Essays on the proper Use of the Navy

[EKikla20906]

Ok I am a big Naval fan, of all Naval stratagies and in CIV IV the Modern Era in Particular. Both my parents are Retired Naval offivers - 0-6 and 0-5, and as the stratagy buff that I am I am always trying to develope or learn new stratagies for the use of my Navy in Civ IV.

Like it or not - on a map such as Continetns or Archipelego the Navy is one of the most important branches of your Armed forces. Even on maps like Tarea or Pangea the Naval Branch can - if you let it - play a criticaly effective role in your operations - offensive in Particular. Reading up on some of the forums here many people, at least many new people, do not understand the true potential of the Naval forces. So without further interuption I shall begin my essay on my personal Naval Stratagy in the Modern Era.




As I have previously stated, the Navy is one of the most potent and versatile forces in your Military. I usualy play on Maps like COntinent, Tarea, or Archipelgo, so my Stratagy revolvles around that landscape.

One of the worst things you can do to your navy is put them on a purly defensive role. Your on maps like Archipelego or Continents your Navy should be the center of Production. Your Navy should be strong enough to always conduct offensive operations. Your Navy should Always be attacking your enemies in war, and prepared to attack them in peace. You Should have the Ability to Isolate enemy colonies, islands, and allies, from reinforcing eachother. With such done even a realtivly small Military can take on an enemy or enemies piece by piece. Absolute Control of the waters is a crucial advantage in winning against a powerful enemy.

The Naval offensive capabilities revolve around the Carrier. No other unit in the game has the mobility or strike range of the Carrier, and yet time after time I see newer players neglecting the Carriers and using them for minor and unworthy duties of Costal Protection, Fleet Protection, and Reconnisance. This is mainly because they fail to biuld the Carrier Strenght required to conduct worthwhile offensive operations.

My Navy has 3 branches: The independants (Destroyers and Battleships roaming alone on the open sea), The Sub Corps (again independant), and the Carrier Battlegroup. While the first 2 branches of the Navy maintain my Nations control over the high seas, the 3rd is strictly used to harras and destroy the enemy on his own turf.

The Traditional Carrier Battlegroup is made up of 2-4 Carriers with full Fighter Compliment and Destroyer and battleship escort. Realize that 4 carriers put 12 fighters are your disposal, a very larger amount of firepower. These Battlegroups roam there apropriat stations around the worls. Typicaly I would have 4 or more Battlegroups to roam to cover the four corners of the worls. With such broad Naval cover I can begine offensive operations in as short a span as the very turn war begins. But at the most 5 turns. Also with 7-8 Carrier Battlegroups I can divert more Carriers to aid the first Battlegroup, perhaps raising its Carrier strenght thoe 8 or even 12 carriers, enough to cover the widest Coast and destroy interior recourses in a very short amount of time.

12 Carriers parked on an enemies coast can deprive said enemy of most or perhaps all of his Natural recourses in a matter of 2-4 turns. Think of it - 36 fighters just continusly strafing and enemy country side. They will destroy farms, mines, plantations, windmilles, cottages, towns, villages, windmills, literal obliterate said nations infastructure and economy and starve out its population. 36 fighters will reduce enemy cities defensive bonuses and huge stacks of troops even before you can begin to mount a ground offensive.

If your enemy chooses not to beg for peace you can use your Navy to mount a seaborn assualt on Enemy territory. The Advantage of such an Assault in unpredictability. With conventional land assaults you have to cover your own territory and may only have a narrow area of assault. With a seaborne assault and aide of Naval Airpower you can choose to land your assault where the enemy is weakest, or strongest, depending on your stength. The Coast of an enemy, traditionaly, is larger that the corridor of attack factoring in Diplomatic and Natural limitations of you ground forces, thus the Enemy can not cover all its shoreling in strenght.

My personal stratagy takes the shape of a two-pincerd Blitzkrieg. Land tactics dictate that if I hold the center of the enemies territory, then they can not quickly mobailise and link up there Military forces. Hence when I attack I have two large forces, one seaborne carried on the backs of Marines and Armour, driving headlong for whatever target I may deem to be military value. Depending on where there recourses and the position of the capital I can drive these troops straight up the coast or directly in land while taking the Capital. At the same time I launch my offensive by land overwhelming even the stronges defenses. But I digress. You may decide what stratagy you like to destroy your enemy. The main point of my discourse is to illustrate the increadible important of the Navy.

