Navies need more power.

[Ddude97]

Define "successfully blockaded".

Seriously, you are saying that the British navy had no impact with their blockading of the French? That is a VERY succesful blockade.

(I'm just ticked b/c civ 5 requires steam! )

 

[Brutoni]

Colossally ineffective and a massive waste of time for most of human history.

No, it did not. The Spanish Empire ceased to exist because Spain could not effectively conciliate regional elites to its control and use them as a counterweight to rebellious elements, and because the Napoleonic occupation of Spain effectively destroyed Spain's ability to respond to the seizure of power by these rebels.

Define "successfully blockaded".

Most of this applies to the last few centuries of naval warfare, and mostly to the twentieth century at that. It's also extremely uneven. The French navy effectively controlled the seas during the Franco-Prussian/Franco-German War, and was able to penetrate the Heligoland Bight and raid German shipping. This did not have an effective outcome on the course of the war, and not because German shipping wasn't a significant share of regional trade (it was). Earlier, the Danish navy had achieved effective naval superiority over the allied Austro-Prussian fleets in the second Schleswig-Holstein War in 1864. Despite this, it was unable to prevent Prussian amphibious assaults on several Danish islands before the peace.

There are massive practical limitations to naval power in the real world.

You are joking yes? You really think that blockading has no effect on a country at all? Let's see.

late 17- early-mid18 hundreds, The Royal Navy single handedly stopped the French invading Britain. Several times throughout that era peace broke out because France had no choice but to stop fighting due to it's inability to control the oceans.
Around Napoleon's time he happily walked through Europe and then despite mocking the Navy found out that he couldn't beat England because he couldn't leave his continent.... How embarrassing to have a large powerful nation reduced to child like status because you can't trade, transport or fight.


WW1, the British blockade the Germans, as a result they cannot get goods, the war on land proves to be inconclusive until the Germans start to feel the loss in man power, rations, weapons, ammunition. All but the first was a result of the Naval blockade on their nation.

Meanwhile the Royal Navy protects our interest at Sea with convoys and Germany resorts to submarine warfare.... I wonder why they are trying to do a similar thing to a blockade (stop supplies) if a blockade is a useless tactic?


WW2, Malta, Gibraltar, The pacific continent battles, The Mediterranean. Several theatres of war almost lost on both sides due to a lack of supplies. Malta got so bad the blockade (this time with air units more than sea) was forced open in desperation. I wonder what would have happened had they managed to keep it up. Against submarines are used in a form of "roving" blockade.


The fact remains, 3/4 of the world is water. A large majority of that 3/4 is blue water, a nation cannot be a super power without a blue water navy. A nation is unlikely to be a super power without dominance of the seas. This is a simple fact, the ocean controls trade. Even to this day trade is a better balance of speed, cost and quantity over sea than by air. Without trade a country will stagnant and die.

Then we have our second fact. To project power you need a navy, you cannot rely on allies having air fields, or providing safe passage. So you need a navy that can establish superiority of the surrounding ocean and coast. Then provide the landings with support and supplies. An aircraft carrier is the daddy when it comes to power projection. Sovereign soil that can project power in a radius of hundreds of miles 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Additionally with the advent of missiles a strong Navy is more important than ever, despite air power. Submarines can provide independent strategic and tactical fire support hundreds of miles in land. Cruisers, Destroyers and Frigates can all provide an AA umbrella for troops landing and to protect trade. Additionally they can engage submarines, protect carriers and provide Naval gunfire support.


Oh and finally... a ship with a proper logistics fleet, can remain on station in any weather at any time of the year for protracted periods of time while requiring little in the replacement of man power. If the ship is nuclear powered then it can fend for itself 18 months at a time. You tell me what air unit can be on station where it needs to be for that length of time? Or an army unit that won't need a HUGE chain of supply.

Seriously, naval power projection is what makes the USA so scary. She can put a carrier battle group anywhere in the world within 24 hours notice. That carrier battle group will slap you to the ground if you offend it. Failing that her nuclear subs can wipe not only you but also your house and town off the face of the planet.


I have such a dislike of how everyone in the world at the moment thinks the army and the air force can do anything without the Navy... What a joke... The navy is an awsome tool of power projection. Just like the air force is an awsome tool of precision striking and the army is an awsome tool of occupation and control if used correctly.

Though I still hold that if you want to be on the global scale, a navy is the most important. (WHICH is why LANDLOCKED nations have RARELY become serious WORLD powers)

 

[Shiggs713]

nice first post Brutoni. Welcome to the forums!

Completely agree. If you look closer at the USA military its easy to see that they focus on air and naval superiority. Land forces are secondary. Think about it, really America doesn't even need much of a land force so long as Canada or Mexico aren't harboring enemy troops. Even if China (the only serious threat to USA at this point) decided to attack us, they wouldn't have a snowballs chance in hell to even land troops on our soil.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Yes, well done Brutoni, you've really hit the forums with a BANG ! Way to put Dachs in his box. I can't stand it when people show such a huge ignorance of history.
The importance of navies does stretch back further than this. As someone mentioned in another thread-the Greco-Persian war was won as much at sea as it was on land. Had the Greek City-States not put out a strong navy, then the sacrifice of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae would have been completely in vain.

 

[Nicolas10]

And to jump on the "Educating Dachs" meme, to say that navies have only had importance in the modern era... well, is MASSIVELY ignorant.

