Seapower in Culture: Civilization IV

The Civilization series of games is in some sense ideal for depicting the influence of seapower on history.  Civilization connects geography, technology, and economic power to military capability, requiring a player to formulate a coherent grand strategy based on factor endowment and international constraints. The system favors (even demands) the construction of empire, often across a series of unconnected landmasses. Every Civ player has his or her favorite edition, and favorite set of stories from that version.  I haven't yet acquired Civilization V, and so this analysis will concentrate on Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, and will focus mainly on solitary play. Beyond the Sword is in many ways a deeply Mahanian game; building a proxy-governed extra-territorial empire is strongly supported, and in many cases even required for victory. Seapower is often key to acquiring (through conquest or colonization) and maintaining this empire.  The questions relevant to this series are as follows:

1. To what extent are the depictions of seapower accurate in tactical and operational terms?

2. How does seapower fit into broader national grand strategy in social, economic, and military terms?

3. What could we learn about seapower from playing a few dozen 47 hour games of Civ IV on "Epic" timeframe at  "Prince" difficulty?

On the accuracy question...

The game abstracts the bulk of the history of naval technology, with ships progressing along two lines until the modern era.  The troops ships run galleys to galleons to transports, while the warships run trireme to caravel (which does have some rump transport capacity) to frigate (and the mostly useless Ironclad and Ship of the Line units) to destroyer. In the earliest period ships are limited to coastal squares, leaving large portions of the map off limits, or at least difficult to find. Ships (like all other units) require no direct logisitical support. Although all military units produce a drain on national resources, individual units require no specific base of resupply.  This means, in the early and middle game, that a galley or caravel can leave its home port and not return for millenia, at which point it is promptly converted into a frigate or galleon. Early game units are unaffected by weather or sea conditions; there are no trade winds or similar phenomena to drive commerce and naval action into particular maritime "highways."

The naval aspects become more interesting as the game progresses. A good primer on late game naval tactics is available here. As that primer suggests, however, the principles that apply to naval combat in the real world (and to naval industrial policy) don't always apply in Civ.  Concentration, for example, has some value, but it's generally very easy for a fleet to avoid direct conflict with an enemy stack of doom.  Indeed, it might well be correct to suggest that Civ follows Mahan less than Corbett.

However, since Civilization II air and sea combat have not been well integrated with one another.  The most obvious problem is that air units (apart from cruise missiles) cannot destroy sea units at sea, and cannot damage them in port.  This can prove extremely frustrating when a fleet of transports show up near your coast, and can't be destroyed despite heavy air superiority.  Indeed, even having surface naval units available doesn't always help, given the limit on numbers of attacks per turn. These limits are designed to preserve game balance (otherwise air units dominate the game), but they do detract from late game verisimilitude.

In Civ IV naval units have fewer ways of influencing shore events than in some previous editions.  Shore bombardment doesn't destroy improvements, limiting the utility of wandering an enemy coast and laying waste.  Similarly, shore bombardment only destroys "cultural" fortification of cities, leaving the cities themselves (and their defending units) undamaged. Again, there are game balance reasons for this, but the decision limits the impact of naval superiority.

Nevertheless, in the late game stacks of amphibious doom can be truly devastating. Destroyers and battleships destroy the fortifications of coastal cities, cruise missiles and fighters wear down defending units, and marines destroy defending units.  It is extremely difficult to defend coastal cities against such stacks, and even the temporary loss of a major city can have dreadful economic effects.  Moreover, if the attacker doesn't expect to hold but simply prefers to punish, even critical, millenia old cities can be burned to the ground.

And then there are the quibbles.  Missile cruisers could (and should) have far greater air defense capabilities, and indeed air defense should be an allowable promotion.  Something along the lines of an amphibious warship, with limited capabilities for carrying both air and land units, would be quite nice. Damaged vessels could move more slowly (as they did in Civ II), and a variety of other small tweaks could be introduced that would make the naval campaign more interesting without fundamentally unbalancing the game.

And the grand strategy question...

Seapower is important to many games of Civ. As all players know, one of the most rewarding parts of the game is exploration of the full map.  Different maps produce radically different constellations of military necessity; seapower is critical to some, but not all of these. I find that the most interesting naval contests happen with mediumish continents rather than archipelagos, mostly because archipelago cities rarely achieve the degree of industrial capacity necessary to the construction of massive fleets.

