Attn: Navy Admirals!

[planetfall]

Very interesting. I dropped back to Monarch for 'easier' game. A little bit behind you in game play. I have a wierd world of 6 continents. One big, one average, and 4 elogated continents. I'm missing Magnetism so I getting pounded by Hittite frigates. My navy at this point is 1, yeap, uno/ein, galley. My reearch path is metallurgy, Mil trad and then Magnetism.

I ended up in middle of big continent between Russia and Zulu's. I played poorly and had to back out of Rep because of WW problem. Finally got rid of Russia and Zulu is toned down, but still here. Most of civs have demo whereas I am back in Republic. Hitties and Aztecs had 3 cities on continent. America declared war. Soon after Hitties started naval bombardment and landing cavs. Ugh, ugh. No cannons yet. Because of my long war with Russia, my cities are really hurting for improvements. Hitties are about 1.5 turns away, so I expect more invasions. I did kick them out of their 2 cities and trying to lead them to land and attack weak cities so after I get enough units killed I can get them out of Demo. It will be tense until I get up to repl parts.

Since I'm behind in techs, I have not yet decided how to play the navy part. I'll probably start with a few DS for harrassment value, until my bombers can come on line. Artillery and DS should get me a fewe transports. Next priority will be split between 2 cruisers and 4..5 subs. Subs are for anti AC work and cruisers are for backup to DS for harder units. Then I will have to see what is more needed: roaming shore patrol as DS, or Battle groups for work. Right now almost everyone in dogpiling on me and it is too early for that. I did get a MA with one minor civ against another minor civ, India vs Aztecs, just so they wouldn't join the dogpile.

I'm hoping I can get oil and rubber or I will be in a world of hurt. I've never cared for the Hitties. Give me back the Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Spanish and English.

PF

 

[danegeld]

Ever notice how the later Recorces that are needed for warfare beyond the ancient world are almsot always on a enimy nation?

need coal nope its elsewere, so is rubber oil alum.

Genarly you have iron and saltpeter though.

I also have noticed the AI's galley defeating my destroyers on occasion. somthing that should be impossible regardles of the relitive strength of the destoryer VS a Galley darn thing could jsut run over it.

I think the abilities and strenghts of the various naval units need to be adjusted and likly enhanced.

 

[scoutsout]

There are a couple of strategies I generally try to follow.

If I've been in a war for a few turns and it looks like it's going to be a long one, I generally try to build some city improvements even during wartime. Let's say I've got 5 productive cities in my core. I'll have 4 producing units while one is working on an improvement, and rotate it around that way. I find it really bites if you've been at war for 20 turns and have built nothing but units...especially during a Golden Age...

Before railroads I generally only build 2 types of land units - attacking and defending land units. Resources allowing, the attack units will be fast ones. Sometimes an AI will attack when I'm unprepared, or at least not in a position to invade him. In those cases I find it easier to reinforce cities under attack with fast units... and skirmishing in your own territory can wear down an invasion force...

During the late middle/early industrial era I'll build cannon, but not because I like cannon - but because I can upgrade them to Artillery and have a stack of 10-20 right after discovering replaceable parts....

 

[planetfall]

Danegeld,
Resources are planned not to be available to human. I expect to find either rubber or oil but not both. Bigger problem will be if I don't have coal. Never seen galley defeat full strength DS, sounds like a bad roll of the dice.

For this game I did bump the movement of SSN's one tile. Naturally I have to get there first.

Scoutsout,
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's why I said I miss played. I though Zulu would not take too long with knights. I was caught on two fronts between Zulu and Russia and made the double mistake of going for a longer war and building mostly military units. I was experimenting and trying to see if earlier grab of continent would pay off more than normal slow and steady. I still have 6 Zulu cities on one penninsula of continent.

