Naming Ships and Units

There have been a few threads on naming units, but they are sort of old, and rather than resurrecting them, I thought that it would be better to start a new one. I like to rename units, by the way, all sorts of them. Units that reach Elite status always get a name reflecting how they made Elite. Transports I rename a lot simply to keep track of what unit is on what ship, and how many units are on the ship. Exploration ships are named after famous ships of Discovery, such as Argo, Santa Maria, Half Moon, and Endeavor, generally reflecting the country that I am playing. One area where I do have a gap is in the Asian countries, except Japan (I have a lot of names from various Japanese wars for those). However, while going through some US Office of Naval Intelligence publication, I came across some Chinese ship names, and a couple of Chinese Naval Officers from the conflict with France in 1884. I am enclosing the entire quotation in case if gives some of the forum more ideas. The combat occurred near Foo-Chow.

Upon the Chinese fleet, therefore, devolved the protection of the arsenal. This fleet was composed of the following vessels : The Yung-Woo, a full-rigged corvette, commanded by Captain Chang Sing, the senior officer afloat; the Yung-Pao and Chuen-Hung, transports; the Chang Sheng and Fah-Sheng, gunboats, carrying 1 18 ton Armstrong M. L. rifle; the Foo-Poo, Chi-an, Fei-Yuen, Chuen-Wei, and Fah-Shing, gunboats, and the Yei-Sing, a small vessel used as a practice vessel for cadet engineers, and carrying 3 small brass guns.

In addition to these vessels, about a dozen war-junks, armed with small, obsolete cannon, and manned with large crews, were moored close inshore. These were to be used in carrying some of the French vessels by boarding. Also a number of fire-junks were in readiness to be sent down among the French fleet.

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Anyone else of the newer members of the forum like to re-name units? If so, what do you rename them?

That's pretty in-depth. I can appreciate the thought process. My project is a mixture of taking historical events and playing with their timelines -often by adding in one or two factors such as lacking a vital resource at that time or giving them one that was unavailable - as well as a future built on that mixture. Since I'm sort of shy about the concept until it's finished, forgive me if I don't detail it here. But I can only say that I also enjoy renaming units, too! I usually pick something with a bit of relevance to what the unit's name was to begin with, and then add or alter it based on it's function. Often, I utilize an acronym. I suppose one example would be taking a Sniper unit, building a name around it's real time period and... well, let's say he uses a gun powered by some form of upgrade to gunpowder... I'd call it something like HPG85-Sniper .50. High-Pressure Gun, 1985 Longshot, 50 cal. Mind you, I'm just randomly making something as I type this so it's not an exact science at the moment, know what I mean? I just liked the topic and thought I'd share. It sounds like you love your history and though I'm probably nowhere near as focused on it, I have a lot of respect for the time and effort that goes into that. Naming in that manner must be kind of fun! ^_^

I name my armies 1st Armor, 2nd Armor, etc. When stacking mech inf or sam inf, I'll name them 1st Guards, 2nd Guards, etc, from the old Soviet Union. I always thought that was cool how the "named" their units. If I get a army from a war, I'll name it 1st Greek armor or whatever civ I was fighting at the time that generated the army. I dont really name ships anymore, I used to, but my creativity would run out and I could not think of anymore names. When I did, I would use names specific to the class, like the US Navy does. For example, my destroyers might be named after states, subs after warm weather cities (like Miami), carriers from great generals in US history, and so on.

Armies got their name from the place, there their hero was created (Legend of Kairo, Legion of Salamanca, Sword of Zimbabwe usw.).

The hero spawning unit themself usually got the name of that hero.

Ships are a little more complicated. They got a prefix (HMS or SMS) and their name depends on nation and type in english, dansk or german. Only japanese ships got historical names.

Early and medium warships either got the names of greek gods (HMS Athene, HMS Demeter) or animal names (HMS Boar, SMS Gazelle).

Ironclads usually got more martial names like HMS Invincible, HMS Terrible or SMS Beinbeißer.

If the first Dreadnought/Battleships got an english name than it will be allways HMS Dreadnought.

Smaller warships like Corvettes, Destroyers and Avisos got alphabetical names (HMS Amazon, HMS Barricade, HMS Chariot usw.)

Transports got girl names.

And in case I forgot to name a ship then she will become HMS Nameless, SMS Navnløs or SMS Namenlos.

Pirate ships do not get a prefix and names like Drunk Drummer or Broken Sword.

Kirejara said:

Armies got their name from the place, there their hero was created (Legend of Kairo, Legion of Salamanca, Sword of Zimbabwe usw.).

The hero spawning unit themself usually got the name of that hero.

Ships are a little more complicated. They got a prefix (HMS or SMS) and their name depends on nation and type in english, dansk or german. Only japanese ships got historical names.

Early and medium warships either got the names of greek gods (HMS Athene, HMS Demeter) or animal names (HMS Boar, SMS Gazelle).

Ironclads usually got more martial names like HMS Invincible, HMS Terrible or SMS Beinbeißer.

If the first Dreadnought/Battleships got an english name than it will be allways HMS Dreadnought.

