Naval Units, Naval Warfare is WRONG

[Kid Casco]

The reality of a strong navy is overlooked completely in civilization. The fact that battleships are the preemminent Naval unit is simply not consistent with other technological advancements. Even the AEGIS cruiser is is marginally useful.

The fact that battleships can bombard my shoreline at will is also a complete annoyance. Radar artillery and cruise missles can send them to the bottom, but it's really just an annoyance and not a reasonable faxsimile of Naval warfare or Naval strategy.

I would like to suggest that the fundemental concepts of Naval units in the game be reconsidered and theat their costs be proportinal to their capabilities.

Some suggestions: Carrier Battle Groups, increased defence, great weapon range. Required stacked units or units in close proximity of varying capabilites (carrier, destroyer, sub etc).

Well, more to say, but now room.

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[Hygro]

I dont quite understand you rsuggestions and how they'd change things.

 

[Kid Casco]

Hi Hygro,
The goal would be to have naval power (without overlooking a proportional very high cost- in fact I would even suggest the carrier be the american special military unit). Consider how much sea a carrier really controls. No enemy units operate in the area. It's ridiculous that a battleship can even consider getting anywhere near a carrier to even take a shot when a carrier can strike another ship from 1000's of miles away. Naval Air is also not accurately modeled in CIV. I'm not proposing a solution because it's complex and needs to be balanced with the rest of the game. I guess I'd just like to see fewer and more powerful naval units taht also have a means to constrol shore areas as well. We all know how difficult and time consuming it is to launch a succussful amphibious assault (another naval unit problem). For this I would recommend establishing a "SEA LANE" not a silly transport that has to ply to and from the battle field. It sould all be about controlling an area with appropriate units to extend your ability to prject power in a more realistic way.

 

[pawpaw]

kid casco you mite want to check out a thread by loaf warden from last week on better privateering that went into detail better privateering and naval combat in general. there were a lot of sugestions.

 

[MadScot]

Originally posted by Kid Casco
<snip> For this I would recommend establishing a "SEA LANE" not a silly transport that has to ply to and from the battle field. It sould all be about controlling an area with appropriate units to extend your ability to prject power in a more realistic way.

I'm afraid that the whole idea of 'sea lanes' and controlling the seas in terms of trade/transport lanes is a fatal misconception that all but lost the allies World War 1. And the US took horrendous losses off the east coast in the first few months of the war while learning the same lesson in World War 2. Vast amounts of effort were wasted 'sweeping the enemy from the seas' with patrols of the high seas.

Control of big chunks of ocean is, frankly, pointless. All that matters is to dominate the little circle centred on the ships that the enemy considers high value targets - whether those be a convoy or a carrier, it's all the same. The visual and radar horizons impose quite short radii to these circles; a fifty mile diameter bubble is perfectly adequate for most cases.

In this respect the civ model is actually pretty accurate. Heavily protected convoys or groups of transports are precisely how the naval transport system should work.

 

[Louis XXIV]

The only thing inacurate is the unit stats

 

[Thrawn]

Which you can easily change yourself in the editor.

 

[tomart109]

Let me chime in with my pet peeve about the naval part of the game. The naval movements compared with their land counterparts are rediculously slow. To sail my first galleys around huge pangeas take on the order of a thousand years...

And modern navies taking several years to cross an ocean? Or go down your coastline? The instantaneous railroads move land units more realistically, given the time scale. No wonder so many players disparage and ignore the naval part of the game, which is a shame, given the role sea power has played in world development.

Sure, you'll say i can just mod the movement factors, and I admit I haven't tried it. But I expect that would open a fundamental can of worms that I choose not to tackle.

Despite my complaint, it's one of my favorite parts of the game. Naval exploration, discovery, colonization, connecting to the far corners of the world, and strategic warfare (which almost has to include the oceans) are great fun.

I would just like to understand why Sid, and Firaxis settled on this glaring mismatch in travel speeds.

 

[John-LP]

1. BATTLESHIPS and their 16-18 Inch guns are obsolete in modern naval warfare, yet they rule to oceans in CivIII.

2. MODERN (AEGIS) CRUISERS carry a respectable load of cruise and tomahawk missiles, which of, two could completely destroy any naval surface vessel. Which is why the Battleship is obsolete.

