What is early naval warfare for?

[Question]

Tiremes just don't seem to be useful for anything except taking out the occasional barbarian galley or scouting...

Since using melee units to attack cities is usually sucidal, you need at least galleas or dromons to take out coastal cities. And galleas have a very hard time bombarding cities with at least walls.

Its usually pretty safe to ignore naval warfare for a long time because the AI never seems to use a navy to threaten you. They are fine with zerging you with a dozen units, but naval units? They usually still have mostly tiremes in the renaissance era. And whatever naval units they have, they just hide it somewhere and dont use it to attack you at all.

 

[Terakahn]

Triremes are nice for guarding your fishing boats from barbs, and exploring in general. Which you mentioned.

I don't usually bother with Naval warfare unless I'm playing England and go with SotL's. Even then I lean more towards just using Longbowmen. i think the earliest I take naval warfare seriously is when Privateers hit.

 

[Rooftrellen]

Early naval warfare isn't generally a make or break thing for a game, but it can be put to good use. he AI does tend to ignore their navy in general (start to finish, not just early), but consider the advantages you gain, if it is possible to use your navy.

Naval units occupy the top of the tech tree, where you find all your beaker and culture producing techs. Using a navy to fight early does mean getting though the tech tree faster, particularly as education is right along the way.

Naval units come quickly (the Galleass requires fewer techs than x-bows, fewer hammers, and gives only 1 less ranged strength) and can therefore push any tech advantage more quickly than land units.

Naval units are fast. The trireme has 4 moves, as much as the horseman, without needing any resources, and without penalty attacking cities.

Naval units upgrade well. Spearmen into pikemen is fine but that line trails off after. Horsemen and knights aren't likely to get enough experience to upgrade, Gatling guns are nice but you won't win a game off their strength...that leaves the warrior/swordsmen upgrading well. Naval units only come in melee and ranged, but both upgrade very well into mid and late game.

That being said it's often hard to use an early navy well due to the fact it generally takes a decent number of units to safely take a city, which an early navy will not have, due to being restricted to the coast, there is no real way for a navy to counter a land invasion or to help take cities inland until battleships, and there is simply so much else to do early, it's hard to find room to make much of a navy when the AI avoids it, leaving it in a situation where your navy doesn't counter anything except random triremes and galleys.

 

[Zteuer]

A small navy can be excellent support for your army to take out coastal cities. Some coastal cities are difficult to get good positions or enough land based units in the right places to take out. It's also nice to have a ship outside the cities range to capture the city when it's low enough in hit points. Even a trireme can do that early in the game.

 

[Tachii]

Good for island maps, but otherwise often unecessary on pangaea maps or even large continent maps. Dromon is probably the only unit I ever considered an early naval war with. They're almost as good as CBs but you can get them way sooner than Construction and their mobility is better. It allows you to build a good frigate army later on. Also their early availability means they can even dominate other Galleass with a decent naval promotion. And with more units Dromon will dominate opponent Galleass completely.

 

[Terakahn]

never thought about using the Galleass as a xbow replacement, that's genius.

 

[Poopin Thelift]

Sometimes it is usefull to have a ranged ship as an extra defender in a city under siege, you can put it on top of an archer. Early naval warefare is good for getting xp for your ships. It takes quite some time to get your ranged ships to logistics, but then you have really nasty toys.

 

[Crafty Bison]

Early navies have a use. Say you're england and want to spam those SoTL's. What you're really after is logistics, which makes them the camel archers of the sea (only with double the movement of a keshik!). However, it takes a freaking age to get there, by which time you're most of the way to battleships. However, if they were upgraded from galeasses that spent their whole lives at war....

A great example of this is byzantine dromons, who start the ranged naval line a unit early. If you've prepared well, they can not only take a civ or two on a water map, but will also have logistics before they even hit frigates. Immediately they're then the strongest things on the sea again until england get their SoTL's to logistics. Especially if your early captures had the great lighthouse, and have the left of commerce.

Lastly, early naval warring is all about the snowballing, just like early land wars. I'd much rather have a second city turn 60 than 3 including the capital by the end of medieval.

 

[Crow T Robot]

I was a big, BIG fan of strong navies in Civ3 and still am, mainly because dominating the seas makes it safe for embarked troops, but coastal bombardment is very useful as well. Navies seem very poorly used by the AI - more like Coast Guard than a proper navy. That said, I loathe the ancient era and typically start in Classical, so my idea of 'early' is likely different. The only thing I really find galleys and the like useful for is scouting the coastline (horsemen can be faster at this though) or looking for chokepoints further away.

The ability of troops to just jump in the water and go somewhere makes many early ships quite pointless for me. In C3, they could be used to xport a spearman and settler down the coast to a choice location whilst workers are still working on roads and city improvements further back.

The earliest (read: sail type) ship I really like is the Privateer. Attacking barbarians to curry favor with CSs and capture the occasional ship for either cash or upgrade to something more useful. I almost never build destroyers because of all the other privateers captured.

