Unit movement in strategy games tends to be restricted to one of the Land, Sea, Sky dimensions — land units move across solid terrain, water units sail across the oceans, other bodies of water, and sometimes even non-aquatic liquids, while aerial units speed through the skies or even outer space. Sometimes, however, there are units that can move across both land and water, affording them a good deal of strategic versatility.
How these units achieve amphibious movement may vary. Sometimes they may be genuinely amphibious creatures like turtles or amphibians. Other times they may turn into instant transport ships, allowing their use for Storming the Beaches without the need of a dedicated transport unit. Other times they may simply float above the surface, though not to the point where they're a fully aerial unit. Others may actually be naval units that can operate on land, inverting the typical dynamic. In some cases they may even be underwater units that can also move around on land.
In order to qualify as an amphibious unit, the unit must be able to move across both land and water, without also being counted as an aerial/flying unit.
May overlap with Dual Mode Unit if the unit needs to change forms in order to move on land or on water. See also Amphibious Automobile for more general examples of amphibious vehicles in fiction.
Examples:
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- Age of Wonders 4:
- Units with the Amphibious trait can move between land and water without expending significant movement points, and do not gain a defensive penalty for fighting in water.
- Land units automatically embark when tasked to go on a water tile after acquiring the Basic Seafaring empire skill. Embarked units gain a -2 penalty to Defense and Resistance, giving them a slight disadvantage in naval combat.
- Civilization: Starting with Civilization V, instead of building dedicated transport ships land units may instead embark on the water after researching an early-game naval technology, allowing them to travel across the seas. For Competitive Balance purposes, embarked units cannot initiate naval combat, and have lower combat strength in the water compared to dedicated naval units.
- A downplayed version also exists with Marines, which are available in earlier installments. They are the only ones that can attack units directly from transports, instead of having to land on an empty tile.
- Civilization: Beyond Earth: Workers and Explorers can reconfigure into aquatic and land-bound forms to work and explore land and sea.
- Civilization: Call to Power: One of the abilities of the fusion tank unit is that it can travel (and engage in combat) over shallow water as well as land.
- Dominions:
- Units with the Amphibian trait can enter underwater provinces as well as land. This is the main strength of the underwater nations. With the best access to amphibious units, they can take over the seas the land-dwellers cannot easily enter and invade the dry realm.
- Commanders with the sailing trait cannot enter the sea, but can sail themselves and any units under their command through sea provinces, giving them increased mobility.
- Downplayed in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri; sea transports must be built and units are restricted to a land, sea, or air environment, but land units can be fitted with the "amphibious pods" feature, which allows them to attack a base or land unit directly when disembarking from a sea transport, or to cross from a sea base to a land tile (or vice versa) without a transport.
- Warhammer 40,000: Gladius: While almost every faction has units that can hover over water, the Imperial Guard's Chimera transport is explicitly noted as being amphibious.
Online Games
- Codename: Kids Next Door: In the online game Protect and Swerve, Numbuh 3's vehicle is the B.O.T.T.O.M. (Big Oversized Tires Tactical Operations Machine), a boat with inflatable tires that can move across the water. It is the only one of Sector V's vehicles that can do so.
- LEGO Dinosaurs: In the online game The Great LEGO Dino Quest, the Brachiosaurus is the only playable dinosaur that is capable of walking on land and wading through lakes, evoking Aquatic Sauropods; however, as a downplayed form of this trope, it is unable to cross the deep water of the Savage Ocean, which requires the Mosasaurus for traversal. Among the NPCs, Spinosaurus and crocodilians are also capable of crossing land and lakes.
Real-Time Strategy
- 9-Bit Armies: A Bit Too Far: The Sentinels faction's basic naval unit is the Tadpole, a cheap spammable hovercraft that can cross land as easily as it can water. Technically all infantry units in the game are amphibious, due to being able to swim through water, but they're slower and can't attack while swimming and are vulnerable to shark attacks.
- Age of Mythology: Several myth units like the Greek Siren, Chinese Xuanwu, and Japanese Umibozu can move on both land and water. To compensate for their versatility, they're only made available in the late-game Mythic Age. As of Retold, Titans also fit this designation, able to cross the water by virtue of being so large that they can wade across the seafloor without drowning, and preventing them from being Awesome, yet Impractical on water maps.
