Brainstorming thread for improving Civ III's naval aspects

[monkspider]

Let this thread serve as a platform for voicing ways to improve Civ III's much-maligned naval aspects. Obviously, as it is now, it is both tedious and uneventful (how often have naval battles ever played any kind of reasonably significant role in any of your games?).
The main problem holding back naval combat is that since it is so slow, most players (and AIs) never really getting around to doing anything interesting with it. One possible way that this could worked around is to give all ships from magentism on the ability to cross shallow water much faster (perhaps even in the case of industrial age and modern vessals, the ability to cross them without movement penalty). It is certainly annoying to build a battleship in a city on one side of the continent that takes 13 turns to reach the other side. With this proposal naval vessals could be ready on command, and make defending your waters against foreign invaders much more interesting.

Perhaps Firaxis can learn a thing or two from this thread, so voice your ideas!

[Nubclear]

Originally posted by monkspider
Let this thread serve as a platform for voicing ways to improve Civ III's much-maligned naval aspects. Obviously, as it is now, it is both tedious and uneventful (how often have naval battles ever played any kind of reasonably significant role in any of your games?).
The main problem holding back naval combat is that since it is so slow, most players (and AIs) never really getting around to doing anything interesting with it. One possible way that this could worked around is to give all ships from magentism on the ability to cross shallow water much faster (perhaps even in the case of industrial age and modern vessals, the ability to cross them without movement penalty). It is certainly annoying to build a battleship in a city on one side of the continent that takes 13 turns to reach the other side. With this proposal naval vessals could be ready on command, and make defending your waters against foreign invaders much more interesting.

Perhaps Firaxis can learn a thing or two from this thread, so voice your ideas!

I don't build up any navy because....well, it's not powerful enough to merit it. I mean, I do build some ships just in case a war starts and stransports are coming, but other than that....Its just useles..

[Darkworld Ark]

One way to boost the nessecity of a Navy would be to have Trade Routes & Piracy like in CTP, that way you need to have a Navy to protect your goods.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

In reality, most naval battles happened in cities. With the except of Trafalgar, most of the RNs victories came against ships anchored in harbors.

In civ3, there needs to be some incentive to make you want to build ships. I think that you would see much more naval battles if there was no fog of war on the ocean. That way you could set up your ships to intercept the enemy's and you could see where they are/are heading. There would be more naval battles that way.
To increase the use of naval units, they would have to be each 1 movement point faster. Bombardment by ships should be more effective (heck, they've got the biggest guns traditionally.) This would make not having a navy a big mistake, because your shores will be bombarded accuratly during war. If the AI would sail in big flotillas (frigates/caravals, destroyers/battleships/carriers/destroyers/aegis) then the human could concentrate his units on them (if you know where they are) and then there would be big sea battles.

[alva]

In civ3, there needs to be some incentive to make you want to build ships. I think that you would see much more naval battles if there was no fog of war on the ocean.

I did expect Firaxis to give us something like radar in PTW: I.E. sonar, something to push back FOW.
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[alva]

A very early naval unit would be welcome too,
even with a movement rate of one. Could be very handy in certain cases; transport a settler to a near island for example.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I concur with Darkworld Ark that we DEFINITELY need actual, visible, trade routes in Civ3 (a la CtP). Then they could have a new flag-can attack and or disrupt trade routes. This would then give you more realistic piracy and embargoes! For instance, if you just attack a trade route, then you get gold but the trade route remains intact (piracy), if you disrupt the trade route, then you get no gold, but the trade route disappears (embargo!) I actually don't think that this should be automatic, but should have a chance of success based on the relative strengths of the attacking vessel and the trade route it's attacking! By trade route strength I mean that, you should have to build trade units for every new trade deal you want to sign. Like CtP these units would be immobile but, unlike CtP, they would have a defense strength, reflecting their ability to defelect a naval attack!
Aside from that, I think that increased MP's for naval vessels, increased Bombardment strength and rate and increased HP's for ironclads and up (to reflect Arnour) would also be great ideas!!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[vondrack]

OK, my two cents here:

1) an early vessel (ADM=1/1/1) would be a bless, that's right. Something like a Raft, Canoe or Coracle (pun intended... ).

Proposal: Raft (1/1/1), may sink at sea (with a probability higher than that of Galley), can never ever enter ocean squares. Transport capacity: 1. No prerequisites, but may be built in coastal cities only, of course (but coasts of inland lakes count, too).
Note: should we decide to call this naval unit a Coracle, I suggest it is subject to culture flipping...

