Dromon more powerful than BB?

[Dida]

I was playing a game using Byzantine, and I found out its UU, the Dromon is incredibly pwoerful. The only sea unit able to have bombard ability in the ancient age.
What is really stupid though, Dromon has lethal sea bombardment, while our all powerful Battleships don't. This means a few shot of greek fire might indeed send our BB to the buttom of the ocean while BB's big gun cannot destroy the ancient age ship??? This made no sense. Battleships should definitely have lethal sea bombardment, especially if Dromon has it.

 

[Longasc]

Makes sense... would also give Battleships an Edge over Destroyers and Cruisers, but well... playbalance?

I am not absolutely sure if it would really be a good idea, but I agree with you, it makes more sense.

 

[Dida]

Now bombers have lethal sea bombardment, it pretty much made ships even more useless. We should make cruisers and battleships both lethal sea bombard, this will help differentiate those heavy warships from destroyers, who are mainly for escort and anti sub purposes.

 

[Gengis Khan]

I don't see how giving bombers leathal bombardment made navy more useless, maybe if you play nothing but Pangeas.

Now you need a way to get those fighters/bombers over to the enemy, and a way to protect them. The only way to do that is with a strong Navy.

 

[Chieftess]

Originally posted by Dida
Now bombers have lethal sea bombardment, it pretty much made ships even more useless. We should make cruisers and battleships both lethal sea bombard, this will help differentiate those heavy warships from destroyers, who are mainly for escort and anti sub purposes.

Why do you think Aircraft Carriers became the rules of the sea?

 

[The Last Conformist]

Does the AI use the bombard ability of the Dromon on naval targets? It never seems to with BBs, which is part of the reason I don't think BBs should have LSB.

 

[Dida]

You had a good point. The AI doesn't seem to be able to handle LSB at all. If we give BB or other ships LSB, it will likey be an easy exploit for the human player.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Who cares about bombard? If a dromon attacks a battleship, it will most likely lose. I've never seen the AI use bombard.

 

[general_kill]

Originally posted by Smellincoffee
Who cares about bombard? If a dromon attacks a battleship, it will most likely lose. I've never seen the AI use bombard.

Thats not the point. Its not about head to head attacking each other they are talking about, they are talking about 3-5 dromons bombing a battle ship to death because of the lethal sea bombardment. I was actually suprised that the battle ship does not have lethal bombardment because: 1. I never bombard with bb because i rather land a few arties or use air support. 2. if i wanted to kill a ship, instead of wasting 3-5 bbs with a possibility of missing the ship i'm bombing, i would use the battle ship's nature high attack point to kill the other ship with my 1 bb.

 

[nullspace]

A Dromon's lethal sea bombard isn't a big deal. If something is down to 1 hp, you might as well just attack it to finish it off. The only advantage of bombarding is that there's no chance of taking damage in the fight.

A BB has defense strength of 12, and a Dromon has a bombard rating of 2. Therefore, a bombarding Dromon has a 1 in 7 chance of knocking off a hp. So on average, it would take 28 Dromons to bombard a veteran BB to death. You'd have to build a whole lot of Dromons before they go obsolete to take advantage of this. And then keep them alive until BBs show up, and keep them all in a big stack and pay maintenance every turn. It doesn't seem very practical . On the other hand, the Dromon does have a really high bombard/shield cost, even compared to modern ships. I guess they could be useful finishers if you REALLY want to finish off an enemy by bombarding instead of attacking.