Nevertheless, Civ IV lacks a coherent economic theory of seapower. The role of trade in particular is abstracted, except in the case of a few critical resources.  To be sure, the game does allow a certain degree of economic destruction from the sea; positioning a ship in a city's resource zone prevents the utilization of those and surrounding tiles, and raiders can cause a lot of damage to maritime resource infrastructure. Nevertheless, it's difficult to cause critical damage to an economy through maritime means because there's little underlying theory of how maritime trade undergirds the international economy.

It's also unclear how naval power affect reputation in Civ IV.  In many games, I've never quite figured out how AI empires assess military power, but my best guess is that they aggregate, rather than divide between land, air and seapower.  Similarly, it's not clear that the AI can assess its own vulnerability to different kinds of military power.  This may mean that you can build a world-beating fleet, yet not get taken seriously by the AI (or perhaps get taken too seriously) because of land power deficiencies.  This would operate much differently in a multiplayer game, of course. Still, Civ models the reputational and social effects of naval power poorly, if at all.  We know that a Chinese aircraft carrier (or, in an earlier era, a Brazilian dreadnought) has a social and symbolic import that goes beyond its strict military value; reputation is an important consideration for naval procurement.

Overall, the lack of a strong economic underpinning to the Civ maritime system remains problematic.  A submarine oriented sea denial campaign can surely have some success, but it can only very, very rarely "starve" a nation in the sense of the Battle of the Atlantic or the Royal Navy blockade of Germany in World War I.  Cutting off a critical resource such as iron or oil is sometimes possible, but requires a tremendous, long term effort.  Perhaps most importantly, there is no such thing as an anti-commerce strategy.  All ships, even transports, are state owned military assets; there are no tramp freighters to sink or whaling ships to seize.  This cuts out a crucial component of naval warfare since the Age of Sail, and incidentally makes a "sea denial" or raiding strategy by an overmatched opponent considerably less rewarding.

And the lessons...

What applicable lessons could be learned from Civ IV? Very little in tactical or operational terms, obviously.  That aircraft carriers do better when escorted by destroyers and missile cruisers doesn't tell us very much, although I suppose it might serve as introduction to the concept "carrier battle group" for someone new to seapower theory.  Similarly, the lack of basing or supply requirements completely abstracts most interesting operational concepts.  Civ IV has great difficulty explaining why base proximity could allow Japan to accept a 10:10:6 ratio, or why the Russian Baltic Fleet was so ragged when it finally arrived at Tsushima.

Of strategic lessons I can think of two.  The first is the reality of helplessness when, in fact, your empire faces a Turn Without Seapower.  Ships take a while to build, and when an enemy fleet shows up on your door either to raid or to land, it can cause immense (often decisive) damage before you get a chance to do anything about it. Fortunately wars can last centuries, so if you survive first contact there's often the opportunity to get revenge.  The second, related, is the broader connection between industrial capacity and seapower. Cities have to be built or seized with an eye to how they fit into a broader national strategy, which of necessity includes seapower considerations.  Decisions about improvements in particular coastal cities (whether to build a drydock, or how much to invest in finishing a factory) also work better when informed by a broad consideration of grand strategy.  

What sort of introduction does Civ provide to seapower novices? The lack of a clear connection between maritime commerce and seapower is problematic.  Ships exist primarily to destroy other ships, rather than to play a regulatory role.  The lack of a good theory of logistics also produces misleading conclusions.  While some navies can indeed operate effectively at extreme distance from their industrial bases, this is not true of all organizations.  That said, a complex system of logistics would probably detract from enjoyment of the game.  With regard to ship types, Civ isn't particularly instructive in terms of the roles and capabilities of the real life counterparts of game units.  All that said, the need for naval power on most maps (and the complexity of building and maintaining an advanced fleet) could serve as a foundation for an interest in naval affairs, or at least of an appreciation of the role that navies play in a grand strategic framework.

When You Add it All Up

When the Navy released their FY2013 budget earlier this year, the reason cited for not providing a shipbuilding plan with the budget was a Force Structure Analysis being conducted by the Department. The FSA is basically a classified review of the force structure, and it was expected at the time that the FSA and shipbuilding plan would be released together. By late March, Congress was getting restless and wanted to see a shipbuilding plan, but the FSA was not finished. March was hearing season on the Hill and a shipbuilding plan was needed. The shipbuilding plan was released in late March prior to the late March hearings with Congress.