2) improved diversity among the naval units. I mean - currently, battleships (18/12/5) are better than destroyers (12/8/5) in every single aspect (um, yes, they're more expensive to build, but that is just about it...). I'd suggest making destroyers faster (M=6), or adding a new unit called Cruiser (faster than the Battleship, but lower A/D values) so as there is at least a bit of strategy involved. As it is now, I am building battleships only (from the very moment I am able to, that is).

Interesting side note: apparently, it was intended in this way, since the printed manual shows Destroyers at 16/12/6 and Battleships at 24/20/4.

Proposal:
Destroyer (8/8/6-4/1/2), nerf down - early one, no need to be a long-lasting powerful naval unit. It would be enough to make it toast ironclads easily.
Battleship (18/12/5-8/2/2), leave as is.
Cruiser (12/8/6-6/1/2), lighter in armor/guns, but faster, more manoeuvrable than the Battleship (comes at the same time).

I would not oppose increasing the movement by 1 for all naval units. Would probably be ok.

3) Nerf the ability of land-based artillery to damage vessels. As soon as I conquer my continent, I just build some decent artillery, a perfect railroad network and then... just feel safe. Almost any coastal bombardment can be easily repulsed (and heavily punished) by bringing in the land-based arty - you will easily bring the bombarding vessels down to 1hp and then finish them off with one or two destroyers created especially for this purpose, normally anchored in the safety of your havens (returning there right after sinking the half-dead enemy vessel, thus never really risking anything). I believe that this should not be possible.

Proposal: lower the success rate for the land-to-sea bombardment significantly (to, say, one fourth of what it is now, or less). Although I hate this argument, this would even probably me more like in the real world... IMHO, it is rather difficult to seriously damage a vessel with the land-based arty fire.

4) give submarines a bombard capability against vessels; I am not sure if this can be implemented easily, but it would greatly increase their usefulness. Basically, I am talking about allowing submarines to torpedo enemy vessels. I would not allow subs to sink vessels, unless they engage in a non-bombard attack, though.

5) introduce modern naval warfare; this is what I miss from Civ3 VERY MUCH. I have always thought that the current implementation of modern naval air warfare has much to be desired...

Proposal:
5a) tie Carriers to Flight, not Mass Production.
5b) add a new unit called Naval Bomber (0/2/4-4/0/2). Lethal Bombardment against shipping, can be rebased to carriers. Comes with the Flight. Regains (full?) health if spending a whole turn aboard a carrier.
5c) add a new unit called Naval Fighter (4/2/4, no bombard); can be rebased to carriers, can be assigned recon and air superiority missions. Comes with Flight. Regains (full?) health if spending a whole turn aboard a carrier.
5d) prevent regular Bombers from being carried by carriers.
Note: I guess the regular Fighter might be used instead of my Naval Fighter, too.

My intention is to introduce aircraft capable of sinking ships, while not making Fighters/Bombers too powerful. My Naval Bomber (or Dive Bomber, or Torpedo Bomber) would be great against shipping, but vastly inferior to the regular Bomber in bombing raids aimed at land-based targets.

6) add Rebase option to modern (Destroyer+) vessels. Vessels could be rebased to cities with Harbour only. I think this might save us the tedium of moving a fresh new battleship manually around the whole continent, while not introducing "sea railroads" and disbalancing the game.

I know that many ideas of mine could be implemented with the editor. I apologize for that, but I have never played with it and frankly, I do not plan to. I prefer playing the vanilla game, just applying patches. It is pretty difficult to discuss strategies and get tips/help, if you are playing more or less a different game than all the others. My point of view only, though.

More ideas may be in the pipeline, but I have to do some real work now...

Cheers

[NeoStar]

Quite a few good ideas here

I also find it hard to find incoming transports. I'd like to see a 'patrol' system implemented to allow the ships to go up and down bombarding anything they see. Those extra buttons on the PTW screenshots have got me hoping...

And give them blitz...

And 1-2 more movement...

And AEGIS 3-4 range cause it has missiles...

That'll make them more important quicksmart

[Goret]

Hi To All

my 2 cents in this matter....

