I seem to find funding and sustaining a Navy as pretty worthless. I play on continents typically, so there is tons of water in play.

However, I just don't see the point in making a Navy. Once I dominate my continent I obviously move onto the next. But I just make ships to transport, get all the troops I need for the initial invasion. Move over there and take a few cities and fortify my troops. Then get peace and bring over more troops.

Obviously once the game is in its later stages you have the airport so theres less of a reason to have a navy. Frankly all the AI has ever done is lower my city defenses and kill fishing boats with his navy. Thats all heart breaking and all, but I don't think it justifies building a strong navy.

Am I alone in this thinking or am i a newbie?

Check out Sirians use of modern navy in Adventure Three (http://sirian.warpcore.org/civ4/adventure-three/adventure-3.html)

Navies are pretty worthless outside of transport and defense. You'll never satisfactorily bombard a city with ships, and taking out their sea resources is negligible. The hammers are better spent elsewhere.

Navies were better in III. At least you could destroy cities by bombardment with battleships. I used to shoot the **** out of enemy cities before conquering them. The only thing that couldn't be destroyed by bombardment were wonders and that last point of population.

You'll probably get out more from navies then the AI though.

I also miss using ships to blow the hell out of terrain improvements and disconnect their resources.

How strange. I'm finding navies pretty important. Although mostly because the AIs build them... If you don't have a navy, then you're vulnerable to nasty raiding attacks by enemy civs. Especially late in the game when three or four transports can show up, drop a Stack O'Doom on your coast, and hit one of your coastal cities the next turn (with assistance from shore-bombarding destroyers).

Montezuma did this to me in a recent game, and oh my goodness, was it a PITA. Oh, I could exterminate the Stack -- especially once I had railroads built and could swarm with defenders. But I lost two cities first, including one that got razed. Ouch.

Someone pointed out that navies can't destroy city improvements like in Civ III. True, but the defense-stripping bombardment is huge. Your frigates and destroyers can reach an enemy coastal city long before your SoD lumbers up. By the time your stack arrives, the city can already be peeled. It's a significant time-saver, and can help turn your wars into proper blitzkriegs.

Finally, note that fighters and jet fighters can be mounted on carriers and ferried all over the world. And these little guys /can/ attack terrain and city improvements. A surprise attack that opens with strafing runs on enemy coal, oil or iron can be quite effective. (Has to be surprise, mind, because once the AI is alerted it will park units on the resources).

Finally, the map makes a huge difference. On a default map, you may be able to get along fine without a navy. You only need to ferry the occasional missionary, or very occasional Great Merchant, across the oceans. So you can let the other civs fight for control of the waves. But on, say, an archipelago map... well, you just gotta have a navy. Otherwise, you'll see ships full of your most precious units heading for Davy Jones' Locker, forthwith.


Waldo

In many games you only really need a navy for defensive reasons as the AI seems quite keen on sneak attacks to pillage water-based resources and dump stacks near cities. This is often more irritating than dangerous. However I've had several games (on different map types) were naval warfare was quite important.

In one game I was in 2nd place but had little or no hope of knocking the top dog off her perch (Victoria with a huge tech lead and growing), no-one was willing to be be bribed to do my dirty work for me, couldn't reach her with planes even if I had them, etc. In short a military campaign was the only solution. The problem was she was on the other side of the world on her own continent and wouldn't even sign open borders, making a land sneak attack that much riskier.

In the end I bee-lined towards techs giving me destroyers and battleships and took out her navy. While this was happening I went for oil and fighters so that I could then send carriers full of fighters. The ships pillaged and bombed cities, the fighters pillaged improvements (they're not very good at it) and established air superiority.

After that it was a simple exercise of sending some transports full of troops (still had muskets I think at this point!) to knock out some of her cities that had been barraged by my navy (note that I didn't take any barrage units and only had catapults anyway I think).

Given my position I'm not sure how else I could have pegged her back without a navy short of waiting for nuclear weapons.

I think there is not enough interaction between navy and landbased units, and the things ships can do are WAY too limited.