Good news is militarily in fair position, i.e. average vs Hitties. Bad is they have cavs, frigates, caravels, and a galleon, musketmen and think ahead of me in techs.
Good is I have 4 armies. 2 are unitless waiting for cav technology. One in in East for use against Hitties. But not sure if this will be enough. I only have about 15 knights and concerned about double invasion of cavs, or in worst terrain. I am trying to counter with hoping they will attack on the plains at the close landing area. The other army is far west trying to bluff the Zulu that now is not a good time to attack. I only have about 8 Trebuchets, 4 in East and 4 in West.

My GA just started. That's good, but too many of cities are size 6 and missing improvments like marketplaces, universities, cathedrals, courthouses, harbors.

My current hope is that Hitties will settle for peace after one more defeated invasion. But first I would like to push them out of demo. I don't have the demo tech yet and even with 2 turns for govt change, not sure if that is a good idea in GA.

Land units are mostly offensive. Rough military:
18 archers
12 warriors
6 spears
16 pikes
4 muskets
8 Trebuchet
4 armies
18 knights
2 longbows
18 med inf
18 workers
2 settlers

Last 2 Hittite invasions have been:
2 muskets
4 cavs
1 longbow
1 med inf

Guess they are using 2 galleons with about 6..8 frigate for support.

Found out a draw back of land grab in middle ages, is other AI's are more trigger happy. Usually I am weak/average until middle of indust era. This time Iam average/strong but don't have infrastructure anywhere near ready. Hard to find a good balance between military and infrastructure.

PF

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by planetfall
Hard to find a good balance between military and infrastructure.

Hehehe...."finding a balance" isn't the hard part, it's that a 'balance' will nearly always leave you 'weak' compared to at least 2 civs. One will be a bloodthirsty warmonger who is stonger than you militarily, the other will be a peaceful scientific civ who is whipping you in the tech race... worse, you might have someone like Persia, who seems to stay ahead of you in both!

...and yes - the game setup does conspire to force you to go to war for resources. In my current monarch game I had only one resource - iron. I had to clobber Ottomans to get a second luxury and a second iron. I had to clobber Russia to get horses (saltpeter was later revealed in the taken russian territory...)

Though I don't consider myself a warmonger, I usually find I have to fight at least 3-5 wars "to the death" even in Monarch level games... I simply cannot afford to trade 2 techs, 4 luxuries, lump sum and gold-per-turn for a single crummy resource or luxury ...assuming the AI will trade it to you at all. It's doubly annoying when the AI offers you 2 gold for your iron, won't offer you anything for your coal... etc.

The AI civs are a cartel. The only way to reduce the cartel's influence is to reduce its membership.

 

[planetfall]

Actually that helps. Balance is not a real balance, but rather a balance between the highs of military advancement and the high of infrastructure advancement. Thus, as there are oscillating wars, so there are oscillating periods of war/peace.

Agreed, game is schewed towards warmongering.

PF

 

[greek-anarchist]

I dont think so, I have yet to win a game by conquest-although while playing as persia on cheiftan (I know, i'm a sissy, but that was my second game on civ 3) I conquered the world, of course i conquer it until 2050ish. I won by diplomatic in 1930ish, then by culture in 1970ish, then by space race in 2010ish, then i conquered in 2050ish, as i said, but the AI's last civ left when i conquered the world had just discovered tanks, and i had had modern armor since the 1970's and killed everyone else with it. The main reason is because i got everyone mad at the germans(the only other people on my continent) before they had boats good enough to cross the ocean. So they built tons of units (bad ancient units) to try and conquer germany w/o coming over to the right continent. Of course germany attacked me, but i had great defending units(did they really think a horseman guy could beat an infantry??)anyway...back to the subject...the AI was so focused on killing the germans they built an army of units, but were barely able to support them because the AI thinks its gonna lose a bunch in a war that never took place. civ 3 is beatable easily with all of its victory conditions, although the intent may have been to try and get people to fight, it can still be won peacefully with 1 hand tied behind your back.

 

[scoutsout]

Well - I wrapped my first Monarch level Space Race win in C3C last night. Caught (and passed) Brennus in Naval Power.

