bombers. 8 for the carriers and 2 for the city cluster. Luckily the Japanesse capital city was not too far away. Definely far into war weariness by now. Japan has tried to end their "short war of expansion" twice, no way jose. You want to end before my response. dream on. BS ran interference and took care of limited Japanesse Navy. Japan had no railroad or artillery, so carriers could hug the shorelines. In short order no roads connecting Japanesse capital to empire.
Lost my 2 front line bombers against a massive attack. {going to watch that next time}. From then on, it was just clean up.
At the end of this campaign I had 5 working carriers and about 16 bombers. Nice, no losses to this navy/air force combination.
Land/air force I need to work on tactics more. For final campaign which just started vs Americans, I have 12 carriers, 8 BS, 3 Destroyers, 44 bombers, 5 transports. It is so easy to have a working 3 front campaign. The AI had an excellent counter strike from the land front, but could not handle the North and South fronts. I don't bother with marines. Air/BS campaign removes rail and road on beach. Land and then move the necessary 4-8 tiles to the closest city.

It is fun to see the smoking cities when the capital placed too close to the sea suddenly loses all its roads. Naturally their is a price to pay: 1) some your cities will be in turmoil, 2) have to watch technology race closely with non warring civ, 3) have to watch for civ's ganging up on you, and have to settle for slower development. But, once you have built a good navy and air force, you can be very, very effective.

Now, what about on higher levels? Don't know, maybe someone else has experience there. A strong navy/air force needs at least equality in technology race. I don't know what it is like yet when others also have navy and air force. Any one with any stories???

Like I started, I think I will try one game without strong navy and air force just to see what it is like. Huh.

[Jack_www]

I use bombers a lot. The reason for this is the since artillery have only a movement of one I use bombers to bombard instead. They can keep up with the faster moving units. I have fought many wars in the modern or late industrail age, when the AI cities are huge, if I dont bombard these cities I end up losing a lot of units, and I can wait for the artillery to come, I want my war to end fast. so I use bombers. You can also use bombers to destroy roads and rails and other improvements, this is also very helpfull in slowing down the advance of enemy troops, straving cities and cuting them off form their civ's trade network, and destroying a civs access to recourses. I find airpower very usefull.

I have the backbone of my navy be aircraft carries, and use battle ships to escort transports and carries and to defend my seas form enemy ships and transports tring to land an invasion force on my coast line. Usually I have most of my bombers on my aircraft carries so that I can move them near enemy civs so that I can bomb them.
So I use both air and sea power in my games, find them very usefull.

[Harovan]

I build about 20 bombers, but lots of carriers. Carriers are very slow and I spread them empty all over the map, escorted with battleships, with the bombers waiting in my homeland. If a war breaks out, I can quickly relocate my bombers whereever I want. If I can, I try to secure midocean islands or get a 1-city-hold on another continent and use them as navy/airforce bases too.

The amount of Fighters depends on the number of border cities in my homeland. I use to have about 2 Fighters/Jets per border city. I rarely relocate them on carriers, only if the AI airforce gets annoying (mostly it doesn't).

Transports are quite fast, I build as much as I need to load my "task forces". One "task force" is 12 Cav/Tank/MA, 8 Inf/MechInf, 8 Artillery and 1 army of Infs to protect the Artillery. One fits in 4 transports. How many "task forces" I build, depends on the map size, for standard maps about 4 is ok. Thus I build 12 transports (1 TF always remains at home).

I escort my transports/carriers mostly with battleships. Destroyers are much weaker and IMHO not worth to be built.

[Dimorier Maximus]

Fighters: Only build these guys if your enemies have air units. They are useless otherwise.

Bombers: These are excellent when invading another country. If you load up on bombers and carriers, you can bring all your enemy's units down to one red hit point bar before your land units attack. This really helps your tanks and modern armor to stay high powered, and it can be the difference in whether or not your tanks can take the city or not.

Knights/Cavalry/Tanks/Modern Armor: These are must have units in their respective ages. They are kings on land. Other than to guard my cities (where I build the spearman - mech inf line of units to defend), I usually make all my land units to be one of these once I get the ability to make knights.

Catapults/Artillery/etc.: I have found these to be less useful than bombers. They are only necessary if you need to take a city on a hill and you don't have bombers, or if your opponent has a lot of fighters and SAMs.

Naval Units: All you need here is enough war naval units to adequately protect your transports and aircraft carriers. In Civ3, the game is won on the ground, not at sea. The number of attack ships you need varies with the number that your opponent has and the number of transports and carriers that you have. You can overbuild them too. This promotes a more defensive strategy though. Because, if you overbuild, then you are likely to use your excess ships to destroy enemy transports and carriers.

