[C3C] Current Best Practices for Improving Naval Combat?

[SayHayKid]

I have not been around for years (or even decades) like many of you that are still active in the Civ3 community, so I don't have all the accumulated knowledge you have acquired over the years. I have done my best to search, read old threads, etc. to learn from those that came before me. Some ideas and concepts are outdated, some new ideas are buried in posts on non-related threads (like within a released mod or in cross-mod editor threads), and with so many threads I am sure there is a lot that I have missed.

Anyhow, one of my favorite aspects of strategy games, and one of the weakest in Civ3, is naval combat. I usually play on archipelagos or continents with lots of water. I never play Pangea unless playing random everything. One of the areas I want to really enhance in the mod that I am working is naval combat and other seafaring aspects of the game (limited as they may be). Modders have learned a lot since the early days, making some older threads and concepts obsolete. I am hoping to get some current best practices from experienced modders in regards to improving the naval aspects of Civ3.

Looking through older threads and looking at other mods, one mod has significant changes to naval combat that no other mods later adopted. I was curious as to why. In RAR ships are REALLY beefed up, especially in regards to bombardment. Modern ships have crazy bombard numbers like 40/6/6 for the AEGIS Cruiser. Part of me is like, "Awesome! That will kick some serious arse!" The other part of me (the less fun part) says, "Hold up that might be a little too crazy. And will the AI actually bombard instead of attacking? And what do crazy numbers like that do when bombarding cities and land units?"

Most other mods follow the same formula as the standard game with some boosts here or there, but overall A/D/M and bombard numbers are within range of Firaxis numbers. Only those crazy guys in RAR seemed to take things in this go big or go home direction and I was curious why later mods never went down this route.

Will the AI actually bombard rather than attack? Why did nobody else do something similar? RAR is quite a popular mod.

Other Questions

What about stealth attack? I don't see anybody using that. Does it not work with ships? Does the AI not use it effectively? I have added for my archers, longbowman, etc. It is great.

What about ship movement rates? What are some best practices for coast, ocean, tile movements coupled with ignore terrains settings? One thing I liked that some mods do is to have modern ships slow down along the coast. Seems to make sense.

How does ATAR affect ships? How about blitz?

What other best practices or tips have you found that have really enhanced naval combat in your mods?

 

[timerover51]

You might want to check out my naval mod here, with the most recent update in the Sept. 14, 2022 post.

Timerover51 Naval Mod

Since I have posted my modding philosophy in the General Discussion Forum, I thought that I might as well start posting some of the mods that I have made for various reasons. This one is focuses on reworking virtually all of the naval units in the game to a greater or lessor degree. The...

forums.civfanatics.com

I would not give an Aegis cruiser anywhere near that much bombardment, as it mounts only two 5 inch 54 caliber guns with a limited amount of ammunition. An Iowa-class battleship on the other hand should pack a lot of punch. The British figured that the 1938 pound High Explosive shell for their 15 inch gun was the equivalent of six 6 inch/152mm rounds for bombardment effect. The World War 2 United States battleships mounting either the 16 inch/45 caliber gun or the 16 inch/50 caliber gun fired a very similar High Capacity shell weighing 1900 pounds. A full broadside of 9 rounds would equal fifty-four 155mm artillery rounds. I rate the artillery piece in the game at 18 for bombardment, with the battleship at 36, twice rather than 3 times the fire of the artillery piece, which I assume is an 18-gun artillery battalion. I go with twice due to the greater number of shell bursts of the 155mm pieces. I do give the battleship lethal land and sea bombardment, along with Blitz. I rate an Aegis-class ship at 12, because of having only 2 guns, with 2 rounds arriving at the same time. Basically, the Aegis-class ships have to hose-pipe the 5 inch to get any real affect on a target.

Following World War 2, the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps determined that the smallest effective gun to use on a dug-in and defended target was the 8 inch gun. The 6 inch did not have the bunker penetration of the much heavier 8 inch round.

 

[SayHayKid]

You might want to check out my naval mod here, with the most recent update in the Sept. 14, 2022 post.


I would not give an Aegis cruiser anywhere near that much bombardment, as it mounts only two 5 inch 54 caliber guns with a limited amount of ammunition.

I'll check it out.

All of the bombard rates are high for ships in RAR. I assume they did not try to simulate actual guns or cannons, but to make bombardment the primary form of attack. Thus, the AEGIS Cruiser is high not to simulate the actual effectiveness of ship mounted guns compared to a battleship, but to simulate that the AEGIS Cruiser is the more powerful overall modern ship especially considering battleships have all been mothballed for some time.

 

[Predator145]

1)The biggest issue with AI naval behavior is the C3C escort. For that, unless Flintlock does something, I don't see a fix. The AI will thus lose 2/3 of its navy to being punching bags. Now if these ships were defensive units, it could be somewhat cost effective. But in stock game ships are offensive units that can bombard. An escorting punching bag neither attacks nor bombards. And thus the human player can easily chip them down with their own bombarding ships. The AI would need more warships just to have the same level of naval prowess in vanilla. Auto production could help.

