Guided missile, worst unit in the game?

Yeah the guided missile is not competitive with alternatives. Infantry & AA guns are better, every oil and aluminum unit are vastly better. The only time I've ever seen anything approaching effective use is on a solo scout/zone control nuclear sub way off in the middle of nowhere using missiles to finish off other subs that they don't one shot kill to stay incognito. And well, why not just send 2 subs? Maintenance is not a concern, you could swap the city to wealth instead of spamming terribad missiles and achieve superior results. Something fundamental would have to change, like -50% production cost, or say cities without an airport cannot base planes. And stealth bomber range would obsolete that anyway.

I'm happy that they aren't really competitive though. I don't think spamming missiles at each other would be compelling gameplay, and though it's not ideal efficiency, if you want to max out your missile cruisers and subs now for the hell of it, nothing is stopping you. I'm glad it is in the game, because sometimes I like to have fun with stuff like that, you know?

I think the idea is to do damage without a unit of yours also taking some damage while attacking. Which the guided missile fulfills, I'd say.

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Why not send 2 subs? Because maybe the player wants to send that sub somewhere else. What if the one sub fires, and then finishes off with missile. But then the second sub, which is not right along with the first one, is able to do the same thing somewhere else. 2 kills is better than 1--it would allow the potential of each to be maximized, right? Now if there was a larger presence of enemy vessels in the first area, it would certainly be good to have that 2nd sub next to the first. But otherwise in more isolated instances, it seems to be more efficient or something to have that 2nd sub elsewhere. I think in the military they call it economy of force (probably wrong) where you don't apply more than you need to one situation. And guided missiles seem helpful in the situation you described.

And...wait...if maintenance is not a concern...then why should one need to research wealth? If they already have enough money and income to negate worrying about maintenance, then why do they need to research wealth? Producing guided missiles or other military hardware seems like it'd be infinitely better than wealth...

The only issue I have with the guided missile is the self destruction part. You have to rebuild them but at least they're cheap to build. You can also reload them in missile cruisers.

I don't know of too many missiles which can be used after they explode though...

In reality no, but if recycling missiles can be done it should. ..

I mean as an improvement to the guided missile, a damage increase against certain types of targets/etc would make the most sense, rather than being able to reuse them which isn't even possible in reality lol. Even the giant death robot makes more sense lol.

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I don't oft use guided missiles, but I have found that they have there utility. Once while Playing G+K as Japan I was fairly far behind, and two sides were approaching victory, Egypt by culture and Russia by science. Since Egypt was a runaway that game and overran his whole continent save for a handful of city states and a pair of Mayan cities on the far coast I decided to pass the time until the end by knocking Russia out, as they were likely to finish there space ship before Egypt built there Utopia.
So I assembled my troops, but notices that the Russians had a huge amount of anti air power, and so I turned to my cities. I had only enough money to buy two fighters, and building them would've taken too long, so instead I said "Screw it!", bought five missiles, and set all of my cities to produce them. Within three turns I had eight missiles and declared war. I used all eight missiles on the fortress of Petrograd, I wounded the city badly, and by slipping my tanks through and using my infantry to keep his troops busy I was able to take the city next turn. I destroyed the space ship part there, and distracted Russia long enough to let Egypt win. While they didn't save me they changed the fate of the game. I would still call them lackluster and situational though.

edit: feeding trolls, please delete post.

reddishrecue said:

In reality no, but if recycling missiles can be done it should. ..

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How does one recycle missiles?

Last time I seen guided missiles it was in gods n kings,,

Guided missiles is dreadfully effective for their job.

They can be stacked infinitely..

And is the best when used defensively.

Also, they're disposable force multiplier.

You have maximum amount of air force in specific hexes and you want even more?
Build guided missiles!

Guided missiles is helpful to have in small quantities to win engagements you won't otherwise.

But they're very powerful when you have MANY MANY MANY of them. Only limitation is that you only can make one missile per turn in each city with no overflow giving you extra missiles in one turn.

If you invade an future era civilization with large land military which is well protected by sea and air forces while being supported by hundreds of missiles and you will regret it if you was unprepared. Your d-day assault will be a laughing stock of the world. Only way to counter this is to bring out the nuclear options xD

I have seen two well protected AI civs like that, I just changed my mind about beating them up and left to beat someone else after my patrolling dessys confirmed hundreds of guided missiles xD One of them was an runaway iroquois.

Yeahhh i didn't want to mess with that at all until I had like 20+ nuclear missiles loaded and ready to go otherwise i would've just lost lots of troops for showing up to fight.

Basically I would advice to build them in low production cities, you would not have raxes there, justtell them to build missiles insted of low quality trops.

In real life you can get much more then 2-3 missiles for the cost of a bomber.

those things just need a cheaper price adn their fine.

Vikingr said:

I don't know of too many missiles which can be used after they explode though...

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You mean you haven't heard of the new eco-friendly re-fragmentation grenade...

Dtekkar said:

I was hoping this would be obvious. I'm probably feeding a troll, but one last go at it just in case there's a hint of sincerity.

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Troll? No, just entertaining thought, inquiry, and potential answers. So sorry.

Walter R said:

You mean you haven't heard of the new eco-friendly re-fragmentation grenade...

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*gasp* I haven't! Is it EPA approved?

Callonia said:

...
They can be stacked infinitely..

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I have just confirmed that in BNW GMissiles do count for air-unit stacking; so 6 or 10 is the limit, depending on Airport presence.

Jaybe said:

I have just confirmed that in BNW GMissiles do count for air-unit stacking; so 6 or 10 is the limit, depending on Airport presence.

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Ahh excellent thank you!

That does quite reduce the power of guided missile by a huge amount.

I'm thinking they should take up an missiles stack limit instead of sharing it with the planes.

I had one game where I tried them. Ran out of aluminum, uranium, and things to build and already had a massive military so the only thing left was them. It was fun to see my big stockpiles, but honestly, it took 3-4 of them just to kill a normal unit...it was ridiculously underpowered...I was very, very disappointed with these guys. I wasted a whole 6-unit arsenal (that could have been planes) just to kill a unit and a half in the first war... The only thing redeeming about them is they cost no maintenance so the only issue was space...Plus the AI sees you as more powerful with them as they factor into your military score. They're more of a maintenance-free bluff in my opinion.

Can we all agree that they should be more powerful/more powerful vs certain units, or something?

is a guided missile is supposed to be like exocet or cruise missile? i would think those would be very effective against ships with no antimissile missles and point defense gatling guns. i would see those as promotions a ship would need in order to survive a guided missile attack. maybe thats why the current missile is weak; its taking into account its a relatively slow speed missile, representing a number of missiles being launched than just a single missile, and the fact that many if not most of those missiles got destroyed (shot down) by defenses that ships and cities are assumed to have by that stage. personally i think if you are able to fire guided missile against ironclads or frigates or even lower tech ships it should be a instakill. who is really going to put antimissile systems on a galleas? against a carrier or battleship or missile cruiser it should be representing multiple missiles launched. a battleship or carrier might survive a missile or even 2 being hit but i dont think a missile cruiser would necessarily survive one hit, nor destroyers. so for them it should be doing either miss or hit; and if a hit depending on the target type either a kill (missile cruiser or destroyer) or random amount of damage up to and including a kill on carrier and battleship, along with any missiles or aircraft they are carrying.
land units in cities its about right imo. the units will not be grouped in one place for easy destruction by a single missile. the city may even have anti missile batteries.
units out of cities maybe it depends on terrain its in, how much damage is done?