Which era has the most enjoyable naval combat?

[Sostratus]

My fellow Fanatics - for those of you who build navies and use them, what group of ships feels the most fun to use?
Do you enjoy how frigates & privateers & ironclads square off? Destroyers and missile cruisers? How do you feel ships handle attacking coastal fortifications? Resource usage for the three classes?

@Victoria or anyone with experience- do naval melee units suffer the same hidden wall resistance penalty that normal melee units do? And is there any functional difference between what naval ranged and naval raider's ranged attacks do to a city?

 

[kryat]

Frigates and caravels are most fun, then subs and battleships. Then carriers. Attacking cities with bombard units is a blast until atomic era, then it gets tedious without bombers. Naval ranged do much more damage to cities than raiders, especially to walls. Melee is next to useless against competitive walls, but chew through unfortified cities.

As usual, oil is the biggest resource obstacle. Thankfully, most late units take uranium.

 

[Sostratus]

Naval ranged do much more damage to cities than raiders, especially to walls. Melee is next to useless against competitive walls, but chew through unfortified cities.

Naval attacks are not supposed to get a penalty against cities like ranged units do. This appears to apply to both raiders & ranged although whether the hidden wall ranged resistance apply to raiders I'm not sure.
I take it you don't play GS? In GS all late game naval units consume oil as fuel, except nuke subs.

 

[bengalryan9]

I love battleships and being able to attack three tiles away, personally. Bonus points if playing as Brazil and you get it earlier!

 

[Victoria]

Naval attacks are not supposed to get a penalty against cities like ranged units do. This appears to apply to both raiders & ranged although whether the hidden wall ranged resistance apply to raiders I'm not sure.

Range get a double penalty of -17 and 50% while naval are only -17. Naval ranged get 2 promotions against fortifications (in total +17) while raiders get none.

I love battleships and being able to attack three tiles away, personally.

Yeah, normally by then a battleship Armada exists with range of 4. Canals make these mighty powerful... but having a Brazilian is nice.

 

[Sostratus]

Range get a double penalty of -17 and 50% while naval are only -17. Naval ranged get 2 promotions against fortifications (in total +17) while raiders get none.

So just to clarify- naval units suffer the wall resistances (what is it, half for ranged and like 80% for melee?) where a siege unit’s attack doesn’t suffer the wall resistance. Hmm. I didn’t realize that!

 

[kryat]

Naval attacks are not supposed to get a penalty against cities like ranged units do. This appears to apply to both raiders & ranged although whether the hidden wall ranged resistance apply to raiders I'm not sure.
I take it you don't play GS? In GS all late game naval units consume oil as fuel, except nuke subs.

Well I was clearly mistaken , thanks for the gracious benefit of the doubt! I tend to stop pay attention to most of my navy toward the end of the game except for moving aircraft here and there. What does help cut down on consumption is fleets and armadas. And biplanes moving to fighters. That's probably why I didn't feel as pressed for oil.

 

[ehecatzin]

Frigates and Privateers, another reason why I crave an Enlightment Era in civ is so that we can make use of privateers and frigates before they get obsolete.

 

[Sostratus]

Frigates and Privateers, another reason why I crave an Enlightment Era in civ is so that we can make use of privateers and frigates before they get obsolete.

Do you make much use of caravels?
Or do you usually find its frigate/ironclad/privateer?

 

[Patine]

Naval attacks are not supposed to get a penalty against cities like ranged units do. This appears to apply to both raiders & ranged although whether the hidden wall ranged resistance apply to raiders I'm not sure.
I take it you don't play GS? In GS all late game naval units consume oil as fuel, except nuke subs.

It's unfortunate you can't upgrade cruisers and carriers to nuclear power. In Civ2, though resource consumption (or even requirement) by unit is not a thing, researching the Nuclear Power tech not only allows the building of Nuclear Power Plants, but all of your naval units receive a +2 move bonus thereafter.