Regards,

 

[theimmortal1]

The only map that you truly need a navy is one with many islands.

All the main maps besides archipelago you do not need a navy in any era.




All you have to do is have loads of transports and a couple escorts. Get at the border of your enemy. Declare war, on that turn go to the coast, unload your troops. And you are there.

 

[EKikla20906]

Ahh the Narrow minded.


Firs of all you just completely cut out an entire point from your thought process, quick response. Perhaps it is my fault that I did not illustrate the point properly, but if you can understand what I did write you would know that quick response is one of the many advantages and central pillars of my Naval stratagy.

Surly you have been in a war where nothing happend? Fighting someone on the other side of the continent and to busy to send a sizable force? Or you do decide to send a force, but it takes you 20 turns to raise and deploy these troops. Hardly an effective or efficient war fighting or general foriegn policy stratagy.


Certainly you can spend the turns and man power cranking out land units and a few transports, then deploy them, on demand. Wouldn't be that great though. The glory of Carriers is it gives you that offensive capability right off the bat. How many tanks do you think your enemy will produce in that 20 turn timespan that it takes you to attack? How many infantry regiments will it raise unoposed before even the weakest attempts of an offensive?

Mobile and Quick response on near any map is the foundation of the Naval advantage. And only the narrow minded village idiot - someone who couldn't poor piss out of a boot with instruction written under the heel - could possibly fail to realise the advantage of a Navy if not implement it.

Civ IV is a rather easy game to play, even on the hardest levels want you have the foundation down its easy sailing. Thats why instead of using the time-tested dumb stratagies of just simple attacking with suppieror forces or loading some troops on a transport and shipping them off for some raid, the player must develope smart stratagies to enhance his own gaming expierience. Instead of playing to win, it is the players job to play to win at the lowest cost to himself. Sure you can go the easy way. Raise your army and attack, but its the truly smart strategens that actualy use stratagy in destroying an enemy, and not just proclaim himself an expert because he beat some pee-brained AI in a biulding contest.

 

[yavoon]

if by proper use u mean the most efficient way to win the game using naval units then that is build lotsa transports, sit outside ur opponents territory and then go in on the turn u declare.

 

[EKikla20906]

if by proper use u mean the most efficient way to win the game using naval units then that is build lotsa transports, sit outside ur opponents territory and then go in on the turn u declare.

LOL!?!?!?!? You said efficient right? What can be more inefficient that having dozens of ground forces vulnerable, isolated, and doing nothing but waiting for a war to break out only to be sent in unsipported? Think of it. I'm just going to position then 30 or so units on transports and wait for a war to break out? God how shallow are you guys here?

The easy way is to do what you illustrated. But if you do everything in Civ IV the easy way the game will quickly loose its playable value. Rather try to invent plausible real-life stratagies and challenge yourself rather than an inmmobile idiot AI playin Cannon fodder.

 

[yavoon]

LOL!?!?!?!? You said efficient right? What can be more inefficient that having dozens of ground forces vulnerable, isolated, and doing nothing but waiting for a war to break out only to be sent in unsipported? Think of it. I'm just going to position then 30 or so units on transports and wait for a war to break out? God how shallow are you guys here?

The easy way is to do what you illustrated. But if you do everything in Civ IV the easy way the game will quickly loose its playable value. Rather try to invent plausible real-life stratagies and challenge yourself rather than an inmmobile idiot AI playin Cannon fodder.

this isnt real life. if u think its the easy way to play then move up ur difficulty level. playing artificially bad and blaming other ppl for not doing the same is a little bit of a head scratcher of a tactic.

 

[EKikla20906]

this isnt real life. if u think its the easy way to play then move up ur difficulty level. playing artificially bad and blaming other ppl for not doing the same is a little bit of a head scratcher of a tactic.

