Do you EVER use cruise missiles?

[hbdragon88]

Originally posted by Panda
Cruise missiles must be the most underestimated unit. They are relatively cheap, and their ability to kill city defenderswithout destroying city improvements is awesome.

I prefer launching 20 cruise missiles instead of loosing Modern Armours to Mech Infantry.

I thought that you were supposed to destroy all improvements because it was all the improvements that would cause a city to flip back to the other civ. Or maybe that was only cultural imporvements.

One time I moved a cruise missle into enemy territory. It was most unfortunante that it was without an escort.

Mech Infantry can kill Modern Armor? Arrrrggh! I assigned a city to build Modern Armor over and over again becaues I thought that they were better than Mech Infantry.

 

[Mephisto]

neh, rarely used them. by the time you have cruise missle, you usually have railroad everywhere in your empire. so i usually just use artillery.

 

[Crow T Robot]

I did very much the same thing as others here,with a few exceptions:
a) CM range 6, this was for there to be a reason for those B1-B bombers with a ranger of 8

b) One of the patches made CMs lethal to vessels, so I left them as a sort of landmissle well suited for coastal defense.

c) Added a harpoon missile as a sea launched CM (which it is). This allows you to move CMs continent to continent on transports when you need to, but still allows a deadly sea based missile.

d) Allowed 4 CMs onto Aegis "Cruisers" which are really DDGs - guided missile destroyers.

e)Allow 2 missiles on nuke subs (mix and match harpoons and nukes)

I did not allow CMs onto BBs (Battleships) because in the history of them, are aFEW ever carried CMs and then for a very short period of time; it also allowed for there to be a good reason to build DDGs.

A related mod is to add the Perry Class Frigate and allow it to base 1 Seahawk Helo. Make the Seahawk lethal to ships (they are with their Penguin missiles) and see subs. Using the right flags the helo will base on the carrier or frigate. The frigate is fast enough to keep up with the fleet, generally needs BB protection but can detach and scurry after the odd ironclad etc.

A Frigate and Cruiser (which still looks like a motor yacht to me) can also be an effective patrol force in low intensity areas.

 

[one_man_assault]

Ive come up with an interesting defense theory while thinking about this topic. Dont all modern naval vessels now have missle defence systems of one sort or another? why not simulate that in CIV3 buy first off making a cruse missle an air unit that can move on land and load on cruisers. then make another air unit to intercept theese cruise missles (like the penguian AM in the units fourm somewhere....) make them tactical weapons and intercept but also make them cruise missiles so u cant use them over again.
It will kind of make it even but it should be at a higher price that a regular cruise missle. SO then u can specialize certain vessels to be escorts with missle defense or to be half and half defense and offense or be pure attack ships...although I dont think the feebly intellegent AI will catch on...

 

[philippe]

cruise missiles are good.
get a stack of 50 cruise missiles and even the best defended city will fall

 

[dog]

Originally posted by Crow T Robot
A related mod is to add the Perry Class Frigate and allow it to base 1 Seahawk Helo. Make the Seahawk lethal to ships (they are with their Penguin missiles) and see subs. Using the right flags the helo will base on the carrier or frigate. The frigate is fast enough to keep up with the fleet, generally needs BB protection but can detach and scurry after the odd ironclad etc.

A Frigate and Cruiser (which still looks like a motor yacht to me) can also be an effective patrol force in low intensity areas.

How did you set up the helo (properties and flags) and how did you flag the frigate to carry the Seahawk and not other air units (for the AI)?? Sounds like a cool mod idea.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Do I ever use Cruise Missiles?

NO!!!

 

[philippe]

Ok listen then:a metropolis on a hill surrounded by rivers
with 7 veteran mech infantry in it.
Dont have nukes and your modern armour gets trashed by the mech infa.
solution: :CRUISE MISSILES!!!!!!!
30 cruise missiles do the job then march in and be happy!

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

phillipe: what a waste! bring Bombers!

 

[Evincar]

Originally posted by philippe
cruise missiles are good.
get a stack of 50 cruise missiles and even the best defended city will fall

Give me a stack of 25 veteran MA and even the best defended city will fall. Plus, I'll keep some of them for the next one.

On a more extreme case, give me 10 tactical nukes (same cost) and even the best defended civ will be reduced to dust

 

[Evincar]

Originally posted by philippe


30 cruise missiles do the job then march in and be happy!

Yeah sure. 16 Radar Art also do the job, then you take your armor and there you have, the city is yours. Plus, your tanks get promoted and you may even get a leader! and guess what:

You can take more than one city with them!!

 

[hbdragon88]

Originally posted by Lt. 'Killer' M.
phillipe: what a waste! bring Bombers!

Bombers are good, but only if there are no fighter jets guarding the city or there's no SAM MIssle Batteries. I had a bad experince trying to bomb an English city.