2) The second issue is its reluctance to bombard in naval combat. The AI prefers attacking to bombarding. Even if the odds are bad like 50-50 or even worse. I've seen submarines take on full health battleships. The AI would only bombard with really bad attacking odds. By having sea power units that have very low attack but high bombard and defense value you could have the AI use them to soften up your ships before their offensive close combat ships move in. These high defense warships can also be used for escort (they'd still waste their bombard ability though). It's hard flavor wise to come up with a line of ships that has good bombard, high def but low attack though. I guess you could do catapult ships-caravel-ship of the line-ironclad-battleship-fast battleship-missile cruiser line that has very low attack, good def and high bombard and leave the attacking to a separate attacking ship line that does boarding and close up fighting/ramming/torpedoeing like war galley-galleass-frigate-steam frigate-armored frigate-gunboat/torpedo boat-destroyer-stealth destroyer. Perfume/auto production will have to be used to get the AI to produce a mix of both lines.

3) Airpower is the most decisive thing (as it should be). Air defense values on ships won't be enough to ward off lethal air bombard if the AI straggles its ships. But that's what they do if they aren't escorting. And if they're escorting they're harmless anyway, no need to risk your bombers on them. I've modded the main strategic bombers and land based fighters to not have lethal sea bombard and they can't be loaded on carriers. There are naval air units for that. They don't have the same bombard power as a heavy bomber and thus are a bit more balanced. But even then, airpower is central and your carrier will be your capital ship. Also, ships have a bit more AD values. Even things like subs have the token value of 1 like my land units as they did mount guns on deck. You can also let the cruisers carve out their niche as AA units like their final upgrade the AEGIS Cruiser in stock game. Maybe make them lean towards the defensive side as well? A single cruiser/battleship should have as much AD or more than a flak battery. In stock game, bombers eat warships for breakfast. So what you've shot down 4 of my bombers when I've sunk 4 of your battleships or your transport full of tanks? Naval air units will be much more important on cont and arch maps so you shall have to use a separate perfume set for them as well as carriers. The AI does use carriers well if their land is far away from yours. But if they share a land border many of their naval air assets would end up being land based, leaving their carrier task forces lacking fleet interceptors. There's no solution to making the AI keep its fighters on carriers if it shares a closer border to you. It may keep some as the Japs did during WW2 Pacific testing around the fleet that struck Honolulu. But some of them also rebased to the China front.

4) The AI handles stealth attack well. Subs will always hunt down your injured ships, transports and carriers in a stack. Now that stealth bombard is available new options can be explored. From my testing I conclude that airpower with lethal sea bombard+stealth bombard makes landings impossible. Who ever strikes first will win as carriers and transports would simply get wiped out. It's too broken even if the bombard value is low. IMO ships shouldn't be part of the target list. Ships after all are fast maneuvering targets over vast open space. The AI will handle stealth bombard well if it has line of sight (being an all-seeing cheater doesn't count as LOS). Unfortunately, the AI does not handle recon missions well. It does fly them, but not very intelligently. Using recon to spot targets and stealth bombing them will be something the human player can use much more effectively.

5) Tactical nukes AI strat is broken. A tactical nuke built in a non-coastal city would never leave that place. That means only coastal built tact. nukes will ever be loaded into nuclear subs. You could use the Flintlock patch to put a harbor/coastal improvement requirement to build tactical nukes, ensuring that the AI will load these carrier taskforce destroying bad boys and give you a nasty surprise should they want to go nuclear on you. Or you could do the whole "king unit version" thing and have the king version be flagged as "air bombard" (with operational equal to bombard range, rebase and bombing mission) and nuclear subs have their own king version flagged as "Carrier". The draw back of this is that the AI will have no diplomatic inhibition about nuking.

6.) Cruise Missiles are anti-ship missiles because they will target ships first. In C3C they will not hit improvements or pop if there are still units in the city to hit. Ship launched CMs would be devastating to ships hiding in coastal cities. You'd need to king unit them into air bombard AI strat and in order to differentiate them from other land units give them the tactical missile ability. That way they can bombard from ships. I suggest using one of these high def, high bombard, high AD ships above as their transport with carrier AI strat. Again, playing around with the perfume/auto production will be necessary to have the AI build both these things and aircraft carriers. Have 1 of these carry 4 CMs for a nasty punch. If you don't want these ships to carry tact. nukes you shall have to differentiate them from CMs. Do this by giving the CM the foot unit ability and make the ships that carry them have the "carry tactical missiles" and "carry only foot units" abilities. Tact. nukes with no foot unit ability can't enter. But nuclear subs can still launch conventional CMs.

7) Use the Flintlock patch to perfume harbors + other coastal improvements and all warships as well as naval aircrafts. Keep back up versions of these perfume lists for when you're playing water maps.

8) C3C warships will never hit improvements or pop if there are still units left to bombard. They will hit, sea units first, then air, then land and then improvements/pop. You have the option to include precision strikes. But the AI doesn't know how to use it on sea power units. They only use it on air bombard. So the CMs above could use that. If you like the C3C targeting, you could make your harbors, commercial docks and offshore platforms have low sea def value. This makes them behave like coastal fortresses. They will be targeted first when the AI bombards. That way the AI's otherwise harmless city bombardments would mess with your vital infrastructure and can't be ignored. This will also necessitate coastal fortresses. The coastal fortress should also go obsolete to be replaced by a more powerful industrial version. Or you could just give all naval bombard units the PTW treatment in Flintlock's patch. Or do both and still have them take out your harbor first. I do find C3C targeting to be too strong for softening up units. In the WW2 Pacific scenario, I didn't lose a single marine. But with PTW targeting implemented I was fighting yellow lined units instead of red. And island hopping became a bloody slog as it was in real life.