Right now building a strong navy is super-unimportant, even when you consider a big bad drop near one of your coastalcities things can be handled better. I usually use a spy to steal plans when an AI declares war on me in lategame to see them coming, and place all defensive landunits I can spare near the landing point. And that will be a lot of units, as I didnt build a lot of ships.

Losing fisherboats and not being able to replace them anytime soon really is the only thing that bugs me at times, but thats not much considering a swarm of battleships is cruising around.

I really suggest to make navy more important with the expansionset!

My ideas:

Battleships should lower citydefensebonus more quickly.

A new unit, something like a gunboat, should be introduced: Relatively weak (strenght 25 or something), but can attack defending units in coastal cities and starts with +20% cityattackbonus, and can get cityraiderupgrades. It cannot conquer cities though. That would mean it has to be escorted by battleships and destroyers to survive the opponents naval units, but can attack land when you could protect it.

Gunships should be able to enter shoretiles like galleys (no ocean!). They should have attackbonuses (+100%) against battleships and the abovementioned gunboat, but be countered by destroyers.

The marine should also somehow interact more with navy - maybe an extrabonus against gunboats when defending a city.

Well.... Thats what I came up with in 15 minutes time. What do you think?

Navies were better in III. At least you could destroy cities by bombardment with battleships. I used to shoot the **** out of enemy cities before conquering them. The only thing that couldn't be destroyed by bombardment were wonders and that last point of population.


This was only true if you had a significant tech or resource lead over the AI. If the AI also had oil and destroyers, they attacked your bombarding fleet with a vengence. The Civ3 AI also beelined for flight so they would methodically sink your fleet with bombers. Against an equal AI, any time you sent naval units anywhere near the vicinity of the AI coast they were almost always destroyed by next turn. My problem with Civ3 navies was that by the industrial era you really couldn't do anything with them except protect your coast.

yea well, I did try to have a navy in my latest game when I tried an Archepelago map with snaky continents and later in the game after I had good relations with tokugawa and when he did a defensive pact I thought he wanted that to defend against Peter since he even asked me to cancel trade with Peter of russia, but several turns later that traitior backstabbed me!! He did drstroy a few of my ships but I cranked out more frigates and it became a short naval standoff with the two of us destroying a few ships and me bombarding his cities, after a while when he didn't seem to be attacking I backed off outside his territory and from there for several turns it was more of a 'cold war' with no actual fighting. At least Peter did trust me more because I easily asked him for assistance to go to war against Tokugawa (Tokugawa deserved it anyway, the backstabber) and later when Tokugawa made peace, I asked Peter to end the war, and he obliged. I guess Peter was as angry at Tokugawa as I was. I didn't trust Tokugawa for the rest of the game and will be more wary in later games. I made it to a cultural victory JUST in time because there was one turn left to the time limit.

The point of the story would be that without that naval coverage, he probably would have sent an invasion at me. I was going to, but since he apparently stopped fighting I put the small invasion on hold.

Why in the world would you care about your fighters being on a carrier?


If you declare war and one turn later take over an enemy city on his continent, you can just fly your planes there in one turn.


And I think to stop a few transports from going to your shore, it would require a healthy navy. You would have to cover the vast majority of your shore in order to have some sort of line of site. Simply not worth it IMO.

Instead of those 10 battleships, give me 10 modern armors or mech infantries. I'll airport them over to the continent im battling in, and boom I got reinforcements to continue to take his cities.

Why in the world would you care about your fighters being on a carrier?
If you declare war and one turn later take over an enemy city on his continent, you can just fly your planes there in one turn.


Yes, but your fighters can then attack and weaken the units in that first city. They will also already be flying intercept, so that they can stop counter-attacking bombers.

Other reasons for a navy:
You also need a large enough navy to defend your transports for any major attack force.

Also, a couple destroyers and some marines can take lightly defended island cities.

Lastly, while defending your entire coast may be impractical, you may have a situation where you want to defend a section of your coast, say if your oil is only a square or two inland.

Having a carrier full of fighters is preferable to taking over a city, when you're on a coastal razing campain.