I spelled this out in another thread, but the Greek defense against Persia depended on its navy of 300 ships and thousands of fighting marines. Without the navy, the defense at Thermopoylae would have been fruitless and pointless. Nor would Platea been a definitive battle; without the massive sea battle, the Persians could have landed where they wished and burned Greece with impunity.

*Thanks for the quasi-shout out, Aussie

Please read something, Dachs, even the short wikipedia blurb, so as to not go through life entirely ignorant of history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis

Going further, the principle reason why the Vikings were so successful in the period between 750-1000 AD was the utter lack of effective shipbuilding anywhere else in Europe. Alfred tried to construct some ships to combat the Norsemen, but was not successful. On land, the viking armies were effective but hardly dominant. At sea, however, they could raid rich merchant vessels, attack coastal cities, and took massive bribe payments to stay away... without naval protection, Europe's myriad of kingdoms were constantly pillaged, razed, and plundered.

Had the Europe been more centralized, rather then a collection of feudal kingdoms without any real monies to devote to a protectionary navy, the Viking threat would have been much different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great#English_navy

I could bring up Chinese and Roman examples, too.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Too true about Rome, Nicolas! One of the main causes of the Punic Wars was the inability of the Roman Republic to expand outwards-by sea-due to the massive dominance of Carthage's navy. It was only due to sheer luck-the capture & reverse engineering of a Carthaginian ship-that Rome was able to turn the naval part of the conflict to their advantage!

Aussie.

 

[trickofthehand]

Yah Navies are important but um... look at um... Vietnam!! The Navy didn't do anything important there right?

Sorry I'm trying to show some support for Dachs but so far it looks like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzfY-aXGcBY&feature=related

In all seriousness, let's hope that Navies are finally important in Civ, the 'ranged combat' of ships sounds interesting. Has anyone heard anything more about this? I wonder if this is going to be something like the current combat is, that is that ships exchange fire (though ofcourse won't always sink each other) or if it's going to be similar to what you can do with DCM. If it's going to be actual 'ship-exchanging-fire' combat, then I wonder about matchups between older and newer generation ships; such as:

Battleship vs Dreadnought (hoping we don't leap from wind to oil navy again /shudder)
Missile Cruiser vs Battleship

The reason I'm curious is because using common sense, the Missile Cruiser can attack from much further away in real life than a Battleship could (specially if it's to do so accurately); so if in-game it's represented as Battleships attack from 2 squares away and MCs from 3 then would a MC-initiated attack from out of range mean that the Battleship doesn't get a counter-attack?

 

[trickofthehand]

Also, why have we heard nothing on late-game combat yet?

Does this worry anyone else?

 

[Thlayli]

Too true about Rome, Nicolas! One of the main causes of the Punic Wars was the inability of the Roman Republic to expand outwards-by sea-due to the massive dominance of Carthage's navy. It was only due to sheer luck-the capture & reverse engineering of a Carthaginian ship-that Rome was able to turn the naval part of the conflict to their advantage!

Aussie.

This has little basis in fact.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

This has little basis in fact.

....and on what do you base that assertion? I got this piece of information from a 3-part BBC documentary on the Punic Wars & their aftermath. You telling me that they'd include something with little basis in fact in a Documentary?

 

[Dachs]

Seriously, you are saying that the British navy had no impact with their blockading of the French? That is a VERY succesful blockade.

I argue that it wasn't that important. I do not argue that it had no impact on the war.

You are joking yes? You really think that blockading has no effect on a country at all?

lolstrawman

late 17- early-mid18 hundreds, The Royal Navy single handedly stopped the French invading Britain. Several times throughout that era peace broke out because France had no choice but to stop fighting due to it's inability to control the oceans.

You're not talking about a blockade. You are talking about preventing an amphibious invasion. The two are radically different things, and I'll thank you to learn enough about naval history to differentiate between the two. The Royal Navy did not successfully blockade France during the Second Hundred Years' War until the Napoleonic conflict, and then only really from 1805-1814. It was a very porous blockade, despite being a close blockade, as American ships could frequently reach French waters, and because France did not seriously trade with extracontinental states (in a manner that the French could not make up with illegal trade with the United Kingdom itself and within Europe) it did not seriously effect the outcome of the war. The Spanish Ulcer, the invasion of Russia, and the creation of the final grand coalition were what defeated Napoleon, not those storm-wracked ships closing off French ports.

Around Napoleon's time he happily walked through Europe and then despite mocking the Navy found out that he couldn't beat England because he couldn't leave his continent.... How embarrassing to have a large powerful nation reduced to child like status because you can't trade, transport or fight.

Platitudes and nonsense. Are you talking about the blockade or are you talking about France being unable to invade Great Britain? If the latter, you are objecting to a point I never made; if the former, then what raw materials did the Royal Navy blockade deprive France of? How did it impair French conduct of the wars in Europe? How did it contribute to the ultimate defeat of Napoleon?

WW1, the British blockade the Germans, as a result they cannot get goods, the war on land proves to be inconclusive until the Germans start to feel the loss in man power, rations, weapons, ammunition. All but the first was a result of the Naval blockade on their nation.

Meanwhile the Royal Navy protects our interest at Sea with convoys and Germany resorts to submarine warfare.... I wonder why they are trying to do a similar thing to a blockade (stop supplies) if a blockade is a useless tactic?