Smaller warships like Corvettes, Destroyers and Avisos got alphabetical names (HMS Amazon, HMS Barricade, HMS Chariot usw.)

Transports got girl names.

And in case I forgot to name a ship then she will become HMS Nameless, SMS Navnløs or SMS Namenlos.

Pirate ships do not get a prefix and names like Drunk Drummer or Broken Sword.

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I like your system, as much of it really follows what was done.

Kirejara said:

SMS Beinbeißer

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When an elite promotes and generates an MGL, I will name the elite with this formula: asterik + unit type + 'Of' + nearby city name OR nearby geographical feature + '_' + YYYY + '_' + BC/AD + asterik. It looks like this *SwordOfRome_0050_AD* and *HorseOfTenMarshes_0110_BC*.

Armies are about as bad (bad = dull): Oridnal Name + 'Army' + blank space +YYYY + blank space + BC/AD.
Looks like First Army 0050 AD.

Ships I will name after their task, so that I don't forget what it is they are doing. Like Clockwise Curragh, CounterClockwise Curragh, or Looking for America (in LK151).

If there is ship-chaining going on, then Caravel01, Caravel02, Caravel03 and so on, so that I don't load the wrong ship.

While I don't have a problem with using Clockwise Curragh, CounterClockwise Curragh or Caravel01, Caravel02, Caravel03 in different games, I do have a problem with reusing the more creative names. In Multi Team Demo Game II, Team FREE, we even had a thread to track our unit names, Unit Names. I haven't used any of those ship names in other games.

Once I get rails, I tend to park my promoted elites near the capital and retire them from the game, until I need some units to pacify a newly captured city and there are no fast units that have already attacked available for this task.

Than again, once I get rails, I tend to park all my units around the capital so that I can better plan for the turn. I will set a continental rally point near the capital (after rails) so that I don't have to bother with moving each newly created unit to the capital. I will have a stack for each unit type (Cavlary, Mace, Infantry, settler, artillery) a stack of just elites (mixed units), so that I can find elites quickly when their are cripples to kill and MGLs to create, and stacks for lightly wounded (3/4 or 4/5) units that will heal just fine without a barracks and can be used, if needed, for special /desperate tasks. Seriously wounded units get placed into a city with barracks, of course. But the lightly wounded are sorta useful, at times, so they just get fortified in case they do need to be called back to active duty.

CommandoBob said:

Ships I will name after their task, so that I don't forget what it is they are doing. Like Clockwise Curragh, CounterClockwise Curragh, or Looking for America (in LK151).

If there is ship-chaining going on, then Caravel01, Caravel02, Caravel03 and so on, so that I don't load the wrong ship.

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Loading the wrong ship, and forgetting that a ship has a specific task is why I started getting serious about naming my ships to begin with. Then, it sort of carried over to my land units. I have not really renamed aircraft units yet, but I should probably do so in the Pacific scenario for any US Air Units in China: Flying Tigers, AVG, 23rd Fighter Group, CACW (Chinese-American Composite Wing), and probably a couple of the B-29 units: Enola Gay, and Bock's Car.

I have done a lot of naming-one of my favorite things about the game. My favorite story however involves my cat Stella. Who named one of my ships! I left the game for a bit to answer the phone or something and came back to find the cat on the keyboard. Got her off and their was a cruiser with the name-www-not very creative-but remember she was a cat! She had to click on the ship-click on change the name-type www and then confirm. This is all true. Now I often suspected she was very close to a break thru in feline intelligence and if she had opposable thumbs human civilization was in trouble-and this only confirmed my fears.

I re-name Armies to 1st,2nd,3rd,etc. It helps when stacking. When playing CCM, units often need re-naming from "Ruler"(the king unit default) to it's real name (Partisan or Galleon are examples).

Ships are always named, though after the transport ships separate from the warships, warships get the meaningful names and transports are reduced to numbers. I use ship names from the country's history, the names of cities, and the names of people from that civ. I also use a great many fictional names -- a recent game saw a privateer named Serenity harassing the frigates and galleons of the French empire.

Units do receive names sometimes. If they accomplish something great, they get a name to remember it by; once my exploring warriors was caught behind enemy lines when they declared war on me, and managed to hike halfway across a map being attacked at least fifteen times by Hittite warriors and archers as well as barbarians, but not dying. Fortunately the area was mountainous. I named them "The Ten Thousand". I usually name cavalry, armor, and airplanes, using designations like "3rd Bmb Grp" or "2nd Armor". I usually have a story going on in my head, and units are renamed to match; when my despotism was replaced by a Republic and I started building Knights, the knights were considered the official army of the Republic while the infantry was mere militia. So, my knights were called "1st Republican Guard", that sort of thing.

When playing the Napoleonic wars, I got a lot of pleasure giving my units names like "33rd Regiment of Foot".

Oh, and I always give Army units a good name. Inspired mostly by Civil War army names, they're called after rivers. or areas they're going to conquer. My most recent game featured five armies of war elephants: the Army of the Nile, Army of the Ganges, Army of Anatolia, Army of the Carpathias, and Army of the Po. I was playing a Med & middle eastern map, so I started in Italy and conquered everything from there to India.