ships for homeland defense - against not-at-war

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    • ships for homeland defense - against not-at-war

      I'm a bit at a loss here. If i'm online, all good. But how do you effectively use ships for naval defense during offline time, and particularly vs people you're not at war with?

      Let's say that i have a 'good enough' fleet:

      - i'm online, anyone approaching my homeland sinks;
      - i'm offline, i set ships on patrol to cover my shore cities, and ideally anyone i'm at war with has to at least fight to get through;
      - i'm offline, and someone comes with a stack of 10 (whatever) units in a transport. They sail across my ship. they land, at that point war is declared, and now my ships start shooting them - but we know how pretty pointless ships are vs land units.

      What am i missing? What's your strategy?

      thanks,
      s

    • I really don't have a good reply to your opening sentence - In the few games I've played so far, I've never had to deal with that.

      I am lucky to be able to log in several times a day - The one doom stack that came ashore in one game got shredded by my planes and their cruise missiles.

      Other than that stack, I don't recall any non-trivial assaults on my coastal cities.

      I suspect that's in part because of me (online a lot and able to micro-manage my planes) aggressively attacking threats with air power to keep them on their back foot.

      Stationing some artillery inland (that will auto-attack disembarking enemies) from your cities might be more useful and/or less costly than trying to use ships to stop an invader?

      What do the more seasoned warriors say???

    • Sgniappo wrote:

      I'm a bit at a loss here. If i'm online, all good. But how do you effectively use ships for naval defense during offline time, and particularly vs people you're not at war with?

      Let's say that i have a 'good enough' fleet:

      - i'm online, anyone approaching my homeland sinks;
      - i'm offline, i set ships on patrol to cover my shore cities, and ideally anyone i'm at war with has to at least fight to get through;
      - i'm offline, and someone comes with a stack of 10 (whatever) units in a transport. They sail across my ship. they land, at that point war is declared, and now my ships start shooting them - but we know how pretty pointless ships are vs land units.

      What am i missing? What's your strategy?

      thanks,
      s
      The game mechanics changed some time ago where ground units disembarking were a naval transport for the 2+ hours while invading a port city to now where they are now ground units thus making naval defense much less effective.

      I suggest having air force with ground attack ability patrol over your city.
      I place ranged attack units such MRLSs near the city center, away from any direct route to the city center to pick off units.
      You can move your city garrison very close to the actual port point. This will prevent damage to buildings if you win. when you click on a unit to move it, hold down the control (ctrl) key on a PC, you will then be able to more accurately position the unit.

    • I should have said in the original note that i only play 4X (even though i joined a couple of 1x by mistake and am learning that sleeping 6 hours is food for your health...).

      So really this thread should have been titled "is there any way that i can avoid forcing myself to get up in the middle of the night, since my ships are useless in defending my homeland?"

      Thanks to you all. not very encouraging, nor realistic, but clear.

    • Sgniappo wrote:

      Im On Smoko wrote:

      click on a unit to move it, hold down the control (ctrl) key on a PC, you will then be able to more accurately position the unit.
      I've been cursing the game for not being able to position units better when close to the city centre, and now i realise it was my ignorance!! This is very helpful, thanks!
      It was not your ignorance. I found this hidden gem on YouTube myself.

      I am glad you found this little nugget helpful.

    • Echoing a lot of what others have already said but here goes. I always start producing mobile radars asap and try to costantly improve the radar coverage around my port cities to spot possible enemy fleets as early as possible. Keeping warships and/or artillery in range to target embarking enemy units is also something to consider, given that embarking units take more damage during embarking (don't know the exact formula), so that's a way to inflict more damage on them even when you are offline. Keeping warships in front of your port cities works well when the enemy is attacking without naval support. It might not work very well if the enemy is attacking with naval support, because keeping your warships in front of your port cities is pretty obvious and makes it easy for the enemy to find them. That might be problematic if the enemy knows how to hit and run and/or have the range advantage. Keeping some air support on standby to quickly react to embarking or already embarked enemy units when you come back online is also something that can minimize the harm the enemy is able to cause.

    • One other thing to consider is a preemptive offensive attack(s) on naval bases to get the jump on opponent before they can build ships. @The Pale Rider had some rather interesting ways to play this game. This concept he posted about in the forum.

      I cannot see attacking every country with a naval base. It may be more feasible to do this with countries which are closer by who you are not "friendly" with or who you might be considering warring with in the future.

    • Im On Smoko wrote:

      . . .
      I suggest having air force with ground attack ability patrol over your city.
      . . .
      Each time think that I might want to do that to defend a port city- I always decide against it - The possibility that an opponent will move some potent AA-Frigates (or some ASF) within range of my planes' patrol circle is just too high.

      Waking up to dead planes will probably mean that the planes I need to retake my city are dead AND my city is gone.