Yep. Arguably the first effective grand-strategic blockade of a state in modern history. Also a colossal war crime, but that's off topic. I totally agree with this and would never have stated otherwise.

WW2, Malta, Gibraltar, The pacific continent battles, The Mediterranean. Several theatres of war almost lost on both sides due to a lack of supplies. Malta got so bad the blockade (this time with air units more than sea) was forced open in desperation. I wonder what would have happened had they managed to keep it up. Against submarines are used in a form of "roving" blockade.

And again, it's a modern war. The volume of trade increased to such an extent over the course of the 19th century that European states actually were damaged by loss of overseas trade. Plus, loss of overseas trade interrupted raw materials flows, which didn't formerly matter because transport costs were insanely high before the 19th century, and so you couldn't rely on overseas transport for warmaking materials. I am aware of this, trust me. Hence why I added the caveat "for most of human history". Believe it or not, despite what the History Channel would have you believe, the 20th century is not "most of human history".

The fact remains, 3/4 of the world is water. A large majority of that 3/4 is blue water, a nation cannot be a super power without a blue water navy. A nation is unlikely to be a super power without dominance of the seas. This is a simple fact, the ocean controls trade. Even to this day trade is a better balance of speed, cost and quantity over sea than by air. Without trade a country will stagnant and die.

I agree. Yet before the 19th century there were a crapton of factors in the way of that. Transport costs are probably the easiest to note; markets weren't really integrated around the world because it was simply cheaper to buy from sources closer to you, even if production costs were high, because it was cheaper to bring things to you. This means that blockades only were truly effective against states that relied on trade to bring in large volumes of revenue, which is a minority of states before the 19th century. A blockade might be useful against, say, one of the Italian trading republics. Like Venice. It even almost happened a few times in the Renaissance. Other factors, inherent to naval warfare, got in the way, and more on those later.

Then we have our second fact. To project power you need a navy, you cannot rely on allies having air fields, or providing safe passage. So you need a navy that can establish superiority of the surrounding ocean and coast. Then provide the landings with support and supplies. An aircraft carrier is the daddy when it comes to power projection. Sovereign soil that can project power in a radius of hundreds of miles 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Additionally with the advent of missiles a strong Navy is more important than ever, despite air power. Submarines can provide independent strategic and tactical fire support hundreds of miles in land. Cruisers, Destroyers and Frigates can all provide an AA umbrella for troops landing and to protect trade. Additionally they can engage submarines, protect carriers and provide Naval gunfire support.


Oh and finally... a ship with a proper logistics fleet, can remain on station in any weather at any time of the year for protracted periods of time while requiring little in the replacement of man power. If the ship is nuclear powered then it can fend for itself 18 months at a time. You tell me what air unit can be on station where it needs to be for that length of time? Or an army unit that won't need a HUGE chain of supply.

Seriously, naval power projection is what makes the USA so scary. She can put a carrier battle group anywhere in the world within 24 hours notice. That carrier battle group will slap you to the ground if you offend it. Failing that her nuclear subs can wipe not only you but also your house and town off the face of the planet.


I have such a dislike of how everyone in the world at the moment thinks the army and the air force can do anything without the Navy... What a joke... The navy is an awsome tool of power projection. Just like the air force is an awsome tool of precision striking and the army is an awsome tool of occupation and control if used correctly.

Though I still hold that if you want to be on the global scale, a navy is the most important. (WHICH is why LANDLOCKED nations have RARELY become serious WORLD powers)

...and this basically only applies to the last century, maybe century and a half. Good job? I like how you mixed up "power projection" with "blockade".

Yes, well done Brutoni, you've really hit the forums with a BANG ! Way to put Dachs in his box. I can't stand it when people show such a huge ignorance of history.

Cruel irony. The nice thing about the OT and WH is that people would actually get jumped on for calling other people "ignorant" - moderation has been a little bit slow to cope with the expansion of the forums. Oh well.

The importance of navies does stretch back further than this. As someone mentioned in another thread-the Greco-Persian war was won as much at sea as it was on land. Had the Greek City-States not put out a strong navy, then the sacrifice of the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae would have been completely in vain.

Did the Greek city-states blockade Achaemenid Persia, cut off its access to iron or whatever, and prevent Xsayarsa šāhān-šāh from raising an army? No? How about drastically reducing his revenues from overseas trade so he couldn't pay his troops, which were mostly levies anyway? They didn't? Oh balls.

You people seem to have gotten the idea into your heads that I am arguing against the importance of all navies throughout history. I am not. I am arguing that blockade is colossally ineffective for most of human history. I do not believe that navies are somehow "unimportant", though I do tend to deride naval personnel as "sailors" with all the fun stereotypes that come along with that.

And to jump on the "Educating Dachs" meme, to say that navies have only had importance in the modern era... well, is MASSIVELY ignorant.

Not reading other people's posts, on the other hand, is the height of genius...

I spelled this out in another thread, but the Greek defense against Persia depended on its navy of 300 ships and thousands of fighting marines. Without the navy, the defense at Thermopoylae would have been fruitless and pointless. Nor would Platea been a definitive battle; without the massive sea battle, the Persians could have landed where they wished and burned Greece with impunity.

*Thanks for the quasi-shout out, Aussie

Please read something, Dachs, even the short wikipedia blurb, so as to not go through life entirely ignorant of history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Salamis

I am almost certain that I wasn't the person who opened up a can of CONDESCENSION here, but I'll play along.