Planetfall - I wound up with right about 25 destroyers, about 15 conventional subs, and 6 or 8 nuclear subs. I intermingled destroyers and subs on "picket duty", with an eye towards assembling a 'wolfpack' if I needed to. (I wound up never needing one.)

I'd like to post a little tactic I used for consideration and comment. For lack of a better term I'll call it "Cavalry Screening with Destroyers". It's tedious, but I think it's worth it.

Screening describes an old-style horse mounted cav tactic in which the Cavalry are deployed to the flank or in front of the slower moving foot soldiers. The purpose of the Cavalry is to a) take out any enemy scouts/scouting Cav, keeping your main force "out of the enemy's sight" until some decisive point. b) If a large enemy force is encountered, to provide early warning to the command of friendly forces.

The way this game played out, Brennus and I both had substantial armies. Neither of us bothered to build Marines. As long as his army was on his continent, I was free to pursue the spaceship (having high-shield cities produce wealth instead of tanks....) Key to my strategy was seeing the enemy long before he got to me - which meant keeping a close watch on a lot of open water.

"Screening" with Destroyers was a key part of that plan. The Destroyers have 3 attributes that make them ideal for this role: speed, cost, and (in C3C) the ability to see subs.

My screens are set up as follows: A "picket line" of destroyers is positioned off my coast in such a way that the areas they can "see" meet. A continuous band of visible ocean beyond my borders. (I didn't do this with the artic oceans, but sent lone Destroyers to simply patrol along those coasts...)

Screening as I'm describing it is simply coordinated patrolling. Each Destroyer moves in one direction to patrol his sector, and moves back to finish the patrol on the same tile it started in. (You can either go 4 forward and four back, or 3 forward, 4 back, and one forward). Do this in such a way that the scouted zones touch or overlap, and you can see a lot of ocean in a single turn.

In time, I had a few carrier task forces assembled, with destroyers to screen around the Carriers, additional destroyers and subs off the rival coasts, and Jet Fighters doing long range recon missions to fill in the gaps.

Nothing moved along Brennus' coast without my knowledge.

 

[planetfall]

Scoutsout,

I understand but the tedium of patrolling is too annoying to use that method much. It is too bad there wasn't an option to automatically patrol between Tile A and Tile B so this would not have to be manual.

The closest method I use to your idea is early in development when navy and air force is small, I will put DS in ports/cities when I suspect AI will be moving and move out 3 tiles and back 3 tiles.

I use something similar when I am moving a BG. For example, in current game main AI is Hitties. I tried to talk other AI's into embargo with Hitties, but no go. I thought Aztecs were trading ivory with Hitties and wanted to slow down their growth without going to war. Just because the nuisance of war without the desire to DDay yet was too annoying to deal with. They have no oil nor rubber on main continent. No rubber at all unless trade and oil is on 5 city island continent. Sure I could DDay but that would be boring, no fun of playing with navy, etc. So they can live for a bit longer, but getting too late in game for much longer. I'm at turn 440, and so not many turns left.

Anyway, had a BG enroute to 5 city oil continent. When Aztecs would not stop trading and saw oil and UR resource, it was time for them to go. My main BG is on SW point of old Aztec land. I don't have exact numbers in BG but this is close:
2 AC
7 DS
1 Cruiser
4 BS
4 transports
Subs are not in BG because of slow speed. There are about 6 SN's starting to circle oil continent. 3 more SN's and 2 SSN's are enroute. No TN's yet, but should start building them within 12..20 turns and will transport TN's to SSN's prepositioned.
Can't upgrade old SN's to SSN's so am upping SSN build rate. Had weak city placement as kept too many old AI cities and too many good cities are one tile away from ocean.

Plan now is very simple. Complete EOL for Portugal. Move armies to transports on SW point. Add more transports from Aztecland. Will have time to add at least 3 more transports, so my BG should have 7 transports. Let's see 7 armies vs 5 cities. A bit of overkill yes, but Hitties do not deserve oil.

