13-04-2005 11:26									#1
	Navies 2 Support Apolyton, buy Galactic Civilizations: Deluxe Edition

I've been trolling around Apolyton like a nuclear submarine now for probably a year without posting, but after seeing a previous thread on Navy proposals for Civ 4, I decided to surface briefly and put in my two cents.

For the background, I'm a cautious warmonger by nature, which means I'm a genocidal SOB that prefers to have a precise plan of action -- one that reflects the way war is actually fought in the real world. I like combined arms, I like minimizing casualties, I prefer plans that do not involve putting all my eggs in one basket, and I generally adhere to a strategy that incorporates these elements even if I know the computer would just as easily die by me throwing everything I have at them and leaving nothing at home as precaution against counterattack. Insane, I know, but I do it anyway.

It is no different with navies. Despite the micromanagement issues involved, I will build a navy based on a hierarchy. A battleship or a carrier (or both, or several of each, etc.) will be the flagship of the battle group. As attack/defence strength diminishes, more units are included (ie: 1 battleship, 1 carrier [w/ its supporting aircraft, of course], 3 cruisers, 6 destroyers, etc. These units form concentric rings of defence that radiate out with the least significant units (the destroyers invariably) occupying the outermost ring.

This is messy and tedious. I, sadly, continue to do it in the futile hope that the computer might one day send something my way that would justify the effort. No luck so far

Short story long, now that you have the background, what I'd like to propose is this:

A "naval army unit" loaded in the same way as a regular army or a method of stacking that allows for more organizational control than what is currently available for the typical Army unit. No big deal at first glance. I'm sure its been proposed before, but God is, as they say, in the details. What else do we need to make this work...

1. An inverted hierarchy that allows the weakest unit to be attacked first

Where a regular stack of ground units allows the strongest unit to defend first, this unit or stack would do the opposite, effectively mimicking the spatial organization of a fleet. The intended benefit hopefully being that it deters the computer (or an underhanded human opponent) from sending a rouge unit to attack in hopes of scoring a knock-out blow. It also would promote the formation of similar units by the enemy if he hopes to control the seas, allowing for all kinds of Jutland-style epic naval battles to ensue.

2. Jet fighters are modified to perform air AND SEA superiority missions

Another feature to deter rouge attacks, an enemy unit entering the range of a carrier group's fighters could be subjected to an auto-bombard equivalent before it even reached at 4-5 tiles out.

3. Line of sight for any battlegroup that contains a carrier WITH JET FIGHTERS based there is immediately extended to the air superiority limits of those jet fighters.

Let's be honest, now; a carrier with the requisite reconaissance aircraft should be able to maintain a line of sight as far as those reconaissance aircraft can effectively travel and return safely. To integrate this feature into the mechanics of the naval unit itself only serves to minimize micromanagement and acknowledges the conceit that, if you can only base 5-6 aircraft units onto a carrier that typically holds roughly 80+, routine functions that require minimal investment in the ship's resources need to be assumed to be done already.

4. The speed of the battlegroup is subject to the speed of its slowest unit

I believe the ship speed of the naval units needs to be revamped anyway for Civ4. "www.navy.mil" provides a fact file on the various statistics of the US military's naval forces, speed included. From the information provided, a fleet looks to be able to operate at a consistent speed without any units being forced to seriously under or over-perform. Anyway, that's all debatable, but for Civ4's purposes, the group needs to move together.

5. Naval units with bombard capability should be able to auto-bombard approaching enemy ships regardless of whether or not that ship engages the fleet

Pretty standard. Battleships get their two tiles, and everyone else has one. Also, bombardment should not have an effect of the distance the ship can travel. Knocking off a tile of travel distance because the ship used its guns doesn't make much sense.

6. The unit would have to allow you to define the hierarchy you want

Since the stack is only occupying one tile and the true spatial relationships of a fleet are being lost in the trade-off, it would be important for the player to be able to define the attack order (basically, who is guarding who) of your ships.

7. Combat between two naval units would have to involve the destruction of individual ship

It would be a difficult proposition for anyone to one to build one of these things, much less actually attack with it, if you thought that a loss meant that your opponent could simply go heal up. Meanwhile, you would have lost a crippling number of ships all at once.