Going further, the principle reason why the Vikings were so successful in the period between 750-1000 AD was the utter lack of effective shipbuilding anywhere else in Europe. Alfred tried to construct some ships to combat the Norsemen, but was not successful. On land, the viking armies were effective but hardly dominant. At sea, however, they could raid rich merchant vessels, attack coastal cities, and took massive bribe payments to stay away... without naval protection, Europe's myriad of kingdoms were constantly pillaged, razed, and plundered.

Had the Europe been more centralized, rather then a collection of feudal kingdoms without any real monies to devote to a protectionary navy, the Viking threat would have been much different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_the_Great#English_navy

I could bring up Chinese and Roman examples, too.

Um, okay, entirely apart from the fact that none of that stuff has anything to do with blockade, you're basically talking about Northern Europe and the Atlantic coastline. Some Europeans were pretty damned good at killing Viking ships. Like those Greeks/Romans/Byzantines/whatever ethnonym-of-the-week they happened to be using at the time. They gave the Viking ships the boiling oil outside Constantinople more than once. Bit of a nasty shock for them, too.

Too true about Rome, Nicolas! One of the main causes of the Punic Wars was the inability of the Roman Republic to expand outwards-by sea-due to the massive dominance of Carthage's navy. It was only due to sheer luck-the capture & reverse engineering of a Carthaginian ship-that Rome was able to turn the naval part of the conflict to their advantage!

Aussie.

This has nothing to do with blockade.

HOWEVER, rejoice, for there is something to do with blockade from that VERY WAR that I can throw right back in your face! During the course of the First Punic War, Rome did achieve naval supremacy, yes? Fought battles off Cape Ecnomus, the Lipara islands, and whatnot, shredded the heretofore-excellent Punic fleet, not least by using Greek shipbuilders from Megale Hellas/Magna Graecia to construct ships equivalent to the Carthaginian ones, right? (The reverse-engineering story is so implausible that it has generally been rejected by modern historians. It may have formed the basis for certain technological improvements to Greek-manufactured quinqueremes but almost certainly was not the basis for the entire Roman battle-fleet.)

So the Romans get this naval superiority janx, and look to be sitting PRETTY NICELY, right? They overrun most of Punic Sicily and besiege the great port of Lilybaeum on the western tip of the island, which they also blockaded to prevent the Carthaginians from sending in supplies. They kept this blockade up for QUITE A WHILE. Yet the Carthaginians, despite having an inferior fleet, managed to get supplies in, via blockade runners. The Romans' numerical superiority was no help to them, and eventually the Romans had to give up the siege.

In the Second Punic War, the Romans had a different mission: a reverse blockade. They wanted to prevent Hannibal, in Italy, from getting supplies, so the Roman fleet was dispersed in a cordon around the peninsula to stop the Carthaginians from sending him more troops. Yet even here, the Romans did not manage this effectively. In the waning years of the war, while the Romans were playing around in Numidia in the runup to the Battle of Zama, the Carthaginians landed a sizable force under Hannibal's brother Mago in Liguria, in northern Italy, chiefly for raiding and recruitment of Ligurian and Gallic mercenaries. The Romans couldn't stop the weak Punic fleet from getting there, and they couldn't stop the Carthaginians from getting back out again.

There is a lesson here. Naval superiority only means so much. Before the advent of radar, the advent of coal-fired steam boilers, before the advent of radio, ships can't really move that fast. They can't respond very quickly. And you need a lot of them to blockade even a small space, much less a very large one. It's incredibly inefficient to try to blockade even one of an enemy's ports, and if he has a lot of ports you are almost certain to not be able to cover them all. So even if he gets most of his revenue from trade through ONE PORT, or his raw materials, before the 19th century and the technological changes that are needed to exploit that, blockade simply isn't an effective solution. You're much better off using ships to raid unprotected enemy territory, or to transport armies to unexpected locations do so some raiding of their own, or even, if you have enough men and ships, an amphibious assault. Blockade just isn't cost-effective enough.

 

[Thlayli]

....and on what do you base that assertion? I got this piece of information from a 3-part BBC documentary on the Punic Wars & their aftermath. You telling me that they'd include something with little basis in fact in a Documentary?

The BBC cruelly and comprehensively lied to you. I'm sorry. It's called "a convenient narrative packaged for an uninformed market." Learn to live with it.

 

[sophie]

The BBC cruelly and comprehensively lied to you. I'm sorry. It's called "a convenient narrative packaged for an uninformed market." Learn to live with it.

Lol, but I thought everything you see on The History Channel was 100% factual! (Especially the bits about how George Washington was a dirty dirty mason secret Templar that wanted to use The US to advance his nefarious masonitemplar purposes!)

 

[Masada]

Wasn't George Washington a Christian dude who wanted to turn the United States into a theocracy which the aethistic/Communist/Islamic elite want to supress so the country can be destroyed!11111!

HITLERS ALSO ALIVE U GUYZ.

 

[Le_Scientifique]

Colossally ineffective and a massive waste of time for most of human history.

Your opinion about the effectiveness of blockades is irrelevant to the fact that blockades is part of what a navy can do. There is many examples in history of successful blockades.
http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/blockade/id/1934384

No, it did not. The Spanish Empire ceased to exist because Spain could not effectively conciliate regional elites to its control and use them as a counterweight to rebellious elements, and because the Napoleonic occupation of Spain effectively destroyed Spain's ability to respond to the seizure of power by these rebels.

