What's With Cruise Missiles?

[Eclectic99]

I've looked through FAQ and the Civ Manual and many pages of this forum and haven't found a good explanation of how cruise missiles work, and I hope I'm not wasting anyone's time with this thread.

The manual says on p 80 that missiles are air units and function identically to planes. On p79 it sayes all air units must be based in a friendly city or on a carrier. I could not get a cruise missile to load on a carrier, but I did load 8 of them onto a transport.

The civilopedia says cruise missiles are long range missiles. I find that the target icon for a cruise missile in one of my cities only comes up for a range of one or two tiles. I was unable to target an AI city a few squares away across water. I moved a transport with 8 cruise missiles to a sea tile next to an AI coastal city, and could not get a targeting icon to hit the city even from the adjacent tile. Can they only be launched from a city, and not from a transport?

I wish someone would give us an of explanation of what's up with cruise missiles. (Maybe Bamspeedy could thaw out long enough to do this.)

 

[warpstorm]

Cruise Missiles in Civ3 are land bombardment units with a short range. They are more like Buzz Bombs than a modern Cruise Missile.

If you really want to see how they work open the real rules i.e. the editor. While you are in there you can do like I did and create 'real' Cruise Missiles.

 

[jeannie]

I just asked a question about cruise missiles on the Newbie thread. I wanted to know how to get them from one continent to another - they won't load onto a transport and they won't airlift and they won't go over water tiles.

The answer is that you can move them onto a transport that's on a water square if it's next to a land square! I would NEVER have guessed that!

 

[hbdragon88]

Warpstorm, how did you modify them to be 'real' Cruise Missiles? I'm curious to know that. I don't even know what cruise missiles are really supposed to be.

 

[Turner]

Cruise missiles (in RL) are fire and forget, GPS guided, long range self propelled 'smart bombs', except as it has it's own power source, it's not really a bomb. Most have a range of several hundred miles. You can find a link to the Tomahawk Cruise Missile here.

 

[alamo]

I just use'em to sink those pesky ships that come too close to my shores (within 2 squares, arty'd down to 1 HP).

 

[taper]

Of course, you'll have to add lethal bombardment to kill a unit. I always max out the range and give it lethal. I don't remember if they have a load command or not, they'd need it to load from a city onto a transport. Otherwise, just 'walk' it onto a trans to move them from continent to continent.

 

[Hygro]

They already have lethal bombardment from the cruise missle flag. They can't launch from ships, just like normal artillery but you can mod that. Check this thread about how to do stuff like that http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=42208

 

[Matrix]

I've never used cruise missiles myself, but I reckon they can be useful in combination with normal artillery. Normal artillery can damage big ships, and the cruise missiles finish the job.

But cruise missiles are far too expensive I think, seeing the fact that they always get destoyed and the target unit only sometimes.

 

[kb2tvl]

cruise missles are like artillery where you can do damage to a unit on land or sea. However, a cruise missle will destroy a unit in addition to damaging it. Artillery wont sink a ship or kill a unit.

Cruise missles should be loadable onto a transport but I dont think you can load them on carriers.

 

[JonathanValjean]

Personally, instead of building cruise missiles, I just use a fleet of bombers. I have used cruise missiles a few times, but I wasn't very impressed by their cost/performance ratio.

 

[planetfall]

Warp,

Love your description of Cruise Missiles as buzz bombs. That is so accurate to the way Fireaxis set them up.

Without changing preferences cruise missiles have an extremely high cost to value ratio.

They only seem to be a useful unit if:
1. modify range to 2
2. allow some ships to move them
3. slightly increase bombard values or reduce cost, but not both.

In play seem most useful against:
1. cities with SAMS
2. ships that are too close to shore

== PF

 

[cromagnon]

I've looked through ... and the Civ Manual

There's your problem. Never trust the manual. In fact, you may as well throw it out right now.

 

[shenryyr]

burn it! it's a good way to keep warm in the wintertime.