Civ3 ships need a complete overhaul

[morchuflex]

Hello.

After playing vanilla about 2 months and C3C for almost 10 more, I have come to think that Civ3's whole naval system is more or less absurd.

1. Bombardment is overrated.
AFAIK there are very few historical examples of effective naval bombardment on cities or coastal troops prior to WW2.
2. Not only is bombardment overpowered, it is also a nuisance.
The AI spends hours bombarding your infrastructure with frigates, doing little damage but wasting incredible amounts of your time!

Therefore, I have decided to remove all bombardment capacity for all ships except: cruisers, battleships and Aegis.
It will make the game more realistic and much faster. And for C3C players, dromons won't be as absurdly powerful as they currently are.

3. Ship A/D values don't seem to scale well.
- Ironclads should be only marginally better than frigates (much greater defence but pathetic maneuvrability).
- Battleships should be at the very least twice stronger than cruisers and cruisers twice stronger than destroyers.

I'll mod the game to reflect that.
What do you think of it?

 

[IbnSina]

Yes!

I also make attack and defense values the same for all surface ships (i.e. a destroyer is 9/9 and a battleship is 18/18), and increased movement points, from the industrial age onwards. ... and I hated those little "Monitor" style ironclads so much I got rid of them.

 

[citizen001]

Should increase their bombardment and movement to make the game more realistic.

 

[Abaddon]

Meh, ships are pants period. I never use them appart from ferrying troops about

 

[allhailIndia]

Their movepoints and vulnerability to aircraft is not well reflected in Civ3.

As for A/D, it it was not that a Battleship would ALWAYS win when it took on a Destroyer or cruiser. In numbers and with better accuracy and luck, 2-3 destroyers could sink a battleship with only 1 taking serious damage. I think there should also be a retreat option for battleships and destroyers (remember Graf Spee)

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

There are threads about this in the civ4 discussion forum, Air vs Naval Power for one is active right now. Better to post your two cents about this over there, it's too late for civ3, but not for civ4.

 

[morchuflex]

@ Ivan: I'll read this Civ4 forum. However, I'm planning to mod my Civ3 game, not making suggestions for an unlikely patch, so I'll still post here for a while.

Important question:
Does anyone know if I can give a ship bombardment capacity but only against other sea units?
I would love to make submarines a naval bombardment unit. This would better reflect their specific way of attacking: launching torpedoes and hoping to hit is much like hurling rocks with a catapult; but submarines hardly ever engage in reciprocal fire with other ships, so I'd like them to have little conventional attack (say 1), but a huge naval bombardment capacity.

Another question: can anyone provide info about the relative speeds of WW2 surface units? I think BBs, CAs and CVs had close maximum speeds (about 30 knots), but I don't know if DDs were faster or not.

 

[AA-battery]

Make the ships better, but make them cost more shields. I hate it when the AI stacks a whole bunch of frigates too. What a waste of time.

 

[IbnSina]

No, I think bombardment is just bombardment. I dealt with submarines by giving them high attack ratings, but very low defense ratings. I reason that surprise is their weapon in attack - if they are found, there is not much they can do.

I think BBs were slower - e.g. 20-25 knots. Some late battleships were a bit faster. Carriers and destroyers and some fast cruisers could do around 30-35 knots. However, in civ I reason that we are talking about cruising speeds - not flank speeds, so I more or less ignore those. I'm with india: I wish we could reflect the greater top speed and maneuverability of destroyers by giving them a retreat capability.

 

[YNCS]

One problem I have is with CIV3 ships is submarine speed. Nuclear submarines are much faster than diesel-electric submarines. The Russian Alfa class nuclear sub has a top speed of 40 knots and can keep going that speed for days. The WW2 Type VII U-boat could do 12 knots for an hour before the batteries went flat, and could do about 5 knots for 24 hours. Surfaced, the Type VII had a top speed of 15 knots.

 

[AA-battery]

Yeah, that is kinda strange. On the nuclear sub's description it even says that they are faster than normal subs.

 

[frekk]

The problem with civ3 ships is that they have no useful role in the game. There is nothing to protect at sea. The only time they ever truly end up getting used is to invade another continent, and the AI isn't smart enough to route all its ships to stop your flow of transports from reinforcing the beachhead.

There are other problems with the AI too. The AI's idea of D-Day is to take a single battleship protecting a single transport and land a couple of outdated units somewhere on my shore and promptly abandon them there.

 

[AA-battery]

The AI's idea of D-Day is to take a single battleship protecting a single transport and land a couple of outdated units somewhere on my shore and promptly abandon them there.

That happens except in one case. When the AI wants to begin a war with a sneak attack what it does is that it takes a transport (guarded with a battleship) with 4-5 tanks and invades an island or another weak part of your empire. Really effective for quick wars with a reasonable gain. I have used this strategy a couple of times with a lot of success.

 

[frekk]

Yeah, OK, if you have an island it can do that. *If* you have an island where you haven't made sure there is no spot to land, that is.

But it is really such a minor thing. They're not going to conquer you by taking over a city or even two, on an island especially (usually not your most important cities). Basically, overseas AI are never much of a threat at all.

The AI needs to be improved so that it can adopt a strategy whereby it builds up a massive invasion fleet, loads it up with lots of troops, and hits hard, just like human players do.

 

[morchuflex]

The problem with civ3 ships is that they have no useful role in the game. There is nothing to protect at sea.

This is not entirely true: it depends a lot on what type of map you're playing. I generally play archipelago maps with max water, and in such games, navies are CRUCIAL. That's why I so much want to improve ships characteristics.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

morchuflex: RE: your question regarding special bombard against naval units only, there is no way to to this in civ3, however, you could flag late modern ships with the Lethal Sea Bombard flag in the editor, this will permit naval units with a strong bombard to sink enemy ships. I have modded AEGIS cruisers this way, and increased their defense as well, makes them a lot tougher against Battleships. It is ridiculous to me that a WWII battleship can easily sink an AEGIS Cruiser equipped with sophisticated missiles and SPY radar systems.

You can mod subs to bombard too, I would think they should have a pretty weak bombard, as it can be used against land targets as well, and subs only carry a few cruise missiles, if any, in real life.