I didn't say "ceased to exist", I said "decline". Declining is what precede the collapse. The Ottomans have been declining for a long time before the collapse of 1918. The Spanish has been declining a long time before the Napoleonic wars.

Define "successfully blockaded".

Britain greatly disrupted France intercontinental trade with it's colonies and other neutral powers (especially United States). That is a successful blockade.

Most of this applies to the last few centuries of naval warfare, and mostly to the twentieth century at that. It's also extremely uneven. The French navy effectively controlled the seas during the Franco-Prussian/Franco-German War, and was able to penetrate the Heligoland Bight and raid German shipping. This did not have an effective outcome on the course of the war, and not because German shipping wasn't a significant share of regional trade (it was). Earlier, the Danish navy had achieved effective naval superiority over the allied Austro-Prussian fleets in the second Schleswig-Holstein War in 1864. Despite this, it was unable to prevent Prussian amphibious assaults on several Danish islands before the peace.

There are massive practical limitations to naval power in the real world.

Where did I say that there was no limitations to naval power ?
You seems to argue just for the fun of it.

 

[Brutoni]

I argue that it wasn't that important. I do not argue that it had no impact on the war.

Something that has an impact on the war, especially one that has a major impact on a war, must be important. If an enemy is destroying your tanks you view that as important and seek to remove the threat. Equally deadly is if an opponent removes your supply chain, which is one of the effects of blockading.

lolstrawman

A more comprehensive answer than that really should be given.

You're not talking about a blockade. You are talking about preventing an amphibious invasion. The two are radically different things, and I'll thank you to learn enough about naval history to differentiate between the two. The Royal Navy did not successfully blockade France during the Second Hundred Years' War until the Napoleonic conflict, and then only really from 1805-1814. It was a very porous blockade, despite being a close blockade, as American ships could frequently reach French waters, and because France did not seriously trade with extracontinental states (in a manner that the French could not make up with illegal trade with the United Kingdom itself and within Europe) it did not seriously effect the outcome of the war. The Spanish Ulcer, the invasion of Russia, and the creation of the final grand coalition were what defeated Napoleon, not those storm-wracked ships closing off French ports.

Don't insinuate that someone knows nothing about naval history before you actually know them. It is quite an insult and I will thank you sir to remove it. Especially after your comments about how you disliked other people calling you ignorant

That aside, the blockade of the French navy was exceptionally successful, their ability to put to sea was severely hampered, which in an age where you needed large numbers of ships to effectively hamper supply routes was a good thing. It also allowed Britain to retain a steady income off the confiscation of goods they did not want the French to receive. It also ensured that the French had little training at sea while our own ships despite being "storm-wracked" gained exceptional experience which in turn allowed them to defeat a numerically superior foe at the battle of Trafalgar

Finally, two or three events do not win a war, mainly because those events in turn are created by smaller events. It is like a ripple, the loss of one battle affects this point, which affects that point, which affects the country. This is why a string of defeats often leads to what seems like an unusually quick collapse of an otherwise still strong force.

Platitudes and nonsense. Are you talking about the blockade or are you talking about France being unable to invade Great Britain? If the latter, you are objecting to a point I never made; if the former, then what raw materials did the Royal Navy blockade deprive France of? How did it impair French conduct of the wars in Europe? How did it contribute to the ultimate defeat of Napoleon?

A blockade doesn't just keep things from going in. It keeps things from coming out. The inability to invade Great Britain was due to the close blockade in all weather conditions. Napoleon was quoted I believe for saying that all he needed was one day without the Royal Navy in the channel.
As for its impact in the French conduct of wars in Europe, well we were able to support the coalition at the battle of water loo. Kind of a big contribution no? Not to mention the moral impact on the French and British populace.
Raw materials were also confiscated, you know gun powder, weapons, the things you needed to conduct a war in that time.

Yep. Arguably the first effective grand-strategic blockade of a state in modern history. Also a colossal war crime, but that's off topic. I totally agree with this and would never have stated otherwise.

The blockade of an enemy port is a colossal war crime? Or do you mean ensuring that normal civilians cannot access food? Personally I don't see how thats any worse than burning raping and slaughtering people like in the dark ages, or gassing soldiers on the front line, or torpedoing a defensless passenger liner. Or sinking convoys so that the opposition also runs out of food.
All war is a crime. No war is pretty, we just pretended otherwise until the world wars when the media was around to ensure that people actually had to acknowledge the human suffering. You are right though. It is off topic.

And again, it's a modern war. The volume of trade increased to such an extent over the course of the 19th century that European states actually were damaged by loss of overseas trade. Plus, loss of overseas trade interrupted raw materials flows, which didn't formerly matter because transport costs were insanely high before the 19th century, and so you couldn't rely on overseas transport for warmaking materials. I am aware of this, trust me. Hence why I added the caveat "for most of human history". Believe it or not, despite what the History Channel would have you believe, the 20th century is not "most of human history".

Transport costs were not insanely high before the 19th century. The British empire, the Dutch nation, the French and the Spanish all relied on overseas trade from the Caribbean, India etc. Yes many goods were luxuries however the trade was still extremely high. You only need to look at Samuel Peeps documents on the requirements of overseas trade to keep the Royal Navy afloat to see this. Or even the port documents from earlier years. IN FACT, an earlier civilisation relied extensively on the income, trade and assimilation of foreign nations. I am of course talking about the Romans.