9) I buffed marine line (archers get amph attack and upgrade all the way to marines). They now are a credible attack unit if you don't have oil. There are also air mobile infantry. They are amphibious defensively leaning conquistadors. These 2 unit lines being perfumed and built by the AI on water maps will make you think twice about leaving your coastal cities unguarded. Air mobile infantry could move from transports 6 tiles inland. And while they don't have high attack this is scary. Coastal defense is vital.

10) Radar Towers, Outposts and Airfields may need to be removed. These terrain improvements prevent units from other civs from entering. That means unless they have amph. attack, they can't land. The human player can just barricade his entire coastline. This is very cheesy IMO. And the AI can't use outposts. It also can't use radar towers effectively, burning through precious workers while guarding them with a single unit. They don't even guard them with defensive AI flag units. So you end up with offensive units guarding. The human player would simply take it out first. The AI on the other hand, would let the human player often get away with having that 25% boost. Airfields the AI can't use at all. They also mess with the usual air units targeting. The AI also leaves them alone and bombs cities instead. With Airfields near but not next to the coast you can have your maritime strike aircrafts hit the AI fleet while they can't touch you with their warships. Your interceptors also don't get bombed. Without airfields you have to decide where to base your aircrafts. Put them in the cities inland and have less range or coastal for max range but in range of both enemy warships and carrier strike aircrafts?

These are my 10 ideas how to improve stock game's naval experience.

 

[timerover51]

SayHayKid, just remember that unless you make separate buildings and units for the AI, any changes that you make will also affect you as well. I have boosted the defense bonus of towns, cities, metropolises, and fortresses, but then have to deal with this when I have to attack them. The same holds true for my changes to ships.

 

[Predator145]

On the topic of making separate buildings and units for the AI, this can be accomplished by having a SW requiring the Palace that generates an "AI Flag" improvement. This improvement will be the requirement for all the SWs that auto produce units. This way only your capital will be burdened with having an SW that you don't want to build on the menu. Perfume all these SW heavily so that the AI builds them ASAP.

 

[timerover51]

On the topic of making separate buildings and units for the AI, this can be accomplished by having a SW requiring the Palace that generates an "AI Flag" improvement. This improvement will be the requirement for all the SWs that auto produce units. This way only your capital will be burdened with having an SW that you don't want to build on the menu. Perfume all these SW heavily so that the AI builds them ASAP.

What do you mean by "perfume"?

 

[Arexander]

That's a method in Flintlock's patch to increase the desirability of an improvement so the AI builds it more often, can be fine tuned to be whatever you want, and along with the option to see AI building desirability in-game with the patch, allows modders to get the AI to build buildings it otherwise wouldn't.

 

[timerover51]

That's a method in Flintlock's patch to increase the desirability of an improvement so the AI builds it more often, can be fine tuned to be whatever you want, and along with the option to see AI building desirability in-game with the patch, allows modders to get the AI to build buildings it otherwise wouldn't.

So it is a valid command if you have Flintlock's patch, and only if you have Flintlock's patch. Otherwise, it is not possible.

What happens if you try to run a mod using perfume with a version of Civ3 that does not have Flintlock's patch?

 

[SayHayKid]

1)The biggest issue with AI naval behavior is the C3C escort.

I have read elsewhere where others (I think it was @Ares de Borg) have removed the "requires escort" flag from transport ships altogether. I'll give that a try and see how it works.

2) The second issue is its reluctance to bombard in naval combat. The AI prefers attacking to bombarding. Even if the odds are bad like 50-50 or even worse. I've seen submarines take on full health battleships. The AI would only bombard with really bad attacking odds. By having sea power units that have very low attack but high bombard and defense value you could have the AI use them to soften up your ships before their offensive close combat ships move in. These high defense warships can also be used for escort (they'd still waste their bombard ability though). It's hard flavor wise to come up with a line of ships that has good bombard, high def but low attack though. I guess you could do catapult ships-caravel-ship of the line-ironclad-battleship-fast battleship-missile cruiser line that has very low attack, good def and high bombard and leave the attacking to a separate attacking ship line that does boarding and close up fighting/ramming/torpedoeing like war galley-galleass-frigate-steam frigate-armored frigate-gunboat/torpedo boat-destroyer-stealth destroyer. Perfume/auto production will have to be used to get the AI to produce a mix of both lines.

I currently have four lines of ships.

1. Transport: Scout Boat -> Galley -> Caravel -> Galleon -> Clipper -> Transport
2. *Light Warships: Trireme -> Galleass -> Corvette -> Destroyer -> Guided Missile Destroyer
3. **Medium Warships: Frigate -> Cruiser -> AEGIS Cruiser
4. ***Heavy Warships: Ship-of-the-Line -> Ironclad -> Battleship

*In modern times they'd have high speed, decent attack, lower bombard, and detect invs.

**Kind of a hybrid of the two with good A/D and Bombard values, AA, and missile transport.

***I was thinking of replacing the Ironclad with the Dreadnought since they were more widely used across the globe. This part of the tech tree moves quickly and there might not be enough time between Ironclads and BBs to build Ironclads and Dreadnought before they go obsolete by BBs.

