Power of Naval Assaults

[madscientist]

Not something I do often, But I was playing as Kublai Kahn. Me and Cyrus were friendly and sharing a continent, the chief rival was Qin who had Liz and Suliman and Liz as colonies.

I was teching towards space, but Cyrus declared war on Qin and could have gotten a diplomatic or domination win first. Cyrun had HC and Toku as vassals so attacking him did not seam too appealing.

Enter the WWII era naval assaults. Built 3 carries each with 3 fighters. Add 3 battleships and a few destroyers. Had only 4 transports, with mostly marines but a few tanks.

These units just plain rock!!!! One by one I simply assaulted first LIz, then Sulimans coastal cities (luckily they had no landlocked ones). Each city was quickly bombarded and defended unit crippled with fighters. THe marines charged, but never had to land and could heal on-ship. The last Marine would defend the city, a tank went afterwards if the marine was severlt damaged. An Infantry unit would be airlifted from a core city in the new one. By the end Liz and Sul were gone and Qin capitulated to Cyrus, leaving me with 45% population which was enough to ward off losing to domination/diplo.

Was alot of fun and kept me entertained while tediously bulding the spaceship.

Granted Qin was behind and had limited seapower (Cyrus and Toku obliterated it all) and Liz and Sul defended with redcoats/rifles, still ALOT faster than if I had to land a force. Being free of counter attacks is a big advantage.

 

[Gooblah]

I agree, planning massive naval assaults can be tedious, but the results are so awesome! they offer an innovative way to secure a victory, and serve, as you said, a distraction from the tediousness of working towards a normal victory.

 

[IronCrown]

I've been planning to play a game like that for some time... I have the habit not to build any navy. I always think those hammers and gold are wasted because after all, naval units cannot hold your cities. I have to say that even maps like Big and Small can be won without having a navy. Move your troops to the enemy shore, attack, take a city and hide your transports there. Take the land. If you need to move to another landmass, make peace for a few turns, then repeat. If you can get to your destination in one turn, you won't even have to make peace.

The AI's ships willl only lurk around your coasts, destroy fishing boats and bombard city defenses, but no troops ever show up...

 

[Roxlimn]

Yeah, that's pretty much one of the main reasons I like warring in the modern age - faster results. Also one of the reasons why my coastal cities have positively paranoid defenses. Believe it or not, you can actually do this in the Medieval Era with Ragnar's Berserkers to limited success. Better once you upgrade them and use Frigates to bombard, though. It sucks that the Vikings can't overrun other Civs by sea like they used to in Civ 3.

 

[Mista]

I always build a strong navy. Enough carriers to get fighters to the foreign coast, battleships to bombard, destroyers to defend against airships and subs. Marines are great, or the Navy Seal, if America. They do not always win, although the odds are high, so you need to have backups ready and replacement fighters so that when a fighter is damaged, you can send it to a city for repair, and replace it on station.

 

[obsolete]

I rarely build naval units because the AI is either ontop of me in tech, or just behind me, or I simply have other priorities. Though last game I was able to build a couple stealth destroyers just to TEST what they looked like (ahem, to test their operations).

I still haven't even gotten around to building a missile cruizer yet. I just fear they are a huge risk. If I make a convoy of them, they are probably dead before I can get them over to the enemy if I really need to do some damage.

Now just MAYBE, next game I'll get the chance to build em and test them around.

 

[duende29]

If the city where you settled your GGs is a coastal city you can probably dominate the seas no matter what. But yeh, I rarely build fleets, mostly just to defend some seafood, or to escort transports.