Once new transports are added to BG and armies are loaded, then start the movement to oil island continent. By then subs will have island encirled and I will know about any movements. I have enough cash so I will break normal play and buy troop plans. But I will play like I did not have plans. The slow movers in BG are the BS, so start movement and then fan out DS in movement direction. DS will be suppliemented with jet surveys. Oh, the AC's have 5 jets and 3 bombers. Primary purpose of AC is to provide AA protection for transports

I am building a second BG now in the NE as America flipped from MPP and polite to war in last 7 turns. They have settled for peace now as I was not invading them.
But they have both oil and rubber and Hitties are more powerful and are at war with them.

So plan is to have a 2 front war very soon with at least 2 BG's.

Other than the BG's I only have about 12 other DS ported in SAM ports for future use. I am starting to increase number of SSN's anticipating getting TN's in about 20..30 turns. Far off, but is much easier to prebuild than wait until TN's are available and build them then.

I haven't seen any Hittite AC, so no need for wolfpacks yet. But as soon as AC's start showing up, it's then time to build a bunch of wolfpacks.

PF

 

[scoutsout]

Interesting... different tactics, but then again, you're preparing for a wartime footing...and a forseeable D-Day... while I was working to "win the peace".

I normally don't do a lot of patrolling, but in this case I was against an AI who was my equal in military strength and nearly my equal in tech. If he had decided to fill his 6 transports with Modern Armor and drop them on my doorstep, I would have wanted the early warning that he was coming...

Would you mind posting a little list of these naval abbreviations? I get a little off-track reading some of your posts. SN is a sub, while SSN is a nuclear sub?

 

[planetfall]

Scouts out,

I only have score and conquest victory conditions turned on.

Yes, I think US Navy uses SSN for nuclear subs.

Here are abbreviations:
BG== Battle Group, a mixed naval unit stack preparing for action in hostile waters
AA == anti aircraft. Can be normal unit AA, or mobile SAM, or plane on AA support.
SN == sub
SSN == nuclear sub
DS == destroyer
BS == battleship
AC == aircraft carrier
TRANS == transport
Cruiser == no abbreviation yet, any suggestions?
AEGIS == AEGIS cruiser [tech not available yet in this game]
older units not abbreviated as they are not significant forces. Oh a ton of ironclads can hurt, but usually ignore them.


Both Hitties and I are at least 3..4 techs away from MA. I have panzers so MA are not urgent. And mixed stacks are more fun to play with.

Even if close, I don't mind the surprise of MA landings. I think you are/were overworrying about AI DDay invasions. I have seen timed landings on 2..3 different continent sites. I have never seen:
-- 2+ AI transports unloading on same tile
-- AI AC supporting DDay
-- flak/mobile SAMS included in invasion stack

I do see TOK's in invasion stack. Defense is fairly simple:
-- RR'ed continent
-- 15+ artillery available to respond
-- a couple of bombers might be in support position
-- 3..12 reserve tanks

I always need more elites. Without a change in tactics, bring them on....

PF

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by planetfall
I only have score and conquest victory conditions turned on.

Well...that would certainly have altered my strategy!

I think you are/were overworrying about AI DDay invasions. I have seen timed landings on 2..3 different continent sites. I have never seen <snip> 2+ AI transports unloading on same tile

Bear in mind, my more productive cities were making wealth. Switching them back to unit-building a turn or three sooner in the face of pending hostilities would have been helpful. And I have seen the AI unload more than one transport on the same spot... even in vanilla Civ. In C3C, I once had the Aztecs drop off a dozen Ancient Cav on one spot using 6 galleys!

 

[planetfall]

Interesting, does multiple landing with galleys but not very often with transports. Or, maybe we just have not had that problem yet.

I can see why you would need early notification. What's really interesting, is once you start DDay you don't have to worry about AI DDay's. I have seen one or 2 harrass landings after DDay, but never been forced to decide which do I focus most on my DDay or AI counter DDay.

PF

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by planetfall
I have seen one or 2 harrass landings after DDay, but never been forced to decide which do I focus most on my DDay or AI counter DDay.