The Heavy Warship line could function as the bombard ships you mentioned. Lower A value, high D, high Bombard value, and big boost to HP.

3) I've modded the main strategic bombers and land based fighters to not have lethal sea bombard and they can't be loaded on carriers. There are naval air units for that. They don't have the same bombard power as a heavy bomber and thus are a bit more balanced. But even then, airpower is central and your carrier will be your capital ship. Also, ships have a bit more AD values. Even things like subs have the token value of 1 like my land units as they did mount guns on deck. You can also let the cruisers carve out their niche as AA units like their final upgrade the AEGIS Cruiser in stock game. Maybe make them lean towards the defensive side as well?

So, in your mod the firaxis bombers/fighters are purely land based. Did you increase their range? Do they have lethal land bombard? I have removed lethal land bombard like several mods have done because it was too OP. Do your ships still have lethal sea bombard?

Then you have separate naval units like a latter day Harrier that have shorter operational range, wesker bombard, and non-lethal? That is an interesting idea. I always liked freedom of choice and preferred limited or no-auto production, but the reality is that the AI just doesn't build certain speciality units such as paratroopers, marines, etc. And probably wouldn't with these naval aircraft. I was planning on adding auto-producing small wonders speciality units only and for battleships since that is the only naval units the AI will usually build. I can add one for the naval aircraft.

4) The AI handles stealth attack well. Subs will always hunt down your injured ships, transports and carriers in a stack. Now that stealth bombard is available new options can be explored. From my testing I conclude that airpower with lethal sea bombard+stealth bombard makes landings impossible. Who ever strikes first will win as carriers and transports would simply get wiped out. It's too broken even if the bombard value is low. IMO ships shouldn't be part of the target list. Ships after all are fast maneuvering targets over vast open space. The AI will handle stealth bombard well if it has line of sight (being an all-seeing cheater doesn't count as LOS). Unfortunately, the AI does not handle recon missions well. It does fly them, but not very intelligently. Using recon to spot targets and stealth bombing them will be something the human player can use much more effectively.

I have never used stealth bombers much. Usually the game is over before then or I am beelining for space victory. Good to know that can it is way too OP to have lethal bombard and stealth bombard against ships. Now that I was able to get Flintlock's patch to work on a Mac, I am going to start tweaking somethings to take advantage of some of the capabilities.

5) Tactical nukes AI strat is broken. A tactical nuke built in a non-coastal city would never leave that place. That means only coastal built tact. nukes will ever be loaded into nuclear subs. You could use the Flintlock patch to put a harbor/coastal improvement requirement to build tactical nukes, ensuring that the AI will load these carrier taskforce destroying bad boys and give you a nasty surprise should they want to go nuclear on you. Or you could do the whole "king unit version" thing and have the king version be flagged as "air bombard" (with operational equal to bombard range, rebase and bombing mission) and nuclear subs have their own king version flagged as "Carrier". The draw back of this is that the AI will have no diplomatic inhibition about nuking.

Since I just got the Flintlock patch working, I am still not sure what all it can do. I know it fixes the sub bug and improves AI use of artillery. Oustide of that I have to explore it more. I don't know you could make an improvement be a pre-req for a unit. I like the idea for tactical nukes.

6.) Cruise Missiles are anti-ship missiles because they will target ships first. In C3C they will not hit improvements or pop if there are still units in the city to hit. Ship launched CMs would be devastating to ships hiding in coastal cities. You'd need to king unit them into air bombard AI strat and in order to differentiate them from other land units give them the tactical missile ability. That way they can bombard from ships. I suggest using one of these high def, high bombard, high AD ships above as their transport with carrier AI strat. Again, playing around with the perfume/auto production will be necessary to have the AI build both these things and aircraft carriers. Have 1 of these carry 4 CMs for a nasty punch. If you don't want these ships to carry tact. nukes you shall have to differentiate them from CMs. Do this by giving the CM the foot unit ability and make the ships that carry them have the "carry tactical missiles" and "carry only foot units" abilities. Tact. nukes with no foot unit ability can't enter. But nuclear subs can still launch conventional CMs.

You have mentioned king units a few times. I am not familiar with how they will work. I will have to look into them more. as far as having CM and foot unit ability I saw in an older thread that somebody did that to have special sea helicopters and ships.

8) C3C warships will never hit improvements or pop if there are still units left to bombard. They will hit, sea units first, then air, then land and then improvements/pop. You have the option to include precision strikes. But the AI doesn't know how to use it on sea power units. They only use it on air bombard. So the CMs above could use that. If you like the C3C targeting, you could make your harbors, commercial docks and offshore platforms have low sea def value. This makes them behave like coastal fortresses. They will be targeted first when the AI bombards. That way the AI's otherwise harmless city bombardments would mess with your vital infrastructure and can't be ignored. This will also necessitate coastal fortresses. The coastal fortress should also go obsolete to be replaced by a more powerful industrial version. Or you could just give all naval bombard units the PTW treatment in Flintlock's patch. Or do both and still have them take out your harbor first. I do find C3C targeting to be too strong for softening up units. In the WW2 Pacific scenario, I didn't lose a single marine. But with PTW targeting implemented I was fighting yellow lined units instead of red. And island hopping became a bloody slog as it was in real life.

