Why Destroyers have lost their ability to attack land units?

[jimc52]

One of the most effective strategies I have had have been to use an armada of fast moving destroyers that can whip the snot out of barbarian ships and do coastal harrassment and bombardments against land units.

Truthfully, if it wasn't for John F. Kennedy, the US Navy wouldn't have a single gun left on board real US destroyers - but the fact is that all US Navy destroyers have to have a gun capability and those guns CAN be trained on land based units, cities or anything swimming around in water.

I would like to see the destroyers given back their rightful capability to attack cities and land based military units.

For now, I have created a new armada of battleships that roam the world hunting down barbarians and enemies and I love the one-two punch, so its a little pointless to use many destroyers. I have found that now, about all the destroyers are good for, are escort duty for non-combatants and they still can blow enemy ships out of the water, but I miss the ability to blow up enemies on land or even to attack a city.

Real world says, destroyers can do it.

Now, for a second thought...

We need to have a Naval Base capability. A Naval Base should be a building type. And this is the only type of military base that should be able to repair naval vessels. It's a little rediculous right now, being able to create a brand new city without even a single worker or work boat yet, and be able to pull a battleship in for dock repair. I hope the game developers understand just how HUGE a naval repair facility really has to be and how complicated it has to be in order to repair fleet capable vessels. We are talking about ports like Pearl Harbor or Norfolk, Va, for example. Those are huge naval fascilities dedicated not only to housing a fleet but also to building and repairing vessels. I am all for the idea that we should have a dedicated naval base facility that acts like a Pearl.

 

[nefloyd]

Because Naval Units were given the new naval melee category and ships were divided into those 2 upgrade lines.

 

[jimc52]

Thanks.

 

[Lord Kid]

I would like Great Admirals to be able to build either a naval repair facility like you said or a floating defense platform like the Great Generals Citadel ability. As it stands they are rather useless outside of pre-Astronomy exploration, at least IMHO. I really like using Frigates and up for floating artillery, but it takes so many now that the cities defenses are stronger it almost feels like a lost strategy. On my last game, it took 6 Frigates cycling in and out of battle over quite a few turns to bombard one of Hiawatha's cities down far enough for the ground pounders to take it, and those were upgraded with land attack bonus' straight out of drydock.

 

[TPQ]

I would like to see the destroyers given back their rightful capability to attack cities and land based military units.

Real world says, destroyers can do it.

We need to have a Naval Base capability. A Naval Base should be a building type. And this is the only type of military base that should be able to repair naval vessels.

Destroyers can still attack cities; that hasn't been taken away, just changed to be melee, instead of ranged.

You really have to be careful making arguments for changes to Civ games based on what happens in the "real world". It's important to remember that Civ is a game, not a simulator and there are numerous unrealistic elements in the game that are there either for fun, or balance reasons. If Civ were changed to reflect what the "real world" has to say about it's various elements, it'd cease to be fun for most of us.

I could see an argument for a Naval Base building that speeds up the healing of damaged naval vessels and possibly replaces the barrack's function for giving new naval units XP, but it would be quite tedious to have to break off a naval attack to send your ships half way around the world to your home territory just to heal them up.

In Civ4 you could at least stack your navy of 10-20 ships and move them all at once, but can you imagine having to move 15 ships half way across the map and back again each time you want to heal them? That doesn't sound fun to me. It's tiresome enough moving a navy around as it is, without multiplying the click-fest.

I think Civ5 does a pretty good job in balancing the fun/reality ratio overall and while there's always room for improvement, I'm not convinced your Naval Base idea (in it's current form) would make things better.

 

[AlpsStranger]

Real world says, destroyers can do it.

Realism arguments

I honestly don't give a ****. And yes, I will post in every realism argument thread I find to say I don't give a ****.

INB4 some weird slippery slope, ad hominem, or straw man posing as a reductio ad absurdum about how Civilization is so totally based on realism and if not why not have flying laser shark robots derp derp derp.

This despite the fact that Sid Meiers always advocated and used a fundamentally non-realistic style of design.

Moderator Action: Please don't troll around.

 

[smallfish]

Just a really nice tidbit about Destroyers:

They are Incan Slingers.

Spoiler :

 

[Lord Kid]

Destroyers can still attack cities; that hasn't been taken away, just changed to be melee, instead of ranged.

