Naval unit (Civ6)

A naval unit is (with the exception of the Great Admiral) a military unit in Civilization VI and its expansions which has water as its native element: it can never move onto a land tile unless that tile is a City Center, a Canal, or submerged due to rising sea levels. Unlike in Civilization V, no naval units (including Submarines) can move through Ice tiles.
== Mechanics ==
=== Movement ===
Moving at sea is significantly easier than moving on land - all tiles here take only 1 to pass through, except when the tile is improved by a Polder. However, as usual, certain technologies are generally required to be able to move at sea at all. (Notably, the Māori have those techs by default.) Furthermore, the seas are divided into two types of tiles: Coast tiles, where the waters are close to land and more calm; and Ocean tiles, which cover most of the map. The Sailing tech allows you to build the first ship in the game, the Galley, but this ship may only move on Coast tiles. The same holds true for the more advanced Quadrireme.
At the same time, most land units may not move on sea at all until the Shipbuilding tech is discovered. Before that, only Builders may embark with Sailing, and Traders may embark with Celestial Navigation.
No units may enter Ocean tiles until the discovery of Cartography in the Renaissance Era. At this point even Galleys and Quadriremes are able to enter Ocean tiles. This represents a stark difference with Civilization V, where early game units could never enter Ocean tiles, even when your civilization had progressed enough.
Finally, all units moving at sea (including embarked land units) receive +1 after discovering Mathematics.
=== Fleets/Armadas ===
Military naval units, like their land-based counterparts, can be formed into powerful permanent unit combinations (not to be confused with creating escort formations). There are two such types of combinations available in the game:
* Fleet, created by combining two units of a kind. Normally requires the Nationalism civic. The effect is to increase the Combat and Ranged Strength by +10 above a single unit of the same type. Note that secondary statistics (such as or , as well as Anti-Air Strength) remain unchanged.
* Armada, created by combining three units of a kind. Normally requires the Mobilization civic. The effect is to increase the Combat and Ranged Strength Combat Strength by +17 above a single unit of the same type.
Maintenance for the combined units is less than the combined value of the two or three units. The exact values involved seem to depend on the era of the combined units. Also, it appears that units trained as Fleets or Armadas in a city with a Seaport will have their maintenance reduced even more.
Another advantage to Fleets and Armadas is that their maintenance cost is not much higher than for normal units of the same type. This makes it worthwhile to form these advanced combinations from a purely economical standpoint: you spend less for maintaining a combination which consists of fewer units of greater individual strength.
You have two main ways of forming these combinations. The first one is to combine existing units: whenever you have two or more identical units in adjacent tiles, a special action will appear in their Action tab, after which you will be prompted to choose which units you want to combine with. The new combined unit inherits the s of its most experienced unit (i.e., the one with the highest promotion level at the time you create or expand the combination), and its XP earning rate and unique name (if it has one). Any other s which lower-ranking units had before being added to the combination are lost. That means it is a good strategy to combine new, inexperienced units with your veteran ones. If the two units you're combining are the same level but have different s, the resultant Fleet or Armada inherits all s from both units.
The second way is to train a new unit directly into the higher combination from the start, in a city with a Harbor and a Seaport. This will take more , proportional to the increase in Combat Strength a combination provides over a single unit of this kind. However, it is still faster than creating two or three separate units, then combining them (unless, of course, you create them in two or three different cities).
Notably, the Great Admirals Gaius Duilius and Santa Cruz can use their retirement abilities to create Fleets and Armadas (respectively).
In Gathering Storm most late-game units also "consume" strategic resources each turn (, , , or ), which amounts to a specific type of maintenance. Fleets and Armadas, however, still consume the same number of resources as an individual unit of the type, which makes it even more advantageous to maintain a lesser number of combined units instead of a greater number of single units of the same type.
== List of naval units ==
== Promotions ==
== Notes ==
== See also ==
* Naval unit in other games
Category:Naval units
Category:Units (Civ6)
Category:Game concepts (Civ6)