      YMMV

      @Sgniappo The fourth post in this thread you created in January of this year might trigger a forehead slap :D
      Where do you build your hospital?

    • Im On Smoko wrote:

      Sgniappo wrote:

      Im On Smoko wrote:

      click on a unit to move it, hold down the control (ctrl) key on a PC, you will then be able to more accurately position the unit.
      I've been cursing the game for not being able to position units better when close to the city centre, and now i realise it was my ignorance!! This is very helpful, thanks!
      It was not your ignorance. I found this hidden gem on YouTube myself.
      I am glad you found this little nugget helpful.
      I'm in the middle of micro'ing units in provinces and the auto snap to centre when too close, was again doing my head in. This is brilliant to know.

    • KFGauss wrote:

      Im On Smoko wrote:

      . . .
      I suggest having air force with ground attack ability patrol over your city.
      . . .
      Each time think that I might want to do that to defend a port city- I always decide against it - The possibility that an opponent will move some potent AA-Frigates (or some ASF) within range of my planes' patrol circle is just too high.
      Waking up to dead planes will probably mean that the planes I need to retake my city are dead AND my city is gone.

      YMMV

      @Sgniappo The fourth post in this thread you created in January of this year might trigger a forehead slap :D
      Where do you build your hospital?
      I find most people don't bring frigates, let alone asf to coastal invasions but I agree, don't like the risk regardless. Something just feels lacking when a foreign nation can just bypass your ships in waters like that. Maybe if nations with coastal exposure had delineated territorial waters it would solve the problem.

    • Sgniappo wrote:

      KFGauss wrote:

      @Sgniappo The fourth post in this thread you created in January of this year might trigger a forehead slap :D
      Where do you build your hospital?
      This is exactly what i was referring to when i spoke about 'cursing the game'... the solution back there was helpful, but it's always spotty. Ctrl works :)
      p.s. are you an AI trained using CON forum data?!
      I was looking for the place where I had learned to use the Ctrl key to avoid snap-to-center when issuing move orders. I think Playbabe or Teburu told me about it.

      I didn't find the spot where I had learned to do it (maybe someone told me in the CoN Discord channels?); but along the way I spotted that January message where Smoko had mentioned it to you.

      I got a chuckle out of seeing the hint there - I forget (and have to relearn) tricks like that one all the time - Maybe that's why I've gotten good at searching through the forum.

    • Hakville wrote:

      Since KFG didn't tell op to google it,
      I'll do the honors.

      Here's are recent threads on Territorial Waters,

      is this something between you and KFG? because neither of the above threads seems to answer my question. One is a game suggestion (which doesn't answer my question) and the other is about people sinking ships that come in their territorial waters (which...).

      So, just giving this answer the benefit of the doubt: how does either of the above threads answer my question?

    • Sgniappo wrote:

      Hakville wrote:

      Since KFG didn't tell op to google it,
      I'll do the honors.

      Here's are recent threads on Territorial Waters,

      is this something between you and KFG? because neither of the above threads seems to answer my question. One is a game suggestion (which doesn't answer my question) and the other is about people sinking ships that come in their territorial waters (which...).
      So, just giving this answer the benefit of the doubt: how does either of the above threads answer my question?
      It's something.

      I (very) frequently) remind posters that the thread topics they create or the thread questions they ask have been discussed, sometimes discussed to "death" in previous threads that are easily discovered by a quick simple (Google, site specific) search.

      For some reason that gets some people's undergarments into a wad. Consequently, they seem to feel compelled to mention my name any time that form of useful advice gets mentioned/offered.

      The threads Hakville listed did seem off-target to me, but I figured you would give them a thumbs up or down (and you have).

      Your actual original this-thread-topic has been discussed before. With a little investment into thoughtful keyword-choices I'm sure you can find and review some of those previous conversations, and maybe add something new to one or more of them.

      KFG

    • Sgniappo wrote:

      I'm a bit at a loss here. If i'm online, all good. But how do you effectively use ships for naval defense during offline time, and particularly vs people you're not at war with?

      Let's say that i have a 'good enough' fleet:

      - i'm online, anyone approaching my homeland sinks;
      - i'm offline, i set ships on patrol to cover my shore cities, and ideally anyone i'm at war with has to at least fight to get through;
      - i'm offline, and someone comes with a stack of 10 (whatever) units in a transport. They sail across my ship. they land, at that point war is declared, and now my ships start shooting them - but we know how pretty pointless ships are vs land units.

      What am i missing? What's your strategy?

      thanks,
      s
      You can get security council and turn on aggressive so that it attacks any ship nearby or you could leave it where it is after mobilization and it will automatically engage enemy ships.
      “This We'll Defend” - U.S. Army :thumbsup: