Battleship

Prerequisites

Requires:

Modern Metallurgy

Summary

Can Bombard Land & Sea Units

Gameplay

The Battleship rules the seas with superior Attack, Ranged Attack and Defensive capabilities and can Bombard land or ocean targets from a distance. It is unquestionably the most formidable naval combat unit of the Modern Age.

Historical

The high seas of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were the setting for the swift advance of naval tactics and warfare. Navies abandoned the wooden-hulls and sails of ships-of-the-line in favor of engine powered, metal-hulled battleships and cruisers. Combining large size, powerful guns, and heavy armor with speed, strength and range, battleships were the unrivaled capital ships of the world’s navies for nearly a century after they were first introduced in 1860.

World War II was the battleship’s heyday, when the Washington Treaty of 1922, which limited battleship sizes to 35,000 tons of displacement, was abandoned. The United States, Germany and Japan built 45,000-ton Iowa class, 52,600-ton Bismarck class and 72,000-ton Yamato class battleships, respectively. They employed antiaircraft weapons, 5-inch caliber rapid-fire guns and a multitude of 20 to 40 mm automatic weapons. They could travel great distances at the relatively high speed of over 30 knots. This period of dominance came to a swift end, however, with the rapid development of the aircraft carrier, the range and striking power of which relegated the battleship to coastal bombardment and carrier escort duties. The United States continued to employ World War II-era battleships in the latter 20th century, finally retiring the Wisconsin and the Missouri, the two remaining Iowa-class ships, after service in the Persian Gulf War in the early 1990s.