Carriers/Fighters + Marines + Razing = good times

Navy is very good for attacking islands.

Yes, but your fighters can then attack and weaken the units in that first city. They will also already be flying intercept, so that they can stop counter-attacking bombers.


But wouldn't you get more use out of having more lands units to attack with. The carriers would come into play in one single battle. To take the first coastal city. Once you take that city you can fly your planes in with no Navy. So wouldn't it be more pratical to have a stronger invasion force that you could use for more than one battle?



Other reasons for a navy:
You also need a large enough navy to defend your transports for any major attack force.


This is the main reason why I don't think you need a large navy. Once you declare, your ships should already be at their shore. So theres no reason why your huge stacks should get killed in water. ONce you land, you kickass. Either throw your ships in the first coastal city you capture or have a couple battleships protecting..but you don't need a huge navy to do this. Once you capture enough cities you do one of two things.

If its late neough in the game, you airport more troops in. If its not that stage, you sue for peace. Go get more troops, re-station..and rinse and repeat.

I have never lost a naval unit in civ 4, and I play all continents. I just have found that having more land units is superior in a war to having the naval units.

I can see how the navy could work out in a long drawn out equal war. But against the AI typically you just rush them and capture/raze.

I find a big navy pretty useless too unless you're in an odd spot. The problem with stopping a landing is that you need to have a ton of sentries out to push back fog all around your land, and enough big stacks of naval units to kill an entire invasion force in 1 turn. I'd rather spend the same resources on extra garrison units along the coast, then kill whatever the AI lands on the ground. Especially since it's such a pain to spot a naval invasion, you pretty much have to look at the advisor every round. To protect my own invasion force, I just move right outside of cultural borders in peacetime.

While there are some circumstances where a navy would be useful (especially on more islandy maps), most of the time when people talk about a great naval victory, I think 'why did you bother'? Vormuir talks about bombarding so that defenses are gone when your stack of doom arrives - yet 4 catapaults with accuracy promotion are much cheaper than an entire navy, but will bring those walls down in 1 turn - and they work even on an inland city. StrideCollosus talks about a huge naval war, but even better would be just bringing up transports and dropping them off on the opening turn. Again, one transport-load of 4 accuracy cats will drop city defenses in 1 turn.

(And something is off in his tech or memory, you have to develop infantry, tanks, and marines to float a battleship).

Why in the world would you care about your fighters being on a carrier? If you declare war and one turn later take over an enemy city on his continent, you can just fly your planes there in one turn.

Not if their continent is far away.

And I think to stop a few transports from going to your shore, it would require a healthy navy. You would have to cover the vast majority of your shore in order to have some sort of line of site. Simply not worth it IMO.

The point was not to intercept enemy naval invasions (as you say, thats quite hard and would require a lot of ships) but to prevent the enemy from idly pillaging your resources. It's easier to let them land and then wipe em out.

Instead of those 10 battleships, give me 10 modern armors or mech infantries. I'll airport them over to the continent im battling in, and boom I got reinforcements to continue to take his cities.

Yeah of course, me too. The example I gave above was well before modern armour though. Unless the beachhead is within air range of your continent you have to use some sort of navy to take that first city. Once done you say you can airlift more units in.

(Has to be surprise, mind, because once the AI is alerted it will park units on the resources).




Waldo

U mean like perl harbor

I play Archipelegos and low sea levels - makes for a much more interesting world than continents. You essentially end up with 5 - 6 medium sized land masses that you can get anywhere from 3 - 20 cities or so plus some islands.

You definitely need a large navy all the time and all ages. Much more interesting than regular continents or Pangea.

I really suggest to make navy more important with the expansionset!

My ideas:

Battleships should lower citydefensebonus more quickly.

A new unit, something like a gunboat, should be introduced: Relatively weak (strenght 25 or something), but can attack defending units in coastal cities and starts with +20% cityattackbonus, and can get cityraiderupgrades. It cannot conquer cities though. That would mean it has to be escorted by battleships and destroyers to survive the opponents naval units, but can attack land when you could protect it.