That's probably always going to be a limitation of the AI. A human player can begin planning an industrial age invasion before the first worker lays the first rail line. A well planned D-Day style invasion requires many turns of planning, pre-positioning of naval units that are normally built far away from the launch point.

It never ceases to amaze me that an AI will continue to build a wonder in a city under siege, send units out from a city under siege, etc.

 

[planetfall]

Originally posted by scoutsout
Well - I wrapped my first Monarch level Space Race win in C3C last night. Caught (and passed) Brennus in Naval Power.
Planetfall - I wound up with right about 25 destroyers, about 15 conventional subs, and 6 or 8 nuclear subs.

I had a broken weekend. Only 6 cities left from finishing the game, but very surprised the navy I ended up with. I didn't realize I was building so many DS. My approximate navy was:

3 AC
35 DS
1 Cruiser
8 trans
1 SN
40 SSN
0 AEGIS

Since land was close I didn't need many AC's. AI's only build 2 AC's so my SSN's were used for:
1. recon
2. transport hunters
3. TN carriers

I think I built a larger navy than necessary because we had been talking so much about a navy. Too many SSN's. AC's were about right, DS were about right. Too few transports. I needed both a larger army and more transports for army.

I built up SSN's as AI was starting to pump out SSN's as I removed oil and thus SN's were not available. Uranium was harder to isolate because of the C3C bug that allows AI to use resource as long as inside area of influence. I had to actually remove the city that was providing the UR. I could have disbanded the SSN's afterwards but used as slow DS to patrol dark areas of world. Before I removed the UR the AI's had up to 10 SSN's and it took a bit to find them all.

But I did discover a neat method of removing excess transports and finding the AI SSN's. Within wolfpack or DS stack range, have a transport patrol AI coast 3..4 tiles out. AI SSN's/SN's will be suckered into attacking the transport. Probably assuming you have troops on it. Naturally there are no suicide troops. You lose the transport but can easily get the AI SSN the next turn. If you couple this trick with espionage of troop plans, you know where to make your transport runs and don't have to continually bombard a port where suspect SSN's might rest. And it sure beats endless patrols looking for AI subs.

PF

 

[redhulkz]

Originally posted by planetfall
Sinister,

TN are great before ICBM's as AI does not have any effective counter. I just started using them after figuring out even if I lose 2-3 SSN's with TN's, I still am ahead of TN.

Here's a chuckle for you. I stopped using them because I was misusing SSN's. I thought the TN range was 1. [Maybe it was for PTW, I can't remember]. TN launches were great but with a range of 1 the SSN became a suicide SSN. Now that I have figured out range is 6, 80% of targets are within range.

Reminds me of the cold war and the boomers loaded with at least 16 TN's. Except in the game we get to use them.

And yeah it is fun to see a ton of AI ironclads or DS take on battle groups. They are great for harrassment, and defense of ironclads vs DS seems too high for values, but still not an important factor.

PF

Qn: are all subs also known as boomers?

or boomers refer to only certain type of sub ???

 

[scoutsout]

Originally posted by redhulkz
Qn: are all subs also known as boomers?

or boomers refer to only certain type of sub ???

In the real world, "boomer" refers to a submarine that is both nuclear powered and capable of carrying nuclear missiles. Modern subs are generally classified as "boomers" and "hunter/killers", the latter being a fast attack sub whose primary mission is to hunt other vessels, particularly boomers.

As someone pointed out earlier in this thread, Civ lacks a fast attack class sub. The Civ nuclear sub is both capable of carrying missiles and faster than the 'conventional' submarine.

 

[bosamar]

SS=diesel
SSN=nuclear fast attack
SSBN=nuclear ballistic missile

 

[planetfall]

So now I have to use SSBN instead of SSN.

Oh well, the price of education.

Thanks

PF

 

[danegeld]

dont forget the new seawolf class thats is supposed to be a quatum leap forward in speed and stealth etc etc