Are Battleship to powerful?

[Mesrot]

Hallo fanatics,



I hope this post is not to long.



After some (mostly MP) games in Civ 6 I and my group think that the current Battleship design

is “a little bit “ to powerful.



In Civ 5 the most important power spike happens when the first player developed Artillery.

With the fire power, indirect fire and three range the first players could break through any enemy troops/ defenses.



Civ 6 made a great job to reduce the fire power of Artillery by adding many requirements like oil, balloons.



The same should be done with the Battleship (BB).



The Battle ship give you the first indirect, three range unit including good Anti-Air.

Without steel (civic defense) the BB will reduce any city defense within 1 or 3 rounds to zero.

Please keep in mind that in MP games the player keep at least 3 units/ fleets together to have a good anti-air and bombardment strength.



You cannot do nothing against this.



What are the strengths of the BB:

1. You can very easy upgrade your frigates to BB. Mostly decent players have enough frigates and gold around.
   
   
2. Res sources: You only need coal. Normally most player will go for industrialization first (getting coal) when you reach BB you have enough coal to upgrade all your frigates at once.
   
   There is no great competition between coal units. You only have the iron clad and energy.
   
   This leads always to the situation, that most of my/our fleets consist of BB (because you have plenty of coal)
   
   
3. Three range: No city can fight back. Even when you are the first one with frigates, you will get some damage.
   

What can you do against BB?



3 Options: Three range Artillery/ Bombarde, Bi-planes, fighters and other BB or Submarine.



For Artillery; Bi-Planes and Submarine you need oil, when you reach the Artillery-Tech you can “see” oil but you need first to build wells, this will take some time.

The get the 3 hex range you need to research “flight” and build balloons.

A Bombard with balloons can also hit BB but the damage is low.



For Submarines you need first to develop the oil tech and then submarines. This takes a lot more time.



For Bi planes you need oil (for which you need the tech first), then research “Flight”, then build Aerodromes and then you can start building Bi-planes (which take some time because of no production card).

If the BB keep together, your planes will take a lot of damage.



Both three option take significant more research time, precious oil and building time.



How to solve this problem:



I would suggest to introduce a new unit: Call it Cruiser. This unit is the industrial range marine unit.

You can upgrade a frigate to get a cruiser. You need coal. This unit has only 2 hex range.

A positive side effect would be that more units need coal and you have an additional gold sink (grades).



The BB should be available at the same tech as the destroyer. All parameters should be the same as now, it should only need/use oil as a resource.



What you think?

 

[Cerilis]

I think your post would be shorter and more easily readable if you wouldn't leave so many large spaces.

 

[AsH2]

I think you may find some interesting posts in..
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/which-era-has-the-most-enjoyable-naval-combat.651315/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/concept-naval-unit-rebalance.651821/

 

[CoconutTank]

Could you provide information about the map settings that you and your group play with? Naval warfare tends to be very map sensitive and is already less appealing than fielding a land force. I'll admit to liking battleships, but I find their influence diminishes a lot unless I'm playing on Continents + Small Islands or Archipelago maps.

I do find it rather frustrating that early planes depend on oil, which means having to tech two separate paths.

 

[The googles do nothing]

It is does feel unrealistic that a Battleship is the same 430 production as a Artillery or biplane unit.

 

[Sostratus]

I think you may find some interesting posts in..
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/which-era-has-the-most-enjoyable-naval-combat.651315/
https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/concept-naval-unit-rebalance.651821/

Hey, these are my threads!

Anyways, to the Op: the frigate should be more slightly more efficient against city defenses than battleships in terms of how much damage it does- a frigate has 55, while contemporary renaissance units have 55 (like muskets.) Cities of course, scale to this. Battleships have 70 in an era where yes, infantry and AT crews have 70 but, tanks exist at 80. So you can get a real jump in defense on that.

Numerically cities shouldn’t be getting flattened harder by battleships unless you’ve not built modern era ground units.

But defensively, you cannot expect that if one player builds a fleet and you don’t, that there shouldn’t be serious repercussions for ceding sea control. It’s weird because of how the ocean is, but having a battleship squadron sail up and begin shelling is literally an enemy at the gates scenario. Your first line of defense was dealing with them at sea before they got to your shore. If you have your own fleet this is viable. I realize resources for naval units is totally imbalanced for multiplayer, but nominally, submarines are really a great answer here because they’d need destroyers (an era away) to handle them. Subs are the direct counter for BBs, though- it wouldn’t be fair if they showed up at the same time. that leaves using your own BBs. They cannot heal without lots of promos so even chip damage from planes will wear them down. (You can rotate the planes for healing.)

