Planes and ships?

[Windwalker]

Is it just me, or are planes and ships fairly useless when it comes to conquering the world? It is my first time playing (in chieftain difficulty), and I passed the 2050 deadline without achieving my goal of cultural victory, but I am continuing play, in hopes of dominating the world. I've spent about half my production on Modern Armor and half on battleships/cruisers/bombers/fighters, and I've noticed that even with about 20 things bombarding a city per turn, not much happens (i.e. 2-3 citizens die and 2-3 improvements go down). Note that I'm trying not to kill improvements just yet, since I plan on using the city once I get it... Should I just be spending most (say 90%) of my production on modern armor and forget about the ships and planes? Are ships and planes only useful for transport security? I guess if I wanted to kill improvements, the bombers would be useful, but right now, there are two civs left, the french and the russians, and I want to use the french cities in my final war against the russians, so I don't want to kill the french improvements. I guess I'll find more use for them when I turn my sights toward my russian comrades...

- Windwalker

 

[Sman]

I have always found ships and planes really helpfull. Basicly the ships eg. battleships are made so you can patrol the seas and keep out enemy ships from entering your coasts and they are also helpfull for escorting cargo ships, but they suck for attacking a coast city. And the Bomber planes are a real help for softening a city before and attack and destroying roads to resources. If you are going for kill everyone then may I suggest a few ICMB's and a couple of nukes will do the trick but keep in mind that if you use it then the russians and the french are gonna go to war with u.

 

[Woody]

Planes, I will build a few fighters just to annoy the AI when he tries to bomb my roads and improvements. I rarely build bombers, they cant kill anything and my wars usually progress so fast that I am out of bomber range after the first turn.

Ships, for warships I build battleships only anything else isnt worth it, mainly for transport defense and killing AI transports. If the AI gets too carried away with shore bombardment I churn out a few artillery pieces and take the ship down to one HP, it doesnt kill it but they do retreat to make repairs.

 

[Style]

I use both planes and ships not so much to bomb cities, but to destroy improvements. Unless you've got 3 transports full of dudes waiting to to attack a city you've pounded with battleships and bombers, it's pretty much useless. But when it comes to destroying improvements, they rarely fail at their missions and the next turn, I see workers in a frenzy trying to rebuild what I smashed ;]

 

[gopherchucks]

Even if an enemy is next to me on land, I use a few ships to transport dudes to smac him around where I think he's weak in another section. I just love attacking from at least two different angles.

I usually always find myself with a fairly large navy. Not sure how many times I was able to drown a transport before he reached my shores and such.

As others said, planes are great for choking off resources. Hate it when they do that to me though, that's just not right.

 

[Ironikinit]

A tactic I've been wanting to try out is bombarding the tar out of an enemy city, destroying all the happiness improvements, and then hitting it with propaganda. It's supposed to work pretty well, but I haven't tested it out yet.

 

[Fanny Brice]

If you are bombarding a city that is not in visual range, you may be damaging the defending units and not realize it. Use the bombardment to knock the defenders' hit points down and then move in to attack with your ground troops. This will do much to reduce the casualties of your ground troops allowing you to sustain a campaign.

If you don't want to destroy improvements, don't bombard the city until you are ready to attack it. (You'll still cause some damage... but that's war).

If you are out of ground units temporarily or if the city is one of the enemy's major production centers out of your range, then go ahead and take out his mines & major shield squares.

You can also use your bombardment to channel the movement of enemy troops. Destroy their roads and they will take a less direct path toward you. Or force them to go by units with "zone of control" which may damage them as they pass. Or form a stong blocking position (like building fortifications in hills or mountains) and tear up the road in front of it. Enemy units moving toward you will use up their movment and be forced to stop within striking distance of your dug in troops. Add some artillery to your position and weaken them before you attack. (The "hammer and anvil" strategy) Pity the AI army.:shotgun:

 

[planetfall]

I thought ZOC was eliminated, except for coastal fortresses and privateers. I haven't seen it on other pieces.

BS are not super effective, nor are destroyers.
about 1:4 ratios. Bombers will get about 1:2 ratio
if you remove roads around city first. I like to
1. remove roads and rails
2. remove irrigation inside city boundaries
3. remove barracks
4. get a red winner bar if musketman or higher

then go get some new workers. Usually it only takes a few pieces {inf, mech inf, tank} to move in. Naturally you must remove reiforcement options first and have at least a 2 front attack in progress.

 

[BillChin]

Artillery is superfluous when you have overwhelming firepower. However if you have even odds at a competitive difficulty, artillery and bombers help a great deal. Example: when attacking with swordsmen or horsemen against hoplites or pikemen, catapults help a lot. Same deal when attacking with Calvary against Infantry in large cities, bombers help a lot.

I do wish they put in some better artillery, as radar arty is a joke. I guess Firaxis never heard of self propelled guns. Modern armor crushes everything so giving radar artillery a movement of two or three would add to the game without changing game balance.

