What about NAVAL BLOCKADES??

[Troyens]

Another thread refered to this topic, and it deserves its own thread.

What about NAVAL BLOCKADES??

In Civ II we had to actually deliver across the ocean a caravan or freight to get that wonderfully big trade payoff. No more.

Now it seems to happen automatically once you get harbors. Someone even suggested that cheating AI sometimes doesn't need harbors to trade!

In both World War One and Two Germany came a lot closer to winning the war at sea (by blockading Britain) than it did with land warfare. U-Boats were effective indeed.

The U.S. wrecked Japan's commerce (and oil supplies) with their own submarines also in WW II.

U-Boats also tried to blockade the Soviet Union's northern ports.

In the Civil War, the North blockaded Southern ports ruining their trade - the cotton rotted on their docks.

In the American Revolution, American privateers sunk hundreds of British merchantmen and caused the insurance rates in London to explode. This helped end the war.

There are many more examples.

But in Civ III, there is NO apparent way to either blockade one nation's ports or to screw up their trade. We have a better chance of seeing the resource they are trading for disappear by pure chance.

It might be the biggest design flaw in Civ III.

 

[Zorbop]

naval blockades ARE possible. you have to surround every square around a city with ships. it says this on page 84 of the manual.
road blackades are possible by pillaging them, of course.

 

[Troyens]

And that WILL stop the trade?? Or does the AI at some level cheat and ignore the blockade?

There's another thread up that suggests blockades don't work regardless of what the rules claim.

Even if so, the REAL purpose of subs and privateers remains lost to Sid.

 

[Gerry Fitz]

:frog:
Its only a game not a way of life
LOL

 

[Zorbop]

well, the manual SAYS it works, but...
there have been reports of them using your harbors, even at war
and i don't think it's the BIGGEST flaw, that's the to-high corruption i think

 

[Zouave]

Its only a game not a way of life
LOL

LMAO!!!

Is that the pathetic excuse Sid Mieir and Firaxis are now going to use instead of getting the game right in the first place?!?!


BTW, the high corruption is serious, but not as illogical and non-historical.

 

[royfurr]

Yes, this is unfortunately true ... warfare on seaborne economic assets/trade is not possible, other then the obvious one of a complete physical blocking action around a given port.

This is apparently a cost of the abstracting of trade- no caravans to move around, so less hassle, but without these being present, we cannot attack them with subs or privateers.

I wish Firaxis had allowed (i.e. included), at least for ocean transiting trade, "sea routes" or something, (perhaps the player would have had to lay them down on the map by an actual initial transit with a transport or galleon), and they could be attacked by alloicating (darn!) subs/privateers to attrite the traffic on them (reduce the magnitude of the trade as well as the absolute number of the merchant ships). Transports or galleons would have to be assigned the role of merchant traffic to maintain the trade. The units (privateers/subs and merchant ships) involved could do nothing else those turns. You wouldn't have to use your transports/subs/privateers for this, units not involved in merchant usage would be used "manually" for transport of troops as we do now. Players could also allocate Destroyers (or for the Good Old Days, Frigates) as escorts to reduce the effect and eliminate some fraction of the subs (or privateers). (Yea, I know, Destroyers cannot "see" subs, but although this would not allow "hunter killer' groups, at least the defending "escorts" could abstractly kill some of the subs, reducing their numbers. And a (VERY SMALL) number of the escorts could be lost as well. (How did the WG song go, "Did you have a friend /on the good Reuben James"??) It wouldn't have been that hard to set up, although the editor cannot accomplish anything like this.

Ah, its kinda sad, in a sense. 70% of the Earths surface is covered by water, and historically what most of the would-be world conquerers lacked to achieve their goal was a sucessful naval force/strategy. One of the closest enities to a world spanning Empire existed due to the consequenses of the Royal Navy's domination of the Seas. Yet in Civ III Land warfare dominates all. The poor integration of Sea with Land IMHO is the truly greatest weakness/letdown of this game. Fixing that would catapult the game from being pretty good to being a true heir of Meiers original game, certainly one of the best computer games ever created (I bought my first REAL modern computer simply to be able to play the original DOS Civilization game.)

Ah well, anyway, it would be very nice to use Subs and Privateers the way they were most often used IRL.

 

[Dark Sheer]

You do not need to block every single square of the city's sea square. You only need to block all the port's exit points. I will illustrate with the example below:

L = land, P = Port city, S = sea

SSLLLLLLL
SSLLLLLLL
SSSCLLLLL
SSLLLLLLL
SSSLLLLLL

Say the above is how a port city located on the map. It has 4 sea square and any ship can only enter the port via the single sea tile that is next to the city. So, to blockage the port all you need to do is place a ship at that single tile and its done.

 

[DrJambo]

uhuh, yes, we know how naval blockade is supposed work, but in reality it doesn't work...!