I don't just watch the history channel, if you would like a list of books I am more than happy to provide you with the ones I can easily get my hands on. The rest are at my parents house at the moment.... Being a student makes it difficult to carry round more than 1 bookcase of books in addition to all your subject textbooks.

I agree. Yet before the 19th century there were a crapton of factors in the way of that. Transport costs are probably the easiest to note; markets weren't really integrated around the world because it was simply cheaper to buy from sources closer to you, even if production costs were high, because it was cheaper to bring things to you. This means that blockades only were truly effective against states that relied on trade to bring in large volumes of revenue, which is a minority of states before the 19th century. A blockade might be useful against, say, one of the Italian trading republics. Like Venice. It even almost happened a few times in the Renaissance. Other factors, inherent to naval warfare, got in the way, and more on those later.

I disagree, King James established the Royal Navy and that was well before the 19th Century, the Spannish armada proved that effective control of the oceans would become immensely important.
The spread of Colonialism started in the 15 century. It quickly became a trade race to establish the largest colonies on the new world, whoever did would become a major player and yet without a strong enough Navy to defend these colonies countries like Spain soon fell behind upcoming countries like Britain and the Dutch who had the capability to defend their interests and raid others.
Please note than by soon I do mean a lengthy passing of time, however in Historical terms the length of time was not all that long.

...and this basically only applies to the last century, maybe century and a half. Good job? I like how you mixed up "power projection" with "blockade".

You can't set up a blockade without the ability to project power. Similarly blockades now are actually more difficult to establish than they were around the 18-20th century. A sustained military engagement on a global scale between the worlds major powers would be over within 3-6 weeks time. A missile takes a huge amount of time and money to build and seconds to destroy. Additionally to that we do not have the ammunition reserves to engage in a war for the length of time that a blockade would require to have effect.
War moves very fast now, or at least the skirmishes the world has been having since world war I and II seem to move particularly fast. It remains to been seen how a fast a major war would move

Cruel irony. The nice thing about the OT and WH is that people would actually get jumped on for calling other people "ignorant" - moderation has been a little bit slow to cope with the expansion of the forums. Oh well.

I was quite strong in my opinion, if anything I said offended you then I am sorry. I also hope others would re frame from branding you as ignorant because you have a different opinion. The discussion is too early on to know if any one of us is ignorant or just not taking the time to post carefully and extensively.

Did the Greek city-states blockade Achaemenid Persia, cut off its access to iron or whatever, and prevent Xsayarsa šāhān-šāh from raising an army? No? How about drastically reducing his revenues from overseas trade so he couldn't pay his troops, which were mostly levies anyway? They didn't? Oh balls.

A blockade is not restricted to restricting money or supplies. It is an act that prevents one from putting resource to sea or receiving resource. While you are right in that the Greek city-state did not blockade the Persians as such, they did prevent them from landing an insane amount of troops. Actions like this probably lead to the concept of the blockade... "Hey, those troops didn't get to land and it made a huge difference. How about next time we just try and bunch them right in so they can't get out."

Additionally resource in war is not just material or revenue. It is of course food and people as well.

You people seem to have gotten the idea into your heads that I am arguing against the importance of all navies throughout history. I am not. I am arguing that blockade is colossally ineffective for most of human history. I do not believe that navies are somehow "unimportant", though I do tend to deride naval personnel as "sailors" with all the fun stereotypes that come along with that.

Again, I disagree with your statement, see above for the reasons why. I have some knowledge of classical history but not about the wars you are talking about so I will leave that well alone.

There is a lesson here. Naval superiority only means so much. Before the advent of radar, the advent of coal-fired steam boilers, before the advent of radio, ships can't really move that fast. They can't respond very quickly. And you need a lot of them to blockade even a small space, much less a very large one. It's incredibly inefficient to try to blockade even one of an enemy's ports, and if he has a lot of ports you are almost certain to not be able to cover them all. So even if he gets most of his revenue from trade through ONE PORT, or his raw materials, before the 19th century and the technological changes that are needed to exploit that, blockade simply isn't an effective solution. You're much better off using ships to raid unprotected enemy territory, or to transport armies to unexpected locations do so some raiding of their own, or even, if you have enough men and ships, an amphibious assault. Blockade just isn't cost-effective enough.

Again you are wrong, that wooden wall stopped Napoleon invading. It did so by blocking his troops from leaving port... I would consider that, as many would I'm sure, a blockade. As such we were able to gain revenue from the illegal (in our sense of the word) trade with France, build up an army and defend our coast. Meanwhile while it is all looking good for us the French are busy elsewhere, however when it came down to it they found it difficult to move serious amounts of trade/troops/supplies to anywhere.

In actual fact, a ship now a days is much harder to put on sustained deployment than back then. For a modern fighting ship to retain combat effectiveness as a stable weapons platform it must contain 60% or more of it's fuel load. The fuel is calculated as ballast as an attempt to make our ships as "efficient" as possible. Below that fuel level the ship will begin to suffer from accuracy and sea keeping problems.
Additionally it must constantly be refuelled and the technological side of it means that taking supplies is much more difficult.

A sail ship on the other hand can move as long as it has wind, resupplying it was considerably easier from a food and water point of view and more often than not after a battle it could replace ammunition with that from a captured ship if absolutely needs be. Obviously a lack of fridges and electricity made it slightly more difficult.

