need some assistance and looking for training games

[vmxa]

No you are not misunderstanding culture. Ships do not make culture. You can indirectly gain culture with ships by using them on invasions. Darski was saying she likes vet ship and then ended that point and her next sentence was about tiny berg adding to culture.

She ran those two things together and I sort of teased her a bit. Vet ships are a waste as you are not suppose to be in protracted naval battles at the level of the game in question and the level that she like to play.

If you do get into naval battles at those levels, you shuld have better ships and they will manage to become vets without you paying for a harbor. Granted you may have a few places with a harbor that actually is useful and swell make capitol ship there.

Where it is swell, if in fact the town is some where close to the action. Not much use, if you have to sail around half the map.

Bergs are fine, but not fine to use for culture. It is not cost effective to build them in tiny corrupt bergs. If you asre going for just a culture win, you do not need a temple in every littel town you have. If you are trying for somespecial culture win, that what I am saying is not germain.

 

[Elephantium]

vmxa, what do you do instead of ship battles at high levels? Doesn't the AI ever try to interdict your invasion fleets? Don't you need some naval power to stop the AI from bombarding your coasts?

(I almost asked about stopping landings, but given the AI's limited "ability" -- and I use that word loosely -- to stage invasions, it's not all that relevant! )

 

[vmxa]

Well as you are seeing right now in our SG, mostly just ignore the bombardment. That is a mod, so it is not quite the same. In C3C at levels like Emperor or less and not playing on an island you should not have that many to deal with.

On the extreme I would say our the 250x250 AWE 31 civs games that I have played solo and in SG's. Those are the games I see a lot of ships. Again I just ignore them till they get frigates.

Then it can start to be a bit painful. You have two ways to go imo. 1- let them find a town that they want to pound and let them. 2- shuffle in enough units to keep them interested and too many to do damage to the town.

This all presumes we are not talking about Dromons. That always requires putting in units to absorb the pounding. Keep your armies off the coast and workers either off the coast in the face of ships or covered so they tiles are not destroyed.

 

[vmxa]

You cannot think of trying to attack the frigates in those games, till you have artillery. That many foes will just bury you and you cannot afford to keep tossing ships into the fray.

I just make 4-5 escorts for my invasions. Usually you can manage to avoid most of the ships. In the times you have an issue with the path, you may need a few more escorts, I cannot recall have more than 6. You already know, if you are going to have to run a gauntlet.

Edit:
I mean by that that you have not been able to pare them down and have to traverse a long distance. Most of the time we will have eliminated a fair number of enemies and the distance is not that great. Failing that you usually can find a fairly safe route. If not if that is true, you already know that. It is not uheard of to lose a galleon, but not common. In really hard spots, I will bring several empty galleons for them to sink.

On Sid games they are frequently island games, else continents. Here I have only the very early part for them to have boats. They seldom have frigates as by that time they are maxed on support and have disbanded them.

I have run into very large invasions of galleys, I have mention more than once a game years back where 32 Aztec galleys came at me. They never made even a galleon. They had about 2000 units by the time I invaded them and did not even have a worker.

Edit:
Though not playing as an AW, it works out often to be the same in island Sid games for me. They DOW and I rarely make peace. I want them to make all those troops and not clear the polluted tiles and not be able to have ships.
If they make a good peace deal for me, that is fine. I know it will not be long and they will DOW again.

My method for std map at levels like DG and not AW, is to have next to no ships most of the game.
Later I will put up a couple of frigates in key spots. They are meant to sally out and kill off cripples, not engage in sea battles.

All I want is to make the AI step lightly, rather than have a free hand at harassment. They like to send out boats to bombard. So in easier game I tend to try to fight back, but surgically. In rough games, I try to hang on, till I can invade.

 

[vmxa]

This is a run to see if what I recall of the AI does in terms of ships is at all valid. So I ran at Monarch. Used France on std map and continents with 70% water. I soon realized that Byz where on my continent, but go ahead anyway. Not sure what distortions, if anyway that will bring.

Things went swell, till I nearly had my steaked out area covered. Then the Dutch land a settler combo. I had to DOW and autoraze town. Did not want to, but settlers where on their way. Turns out that Rome declared on me then as well. I think this was around 300AD.

I battled them till I had all except 1 town. About 840AD. I got to Steam and found no coal and I had over half the continent. The only source it turned out was held by the Dutch. I DOW and take 4 towns and make peace. Start rails about 940AD.

I went ahead and eliminate Rome 1070AD.

Soon as I got some key rails in place I DOW Theo, 1100AD. I should say I was in Republic all the way. It is now 1230AD and I have pushed Byz into a small corner and would soon have them off the continent and can turn to the Dutch.

I had 1 caravel that I used to send two units to an close island to kill a town of Rome's. I disbanded it after that was done. Later I made 1 frigate to expose the map and finally find some of the missing nations.

I am currently making galleons to upgrade as I am about to get transorts and destroyers. I will switch pre's to DD at that point and rush them, if needed.

The Byz had and still have dozens of boats. They have yet to land a single unit or even bombard. I confess that the lack of dromon runs is strange to me, but I have not played with them still around this late in some time. Now I have a few artillery that I use to ping the boats that come close. I have sunk a few in port while capturing towns.

I have only seen a couple of boats from the civs on the other continent and those only recently. So it looks like what I would expect at this level, no real need for a navy, till I invade. Then only enough to shepard the invasion. In this case I would think 2 destroyers will do the job as I am not going to be at war while I travel.

Once I push Theo off the continent I will make peace with her. The run on the Dutch will be brutally quick. I see 5 towns and 1 probably in the fog that is still around. I have 5 armies and a 6th in 3 turns. Rails to all, but the most recently aquired towns.

Oh, I still have the one frigate, but it has not been in a battle.

 

[vmxa]

I see I had some other notes left on that run:

1270AD I went ahead and took all 6 towns in one turn, using workers to rail to each town. They have 2 towns on a small island. I would be willing to make peace, but it will probably be quicker to just drop the armies on them and end them.

1300AD finished the Dutch. They planet a town while I was at it, so wasted a turn. Decide I will eliminate Byz. I think my test is really done though. I can lannd any place with no intervention. Byz has two towns on two on seperate islands. Split the fleet as they as close to each other.

1310AD Eliminated Byz. The best count I could come up with the Byz still had 23 boats with 2 towns. Add in theones they lost from prior towns being captured you have to figure at least 35 ships. Still they never put up a single sea battle or bombardment.