Super carriers vs. smaller carriers

Navyman · April 1, 2003, 10:19

Admittedly, I am a n00b, even though I have played Civ3 before and gave it up for a few months and am interested in returning to try out some different strategies, etc.

One of the things that occured to me was that it was bloody easy for some of my cities to crank out carriers and there is only one carrier to build, which seemed odd to me.

So, I was wondering if me modding a new super carrier that costs significantly more and can carry significantly more aircraft and have more movement points would be a good idea in terms of enhancing the gameplay.

If others have tried it, please share your experience actually using such a super carrier and did it enhance gameplay. Also, did the AI use it as well or were you the only nation building these super carriers?

This topic may have been covered earlier, if so, I apologize.

epics · April 1, 2003, 10:56

Good idea, but wy only carrier. Why not more tanks, airplanes etc.

Lucarse · April 1, 2003, 10:59

How would you know the AI was using the super carriers?

90% of the time you never see them, and when you did you'd have to count then number of 'sorties' i guess to check.

I think a super carrier is a good idea i'm sick of only being allowed to stick 4 bombers in a carrier.

A 'Boomer' sub would be another welcome addtion.
One that could only carry nukes and had a purely bombard attack (via the nukes) this would change battle group formations a bit, the use of tatical nukes is a bit limited in civ 3 currently

CerberusIV · April 1, 2003, 11:11

I would suggest editing the carrier to carry five air units and move 5 as a first step. That allows fleets to move together.

Someone did comment a while ago that they tried supercarriers and the AI had trouble using them to the full.

The real cost is of course the air units more than the carrier. I suspect it is in part a game decision so that you can operate several carriers and redeploy your air units between them rather than moving carriers across large distances, especially on large maps. So you would not necessarily have all your carriers fully loaded at all times.

PrinceBimz · April 1, 2003, 15:16

Quote:

Originally posted by Navyman
Admittedly, I am a n00b, even though I have played Civ3 before and gave it up for a few months and am interested in returning to try out some different strategies, etc.

One of the things that occured to me was that it was bloody easy for some of my cities to crank out carriers and there is only one carrier to build, which seemed odd to me.

So, I was wondering if me modding a new super carrier that costs significantly more and can carry significantly more aircraft and have more movement points would be a good idea in terms of enhancing the gameplay.

If others have tried it, please share your experience actually using such a super carrier and did it enhance gameplay. Also, did the AI use it as well or were you the only nation building these super carriers?

This topic may have been covered earlier, if so, I apologize.

There has been many good posts about carriers on here. One was recently...check it out

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...threadid=81747

I think a super carrier would be pretty cool. I use carriers all the time but I never modded anything. Just to think how very powerful a carrier normally is with 4 aircraft, I can only imagine a super carrier. The AI use carriers alot in my games so I can't see why it would not use a super carrier. I say go ahead and make one see how things turn out. I think you can even find a new graphic to go with it. I don't remember if it was here or civ fanatics but they have some new unit graphics somewhere.

King_Henry · April 1, 2003, 19:32

Quote:

Originally posted by epics
Good idea, but wy only carrier. Why not more tanks, airplanes etc.

Don't stop with carriers. How about an atomic bomber? (Heh Heh ). Destroy a city with a couple of those.

Yeah, a super carrier would be great for a long siege.

pedrojedi · April 1, 2003, 21:22

I like the idea, but if I did it, I would further moderate it by giving a slower movement rate (say, 4 tiles/turn) and giving the smaller ones a faster rate (well, 6 tiles/turn).

I think the subs could carry some cruise missiles (10?) and a more limited tactic nuke capacity (2?), just to keep them interesting and less useless... Maybe if you are only 5-6 tiles from the coast, you could airlift missiles to them, representing fast air and water reload groups. But that would make the game more complex, I think, and would be difficult to program the game that way.

That's just me and my HO.

TacticalGrace · April 2, 2003, 05:03

civ is too abstracted for there to be a need for two carriers just based on how many bomber units it can carry.

What you should be asking yourself is, should a carrier be able to carry bombers? maybe they are medium bombers... okay so should they be able to carry stealth aircraft?

I think that carriers should only be able to carry fighters. this would start to make the F-15 a good unit and would perhaps give a reason for having a specific fighter-bomber unit.

Master Zen · April 2, 2003, 13:12

I have tried to mod carriers from not carrying bombers but have failed always

You could give them the ability to carry 6 instead of 4 and give lethal sea and land to fighters stealth fighters and F-15 and they'd be much more useful.

