Do you use carriers?

[Globex]

I never use carriers because their slow, expensive, and only carry a small amount of bombers/fighters. I usually only use transports and destroyers along with a few battleships for naval combat. I destroy/raze coastal cities with marines so that enemy ships don't have anywhere to go for repairs and bombard my enemy's ships with my destroyers (or artillery and bombers when they get close to my territory). After that, I finish off these damaged, isolated ships with my destroyers/battleships.

Do you use carriers often? If so, how do you use them effectively and what are they good for?

 

[vmxa]

I don't normally use them.

 

[sixtysix]

I use them a fair bit. They're neato!My usual scheme for an invasion of a new continent involves four carriers chock full o' bombers to soften up a costal town, and two marine armies to invade and capture that bombed out town. Then the tanks and arty get to unload ready to blitz on the first turn.

Good times!

Plus there is the benefit that you don't have to worry about loosing your bomber stack to a culture flip. That is painful and sort of makes me sad whe it happens. As long as you have a bunch of destroyers in the stack to soak up damage they'll be nice and safe.

Have I mentioned that carriers are also neato?

 

[anaxagoras]

I love the concept of them, and I used to build them a lot. Now I think they are pretty much just wasteful. The one use for them I still see is to give fighter cover to a transport task force when the invasion crossing is longer than one turn and the enemy has bombers. That's not a common situation.

But I do agree that carriers are neato!

 

[Taras Bulba]

I usually build a few just for looks


but I don't typically find them necessary

 

[Sweetchuck]

My games usually don't go that far into the ages, but when they do - I build a fair amount of them.

When at war, I move them (escorted, of course) up and down the enemy shores and bomb the crap out of everything I can reach.

It's brutal, I tell ya.

 

[Globex]

My games usually don't go that far into the ages, but when they do - I build a fair amount of them.

When at war, I move them (escorted, of course) up and down the enemy shores and bomb the crap out of everything I can reach.

It's brutal, I tell ya.

Couldn't you just build cities on the enemy coast and use them as air bases? It would be cheaper and cities don't have a limit to the number of bombers they can hold.

 

[darski]

I have noticed that the AI seem to like carriers.

I don't use them much but I have been known to use them on occasion.

 

[Globex]

I have noticed that the AI seem to like carriers.

I don't use them much but I have been known to use them on occasion.

I don't think I've ever seen an AI carrier. Off course I think that stems from the fact that I always beat the game before any of the AI gets that far.

 

[Yui108]

I've generally won by the time carriers come :/

 

[damnation]

i dont. besides, most of my wars are right next to me, and i dont create citys away from the homeland. they always fail and then they flip

 

[darski]

It is one of the things I dislike about going for a space win... A lot of stuff happens while waiting for techs and it just goes on and on.

 

[dirtworm]

i tend just to use them in the first landing of an invasion. After that i stack my bombers into one city and then move them out as I take other cities over.

 

[Sweetchuck]

Couldn't you just build cities on the enemy coast and use them as air bases? It would be cheaper and cities don't have a limit to the number of bombers they can hold.

Sure, but you can't move cities around and getting to the enemies coastal cities on a distant continent is tricky.

 

[Argetnyx]

i love carriers. i use them whenever i can get them.

 

[Thorvald of Lym]

Plus there is the benefit that you don't have to worry about loosing your bomber stack to a culture flip.

Typically why I use carriers. When I'm invading an island I use a large-scale blitz strategy, and carriers save time re-basing.

 

[Aabraxan]

It's pretty rare that I build carriers. I usually play continents & start invading the other continent before flight or carriers. So I rarely need carriers.

 

[iambenben]

I use them a lot

 

[timerover51]

Couldn't you just build cities on the enemy coast and use them as air bases? It would be cheaper and cities don't have a limit to the number of bombers they can hold.

I play on a lot of archipelago and continent maps, normally huge, so I find myself using carriers quite a bit. I have modified them in the editor to cary more aircraft and take more damage, and also modified the aircraft to be more effective. Overall, I find them very useful. On a Pangaea map, I would say that they would be less useful, and on smaller maps.

 

[capnvonbaron]

I use them a bunch. Basically the same as others who use them... I have three or four in a battle group... one full of fighters, the others full of bombers. I keep a fighter on air-defense and use the other fighters to recon out ahead to see other ships. If the enemy is sending naval units to intercept, I see them first and use bombers to bomb them down to redline (at which point they turn back to port rather than attack my battle group). In that way, I always reach the enemy continent with full health navies. With carriers, I can take the typically annoying enemy navy and make it completely ineffective. Saves the time and energy of having to rebuild ships that the enemy sinks.

Once you get to the coast, turn all the fighters to air defense and use the bombers to wreak havoc on the enemy's resources and units. I find the fighter cover is essential when the enemy has air defenses. You can park the carrier next to a newly conquered city and it's fighters on air defense will provide cover for the city and surrounding tiles.