- Command & Conquer:
- Command & Conquer: Tiberian Sun: GDI has the Amphibious APC that is able to ford rivers to drop troops from otherwise protected angles of attack. It also fields the Hover MLAS, which is a missile battery mounted on an anti-gravity skimmer. The Hover MLAS, unlike the APC, doesn't work right during Ion Storms, causing them to be immobilized on land and sink like rocks in water.
- Red Alert 2:
- Both the Allies and Soviets (and Yuri in the expansion pack) can produce Amphibious Transport hovercraft from their Naval Yard structures.
- The Allies also have their Hero Unit Tanya and the Navy SEAL, which unlike other infantry units in the game are able to swim.
- The expansion gives the Allies the Robot Tank, which can cross water thanks to being able to hover.
- Red Alert 3: Given the greater emphasis on naval combat (and even construction) in this game, every faction has at least three in addition to their scout, harvester, MCV and commando unit (although Yuriko floats rather than swims):
- Allies:
- The Riptide hovercraft serves as the troop transport, basic Anti-Infantry vehicle and can fire torpedoes in water.
- The Assault Destroyer is built in the dockyard but can deploy treads to go on land, serving as a superheavy vehicle that can crush tanks. It can disable its gun to emit a magnetic field that redirects enemy projectiles into itself.
- Being a James Bond expy (Sean Connery's version specifically), the Spy pulls a Spy-Tux Reveal when getting out of the water (and inversely when going in the water.
- The expansion adds the Pacifier, a Hover Tank with dual chainguns that can deploy into very long-range artillery (but only on land).
- The Cryo Legionnaire (also from the expansion) is equipped with a jet pack that lets him Walk on Water.
- Soviets:
- The Stingray fires a slow Lightning Gun that's lethal to infantry and can unleash a circular shockwave that damages even submerged units. On land it deploys spider-like legs that make it slower.
- The Bullfrog serves as both transport (via Catapult to Glory) and Anti-Air.
- The expansion adds the Grinder, which is basically a spiked roller strapped to an engine with retractable floaters. Due to a bug, it's sometimes unable to attack buildings in the water.
- Empire:
- Unlike the other factions that use their MCVs to build structures, the Empire creates buildings as amphibious cores that deploy at the target location.
- The Mecha Tengu is an Anti-Infantry Mini-Mecha that hovers over water and transforms into an Anti-Air jet. It's not as strong as the other factions', but has the indisputable advantage of not needing to refill its ammo at an airfield.
- The Tsunami Tank floats on water and can disable its gun to deploy a deflector shield to reduce damage taken.
- The Sudden Transport can disguise itself as an enemy vehicle (including those that have no business being on land or water, as the AI will sometimes disguise it as a plane).
- Allies:
- Empires: Dawn of the Modern World: In the World Wars, the British can field commandos whom are distinguished from regular infantry units by their ability to swim. The British also have the Amphibious Tank, the only tank unit able to traverse water in the game.
- Empire Earth: The Hyperion cyber is amphibious by virtue of walking along the seabed. But unlike submarines which can only be targeted by frigates, other subs and towers, this leaves it targetable by any anti-ground enemies (and can lead to amusing sights like a sub firing torpedoes at a Hyperion just close enough to water to count as targetable, but explode harmlessly since it's technically on land).
- Impossible Creatures (2003): Given the game's main gimmick of creating Mix-and-Match Creatures for units, it's possible to create these sorts of units using the DNA of aquatic and/or amphibious animals.
- Mental Omega:
- Like the base game, each faction in Mental Omega has an amphibious transport. The Allies use the LCAC-alike Voyager; the Soviets use Zubr-class hovercraft; Epsilon has the faster (but unarmed) Mandjet hovercraft; and the Foehn Revolt use windspin engine-equipped Watercat Transports.
- The Soviets have another amphibious transport, the Borillo, which is a heavily-armoured APC equipped with a flamethrower. The Chinese instead get the Armadillo, which is bigger, slower, better armoured, can carry more units and has an extra flamethrower. Similarly, Last Bastion use the Chinese-developed Gharial heavy amphibious APC. The Foehn in general, meanwhile, have the Jackal Racer, which is fast, poorly armoured, and can only carry two infantry.
- Attack Dogs (and their Epislon reskin, Spooks) have gained the ability to swim.
- The Allied Riot Trooper can use its riot shield as a surfboard of sorts. Pacific Front Suppressors, meanwhile, have bona fide hoverboards, as do Epsilon Dune Riders.