Gunships should be able to enter shoretiles like galleys (no ocean!). They should have attackbonuses (+100%) against battleships and the abovementioned gunboat, but be countered by destroyers.



I really like this idea from Still Asleep. A Navy would suddenly be really important because this gunboats may be really annoying when suddenly a stack of them attacks your big harbourcities.

I am playing a large map, in a modern era warfare, without a navy protecting my coast and and attacking the AI costal cities, I would not be wining the war. The AI has twice as many Artillery (60) pieces as I do, so every over land attack is getting know back before I can reach is inner cities. His navy is attacking every chance it gets.. I finally knock out his navy after losing a carrier (full of jets) :mad:, and 4 supporting ships. Now that I control his costal waters, I am crushing his cities by attacking from the see and jumping back onto the transports before his artillery can attack me.

Navy is important to me 1 time i was at war wit monty and he sended 4 full but unescorted gallons he was aproching my big city NY ihad a big navy there and i sent 5 firgates to kill him and i killd all 16 units

interesting idea about gunships but what if naval units can bombard targets like 3 tiles inlad or whatever depends on unit... which some people are trying to make possible and also aloww naval units to bombard military units:)

and the problem with using seige weapons to take a city is that your catpults or whatever unit is left without much military support and can easily be picked off by enemy units...:eek:

so now it is pretty difficult to move onto next city with a lot less seiges units...
i mean i already try to have it so that my seige units dont die on defense and will be able to move into captured city even if it means waiting to attack last unit in city for one more turn... this is a bit more strategical then simply having naval units bombard city defesnes where i dont need seige units as much....

having naval superiority is importnat as if my military units need an evacuation then my transports are waiting for them....and my transports will not be waiting for them if enemy had naval superiorty:(

carriers are very useful in that more easily movable to places you want then capturing cities and trying to place airforece in the captured city.... and i dont like putting airforce units in a city that will ultimately be first on the enemy's counterstrike...unless i have a good control of city which slows down my offensive...:(

not to mention for defensive importances.. having planes on carriers go to recon is very useful to know where enemy units are at

i agree that naval units should be more stressed or seem more needed but i still think the having a strong navy is important to at least how i fight wars:D

One of the most beneficial uses of an aircraft carrier is recon. You can position a carrier well away from your coast, between you and your enemy, and fly recon missions each turn to know well in advance where his navies are.

I played one game where I was leading most of the game, until Alexander and Isabella made a permanent alliance. Alexander was on my continent, and was my main enemy. Isabella was on another continent. I had several wars against Alexander (modern age wars), and with my large navy I was able to prevent Isabella from ever mounting any real military aid. About the best she ever could do was station a few stealth bombers in Alexanders cities to harass my armies. But, I eventually took one of his city where she had 3 of her stealth bombers, and that's about all I ever heard from her.

I had several naval battles with Isabella, however. But due to my recon flights with my carriers and coastal stealth bombers, I was always able to see her incoming fleets and intercept them. I sent many a transport full of Spanish units to the bottom of the sea.

Both navies and air forces are extremely underpowered IMO.

Navies should be able to destroy POP and land improvements.

Air forces should also be able to destroy POP.

And both should be able to destroy land units, not just damage them.

I dont think airunits are underpowered, fighters are weak in offensive but great as interceptors as they should be, and a stack of bombers can make siegeunits obsolete (unless the opponent stacked fighters).

While I am new to Civ 4, it does help to have a few battleships to ward off zit-face and skitzo.
(Mao) (Isabella)

Yes, land armies do more damage. All the more reason to keep your boats and artillery on the shore, don't you think?

I dont think airunits are underpowered, fighters are weak in offensive but great as interceptors as they should be, and a stack of bombers can make siegeunits obsolete (unless the opponent stacked fighters).

IMO air units should be able to destroy enemy units, not just weaken them. There is no reason why bombers should not be able to destroy tanks, infantry, etc.

Are the bombers useful? Well yes, but why not make them more so? As it is, I'd rather just build artillery and tanks.