First of all, the navy system as done in CIV III is wrong from the start :
1) Naval Move proceeds like Ground Move : From the very beginning, a horse move almost as fast as a galley ....( ok double with the lighthouse !). At the End of the game with Roads and RR well, a tank may well go the whole world around, still the BB will move 5 or 6 hexes.
2) Can t make Armies or I should say, Task Force. You can t group naval units like you can with armies ( I know they are much discussed around here but any way, they are usefull )

The think is that naval moves should be treated differently from ground moves by using Naval Zones. Naval Zones would be a group of Hexes defining a Zone in which ships could go.
Each Ships could reach any number of naval zone : let s say a galley could move 3 Zones while a battleship would move 6 Zones.
If you divide the sea hexes in NZ ( Naval Zone) ,with on earth, let say, 3 zones in med or 5 in Atlantic from North Europe to East Coast, a galley could go from Spain to Lebanon in one turn and try to go acros atlantic in 2 turn with the risks to be sunk in the open water. You could also have coastal NZ or Open Water NZ for bonus purposes like Port forteresses or movement for galley.

The advantage of this system is that each time you move units in NZ others ships currently at war with you could try to intercept ( with advantges with Task Forces ).
Sub could intercept in adjacent Zones, carriers would drastically improve your naval ability etc...

Trade could be trace throught NZ which could be blockaded and so on....

No more could you sunk the IA's ships by using artilleries from land.... You would have to use Ships and planes!

In fact Naval units could be very usefull and long term investment to protect trade ( which is historical ) or simply to rules the Land by ruling the sea....

Well just my two cents anyway

[monkspider]

lol just imagine if Firaxis included a Coracle unit as sort of an inside joke. Wouldn't that just beat all?

[Ijuin]

I would like to see ships have a "naval superiority" option that acts like the Air Superiority mission. In essence, a ship assigned to Naval Superiority will automatically attack any enemy ship (enemy that you are at war with) that comes within its "operating range", which would be equal to its movement per turn (for example, a ship that moves five spaces per turn would have a range of five). The ship would automatically return to its original position after engaging the enemy ship, provided that it survived the encounter.

[RedBird]

One of the things I liked about CivII was the added defense of the Aegis against air units. This forced stacking.

You couldn't send carriers out alone because they were too weak against any other ship. And battleships were not sufficient to protect the carriers when cruise missiles were available (I liked Civ2's cruise missiles much better than CivIII's). You always had to have an Aegis in there to protect against cruise missiles, and yet the Aegis by itself was not sufficient because an enemy battleship could take you out if you didn't have a battleship. So you had to have a bit of everything in the square, and that tended to make it more realistic (like modern day task forces).

Certainly the lack of lethal bombardment has weakened the role of naval units in CivIII. In CivII I used my ships a lot to pick off units on the coastal squares. What's the point in CivIII. Unless it's part of a coordinated attack they'll just heal up.

PS: I like these ideas about trade routes. I've never played CtP so I'm not familiar with that system, but some of those ideas sound good. Having actual, drawn, trade routes (which could be interupted) would certainly give ships a significantly more important role.

PS2: while I don't so much like the idea of zones I do agree that it seems unrealistic that your tanks can cross your continent in a split second, but your ships take forever. Probably the best way to fix that though is to remove railroad movement as it is rather than changing ship movement.

[TheBirdMan]

-->RedBird

Try to play a CTP game - preferable with the MEDMOD4.13 from WesWhittaker.

Only real things missing there is the missing AI-abilities to invade from sea and to use a carrier as it should be used.

Oh yes - and then the AI can't find out to use nukes either. That is actually the only thing I miss in my CTP-games from my old CIVII days.

[Colonel D.]

Superb post, Vondrack! Your ideas would greatly enhance the naval game. I recently wrote an epistle in another forum on the whole naval issue, which I will try to recapture below.

Naval Movement:

I agree that this is really broken for precisely the reasons mentioned in the threads above. When a Panzer unit can move from one end of a continent to another and a battleship (BB) requires 10 turns to do the same, there is a severe disconnect between the scale of the ground and naval games.

One way to fix this would be to make ground movement more costly. For instance, it should cost movement points to entrain and more to detrain. While entrained, the moving ground unit would have 0 attack or bombardment capability. A "light" unit, such as infantry or riflemen would perhaps only cost 1 mp to entrain/detrain. Heavy units -- like mech or armor -- would pay a higher penalty.

Naval units could perhaps move faster (+2 mp) when in deep ocean squares. But, for reasons described below, I think this bonus should never apply to sailing or rowing vessels.

On the other hand, there should also be MORE movement restrictions in the early game. One of my biggest pet peeves with Civ 3 is that by the time I can build an explorer, I don't need him, because I already know the whole world. Triremes -- even with the LIGHTHOUSE WOW -- should NEVER be allowed in the deep ocean (even to move through) nor be allowed to stop in a sea square. Triremes should always have to end their turn in a coastal square (not merely to reflect their relative flimsiness in comparison with Caravels and Galleons, but to emulate the need for triremes to put ashore to replenish food and especially water for its large crew).