The AI is strategicaly inept on every level of difficulty. The only way for it to gain an advantage is through production or technology. Other than that it can't plan an offensive or any grand stratagy. You Can. Most of the people who skulk around the Stratgy forum want to exercise an actual stratagy. The AI may be stupid. That doesn't mean we have to be.

 

[yavoon]

The AI is strategicaly inept on every level of difficulty. The only way for it to gain an advantage is through production or technology. Other than that it can't plan an offensive or any grand stratagy. You Can. Most of the people who skulk around the Stratgy forum want to exercise an actual stratagy. The AI may be stupid. That doesn't mean we have to be.

making up a complicated strategy does not mean it is the most efficient way to win the game. if u want to fantasize about interesting ways to use carriers thats cool. just dont expect me to be wowed by u toying around w/ the computer in lategame.

 

[EKikla20906]

Look If you choose to be a simpleton and degrade yourself to the level of the AI thats fine. I'm just presenting a thread for those of us, if there are any, who actualy challenge themselves with intellectual stratagies vice the rather Barbaric and dumb 5 infantry will kill 2 Marines aproach to the Game.

I mean seriously Don't you think theres something wrong with the fact that over 5000 years of development your war fighting stratagy does not change at all? I mean the game attempts to open up new demensions in war fighting with Airpower and quick redeployment of troops using Airports, new importance on the ocean as the world becomes more globalised, Carriers, Tanks, ICBMS, all these new technologies literaly creat entire new demensions in war and all it takes is just a little trial and error. Its a serious pity that people like you just refuse to change and stratagy, tactics, emphasis or objective, in the entire development of you Civilization.

 

[Vietcong]

i build tuns of subs to pic off loan ships. ill have more subs then any thing.

im, more a fan of icbms. ill build 20 of them and then let them losse.
whats the point of haveing any millitary, aslong as u have icbms.

 

[yavoon]

Look If you choose to be a simpleton and degrade yourself to the level of the AI thats fine. I'm just presenting a thread for those of us, if there are any, who actualy challenge themselves with intellectual stratagies vice the rather Barbaric and dumb 5 infantry will kill 2 Marines aproach to the Game.

I mean seriously Don't you think theres something wrong with the fact that over 5000 years of development your war fighting stratagy does not change at all? I mean the game attempts to open up new demensions in war fighting with Airpower and quick redeployment of troops using Airports, new importance on the ocean as the world becomes more globalised, Carriers, Tanks, ICBMS, all these new technologies literaly creat entire new demensions in war and all it takes is just a little trial and error. Its a serious pity that people like you just refuse to change and stratagy, tactics, emphasis or objective, in the entire development of you Civilization.

ur a piece of work. the point of strategy isnt to impress ur own ego w/ the aesthetics or complication of what u have thought up. its to win the game.

and like I said, this isnt real life.

 

[Spartan117]

i build tuns of subs to pic off loan ships. ill have more subs then any thing.

im, more a fan of icbms. ill build 20 of them and then let them losse.
whats the point of haveing any millitary, aslong as u have icbms.

you need to have units to mop up cites and whatever damage units there are



"it is the players job to play to win at the lowest cost to himself"

a very true statement, you cant have too many wars when you carelessly sacrifice units or expect to win...every thing is about efficiency

people dont use the navy correctly and there are so many advantages to using all the dimensions of warfare

but having that large of groups as in your strategy is expensive to maintain...and so is having transports outside cities with troops..



you should play realism mod..they have new units called strike fighter, can load on carrier, has no collateral damage, but can destroy units completely, and has no intercept ability..in the mod the carriers carry 5 aircraft and nuclear carriers carry 8.. submarines have bonues when attacking battleships and transports..they alos included an AEGIS cruiser, nuclear submarines..not to mention the a ship of the line and privateer for earlier ages..

i havent played vanilla civ for months now.. and with realism mod one such as yourself can use these additions to expand the importance of a navy and this could really heighten the types of strategies you can now implement

they are also going to add naval ships that are capable of bombarding coastal tiles and such

 

[alpha wolf 64]

there are ships in civ4????? get outtttttttttttttttttt.....LOL

I'll build ships to try to get the circle the globe bonus, then transports with a few escorts when I've secured my continent. As is, the ships in Civ4 are useless since I cant set them out as sentries unless I want to look at each and every one every turn to maybe spot an invasion fleet. But since its very easy to move right thru the LOS of a ship in a single turn, its not worth the maint costs to maintain any sizeable navy. Plus each ship is a land unit that could be used in actual battle. Fishing ships are cheap to replace so not even that is worth building a ship to defend.

