@Kaiservar
"You describe some situations, mostly ideal and not mandatory to be the same every time you play, thinking about America and inactive players. My experience is the opposite."
What you describe as ideal, I find to be typical in my maps. I find it rare to encounter actually competent, active coalitions working cohesively and co-ordinated as a team with proper defences and scouting networks. How we each define these terms could be different. For e.g. what you may deem competent & a challenge I may not, etc.
"i don't know if without it i can expand more quickly, i don't care about time"
I find this position odd because time is a cost. If you pay no mind to it you are liable to be left behind. If you grow quicker, and therefore have more forces than the other guy, this in part, potentially feeds into your ability to preserve your k/d, the thing you say you're manic about protecting.
"An island nation wil need a navy mainly early because a single corvette is sufficient to stop transports"
Corvettes can protect you for a short period of time but you need to shift off that soon. My bigger point was in comparing the cost of a naval defence vs a ground one and how much is it going to set me back in just getting going. Landlocked can be rushed sure, but early game the defender has the advantage & if you're smart about it, & unless you're being dogpiled it's not hard to defend. That you get some early game security as an island, to me is not worth all the drawbacks.
You say neither approach is better or worse but that's because you don't seem to be judging their use relative to some ultimate goal. If you set a goal, whatever it is, test both approaches, one will win out over the other over time. Without an objective, of course neither is better or worse, it then simply becomes contextual to your situation and particular circumstances. My hypothesis is that navy is inefficient to the goal of winning as quick as possible. You seem to instead argue for specific use cases which misses the point and doesn't address that claim directly. Arguing that navy is good for x or y is fine but misses the point.
"And yes, with Germany you can lose 2 of 7 cities and you could be competitive. Try this with France"
But that's why I'd never pick France, because we're back to wasting time with boats which runs contrary to my particular goal. One of the reasons I pick Germany is due to it's limited exposure to this stuff so I can just get on with winning the game.
"Ah, yes, now you will have ASF... well, i have my FIRST Sam barriage on my frigates that allows me to land my own SAM to protect my air and ground assets inner land. And we can be here looking counters to any that you throw, because ALL in this game have a "uberdog", there is no better unit for all, there are units better for some situations."
Yes ok you bring your SAM's and you bring this counter for his counter and so on. But the larger point being made here, is that once you're on land, he's the ground focused player while you're not. Odds are that he either outnumbers/out-techs you or both in that arena. He likely has the advantage there. Skill differential/allies etc change the equation, but I strip out all those unquantifiable variables to just focus on what we're fundamentally looking at here.
"You describe some situations, mostly ideal and not mandatory to be the same every time you play, thinking about America and inactive players. My experience is the opposite."
What you describe as ideal, I find to be typical in my maps. I find it rare to encounter actually competent, active coalitions working cohesively and co-ordinated as a team with proper defences and scouting networks. How we each define these terms could be different. For e.g. what you may deem competent & a challenge I may not, etc.
"i don't know if without it i can expand more quickly, i don't care about time"
I find this position odd because time is a cost. If you pay no mind to it you are liable to be left behind. If you grow quicker, and therefore have more forces than the other guy, this in part, potentially feeds into your ability to preserve your k/d, the thing you say you're manic about protecting.
"An island nation wil need a navy mainly early because a single corvette is sufficient to stop transports"
Corvettes can protect you for a short period of time but you need to shift off that soon. My bigger point was in comparing the cost of a naval defence vs a ground one and how much is it going to set me back in just getting going. Landlocked can be rushed sure, but early game the defender has the advantage & if you're smart about it, & unless you're being dogpiled it's not hard to defend. That you get some early game security as an island, to me is not worth all the drawbacks.
You say neither approach is better or worse but that's because you don't seem to be judging their use relative to some ultimate goal. If you set a goal, whatever it is, test both approaches, one will win out over the other over time. Without an objective, of course neither is better or worse, it then simply becomes contextual to your situation and particular circumstances. My hypothesis is that navy is inefficient to the goal of winning as quick as possible. You seem to instead argue for specific use cases which misses the point and doesn't address that claim directly. Arguing that navy is good for x or y is fine but misses the point.
"And yes, with Germany you can lose 2 of 7 cities and you could be competitive. Try this with France"
But that's why I'd never pick France, because we're back to wasting time with boats which runs contrary to my particular goal. One of the reasons I pick Germany is due to it's limited exposure to this stuff so I can just get on with winning the game.
"Ah, yes, now you will have ASF... well, i have my FIRST Sam barriage on my frigates that allows me to land my own SAM to protect my air and ground assets inner land. And we can be here looking counters to any that you throw, because ALL in this game have a "uberdog", there is no better unit for all, there are units better for some situations."
Yes ok you bring your SAM's and you bring this counter for his counter and so on. But the larger point being made here, is that once you're on land, he's the ground focused player while you're not. Odds are that he either outnumbers/out-techs you or both in that arena. He likely has the advantage there. Skill differential/allies etc change the equation, but I strip out all those unquantifiable variables to just focus on what we're fundamentally looking at here.