Ironclads would also be required to end their turns in coastal squares -- never being able to move into -- much less stop in -- a deep ocean square.

Naval Units and Aesthetics:

Whenever I see combat between a trireme and a battleship and the BB takes damage, I want to just turn off my computer and go mow the lawn or something! To fix this I think the game aesthetics would be dramatically enhanced if vessels "morphed" as each new era arrives. Thus, a trireme would morph into a galley in the middle ages, and into a gunboat in the industrial age, and perhaps a patrol boat in the modern age. The unit capability would remain the same -- to include movement restrictions -- but the image portrayed in the game would be much more palatible.

Aircraft Carriers (CVs) should move faster than BBs until nuclear propulsion is discovered. Moreover, CVs should (as was said in a thread above) be able to carry only naval aviation. I hate seeing the image of B-17s flying off the deck of my CVs.

Surface Naval Combat:

Ships which are damaged in combat need to suffer movement penalties as well as reduced combat strength. I hate it when I hammer an enemy BB down to its last hit point and it blithely sails over to one of my cities and destroys a city improvement and then glides away -- at full speed! The Civ 2 naval combat was better in this respect -- although I do like it better that sinking any one ship in a stack does not sink the entire stack as in Civ 2.

Continue to permit bombardment between ships -- but allow that bombardment to have a CHANCE of sinking the targeted vessel -- especially if a BB is bombarding a transport, ironclad, DD, or other smaller vessel. Close attack should also remain an option as is currently depicted in the game.

ASW

Submarines a very poorly depicted in the game. Firstly, only ASW vessels should be allowed to attack submarines. A moving BB, CA, transport (etc.) that bumps into an enemy sub should receive a spead of torpedoes for its effort. Moving DDs or other submarines, on the other hand, would be able to detect and attack an enemy submarine.

Here's how it would work. Submarines would only be able to attack or be attacked via bombardment. Thus, if a BB bumped into an enemy Sub (SS) then the BB would receive a bombardment attack. If a moving DD spotted a sub, it could ignore it or attack it by bombardment (I'd love it if Firaxis would depict this as a depth charge attack!)

A moving surface vessel that encountered a neutral SS would simply become aware the square is occupied and move around. (See below, however, for deep diving subs).

Moreover, submarines need to be further developed to depict the two basic types as well as emulate the differences between propulsion methods. The two types of subs are attack and ballistic missile (boomers). The two propulsion systems are: diesel and nuclear.

A diesel boat (SS) has to surface to recharge its batteries. Nuclear powerded subs (SSNs) rarely have to surface when on patrol. To emulate this in the game, I would have two depths a sub could move into when in the deep ocean squares.

Diesel subs would always have to remain at the shallowest depths (which I would depict by putting a sky-blue box around the sub icon -- the same color as is used for coastal squares). A sub at this depth would be vulnerable to any ASW vessel that detected it.

Nuclear subs would have the opportunity to dive deep when in a sea or deep ocean square. A deep-diving sub would be depicted with a dark blue square around its icon and this sub would be invisible to any vessel moving over it. I'm not sure how this would be programmed but perhaps the deep diving sub would be placed in a box off the map and the square it occupies would have a different color outline that only the owning player could see. At any rate, this would permit you to park nuclear powered boats where they are essentially invulnerable -- as in real life -- a HUGE advantage if you do this with your boomers (SSBNs).

Deep diving subs would not be entirely invulnerable, however. They could be found by a deep diving attack sub (SSN). If an SSN is deep -- having the dark blue square around its icon -- and it moves into a square where an enemy sub is hiding, then normal combat would occur. Note: I think sub-to-sub combat is the only time this should be an exchange of fire as is currently depicted in the game.

I'll end this here and write some more in a different post.

Colonel D.

[Colonel D.]

To continue my rantings on Naval Warfare . . .

Trade Routes:

Heaven forfend that I say anything good about Call to Power, but I did like the basic trade route concept in that game. I would modify it for Civ 3 in this way:

Firstly, I would keep the ability to negotiate to trade resources and commodities. But, once the trade is agreed upon a trade route must be defined. As in CTP, you'd have to build and dedicate a caravan or -- if by sea -- a transport to move that commodity. As was mentioned in a post above, this transporting unit would not be helpless when attacked, but -- being a non-military unit -- would be relatively weak.

This, of course, leads me to the idea of being able to perform commerce warfare or guerre de course. Instead of depicting the trade route as the commodity moving over a blue line -- as in CTP -- which could be interdicted at any point, I would have the transporting unit physically move between ports by the shortest path (allowing deviations as necessary for intervening neutral ships). To interdict this transport, the enemy naval unit would have to intercept it (move into the same square) as it would any other unit.