Also bombers don't kill any foot units. I for fun bombed a Mech Infantry and it didn't hurt him enough. And it was a waste of a turn, too.

Yeah, Radar Artillery are good, but are they only for offense?

 

[TheDS]

Effective modding of the Cruise Missile problem does NOT begin with assuming they have greater range than a Bomber, nor fiddling with putting them on Cruisers and Battleships.

You first have to realize that there are three broad types of cruise missiles. Most of you seem to feel the naval cruise missile is the one the Cruise Missile (Tomahawk, Harpoon, Exocet, Penguin...) is modeled after. It's not. The land-based cruise missile is what we've got here (Silkworm, Styx, Scud...) NATO doesn't use a whole lot of purely land-based missiles, they concentrate on multi-platform weapons; stuff that cen be launched from sea, air, or land (mostly air and sea). But there's an awful lot of countries that have land-based systems.

So we can keep the Cruise Missile pretty much as it is, although it does deserve a little more firepower and a range of 3, and we have an effective land-based system.

For our naval missile systems, the change is really really simple: AEGIS cruisers get a bombardment range of 8. When was the last time one of these things fired its gun (GUN, not GUNS!) in a shore bombardment? But you hear of missile bombardment all the time. This even lets you simulate the long ranged missile duels of WW3! All we need now is a different animation for bombardment, and we don't even have to imagine that the gun flash is actually a missile launch. Turn on Lethal Bombardment flags, and it's complete.

Nuclear Subs are fixed in the exact same way: give them a bombardment range of 8, although I tune their power down a touch under that of the Cruiser. All it needs is a new animation, but until then, we can imagine that torpedo is actually a tube-launched missile.

Air-launched weapons are not even a consideration here. Mostly, this is due to the way the game is made, but it's not that important anyway.

One final thing needs to be mentioned about this: Radar Artillery. This is obviously an improvement to the Cruise Missile system, and it likewise deserves to have stats comparable to that of the Cruise Missile. I give it the same bombardment ratings, and a speed of 3, and as with all my land units that have a move of 3 or more, it can blitz. Artillery is finally the deadly thing in-game that it is in real life, and you now realize why we spend so much effort looking for enemy artillery pieces (after we kill all the aircraft).

Next: helos and bombers.

I discovered somethng interesting when I modded Bombers to drop Infantry. (Who bothers to research helicopters and paratroopers?) That thing is: you can't land them on Carriers any more. Why? Because anything that can carry somethng else cannot itself be carried.

(I also found out that if you make a troop drop onto a position that already has an enemy unit on it, you lose the troop.)

So in order to make a helo land on a ship, we have to take away its ability to carry people. Actually, this isn't so bad, now that I think about it. The big bombers couldn't fly off a Carrier any way, and helos are often used to spot and attack enemy subs. Once we make helos powerful enough to do something, now they're worth researching and building.

Of course, now we have the interesting question of how to keep Stealth Bombers off the Carriers. Do we give them the ability to carry a troop? Who says that's a bad idea? There's probably nothing wrong with it; it just hasn't been done, so it sounds strange.

Modern Armor, Mech Infantry, and basic Combat Resolution for hbdragon88:

Any unit can kill any other unit.

Well, bombardment doesn't count, unless you enable lethal bombardment.

Take a look at the numbers used to depict the units' combat strengths. You will see that MA has a higher Offense rating than its Defense rating. The Mech Infantry is just the opposite (but with different numbers). Mech Infantry is good for defending. If you dig him in and put him in a mountain and behind a wall, it might take several MA to dislodge him. Those failing to do so will die. YOu can do the same with an MA and attack it with MI and again, it will take several of them to dislodge him; those that fail will die.

What we learn from all this is that because MA has the best OFF rating, we use it to attack people. Because MI has the best DEF rating, we use it to defend. They're both effective against each other. MA can kill MA more easily than it can MI. MI has a hard time killing other MI.

So we like using artillery and aircraft and naval bombardment to weaken the enemy before we throw our valuable Tanks and IFVs at him. And if we're really good, we kept him from acqiring the tech to build the things in the first place, and kept his economy from being able to support them if he gets it anyway, and kept the necessary resources away from him even if his economy's strong.

It's far more effective to kill units before they're built than after.

 

[Mephisto]

lt. killer: why bomber if you have railroad & artillery?
phillippe: cruise missle? what a waste.

 

[Crow T Robot]

Originally posted by Mephisto
lt. killer: why bomber if you have railroad & artillery?

Precisely. Game-wise even though bombers, arty and CMs are basic bombard units, unmodded each has some degree of uniqueness (aside from ADM and B stats) to lendto the game. Artyon railcan respond fasterthan a bomber, but unmodded (as of one of the patches), the CM was lethal to naval units which is a claim neither arty nor bombers can make.