Navyman · April 3, 2003, 00:01

Here is where I am thinking of going with the Super Carrier:

The regular Carrier has a shield cost of ONLY 180 which is OK for a midget carrier like the Garibaldi or even the Charles DeGaulle. My idea was to emulate the US Navy's Nimitzes. Emulate them in the devastation they can bring to the enemies and also the burden they place on the nation that uses them.

What do you guys think of these stats for the Super Carrier?

Shield Cost: 600 to simulate the $5-6 billion it takes to make one
Pop cost: 2 to simulate that it costs a lot to upkeep since the editor doesn't let the upkeep cost change
Attack Str: 1 same as Carrier
Defense Str: 8 same as Carrier
Transport Capacity: 28

Building something that costs 600 shields (as much as JSB Cathedral) should give the owner some benefits

Unfortunately, bombers can't be taken off the list of things that the carrier can carry but c'est la vie, n'est pas?

With the Super Carrier, I really would like to see how an unit that costs so much but has so much capability (other than turning cities into orange ooze) would affect gameplay and fun factor.

Any more inputs would be appreciated.

Thanks

PS. Can anyone direct me to a place where I can get a suitable unit image of the Super Carrier?

Master Zen · April 3, 2003, 00:19

Transport Capcity: 28?!?!?!

Geez, I think it's a little too much... I would have rather made the carrier a little less expensive and given it 12 at the most.

But that's me, if it works for you go ahead

Tattila the Hun · April 3, 2003, 03:46

Just popped to mind... How about getting rid of bombers alltogether? As far as I can remember, carriers carry small sized planes, and the bomber in civ is, to me, something like the b-17 and so forth. These fighter-bombers would have medium/short range. And for bombers, how about modding an artillery unit unmovable, rebaseable (can it be done? have to check...) and with unlimited/very long bombing range, to simulate something like the b-52? You couldn't shoot these down, but it's quite difficult to shoot down a b-52.

bongo · April 3, 2003, 04:16

B-52's are big and slow and would be easy to shoot down if it hadn't been for the fact that they also have a tremendous range, goes really high and motstly fires cruise missiles.

Unstoppable artillery with super-range sounds cool but it is something that would favour humans. AI's can't even use normal artillery properly.

Tattila the Hun · April 3, 2003, 06:12

Damn, I knew Iwas forgetting something... AI!

But there really should be more types of tanks, I mean, talking history, Sherman is quite different than a Tiger... And M1 Abrams is quite a lot better than T-72...

Flight · April 3, 2003, 11:06

abrams is MA while t72 is tank though

but i know what u mean, need more graduations in tech to stop the 'get tech, upgrade all units, invade and conquer in one turn' tactic which gives such a huge advatage after getting just one tech ahead of your enemy.

Navyman · April 3, 2003, 13:32

OK, 28 may be a bit excessive for some people's tastes. How does 20 sound at the same price and cost as before?

bongo · April 4, 2003, 06:45

Why do you want super-carriers in the first place? IMO the current model works fine. If you want larger carrier-capacity you just build more carriers and pays more in upkeep.

Maybe an advanced carrier would be good enough? Available later, cost 280, capacity 8 planes, +1 A/D/M. Not possible to upgrade from old carriers.

epics · April 4, 2003, 09:57

Yes, bongo good. Maybe with Fussion? They are nuclear carriers in fact

pedrojedi · April 4, 2003, 10:26

Quote:

Maybe with Fussion? They are nuclear carriers in fact

Nice idea, but that would render the first carriers a "old" quality too fast. I'd put them available at Miniaturization or Robotics, to represent the advanced tech and computers found in such vessels, requiring, of course, oil, steel, aluminum and uranium.

Qilue · April 4, 2003, 13:56

I'm guessing some of you don't use large carrier formations.

With a group of 6 carriers (all filled with planes) plus a suitable escort (8 battleships/aegis cruisers), the right-click list is full. With the above except with 8 fully loaded carriers, you have to do a lot of clicking to find the ships amongst the planes.

This becomes complicated if the planes are all the same type with some flying air sup.

I use bombers on carriers so I can easily tell which planes are doing the bombing and which are doing the intercepting.

Had Sid&co changed the unit list to add columns rather than the 1 line clicking and scrolling along with some indication of what each plane is doing, carrier groups such as I detailed above wouldn't need any where as much micromanagement.

Btw, I use at least 3 of these carrier groups since 1 of them can provide air cover for a newly conquered city along with any ships in the vicinity until I can get land based air cover in place.