The US Navy pounded the Pacific islands to mush before moving in marines, and the US and UK air units were crucial in defeating Germany. In Civ IV, you'd be better off just building more tanks to take on the panzers/infantry.

using a powerful navy just provides nothe gimension of war... and a lot of bombers are very useful... more useful then artllery in late games, ever tried to move two or whatevre many stacks and have them torn apart in a single turn of bombing and then artillery strikes..
bombers allow range without having to put my and units at risk...and i agree air units should be able to destroy military units

tanks are quicker then artillery so it sucks having to wait for artillery, which will force my invasion to significantly slow down...with bomobers i have the ability to help on mulitple fronts as i have range

Playing on Marathon speed, I'm finding that the AI uses naval invasion a lot. Peter loves his ships and will often send them deep into your territory after scouting with missionaries. Napoleon sends Galleons and transports towards the coastal cities, usually important ones. Landing six or eight Cossacks on a tile next to a city defended by 4 troops . . . could get dicey.

My modern navy uses all ships together in task forces, with subs screening my shores and the carriers/Battleships/destroyers and wolfpacks waiting for their chance.

Conversely, naval assaults are fun. It would be nice if one of the expansions improved the ships (I really liked the Aegis Cruiser) and some of the naval combat, but overall, it's enjoyable. On marathon, the units have a life span.

Note: LOL ... Napoleon just sent two Destroyers accompanying 4 fully-loaded transports at my eastern shore, but ran into a submarine screen and a wolfpack augmented by two battleships. The subs withdrew from combat after heavily damaging the destroyer escorts, then the battleships dispatched the destroyers and the wolfpack had fun with the transports, sending all hands to the bottom of the sea!

Ok, I could have destroyed them as they landed, but this was more fun.

We need naval combat to be like Sid Meirs Pirates, complete with sword fighting scenes in the renaissance.

That would be fun, if a little time consuming.

Navies are really helpful in attacking enemy coastal cities! Really helpful. . . and that, guarding transports, and aforementioned carriers are about it in that department. Much rather have more Modern Armor or Mech Infantry.

Navies are useless and a total waste of production.

The AI always builds a big navy and it generally does nothing. When it does actually do something, its effects are negligable and they're just not worth the production. In wartime the enemy ships come to my shores, destroys a couple of fishing boats, and maybe lowers the defences of a city which the AI has no chance of attacking by land.

Big deal. How was that worth the 1000's of shields they waste on these big expensive ships? The city defences regenerate automatically, so the bombard cost my civ absolutely nothing, and pillaging work boats is mildy annoying. Not something thats worth building a ton of expensive units for.

I build transports, and a few others to defend the transports.... but other than that... ships are wasted production.

Seeing as the navy can't actually do anything to affect the war on land..... ruling the seas actually means very little. I'd much rather put the production into land units, and take some of the enemy's cities, than combat his navy.

I fyou play on an island map or continents navies are really needed to prevent an amphibious assault, but i agree that as it's done in civ4 naval warfare is really bad done and boring.Units are really a few (only 2 units for ancient and middle age? 1 attack unit for industrial era and nominally (3) for modern era because battleship rocks).From a strategic point of view i agree also that navies are worthless because sea resources are not so important.There is no naval blockade that would add a lot of strategic importance to naval warfare, norock paper scissor concept for modern navies was also a big mistake.

The problem is that you can't affect shipping.

In rome: total war, navies can kill an empire's economy by blockading ports. In that game, if you don't have a big navy you are stuffed since no sea trade = no land army.

In fact, the civilopedia entry in civ4 for frigates says that they were mainly used to attack shipping.

So why on earth can't you attack shipping in civ 4? All it would take is give navies a blockade option once next to an enemy port, which would prevent any sea trade routes and stop water tiles being worked at all.

That would add in a whole new naval dimension, and in fact I might see if it can be modded in.

Edit: I just realised that if you have a naval unit on an enemy water tile, the enemy cannot work any of the adjacent water tiles. So it is good for killing off a city which relies on water tiles for food, but you really need a trade route blockade option.