 

[Tampico]

Agreed with the love for battleships (with a couple naval raiders in tow). Pirates IRL really missed out on coming before Seaside Resorts filled the coasts full of gold.

 

[Lord Shadow]

I love battleships as well, before they're appallingly demoted to missile corvettes.

Anyone know of any proper missile cruiser replacement mod to get rid of the bloody Nanuchka?

 

[Beaver79]

Not a fan of battleships. Correct me if I'm wrong but they don't get bombard strength so they don't take down walls fast enough for me. They have 70 ranged strength whereas artillery have 80 bombard strength and they are the same tech. They have the same melee strength so I assume that means they have they can take the same punch. Yes you have to land the artillery and get shot at, but I want that city down fast. A 1 tile city is about the only time I consider taking a battleship.

I actually like galley naval warfare the best. Especially longships/biremes. 2 of those can take a city before walls get put up. After they get walls or too much defense, I just feel you are better off bringing siege or archers to take it.

 

[Lily_Lancer]

Naval ranged get -50% against walls, but not -17.

I don't like GS battleships, they basically require both industrialization and refining. Why do we use them if we can just clear out the coast using frigates?

 

[acluewithout]

Caravels and Frigates are fun. I assume Privateers are fun, but I always get to Frigates first so don’t know. Recently got attacked by Peter’s Caravels and Privateers. Fricking awesome.

Early naval units aren’t much fun unless you’re Norway. You just get smashed by Barbs, and can’t really achieve much beyond exploring because you can’t grab goody huts or pillage and can’t really properly embark units yet.

Late Naval Units look cool, but I never get there. Frigates are usually enough.

Overall, I feel like Naval is well balanced, except that Frigates needing Niter is really stupid.

Problem is just the AI doesn’t really play Naval, although like I said, Peter got a bit exciting in my last game.

 

[Sostratus]

Late Naval Units look cool, but I never get their. Frigates are usually enough.

Overall, I feel like Naval are well balanced, except that Frigates needing Niter is really stupid.

Everyone seems to gravitate towards frigates and battleships-land bombardment and city capture seems be the prime motivator since sea battles aren't really happening.
What's so awful about the niter req? If coastal players could spam frigates it would be an absolute madhouse. Although the pinch with muskets and bombards at the same time really hurts.

The later game ships don't seem balanced to me at all. But hardly anyone uses them in naval combat. For example, the resourceless Nuke Sub is 85/80, where a missile cruiser is 85/70, and a destroyer is 80. Destroyers have no attack bonus against subs, they can just see them. Why do nuke subs (the counter to naval ranged due to stealthy) have so much defense? Destroyers would beat missile cruisers without a screen as well, and nuke subs would also beat destroyers. It's all quite confusing.

In general the caravel, ironclad, and destroyer are a little weaker than contemporary land units, which probably really hurts them in the city attack dept as well.

Early naval units aren’t much fun unless your Norway.

That's probably because there are only two early naval units for the first 3 eras of the game: Barbarian Quads churned endlessly out of the barbarian starforge camps, and our poor galleys that stand no chance... How I miss the galleass!

 

[RohirrimElf]

I really like the attack animations of ship of the line and battleship. Looks so powerfull. Mostly because of this i like building up a sizeable fleet of these units and go bombard some cities whenever i can.

 

[Laurana Kanan]

Range get a double penalty of -17 and 50% while naval are only -17.

Naval Ranged has no -17 penalty vs cities/districts, it does vs land units however.

 

[Victoria]

Naval Ranged has no -17 penalty vs cities/districts, it does vs land units however.

Yeah I got it the wrong way round, they get the -50% but not the -17

 

[Leucarum]

Post GS, the per-turn strategic resource requirements make me shy away from modern naval warfare. I usually want to use my strategics elsewhere.

Naval warfare in the renaissance is my favourite as a result. It's easy to get some upgradeable units early if you think navy is on the cards. And frigates can really do some damage. Especially as the Dutch.