These are the things I have noticed. I hope it helps.

Oh yeah, one more thing.

Get Iron Working and grab iron as early as possible, then start building swordsmen or your civ's swordsmen equivalent. You can wreak havoc early on if you know what you are doing! This strategy works especially well with the Greeks. I would imagine that the Persians and Romans are pretty good at it too.

[Unregistered]

I would definately say yes, they are.

As others have stated above, the range of the bombers alone makes them great support units when attacking (or defending!) a neighboring civ.

I definately use sea power too. When your capitol is near the coast (or any major building city for that matter) it is important to be able to defend them from the infrastructure bombardment. In my current game, the #1 & #2 civs are on a continent that is about 5 times larger than the one I'm based on and it is 4 - 5 turns away for a carrier task force. (I'm playing monarch, huge map, 16 civs) I ended up forming two carrier task forces, each having two carriers & three battleships in the main stacks and two escort stacks of two battleships each. Added to this a strike force stack of four transports with four battleships in the main stack (so I could break them out into two smaller stacks if needed) and two more escorting stacks with three battleships each. Each carrier had two fighters and two bombers. The fighters were either on air superiority or doing recon missions. The strike force consisted of two transports w/ five marines, one elite mech inf & two artillery in each. The other two transports contained six modern armor and two mech inf in each. Using the bombers & battleships I was able to beat down the defending cities mech inf so that the marines didn't have much trouble taking it. The follow on forces landed and secured two more cities in the same turn. Without the naval build up I don't think I could have successfully pulled this off since we're pretty equal in forces & most of mine were across the pond to start with.

Now if I could just get them to talk to my envoy before I'm forced to wipe them out...

fwiw,

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Dimorier Maximus
Catapults/Artillery/etc.: I have found these to be less useful than bombers. They are only necessary if you need to take a city on a hill and you don't have bombers, or if your opponent has a lot of fighters and SAMs.

Bombers have one huge disadvantage, especially if invading large continents (playing on large/huge maps), and that is their very limited range. In the late game, you usually won't take big cities, but raze them to prevent losing units if the cities revert back. Doing this, the bombers soon are short of range, as they must start from cities or carriers due to the lack of airfields, and can't reach the enemy cities anymore.

Artillery units have the disadvantage, that they move slow. But, usually razing cities you leave an intact, unoccupied road/RR network, where they can move faster. And they are reliable and can move anywhere you want them.

[Xin Yu]

I mainly use artilleries, etc. for defense. Very easy to get a great leader when you bombard enemy units then use elite units to attack. All your units are in a city thus you may have defense advantage.

[Arrian]

Once my position on my continent is secure, I start preparing to deal with a war against a civ on another continent (since I play normal map/continents, there are usually two large continents and maybe an island nation thrown in). I tend to build up a large navy (prior to this I have none) of Battleships and Destroyers. These are multi-purpose, as they can kill enemy ships, protect transports, and bombard coastal cities and resources. I also build up a bomber force. If the AI is actually close in tech, I will also build some fighters/jet fighters. Oh, yeah, and 50-75 Modern Armor.

If I have to fight "over there" I send over three or four transports of Modern Armor with a settler or two, protected by my navy. I drop all of them on a hill near the enemy capitol. Next turn, build city and relocate bombers. Next turn, let the destruction begin. The bombers & battleships soften those size-25 cities up and my Modern Armor rolls right on through, razing to their heart's content.

So, yeah, I think air and naval power is useful, but it does depend on the situation. I had a game where I had Modern Armor and the AI's still didn't have replaceable parts. No need for an airforce there. Modern Armor does horrible, unspeakable things to riflemen. At the end of the day, M.A. is unstoppable vs. anything short of Mech Inf. or other M.A. (I assume mech inf would give them trouble, I've never actually experienced that).

-Arrian

[Thrawn05]

Generaly, no its not. However I do do these things.

I build fighters/jets/f-15s for air supirority missions to prevent others from bombing me.

I build nuke subs to carry my nuke missiles.

I might build a carrier to hold the above air fighters, but not really all the time.

Transports are a must, and fill them with marines. I thought that marines are worthless considering for the same price I could build better units, but they are good for land ontop of enemy units and cities.

[Kc7mxo]

I found that battleships were very uesful, especially if you weren't intereested in conquest, just in making war. a squadron fo battleships can quickly reduce the defenders of an enemy city, and then marines c an be sent in to eliminate teh defenders while placing the minimal number of soldiers at risk from a counter attack. Only a single unit ever lands, and he razes the city.