I had a game where i was at war with the Iroquois and at peace with the English who were both stationed on a separate continent with only one port (Iroquois) that both them and the English were using. I had units all over their continent and so decided to do an experiment:

1. Pillaging roads around the IRoquois capital destroyed their trade.

2. Pillaging roads around the port destroyed both the English and Iroquois trade.

3. Surrounding the port with my navy did nothing to either side's trade (i rebuilt the roads for them to find this out). This would be expected for the English as i was at peace with them, but certainly not for the IRoquois.

SO conclusion is that naval blockade doesn't work as intended, which may or may not be a good thing as the AI never attempts such a thing itself...therefore, this would be a feature solely for the human player and probably would imbalance the game.

 

[Dark Sheer]

It works for me though.

And the AI used the same method against me too. Thats how I found this out

 

[gpsmith]

I agree with Royfurr's comments.

It would be great to have to assign cargo ships to create a trade route between one civ and another. You can have multiple routes depending on the location of the commodity. The way I see it working is that a cargo ship sails constantly between one port and another either between Civs or within the same civ. The more ships assigned to that route will increase the revenue or the chance of the commodity of getting through.

I appreciate the fact that trade embargos can be put on a civ, but that doesn't eliminate the transportation of resources between the targeted civ and other civs who aren't prepared to take out an embargo, nor the civ internal transfers.

I dare say this, but I have played Call To Power a couple of times (but never got the hang of it). I found that it has animated trade routes, which can be raided by placing a naval unit over the route and "pillaging" it. The route is closed and will only reopen until that naval threat has been removed.

During times of war, normal naval power units can raid them by destroying passing cargo ships, and once all the ships on that route have been destroyed, that resource is no longer passed between the two ports, and will force the player to assign more ships or eliminate the naval threat to the trade route.

The use of privateers to raid trade routes work on the same way as it would during war, except that it is classed as piracy with no country to blame for the actions, or a chance of being discovered. Therefore, it is a peace time way of disrupting a civ's trade route.

I think it is big baggy pants that a destroyer can't see subs, I have always believed that the primary role was anti sub warfare. I think I will check the editor and amend that accordingly. I think it is correct that cargo ships and battleships etc who can't see subs should receive more damage and a less chance of killing the sub, but not a totally unbalanced disadvantage, or else the best defence against a mighty battleship navy is to have a fleet of subs.

This is just my contribution.

Gary

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

the naval blockade in CivIII is BS because the AI only needs to break it in one place for half a turn - and can start building the units you want them to be unable to build everywhere - then let you park your ships in bombard range again until it needs that quick inburst of iron trade for one turn again...


Imagine that in real world! You don`t even have to sneak a transport through but you still get the resources??? LOL!

 

[Zachriel]

Sea power is weak in CivIII. Maybe in Civ3.5 it will be improved. I find that the naval blockade works as advertised, but they can often trade through other countries, or have a harbor built in the "fog of war," that you can't see.

I use blockade differently. If I can station my ships safely off their coast, then I'll just bombard the city until the harbor is destroyed. Then again, why stop there? Bombs away!

 

[marshal zhukov]

naval units are very poor in civ III , I never use them because I always play on pangea so they are toltally uselless to me

 

[simwiz2]

one of my favorite parts of civ2 mp was sending diplomats into my rival's land. often we would stumble on each other's ships, and in the early times, the attacker had the advantage, and of course gold often switched civs to avoid a ship being sunk. One time i got 400 gold for sparing a galleon, which was filled with 4 caravans that delivered him over 100 gold each, but also gave me trade. Navies werent very fun against civ2's incompetent AI, but in MP it was often naval hide-and-seek, sort of like with subs during the cold war. Its too bad that there wont be anything like that in civ3

 

[praestare]

I agree that Naval blockade is too weak to be useful. Pillage all the roads to the AI's capital is very effective, but usually it's hard to send so many troops to the heart of enemy's land.

 

[DagorFunk]

Originally posted by Troyens

In both World War One and Two Germany came a lot closer to winning the war at sea (by blockading Britain) than it did with land warfare. U-Boats were effective indeed.

In World War One Germany never came that close to knocking the English out of the war through naval action. OTOH, England was able to starve Germany through a naval blockade which was crucial to winning the war.

 

[Mr Spice]

I never bother to use naval blockades, since it would require too many units. I use military alliances and trade embargos instead. A much better way to damage my enemies.

Troyens, did you check if the Apolyton server is back on line? They probably appreciate your wisdom more.

 

[eyrei]

I think people beleive the AI cheats to avoid naval blockades because they have overlooked the fact that the AI can use the harbors of any civ on the same continent to trade overseas provided they have a trade connection with that civ.

 

[Lt. 'Killer' M.]

Originally posted by eyrei
I think people beleive the AI cheats to avoid naval blockades because they have overlooked the fact that the AI can use the harbors of any civ on the same continent to trade overseas provided they have a trade connection with that civ.

never trested that on 1.17, but with 1.16 I`d often see units built for which I`d made sure the res was gone.....