Players could elect to protect their sea-going transports by assigning escorts (perhaps in the same way armies are built for land purposes -- although, I would hope it would be possible to detach ships from task forces -- see below).

A caravan or sea transport would only be able to carry one commodity or resource. As is depicted in the game now, it would not be necessary to physically carry the commodity between trading cities (as in Civ 2) but simply open the trading route.

Task Forces:

Permit the construction of Task Forces (TFs). These would operate much like armies on land -- though it should be possible to attach/detach ships to it at the beginning of any move.

Amphibious Operations:

Amphibious assault directly upon a defended coastal square should be possible by any ground unit, but require specialized amphibious naval vessels to perfomr this mission. These could look like LSTs or LCMs, but the bottom line is, they enable direct assault.

Marine units would perhaps receive an attack bonus -- or at least suffer no combat penalties -- for performing an amphib assault. Other ground units would attack at, say 50% their normal power when performing an amphib assault. Cavalry and armored units would also loose their ability to retreat during combat when performing amphib assault.

LSTs (amphib vessels) would only be able to carry one unit. Thus, an amphib unit would have to be relatively cheap to build. (I am doing this so that players will differentiate between large sea-going transports and amphib vessels).

Normal coastal landings on undefended shores should still be possible from transports, but landed units may not move further that turn. If these landings (on an undefended coastal square) are made from amphib vessels, however, the ground unit should be able to move up to one-half its normal movement rate -- normal terrain and other movement costs woudl still apply.

It should NEVER be possible to land any ground unit -- except, perhaps, rangers if/when such a unit is created for the game -- from the sea directly onto a mountain square.

Naval Air Warfare:

Naval vessels should have an anti-aircraft (AAA) capability!! Any aircraft attacking a naval vessel should be subjected to AAA. If hit by AAA, the aircraft would either suffer damage -- or even be shot down! (What a concept!)

An aircraft that is hit by AAA would still be able to attack the ship, but at a lower probability of getting a hit on the ship, and/or doing less damage if/when the hit occurs.

A ship would be able to fire AAA each time it is attacked (although I could be persuaded this defensive fire would be as is currently depicted in the game for artillery).

(Oh yeah, when I get the chance to write about air warfare, I will most definitely wax prolific on the need for the player to BE ABLE TO MOVE HIS AIRCRAFT again as in Civ 2 -- but that is a topic for another thread).

As mentioned above, there should be naval aircraft -- and only they should be permitted to operate from CVs. Moreover, they should have a bonus attack strength when attacking ships at sea or in port.

I forgot to mention in the ASW posting above that there should be ASW aircraft (such as the P-3 or S-3) in the game as well. These would cost about as much as a bomber, but be able to patrol and spot any submarine at the shallowest depth.

(I also forgot to mention in my discussion of deeply diving subs that they'd have to come to the shallowest depth to attack surface vessels or launch ballistic missiles. They'd have to remain at the shallowest level at the end of any turn in which combat had occurred).

Naval aircraft, of course, would be able to operate from land bases as all aircraft currently do in the game. But no non-naval aircraft could operate from a CV.


Fuel and Replenishment

For those of you who played Civ 2, you will no doubt recall the helicopter unit, which lost strength each turn it was away from a city. Naval vessels -- other than sailing ships -- require an immense amount of fuel to stay underway. As with the helicopters in Civ 2, I'd like to see naval vessels affected by their running low on fuel.

Here's how I'd emulate this. I'd give all naval vessels -- except those under sail -- a second power/strength bar which would show the amount of fuel it has remaining. Once this goes to zero, the ship would be dead in the water (though, perhaps it could be towed by any other naval vessel at 1 or 2 squares per turn).

Coal-powered ships would be able to stay at sea four turns. Oil powered ships would be able to stay at sea six turns. Nuclear powered vessels should be able to stay at sea indefinitely.

Players should be able to build underway replenishment ships -- colliers and tankers. These would be able to refuel any number of ships at sea at a rate of one or two per turn.

I know players often don't want to worry about such logistics, but is sure would make the game more interesting. Moreover, it could be toggled off if players really did not want to bother with it.

I've more, but I need to get to work.

Da Colonel

[Incan_Warrior]

Geez - another Vondrack diarrhea thread has spawned even more diarrhea. I think you've got good ideas Von, but there's something to be said for brevity.

