no use for naval units?

[cort]

in previous civ games, building a naval fleet was nearly pointless. Especially after railroads, while you can move ground units even 80 squares in a single turn, battleships were limited to 4? if i am not wrong it was taking 6 or 7 turns (two years?) to land American soldiers to Normandy in the WW2 scenario.

And I am afraid things will not be much different for civ3. besides their limited movement capabilities, there is no real use for them. There are no merchant ships to protect for the main reason. You do not need to build a single ship to trade with a civilization that resides on a different continent. And you only need build a single trasport to send a worker to gather resources from a colony on an island. You do not need to build a fleet to protect trade routes. Of course enemies can make invasions and stuff but the real point is that they cannot issue blockades. If you want to cut off resource traffic of an enemy you have no other choice but to make an invasion which is not only unrealistic but also impractical even in terms of gameplay.

This is a little bit of shame for a game like civ3, dont you think so. World history is full of examples of how naval power determined the outcome of events. Think about the colonization era, World wars, to name a few. how did Britain managed to be a supreme power for such a long time, why did Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour.

I am not making any suggestions to fix this because at this stage of development i am pretty sure they will be ignored. But would not it be great to have a trade system like the "Imperialism" series; your trading capacity is determined by the cargo capacity of your merchant ships; and you have to defend your ports/merchants from enemy blockades.

Any comments?

-- my point is not to critisize fraxis, i am looking forward to play the game. just to make it better..

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Well I definitely agree on the importance of maintaining shipping lanes to protect trade interests, etc. This was huge historically (esp for the English)

My biggest concern with ships in general is the HOPELESS movement rate. A Trireme can move the same distance as a Submarine??? A battleship can only double a Horseman's movement rate?? (civ 2 ADMs here)

FASTER SHIPS!! C'mon!

Or give all ships the Alpine Ability

 

[Sparrowhawk]

I think that naval units have always, and will still have a lot of influence in Civ. Sure, while you cannot actually impede trade, you still can blockade.

Assume two scenarios: one where the landmass is in large continents, the other where it is split among several islands.

In a situation with large continents, blockading sea trade would be useless anyway (what point does a blockade on mongolia have?) since almost all of their trade and expansion is going to occur over land.

In a situation with many isles, sea power is very important. If you can put a large navy to sea, you can keep other civs from expanding off of their isles, and even if they do get a few small cities built elsewhere, you can strangle them. You also keep away any invasions on your soil.

Also, sea power will become more important in Civ 3 than it was in Civ 2. As you mentioned, landing assaults by sea in Civ 2 was often useless since land travel on rail was unlimited. Not any more. Now you have to capture the city before you can use the rail lines. Leap-frog assaults up an enemy's coast could very well be the fastest and most efficient method of conquest.

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

Another importance will be their ability to bombard!

Park a ship outside your opponents capitol and bomb his roads to nothingness and watch him trade then Wow, I'm so clever!

 

[Sparrowhawk]

Oh, not only that... Make sure to kill any workers and especially settlers that you can see. They're worth so much population! This could be fun.....

 

[Cunobelin Of Hippo]

And IF this is part of the game, target his harbour and blast away! No more overseas trade.

But target bombarding might be associated only with Smart Weapons (modern Tech).

 

[cort]

sparrowhawk,
limitation on use of railroads is good but not enough..

consider this; Mongols residing in the middle of asia can start trading with Aztecs located at the America even if they have no coastal cities. They do not even need the have the Navigation?

besides, you have given examples about preventing enemies to expand. Consider this; you need something more powerful than triremes to rule the seas right, which means the middle stages of the game. however, you can start expanding to nearby isles very early in the game with the help of triremes. You have a lot of time to improve your cities for resisting to simple invasions. This is quite historical upto this point.
Than, as I have mentioned in my first post, your oppents' naval superiority helps nothing at all because they have no target . It requires a considerable ground force to make an invasion, which is not historical.
What was the real case in history was; Britain was not invading every single island/port on the world. Instead, they were blockading them which was having the same effect at the mainland; loss of resources being gathered from that point.

 

[cort]

Originally posted by Cunobelin Of Hippo
Another importance will be their ability to bombard!

Park a ship outside your opponents capitol and bomb his roads to nothingness and watch him trade then Wow, I'm so clever!

is this correct? can you damage roads, mines, etc. with range attacks?

this is just the thing I was mentioning!

 

[DaEezT]

I think that - given the right setting(severall continents, not a single big one) - the naval units will be more useful than ever.

In a Preview trail of an German Mag is a scene of a battle ship using it's bombardment skill. The range is 2 squares in each direction! And it was also said that Air units are now flying missions instead of being a directly controlled unit. That could make Carriers even more valuable.


for those who want it, here is the trailer
http://www.civ3.de/movies/civ3gamestar_divx.avi (20MB)
The scenes where u can see the bombardment range are @ 1:20 & 1:23. The german comment even sais that the ship is using the bombardment feature.

 

[GhostMutt]

First off, if you haven't already, follow this thread

Battleship Stats

Great Britain used a navy to exhert influence precisely because of the trade factor. But what developed was also a defensive response to nations with much larger standing armies. By that notion, if a few frigates can stop your enemies civs from deliver musketeers to your shores, by golly, you WILL still build a navy.