 

[TallNSturdy]

If I am going to use a navy in my game I don't use the early navy units to attack, more just scout. The reason I do build them though is so later I can upgrade them to better navy units. An early game trieme that has scouted for 40 turns and revealed where everyone is can come back home and upgrade to a caravel then ironclad to use during the invaison part of my game. If you can get a promotion or 2 out of fighting the barb's all the better. Galeas (sp?) can be promoted to gain 1 range as the third promotion if you stick to either bombard or naval attack promotions. Follow that with the third of either of the 2 previously mentioned and next you can get 2 attacks per round. When they get to battleships you can have 4 range that doesn't need a clear line of sight that can hit a town with 100 defence for 20-30 damage a hit. Get 2 or 3 ready and you can take a city every few turns in the late game.

 

[OmniPotent42]

The best is when you can get away with making it to Renaissance without researching any naval techs. 4 turns later you're at Astronomy.

 

[Deau]

Since cities with 1 hit point cannot kill an attacker, you can actually begin to naval warfare with a bunch of galleas and a single tireme (or 2 to be safe if the enemy has some naval).

Works somewhat similar to kheshiks with 1-2 horsemen. Sure you can't run after ranged hit but there aren't nearly as many enemy units that can attack you and you can survive 2-5 city hit depending on how early you beelined naval techs (even on deity)

I generally just try to DoW steal a coastal city's worker and leave it at war to use low defense city to levelup my units, even the tiremes so that they are stronger in the late game.

 

[Duke Maynard]

If we had on-map international trade routes early navies would gain great new jobs of raiding and protecting those routes. Given how much more difficult it is in G & K to make money in the early game keeping and protecting those early trade routes, or failing to do so, might become a snowballing advantage or disadvantage.

 

[Waraddict]

Triremes can be used to plunder repeatidly cities you are at war with.

Prefer a small city to a capital. Start pillaging early to get the pillage promotion. Heal after each attack as the retribution from the city will leave you ship injured. Cycle through your triremes (i usually have 4 triremes just for this purpose). Pillage III trireme can survive an attack and retribution of a defense 18 city garisonned by a CB. This give you some very nice extra cash (30-40 gold per attack with a pillage III Trireme) and an early admiral you can use to explore ocean long before Astronomy. If you can attack simultaneously with several triremes, you can also eventually capture a city (do not expect to keep it, but it can significantly slow down your ennemy).

Very usefull specially on archipelago map.

 

[Loucypher]

In my current game, I saw Dido of Carthage pull quite a nice early-naval trick. Me being China, I had only one city at the coast (my capital) and two close by the coast. I did spot her navy (Ten Quinquireme's) approach, but she appeared to be en-route for England, who was opposite of me on the local bay. I myself had three Tririme's to protect my fishing boats and scout around a bit - dead in the water against Dido's fleet, of course. When Dido DOW'd me, her Quinq's swooped in, destroyed my Tri's and cut off my Pearls and Fish, causing my capitol to go in hunger. At the same time her elephants landed near one of my somewhat-inland city and approached that one. Two for the price of one.
So yeah, it does have certain merits. Sure, I managed to beat Dido back, but it was scary either way.

 

[slapshot2119]

With so much that needs to be built early in the game, and such a limited infrastructure to do it with early on, you need to look at what you can do without, and an early navy is something that has always failed to make the cut for me. Even with Carthage, Byzantine, and England. Seems that each early city has some building or wonder that would really help there. In the rare occasion when there isn't, I'm wondering how long that optimal city site will remain open before someone else claims it. At the same time, early game land military is looking a little weak. And by the time I've gotten all the above at least satisfactory, I'm looking at all the city-states to start funding influence with.

Plus, it's so easy to hit the ground running with a mid-game initiated Navy. Aside from more cities that are more developed to build navy quicker, simply building two privateers can then capture you a start-up navy.

 

[Waraddict]

Slapshot2119.

Playing England immortal on archipelago map with other naval oriented civ (carthage, byzance, denmark, polynesian, ottoman, netherland, songhai) i very seldom go for early WW for i miss them most of the time.

My opening tech are potery , writing, sailing, calendar, (mining/maconnery if needed), philosophy. This leaves me 3 possible early WW to built : the Great Library, the Great Lighhouse and the Stonehenge which all go pretty fast at this level. I prefer to let the other civ built them for me . After monument, altar, library and granary i usually have time before i can start on NC (unless i have a quick start not requiring mining like crabs/whales and wine/cotton). I usually spend that time building an early navy of 2-3 triremes and/or workboats.

 

[Poopin Thelift]

. I usually spend that time building an early navy of 2-3 triremes and/or workboats.

Are you sure that a workboat navy helps you on immortal?

 

[Waraddict]

A workboat navy wont help even on chieftain

If i want to go agressive with my navy, which is the current topic i obviously focus on building triremes. Also finally found the right english translation for what i called "pillage" naval promotion : its "coastal raider".

I mentionned the possibility to produce something else (scout, settler, worker, warrior, workboat) as a possible alternative for a different strategy. This is of course a bit off subject.