You really have to be careful making arguments for changes to Civ games based on what happens in the "real world". It's important to remember that Civ is a game, not a simulator and there are numerous unrealistic elements in the game that are there either for fun, or balance reasons. If Civ were changed to reflect what the "real world" has to say about it's various elements, it'd cease to be fun for most of us.

I could see an argument for a Naval Base building that speeds up the healing of damaged naval vessels and possibly replaces the barrack's function for giving new naval units XP, but it would be quite tedious to have to break off a naval attack to send your ships half way around the world to your home territory just to heal them up.

In Civ4 you could at least stack your navy of 10-20 ships and move them all at once, but can you imagine having to move 15 ships half way across the map and back again each time you want to heal them? That doesn't sound fun to me. It's tiresome enough moving a navy around as it is, without multiplying the click-fest.

I think Civ5 does a pretty good job in balancing the fun/reality ratio overall and while there's always room for improvement, I'm not convinced your Naval Base idea (in it's current form) would make things better.

Forgive me if I've missed something, but in the current incarnation don't you still have to send the ships to friendly territory to heal them? I mean outside of expending a GA to heal all surrounding units of course. At least land units can sit in enemy territory and heal, but I have not been able to heal my ships without the GA or sending them home.

 

[CYZ]

Makes enough sense to me. Sure, a destroyer can attack land targets. But it is meant for anti-ship and/or anti-air combat.

I mean, a spearmen can throw it's spear. But to represent it in game seems unneeded.

 

[TPQ]

Forgive me if I've missed something, but in the current incarnation don't you still have to send the ships to friendly territory to heal them? I mean outside of expending a GA to heal all surrounding units of course. At least land units can sit in enemy territory and heal, but I have not been able to heal my ships without the GA or sending them home.

If you have open borders with another Civ you can heal your naval units inside their borders. The same is true with City states if you are allied with them (possibly friends too, idk). Otherwise yes, you have to send your naval units back to your home territory, unless you have the "supply" promotion, which allows you to heal naval units in non-friendly territory.

Only allowing naval units to heal in your cities if they contain a "Naval Base" as suggested by "jimc52" would mean you could only heal as many units at one time as you had cities with Naval bases in, which would be quite annoying on it's own, let alone if you could no longer heal in other Civ's territory (with OB) or a city state.

 

[Smokeybear]

We need to have a Naval Base capability. A Naval Base should be a building type. And this is the only type of military base that should be able to repair naval vessels. It's a little rediculous right now, being able to create a brand new city without even a single worker or work boat yet, and be able to pull a battleship in for dock repair. I hope the game developers understand just how HUGE a naval repair facility really has to be and how complicated it has to be in order to repair fleet capable vessels. We are talking about ports like Pearl Harbor or Norfolk, Va, for example. Those are huge naval fascilities dedicated not only to housing a fleet but also to building and repairing vessels. I am all for the idea that we should have a dedicated naval base facility that acts like a Pearl.

Disagree. Such a limitation would only be an unnecessary nitpicky realworld detail, in a game largely lacking in such nitpicky stuff, thankfully. Would add nothing to the fun of the game, just limitations on it.

 

[DrZero]

I would like Great Admirals to be able to build either a naval repair facility like you said or a floating defense platform like the Great Generals Citadel ability. As it stands they are rather useless outside of pre-Astronomy exploration, at least IMHO. I really like using Frigates and up for floating artillery, but it takes so many now that the cities defenses are stronger it almost feels like a lost strategy. On my last game, it took 6 Frigates cycling in and out of battle over quite a few turns to bombard one of Hiawatha's cities down far enough for the ground pounders to take it, and those were upgraded with land attack bonus' straight out of drydock.

I couldn't agree more.

A floating Naval Base that acts just like a GG citadel would be perfect. Personally, I coastal cities are way too exposed to Naval strikes (at least when battleships are available). Of course you can counter with a Navy of your own, but I'd like to see more strictly defensive options.

It would also enrich naval battles and make the GA a worthwhile GP (instead of the novelty it currently is)

 

[SeptimusOctopus]

Just a really nice tidbit about Destroyers:

They are Incan Slingers.

Spoiler :

This is only true for destroyers you've upgraded from caravels right?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

This is only true for destroyers you've upgraded from caravels right?