Before you say it, I am aware that Nuclear vessels need less support, however the modern world does not have a lot of nuclear vessel... Only the bigger players and of them only the USA in serious numbers.

 

[Brutoni]

Yah Navies are important but um... look at um... Vietnam!! The Navy didn't do anything important there right?

Sorry I'm trying to show some support for Dachs but so far it looks like

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzfY-aXGcBY&feature=related

In all seriousness, let's hope that Navies are finally important in Civ, the 'ranged combat' of ships sounds interesting. Has anyone heard anything more about this? I wonder if this is going to be something like the current combat is, that is that ships exchange fire (though ofcourse won't always sink each other) or if it's going to be similar to what you can do with DCM. If it's going to be actual 'ship-exchanging-fire' combat, then I wonder about matchups between older and newer generation ships; such as:

Battleship vs Dreadnought (hoping we don't leap from wind to oil navy again /shudder)
Missile Cruiser vs Battleship

The reason I'm curious is because using common sense, the Missile Cruiser can attack from much further away in real life than a Battleship could (specially if it's to do so accurately); so if in-game it's represented as Battleships attack from 2 squares away and MCs from 3 then would a MC-initiated attack from out of range mean that the Battleship doesn't get a counter-attack?

Only new to Civilisation, and I spent way to long on the last post. However I can try and answer you here as regards real life.

A missile cruiser engaging a battleship would not have as easy a time of it as people think. Most SSM's today rely on unused fuel spreading fires. They also do not have to be designed to penetrate heavy armour. As such the damage they would do to a battleship above the waterline would be minimal. Hitting conning towers, range finders etc would be the way to beat it, although that would leave it crippled not destroyed. So yeah, if you designed an armour piercing missile to hit the battleship then the missile cruiser will win but armed as they are now. I'm not so sure. Especially as the Iowa class battleships (only ones remaining in the world) were refitted with a huge number of SSM's and LAM's as well as extensive CWS to defend against missile and air attack. It goes without saying that if you could get it into gun range.... World of hurt begins to descend on the cruiser.

If the cruiser has a helicopter, well that changes the game. Helicopter flies to a few miles out and torpedoes the battleship. Game over.


In game, I assume this would mean that the missile cruiser will win at range, if a player was skilful enough to get a battleship up close though it would have to win hands down.

I'm looking forward to the combat mechanics change, and I can see how it should really benefit naval play. Forcing intelligent placement of naval assets to screen Missile cruisers and Carriers. How you could set up an AW umbrella with proper use of your carrier and destroyers.

However this is dependent on them recognising how weak naval play is in CIV and how, regardless of what we think about naval power, inaccurately they model the importance of naval power.

 

[Nicolas10]

Well, that was an interesting response from Dachs. He's certainly bringing out a lot of historical examples, which, I gratefull concede, at least indicates that he's studied/read a lot. So well done there.

As the Punic Wars... It would appear that Hannibal's march through the Alps, losing all his War elephants and half his troops, was a direct reaction to not having transport and food capacity to make a landing onto Italy.

I think you're being a bit formalistic on the term "blockade" and a bit too dismissive of coastal actions world-wide. But, if you think navies are of little importance, and you're decently well-read on certain periods of history, then any quick examples I give now aren't going to dissuade you.

 

[Masada]

I'm just going to clear up the dross in the debate.

Your opinion about the effectiveness of blockades is irrelevant to the fact that blockades is part of what a navy can do. There is many examples in history of successful blockades.

Well, for the reference period nobody has cited any that stands up to criticism. All the suggestions (and I can't see many) have been debunked by Dachs. He has also suggested some of the factors that militated against blockades. So, please, cite some of these many time relevant incidences.

Something that has an impact on the war, especially one that has a major impact on a war, must be important. If an enemy is destroying your tanks you view that as important and seek to remove the threat. Equally deadly is if an opponent removes your supply chain, which is one of the effects of blockading.

Proof for your assertion that it did have a major impact on the war? I don't see any... I just see an implicit assumption that it was a major contributing factor.

A more comprehensive answer than that really should be given.

You misrepresented his position -- the definition of a strawman -- so he hardly needs to respond something he never said or even intimated.

Don't insinuate that someone knows nothing about naval history before you actually know them. It is quite an insult and I will thank you sir to remove it. Especially after your comments about how you disliked other people calling you ignorant.

I think it’s justified from a close reading perspective. I remain to be convinced that it isn't justified in other spheres. Suffice to say that you couldn't even be bothered to read Dachs post in the first place. The important part of the post which explicitly accepted the possibility of the existence (if not the accuracy) of every single paragraph below your second.

Most of this applies to the last few centuries of naval warfare, and mostly to the twentieth century at that.

But to continue with the theme:

That aside, the blockade of the French navy was exceptionally successful, their ability to put to sea was severely hampered, which in an age where you needed large numbers of ships to effectively hamper supply routes was a good thing. It also allowed Britain to retain a steady income off the confiscation of goods they did not want the French to receive. It also ensured that the French had little training at sea while our own ships despite being "storm-wracked" gained exceptional experience which in turn allowed them to defeat a numerically superior foe at the battle of Trafalgar

You haven't shown that it was all that useful. Vapid generalities, most of which are tangential, at best, does not an argument make.

Finally, two or three events do not win a war, mainly because those events in turn are created by smaller events. It is like a ripple, the loss of one battle affects this point, which affects that point, which affects the country. This is why a string of defeats often leads to what seems like an unusually quick collapse of an otherwise still strong force.

