(Rising Tides) Possible uses for Submarines.

[swordoflight86]

From what I watched of Quill's livestream, subs are rather slow, and I am not entirely certain they are useful for offensive operations except at the outset. So what can submarines be used for? That is the question I am positing.

I have a few ideas. The first being to set up two rings of subs around your empire as sort of an early warning/delay system. They let you know the attack is coming and then when they declare war, the subs ZOC messes them up for a short time, until they hunt down the subs, by which point the rest of your subs and your navy have arrived.

I would set up the subs with the outer ring 5 hexes apart and the inner ring 3 hexes apart, but that is just me.

My second idea is to set up a few roaming "wolfpacks" of subs, which on the outbreak of war start plundering every trade route of the enemies they can reach, then fall on every isolated military unit they come across.

My third is just to combine those two ideas. Two rings of subs and a bunch of "wolfpacks" to cause havok with the enemies war plan from the word go.

 

[Westwall]

I also imagine they're good for taking potshots at things like Krakens and Sea Dragons.

Come to think of it, one of the benefits of using them should maybe be that they don't affect your overall relationship with the aliens.

 

[Ryika]

From what I've seen in the Streams the main usage will probably be the same as in Civ 5 - destroying whole Navies because the AI doesn't understand how to defend against them.

So it's really the decision between a "quick navy" and a "navy that won't take many losses".
Don't think mixing them with other ships is a good idea (unless you can get them where you want very early), given that they'd slow down all other units.

 

[Ryoga]

I also imagine they're good for taking potshots at things like Krakens and Sea Dragons.

Come to think of it, one of the benefits of using them should maybe be that they don't affect your overall relationship with the aliens.

Not like killing them from a distance (including with regular ships) affected alien relationship at all until now.

 

[Westwall]

Was this also true for land aliens?

Could I use my ships to snipe them without penalty?

 

[Ryika]

Ranged Attacks to give a Penalty, just like Melee attacks. Only exception is the City Ranged Attack.

 

[Halbbruder]

From what I watched of Quill's livestream, subs are rather slow, and I am not entirely certain they are useful for offensive operations except at the outset. So what can submarines be used for? That is the question I am positing.

I have a few ideas. The first being to set up two rings of subs around your empire as sort of an early warning/delay system. They let you know the attack is coming and then when they declare war, the subs ZOC messes them up for a short time, until they hunt down the subs, by which point the rest of your subs and your navy have arrived.

I would set up the subs with the outer ring 5 hexes apart and the inner ring 3 hexes apart, but that is just me.

My second idea is to set up a few roaming "wolfpacks" of subs, which on the outbreak of war start plundering every trade route of the enemies they can reach, then fall on every isolated military unit they come across.

My third is just to combine those two ideas. Two rings of subs and a bunch of "wolfpacks" to cause havok with the enemies war plan from the word go.

I noticed in my current Apollo marathon Archipelago game that when enemy ships bump into yours, they won't attack it until next turn because they didn't see the unit initially and thus process subsequent actions, so I see that happening a lot: your subs will get inadvertently surrounded by enemy ships and then...

Spoiler :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZlOhSt_qW0

But otherwise, yeah that is something I would do: placing subs near sea straits where potential enemies would come from.

 

[Ryoga]

Ranged Attacks to give a Penalty, just like Melee attacks. Only exception is the City Ranged Attack.

Nope they don't, I made extensive testing about that. The only time a ranged attack does cause a change in alien relationship is when you do it from melee range.

 

[Ryika]

Nope they don't, I made extensive testing about that. The only time a ranged attack does cause a change in alien relationship is when you do it from melee range.

Just double-checked that and yep, you're right, Ranged Attacks from outside of the Melee Range do indeed not give a penalty.

Didn't know that and learned something new and useful. Thanks.

 

[legalizefreedom]

Nope they don't, I made extensive testing about that. The only time a ranged attack does cause a change in alien relationship is when you do it from melee range.

Is this testing in BERT? If not, this is certainly something to look at when it comes out.

 

[omniclast]

@Ryoga - I'm pretty sure the devs are still unaware of this bug (or feature?) since they don't shoot aliens from two tiles at every opportunity, as you should pretty much always do. We regularly see them avoid shooting aliens in livestreams, with the stated reason of not wanting them to get aggressive. (Although for some reason I vaguely recall something about a patch fix related to this? Not sure if that would have been after your testing.)

Couple things I'd still like to know about subs. 1) Can they hit cities/land units. 2) Since they're invisible, can they enter an opponent's territory while not at war (this was a big ask from subs in Civ5). 3) Will there be a rock-paper-scissors advantage between melee ships, ranged ships and submarines as there was in civ5.

It's disappointing to see they're so slow, but hopefully they get increased movement at higher levels. More like artillery I guess?