As the Secretary noted in his written testimony, the"new FSA will consider the types of ships included in the final ship count based on changes in mission, requirements, deployment status, or capabilities. For example, classes of ships previously not part of the Battle Force such as AFSBs developed to support SOF/non-traditional missions, Patrol Combatant craft forward deployed to areas requiring that capability, and COMFORT Class Hospital Ships deployed to provide humanitarian assistance, an expanded core Navy mission, may be counted as primary mission platforms." Basically, the Navy is conducting a review of counting rules that will determine what ships are counted as Battle Force ships.

This is nothing new. Under Reagan, Secretary John Lehman counted every grey hull that floated in his attempt to build a 600 ship Navy, and if the Navy used Lehman's counting rules today, the ship types that counted towards the 568 Battle Force ships in 1987 would give the Navy well over 300 ships today if the same ship types were counted. Thirtyish years later, the Navy is conducting another review of the counting rules - reasonable.

After returning from Washington DC last week, I began breaking down the Navy's new 300-ship shipbuilding plan in detail. Leveraging the new shipbuilding plan, CRS reports on the Navy's new and old shipbuilding plan, and the Navy's FY13 budget I kept coming across what I would describe as anomalies when trying to add up the small surface combatant line. What I decided to do was go to the FY19 line, because in FY19 there will be only 1 FFG-51 left in the Battle Force, and using the Navy SCN budget book I was able to determine there were going to be 25 Littoral Combat Ships commissioned by that fiscal year.

Well, if there are 25 Littoral Combat Ships and only one Perry class left, and the new Navy 300 ship shipbuilding plan has 39 small surface combatants in FY19 - I started trying to figure out where the other 13 small surface combatants are. At first I thought maybe they were the MCMs, so I went to Ronald O'Rourke's report Navy Force Structure and Shipbuilding Plans: Background and Issues for Congress dated March 30 which reflects the new Navy shipbuilding plan. As is historically custom, Ron lists Dedicated mine warfare ships as it's own ship type to be counted, but nowhere is there any mention of MCMs in the report - indeed the report lists the plan as having zero MCMs. Because mine ships have historically always been counted in their own category, and Ron didn't list them, I presumed the Navy wasn't counting them. Plus, there are 14 MCMs, not 13. The only small surface combatant class in the Navy that numbers 13 is the PCs.

It was about that point I realized the FSA and shipbuilding plan were supposed to be released together - but were not - and presumed that in the madness of getting the shipbuilding plan out the door the Navy added the PCs in the plan they released.

This is what Bob Work kindly forwarded to me on this subject before he got up on stage at SAS on Wednesday.

39 SSCS IN FY2019 INCLUDE 1 FF, 25 LCS, 13 MCM. WE USED TO COUNT MINE WARFARE VESSELS SEPARATELY. BUT SINCE LCS IS REPLACING FFS, PCS, AND MCMS, WE COUNT THEM IN THIS LINE.

33 SUPPORT SHIPS INCLUDE 2 LCC, 2 AS, 4 T-ARS, 4 T-ATF, 5 T-AGOS, 10 JHSV, 2 MLP, 2 AFSB, 2 TAKE IN MPSRON. WE COUNT ALL MLP, AFSB, AND TAKE IN MPSRON AS FLEET SUPPORT ASSETS, SINCE THAT IS HOW WE WILL EMPLOY THEM.

13 MCMs in FY19? Guess that means the Navy is retiring the MCMs immediately after Increment 3 of the LCS MIW module comes online. I also suppose my waterfall from FY13-FY20 regarding is off by one MCM decom somewhere...

Now, why would I suggest there is a shell game taking place with ship numbers? Well, here was the working theory, and I'll let you decide if I'm right or wrong on this - and we'll all know one way or the other as it plays out this year.

According to the 300 ship plan, in Fiscal Year 2013 the Navy expects to have 285 Battle Force Ships, but that number will fall from FY14-FY16 because the Perry's are going to retire faster than the Littoral Combat Ships come online, but by FY17 the Navy will be bounce back to 285 Battle Force ships.

So what happens if the FSA comes back and says add in the PCs and T-AHs? The Navy is also working hard to try to save some of their Cruisers being retired, and Congress is working hard to save the ships up for early retirement as well. What happens if just 2of the 4 Cruisers scheduled for FY13 decommissioning are saved?