This strategy isn't good for defeating an ai, but it is very entertaining for a while. And if you sucesfully wipe out all of his port cities, well, he won't have much of a navy. . . .

[barefootbadass]

Naval and air power isn't essential to deal with the ai, unless you are on archipelago, but it is helpful. You are definitely more powerful with it(if you have a strong ground force already, adding bombers will increase your strength more than adding and equivalent amount of extra ground forces). There is a balance that depends on your map, where you and everyone else is in it, and what you hope to acheive with your military.

[Kc7mxo]

I've seen the ai rack up massive fleets of ironclads and frigates, and if oyu don't have something to wipe these guys out, you're going to take a lot of losses in your infrastructure once war breaks out. unfortunatley battleships only seme to be able to take out two, three ironclads if they're lucky, so destroyers are much better for that role. they may only take out one ironclad before having to go home, but they're much cheaper than a battleship.

[Arrian]

The best way to wipe out large fleets of obselete AI ships is to use destroyers and battleships in tandem, along with artillery and/or bombers (depending on your tech level, clearly), if the AI ships come near your coast.

Use the destroyers to bombard enemy ships, then hit with the battleships. If the AI sails over to bombard your improvements, roll out the artillery and bombard them from shore, and then your ships will polish them off easily. That tends to work for me.

-Arrian

[Kc7mxo]

or you could just launch your fighters and bombers at them and send them to the bottom of the deep blue sea. . . . . . um, never mind

[barefootbadass]

I mainly use destroyers to take out the obselete stuff. I use my battleships for carrier escort and invasion support. Eventually I have so many battleships I use them for everything, which happens when I have a lull in infrastructure options.

[Kc7mxo]

Which interestingly enough didn't happen as much in civ 2. Personally I used a combination fleet of cruisers to watch for subs, carriers to give me range, and battlehsips to protect my stack.

i think that with the removal of full stack loss, if they'd just kept the old ships, the naval combat could have been pretty cool in civ3. at least for the modern age.

for the middle ages it would have been nice if they introduced say a frigate combat vessel, a battleship level galleon, and a transport vessel.

[Unregistered]

Originally posted by Arrian
At the end of the day, M.A. is unstoppable vs. anything short of Mech Inf. or other M.A. (I assume mech inf would give them trouble, I've never actually experienced that).

-Arrian

It is an experience. & yes, they can & do give them trouble, even if they're only fortified on grassland. Unfortified on grassland, not so much.

[Eric S]

I'd have to say that it very much depends on the map. If you're attacking islands, they make all the difference in the world, as battleships can take out the roads/railroads of resources near the coast, bombers on aircraft hitting ones farther in, limiting the opponents ability to wage war before you land any troops.

Artillery is good, but it can't be used before you land on an island, and it can't be airlifted in. Aircraft can rebase in one turn quite easily. However, once you've established a foothold on the island, artillery is more mobile, as it doesn't need to be rebased as you attack inward, loosing turns that it could be used to attack. Aircraft still maintain the advantage of being well to the rear, so less likely to be destroyed due to a counterattack, but since
they have to be stationed in a city, they're vulnerable to culture-flipping.

[Dodgy Geezer]

This all makes interesting reading. From what I can see the main reason I haven't used it Naval/Air is I don't play on maps with lots of islands (in fact I prefer Pangaea most of the time), and when I do I tend to be so much in the lead that I just send in the Tanks/MA and accept a few losses. The other reason is that I prefer surgical strikes rather than wars of attrition. This means that even if the enemy has 100 ironclads and I have none, the amount of damage I take can be repaired in less than ten turns since the war only lasts three or four turns. On the rare occasions I have had longer wars I found I could keep my resources connected even if they were disconnected every turn (like that bridge in Apolocalypse Now).

The problem with bombardments of cities is you never seem to get good feedback on what you were hitting. I thought they just killed people/destroyed resources. Now that I know you can injure defenders as well, I might be inclined to give it a go, especially the marines attack, although I am not sure I have ever bothered making Marines before.

One of the things that is puzzling me though, is all this talk of nukes, Minf etc. I always play at Monarch (Deity requires an anal attention to detail in the early game I just can't get enthused about), and have played at all map sizes, but have never found the need to research anything past Synth Fibres and Rocketry to get MA unless I am going for a Space Race victory. The one time I did get MInf, it was only because I spent too long getting my MA's ready for an onslaught of a massive enemy continent (we both had about 80 cities) involving around 150 MAs. This was quite amusing because as I was busy with my Blitzkreig, barbarians began setting up on the cleared land. Not that they stand much of a chance against MA:
- *BUMP*
- Commander to Driver: "What was that noise?"
- Driver: "Dunno, must have hit a 'roo or summink."