As far as I can tell, yes. Caravels are the ships with the avoidance promotion.

 

[Smokeybear]

As far as I can tell, yes. Caravels are the ships with the avoidance promotion.

Yeah, went to attack a barbarian caravel yesterday, and it bounced back twice during the same turn, as I was trying to attack it. Making 'em out of flubber now, I guess ;-)

 

[Disgustipated]

We need to have a Naval Base capability. A Naval Base should be a building type. And this is the only type of military base that should be able to repair naval vessels. It's a little rediculous right now, being able to create a brand new city without even a single worker or work boat yet, and be able to pull a battleship in for dock repair. I hope the game developers understand just how HUGE a naval repair facility really has to be and how complicated it has to be in order to repair fleet capable vessels. We are talking about ports like Pearl Harbor or Norfolk, Va, for example. Those are huge naval fascilities dedicated not only to housing a fleet but also to building and repairing vessels. I am all for the idea that we should have a dedicated naval base facility that acts like a Pearl.

I'm an ex-navy guy. First of all the Navy does use tenders (although not that many anymore I believe). Tenders can't do major repairs like anything requiring drydock, but can do some reapirs. I also worked for a SIMA (short intermediate maintenance activity) in Pascagoula, Mississippi (the base has since closed down). This is a town of 28,000 people, but as the name suggests, we could do intermediate maintenance.

If you read accounts of old voyages in the agie of discovery (even wiki has some decent detail on these), you'll see many of them did repairs "on the fly". Meaning they stopped into remote places like in South America, but were still able to repair their main sail. They were able to do some pretty hefty repairs in far away places. Sometimes they even chopped local trees to get wood to repair their masts. Magellan's fleet would have never made it around the world had they not been able to repair in far away places. Yes this applies to pre-steel ships, but that's a pretty big chunk of the game.

Also keep in mind that we could have parts flown out to us. We had a main condensate pump (I worked in engineering, so I know what makes the ship go through the water) go out on our ship in the Mediterranean. We had one flown out to us, and we did repairs at sea.

You could implement a mechanic that if your ship is less than 25% health, you need to go to a major naval base for repairs, but that seems unnecessary.

 

[Spiceweasel]

Perhaps part of the reason destroyers were tuned down was to make battleships more useful.

If I'm remembering right, in vanilla Civ5, battleships really weren't worth pursuing. They were more vulnerable than destroyers to air attacks and subs, they moved slower, and weren't a whole lot more powerful in combat.

The current balance encourages you to mix your units. Unescorted battleships are submarine bait, but destroyers don't pack enough punch to take down a city.

 

[78stonewobble]

You could also view the lacking land attack of destroyers as a gun range issue.

A destroyer gun has somewhat less range than the main batteries of a battleship. AFAIK there was quite a bit of debate in the USNavy and political circles whether to retire the missouri class.

They just don't have anything similar to those big guns.

Sure there are missiles but those are rather expensive.

 

[Smokeybear]

The current balance encourages you to mix your units. Unescorted battleships are submarine bait, but destroyers don't pack enough punch to take down a city.

Heh? Destroyers don't pack enough punch to take down an outhouse, in GnK. Sure, tone down their punch to make them weaker, shorter-ranged land-bombardment vessels than battleships- but don't make them entirely incapable of it- that was just wrong.

 

[dexters]

Perhaps part of the reason destroyers were tuned down was to make battleships more useful.

If I'm remembering right, in vanilla Civ5, battleships really weren't worth pursuing. They were more vulnerable than destroyers to air attacks and subs, they moved slower, and weren't a whole lot more powerful in combat.

The current balance encourages you to mix your units. Unescorted battleships are submarine bait, but destroyers don't pack enough punch to take down a city.

They're complementary now. Battleships bombard from a distance and destroyers go in for the kill and live up to their role as support ships in a fleet around a BB

When both were ranged, it was a mere degree of how much ranged damage a destroyer would do vs. a battleship, and usually you're stuck with uninspiring damage from the Destroyers. You need a whole lot of them to do any good. With the change destroyers pack a mean punch on the melee side but rely on ranged bombardment to soften up their targets where possible. It's a nice mix and encourages use of combined arms.

The best way to think of it now is BB as the artillery of the sea and the Destroyers as your rifles or infantry. I would assume that's how the AI treats them.