Essays on the proper Use of the Navy

[Petrucci]

I'd also like to mention a great strategy i have been using. Which is to assult and raze a rival civ's coastal cities, even razing 4 cities on their cost, it pretty much kills that civ's hope of trying to compete with me. Very good for a civ that is competeing for space race on the opposite continent. I find having at least a moderate naval fleet being able to transport 12 units very handy.

I also have to mention that I would never sacrifice a navy and basically give up my coast to any maniac civ who would like to raze food resources or land their troops on my coast.

 

[EKikla20906]

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

I didn't insult him. I gave him every option in what labeling he preferd.

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?

Finaly someone who agrees with me.

What would be far more helpful would be some strategies that could be used in earlier ages.

The reason why I choose the Modern era is because all the other eras are 1 dimensional. Its all surface warfare but once you get in the modern era you can fit stratagy to recourse as efficiently as possible.

 

[theimmortal1]

Guys we need to remember the point is to win the game.


1. Now the best games, are the ones that do not even enter modern era. You don't get a huge score by getting a domination victory in the 1980's.

2. If you are in the modern era, you should be going for a type of victory. Frankly, that late in the game, military might is used to guide you in your victory course. IE: take land to help with diplomatic or slow down your opponents ship. But if you make the huge navy as the OP suggested you are slowing down your own spaceship.



Now most importantly, if for some reason you do need a war of conquest/domination in the modern era, you want to be able to do it the most efficient/fastest way possible. The goal in this game is to win as fast as possible with the highest score possible. Not to simulate real life. If it was real life we could never raze a city in the modern era.



Therefore, in order to win the fastest and most decisive war in the modern era, the navy is a hinderance. Why? Because they do not help you take cities.

Ill explain:

You have two possible scenarios

Scenario 1..which would follow the OP plan You have a bunch transports with your stack of doom. Tons of carriers and fighters. And a few destroyers to escort. You get outside your enemies cultural borders, declare war and position your stack. You fly your planes in to bombard the city and hurt its stack. Many of the planes get shot down however. You use your arts to finish the rest of the cultural defenses and for collateral damage. You finish the city with minimal casualties. Now you have one pretty good stack on the other continent? What do you do? You don't have a big enough stack to continue with your raid. You have to wait for reinforcements. Takes time...Your planes will help if the enemy sends stacks to take back his city, but again they are going to get shot down. If you hold your city it will take ages to continue your assault

Scenario 2, efficient way to win

You make tons of transports all filled. You do this by not having the carriers/fighters. You still should have a few escorts just in case. You go to your enemies cultural borders, declare war. You place your 3-4 big stacks. You go to two of his cities. Use your arts of cultural defense and as collat damage. You take his cities. Then you fly the planes you've been building in your home continent to this continent you are invading So now all of a sudden, at the same point in time as scenario 1, you have 3x more invading units, and now they have aerial support.[/b]

Now the only time a huge navy is needed is if you are in a war which involves many invasion points while at war. In other words your ships may be attacked during wartime. If you are the aggressor and you set the terms of war, your ships are relatively safe.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

Guys we need to remember the point is to win the game.

Silly me, I thought the point was to enjoy the game.

Two interesting discussions using a navy in Civ 4:

Sirian's Binding of the Three - very late domination featuring a modern navy and "the Sirian Doctrine".

Sulla's Rise of the Inca - wooden navy tactics.

 

[yavoon]

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.

annoying to rebuild is hardly a strategic reason to build a giant navy.

 

[yavoon]

Silly me, I thought the point was to enjoy the game.

Two interesting discussions using a navy in Civ 4:

Sirian's Binding of the Three - very late domination featuring a modern navy and "the Sirian Doctrine".

Sulla's Rise of the Inca - wooden navy tactics.

I believe in talking about strategies the point is to win. if u preface ur post by saying "this may be ineffective but I enjoy watching the pretty lights" then u will save urself from all responses from the group of ppl who play strategy games to win.