One final question. Does air defence using fighters work? I had several fighters based around squares that were getting hit by bombers repeatedly, and the fighters did sweet FA. This was a while ago, so it might have been pre-patch. It's one of the reasosn why I stopped building fighters.


I think that both Naval and air units should be able to kill ground units (including workes) with bombardments. That would make them worth having, and would certainly be consistant with reality, especially in the modern age.

[Encomium]

Simply put, naval combat stinks in Civ III.

It is all too simplistic.

There is no difference between slow diesel subs and nuclear subs.

Bombers cannot sink warships!!

Privateers and submarines SHOULD be able to attack an enemy's trade and commerce by merely getting on his trade routes - that is realistic, not this bloackading stuff.

Warships do not in reality muck around bombarding improvements, and only warships AFTER the ironclad had the firepower to make a difference.

And a lot more.

We can't even attack diplomats and caravans on transports as we did in Civ II!!

[Ironwood]

I don't know about modern warfare, since I can't seem to force myself past that point where a single turn begins to take ten minutes (I probably won't actually beat a game until I get my Morrowind machine, which will be able to shorten turn times significantly), but i know in the early Industrial Era, I find a strong fleet of Ironclads to be indispensable. First off, my galleons have this annoying tendency to get sunk before they deliver their payload if I haven't already dealt with the enemy's navy. Of corse, on Pangea, this really doesn't matter, but I prefer to have at least one new land to discover (if not more).

Secondly, a good fleet of ships can do some serious damage to the enemy civ while costing a very minimal amount to yourself. This is usually how it goes in my Archipelago games:

1. Annoying civ makes outrageous demand, which I refuse, thus war is declared.

2. My massive fleet of Ironclads completely destroy's their navy.

3. My massive fleet of Ironclads then proceeds to reduce all coastal towns to slag heaps; meanwhile, my invasion force is being constructed (as I was pumping my resources into infrastructure development up to this point). The enemy's massive army is useless, or learning to swim the hard way, at this point.

4. I take some territory (maybe a secondary island or something) as well as some concessions from the enemy. My reputation is completely unsinged.

I prefer the simplicity of sea combat to the uncertainty of land combat, as you can plainly see. I do the "vassalage" method, just from island to island, rather than from sea to shining sea.

[Kc7mxo]

Privateers and submarines SHOULD be able to attack an enemy's trade and commerce by merely getting on his trade routes - that is realistic, not this bloackading stuff.

well, thats a very nice thing to say, but how would oyu inplement it? this trade route is going to be massive (many many squares) and a privateer can block it, where? anywhere? how would you prevent it then? have ships spaced ALL along the route?

As it is, its pretty useless, but it doesnt' hinder the system, and it can happen sometimes. but if it was badly implemented. . . .come on, we got enough things to complain about.

Personally, I just bombard any city with a harbor instead, which tends to be much easier than a blockade, and much more effective.

[Dodgy Geezer]

Maybe trading routes could be represented by automated ships travelling between harbours, either individually or in groups. Each ship represents a turns worth of trade. But it will complicate things somewhat.

But as it stands the U-boats campaign of WW2 can't be played out in CIV3.

[Dida]

In CTP trate routes are represented by a physical line, and you can use submarines to mess their trade up.

[Dodgy Geezer]

Hey, I just read this on CIVFANATICS, and thought it was worth mentioning here.

Fanny Brice??? came up with the idea of bombarding the enemies land, waiting for the workers to arrive and then stealing them with Marines.

Finally, a use for both Marines AND naval bombardment!!!

[=DrJambo=]

iF YOU change the types of things the AI spends its shieds on in the editor/civilisations tab, then you'll almost certainly require a Navy and Airforce.

FOr instance, i flagged many of the AI civs to build artillery, naval and air units on that page and then played a game. The AI then builds quite a substantial naval/airforce which if left alone can cause havoc in your lands.

You see, at present the AI civs have build offensive land troops as the most common build type... which seriously limits the variety in AI strategies. Modify these and you'll get a more diverse AI experience!

[Eric S]

I find that against the computer, a group of about 4-6 fighters in the right place at the right time can be very beneficial, but more than that is usually wasted.

Bear in mind, I'm only up to Regent level, and I prefer island maps. Every once in a while, I'll get war declared on me unexpectedly, and suddenly the computer will start pounding on my resources and cities with bombers.

After a turn or two of getting the bombers shot down in large numbers, the AI has usually depleted his supply of bombers, and after that, you might see one or two more, but not enough or suddenly enough to cause serious damage.