(IS THIS A BUG?) Stealth Destroyer won't defend carriers and transports

[DemonMaster]

And Cavalry, make horsemeat of the steed and give the guy a helicopter licens, Voila a gunship, very logical. I wonder if he will miss his old friend or does he just eat his horsemeat sandwich with joy.

 

[jkp1187]

Then again, there's still the inherent paradox of naval ships in Civ, where you build lots of large, expensive ships (Battleships and CG's) as your primary naval force, with only a few small ships (Destroyers or DDG's) for support roles and air defense... the quantities are reversed from real life, where in actuality it's the cruisers that you have only a few of for anti-missile and other anti-air defense, a few carriers, and most of the fleet is comprised of Destroyers or the future LCS's. Hmm... I wonder if there's a way to reverse that...

I think the only way would be to permit lethal bombardment of naval units (and only naval units, not land units -- that would be too unbalancing,) for certain air units -- like a promotion available after Combat I or something of that nature. Then players would be forced to stack their fleets with destroyers and CVA's to intercept air attack from their expensive capital ships.

 

[Thalassicus]

Guided Missiles actually do in fact have lethal bombarment, but are non-interceptable and one-shot. The lack of capability to reliably defend against naval attacks during someone else's turn is what has bothered me the most in this game. Transports can run right past your fleet and land without a way to stop them. Carriers will sit there and die to 1 destroyer rather than scramble their planes to kill the destroyer. It's partially due to the problem of it being a turn-based game without zones of control... and the movement speed of modern ships (around the same speed, or slightly faster than of 6-tile move horses on a road at 10knots), is 1/3 that of real life (30 knots). Precombustion ships have accurate speeds compared to horses, but moving ships around is excruciatingly slow in the modern era.

Likewise, Carriers cost much less than Missile Cruisers and Destroyers, and Battleships only cost 225 versus 200 for a Destroyer. Why build more than 1 destroyer for sub spotting when Battleships are dirt cheap?

Naval warfare is somewhat more accurate with guided missiles, but still very lacking. There's no strategy to unit construction or combat, you just build massive amounts of the most powerful ships available, lots of expensive Battleships and Cruisers for the main bulk of your fleet, with small ships as auxiliaries, rather than the other way around and having capital ships as flagships of a fleet of smaller craft.

Sure it's just an abstract game and a simulator, but it could at least feel a little more real... something I'm working on in my spare time. *shifty eyes*

 

[bmarnz]

You could make capital ships national units and limit the number you can build.

 

[Thalassicus]

Oooo... very, very intriguing idea...national units... *ponders*

Hmm... I wonder if it's possible to have the limit altered ingame. You could have a base limit, increasable by constructing certain buildings... What would you think good limits would be? Thinking over some BTS naval warfare I've been doing in my current games, possibly 20 battleships / missile cruisers, 10 stealth destroyers, 10 carriers, 5 supercarriers. This would allow for 5 seperate fleets... in my past games I've kept 3 for home defense, and sent 2 out on offense. One problem is that upgrades would allow you to keep 20 battleships, for example, while also building 20 new guided missile cruisers, and then upgrading the 20 battleships to missile cruisers for a total of 40.

Another idea I've had is altering things to be a sort of Final Frontier rock-paper-scissors, with swarms of cheap units capable of defeating slower, vulnerable battleships. Hmm...

If anyone else is interested in improving naval warfare, take a look at this post as well:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=237694

 

[Jaybe]

... and then upgrading the 20 battleships to missile cruisers for a total of 40

If you are going to alter the game, then prohibit upgrading the battleships.

 

[Thalassicus]

True, although then it'd be an isolated unit, with neither upgrades to nor from. I don't think there's any other units like that in the game, everything has at least one other thing in its hierarchy. It's a thought though, national units for capital ships...

 

[Martock]

Hmm... I wonder if there's a way to reverse that...

I think one way to reverse this is to give Subs a vastly higher strength rating and possibly more health as well. Then people (not sure about the AI) would be forced to concentrate more on destroyers than just the big guns. Granted this means the AI, being what it is, will focus more on subs than anything else. So, it's clear my idea needs work.

 

[DemonMaster]

Then people (not sure about the AI) would be forced to concentrate more on destroyers than just the big guns. Granted this means the AI, being what it is, will focus more on subs than anything else. So, it's clear my idea needs work.

I learned this the hard way the other day. In my epic large game I ended up in a "modern war" and the AI started the war with alot (I mean alot) of guided missiles fired from subs, destroying most of my destroyers, my strategic resources (lucky me I have founded the ethanol company, for security reason). All this lead to almost total naval superiority for the AI, even though I had battleship and/or missile cruisers. He used the sea as a highway with his damn subs, go into port, load up new missiles, go back, fire, go back to port. Eventually I won the war (thanks to the ethanol company). I killed 28 subs for him before I started to get the upper hand, and could stop panic build destroyers/subs in my ethanol cities (I had no uranium - yet).
I must say that this was the most fun war I have participated in civ. The new map type (medium and small) allowed for good use of paratroopers, marines, etc. The war was eventually stopped by the UN and neither me or the AI wanted to defy that, but I captured a uranium city before that happened.

 

[windmilltilter]

What I think is happening here is that the battleships and destroyers can't see the stealth destroyer. When a battleship moves into the same space as a submarine, the submarine is "pushed" out of its previous space. I think the same thing is happening here.

I'd rather see a change to how this works so that the enemy moving into my square doesn't move my sub or stealth destroyer. Instead, it would be treated as an attack by the other player, where my sub or stealth destroyer gets 1 "free" first strike for being stumbled upon by a non-detecting enemy, in addition to the regular first strikes the sub or stealth destroyer would get (if any).

Maybe someone can do a mod where this happens???

Jeff