Submarines! Do you love them?

Playing as England, and more often than not also with The Great Lighthouse, these "resourceless" naval vessels can really dominate the seas!

Promoted with Targeting 1,2,3 and Logistics, they are able to single-handedly sink a Battleship in one turn.

My impression is that most people tend to favor surface ships, but I for one Love to keep my navy at roughly 1:1 ratio with subs/surfaceships. All subs are promoted with anti-ship promotions, while my battleships have the bombardment promotions, picking off any land based threats.

Because they now don't require any resources to build, I'd say that Subs definitely bring the most bang for the buck. I don't even build destroyers now that they are "melee" ships. Melee ships for modern era just feels plain wrong.

So, do YOU build Subs? Discuss

Once I got over a lack of land bombardment and used them properly I've started to like them.

The problem is: Once you control the seas, they are useless.
Moreover: It's easy to get control of the seas without them plus they actually die in one shot as well (where a destroyer would survive and due to being fast be able to retreat - not to mention he spots enemy submarines and farther in general).

So usually I have zero submarines. Sometimes (mostly Archipelago etc) no more than 1-2 per game.

FeiLing said:

The problem is: Once you control the seas, they are useless.
no more than 1-2 per game.

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Yea, it's all about adapting to the surroundings. However, 1-2 subs won't control the seas on a huge map (I always play huge maps)

On a water map, against a civ that has a good navy, and builds ships regularly, they are great... I've used them to good effect many times. However, there are many games I've not used them at all.

I find them very good value for money.

The fact that they don't require a resource means that they are good for creating the secondary fleet in those games where you have a main fleet, which already has some task.

I really love the fact that they can be used to scout enemy territory without being seen. The value of this ability becomes even more valuable in multiplayer, where it's much more difficult to surprise your human opponents. If one sees your ships amassing near his borders, he won't stay passive like AI would.

A fleet of subs can give you the needed surprise factor. Additionally, subs have very good attack power. 60 is just insane for a unit, which you can build much earlier than battleships and destroyers (and often even earlier than ironclads, depending on your teching preferences). You could very well end up putting your subs against enemy frigates and blasting the whole enemy fleet off in one go.

Also, the fact that you can later upgrade them and put nukes on them makes the unit even more valuable.

who exactly can see submarines? i got mine sunk by airplaines in multiplayer so i stopped making them.

Thats one of the big problems in multiplayer.

I have to agree with Ermak - both Mobile SAM [Can be attacked head on from the air, and the SAM wont defend itself] and subs have... weird tendencies.

Subs can be seen by a player looking at a ship's potential moves and seeing a red square that he can't move his unit to. Thats where a sub is - and thats where it can be taken out.

Their defense's are weak - so in multi they are more shock troops of the seas to hit a ship and hope the rest of your fleet can take out the ship before its a threat to the sub. Nuclear subs that are highly promoted are extremely powerful though - even in multi.

IMO, the subs have some advantages and drawbacks:

I appreciate the fact that they do not require resources.
I like that they are invisible.
I don't like that they can't enter an enemies territory without declaring war(maybe they can but not when they're visible, does someone know?)
Great offensive power for first strikes; poor defensive power that makes them suck for long wars.

I will build 3-4 of them, more or less depending on the map size and the percieved threat level of enemy fleets. They pack a punch and are perfect for first strike situations; particularly against a foe that doesn't have destroyers. Once fighting has moved past the initial turn or two, if the opponent has any destroyers left the subs start to fail due to major attrition as they don't have good defense.

As one poster mentioned, once you control the seas they become a lot less usefull until they can be upgraded and used to carry nukes. They do remtain some use as decent and cheap coastal defense - the AI won't always see them when they approach and will try to land at beaches defended by subs and lose all their units.



To the poster who doesn't use destroyers, I have to say you don't know how to use them. If you have a carpet of BB's, why don't you use them to bombard cities and use the destroyers to take the city? It's a totally new and fun way to fight on water maps...give it a try.

I don't often use destroyers actually. My coastal cities would much rather build Battleships and have an older ironclad or even older frigate/caravel clean up the city once the Battleship levels the city.

In intense naval combat a few to act as meatshields in multi are nice - but in most cases I don't find a need for destroyers often in single

I find subs pretty useful because in my experience, the AI doesn't build a lot of destroyers. Carriers, battleships, yes, destroyers, not so much. And without a destroyer screen, subs can do a lot of damage.