Of course, there could also be a percent chance of being able to withrawing from combat. Though, counterattack might be an unvoidable side-effect of this option.

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I'm sure there is more that could be added. Maybe there are ways to improve these ideas. Is it all just wishful thinking? Maybe you just think the whole thing stinks. Please feel free to give some feedback.

IMHO, naval warfare is severely lacking in the AI strategy and forcing it to address the issue would vastly improve the playability for people like myself who love the idea of true naval combat.

	15-04-2005 22:17									#2
	Support Apolyton, buy GURPS/ Alpha Centauri

Very interesting.

You post something that I had not seen before in all the "future civ lists" regarding jet fighters based at sea. Today's modern naval warfare conflicts are not well represented in Civ3 as you say. The jet figher auto-bombard is a good concept when an enemy naval ship is in range.

To clarify one point, would a jet fighter be assigned to either air or sea superiority -- not both, correct?

The idea puts a bit more tactical thinking into the sea warfare. Also, the auto-bombard of naval ships would really start to eliminate the viability of surface conflict -- which is what has occured in real life.

	17-04-2005 02:46									#3
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New ideas:

1)Fleets should allow the units to fight together, adding defense and/or attack, but critical damaged units (red health bar) should not retreat.

2)Fleets should use more then one map tile, and you should turn them to directions. This is dificult and odd, but should be more like real world.

3)To build fleets, instead of leaders, you should need 10 harbors, or 15 coastal cities, or 50 water tiles under your control. To represent the commercial aspect of the navy, maybe some extra resources or luxuries should be required.

	17-04-2005 06:57									#4
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by Shogun Gunner To clarify one point, would a jet fighter be assigned to either air or sea superiority -- not both, correct?

It would be nice to have the options. Maybe, you would be able to have the choice of air superiority only versus both air & sea superiority, even sea superiority only. Keep it flexible.

But sea superiority is risky when you factor in the anti-air defense capabilities of naval units. Making your planes auto-bombard approaching enemy surface ships seems good to me at first, but I'm not sure how realistic the percentages are for how Civ3 ships respond to air attack. If they were too high, you'd probably lose more aircraft to retaliation than would make it worth your while.

Naturally, wanting to make it work in practice always seems to tip off other problems that would need to be addressed. Maybe anti-air defenses for naval units could be modified to balance out the risk to attacking air units.

For instance, maybe only the battleship is capable of lethal anti-air defense against a fully-healthy attacker (and, even then, not every time). Cruisers would only be able to remove 3 units of health from an attacking aircraft, and destroyers would only be able to remove 2. This might better reflect the reality of each naval unit's true capabilities when combined with the knowledge that it is unlikely a squadron (if a Civ air unit can be thought of as a squadron) would engage a unit to the death, with no regard for mounting losses. Better to retire and save the aircraft. Wounded air units would then become a liability for defense because, for example, bombing a cruiser with only 3 out of 4 health bars could result in loss of the aircraft. They would need to be re-based to heal up, being replaced by fresh units in rotation.

The threat to naval units would, again, promote the formation of fleets or smaller task forces. There could even be anti-air and ship-to-ship combat bonuses provided in game as another way to promote stacking.

	18-04-2005 02:04									#5
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Love this idea as well

Not sure if I didnt see but it would be nice to have a helo attack chopper based sea craft like the ocean picture below

Attachment: hms ocean.jpg
This has been downloaded 44 time(s).

	19-04-2005 01:33									#6
	Increase Your PM Length

quote: Originally posted by Elda king New ideas: 1)Fleets should allow the units to fight together, adding defense and/or attack, but critical damaged units (red health bar) should not retreat. 2)Fleets should use more then one map tile, and you should turn them to directions. This is dificult and odd, but should be more like real world. 3)To build fleets, instead of leaders, you should need 10 harbors, or 15 coastal cities, or 50 water tiles under your control. To represent the commercial aspect of the navy, maybe some extra resources or luxuries should be required.

I like the idea of requiring whatever certain number of water tiles to be under your control than your other suggestions.

	19-04-2005 01:49									#7
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agreed here as well

keep 'em coming folks

superb ideas if only we could have them incorporated

Gramps