3. The AIRCRAFT CARRIER in CivIII is modeled after the Nimitz Class of the American Navy, which carries approximately 80 combat aircraft. So considering that the CivIII Carrier loads 4 fighters, you must assume each fighter equals 20 combat aircraft. One American F-14 Tomcat alone is capable of carrying enough anti-ship firepower to sink a battleship 4 times over. So 20 combat aircraft (1 CivIII F-15 or Jet) should be capable of sinking any naval vessel with 100% chances.

4. FIGHTER AIRCRAFT in CivIII have an "Air Superiority" option, which is great, but it needs to be able to do Air Superiority over an enemy target, such as one of their cities. More often than not, that is where you need it.

5. The DESTROYER is traditionally the anti-submarine or small craft naval vessel. In CivIII it is incapable of detecting enemy submarines, rendering them useless.

6. SUBMARINES V. BATTLESHIPS: I don`t remember the last time I played an unmodifed game with default settings, but I remember that attacking a Battleship with a submarine was suicide. In reality no Battleship ever made would be able to defend against a submarine attack. The Battleship had no depth charges and fired no torpedos. A Submarine might not sink it, but it will get it`s shots. No Battleship would have a snowball in hell`s chance of surviving an attack from a modern nuclear submarine.

7. Some SUBMARINES carry Cruise Missiles. In CivIII, they cannot.

8. BOMBERS and FIGHTERS attacking any Naval Vessel would suffer some serious losses to ship`s anti-aircraft artillary and anti-aircraft missiles, possibly 100% losses.

9. STEALTH BOMBERS are all equiped with missiles of some type, usually cruise missiles. An attack from a Stealth Bomber upon any naval vessel would likely result in the loss of that enemy vessel or very serious damage. Also, the Stealth Bomber is capable of carrying tactical nukes in real life, which obviously they aren`t capable of in CivIII.

10. STEALTH FIGHTERS are just small Stealth Bombers. They are absolutely useless. In real life they are a cheaper alternative to sending a bunch of Stealth Bombers to do a job that a few F-117 Nighthawks could do with a few runs. They are also faster and smaller of a target. In CivIII, none of these are real factors.

11. Most modern NAVAL SURFACE VESSELS carry some type of anti-missile defense system, such as the American Phalanx guns. These guns would be capable of destroying, at very least, half of any Cruise Missiles that come into range, probably more like 75 to 90 percent.

CONCLUSION: CivIII Naval and Air Warfare is completely unrealistic and futhermore serves little or no practical use in gameplay. As a lover of Naval and Air Combat Tactics, this is a dissappointment.

 

[TETurkhan]

I think with enough manipulation of the editor you might be able get the desired effect you are seeking.

On a different note - I need someone to help with stats for my mod. John-LP contact me on MSN Messenger teturkhan@hotmail.com to discuss if you are interested.

thanks.

 

[Peter Harris]

Originally posted by John-LP
CONCLUSION: CivIII Naval and Air Warfare is completely unrealistic and futhermore serves little or no practical use in gameplay. As a lover of Naval and Air Combat Tactics, this is a dissappointment.

I like it the way it is. Simple.

I do not like the complicated micromanagement hell that you propose. Umh, this is not a wargame.

 

[John-LP]

What I propose is not a micro-managment "hell", simply that there are needs for improvement.

A few simple things can be done as teturkhan has said. I have done what can be done, as I said.

 

[Zzzax]

I agree that there are huge problems with the naval aspects of the game. Personally, I intensely dislike this part of the gameplay experience for several reasons:

1. There is nothing on the seas worth fighting FOR (no territory, no resources, no trade etc.), only other silly enemy naval units to fight AGAINST, and usually for no good reason. The potential gain by doing so is usually very small, even though a navy is costly and time-consuming to produce.

2. The process of micro-managing a navy is cumbersome, tedious, boring and SLOW. I rarely find worthwhile reasons to bother with it when my ground units can move just as FAST or usually faster, and with instantaneous railroads in the late
game there's just no contest.

IMO, of course. For these two reasons alone, I will almost never build naval units, and I only do so when I'm required to transport ground units across seas. To be honest, I dislike naval units and their gameplay implications so badly I will often refrain from expanding beyond the continent I started the game on (on the condition, of course, that it is large enough for me to do my thing and that I'm not playing conquest etc.). If I do expand beyond my first continent, I will usually disband most or all navy units after my "new world" settlement is ready to manage on its own.