 

[VoiceOfUnreason]

this may be ineffective but I enjoy watching the pretty lights

Ineffective is not a word that leaps to mind when contemplating the tactics used by Sirian and Sulla. Your mileage may vary, of course.

 

[EKikla20906]

Guys we need to remember the point is to win the game.

Any idiot can win Civiliaztion IV. The Secret is not all that hard to find: Outproduce your enemy in Tech and Procution and your going to win. Not that fun just pushing buttons and letting the turns pass by.

I believe in talking about strategies the point is to win.

Yeah but winning ain't fun if your not challenged. Ever here of House Rules? For instance in the Game Rome Total War the AI is so bad that you have to impose your own rules on yourself to level the playing field. These limitations force you to inovate with then makes the game more complex and enjoyable.

the group of ppl who play strategy games to win.

If you consider Vanilla Civ IV a real stratagy game then you are sadly mistaken. Look at all real life stratagies and not some Arcade style click-war. Then use what you have learned from history to make your game more enjoyable.




I guess tactical board games are the only way to get a challenge in this world.

 

[yavoon]

Any idiot can win Civiliaztion IV. The Secret is not all that hard to find: Outproduce your enemy in Tech and Procution and your going to win. Not that fun just pushing buttons and letting the turns pass by.




Yeah but winning ain't fun if your not challenged. Ever here of House Rules? For instance in the Game Rome Total War the AI is so bad that you have to impose your own rules on yourself to level the playing field. These limitations force you to inovate with then makes the game more complex and enjoyable.



If you consider Vanilla Civ IV a real stratagy game then you are sadly mistaken. Look at all real life stratagies and not some Arcade style click-war. Then use what you have learned from history to make your game more enjoyable.




I guess tactical board games are the only way to get a challenge in this world.

move up ur difficulty level.

 

[Wodan]

Guys we need to remember the point is to win the game.

Actually, I think they have it right when they said the point is to have fun.

That said, losing is a serious downer.

Wodan

 

[EKikla20906]

move up ur difficulty level.

That does nothing. All it does is make it harder for the player to get his feet on the ground. Its harder to research technologies, its harder to keep your people happy, things like that. The AI is physicaly incapable of striking you where you know you are weakest. THe AI can not develope a grand stratagy. It does not have the gift of foresight. All it will do is respond to what you do. If you keep it happy and stay ahead of it culturaly it will do nothing to prevent you from winning a culural victory.

 

[yavoon]

That does nothing. All it does is make it harder for the player to get his feet on the ground. Its harder to research technologies, its harder to keep your people happy, things like that. The AI is physicaly incapable of striking you where you know you are weakest. THe AI can not develope a grand stratagy. It does not have the gift of foresight. All it will do is respond to what you do. If you keep it happy and stay ahead of it culturaly it will do nothing to prevent you from winning a culural victory.

it requires u to expell the chaffe from ur strategies and only use that which is most effective. it will be a good experience for u in what is the point of making strategies.

 

[EKikla20906]

Don't be so narrow minded. It causes you a lot of pain while biulding your empire and once its developed the difficulty doesn't change strategicaly.

 

[yavoon]

Don't be so narrow minded. It causes you a lot of pain while biulding your empire and once its developed the difficulty doesn't change strategicaly.

like I said, move up ur difficulty. it will cause u to stop doing the stupid things ur doing now and start doing things that actually work. which is the whole point of strategy anyway.

 

[ownedbyakorat]

The only use I've found for a navy is to take out enemy ships. If the AI doesn't make ships that can threaten you, making your own is just a waste.

 

[EKikla20906]

Ok. I'm going to end this off topic discusion once and for all. If you do not have a Naval Stratagy or an Idea for one or constructive Critisim of mine then cut the crap and stop posting. I'm not here to discuss one way of gaming to another. For those of you who like stratagy and inovating your own personal stratagy, welcome and please share your ideas. For those of you who just spam units and call that winning you are not welcome so please leave this thread.

