AI naval bombardment

[DrJambo]

Bombers are fine; they're dangerous and if the AI has them and you don't nor any air defence you're in trouble.

Ships on the other hand don't seem to pose the same threat in the hands of the AI as aircraft. Is not that they don't have the potential to do so, it's just the way they're currently coded that prevents them from being the threat they should be.

For instance, like land artillery, for some reason naval bombardment always targets the defending units first and will never destroy city improvements if defending units still have health other than the coastal fortress - which is arguably the most useless improvement in the game. If you want to protect your cities just pack them with land units and a barracks and AI naval bombardment will never hurt you.

So how to remedy this? Simple - there are several ways:

1. Under the current AI tactic of always targeting cities, one could make them more like bombers... In other words have the potential to destroy improvements in cities even though defending units have health remaining. At the moment the only time they can do this is if all the defenders are on their last health bar.

2. One could program the AI to bombard cities and bombard improved land tiles. Creating craters all over your land would be much more effective and troublesome to the human player. The only time the AI would bombard cities would then be if they were accompanying an invasion force. In this situation it might be advantageous for the defenders to be weakened by a preemptive naval bombardment.

Obviously this doesn't apply to the human player because they can pick and choose what they bombard depending on the immediate need.

Don't even get me started on the use of land artillery by the AI...

Thoughts?

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

As it stands, I don't think it matters much what the AI bombard can do, because all you have to do is redline them with artillery and they run for home, not to be seen again for many turns. Or, if you have bombers, bye bye, AI ship.

Naval warfare really needs some major recoding to make it interesting, not that that will happen at this point. None of the stuff that makes modern naval warfare so interesting is modelled at all in the game, like air threat from carriers vs attacking ships, or AEGIS screen defending tiles around carrier group before bombers can hit tile with capital ships.

In C3C air war was recoded to make it far more useful and deadly, and given a bit of depth with the introduction of mobile air defense. Naval warfare is still weak, and will likely remain so.

 

[DrJambo]

I agree.

There is that Collateral Damage tag in the Editor. I wonder if they could switch that on for all the naval ships able to bombard. Then, as i understand it, they could potentially damage units AND improvements/surrounding terrain with each bombardment...

In the interim that might add a little excitement for very little developer work.....

 

[Bleser]

I agree that watching the AI bombard my cities with five or six destroyers is really annoying. It doesn't hurt me a bit, and I usually just devot some artillery to making them run home, as mentioned above. The navy has become even more useless now that airpower can sink ships. Six bombers can sink three ships in one turn (usually)! I only build a few cruisers, and once airpower is available, I sink anything that comes close to my shores in a single turn. The only time I MIGHT build warships is if it is an island-based map and I have territory on several islands, so I am defending them before I have airpower.

Submarines, on the other hand, have become VERY effective...being able to target the transport in a convoy each time is deadly...so if I was going to build ships, I would build subs.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

That stealth attack for subs is almost TOO effective. In order to sail about the seas in relative safety, a modern invasion force must have: (1) First, the transports carrying the invasion force. (2) A carrier full of jets on AS. (3) A stack of Battleships/AEGIS cruisers in the same tile as the transports/carrier. (4) An AEGIS cruiser on all the 8 tiles around the main force, to keep the subs away. Replacements for sunken vessels can be taken out of the main stack.

IRL, modern ships have considerable ASW capability. If it were coded in, I would suggest adding in an ASW frigate, capable of destroying an attacking sub going after other units in the stack, similar to how mobile SAMs work on land. Again this is another example of insufficient game modelling.

I'm not sure what effect naval bombard should have, keep in mind in real life this is not an effective tactic, except against very specific targets at short range. Better to have modern ships carry CM, and do damage that way - cruise missiles ARE effective, guns just aren't, except against other ships.

 

[Bleser]

Originally posted by Ivan the Kulak
That stealth attack for subs is almost TOO effective. In order to sail about the seas in relative safety, a modern invasion force must have: (1) First, the transports carrying the invasion force. (2) A carrier full of jets on AS. (3) A stack of Battleships/AEGIS cruisers in the same tile as the transports/carrier. (4) An AEGIS cruiser on all the 8 tiles around the main force, to keep the subs away. Replacements for sunken vessels can be taken out of the main stack.

IRL, modern ships have considerable ASW capability. If it were coded in, I would suggest adding in an ASW frigate, capable of destroying an attacking sub going after other units in the stack, similar to how mobile SAMs work on land. Again this is another example of insufficient game modelling.

I'm not sure what effect naval bombard should have, keep in mind in real life this is not an effective tactic, except against very specific targets at short range. Better to have modern ships carry CM, and do damage that way - cruise missiles ARE effective, guns just aren't, except against other ships.

Look at how many shields/turns you would need to buld this force...the transporst and twenty to thrity units in them ALONE is a lot, plus this HUGE escort, that could still be destroyed/sunk by about twenty or thirty bombers. This makes naval invasion VERY DIFFICULT. Maybe this is what Firaxis wants...to show us that D-Day was indeed the most complex invasion ever, since it was a comlete naval invasion (and paratroopers, but don't get me started on how weak they are in Civ3).

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

Well, for any invasion, you will have to build a large army of ground units anyway. But yes, the shields needed to build that navy add up very quickly. I suspect that if you put 3 AEGIS in every outlying tile, and a stack of 8-10 in the center, you would find bombing not quite so easy - AEGIS Cruisers have a pretty good air defense. Try stacking several enemy AC in debug mode and then bomb them. You WILL lose bombers.

For a human player with subs, though, punch through that outer picket line and you can say, bye bye transports. Sub stealth attack is nice, but I wonder if in MP people will find naval invasions no longer practical because stacking your fleet does not work. That's why I think a nice ASW frigate would be a good addition to the game.

 

[Chauliodus]

Maybe that could be fixed by adding unloadable army-like units called fleets or convoys.

 

[Scorpio05]

Hang on, the AI attacks your cities with it's ships? Wow, I've never had that happen. They usually just bombard my terrain improvements. But I haven't played an epic game in conquests yet, so I'm assuming that something has changed.

I like the fact that ships can be sunk by bombers, much more realistic. As is the sub being able to surprise attack specific units. But only if it's blanced with sufficient anti-air and anti-sub units for protection.

 

[derekroth]

I think the new sub rules are perfect. To be honest, modern anti submarine techniques are not as fool proof as you may think (I'm in the navy, on a submarine). I have always thought they made subs with too weak an attack value. Now that they have the suprise attack, this really offsets their weakness and makes them more true to life. And, since they can't really move that far, they are almost guranteed to die right after thier attack. Also, this new ability forces the player to alter his/her sub scouting techniqes instead of just stacking units. I think they took a formerly crapy navy unit and made it useful, and I'm all for that.