All that said, I did once build a 6 transport fleet with BB and CV escorts and sent it after India who was alone on a continent. I took an isolated city, then used the fleet to bombard and invade/raze the next city up the coast. Unfortunately, they only had 5 decent coastal cities, so after the last one was razed, I landed the troops in a strategic location and scuttled the fleet to save maint costs, since I had airports back home airlifting in troops each turn. Now IF you could only airlift from airport to airport, then a navy would be useful longer. But they've castrated the naval abilities too much to justify ship costs. They really need to bring back the ability to bombard units and improvements.

 

[Spartan117]

people may have had experiences in which they do not neceassarily need a strong navy to complete their objective, but however using a nvay properly can greatly increase the effectiveness of your campaign..

 

[ainwood]

Moderator Action: EKikla20906 - please do not flame and insult people.

Warned.
Please read the forum rules: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=422889

 

[Sam_Yeager]

From my point of view the issue with this thread is that it only talks about strategies for using the navy in the modern era. What would be far more helpful would be some strategies that could be used in earlier ages.

In the early game you only have workboats and galleys. After Optics you finally get an ocean going vessel, the caravel, but it can't pillage or carry troops. It's not until mid game that frigates and galleons become available.

In other words for the bulk of the game players will only have galleys, caravels, frigates and galleons at their disposal. So what is really needed are ideas on how best to use these units.

 

[Jorunkun]

Oi, folks, why is everybody so quick to dis the OP? I for one really enjoyed this thread - because I do tend to neglect the navy unless playing archipelago and actually learned something about the potential of carriers, but even more so because here is someone who is passionate about a particular (peculiar?) way of playing our favorite game. And has taken the time to put this into writing. Better than the umpteenth essay on the relative merits of specialist economy for sure ...

So yes, it may be more cost effective to play a straight naval assault, rely on superior force and AI ineptitude ... but setting up a strong carrier force and dealing a crippling blow to the AIs infrastructure before landing your forces sounds like a lot of FUN to me - and isn't this why we play this game after all?

So: Thanks, good post.

J.

 

[AljayBoy]

While carriers filled with fighters seems a good idea for pillaging the enemy landscape prior to an assault I mainly use carriers and their fighters to soften up other ships before an attack.

I also go for the old 'lots of transports filled with tanks, marines n infantry' plan, with a moderate esort size, then take the first coastal city on the turn you declare. At most I soften up that city from carrier fighters, after that you just move all your bombers/stealth bombers there and you have a greater range and power than the fighters from your carriers.

Plus most of the time im not interested in pillaging the countryside of my enemy as that would mean i'd have to rebuild it once I have defeated him

 

[uberfish]

I don't understand the transports only mentality, the "cost saving" of not building any ships is an illusion. Even on pangaea. Ignoring the carrier discussion, because it's irrelevant what age you're in, or whether you're playing SP or MP:

1) losing all your sea resources wreaks havoc with a finely tuned economy and they are annoying to rebuild after every war

2) if you have a weak navy, you can't stop enemy transport landings and need to maintain a sizable land defensive army. Which isn't cheap either.

3) sending some units by sea is faster than going by land since you don't have to slog through hostile culture at 1 move/turn. Good for opening up a second front once the enemy units are committed at one end.

 

[AljayBoy]

Yeah well you build some defensive ships to alert you to enemy invasion and even if you don't manage to destroy all the enemy transports you can organise your defensive forces to counter.

There aren't really that many sea resources that have that much of an influence, and all you need to do is spend 1 turn building a workboat for each resource you lost which means a maximum of, what, 5 or 6 turns? 1turn per resource or have 5 or 6 coastal cities spend the same 1 turn building the workboat.