One thing I grow tired of is the fact that it is difficult to use naval units defensively, to prevent an enemy amphibious landing, or offensively to attack enemy trade. This is a bit ahistorical, and it discourages construction of a navy, when in fact, a navy can be a very poweful tool of defense and economic warfare.

I would like to see ships have a "patrol" order. This patrol order would sacrifice all of a ship's movement points for that turn (i.e., a ship that has moved one more or spaces cannot patrol, it must wait until the next turn.) A ship will patrol a radius equal to half its normal movement points. If, during AI movement, an enemy ship enters that radius, there would be a certain % chance that the patrolling ship would intercept the enemy and initiate naval combat (which would be resolved normally). The more ships patrolling, the higher chance of interception (and more ships would be required to intercept an enemy stack, since each ship can only attack once.) This would also make submarine wolf packs a much more threatening weapon.

Unfortunately, I do not have the skills to do this, but I'm pretty dilligent about playtesting... :) Anyone interested in trying to make this work?

Full discussion thread here: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=207059

I agree with you totally here. I'd love to see the equivalent of the "air superiority" mission made available for ships as well. If an automated intercept mission can be coded for aircraft, why the heck not for ships? It's strange that this feature was never made available in all previous incarnations of CIV games. Add my name to the list of those wanting this additional functionality!

What if the guy was your friend, and he was slipping his boat past your defences to break out a war. Perhaps the enemy ship could be intercepted, but not attacked. It'd bring up a diplomacy screen which states why that ship was doing it or something or requesting it to be moved.

Well if he was your friend he has to become your enemy first if he wants to attack your culture.

Not bad, but let's see if we can't get the basics working first. Any takers? Please...?

What if the guy was your friend, and he was slipping his boat past your defences to break out a war. Perhaps the enemy ship could be intercepted, but not attacked. It'd bring up a diplomacy screen which states why that ship was doing it or something or requesting it to be moved.

While I definitely like the idea of getting some sort of naval patrol working, there's one main problem I see with it.

First off, with regards to air superiority, you don't have "moves" being intercepted, but rather bomb/strike "missions." When a plane is intercepted, it's merely that single plane that gets attacked.

When you're moving in a fleet to land troops, sometimes you move one unit at a time. For example, often I'll move my transports where I want them first and then move my offensive naval units around to cover the transports. This would mean my transports would be intercepted when in reality they would move all at once. It's simply a convenience that I move them that way. With interception, the interface of moving units would be more tedious. But doable. However, how would this affect the AI?

Actually, now that I've written this, I kinda like that it would force me to decide ahead of time how to cover the transports on the move. And thinking of my most recent game where I had a huge navy, I ended up stacking fleets and moving them together. It's only when I have but a few offensive units that I need to optimize there movement.

Hmm, this would make having stationary offensive units in a string and moving only your transports between them dangerous. This again comes down to make the game easier to deal with when in reality you wouldn't move units that way.

In any case, I'd love to see it in action. Good luck! :)

That is a very good point. I do not know the order/sequence in which the AI moves its units - warship first and then transport or vice versa? (It really SHOULD be warship first....) Certainly from the player's perspective, if you're sending out unescorted transports, you're wrong....

Certainly from the player's perspective, if you're sending out unescorted transports, you're wrong....

That's my point though. Because it's a turn-based game, even though I technically move the Transport first, they move the same path during a single turn so they're really moving "together."

Who knows -- maybe the AI groups their units into fleets? :rolleyes:

I will say again that I agree wholeheartedly with the initial premise: that naval blockades and patrols would be extremely valuable, and without them I find my navy to be 1) a PITA to manage and 2) mostly impotent when it comes to defense. Having to park a ship or two on each seafood resource? Lame! Though the same argument can be made about land units.

Something that should be very easy to fix and much less game-altering is that sentry for units should wake the unit when an enemy is seen at all and then display where the unit went out of sight. I play with show moves disabled (I like to finish a game in under a week of real time, TYVM), and so setting naval units to sentry is completely useless (as opposed to next to useless as it could be). An enemy fleet could pass right by and even if my ship wakes up, I have no idea where it went even though by all accounts I should know where it went since I could watch it with the option disabled...

Hmm. I think the biggest problem I see with this is the fact that turns aren't simultaneous. You might order a patrol in a certain location, but the ship goes back to port before the next nation moves their units.

There's a small file in the mod components directory that gives naval units a zone of control. This would alleviate some issues with the way fleets are handled by allowing a player to set up screens (which the AI may or may not be able to do!), but by and large, the only way to make fleets more useful is to remove the emphasis on a transport based navy. At this stage, the only reason to have a navy is to move a group of land units from one continent to the other. At that point, their strategic value ends.

Overseas trade is abstracted to a point that the use of high seas interdictors is unecessary, and any combat likely to happen will do so in coastal waters.

One ham handed way of correcting this might be to introduce a resource that only appears in the high seas -- consider it some kind of trade route bonus that provides players with a measurable boost in their commerce. Perhaps this would give players a reason to control the seas? Beyond the short term tactical superiority needed to land an invasion fleet, that is...

---the problem with the above would be the need to pull that resource in, of course. The game does not at this time recognize a player's access to resources unless they're located within the player's cultural borders. Making a tile improvement that generated cultural borders would likely need some SDK work...

Another thing I would do for modern era work would be something along the lines of a feature in Snafusmith's modern warfare mod. He's made it so that airlifting is impossible, and that a player choosing to move land units by air would have to use air transport. I'm not sure if this is the case in his mod, but why not implement the air transport unit in such a way that only infantry can use it? Armor, Artillery, and probably helicopters would still need sea transportation...

That's my point though. Because it's a turn-based game, even though I technically move the Transport first, they move the same path during a single turn so they're really moving "together."