I never played PTW, so I am not sure how PTW handled bombard differently from Conquests. To allow ships to bombard harbors, docks, etc. first do they have to labeled with seafaring trait in the editor?

Also, I liked how @Civinator had immobile battery canyons produced by the coastal fortress. I am going to have into look into exactly what he did there.

9) I buffed marine line (archers get amph attack and upgrade all the way to marines). They now are a credible attack unit if you don't have oil. There are also air mobile infantry. They are amphibious defensively leaning conquistadors. These 2 unit lines being perfumed and built by the AI on water maps will make you think twice about leaving your coastal cities unguarded. Air mobile infantry could move from transports 6 tiles inland. And while they don't have high attack this is scary. Coastal defense is vital.

I made my marine line have double attack vs defense, amphibious, and blitz. And made the American UU a USMC. I ahevn't tested them out yet. Are your air mobile infantry like pratroopers or something different? I have paratrooper upgrade to Airborne (essentially a special forces unit).

10) Radar Towers, Outposts and Airfields may need to be removed. These terrain improvements prevent units from other civs from entering. That means unless they have amph. attack, they can't land. The human player can just barricade his entire coastline. This is very cheesy IMO. And the AI can't use outposts. It also can't use radar towers effectively, burning through precious workers while guarding them with a single unit. They don't even guard them with defensive AI flag units. So you end up with offensive units guarding. The human player would simply take it out first. The AI on the other hand, would let the human player often get away with having that 25% boost. Airfields the AI can't use at all. They also mess with the usual air units targeting. The AI also leaves them alone and bombs cities instead. With Airfields near but not next to the coast you can have your maritime strike aircrafts hit the AI fleet while they can't touch you with their warships. Your interceptors also don't get bombed. Without airfields you have to decide where to base your aircrafts. Put them in the cities inland and have less range or coastal for max range but in range of both enemy warships and carrier strike aircrafts?

Good suggestions. I never use them. So, no big loss. I am definitely about making gameplay more balanced. Anything that exploits the AI or the AI can't do, I try to avoid if possible. Makes things more fun for me.

I have a question about A/D vs bombard for modern naval units. Which one is supposed to represent torpedos and which one is supposed to represent cannons/guns? I am still trying to figure out A/D/M and bombard values for modern ships. Some mods have a high A/D values and HUGE bombard values for ships. Some have high A/D values and low bombard values for ships. I am trying to figure out the design intent between high A/D vs high/low bombard.

For example, the RARR battleship is 40/26/6; 40/3/6LS. Whereas the CCM battleship is way more modest at 15/14/6; 12/2/3LS. @AnthonyBoscia with the Worldwide mod is kind of in between at 28/24/5; 32/2/3. Then there is the Age of Imperialism mod where the BB (Colorado Class) is 62/40/6; 62/1/4LS with huge HP boost. HP boost makes sense for BB.

I am trying to figure out how and why the AI uses A/D versus bombard and what each method of attack is supposed to represent. What is the purpose of bombard vs a normal attack? Also, if a ship is giving blitz can it attack one turn and bombard another? I don't see blitz used much for ships and to figure out what purpose it could have for ships.

For which type of attack represents torpedos versus guns, this would make a difference for submarines. I noticed in Worldwide that subs have NO bombard. So, I assume bombard was meant to represent cannons/guns in the mod. But then I see that the Age of Imperialsm mod that submarines have minimal A/D value but high bombard. Same with CCM, low A/D higher bombard. So I was all kinds of confused.

 

[Predator145]

I've tried increasing bomber range to 20 max. But testing showed how god-like of control over the AI's territory that gives you. The AI's strat resources can easily be disconnected. Unlike the human player, the AI does not cover them with units. The human would have a couple of flaks over his only oil. I'm experimenting with giving autoproduced AA units the "Terraform" AI strat. That way they will at least try to cover the cratered resource while the real workers repair. 16 range max from stock game IMO is just right for the longest ranged strategic bombers.

I'm still experimenting with lethal land bombard. It's removed for most of the aircrafts. From testing so far the combination of stealth bombard and lethal land bombard for dedicated tactical ground attack aircrafts proves to be extremely strong. You can easily reach in and destroy soft targets like workers, settlers, artillery, aircrafts. Even units with no def value can be lethally bombarded. But it will always take at least 2 bombardments regardless of ROF. And the unit will be treated as if it has 3 HPs. So if a stock game Hwacha bombards a worker it would take 3 hits to kill it even if you can't see the health bar.

With lethal stealth bombard, I was able to pick off AI artillery with a positive KD ratio even though both the defenders and the artillery pieces have token AD value of 1. And with attack aircrafts having their defenses increase as the tech tree progresses, they become stronger in relation to ground units being able to shoot back at them. A lethally bombarding Stuka has 4 def. An A-10 has 8. If you get to the A-10 you're back at the broken stock game situation except now it's even stronger with stealth bombard tripling your hit rate vs cities. So I think I'll restrict lethal land bombard to cruise missiles and gunships (heli and fixed wing). Gunships are expensive and have very low defense value. They are high risk, high reward units. The AI be able to use airpower to neutralize human artillery is a boon and it gets these frail ultra expensive units autoproduced. Fixed wing ground attack aircrafts like the A-10 are strong enough with stealth bombard vs land targets and lethal sea.