 

[Troyens]

Originally posted by Windwalker
Is it just me, or are planes and ships fairly useless when it comes to conquering the world?. . .

Many of us have complained about the lousy way Civ III treats navies, whose real purpose is to destroy the trade and commerce of a civ - not muck about attacking "improvements", which is unrealistic. Ships pre-destroyer didn't even have the firepower to destroy mines and irrigation canals.

Even dumber, waves of bombers can't even sink a warship!! Too bad Firaxis never heard of Pearl Harbor.

 

[Allemand]

Or Midway.

My basic goals are 100 tanks, 150 infantry, 30-40 artillery, 25 bombers, 25 jet fighters, 30 battleships, 10-15 transports, 5-10 aircraft carriers if I can use them, 10 settlers. Also depends on what kind of map you get.

Destroyers are useful if you give them the ability to see subs, otherwise don't bother with them.

 

[sealman]

Originally posted by Fanny Brice
You can also use your bombardment to channel the movement of enemy troops. Destroy their roads and they will take a less direct path toward you. Or force them to go by units with "zone of control" which may damage them as they pass. Or form a stong blocking position (like building fortifications in hills or mountains) and tear up the road in front of it. Enemy units moving toward you will use up their movment and be forced to stop within striking distance of your dug in troops. Add some artillery to your position and weaken them before you attack. (The "hammer and anvil" strategy) Pity the AI army.:shotgun:

Your stategy sounds like it would work and I use a close variant but you got the hammer and anvil stategy wrong. The thought lines of the strategy are similar to a pincer movement. You have two forces moving against one. Your 'anvil' sits tight and fortifies in some well defended position. You then bring the 'hammer' down on the opposing forces and force them towards the anvil where they will be caught between both forces.

 

[Fanny Brice]

Originally posted by sealman


but you got the hammer and anvil stategy wrong.

True. I was wondering if someone would catch that.

 

[Amask]

I always use bombers and lots of them. Especially if I'm playing on an archipelago map. If a city is on an island, it is enough to destroy the harbor and airport for it to go into civil disorder. The AI builds them next turn, and I destroy them again. Bombers are good to destroy roads to resources and luxuries. And to get close to enemy's cities I build battleships and carriers. Works well!

 

[sgrig]

I have rarely used large numbers of ships because I usually play on pangaea maps.

I tend to use bombers in the beginning of a war so that the enemy units are softened before my offensive. I use artillery only only on small culture cities, because it is annoying to wait a few turns before artillery can move into range of a city.

Of course if I am starting an operations to capture a large, well-defended enemy city, I usually mass bombers in some nearby town and do wait for artillery to move into position, otherwise it is easy to lose too many units.

 

[planetfall]

Even with pangaea maps, they are very useful. I also have only played with pangaea maps, but depend on ships to reduce AI expansion. I am experimenting on game play and increased load capacity of carrier from ridiculous 4 units to 12 units. I have not yet progressed to the end game so it is too soon to see the difference in game play. I simply got tired of just sending out 10-12 carriers and a few BS and destroyers. Now the naval force should match a carrier task force better. Looking forward to see how it shapes up.

 

[Dragon67]

I never build artillery, since it slows my attack badly, and why build them when you can capture them from your enemy instead?
I have found bombards more useful, so I always try to build lots of them. I also build carriers (each one guarded by two battleships), so I can get my bombers into strategic positions along their coastline before the battle. It is a great chance that some of them can be intercepted, but it's worth it.
I only use (captured)artillery, if they can reach the target in the current turn, but I never wait fore them anymore.
After I changed my tactic from artillery to bombards, I also managed to reduce the wartime with several turns. Sure, you can avoid culture flip's if you use artillery against cities, but it's a better way to avoid it if you can wipe out your enemy in a faster attack.

 

[Ayatollah So]

I've never reached the age of flight in a Civ3 game yet. Is there any way to escort bombers with fighters? Other than flying fighters and hoping the enemy runs out of interceptor missions, that is. (How does that work, anyway? One plane vs one plane, until the attacker stops flying or the defender runs out?) Civ2 was irritating because of this escort-free approach.

 

[Eric The Fish]

I've found that artillery is almost entirely useless. especially early in the game (catapults are horrible). i like to go in with fast moving units (knights, cavalry) and artis are just too friggin slow. and what's with not being able to kill troops by bombarding them? What? cannons and bombs dropped from planes can't kill people? ok. and yeah the fact that planes are so weak against battle ships?

 

[Jinglehopper]

I haven't seen one of my fighters do anything yet as far as air superiority goes. Do they just attack bombers which do operations in their city radius? Does that mean every strategically important city should have fighters in them?

There doesn't seem to be any way to protect my massive legions of bombers. In other games, having a couple of fighters in your air force meant you could take out opposing fighters when they posed a threat. In Civ3, the only counter is to swarm the city with as many bombers as you can muster.