In addition, the revelation that civs in "War" relations will not be able to use roads/railroads in that civ's sphere of influence makes naval units invaluable for assaul on coastal cities. I'm too lazy to search for that thread, so find it yourself.

 

[JBearIt]

Although I never built huge navies in CivII, a few battleships were always handy to weaken coastal cities' defenses (especially before I had access to tanks and howitzers). I expect it will be the same with CivIII. Plus there's always great satisfaction in sending one of my subs to sink a transport containing 9 enemy troops.

 

[Robespierre]

they should make ship movement a lot higher - like 10 or so. this would make more sense since in real life having the most powerful world navy allows you to basically traverse the world's oceans at will and deploy your forces anywhere.

and i mentioned in an earlier post about my worries about whether or not you will be able to disrupt an opponent's trade through piracy, the way the germans did on a massive scale. how can you sabotage trade routes when there is nothing tangible there for you to attack? is blockade of harbors the only way to sabotage sea trade?

 

[Monte Pyton]

i think that the only real way to solve this would be to change the game so that railroads do not give you unlimited travel, even in your own territory. as bad as some people might dislike this, it seems most realistic to todays world....of course, it would be a much higher movement multiplier than the basic roads but not infinite ( maybe 1/5 to 1/10 at very most ).

i also think there should be trading ships in the game...and i know that there's no more caravans, but i really liked the idea of 'micro-managing' trade.....

 

[GhostMutt]

Oy Vay!
If you cannot use your enemy's Roads and Railroads during a declared state of war, it'll reduce you to the base movement rates of the unit. Battleships can just sail up to a city, and marines can do amphibious landings. Launching an attack on an enemy during Peace, assuming your troops are massed on the border virtually nullifies the chance of capturing a city in the first turn. No more Howitzer rushes. In addition, imagine stopping an enemy unit in it's tracks by bombarding it with your Battleship, *before* it is adjacent to the City.

 

[H Tower]

One of the ways that would make a large navy be important is letting ships block trade routes. say your at war with the english and they have a trade route to south america, if you have a ship in between the two cities, the trade route wouldn't work, or the shipment might be intercepted. It could work a lot like the airlift function in civ2, with the possibility for your airlift to be shot down. i also think this wouldn't be too large a leap in programming, but really is too late to add it, pity

 

[GhostMutt]

That would be one heck of a blockade.
The tonnage of the ships that made it past German Submarine and surface Navies during the 1st and 2nd World Wars is tremendous. You'd need more than a few ships to stop a trade route based on the high sea. Now if you blocked off all the immediate adjacent squares of the city to sea, then maybe.

You are also simplifying trade itself, since you assume that it is a trade between two fixed points. British and American (or any Nation's) trade was, (and is) a large series of transactions between multiple cities. Sure, Persepolis is trading Hides for Wine, but the Hides are actually being traded for Timber, which is *then* being traded for wine. Civ2 just cuts out the intermediate steps.
If I recall, one of the American Colonial trade routes was:
Slaves- to Americas Via Caribbean (from Africa)
Rum and Sugar to Britain Via Americas (from Caribbean)
Timber, wool, cotton to Britian (from American Colonies)
Manufactured goods to Americas and Africa (from Great Britain)

Naturally any of these products could be acquired by simply paying for them, but exchanges in kind was more efficient. Bascially, Britain needed cotton and timber, and traded by any means in order to obtain it. So if you blockaded a sea route for trade, the blockaded civ will make other deals, as opposed to trying to live without Iron. If it by Sea is the *only* way to get that commodity, then.. Excellent!
Sorry, I got carried away

 

[H Tower]

Originally posted by GhostMutt
That would be one heck of a blockade.
The tonnage of the ships that made it past German Submarine and surface Navies during the 1st and 2nd World Wars is tremendous. You'd need more than a few ships to stop a trade route based on the high sea. Now if you blocked off all the immediate adjacent squares of the city to sea, then maybe.

i didn't mean it would block the entire trade route, but maybe some of it, the amount blocked increased if you had more ships or if you put the ships in a bottle neck area (like the straits of Gibralter) plus it could have a randomness to it, just like the shooting down of an airlift in civ2

 

[GhostMutt]

OK, I see what you're getting at. But as the CIV series evolves, it will hopefully take on greater levels of complexity, which I suppose is what I was getting at.

 

[Monte Pyton]

thats one of the reasons why i wish they hadn't gotten rid of using caravans to trade and 'micromanaging it' ....this trade blockade idea would have worked if they had also added new trade ships and trade planes

---or perhaps one way that they could keep trade units and still use the new system is by allowing civs to trade like they would using the new system, except trading to foreign cities one by one instead of with the entire culture. these city to city trade routes could only be initiated by sending a caravan or other trade unit from one city to the other.

 

[Sparrowhawk]

Trade boats and trade planes? Isn't that the same as putting a caravan in a transport, or airlifting it? That's how Civ 2 works! Lo and behold, you can shoot down the airlift or sink the transport if you have the right assets in the right spot, at the right time. Remember also that using a caravan to initiate a trade route is exactly the way Civ 2 worked.

I don't see how these suggestions would change Civ at all, it would just be Civ 2 all over again. And while I'm a huge fan, who doesn't find it tedious to organize caravans?