My current solution to this is simply to play pangea or continent maps. Fine. Sort of. Historically, though, powerful navies have proven to be of great to huge importance, and I think this should have been reflected in the game as well. However, in Civ3, the "Age of Sails" simply does not exist. The problem can be rectified in several ways:

1. Give the navy a PURPOSE. Make a poweful navy essential in order to establish, protect and maintain diplomatic and commercial relations/trade across the seas etc.

2. Implement this in a way that makes for FAST gameplay (compared to the existing naval system), one that does NOT add even more cumbersome micro-management to the game.

Just my $0.02. Heck, I'd give a nickel to see it come true!

 

[Grandraem]

I think that naval power isn't great, but I find that Air power is non-existent in Civ3, as far as I've played it.

 

[Moulton]

I do build and use naval units, even with the shortcomings. I happen go love naval warfare, being an ex squid.
One of the things that worked in Imperialism was naval fleets, cargo fleets and blockades.

It takes a week to move troops from the United States to the Eurasian Continents accross the Atlantic, 3 across the Pacific... Air transfer in hours. However, even the largest cargo plans take just as long -- with numerous trips -- as a fleet of ships.

However, the was CIV sets up it takes 21+ turns to move a settler from Europe to Australia on a real world map--- a little long. I realize a settler is not a man, but a unit that makes a village with 10,000 pop...

Here are my thoughts. Make sea travel much faster, at least for modern units. perhaps 3 times as fast as now.

Give the Aegis antiAircraft/antimissile capability, give the destroyer anti-sub abilitiy. or leave the destroyer as a WWII type, that was vulnerable to subs, and make a modern frigate class for anti sub.
Make the helicopter capable of carrying and launching anti-sub, missiles. (torpedoes.)
Make attacking aircraft susceptible to ships antiaircraft defenses, as they are to SAM.

 

[Mr Black]

There needs to be a way to attack TRADE!!! Also in Civ2, when your ship lost some HP's, it's movement was seriously decreased. In Civ3, you can bombard a ship all you want, but it can still run away from you. I agree with what zzzax wrote, the Navy has no purpose at all, quite unrealistic.

 

[The Last Conformist]

The problem with increasing the movement allowances of ships is that it allow a warhship to sail out of port, sink an enemy ship, and then return to the safety of the port, no with a radius of 1-2 tiles, but one of, f'rinstance, 6 tiles for a trebled move Battleship. This'd make for some seriously strange naval tactics.

The easy solution is to, SMAC-style, force ships to end their movement immediately after conducting an attack or bombardment. But this can't be done in the Editor, so it'll have to wait for Civ IV.

I really hate the fact that Destroyers can't see subs. Even WWII ones were employed as sub hunters, with some success.

 

[TETurkhan]

I am willing to listen to any and all suggestions - and will try to incorporate suggestions in to the release of version 2.0 of TETurkhan mod...

anyone interested just PM me.

thanks.

 

[Ivan the Kulak]

One of the easiest ways to improve naval combat with respect to carriers is to have the aircraft actively defend during an attack, as was the case with civ2/ctp. Early fighters could defend within a one tile radius and later units could defend from 2 tiles away. This would provide a more realistic kind of protection for the carriers. The fighters would also suffer damage during the attack from the battleship/AEGIS cruiser's AA defenses. Giving all early naval units (battleship, destroyer) a bombard range of one and the AEGIS a bombard range of 3 would be a good way to model the capabilities of these units, if you could get the AI to move its own AEGIS units to a 2-3 tile range of an enemy and bombard before moving in for the kill. Flying heavy bombers of off carriers should be disallowed, IMO (how can you fly a B2 off the Nimitz?). Re aircraft in general, I think you should be able to rebase to a frontline city and have the fighter active defend the next turn, without issuing an air superiority command. As it is the fighters can't keep up with the tanks, rendering the entire tactical air concept useless.

 

[Tonsoffun]

It would be cool if there was a system that gaged how strong nations navy's were, and accordingly affected trade. So lets say country A and country B were at war. Country A is trading Iron to country C and is using a sea route because there cross continents. Country B has a huge navy though, so the game cuts of trade automaticaly because country has no way to defend its convoys of Iron. That would force Country A to build a navy and attack Country B's navy.