That being said: I sincerely think the naval part of Civ3 would be improved if there were some reason to be on the ocean in the first place - so I propose placing oil resources in the ocean. Any boat could carry workers, who could then build an offshore oil rig - essentially creating an oceanic colony. Those without oil in their borders would throw a fit fighting over the resource, and the ocean would become a new, interesting battlefield.

[vondrack]

Originally posted by Incan_Warrior
Geez - another Vondrack diarrhea thread has spawned even more diarrhea. I think you've got good ideas Von, but there's something to be said for brevity.

Is it that bad??

I know some of my posts are lengthy... but especially for this one I did my best to keep it on topic... sorry, guys, you will probably have to put up with this... uh... diarrhea (?!?) of mine... it's a feature probably... and even if it is a bug... it is still a feature I can't switch off...

Originally posted by Incan_Warrior
That being said: I sincerely think the naval part of Civ3 would be improved if there were some reason to be on the ocean in the first place - so I propose placing oil resources in the ocean.

I like this idea with resources appearing in the ocean. I can see a small problem however... how could you "connect" them to your empire?

[Colonel D.]

Incan,

Having some resources at sea is a good idea. The real reason to go to sea, however, is that is -- or should be -- the highway of world commerce.

That's why it is so important to bring back in the idea of physically having to move goods and resources between civs and their cities. Right now it is so abstracted, you're right, why bother going to sea at all?

Col D.

[Dida]

In my own mod, I nearly doubled the movement of all naval units, for destroyers, their movement is more than doubled. To battleships I gave blitz ability, and to Ageis Cruiser, I increased their range to 4 and capacity to 10. Nuclear Sub can carry 5 Tactical Missiles and Carrier can carry 8 air craft. A powerful navy can now be a huge threat to your enemies.

[GI Josh]

Subs should have retreat ability during combat, like fast movers on land. Right now you usually lose a sub v. destroyer (much less battleship). With retreat ability (instead of just higher attack values), the usefulness of subs will be when combined with other surface ships or when used in wolfpacks.

I like the idea of visible trade routes which only certain units, such as subs and privateers, could disrupt. However, the idea of adding back caravans or other logistical units is really terrible - the game (especially late-game) is enough of a clickfest the way it is. I like having trade abstracted - it just needs to be attackable.

In the alternative to visible trade routes, I would suggest much easier blockading. Right now to blockade you need to have a unit on *every* water tile around a port - that's a ridiculous amount of resources. Instead, any single unit with attack value >1 should be able to blockade a port by being within it's movement range of the port (e.g. nuke sub w/i 4). What will happen? Blockading will be easy - one ship per port to blockade, and most ships can sit outside the visible city radius of a port, or you can use a sub which is invisible. Suddenly privateers have value and disrupt naval trade. Response? A civ dependent on water trade routes will need a navy to patrol it's sea lanes - one or more flotillas floating around, responding to messages that a port is blockaded. Counter-response? The blockading civ will back up it's blockading privateers/destroyers/subs with a few fleets of its own farther off.

Voila - you suddenly have significant value to naval units and constant naval combat. Being a island civ will require you to have a strong navy to survive (think England), but if you have the strong navy, you can inflict heavy damage on a continental power without invading (think France). The best advantages to this suggestion is that it's only a minor tweak to the way the game works now and it doesn't introduce a bunch of logistical units which become a nightmare of constantly maneuvering around the map.

[korn469]

Ok here is what i did to improve naval units in the Blitz mod

*moved ironclads from steam power to steel (lengthens age of sail)
*increased naval units bombard
*gave virtually all modern naval units the all terrain counts as roads along with blitz:
what this does is make naval units very fast when they don't attack, but they can't come in bombard a few times and then escape
*changed unit statistics to encourage use of combined arms
_______________________________
Frigate 6.5.2 8[4]1 60 {Ironclad}
Man-O-War 8.6.2 8[4]1 60 {Frigate}
Ironclad 10.9.3 10[5]1 90 {Destroyer} Steel
Transport 1.6.3 100|8
Destroyer 12.15.5 12[5]1 110 (can see submarines, zoc) {Aegis Cruiser}
Battleship 25.20.4 16[6]2 200|1 (can carry cruise missiles)
Carrier 1.12.4 200|5 (radar, doesn't carry bombers) Advanced Flight
Submarine 16.6.4 110 (can see submarines, zoc)
Aegis Cruiser 16.24.5 12[5]1 160|3 (can see submarines, radar, can carry cruise missile)
Nuclear Submarine 10.14.4 150|3 (can see submarines)
_______________________________

all of the units listed above have all terrain as roads and blitz
while without flags to make certain units perform better than others i still believe that these stats would encourage players to a number of different unit types instead of just just one super unit like a battleship

if firaxis did all of the above that would be a start

but then here are the other things i think would improve naval combat

*naval units get a zone of control for blockade purposes, and if a civ is blockaded at the start of their turn that civ will experience a blockade throughout the entire turn

this would make setting up a blockade far easier than what it is now, because right now setting up a blockade is virtually impossible on all but the smallest weakest civs