I agree alot with the first post, a navy is perhaps not worhtless but too underpowered. And biggest reason is to me the naval units lack of abillity to bombard enemy land units and perhaps improvements. I havent read all the post here but i was it looks like you have discussed it alot and i was wondering if any of you know of any mod that has adressed this issue. It cant be too hard to make. That perhaps battleships and destroyers can bombard coastal tiles with enemy units and improvements. With collateral damage and perhaps a limit of reducing enemy an enemys units strength to 50% just like the air strike funtion works. So, is there any such mod?

I was under the impression that if you blocked all the adjacent coastal tiles of a city it did kill all their overseas trade.

Carriers are about the only useful naval unit. Unfortunately by then the game is already won or lost. Naval units are also useful to destroy full enemy transports enroute to your lands.

Other than that, no, navies aren't useful at all. Totally useless in fact.

I was under the impression that if you blocked all the adjacent coastal tiles of a city it did kill all their overseas trade.

Ah really... cool.

I'll use a navy more often to do this then.

Interesting. Does this mean if their capital is a coastal city you could easily disconnect it from their oversea colonies? That could be quite a potent move :D

Having a few ships on standby can be a good idea.

On my current game I was attacked from another continent by Kublai Khan. My standby frigates killed at least 8 Galleons ready to drop troops. He never reached my coast, and asked for peace a few turns later. :)

I'm surprised there's been no mention of marines, let alone Navy SEALS. I use them both exstensively.

They're devastating on Prince level, and still usefull on Monarch. An armada of 4-5 Destroyers and 4 Transports full of them will take care of a few coastal cities.

From there, you airlift in Garrison units and eventually bombers, and go to town. I build more Marines then Tanks, most times. Especially when they've got Combat I and Pinch. Throw in a medic unit, and you're laughing. Heaven forbid that the defender has Artillery or Machine Gunners!

Even if you can't sink a whole naval stack before it deposits an invasion stack on your shore, the more ships you sink the longer it will be before they can try again.

From what I understand, this is historically fairly accurate anyway.

Even when an enemy shares your landmass, they often try amphibious invasions. And I respond in kind if there's a neutral inbetween I don't have open borders with.

Finally, I don't understand the assumption that the human player is starting all the wars, and can have stacks of transports just outside his target's border. I prefer to play Space Race games, but after I drive off an invasion I often like to counter-attack. That means getting transports into position, which means protecting them with a navy.

Finally, even if naval units are less effective - something of which I'm not convinced - it's more fun to add them to your unit mix than just to load up on ground troops. Civ 4 being a game, that's more important than effectiveness anyway.

All that said, I think battleships should be able to bombard terrain improvements and ground troops.

WOW, I cannot believe people saying Navy is useless. I find it very usefull, especially in certain maps like continents. Navy is very usefull, depending on the situation.

They had something about blockading trade routes in CTP didnt they? That game had a few good ideas.

In civ3 you could blockade a City ... if you wanted to cut a Civ from Trade you just had to blockade all water tiles next to harbor Cities and they couldnt trade resources anymore

even though in Civ4 you dont need a Harbor for trading anymore, Im not sure if blockades still work (given there is no land route of course)

once Im home I will take the world editor and try it out.

after trying ingame, naval blockades dont work anymore

Navies are becoming interesting for me. In my current game i kept 3 destroyers outside greeks city with 3 frigates and 3-4 galleons and about 15 attack units inside city.

During the whole war the Greek AI never let the units leave the city to cross the sea to my continent. After the war i asked the greeks to attack the Persians which they did. 5-8 turns later a force of 15 or so Greek units landed with destroyer escort and the persians lost a city destroyed by the Greeks. Although the entire attack ground force was taken out by the persians. The persian seemed to have 30-40 units including cavalry, riflemen and cannons in waiting. Took me 10-15 or so tanks to help run this down. :)

My point is the AI seemed to know that i would wipe out the entire fleet if it left port. Perhaps they just didnt want to attack me? I had pretty much destroyed all resources outside the greek cities and all naval units they had at sea.