 

[Crow T Robot]

Originally posted by TheDS
Effective modding of the Cruise Missile problem does NOT begin with assuming they have greater range than a Bomber, nor fiddling with putting them on Cruisers and Battleships.

(etc)

Quite true, but not everyone is after 100% real life accuracy - some just want to make certain things like CMs more useful.

For our naval missile systems, the change is really really simple: AEGIS cruisers get a bombardment range of 8. ... All we need now is a different animation for bombardment, and we don't even have to imagine that the gun flash is actually a missile launch. Turn on Lethal Bombardment flags, and it's complete.

If you make them naval missile transports and stock them with a naval missile as some of have, you dont need a new animation.

I would urge caution in the area of what gets lethal land or sea bombard capabilities though. I made several such mods one in the interest of "realism" and it was really just too much.

 

[Crow T Robot]

Originally posted by dog


How did you set up the helo (properties and flags) and how did you flag the frigate to carry the Seahawk and not other air units (for the AI)?? Sounds like a cool mod idea.

It *is* pretty cool, and they have actually been very handy in a few games because of the geography. This was *part* of extensive mods I did to "fix" the whacked out naval units thing (such as in real life, battleships preceeded destoyers but were not the killer ones we see in the game).

I could go into those, but everyone sort of has their own ideas as to hgow naval units "should" be...

Frigate:
I used the Perry Class Frigate found here in the "Unit Library".
Cost: 14
ADM: 6/8/6 (Make it move as fast as the battleship)
Resources: Oil, Aluminum
Tech: Advanced Flight (useless unit without the helo)
Abilities: Radar, Transports aircraft, Ranged Attack; detect invisible is optional

Seahawk Helo:
Also found here or someone's online CIV web page - It is the White helo, if you are after accuracy.
Cost: 12
ADM: 2/4/1(Range=4), 0 transport
Resources: Aluminum (rubber?)
Tech: Advanced Flight
Missions: Bombing, Recon, Rebase
Strategies: Air Bombard
Abilities: Immobile, Lethal sea

The thing that keeps the standard helo off the carrier (and frigate) is that it carries units (a unit that carries units like the carrier cant carry a unit that carries units like the reg helo).

I was "careful" to balance the abilities of the Seahawk against the Apache helo I added primary as a tank/land unit killer:

Apache Helo:
Cool black helo easily found - prolly here, I forget.
Cost: 12
ADM: 2/4/1(Range=5), 0 transport
Resources: Aluminum, (rubber?)
Tech: Modern Warfare (a tech I added, Rockets or Adv Flight would work)
Missions: Bombing, Recon, Rebase, Air Superiority.
Strategies: Air Bombard
Abilities: Immobile, Lethal land, TACTICAL MISSILE

The Apache can go farther than the Seahawk, is better suited for land warfare than the Seahawk and can do Air Superiority. The TACTICAL missile flag keeps the Apache off the carrier and frigate.
The cost of being lethal to land or sea units should be that you have to build a unit specifically intended for that, IMO.

These both make the reg helo obsolete except for dropping landmines

HTH

 

[unscratchedfoot]

Good idea with the tactical flag on apaches to keep them off the carriers. I'm wondering though, are you sure apaches can't operate from a carrier? I also like the idea of using them as back-up air superiority units, maybe with an attack of 4 instead of 2 though. They can carry a pair of sidewinder missiles from what I've heard. Plus 1 bonus hit point to represent their armour (+2 hp for Mi-24 Hinds).

Apache 4/5/1 range 6 plus 1 bonus hp. Cost 37 (370 shields). Bombard 15 Rof 5 (hellfires are nasty). Flag radar, immobile, lethal land/sea and tactical (for no carrier use) etc. No sea lethality maybe worth considering if carrier use is not allowed. I jacked up the costs/def values on all my jet fighters too for balance. When a fighter meets a fighter the better pilot wins so the attack/def values of fighters should be equal. Try this and you'll have some cool air battles.

As for the perry, I had to change it from transporting 1 air unit to a tactical missile transport because the AI kept flying bombers off them. Can you imagine a bomber flying off of a frigate??? I know we can flag the bombers as paratroop transports to keep them off naval units but I need bombers for carriers. Just the B-52 and Stealth bombers should be tagged as transports to keep them ground-based.

Just some ideas I use. If you want you can try them out.

 

[Shabbaman]

Actually, in almost every pangea-game I've got the idea to build them as defence against enemy ships bombarding my shoreline (as cruise missiles ought to have lethal bombardment against ships, although I've never seen it) because I'm almost weak in the naval department or my ships are on the other side of the world.

But I never build any because the game has ended one way or another (I like to go for the UN-victory, so no warmongering here) On the other hand, I've never seen any battleship even near my territory, so regarding that my fears have yet to be true (this doesn't look as cambridge english to me btw)