Battleships overpowered?

engapol

Chieftain
Joined
Aug 27, 2015
Messages
14
Is it just me or are navies (Battleships in particular) overpowered? I usually play on Emperor difficulty and above on the Giant Earth map and battleships make an absolute mockery of the combat system. Aircraft carriers are limited by the fact that my planes usually take a fair amount of damage per raid, destroyers can only melee and subs are good only in ambush attacks against other ships but battlewagons just rip up everything.

The enemy civ usually has better at least equal military tech as me but I just assemble a fleet of 6 or so BBs, arrange them so that they are all in range of the city and just demolish it. Even the largest and toughest coastal cities can be taken in a few turns of bombardment.

I initially tried this at Prince level but it was way too easy so I tried raising the difficulty in the hope that the AI would build credible navies to oppose me. But even at Emperor where AI does have a few battleships/carriers around, there's just an initial struggle then my ships just run around with impunity, the AI just doesn't seem committed to a naval war.
 
AI is known to not handle naval battles very well. Apart from that, I do like experienced battleships, they give you a lot of power and ability to take coastal cities very easily. One or two submarines do help too.
 
Battleships are end game top tier Naval Siege Units and as such they should be quite powerful given enemy cities with defensive values from 75 to 200. That being said, the AI typically does not build a strong enough Navy nor does it deploy it as efficiently as a human player due to technical limitations and game design choices aimed at player enjoyment rather than player challenge. That being said though...try playing on Emperor or higher and on larger maps if you want a more challenging Naval Game and don't pick any Leader that is designed to be used on Water Maps.
 
Range ships in general have balance issues. The fact that Naval units by default at least has movement 4 and furthermore navigates on a "terrain" that never has movement cost above 1 obviously makes them compare akwardly to ranged land units, that never move more than 2 tiles and furthermore has to face terrain and visibility issues. To make this problem even worse, Ranged Naval units can get the range promotion already at level 3, where normal units need to get to level 4 (and that *does* make a big difference). If Ranged Naval units had a default range of 1 instead of 2, they would probably be much less easy to abuse. In fact, it's only because the AI doesn't understand how to use military units properly that it isn't a crippling issue for the game.
 
Battleships arent that overpowered in late game naval action since the missile cruiser does way more damage than the battleship does and then theres the nuclear submarines which could sink battles in 1 with wolf pack promotions and maybe sink battles without promotions using 2 hits. Same thing goes for regular submarines which could sink battles with 2 hits. However, battles have indirect fire which allows it to fire over hills and forest jungles, and thats something that the missile cruiser doesnt have.
 
Battleships arent that overpowered in late game naval action ...
Well yes, Battleships sits through 5 tech levels so obviously towards the end they are not overpowered; problem comes if you have a navy of Frigates with some promotions and then get to Electronics early - which is not that far of a shot, really, since Scientific Theory, Electricity and Flight sits right on the way, and it's just an offshot of one tech from beelining Plastics - you can wreck some serious havock and be practically unstoppable.
 
It's not that battleships are overpowered, it's instead that the AI can't handle defending itself against fast moving units with ranged fire.
This mostly applies to naval combat given their higher movement points vs land units, but this also applies to defending itself against the Mongolian Keshik.
 
That too, weak ai and electronics rush both make battles kind of op in a way.
 
I hope CIV VI will rectify this, I felt the AI got worse at wars ever since the stack of doom was removed.

It was really tough fending off 5 galleons worth of riflemen and cavalry back then.
 
This was something I have been thinking about for awhile. Battleships are practically a game-changing unit. They have 3 range and indirect fire just like artillery!! You can use them to snipe inland units from the coast, even over mountains and natural wonders.
 
This was something I have been thinking about for awhile. Battleships are practically a game-changing unit. They have 3 range and indirect fire just like artillery!! You can use them to snipe inland units from the coast, even over mountains and natural wonders.

Yea when I'm invading I usually just line them up along the coast, so they create a death zone 3 tiles inland while my army lands without resistance.
 