*introduce combat flags, the most important would be ASW, combat ships (naval power AI) without ASW could not attack submarines and would pass over them, while naval transport AI ships would always engage submarines they run into, and submarines attacking units without ASW would either get a combat bonus or those ships would be unable to attack back, so a submarine attack against a battleship would work similar to bombarding...this means that ASW ships would always need to be in a stack, and if surface ships like cruisers or battleships could easily sink ASW ships like destroyers then combined arms would be the key to naval superiority

*introduce navies

*get rid of infinite movement along railroads for land units, change it to something between 6-12, this would encourage amphibious assaults because a player could use navies to catch land forces off balance, unlike now where railroads make it impossible for a navy to catch ground forces off balance

*increase marines' attack

all of those taken together could radically change the naval combat aspect of civ3 and hopefully make naval units more powerful without being unbalanced compared to air or ground units

also i think we should make a best of the best list that the great majority of us can agree on and i think that simpler ideas should take precidence over the more complicated ideas, because while i think firaxis will most likely implement a few simple changes i know they won't completely rewrite all of the naval warfare code because it is doubtful they have the time or resources to do that even if they wanted to

[kring]

To be able to connect resources to your network, you would have to allow roads to be built on coast/sea/ocean, which can be done.

I allowed roads, irrigation, and mining to be done on coast to test the theory. The results: roads are possible, but they don't allow unit movement (at least in the limited trial I did) . You take a Worker on a boat, send it to the tile you want worked, wake Worker, assign task, don't move the boat until the Worker is done. I haven't finished my trials yet on water related stuff because I need to add some resources in the water and test if roads work for the network. Roads don't block the early ships (haven't tried later era ships yet).

[RedBird]

Originally posted by korn469
*gave virtually all modern naval units the all terrain counts as roads along with blitz: what this does is make naval units very fast when they don't attack, but they can't come in bombard a few times and then escape

I don't understand this. Why aren't they fast if the do attack? You can still move after you attack. Do you lose your road rate after you attack or something? Why does it make the ships slower if they attack?

Battleship 25.20.4 16[6]2 200|1 (can carry cruise missiles)

How do you set Battleships to carry CM's? In the editor I see settings like "Transport only aircraft" or "Transport only Tac Missiles", but no "Transport CM's".

Also, just curious, why don't you have this capability for subs?

*naval units get a zone of control for blockade purposes,

So, presuming visible trade routes, if a ship's ZOC covered the route the route would be blocked?

[RedBird]

Originally posted by kring
To be able to connect resources to your network, you would have to allow roads to be built on coast/sea/ocean, which can be done.

I allowed roads, irrigation, and mining to be done on coast to test the theory. The results: roads are possible, but they don't allow unit movement (at least in the limited trial I did) . You take a Worker on a boat, send it to the tile you want worked, wake Worker, assign task, don't move the boat until the Worker is done. I haven't finished my trials yet on water related stuff because I need to add some resources in the water and test if roads work for the network. Roads don't block the early ships (haven't tried later era ships yet).

Interesting. I can't say I'd like the aesthetics of it, but if it allows off-shore oil resources it might be worth it. Do these roads boost the trade that city workers generate for that square?

[Ben Williams]

How about adding a patrol key for ships, they could go along your coastline and protect trade routes. One of the biggest problems with civ has always been having to do everything manually, which is boring when you're not at war but want to maintain a millitary and be ready to fight.

FLEETS! They could see further and move as one. You could attach carriers to battleships to do automatic recon, and you could attack destroyers to act as support ships for the fleet, bombarding, conducting recon and joining in battles with the other ships. Once you get into battles with other AI fleets things could get really interesting, and it would turn into an interplay of ships and planes that you could control at different phases of the battle.

I think all of this could be done without making the game needlessly complex, actually, much of it might simplify things, as you wouldn't have to constantly be telling your units what to do.

[Catt]

Originally posted by GI Josh
Subs should . . . .

I saw your ideas in another thread and was going to cut and paste them over here (with attribution to you of course) if you didn't make your way over here to post.