- Both Epsilon Elites and Libra float using their psychic powers, enabling them to traverse water as easily as they do land. Yuri himself, in his rare in-mission appearances, also floats the same way.
- Amphibious vehicles are a dime a dozen in this mod. These include the Pacific Front's MBT, the Kappa Tank; PsiCorps' "tank without pants", the Marauder; Scorpion Cell's support AA vehicle, the Oxidizer; the campaign-only Mastermind variant, the Overmind; Wings of Coronia's Tarchia Cannon plasma howitzer and Orcinus Waveshaper area weapon jamming platform; and Last Bastion's Sweeper combat drones.
- The Foehn Revolt in general possesses multiple such units, including their spy equivalent, the Clairvoyant; Wings of Coronia's air-manipulating infantry, the Zorbtrotters; the SODAR Array support vehicle; Haihead's variant of the Racoon ECM jammer, the Hovracoon; and the stolen tech Archelon cloaked anti-infantry tank.
- Overlord: Blues Minions are the only Minion type that can safely traverse water, and pull double duty as being able to revive dead Minions. This is balanced by them being the weakest Minion type.
- Pikmin: Blue Pikmin are the only basic kinds of Pikmin that can survive in water and land, with several cases where one needs them to collect the main items of the game. To balance this they have among the weakest attack power, making them strictly useful for obstacles and enemies that involve bodies of water. There are also Wollyhops, actual amphibian-like enemies that can fight both on land and in water.
- Rise of Nations: Land units automatically turn into transport ships when ordered to move into the water after researching the first Science research and building a Dock. Like with the Civilization games, transport ships are vulnerable to dedicated naval units, which encourages the use of your own navy to serve as an escort.
- Supreme Commander: Every faction has access to units that can move across both water and land, including at least one Experimental unit (two for the Cybrans). There are three different ways that amphibious units can cross water:
- Some units can hover, allowing them to operate on land and water equally well. The Aeon and Seraphim factions specialise in hover units, with both factions having access to cheap early and mid-game amphibious units allowing for devastating early rushing across water. Both factions' engineers also hover. The UEF have one hovering unit, a dedicated Hover Tank, while the Cybrans have none. A key advantage of hovering units is that they can't be attacked by torpedoes.
- Some amphibious units float on the surface of water. Both UEF and Cybran engineers cross water this way. The Cybrans also have an amphibious warship; their Salem Class Destroyer can deploy spider legs to climb onto land. As the Salem's gun outranges all point defense, it can be a very effective support to an assault, and can extend its threat way further from the shoreline if the Cybrans get dominance on the sea. At launch this proved to be an issue as its pathfinding would prioritize the shortest route, ignoring that the Salem is almost 4 times faster on water than on land, which would cause it to walk on land when going around would be faster. This was eventually patched.
- Some units simply walk (or drive) on the sea bed. Examples include all Armored Command Units and Support Command Units, the Cybran Monkeylord & Brick, the Aeon Galactic Colossus, the Seraphim Ythotha and the UEF Fatboy and Percival. Notable is the experimental Cybran Megalith, which instead of being a land unit that can cross water, is meant to be a water unit that can go on Land. The Megalith features the most torpedoes and torpedo defenses of any unit, and in all but the deepest water can fire its giant shoulder guns as devastating shore bombardment batteries. All the while it can lay eggs underwater to create more Bricks to act as a coastal invasion force. The Megalith can destroy any other non-air unit in encounters in the water in a one-on-one fight (though it may not always be cost effective).
- Total Annihilation: The expansion added Hovercrafts for both sides, allowing amphibious combat.
- Warcraft III: The Naga are a campaign-exclusive race who are almost wholly composed of amphibious units, able to move across both land and water. Every other race requires either aerial or naval units for aquatic combat, as well as transports of either stripe to move units across the water. They also are able to create structures on shallow water, which no other race can do. Some neutral creep lines also have amphibious units like Sea Turtles, Sea Giants, and Hydras.
- Warzone 2100: A hovercraft is one of the options given to the player when choosing propulsion for their custom-designed vehicles, allowing them to cross land and water.
Simulation Games
- Some of the MechWarrior series (particularly the 4th game) adapt the hovercraft from the tabletop source material, BattleTech.
