How important is the protection of your coast area for you? Once I've built a too small fleet, and so I had constant problems with enemy ships destroying my improvements on the sea during wartime. After this game I decided to put more emphasis on my Navy. Now I usually build enough ships so that every square near my coast can be reached by at least two(better three) ships within a turn and destroy all invading ships instantly. Byside this I also have a small Fleet(usally 10-15 ship) to attac enemy coast cities.
Do you think this is exaggerated? (I usally play on the world map or a map consisting of at least 4 continents)

I never bother with too much of a navy beyond 1-2 ships to guard each coastal resource and having a several ships to escort transports for an overseas invasion.

I never find too much of a need for them, but then again, I only play warlords (limited to a mac ftl).

pillaging sea resources is not that big a deal: work boats are really cheap. If you have a lot of seafood it might hurt in a protracted war, but if you eat his cities while he pillages your fish you can easily rebuild afterwards. for intercontinental warfare or if your only oil is sea based this might be different, but that is almost always more focused (you know where your oil is, and it is probably easier to check his ports with subs or caravels to see an invasion fleet than to put out a complete surveillance blanket...

An alternative is to have a slightly smaller navy and a couple of spare workboats. They don't take long to build. Finding the pillaged water tiles can be tricky though.

I'm more concerned with troops suddenly landing near unguarded cities. :) As others have said seafood is easily replaceable. And you'll also get war weariness so sometimes you can't even work all that food, so I don't care too much about it. But I do keep a small amount of boats in case the AI tries to sneak in and take a beyond-the-lines city. When things get to intercontinental war you'll have to built protection for your Galleons/Transports, so in such a war you'll probably intercept the enemy units at their starting point, not in your own waters.

Navy only matters in intercontinental warfare, where it can make a big difference.

If I'm at tech parity, I'll generally just make a raiding stack of transport ships and things to protect them to shuttle units over, and marginally protect my seafood (the AI, if being attacked on its mainland, will not be overly aggressive with its navy).

HOWEVER, if you have a tech lead, you can use spare ships like frigates to blockade, and if the AI isn't very near chemistry this can REALLY dampen their ability to fight you back. Blockaded AI's without chemistry will spam caravels and maybe galleys once they have astro. These are not sufficient to dislodge frigates typically. Better yet, they're spamming SHIPS, NOT THINGS THAT ATTACK YOU ONCE YOU LAND. Coastal cities relying on seafood also start to shrink and have to work food tiles instead of production tiles. Generally in this scenario the relatively cheap investment in a few frigates will cost the AI you declare on far more hammers in production than you spend on the frigates. Of course, this is somewhat map dependent, since the AI has to be relying on coast in the first place. This is even more painfully effective with destroyers vs frigates...i'm sure you can imagine why. Remember though, only with a tech lead - I find it not worth the effort to mass enough ships to hold a blockade at parity (the advantage shifts to the AI), and in that case you'd just want enough to protect transports.

Fighting a powerful overseas enemy with nukes is the main reason for having a defensive navy. Otherwise you don't need one for self protection. They are useful on attack though.

Amphibious landings have a special role in most if not all major real-world conflicts, and projecting air power at a distance is crucial to long-range invasions. Carrier-based fleets are the only guaranteed way to bomb cities and resources that are far away, until you take a city and can rebase bombers and fighters.

When attacking an enemy on the same continent, once the enemy has begun moving resources to the original front, it's a proven tactic to sweep around to the other side with a surprise amphib landing to open a new front and attack poorly guarded cities.

Transports with medic are a great place to heal units without exposing them to continued fire. They just need to be protected from air and sub attacks.

I just love sinking an enemy invasion fleet when the enemy sends several transports escorted by just a couple of destroyers, too. That's the easiest way to hurt an enemy.

It's nice to have enough battleships to reduce a city's defense to zero, then bomb with fighters, before letting the marines attack directly from transports.

An alternative is to have a slightly smaller navy and a couple of spare workboats. They don't take long to build. Finding the pillaged water tiles can be tricky though.

You can put the workboats on Automated. In fact you couls have a few workboats ready on automated to run out of port and rebuild the fishing nets, although you run the risk of them being intercepted by the enemy if you can't regain control of the seas soon.

isnt there some wisdom in destroying a ship before it drops off its payload on your land rather than fighting a land war?

isnt there some wisdom in destroying a ship before it drops off its payload on your land rather than fighting a land war?

Oh completely, totally. I love love love sinking a transport or galleon with troops aboard. The problem is that they are so mobile, they can usually land on your shores in the same turn that you discover them.
One defensive technique is to shadow their embarkation port. The AI I've found usually has one coastal city with lots of troops and transports. I generally station a caravel just outside it. If the AI doesn't attack me directly, thus tipping their hand, I can just check inside the city for missing troops/transports, and shadow them, meantime massing my fleet at an intercept point. fun fun fun

A navy is a fun part of the game for me, but I often rely on trade routes and international commerce with lots of port cities.


I also like to put a ship or two wherever there is a narrow passage between continents , or continents and ice caps, to see what passes.