I really think your's is a great idea -- substantially improves naval units / brings the navy back into the game but is straightforward and easy to understand for the average player. [Don't know about the re-coding issues / challenges, but this idea, IMHO, would be a terrific addition to PTW or the first patch after PTW].

Catt

[seano1]

Some ideas I have have for improving submarines. First give all units a chance of spotting pre-nuclear submarines. The more they move the higher the change of being spotted. This will represent the time they spend on the surface. This, however, will be the only way stop spot a sub without the new sonar advance.

With the sonar advance a new advanced sub will because available. This sub would represent subs equipped with snorkels, and with hulls optimized of underwater travel. This will NOT be tied to nuclear power. These subs would have zero change of being detected by units not equipped with sonar. However sonar equipped units will have a special sighting range, were they can spot the subs. Also the faster they move the easier they are to detect. The biggest range for spotting subs would belong to the sub itself, making them valuable against other subs. Once rookery was developed you’d get ballistic missile subs, which can carry two cruise or tactic nuclear missiles. They would be able to do anything a regular sub could do; only not as well, with lower attack and spotting range, and they would cost more. With the discovery of nuclear power you’d get nuclear versions of these subs, which would be faster.

One this I’ve noticed about the advancement tree, especially in modern times, is that there’s a tendency to assume that advances must come in the same order that they came in real history. There was a new generation of diesel powered subs that where coming to be right at the end of Would War II. In fact advanced diesel subs allot like that are gaining favor for use as attack subs today!

[BigRed515]

A few ideas for surface warfare: first, there definitely needs to be an intermediate "cruiser" surface unit. Rock-paper-scissors wouldn't work as rock-scissors, and naval comabt is always going to be uninteresting with only two units. To make the cruiser useful beyond just a not-as-cheap-as-destroyer unit, both the cruiser and destroyer should operate like ground fast-movers. The battleship, transport, and carrier should operate like ground infantry and should all have less movement. This way, hordes of cheap destroyers can kill a battleship without or with very little loss, however a few cruisers will be able to defend the big boys from the speedy little destroyers. Combined with all modern ships blitz, and you would have a situation where the large, heavy battle fleets plod around protecting the carriers or transports, while speedy destroyer and cruiser squadrons flit around the ocean picking off stray transports and hunting each other.

Subs have been handled in great detail by others, and better than I would address it. My only wish would be if there was some way for subs to pick their target when they attack, rather than have the strongest defender automatically defend. If a sub gets close enough to launch an attack, wouldn't it also (by it's silent nature) be able to pick the first target to launch a spread at? The only exception would be AEGIS-stacks, where the AEGIS would automatically defend (becasue there isn't ever going to be a seperate "Modern ASW Frigate" unit)

The "naval superiority" mission is an excellent idea. It should come availible with Magnetism (the first offensive sea units) and could allow a small force of privateers to enforce blockades along an entire coast. Going further, I think giving ships the "recon" mission option would make spotting the enemy task forces/transports much easier. Allowing ships to move, then recon, would mimic the ASW "sprint-and-drift" tactics used by modern navies. Recons by destroyers/AEGIS should be able to spot non-nuc subs, the only way to spot a nuc should be another nuc or getting one/two tiles away from an AEGIS (to reflect the lower average noise and greater depth at which they operate).

Carrier aircraft need to have lethal naval bombard. Carriers with aircraft should be able to conduct naval superiority over the range of the carrier + the range of the aircraft, and use aircraft against those that violate the range, both at sea and on land. For the current aircraft, there need to be counterpart naval aircraft, except for the stealth. So, there should be naval figter, naval bomber, and naval jet fighter (which would have the best of both world stats of the earlier version plus a little - think F/A-18).

[seano1]

If you want to simulate modern nave combat you need two thing, missiles and aircraft. There’s basically two big advances in this area. Aircraft careers and surface to air missiles.

With rocketry you should be able to build missile cruisers with both carry missiles and have a high chance of intercepting air units. There attack, defense and none missile bombard will be much lower then battles ships, but they’d be more effective because of there cruse missile. They should also be able to spot subs, you could put a modern destroyer unit in, but if you're coning to bring another unit with you to hunt subs it might as well be one of your subs.

Aircraft carriers should, in general, be developed before missile cruisers but after battleship. Plane should be able to sink ships on there own. However attacking in range of a missile cruiser should be a very bad idea. battle ships and destroyers should get a chance to intercept fighters and bombers, but not jet fighters or stealth, and at a much lower rate then missile cruisers. This means that attacking battleships with aircraft is a good tactic.

The AEGIS cruiser, which is really just a poorly named missile cruiser which takes to long to develop should be dropped.