The AI sometimes just decides that its navy is going to suicidally stay in port. I was unexpectedly declared war on by one of the weak powers, so I landed some infantry and cats with around 4 galleons and 2 frigates. When I looked at the city, there were around 6 frigates and 5 galleons holed up in there, and they stayed there until my ground forces took the city and destroyed them. His ships were easily strong enough to destroy my whole invasion force, but instead they stayed in port to die.

after trying ingame, naval blockades dont work anymore
Plus even if you could blockade cities like that the river trade route system would quickly re-connect them.

When I looked at the city, there were around 6 frigates and 5 galleons holed up in there, and they stayed there until my ground forces took the city and destroyed them. His ships were easily strong enough to destroy my whole invasion force, but instead they stayed in port to die.
I believe this fleet was not intended for battles, but for transporting troops overseas. I also frequently see such a thing. The AI uses some ships for battle, but also keeps a transport (plus escort) fleet in a coastal city. These ships never attack. If you take the city, the fleet is lost.

Usually the only time I have a strong navy is in the beginning, when only galleys are available. If I'm playing on a Pangea map, I can use the galleys to block anyone from bringing troops to my inner cities via the ocean. However, once galleons become available it's too hard to prevent naval invasions by using ships and it's much more effective to put more units on land to defend cities.

They should make it so ships can interrupt the transport of luxuries and resources across the ocean. See how much people ignore navies when the AI has stopped half your luxuries from reaching your cities!

I think i have been missing the point on navy usage. A transport along a coast dropping off 4 units can sometimes reach the city inland quicker than a unit crossing 3-4 square of a cultural area. Inefficiency in my war strategies on higher levels. Assuming your waiting for those slow artilery to come up from the ranks.

If the AI navy is all but wiped out the sea approach can be surgical. In one turn i took out the English capital by a sea landing. 4 artilery and a few tanks and a marine to take out the 4 defenders. The end wars are not so much about have you got the numbers but more how quickly can the troops reach the next target.

Took me best part of 20 ish turns to wipe out the persian 14+ cities and 40% culture to keep those pesky cities happy. Still not won at 54% land 60% population. I cant lose diplomatic now as i have 521 of 998 un votes but no one wants to vote for me grrr.

I find navies are vital at higher levels since they enable you to keep the majority of your invasion force offshore and hence safe from counter-attacks. The AI can be brutal in savaging SoDs and cities established as footholds. Once they have railroads, it can be very difficult to keep your main force safe since they are more than capable of using artillery units for collateral damage and sending all of their troops to meet your invasion force. Attacking from offshore, particularly using Marines or Amphibious-promoted units (and it's only two promos away for an Aggressive civ) allows you to retain the initiative, since you will be able to strike at several different cities.

I think i have been missing the point on navy usage. A transport along a coast dropping off 4 units can sometimes reach the city inland quicker than a unit crossing 3-4 square of a cultural area. Inefficiency in my war strategies on higher levels. Assuming your waiting for those slow artilery to come up from the ranks.


perfectly right
with a dominating navy, you can reach enemy inner (coastal!) cities faster, slow artillery? yes sure, but loaded on a transport, they are much faster than your tanks ;)
Plus ship bombardment, you can effectively take almost any coastal city in 4 turns (1 to load the troops, 1 to carry/unload, 1 to bombard (can be skipped if you have enough frigates/destroyers/battleships/carrier full of fighters), 1 to take).
Since One of those turns is a "peace time one", and since one can be skipped, you can quite often take a few coastal cities in 2 turns after declaring.
And this doesn't prevent you from taking inland border cities in the same 2 turns!


If the AI navy is all but wiped out the sea approach can be surgical. In one turn i took out the English capital by a sea landing. 4 artilery and a few tanks and a marine to take out the 4 defenders. The end wars are not so much about have you got the numbers but more how quickly can the troops reach the next target.

