Big Navies Good or bad?

[Nimitz96]

hello, Ive seen that most people forget about Navies, in fighting.well, I find them EXTREMELY USEFUL not only can you bombard to help amphib assaults but you can explore and conquer but can also NUKE THE COMMIES!!!!!!
and do survallience on shore strength. So Navy GOOD or BAD? you decide

 

[Spoonwood]

Bad. There's rarely a need for marines or nukes also.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

Navies are fairly useless outside of Archipelago maps, and a large navy will usually just be a waste of Unit Support. Outside of Scenarios, I've never seen the AI actually build a navy of more than ~20-30 ships, and it's flatly incapable of combining its ships into anything reasonable. A curragh or galley in the beginning is useful for scouting, and you'll need some kind of transport if you're playing Continents or Archipelago, but really ...

it's not that navies are good or bad, it's that a lot of the time they're simply useless.

 

[vmxa]

Bad. Well you need more than one word and bad is not the best choice anyway. Irrelevant is a better word. I often invade with no escort at all.

The size of the fleet the AI will have is directly related to the map and the level. The game style will also have an impact. Read some of the 30 nation 250x250 games. The AW aspect often means scores of frigates.

I have had one nation send about 32 galleys to invade me on island Sid maps. In normal std maps, yeah you will not see all that many ships.

 

[Theov]

only when unit support allows it, I make some ships to intercept the AI's and some to bombard.
I use carriers to transport some bombers to destroy a city when I feel like it.

 

[da3dalus]

Navies are great to bombard, but then you're limited to the coast. Best to go with cannon/arty/bombers.

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

Big navies, as in big enough to dominate major portions of the seas, sorry waste of time unless you do it just for the enjoyment. My navies are as big as they need to be to protect transports. Currently I'm in the year 2230~ and have three triple leg convoy paths to the enemy continent. They are protected by Aegis, Battleship & carriers with fighters. I also have enough carriers for 30+ Stealth Bombers to give me support for my landings, artillery units aren't any good until they are unloaded in a city or have sat somewhere until the next turn, a very inviting target.

 

[EvilConqueror]

You really don't need to dominant the seas in Civ III (although it can be quite fun to do so ). You generally only need enough naval units to get your ground forces safely from one island/continent to another.

But there are certainly times when having more ships around can come in handy. Besides exploring, spying, and transporting, it's nice to sink ships before they can land units on your shores or to bombard an enemy's coastal infrastructure to dust.

In the later ages, I'd rather have two bombers than a battleship in most instances.

 

[timerover51]

Personally, I like navies. I play on archipelago and continents maps pretty much exclusively, and prefer huge plus size ones. I have improved the ships a bit for offense and defense

 

[Nergal]

I once had a navy of 110 battleships, it was seriously awesome. On a stringy continent map with almost 250 bombers. It was way over the top. The primary advantage was simply no AI interference. No annoying coastline bombardment by AI Frigates and Destroyers. Anything I saw got bombarded or bombed out of existence. Its useful having some navy just to ward off enemy attacks but I prefer air support.

 

[Blaatand]

The naval historian Andrew Lanbert wrote: 'The fruits of naval victory are always found on land'. So, the navy needs to be big enough to keep supply lines open, support landings and battles along the coastline and defeat or at least weaken/delay enemy invasion fleets. The 'correct' size of a navy therefore depends on the tasks assigned to it, enemy forces and the nature of the map.

 

[Camulodunum]

as for me, i often forget to build a navy when im too busy building my ground military and economy. but when i make a navy i make too much an end up having no use for the ships and just disbanding them. but i always find it fun to conquer other continents

 

[Big Rob]

AI's just don't have the proper military expertise to conduct effective operations. Sure, they may send waves of strong units at you, but I do that at a buffet. Play a multi-player game against someone who knows how to use a navy against you, and you'll change you're opinion on navies.

 

[SG-17]

I always build moderately sized navies. I mainly play on Archipelago maps anyway.
when the map allows it I will set up a blockade to make ships go the long way around an area to prevent them from colonizing a certain piece of land.

 

[TheOverseer714]

I haven't been playing continents or archipelago of late, so only explorere and thats it.

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

I always build moderately sized navies. I mainly play on Archipelago maps anyway.
when the map allows it I will set up a blockade to make ships go the long way around an area to prevent them from colonizing a certain piece of land.

I've never looked for this, thanks for the excellent idea. I just had the opportunity to do a land version of this: I blocked the land access for my AI ally so it had to convoy around giving me the quicker access to the weaker AI opponent. Its always been a surprise that reputation doesn't seem to take a hit for this kind of blockading.

 

[ChaosArbiter]

I've never looked for this, thanks for the excellent idea. I just had the opportunity to do a land version of this: I blocked the land access for my AI ally so it had to convoy around giving me the quicker access to the weaker AI opponent. Its always been a surprise that reputation doesn't seem to take a hit for this kind of blockading.

Why should it? You're not doing anything to another civ, you're just having your units sit in place ... the place they're sitting in just happens to block the other civ's units. Getting a rep hit for that would be like getting a rep hit because you're the only one on the island with any Iron - it wouldn't make sense.

 

[timerover51]

I always build moderately sized navies. I mainly play on Archipelago maps anyway.
when the map allows it I will set up a blockade to make ships go the long way around an area to prevent them from colonizing a certain piece of land.

On either land or water maps, blocking a choke point with your units to force the AI to go another way is generally always a very good strategy.

 

[Fiddlin Nero]

To recant my earlier opinion of large navies, I've run into a situation that may need one. Skipping the history the current situation is a runaway Civ sharing my continent. Most of the AI units are on a distant continent where we just finished off the last of the other civs. The AI has me way outnumbered on the distant continent. So the need for a large navy comes into play to strand the AI units on the distant continent so I have a chance at conquering the local continent.

So yes to large navies in some circumstances.

 

[dexters]

PTW AI doesn't put a huge emphasis on navies and is probably just running with the vanilla navy AI. I think the learning algorithm Soren put into vanilla Civ will kick in with 'unknown' conditions and you'll see the odd AI with a large fleet.

The navy AI got a bump in C3C and you'll see a much more diverse use of ships by the AI. I've run numerous debug games on this, usually on STD - continents maps, and the strong AIs can field some pretty mean stuff. Carrier fleets, and stacks of invading fleets. one AI had 70 odd destroyers on a standard map!

Usually you're more than likely to see the usual 1 transport escorted by 2 escorts (the best ship AI has) against most AI opponents. But I generally play on standard/continents maps where navies do come into play and the AI does put more emphsis on ship building as part of its exploration/colonization process so I may be seeing more ships than the Pangaea players.

That said, like the airforce, navies are usually the first thing to go when an AI economy is buckling under a sustained war as they will usually be unable to replace ships fast enough and what you'll see is at the war's outset, you'll face a formidable AI fleet that dwindles overtime, (assuming you're killing the ships) and they usually don't recover to their pre-war levels unless you sign a peace with them. As with everything, there are exceptions. AI's can sometimes set their coastal cities to build ships all at once, and in the middle of a war, there can be waves of new ships coming out every 5-10 turns.