I have a carrier strike aircraft line and carrier fighter line. When playing water maps I shall perfume these 2 to be the main air units. Carrier strike aircrafts have more range and bombard value than land based ground attackers. They too have lethal sea. But they don't have stealth bombard. Their niche is being cheaper and carrier-capable.

Ships don't have lethal sea bombard in my mods. Ship lethal sea bombard is 100% risk free and a no brainer. And of course the AI can't use it effectively. Its Dromons would still try to attack your galleys instead of bombarding them.

Perfuming can somewhat reduce the need for autoproduction. But you have to spend quite a bit of time testing to find the correct amount to get the AI to build multiple lines of units. Please share your test results.

To have a city improvement be targeted by sea unit bombardment first, give it that improvement a Sea Bombard value in the editor. This makes them behave like Coastal Fortresses, which get targeted first by naval bombardment. The coast fortress should of course have the highest Sea Bombard value. Don't build coastal fortresses and your harbors will get destroyed by AI warships, blockading your overseas trade and destroying your reputation.

Airmobile infantry are defensive units with 2 movement points and the all terrain as roads+amphibious ability. I use a utility helicopter as most of the graphics and only have the infantry grunt appear as 2nd or 3rd attack. You need to negatively perfume them as 'all terrain as roads' makes the AI love this unit too much.

King units can be upgraded into but not built. Make sure the icon for that unit is after the last unit on the icon sheet (Mobile SAM in stock game). You can have the AI build something with an AI strat flag but use it with another after upgrading into an identical king ability version. I can have for example the AI build cruise missiles with the usual cruise missile strategy flag but upgrade it into an identical cruise missile with the artillery strategy flag. Now the AI tks to Flintlock patch can use that cruise missile unlike in stock game.

 

[Theov]

A line of pirate ships that operate under hidden nationality works well to limit the amount of out of place/ far away settlements.
It also just works well to add some spice to naval play. Meeting pirates is now a real risk throughout the game.
You now have to be careful going around exploring the world, because danger looms around every corner. And I think the discovery of the world is one of the more fun parts of the game.
The AI uses it well, too, I might add.
I havent used or experimented with ATAR or Blitz, stealth attack is interesting, but i barely ever see stacks of ships that are different.
It is not realistic though. If you attack a ship that has an escort, you'd be having dinner in Davy Jones's locker if you'd attack the merchant ship and ignore the escort.

 

[Predator145]

Regarding A/D stats vs bombard: You have to take into consideration land and air units as well. Sea units don't exist in their own world. They bombard land and air targets and get bombarded by them.

You can jack up their A and D stats and make them more resilient to land and air bombard. OK. But that means you'd have to increase their own bombard stat proportionally. This leads to them being stronger in relation to land and air. If you think ships are just too weak in general, you could do that.

You can make them bombard better vs everything. But then this drastically alters gameplay. The AI is already bad at bombarding. Air units are already squishy enough since they often get targeted first and all bombard vs them is lethal. And who needs carriers and airpower when your ships are mini nukes?

Bombard stats are also used in defensive bombard. The higher the base bombard stat, the more it favors the human player who knows how to use SODs that aren't harmless punching bags. Stock game has the frigate's bombard stat at 3 vs 2 def stat. This is where def bombard is the most potent. The AI would still rather attack with the 57.7% odds of losing a HP. I was able to hold off a 3 times as large Deity AI navy with my bombarding band of 6 frigates. Mine mostly bombarded and only fought red-lined stragglers. Theirs were mostly tied to being escorting punching bags.

So in my mod I doubled early sea unit stats. This makes them tougher in relation to land and air. Galleys for example are twice as hard to hit with catapults. Offensive naval units have their base bombard value be 50% of their atk stat like stock game destroyers which I find to be very balanced. And while the early naval units were doubled the industrial ones remain the same. This reduces the huge stat gap.

I'm still not sure about AD value. Since only dedicated naval strike aircrafts have lethal sea bombard I guess I'm just gonna slightly increase it for now. But I'd double it if all air units had lethal sea.

Torpedoes are naval close combat meant to sink ships and can't be used against land targets. Subs need to launch missiles to bombard.

ATR will make a sea unit always move at a multiplied rate set in the editor (default is 3x). So a 2 movement point ship with ATR will in reality be able to move 6 tiles. But if that ship has blitz it would only be able to attack/bombard twice.

 

[SayHayKid]

I have a carrier strike aircraft line and carrier fighter line. When playing water maps I shall perfume these 2 to be the main air units. Carrier strike aircrafts have more range and bombard value than land based ground attackers. They too have lethal sea. But they don't have stealth bombard. Their niche is being cheaper and carrier-capable.

@Predator145 what settings are you using for carriers and naval aircraft units? I read different information on different posts. Some say just remove the load flag from the land based aircraft and they won't be able to load on a carrier. However, I read in another thread that you can still rebase to carrier if you remove the load flag.

So, then the suggestion was to give land based aircraft the Tactical Missile flag. That way they won't be able to load or rebase to the carrier as long as the carrier has only the "Transports Only Aircraft" flag and not the "Transport Tactical Missile" flag.