Took me best part of 20 ish turns to wipe out the persian 14+ cities and 40% culture to keep those pesky cities happy. Still not won at 54% land 60% population. I cant lose diplomatic now as i have 521 of 998 un votes but no one wants to vote for me grrr.

kill'em all

I've been wanting to see beefed up navies and airforces in Civ for a long time - I think the following would do the trick:

Naval:
1) Give ships stronger bombards - modern ships should be able to shoot units/city improvements/tile improvements - could give them a range, bombard, and air defense bonus once the rocketry tech is discovered.
2) Naval blockades - I think if a warship is in enemy waters and the enemy has no defending ships then the warship should prevent the city doing overseas trade or using any water tiles in its city radius.
3) I like the gunboat idea that was stated earlier and was thinking that maybe the ocean going ships should be able to spawn smaller units that can attack coastline (similar to the summon ability in the Fall from Heaven mod) - could be along the lines of:
Ancient/Medieval ships create coastal raiders (coast ships that last one turn and can attack land units but not capture cities) - coastal raiders get combat bonuses with iron working and rifle techs
Modern ships create gunboats (same as above but more powerful)
Carriers create fighters (saves loading them from a city)
Battleships/Cruisers/Subs create cruise missiles
Each ship would get a number of 'shots' with its attack unit before it needs to return to a friendly city to get more boats/missiles/planes
The better ships get more shots e.g. battleships would get multiple missiles and gunboats to use before they need to return to a city

Air:
1) give air units lethal bombard abilities
2) give fighters an attack bonus against armour and ships

Not sure the AI would use the extra ship abilities effectively though

Sullla (http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4_epic3_4.html) offers a nice demonstration of Galleon/Frigate tactics in Epic 3.

I'm a little confused as to how blockading is supposed to work in Civ 4, if a cities water tiles are completely blocked off by enemy units wouldn't it still be able to access overseas resources through a land trade route to other coastal cities? So if you wanted to isolate a city from resources obtained from overseas trades/colonies wouldn't you need to blockade every single coastal city.... quite the undertaking.
I think Navies are crying out for the ability to be able to bombard other sea/land units a la Civ III, im hoping this may be included in warlords, but reckon ill probably be disappointed!

I'm a little confused as to how blockading is supposed to work in Civ 4, if a cities water tiles are completely blocked off by enemy units wouldn't it still be able to access overseas resources through a land trade route to other coastal cities? So if you wanted to isolate a city from resources obtained from overseas trades/colonies wouldn't you need to blockade every single coastal city.... quite the undertaking.
I think Navies are crying out for the ability to be able to bombard other sea/land units a la Civ III, im hoping this may be included in warlords, but reckon ill probably be disappointed!

you're right about the blockading thing
I have yet to see such an effect!

yeah it was even a problem in CivIII even though a city needed a harbor to be able to trade using a sea route, harbors were so cheap that practically every coastal city would have one. Perhaps creating a new improvement like "international port" that was pretty expensive (or required a certain amount of harbors to be built like cathedrals for religion) would do the trick. A civ would probably only be able to muster the requirements to build a couple of these and so it would become feasable to mount a blockade. This would also increase the need to build defensive navies to protect these important hub cities...

about 5-8 turns after Persians lost 14 cities the culture borders expanded and i hit the magical 60% land domination mark. Who to play next chinese are a bit too easy to play esp with the UU.

For me, a navy is useful only in coastal movement when I am planning to attack an enemy from sea and to prevent the same in the other direction. Plus I am trying my first real Terra game to see how important the later navy is when the race for the New World begins. I plan to stop conquest at 25-30% of the "Old World" so there will be more than just me trying to colonize the barbarian continent. (I didn't know how effective those war chariots would be...)

Single Player, latest patch (1.61?), Random (Egypt), epic, large map.

Sullla (http://civ4info.com/Sullla/civ4_epic3_4.html) offers a nice demonstration of Galleon/Frigate tactics in Epic 3.

Wow. That is inspirational. In a game where I was late to get oil, I relied on marines, because they were my strongest units. Later on this proved very useful, as marines in a transport move faster than tanks, and with a little air support, they do the trick just as well. Maybe I'll use the tactic more often from now on.