What's the opinion on fleets/armadas?

[cerberusiv]

Worth it or not?

I usually play high sea level island plates for the naval action and generally get by with six battleships, maybe going to eight as my conquests roll by. I do form some 2 ship fleets, although they don't appear to be that much more powerful than single ships, mostly for those city targets where there are only a few tiles to bombard from due to the geography.

I just had a bit of a surprise taking on Brazil. So far I have counted 13 Minas Gerais, including one fleet and two armadas, and sunk 11. The surprise was an armada one shotting one of my battleships. They are a bit harder to sink too, although not that hard.

I'm still not convinced fleets and armadas are worthwhile and would like to hear what others think?

[FollowsJesus]

i normally aim to have 4 battleship armadas as my rapid navel force, and then some smaller fleets for patrols etc

[paugus]

They're really not worthwhile unless you have far too many units to attack a single target or you have so much surplus gold that you can afford to waste it on slightly stronger naval units. Considering the AI is awful at naval battles, I don't think they're particularly necessary or useful.

[ubik]

I think it's more of a question of flanking.

Flanking/support bonus is weaker as the units get more powerful in Civ6 ... it's just flat +2 combat strength per tile surrounding the target unit (as opposed to Civ5, where it scaled up by percentage - 10%/15% bonus to combat strength of the attacking unit) ... so you have a ceiling of +10 bonus on flanks in any stage of the game. There is a Great Admiral (Horatio Nelson) that confers a huge (+50%) flanking bonus to all naval units. Regardless, one late-game strategy for dealing with a Minas Geraes fleet would be to primarily attack with a Battleship fleet and positioning cheaper units on flanks (eg Ironclads). Your support units will probably get attacked first, probably, but that will be a more efficient strategy than flanking with Battleships. Could be wrong about that ... air/naval battles in Civ6 is not something I focus on as much as I did Civ5.

[gimmethegepgun]

Originally posted by King Buzzo:

I think it's more of a question of flanking.

Flanking/support bonus is weaker as the units get more powerful in Civ6 ... it's just flat +2 combat strength per tile surrounding the target unit (as opposed to Civ5, where it scaled up by percentage - 10%/15% bonus to combat strength of the attacking unit)

No.
Combat in this game is not based on the proportion of the combat strengths involved, it's based on the difference between the combat strengths. +2 will add exactly the same amount of damage at any point in the game.
Or, in other words, 77 vs 75 will do exactly the same damage as 22 vs 20.

[ubik]

Originally posted by gimmethegepgun:

Originally posted by King Buzzo:

I think it's more of a question of flanking.

Flanking/support bonus is weaker as the units get more powerful in Civ6 ... it's just flat +2 combat strength per tile surrounding the target unit (as opposed to Civ5, where it scaled up by percentage - 10%/15% bonus to combat strength of the attacking unit)

No.
Combat in this game is not based on the proportion of the combat strengths involved, it's based on the difference between the combat strengths. +2 will add exactly the same amount of damage at any point in the game.
Or, in other words, 77 vs 75 will do exactly the same damage as 22 vs 20.

Okay, I should have written that differently. I was correct in saying that it's a flat +2 per flanking tile in all eras. Lack of the word "potentially". ... What I was trying to explain, concisely, is two things.

1. Early game, you don't really have an option of flanking with a cheaper unit, eg because you can't move into ocean tiles with the cheaper unit.

2. If you are flanking with unit of an earlier era than the target unit, you still get the +2 CS flanking bonus regardless. The tradeoff is old era support units will probably get attacked first, and in terms of damage, will get hurt more. Let's say in the case of a Frigate target assuming at least one support (CS: 45+2) vs Battleship (CS: 60) attacker. That's a difference of 13, or damage of ~50 as opposed to Battleship + 1 support (CS: 62) defending vs Battleship (CS: 60) which would be ~32. That's without the bit of RNG. Therefore technically I was correct in saying the support bonus is weaker as units get more powerful late game.

Therefore, to your point, where that bonus is the same in late game is primarily when employing flanking bonuses between the two strongest units, but not considering the tradeoff when the flank/supports are much weaker and likely to get attacked first.

[ubik]

I don't know why I'm having so much trouble trying to explain that in some concise way. I give up. Tuesdays...