 

[Ryoga]

Well submarines are still a cool addition if they work like Civ V, the problem is that AI have always been horrible with them both at using them and at dealing with them. You get enormous advantage by knowing exactly when they are as soon as they fire, while AI do not.

 

[Lucius_]

Couple things I'd still like to know about subs. 1) Can they hit cities/land units. 2) Since they're invisible, can they enter an opponent's territory while not at war (this was a big ask from subs in Civ5). 3) Will there be a rock-paper-scissors advantage between melee ships, ranged ships and submarines as there was in civ5.

Personally I think any unit should be able to enter enemy territory without open borders, but the stipulation would be those units can be freely attacked without a DoW and without a diplomacy penalty. Basically, wander into enemy territory at your own risk.

 

[Barathor]

Nope they don't, I made extensive testing about that. The only time a ranged attack does cause a change in alien relationship is when you do it from melee range.

Wow, that's very stupid. I never realized this. I just tested it as well.

I lined up wolf beetles to die, and my CARVR's one-shotted 15 before I reached hostile.

The next game, I lined them up again and one-shotted them with AEGIS at a distance of 2. I went up to about 80 kills before I quit.

(Initially, I was thinking that maybe it was tied to XP gain, so with melee at 15 kills x 5 xp = 75, I was expecting my 38th ranged attack kill to turn them hostile with each attack only gaining 2 xp.)

The next game, I did the same with the AEGIS, but this time I made them adjacent to the wolf beetles. 15 kills and they went hostile, just like the melee CARVR's.

I also did a test using a whole bunch of Purity Rocket Battery cities and one-shotting beetles at a distance of 2 and when right next to my city. Neither of them raised the aliens to hostile.

I really hope Firaxis fixes this, I doubt they did in the expansion. But Dave "did" say something about reworking the alien AI, so maybe there's a tiny bit of hope.

- - - - - - - -

I made another thread about the annoying ranged attack buttons underneath city names, thinking that they shouldn't always be displayed in that manner if we're not meant to shoot aliens on sight. Never mind that, I'm blasting away at them all the time now! I'll try my best not to exploit things out in the wild with my ranged units, but it's going to be hard to do now after knowing this.

 

[ImperialGuard]

I wonder if the designers would say this is an "intended feature"?


E.g. Because it is a ranged attack, the aliens don't know who initiated the attack (because you're not next to them), therefore they don't know who to get aggressive with because of the attack.



Either way (bug or feature), the system can be "gamed", and that's just not right.

 

[poom3619]

^Handwaving of Dev

Be right back, farming science from alien

What a great discovery, Ryoga

 

[Ryika]

I'm too lazy to test it myself now, but does it at least crate local aggression?

 

[Barathor]

I'm too lazy to test it myself now, but does it at least crate local aggression?

That's what I was thinking about as well, but I'm too lazy to test that too, haha. It would take more time and you would have to go through turns to observe their behavior. If you activate the "Aliens" panel in Firetuner, you can at least force aliens to spawn from nests so you don't have to wait for them and you'll know they're tied to that one.

Though, if I remember right, I think Dave said that in Rising Tide the aliens will be less aggravated by killings near your cities (since that's your "territory"), but as you kill them closer to their nests, they'll become more aggravated. Supposedly, it's probably supposed to work like that now, but I think he's optimizing it.

Hopefully, our territory trumps their nest territory if they have one right next to our city. It's sucks when your starting affinity resource gets a nest on it right at the very start of the game -- and now it won't be limited to xenomass.

 

[omniclast]

It doesn't trigger local aggression. I haven't tested it specifically but I have killed many, many aliens with cities and they've never attacked a nearby unit afterwards.

There's really no point in not shooting aliens with cities, much as it makes Pete Murray uncomfortable. I kind of assumed everyone was doing this. Also wondered why anyone bothered getting the fence when you can clear out aliens to the same radius with city attacks.

Oh and PS, alien farming still isn't a great strategy because it takes a big military investment and there's never enough aliens to kill to get a real advantage out of it. Plus you have to go might pretty much right away so you're sacrificing the free settler, and you've spent three virtues that get you nowhere useful in the long game.

 

[kipwheeler]

It doesn't trigger local aggression. I haven't tested it specifically but I have killed many, many aliens with cities and they've never attacked a nearby unit afterwards.

There's really no point in not shooting aliens with cities, much as it makes Pete Murray uncomfortable. I kind of assumed everyone was doing this. Also wondered why anyone bothered getting the fence when you can clear out aliens to the same radius with city attacks.

You get the fence to later get the trade unit-immunity option.

I always figured it was working as intended. Aliens that get sniped more than a single hex out wouldn't have a clue what had struck them, and wouldn't associate the damage with you--at least that's what I presumed after first encountering the phenomenon.