You can always leverage the opposite side of this equation- if he’s building fleets you can focus on land units and hit him there. But it sounds like you’re being invaded here.

Then there is the issue tht BBs need other units to take and hold a city. The last line of defense is that you either kill those units - if the city isn’t directly on coast you have an opportunity to fight off the landing party- or make holding the coastal city untenable by having an army ready to immediately take it back. They can go for the raze, although again- you can just not build directly on the coast and mostly invalidate battleships.

 

[Tabarnak]

I like the Fighter-Bomber route for water maps. As long as i can build a lot of frigates. If i can control the ocean with them i can safely go for better techs like the plane route. Harrass best science civ and your even safer.

 

[japanesesamurai]

The battleship always has been very powerfull. Problem indeed in civ 6 it is hard to counter with anything but the battleship as submarines need another part of the tech tree and oil as well.

Maybe make a MP mod which either:
A/ removes the battleship
B/ have submarines require coal and have it in the same tech.
C/ reduce the inflicted damage of a battleship
D/ increase the battleship production cost

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Battleship need coal. I don't think this is anything imbalance. I guess the only reason you feel it imbalance is because you're too slow in science and culture, and that definitely leads to failure in MP games.

When your enemy have battleships you shall at least have ~80 defense (if you keep yourself to your opponent's tech) so Battleships actually don't eliminate city defenses that quickly.


Considering the requirement of tech on both lines, Bombers are just a bit later than battleships, however they have 110 strength instead of 70. Bombers are the first normal unit that can take down walls without having a tech lead, and force their enemies to use units(Bombers/Fighters) on the very same tech to counter.

BTW 3 or 4 range isn't a thing compared to 10.

 

[Victoria]

Realistically it is not hard to get a 4 range battleship armada quite early if you push it right which is OP on an islands map and pretty useless on Pangea.
I have played a lot of continents naval and itcan be fairly hard there until you can get canals into lakes.

Bottom line is a group of you playing against a group of AI it’s very strong like on island maps but play deity and you will find those cities pretty tough.

 

[UWHabs]

I know one game I had a long time ago I was on an island and slightly behind in science. But I was lucky to rush to get the Venetian Arsenal, and then churned out battleships, and I absolutely destroyed everyone, even though it was a "mostly pangea" map (ie. I was offshore on an island, but I think everyone else was on the same continent). Mass enough of them and they absolutely destroyed the coastal cities, and then that lets you snowball to anything inland that they can't reach.

 

[Disgustipated]

city defense within 1 or 3 rounds to zero.

Not in my experience. But perhaps it's different in single player because all the players are technically at the same difficulty level?

It generally takes me 3 battleships to do this.

 

[Mesrot]

Thanks for the answers. I only wanted to point out this is not a wining post
The main problem is that the current Battleship is extremely strong and it can be upgraded very easily.
When the first player reach the BB tech, he has in most cases a lot of coal in his stock. Then he need only some gold and 1(!) coal, and suddenly
his frigates became a whirlwind of doom with no defense against it.

An artillery (in the same tech region) need oil to be upgraded and then balloons to receive 3 range attack.
When you research the Artillery you will have almost no oil in stock.
(By the way, why is the Artillery using oil? If you need trains for transport, coal would make much more sense?)

This is the power pike I mentioned.

In my current game as Macedonia I needed very fast some Frigates but I run out very fast of Saltpeter. The same with Cuirassiers and iron.
But normally you will have plenty of coal to upgrade all your Frigates at once. (We play on standard speed with 9 ages of pace).

One fast solution could be to make BB use a lot of Iron as building resource and oil as fuel. Or only oil instead of coal.

I think the whole navy line need some rethink because the power pike from one unit to another is really strong.
With GS the land units have receive more units to fill some gaps. Therefore the power gap between to the next higher unit is
soother.
A low tech player with good culture out put can defend very well against high tech units with corps.
(In our last game the invading Koreans rocket artillery units where defeated by Russian Kosaks

Like in Civ 5 a middle age ship line would make sense. And a "industrial frigate" which use coal.
Destroyers are in fact useless beside city taking. Why? Because sub marines can also "see" also other supmarines. Why should I build
destroyers? I only need submarines and plenty of BB.
It would make much more sense that only nuclear submarines should see other submarines.
Submariens should also not be able to bombard land units, this should be
the domain of the BB line.