 

[Predator145]

@Predator145 what settings are you using for carriers and naval aircraft units? I read different information on different posts. Some say just remove the load flag from the land based aircraft and they won't be able to load on a carrier. However, I read in another thread that you can still rebase to carrier if you remove the load flag.

So, then the suggestion was to give land based aircraft the Tactical Missile flag. That way they won't be able to load or rebase to the carrier as long as the carrier has only the "Transports Only Aircraft" flag and not the "Transport Tactical Missile" flag.

I give all non carrier based air units the transport ability of 1 and the abilities "transport only air units" and "transport only foot units". That way they can't be loaded into anything. Nor can they serve as a transport themselves.

 

[tjs282]

I thought the flags needed to be assigned the other way around? That is, if Fighters (and naval bombers?) — but not the heavier Bombers — are intended to be loadable on Carriers, then I should give the Carrier the "Transports only Air/Foot Units" flags, and give the Air-units also the "Foot unit" flag if I want to make them Carrier-capable? Assuming that since the Bombers don't have the Foot-unit flag, they are then prohibited from making Carrier-landings(?).

(Or does the game treat the "Transports only ___ units"-flags using "OR" logic, rather than "AND" logic?)

 

[Predator145]

I thought the flags needed to be assigned the other way around? That is, if Fighters (and naval bombers?) — but not the heavier Bombers — are intended to be loadable on Carriers, then I should give the Carrier the "Transports only Air/Foot Units" flags, and give the Air-units also the "Foot unit" flag if I want to make them Carrier-capable? Assuming that since the Bombers don't have the Foot-unit flag, they are then prohibited from making Carrier-landings(?).

(Or does the game treat the "Transports only ___ units"-flags using "OR" logic, rather than "AND" logic?)

You can do that too. The difference would be on how the AI rates the unit. "Foot unit" is considered a pure positive by the AI while something restrictive like "wheeled" is a pure negative.

I use your method above for my cruise missile carriers. I don't want them to be able to carry aircrafts as in real life aircraft carriers don't launch cruise missiles. Their equipment would clash.

Giving a unit transport capacity and transport limitations that results in them not being able to load anything is a surefire way to prevent them from being loaded.

 

[Brenshar]

2) The second issue is its reluctance to bombard in naval combat. The AI prefers attacking to bombarding. Even if the odds are bad like 50-50 or even worse. I've seen submarines take on full health battleships. The AI would only bombard with really bad attacking odds. By having sea power units that have very low attack but high bombard and defense value you could have the AI use them to soften up your ships before their offensive close combat ships move in. These high defense warships can also be used for escort (they'd still waste their bombard ability though). It's hard flavor wise to come up with a line of ships that has good bombard, high def but low attack though. I guess you could do catapult ships-caravel-ship of the line-ironclad-battleship-fast battleship-missile cruiser line that has very low attack, good def and high bombard and leave the attacking to a separate attacking ship line that does boarding and close up fighting/ramming/torpedoeing like war galley-galleass-frigate-steam frigate-armored frigate-gunboat/torpedo boat-destroyer-stealth destroyer. Perfume/auto production will have to be used to get the AI to produce a mix of both lines.

I have been using this solution, but the AI will sometimes continue taking insane odds. After a game where I watched about a dozen ironclads suicide themselves on a single redlined (otherwise previously well-bombarded) Ironclad, I had to do something about it. I already game ships lethal sea bombard and all had 1 attack strength to incentize bombardment, but the AI doesnt seem to realize that that means they dont need to close in. So I used Quitillius' editor to give them zero attack while retaining their ai naval power strategy.

So that's not a problem anymore, however a big challenge is balancing bombardment strength, as I dont want it too high but strong enough that there's a good chance of one shotting an enemy unit. Currently it sits around a 20% chance of lethal damage, as all ships have - hp until Cruisers and Battleships, this doesnt also mean theyre too powerful against land targets (tile improvements in particular, is a major goal I aim to reduce ease of destroying by all bombardment units). Likewise 40-50% chance of missing the attack entirely means the bombardment isnt too shifted in favour of who ever has the first turn, as first shooters have a big advantage still, but on the otherhand it is a bit annoying that sometimes its really hard to destroy a single naval unit compared to the vanilla forced engagement (also its sad to see naval combat cannonade exchanges go). An important concern though is to try and reduce the effect land artillery bombardment can have on a naval unit, as it shouldnt be so easy to simply redline attacking naval units especially once railways permit rapid artillery redeployment. So a consideration is to reduce naval units hp to just 1 to become immune to land artillery fire, and also reducing naval bombardment strengths further in that case. But its not very aesthetical.

Overall it means naval units are fairly durable, which I think is alright in the end. The introduction of airpower theoretically should shift things towards lethality, but is somewhat balanced by Cruisers and Battleships having more hp as well as fairly good AA values.

8) C3C warships will never hit improvements or pop if there are still units left to bombard. They will hit, sea units first, then air, then land and then improvements/pop. You have the option to include precision strikes. But the AI doesn't know how to use it on sea power units. They only use it on air bombard. So the CMs above could use that. If you like the C3C targeting, you could make your harbors, commercial docks and offshore platforms have low sea def value. This makes them behave like coastal fortresses. They will be targeted first when the AI bombards. That way the AI's otherwise harmless city bombardments would mess with your vital infrastructure and can't be ignored. This will also necessitate coastal fortresses. The coastal fortress should also go obsolete to be replaced by a more powerful industrial version. Or you could just give all naval bombard units the PTW treatment in Flintlock's patch. Or do both and still have them take out your harbor first. I do find C3C targeting to be too strong for softening up units. In the WW2 Pacific scenario, I didn't lose a single marine. But with PTW targeting implemented I was fighting yellow lined units instead of red. And island hopping became a bloody slog as it was in real life.