That is why I build destroyers, I'm scared an AI will sneak some subs in a trash my fleet.

In multiplayer naval maps they work rather well

After losing a city and my entire navy to a friend's massive Ship of the Line fleet i used my tech advantage to unlock the ability to build subs...it was rather nice coming back at him and one shotting all his SoTL

I don't find them as useful in SP, but they are still helpful for clearing out the excessive units the AI spams on Immortal+

Subs are good on water maps for nerfing enemy invasion forces. If you're saving your oil for other units then subs + destroyers can enable you to project sea power and still conserve your oil. I've been trying some sub/destroyer wolfpacks with good results. The only drawback to that strategy is the destroyers have the same hammer cost (375) in G&K as Battleships with subs costing just 50 hammers less.

I put extra vision on mine and use them as sentries. They are great for gaining initial dominance of the seas if you don't have it by then, and are always good 'sea scouts' if you already have dominance. I generally build about 3 per 'front'

I usually build subs for a couple of reasons. in addition to their ability to explore undetected, they are really useful in situations [which I seem to encounter regularly] where ice reaches a continent (or large north or south island) and the only way to quickly go from one ocean to the other is under the ice with the sub as opposed to 20 or so turns to get to the same place on the surface.

binhthuy71 said:

Subs are good on water maps for nerfing enemy invasion forces. If you're saving your oil for other units then subs + destroyers can enable you to project sea power and still conserve your oil. I've been trying some sub/destroyer wolfpacks with good results. The only drawback to that strategy is the destroyers have the same hammer cost (375) in G&K as Battleships with subs costing just 50 hammers less.

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Yikes. I had no idea that this was the case till you said it. It makes no sense. I mean, they're called capital ships for a reason and in no way should a destroy equal a BB in construction costs. And subs (of the WWI and WWII variety) were pretty simple and everyone who used them spammed the heck out of them so they should be even cheaper.

King Rad said:

I usually build subs for a couple of reasons. in addition to their ability to explore undetected, they are really useful in situations [which I seem to encounter regularly] where ice reaches a continent (or large north or south island) and the only way to quickly go from one ocean to the other is under the ice with the sub as opposed to 20 or so turns to get to the same place on the surface.

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This is absolutely true, but that ability doesn't help you if you need a surface bombardment or city capture unit on the other side of the ice field.

Yikes. I had no idea that this was the case till you said it. It makes no sense. I mean, they're called capital ships for a reason and in no way should a destroy equal a BB in construction costs. And subs (of the WWI and WWII variety) were pretty simple and everyone who used them spammed the heck out of them so they should be even cheaper.

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I just took that info from the in-game Civilopedia and it surprised me as well. Carriers also have the same cost as battleships. This looks like an oversight on the part of the devs. To my mind, carriers should be the most expensive ship, then battleships, then destroyers with subs being the least expensive. For another comparison, the Great War Bomber has the same hammer cost as the sub and the Landship only costs 25 hammers more.

So I have a set of ready-to-upgrade templates for Nuclear Submarines

And remember, both types of submarines classes are the only types of naval warships that can traverse the ice flows! I'm going to try this out on some unsuspecting human runaway next time I get into some multiplayer game or something.

binhthuy71 said:

I just took that info from the in-game Civilopedia and it surprised me as well. Carriers also have the same cost as battleships. This looks like an oversight on the part of the devs. To my mind, carriers should be the most expensive ship, then battleships, then destroyers with subs being the least expensive. For another comparison, the Great War Bomber has the same hammer cost as the sub and the Landship only costs 25 hammers more.

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I can't think of a single type of unit that my supposedly invisible submarines have been attacked by. Pretty sure an embarked missionary sunk one of my subs, once.

No, that is an exaggeration. But the invisible thing breaks at will. The first sub I built was attacked by an AI city when it was just snooping around.

And if you attack an outteched fleet that has no destroyers, you'll be sunk the next turn by ironclads. I know that before WWII subs were often sunk by ramming but give me a break.

One problem with subs is that in real life, they were most useful for attacking commerce. In CiV there's no good way for them to fulfil this role. There's not enough impact in commerce attacks in general. I can blockade a city but so what, somewhere else a new unit is being built so I should be killing units instead. Pillaging a fishing boat is fun but you aren't going to stop a bomber being built. (And lately the AI doesn't even have fishing boats up by the modern age anyway.)