Generalities seem to be a recurring theme. But more seriously how did choking French commerce win the British the war? Sure, it might have materially improved their odds but I presume taking a dump in the English Channel would as well (increased chance of the Plague in Paris and all that).

Raw materials were also confiscated, you know gun powder, weapons, the things you needed to conduct a war in that time.

Cool were those significant contributing factors to the French defeat.

As for its impact in the French conduct of wars in Europe, well we were able to support the coalition at the battle of water loo. Kind of a big contribution no? Not to mention the moral impact on the French and British populace.

This is dumb on so many levels. Comparing the situation of the Hundred Days to the broader Napoleonic Wars is either (A) disingenuous or (B) simply a show of profound historical ignorance not to mention the whole: YOUR TALKING ABOUT NAVAL SUPERIORITY AND AMPHIBIOUS LANDINGS AND NOT BLOCKADES, AGAIN.

The blockade of an enemy port is a colossal war crime? Or do you mean ensuring that normal civilians cannot access food? Personally I don't see how thats any worse than burning raping and slaughtering people like in the dark ages, or gassing soldiers on the front line, or torpedoing a defensless passenger liner. Or sinking convoys so that the opposition also runs out of food.

It isn’t like acknowledging one war crime necessarily means repudiating the existence of others especially ones that haven’t even been previously discussed. But more seriously starving millions of civilians to death is nasty however your morally equivocate it.

Transport costs were not insanely high before the 19th century.

Dachs is right. Harley (1988) and North (1958) probably the two most authoritative and comprehensive voices on transportation costs both show that freight costs remained essentially constant between 1740 and 1840 before they declined substantially between 1840 and 1910. This could (and did) account for a substantial part of the differential between the products point of origin and its point of consumption. For instance, Williamson (2002) cites the case of Rangoon rice which cost in 1882 74 per cent more in Europe than Rangoon that declined to only 18 per cent in 1914. That represents a substantial decline in the real price of rice for European consumers. I can even post tables if you want to show that change in the differential for all kinds of things but I suspect that my example is sufficient for your purposes and mine.

The British empire, the Dutch nation, the French and the Spanish all relied on overseas trade from the Caribbean, India etc. Yes many goods were luxuries however the trade was still extremely high.

To paraphrase my favorite economic historian of the Nederlands-Indië J.C Van Leur (1955) the trade was in the splendid and the trifling and that might as well apply to all your examples. The VOC really only traded in luxuries principally spice, pepper, drugs, and precious metals. It was only after 1830 during the 'cultuurstelsel' that the Dutch attempted to do anything else. And even then, the 'export' crops they cultivated were more often that not sold internally. The tonnages are also laughable measured in the thousands of tonnes, for the reference period, and nothing else. Practically, it represented no more than 200 ships at any one time plying the route. Scarcely, high.

Nevertheless, you kinda proved the point for us anyway with that little rejoinder. Luxury goods are expensive and relatively light -- spice, pepper, drugs, and precious metals -- so it stands to reason if transport costs were high that they would be the lowest hanging fruit to start with and thus the principal object of trade. Which is what happened. Besides which no other trade meaningfully took place. Therefore, we can infer that not only were they the lowest hanging fruit they were the only economically viable fruit as well. I'm willing to conclude that transport costs were high on this basis.

You only need to look at Samuel Peeps documents on the requirements of overseas trade to keep the Royal Navy afloat to see this. Or even the port documents from earlier years.

Cool... that still doesn't mean that transport costs were high. I mean, if they weren't, you wouldn't have Britain trading with Scandinavia for wood when it had all those America forests to rape.

IN FACT, an earlier civilisation relied extensively on the income, trade and assimilation of foreign nations. I am of course talking about the Romans.

Some of that doesn't follow. Besides, the Mediterranean isn't that sophisticated of a barrier to trade. Africa is.

I don't just watch the history channel, if you would like a list of books I am more than happy to provide you with the ones I can easily get my hands on. The rest are at my parents house at the moment.... Being a student makes it difficult to carry round more than 1 bookcase of books in addition to all your subject textbooks.

Please do...

I disagree, King James established the Royal Navy and that was well before the 19th Century, the Spannish armada proved that effective control of the oceans would become immensely important.

Dachs isn't contesting that. He's contesting the efficiency and practicality of blockades which the Spanish Armada demonstrates considering all the problems it had. All weather alone was a stretch.

The spread of Colonialism started in the 15 century. It quickly became a trade race to establish the largest colonies on the new world, whoever did would become a major player and yet without a strong enough Navy to defend these colonies countries like Spain soon fell behind upcoming countries like Britain and the Dutch who had the capability to defend their interests and raid others.

Which Dachs acknowledged. He even suggested that raids were an optimal solution viz. a viz. blockades. I'm going to stop at this point since you obviously have no intention of reading Dachs post let alone understanding his position. Most of what you've written past this point is utterly irrelevant and frankly kind of ridiculous when you consider that most of it has been covered repeatedly. I'll leave the rest to Dachs with these parting words of his quoted again:

Most of this applies to the last few centuries of naval warfare, and mostly to the twentieth century at that.

Besides which I've covered the areas I'm intimately familiar with, hopefully straightened out some of the silliness and honestly Dachs is far better at this kind of thing than me.

 

[Yared]

Check out some of his history articles.