Tabletop Games
- BattleTech:
- Hovercraft and WiGE (Wing in Ground Effect, basically ground vehicles that can achieve higher altitude than hovercraft without true flight capability) are capable of moving over the surfaces of bodies of water.
- Wheeled and tracked vehicles with amphibious hulls have the ability to cross bodies of water at reduced speed.
- Battlemechs can't float, but they're fully capable of walking along the bottom so long as they don't have any armor breeches, and if they mount Underwater Movement Units they can move at a fairly good pace in any direction.
- Battle Armor can survive underwater as long as they've got remaining life support functions, but they can't actually move into or through water unless they've got Underwater Movement Units, which is restricted to only a few suits, most famously the Clan Undine.
- Warmachine: Models with the Amphibious advantage ignore the effects of deep and shallow water and can move through them without penalty.
Tower Defense
- Bloons Tower Defense 6:
- The Hero Unit Pat Fusty can be placed on land or water. Silas, another Hero, is the same, alongside allowing other Monkeys near him to be placed on water as if they were Amphibious.
- The Ice Monkey tower wasn’t amphibious in prior games, but was given a buff to be Amphibious in an update. It can give this to other Land Monkeys with the Arctic Winds upgrade like Silas can.
- The Mermonkey tower is amphibious, but has increased range when placed in water. With the Lord of the Abyss upgrade, it can also allow Water Monkeys to be placed on land.
- Holo vs Robo: Certain dolls have the category of "Amphibious", which allows them to be placed on areas of water in the levels of Stage 3. This includes the likes of Gura (a shark girl), and Marine (a doll sitting in a boat).
- Plants vs. Zombies 2: It's About Time:
- Cattail in the Chinese version. While in the first game it can only be strictly planted in the water, its re-implementation made it work on both land and water.
- Guacodile (a crocodile-shaped avocado) can be planted on either land or water, albeit with a tweak in functionality; it can fire a weak projectile at a slow rate on land, but when in the water it loses the ability to shoot, strictly being used as a trap-based plant.
Turn-Based Strategy
- Fire Emblem: The Archanea games (Shadow Dragon And the Blade of Light, Mystery of the Emblem and Archanea Saga), and Game Boy Advance era games (namely Binding Blade, Blazing Blade, and Sacred Stones) feature the Pirate class, which is the only non-flying unit that can move across ocean tiles. They retain this ability after changing class to Berserker, but Pirates in Sacred Stones lose this ability if they promote to Warrior instead.
- Gihren's Greed:
- In all games in the series, this is naturally the function of amphibious mobile suits like the Aqua GM, the Underwater Gundam (basically an Aqua GM with a Gundam-style head) and the Z'gok. Reflecting the Lensman Arms Race aspect of the series, the first few attempts like the Zaku Marine aren't very good at either function (their SUBROC gun is fairly effective underwater but they have no melee attacks other than punches), while later models like the Z'gok E, the Hygogg and the Underwater Gundam are fairly capable combatants both on land and in the water.
- One of the biggest advantages of the RX-78 line of mobile suits (i.e. the RX-78-1 Proto Gundam, the RX-78-2 Gundam and the RX-78-3 G3 Gundam) is that they can fight underwater almost as well as they do on land. Their one weak point underwater is that they can't attack flying enemies (as their beam weapons are weakened enough underwater they can't break the surface).
- When playing as the Earth Federation (or factions that share their technology like the Titans or AEUG), this can lead to Break Out the Museum Piece during the Neo Zeon War era, as Neo Zeon has access to the state-of-the-art Capule amphibious mobile suit while the EFF is stuck with the One Year War era Aqua GM and Underwater Gundam.
- Might & Magic: Heroes VI: Being an aquatic faction, all Sanctuary creatures have the Amphibian trait. This lets their heroes cross bodies of water without a boat so long as their hero belongs to the Sanctuary faction and every unit in their army is an Amphibian.
- Super Robot Wars: While various land-based units can function in the water, they tend not to be very good and suffer movement penalties (and even attack debuffs in the case of Gundam-based units as their beam attacks are all but nullified). However, the Getter-3 lineage is one of the few that can move in water without penalty. The only downside to them is that there aren't many water-based stages for them to fully realize their potential.
- Worms W.M.D: The Drillboat allows worms to float above ocean in addition to moving on land. This is the only amphibious vehicle, as everything else will drown instantly. To compensate, it has low mobility and is more of a digging machine than a fighting unit.