Who knows -- maybe the AI groups their units into fleets? :rolleyes:

I will say again that I agree wholeheartedly with the initial premise: that naval blockades and patrols would be extremely valuable, and without them I find my navy to be 1) a PITA to manage and 2) mostly impotent when it comes to defense. Having to park a ship or two on each seafood resource? Lame! Though the same argument can be made about land units.

Something that should be very easy to fix and much less game-altering is that sentry for units should wake the unit when an enemy is seen at all and then display where the unit went out of sight. I play with show moves disabled (I like to finish a game in under a week of real time, TYVM), and so setting naval units to sentry is completely useless (as opposed to next to useless as it could be). An enemy fleet could pass right by and even if my ship wakes up, I have no idea where it went even though by all accounts I should know where it went since I could watch it with the option disabled...

Key question -- is stack movement considered 'simultaneous'? That is, if I'm moving a stack of units from one position to another, is it a series of individual units moving, or is it considered one 'group' movement? And if the former, which unit moves first?

Hmm. I think the biggest problem I see with this is the fact that turns aren't simultaneous. You might order a patrol in a certain location, but the ship goes back to port before the next nation moves their units.

There's a small file in the mod components directory that gives naval units a zone of control. This would alleviate some issues with the way fleets are handled by allowing a player to set up screens (which the AI may or may not be able to do!), but by and large, the only way to make fleets more useful is to remove the emphasis on a transport based navy. At this stage, the only reason to have a navy is to move a group of land units from one continent to the other. At that point, their strategic value ends.

Overseas trade is abstracted to a point that the use of high seas interdictors is unecessary, and any combat likely to happen will do so in coastal waters.

One ham handed way of correcting this might be to introduce a resource that only appears in the high seas -- consider it some kind of trade route bonus that provides players with a measurable boost in their commerce. Perhaps this would give players a reason to control the seas? Beyond the short term tactical superiority needed to land an invasion fleet, that is...

---the problem with the above would be the need to pull that resource in, of course. The game does not at this time recognize a player's access to resources unless they're located within the player's cultural borders. Making a tile improvement that generated cultural borders would likely need some SDK work...

Another thing I would do for modern era work would be something along the lines of a feature in Snafusmith's modern warfare mod. He's made it so that airlifting is impossible, and that a player choosing to move land units by air would have to use air transport. I'm not sure if this is the case in his mod, but why not implement the air transport unit in such a way that only infantry can use it? Armor, Artillery, and probably helicopters would still need sea transportation...


The locking ZOC idea is not bad, but it kind of goes against the flow of the way movement in Civ IV seems to be intended to work.... (That said, I might give it a try and see how it works....)

[slightly off topic]
I am a fan of the way in which trade routes work in Galactic Civilizations II -- a freighter-style ship moves regularly between the trading ports, but it is still 'on the map' and players can attempt to interdict those ships. In Gal Civ, the players have to build their own freighters (ala Civ I/II.) I don't think the game should go that far, but I like the idea of these trading caravans appearing on the map and moving regularly once the trade routes are established....

[/slightly off topic]

A similar trade route feature existed in Call To Power. It worked pretty well, I thought. Much of the resource and overseas commerce system in Civ 4 was made abstract in an attempt to streamline the gameplay. To that end, I think it was a good decision. Allowing the player to focus on domestic and foreign policy for his empire was a bit of a gameplay improvement over burying one with the minutia of logicistics and economics.

Gonna need to give this more thought...

I am a fan of the way in which trade routes work in Galactic Civilizations II -- a freighter-style ship moves regularly between the trading ports, but it is still 'on the map' and players can attempt to interdict those ships. In Gal Civ, the players have to build their own freighters (ala Civ I/II.) I don't think the game should go that far, but I like the idea of these trading caravans appearing on the map and moving regularly once the trade routes are established..

... Trade is maximized at the mid point between destinations. At either end, it generates 50% of the standard value, in the middle 150% of the standard value.

Attacking a trade caravan destroys it, and causes it to respawn at the other end. It also does a single contest of (trade route value) vs (attacking unit strength) -- if that contest is successful:

1> The caravan doesn't respawn for (unit damage vs trade route value) turns.

2> An area of (unit damage vs trade route value, scaled by map size) tiles centered on the combat becomes impassable to trade routes (possibly booting them out of the region) from the losing-caravan-owning civilization for 10 turns.

3> 5 times the trade route value is looted by the attacking civ.

This can cut off other trade routes. Caravans are truely amphibious, and move 5 squares per turn along both water and roads/railroads (which makes them hard to catch). Refrigeration doubles the speed of caravan movement.

... Trade is maximized at the mid point between destinations. At either end, it generates 50% of the standard value, in the middle 150% of the standard value.

Attacking a trade caravan destroys it, and causes it to respawn at the other end. It also does a single contest of (trade route value) vs (attacking unit strength) -- if that contest is successful:

1> The caravan doesn't respawn for (unit damage vs trade route value) turns.

2> An area of (unit damage vs trade route value, scaled by map size) tiles centered on the combat becomes impassable to trade routes (possibly booting them out of the region) from the losing-caravan-owning civilization for 10 turns.

3> 5 times the trade route value is looted by the attacking civ.

This can cut off other trade routes. Caravans are truely amphibious, and move 5 squares per turn along both water and roads/railroads (which makes them hard to catch). Refrigeration doubles the speed of caravan movement.


Sounds reasonable -- except once flight is available, perhaps trade can be conducted via airports?

Or, maybe to reflect life as it is, only one trade route (i.e., the route made available by constructing the airport in the first place,) can be done via airports....

To prevent it from being too complicated, though, why not just keep the commerce generated by a trade route at the standard fixed level?


Now I'm way off topic.