Well, there are 282 Battle Force ships in the Navy today and when USS Mississippi is commissioned in June, the Navy will have 283 Battle Force ships. If in mid-June the Navy was to complete the FSA and announce changes like adding the 13 PCs, suddenly the Navy has 296 ships. If the Navy also added a pair of hospital ships, suddenly the Navy has 298 ships. If the Navy finds a way to save at least 2 cruisers from the FY13 budget axe, the Navy will suddenly have a 300 ship Navy by next year.

The PCs are rapidly approaching end of life though, so they may have only a decade or less of life left in them, meaning those 10 Battle Force PCs will only boost ship numbers for a limited time in the shipbuilding plan, if boosting ship numbers is the objective of the exercise.

But what if boosting ship numbers in the shipbuilding plan is not the objective of converting a PC with a limited life left in it to a Battle Force ship? Well, wouldn't that suggest this isn't about politics? If it isn't about politics, then why bother because the PCs are near end of life despite a bit of investment this year? When you start going down that road, one might wonder if there is some serious consideration regarding a replacement for the PC that isn't named LCS. Is a PC(X) program perhaps being legitimately considered by the Navy? Not on Admiral Roughead's watch... but he's gone. It couldn't be, could it... this has to be about the politics of ship numbers, right? There must be a reason, and I look forward to learning what it is.

The scenario of achieving a 300 ship Navy by next year, or some variation of it, is what I believe I am watching unfold, and it really is remarkably clever during an election year I might add. For the record, there are no PCs and T-AHs in the 300 ship shipbuilding plan, so I was wrong when I suggested otherwise.

But am I wrong for suspecting and/or suggesting there might be a shell game afoot? I'll let you decide.

Maritime Foundations of the Modern International System (Youtube Edition)

This is some ridiculously interesting stuff, using a database of maritime voyages between 1750 and 1850.
And here is a seasonal representation of the data:
If you pay close attention you can see the increasing prominence of Pacific and Indian Ocean trade, as well as the effects of the Napoleonic Wars and the American Revolution. The data is limited, of course, but it's nevertheless a fascinating visual depiction. Via Ezra Klein.

Driving the Discussion

Bob Work just walked into #SAS12 and decided to start a big discussion on LCS, among other topics. There was a lot of good information discussed - I have 6 pages of notes which will take forever to go through. Get ready for LCS news saturation, because I got the impression Bob intended on kick start a public debate by boiling water on a lot of issues - and specifically LCS. It was very refreshing to see the raw passion about the current direction of the Navy, it is unclear why we don't see that raw emotion from uniformed Navy leaders, but it does inspire.

CDR Salamander, call your office, pretty sure the UNDER decided to kick sand your direction on LCS when he all but shouted the LCS will "kick their ass" when discussing small boats and LCS "will escort logistics ships." There is so much more...

Worth noting, Robby Harris asked about the blog discussion regarding ship counting rules, and Bob Work made clear the PCs and AHs are not in the new 300 ship plan, then he discussed that a bit. I have been in discussion with folks on this topic offline and will discuss this topic in the very near future. Bob Work said "there is no subterfuge." That's the right word, but I'll let others decide if there is a shell game at work.

Those of you who enjoy flaming me for getting something wrong (like the PCs and AHs) will soon have a chance to gloat. I look forward to it.

Observing the Omissions, Additions, and Denials of Future Force Structure

So by now you might be starting to see what I'm talking about in regards to the questionable figures and statistics listed in the Navy's new 300 ship plan. If the hint on Monday wasn't enough, perhaps the visual aids from Tuesday were more effective in making the point.

You see, the issue here is specific to counting rules and how one creates a 300 ship fleet so as to not be the administration that let the Navy fade away quietly into the night. If you have been paying attention to the details of the new shipbuilding plan, you would note that the Secretary of the Navy himself is the one who brought the subject up regarding what ships count and what ships don't count in the plan. From the February 16, 2024 House Hearing on the Navy's FY13 Budget, written statement by Secretary Ray Mabus, page 11.