 

[yavoon]

Ok. I'm going to end this off topic discusion once and for all. If you do not have a Naval Stratagy or an Idea for one or constructive Critisim of mine then cut the crap and stop posting. I'm not here to discuss one way of gaming to another. For those of you who like stratagy and inovating your own personal stratagy, welcome and please share your ideas. For those of you who just spam units and call that winning you are not welcome so please leave this thread.

maybe if u thought up an idea that actually helped ppl win games and wasn't u toying around in the modern era w/ an inferior AI because u think thats how it looks in real life, ppl would be more impressed.

and I believe we should reserve words like innovation for ppl who think up things that actually help win games, not for ppl who imagine complicated and ineffective ways of deploying massive amounts of hammers.

 

[OceansEleven]

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.

That is a pretty dumb idea... What if there is a huge load of units coming in to attack you, right on the border of your city and someone elses city? If you want to launch a nuke and mess up your Empire, and somebody else's and get declared war on maybe, then go ahead. It's a stupid idea. I barely ever use nukes unless I'm really down in the military, need to declare war, and if the SDI hasn't been built yet. And if you launch a lot, global warming is a pain. I launched 2 nukes the other day, and I got 3 global warrmings by me. Plus, other Civs would start hating you if you launched some at their friend.

And yeah, I agree that your Navy is really, really important when it comes to maps like Pangea (the only I usually play). The AI always has Galleys/Transports or whatever come in a drop some units, or a lot of units (near the end of the game). If you can't defend that atleast, you have a weak Navy. If you have a good navy (doesn't have to be HUGE), you can not only defend but go and kill theirs, bombard their defenses, kill their improvments, and send troops in too. If you're looking to wipe out a civ., they might have a city on a small island. How else are you going to kill them? And what if they're positioned where you can't get to (no open borders to someone), but they could send units to you?

 

[SpriteSODA]

EKikla20906, your strategy is a real life warring strategy and for those purposes its great, but for this game, its just toying. If you complain about inferior AI, play multiplayer. Im sure that your strategy wont help you much vs a human opponent simply because the game doesnt work like real life.

 

[Betafor]

This topic is getting out of hand-

The game is about having fun. For some, winning always = having fun. For some, pulling off a hard slingshot = fun. For some, having the game emulate the real world is fun.

the game is not perfect. It is not perfectly realistic. No game is. And as such, things that work in the real world may or may not work here.

For those of you telling the OP to be quiet because the strategy isn't the most efficiant - stop. You are assuming that all the OP wants to do is win the best/fastest way = fun. I know this, because one of my parents plays CIV4. She plays warlord difficulty, and has a blast. You wouldn't berate a lady for playing on the 5 cent poker table when she could be risking it all in the pros! Similarly, don't berate a person who plays at the style he wants, at the difficulty he wants, in a SINGLE player game that does not affect you. I'm not comparing the OP to my motherP), I'm telling you to not force your "win best way=fun" idoloitry onto people who won't accept it.

To the OP - This is a strategy forum. Simple as that. Your strategy, however fun it may be, is not the "most efficiant" way to win in the game. Why? Because we have already established that the game does not reflect what should happen. The game is flawed. Navy does have a more important role in the real world. HOWEVER - do not let this stop you from using the strategy. You are a person that does not have fun simply massing units and attack. I'm like you - everyone may think i'm a nub for never playing with barbs, but i beleive the game should be country vs country, not unit vs unit. I have fun playing no barbs, and no amount of speech from anyone else will make me use them unless i want to. Because it's not THEIR way to play(most strategy forums for games are based on winning soley at highest diff w/ highest score), its best not to profess the strat in THEIR turf, if you know what i am saying.

Now, this thread is cluttered with arguement. Can a moderator delete any non-constructive posts and put the topic back on track?