Landing Craft

Combat role

Naval infantry carrier — can capture coastal cities from adjacent water tiles.

Lore

Amphibious assault was supposed to be a solved problem — solved in the sense of impossible, priced out by shore-based missiles. The Landing Craft of the Red Age is the workaround: small enough to be a poor missile target, cheap enough to build in flotillas, and carrying a reinforced marine platoon trained to take a waterfront district in the first twenty minutes.

The hulls are unglamorous — flat-bottomed, ramp-bowed, screws caged against debris. What changed is the approach: modern craft ride in under coastal clutter, jammers running, timed against tide tables that planning staffs treat as classified documents.

Every coastal city in the world now drills against the same nightmare: waking to find the harbor already contested. Landing Craft are why the nightmare stays plausible.

When to use

Use Landing Craft to snatch weakly garrisoned coastal cities or open a second front the enemy's ground army cannot reach in time. Escort them — Damage 2 means they lose any honest fight at sea.

Counters