Future Force Structure Assessment and Re-designation of Primary Mission Platforms

Given the broad refocus of the DoD program objectives reflected in the new defense strategy, the Navy has undertaken analysis of the existing Force Structure Requirements and, in conjunction with ongoing internal DoD studies and planning efforts, is reworking an updated FSA against which future requirements will be measured. The new FSA will consider the types of ships included in the final ship count based on changes in mission, requirements, deployment status, or capabilities. For example, classes of ships previously not part of the Battle Force such as AFSBs developed to support SOF/non-traditional missions, Patrol Combatant craft forward deployed to areas requiring that capability, and COMFORT Class Hospital Ships deployed to provide humanitarian assistance, an expanded core Navy mission, may be counted as primary mission platforms. Any changes in ship counting rules will be reported and publicized. Any comments on total ship numbers in this statement are based on current counting rules.

I have a question. How exactly did the Navy's ~300 ship shipbuilding plan expect to ever get the fleet total to 300 ships as stated in this February testimony under "current counting rules" when the final plan released on March 28, 2024 before the Senate changed the counting rules - except they changed the counting rules without reporting or publicizing to the Senate those changes despite the SECNAV suggesting he would. The Navy quietly added the PCs and T-AHs into the final shipbuilding plan submitted to Congress to reach 300, then conveniently forgot to report and publicize that change. Oops.

The shipbuilding plan was released for the Senate hearing on March 28, 2012. Why didn't the Navy "report and publicize" the changes to counting rules at the hearing like the SECNAV said he would? Lets see, "Any comments on total ship numbers in this statement are based on current counting rules" was clearly an inaccurate statement, because without the changing the counting rules the plan would never be 300 ships. Saying "any changes in ship counting rules will be reported and publicized" also appears to have an accuracy problem, because the only person reporting and publicizing this counting rules change is me.

I don't know if these are SECNAV lies of omission or lies of commission, but the truth is hiding in the vast distance somewhere between CNO hope and SECNAV change.

I would like to hope Wednesday's 3:00pm House hearing on Navy Shipbuilding puts an end to the shell game the Navy is playing with shipbuilding - and has been playing for years. It is past time someone in the Navy just states outright the ugly truth about how the fleet numbers under tbe counting rules of the 313-ship plan are not going up under this new plan, and any cost growth in shipbuilding from this point going forward - like the future DDG-51 Flight III and it's AMDR gallium nitride (GaN) hail mary - means the fleet is likely to shrink even further. The new shipbuilding plan makes assumptions that carry a very high risk of failure, and the credibility of Navy leadership is on the line.

It's time to shake the "stay the course" addiction because that really is a rocky shoal ahead - the CNO can admit this but apparently does not want to admit what it really means for the future of the Navy. The new shipbuilding plan is as much a house of cards as the old plan, and the solution demands innovation in force structure sooner rather than later. The first step is admitting there is a legitimate force structure problem is to acknowledge that the evolution of existing warship platforms has become too expensive to meet operational requirements while sustaining pace on competitors, and the revolution in aircraft platforms has become an unaffordable money sink that draws resources from the innovations necessary to make NAVAIR relevant to the threats of the 21st century. No, even a perfect Joint Strike Fighter cannot make up for the loss of capabilities it's price tag prohibits from the modern carrier air wing, and JSF is destroying the value of big deck aircraft carriers to the total battle force with every extra dollar dumped into the program. If the Navy cannot admit these things, the Navy will never find suitable answers to the question the Navy has failed to answer since the cold war - what is the link between resources and strategy for the US Navy?

An entirely new force model is needed under current reduced resource investments, and both the SECNAV and OPNAV folks ignore this plainly obvious truth. Until the unaffordability reality can be admitted by the various communities inside the Navy, the shell game will continue with fewer platforms, fewer systems, and less capacity to meet the political and COCOM demand signal. The Navy doesn't have a plan, and the reason is simple:

The solution is big deck CVNs, constantly bigger surface combatants, and constantly big nuclear submarines - as many of all of them as possible - now Mr. President, what was your problem?

There is no such thing as a plan that links resources to strategy when the resources are predetermined regardless of resources available or political objectives stated in policy. The current Navy strategy is designed to inform towards a predetermined resource conclusion - the Navy will do everything, but only with these specific platforms.

The inflection point the CNO has discussed is here, now. The Navy raced past the Tipping Point months ago. It's time for folks to stop the political shell games with the future of the Navy and demonstrate some leadership. Will a leader step up to the enormous challenges of the moment?

Doubtful. Perpetuating a state of denial is easier.