I just added PTW style bombard to naval units so I haven't experimented with it too much yet, so far I didn't notice anything, I was wondering if PTW bombard only applied to land bombardment units. Conquest bombers appear to already use PTW style bombard. As an aside, I think PTW is a must for in general because it makes any kind of bombard more punishing than just having units absorb all the damage, and the effect of hitting a barracks or harbour can be significant. However the AI still uses Naval bombardment really badly, prioritizing usually the closest target even if there are naval units just a tile further away, but this is something I will be testing further.

A major remaining flaw about ai naval bombardment right now is that they will continue pounding a coastal city even if there is nothing in it, a 1 pop city with no improvements and only redlined units, it is a massive waste, and they do this with land artillery as well. Really it seems like a bug, if you use flintlock's stack bombard it automatically ceases when there are no more hittable targets. Maybe this can be improved by increasing their bombardment and movement range so they can acquire new targets easier. The AI would really benefit from being able to hyperprioritize units.

10) Radar Towers, Outposts and Airfields may need to be removed. These terrain improvements prevent units from other civs from entering. That means unless they have amph. attack, they can't land. The human player can just barricade his entire coastline. This is very cheesy IMO. And the AI can't use outposts. It also can't use radar towers effectively, burning through precious workers while guarding them with a single unit. They don't even guard them with defensive AI flag units. So you end up with offensive units guarding. The human player would simply take it out first. The AI on the other hand, would let the human player often get away with having that 25% boost. Airfields the AI can't use at all. They also mess with the usual air units targeting. The AI also leaves them alone and bombs cities instead. With Airfields near but not next to the coast you can have your maritime strike aircrafts hit the AI fleet while they can't touch you with their warships. Your interceptors also don't get bombed. Without airfields you have to decide where to base your aircrafts. Put them in the cities inland and have less range or coastal for max range but in range of both enemy warships and carrier strike aircrafts?

These are my 10 ideas how to improve stock game's naval experience.

Thanks for taking the time to writing all that up, these are great ideas I will be implementing.

 

[Civinator]

The different settings in the bombardment strength settings in RARR, CCM, AOI and Worldwide belong to the different other settings of those ships in those mods and scenarios. If the defense strength and especially the additional hitpoints are low in such a mod compared to other mods and scenarios (per example in CCM) even less bombardment strength and Rate of Fire is needed to achieve similar results in a battle. As mentioned, higher bombard strength in general favors the human player. It is also an important factor for bombarding improvements on land tiles and of buildings in coastal cities. It is interesting, that the Rate of Fire seems not to be mentioned in this thread, so of course it is a very important factor in the naval settings, too.

In the next version of the CCM mod those settings will come for some kinds of naval units, using the advantages of the Quintillus editor and the Flintlock Mod:

The current setting for submarines in CCM 2.5 with a high bombardment strength and a low attack strength is modified by the Quintillus editor to zero attack strength, but keeping the Naval Power AI strategy, and by the Flintlock Mod to stealth attack bombardment (the stealth attack targets are still set in the old settings of CCM 2.5). This allows that the special ASW settings in CCM 2.5 now can also work for the bombardment attack by submarines.

Different to normal stealth attack settings, in CCM these settings hold a limitation in the attack of submarines, forcing them to deal first with some escorting escort ships before able to attack other ships in a stack.

Per example an attacking era 4 submarine, coming with tech "Stealth" or "Integrated Defense", first has to deal with an era 4 defender coming with tech "The Laser" or "Integrated Defense". Anti-submarine ships in that stack coming with era 4 techs "Cold War", "Miniaturization" or "Combined Arms" are no obstacles for the attack of a submarine with that tech level. Of course anti-submarine ships coming with techs of earlier eras are no obstacles for the attack of such a submarine too.

On the other side, a submarine with an ASW-level of 1, first has to deal with any kind of anti-submarine ships in a stack.

Giving submarines only a bombardment attack of course also causes the danger of the bombardment of land tiles by WW1 or WW2 submarines. In CCM this relatively seldom does happen, as in those phases of the game not so much submarines are existing. In scenarios like SOE, this problem can be limited by the deepwater harbor settings, that are possible by the Quintillus editor, disallowing such submarines to travel (and therefore to bombard) on coastal waters - and if such a land bombardment is still occuring, it was done by board cannon or by a commando landing from the submarine.

Carriers in the next version of CCM will have the zero attack strength settings for their air bombardment component, too.

For amphibious landings the special setting of CCM land terrain and their handicaps, even in CCM 2.5, allow blitz attacks by some units on beaches (and unfortunately on land tiles with roads).

Some naval buildings in coastal cities have a kind of coastal-fortress-setting, so harbors, ports, docks and so on can be endangered by naval bombardment, too. The charm attack setting in CCM at present is not used here, as charm attack will be used for chemical attacks - but at present this is not integrated into CCM yet.