Some surprise subs could sink battles by surprise particularly if you dont have refrigeration nor destroyers around so making ships block city entrances by placing ships adjacent to the city wont allow new submarinesto fire since they need to be in the sea first to fire.
 
This was something I have been thinking about for awhile. Battleships are practically a game-changing unit. They have 3 range and indirect fire just like artillery!! You can use them to snipe inland units from the coast, even over mountains and natural wonders.
Also, don't forget the fact that they have an extremely acceptable attack value compared to contemporary units (65 ranged attack, which actually compares favorably to the 60 ranged strength of the machine gun) and then in just three promotions can get +100 % bombardment strength (lolwut?) which is absurd compared to how the similar promotions for land ranged units give less than half this value, and only in certain types of terrain (+45 % strenghth in open terrain with Ranged 3).
 
First, battleships are not cheap and requires techs from both top and mid branches. So if go battleships you delaying labs.
Second, they have no defence vs air, no promotions vs air.
Third, they have no promotions vs city. This results that you cannot take strong city (with Red Fort, several defence buildings and freedom +to city strength) fast or in some situations cannot take it at all.

But, y after all very strong unit, especially vs AI.
 
First, battleships are not cheap and requires techs from both top and mid branches. So if go battleships you delaying labs.
Second, they have no defence vs air, no promotions vs air.
Third, they have no promotions vs city. This results that you cannot take strong city (with Red Fort, several defence buildings and freedom +to city strength) fast or in some situations cannot take it at all.

But, y after all very strong unit, especially vs AI.

They're so good I keep them in my late-game navy alongside the more modern ships. Air attack isn't usually an issue since I always bring a carrier with fighters along. When playing on large maps with lots of water I usually opt for a small 'core' with 4 or 5 super cities which do the vast majority of my military production, they churn out units like mad in late-game while the rest of my empire just focuses on buildings (since most were damaged when I conquered them).
 
Hey guys kind of an unrelated question here.

I forget if this applies to boats or air units, but there are two different types of promotions for one of those classes of units - one promotion gives combat bonus to land units (bombardment I think?) and another one gives combat bonus against armored units.

The thing is, aren't armored units a subset of land units? So why would one take the armored promotion if the land promotion is inherently better?
 
Hey guys kind of an unrelated question here.

I forget if this applies to boats or air units, but there are two different types of promotions for one of those classes of units - one promotion gives combat bonus to land units (bombardment I think?) and another one gives combat bonus against armored units.

The thing is, aren't armored units a subset of land units? So why would one take the armored promotion if the land promotion is inherently better?
I don't think ships can get the armored promotions - but to answer your question, I think in those cases the ones that applies towards a smaller group of units provides a larger bonus - something like: 33 % vs. all units or 50 % vs. a special kind of units. Also remember that one doesn't exclude the other.
 
Even considering how bad the AI is with naval combat, battleships are over the top. 60 ranged strength 3 range indirect fire, high mobility. In fact the biggest issue is that they act like an artillery unit but with non mitigated damage against land and naval units.
 
I don't think that battleships are overpowered. Their numbers are on point with other units of the era, maybe a little higher to reflect some access limitations (they can't hit anything deep inland, for example.)
Rather, there's two game elements that the player can exploit, and battleships inherently compound them. The first is that the AI doesn't handle naval battle well. Fleet composition is wrong, they don't concentrate on one target, they don't use ranged attacks first, they don't set up huge flank bonuses, and they don't finish with privateers. Second, the game mechanic of melee units always suffering damage whether attacking or defending while ranged units get a "free shot" on offense is laughably unbalanced. Further aggravation caused by silly things like an arrow being considered ranged while a rifle is not.
Add to this another huge flaw of the AI: it will not move and attack on the same turn. Try it: leave an injured land unit 3 tiles away from an AI archer and I guarantee it will not attack it next turn. This becomes much more critical when dealing with a unit that can move many tiles and then fire, such as a battleship.
In summary, its not a problem with the unit, but rather a problem with the AI and some game mechanics.
 
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