Hopes for Increased Naval Importance

I have always been a civ fan, but have been disappointed by the relative unimportance of dominating the oceans. Throughout history, navigating the seas has been extremely important for both military and economic reasons. These are some ideas I hope will appear in some form in Civ 4.

1) Implement sea trade routes: For much of history, the oceans have provides the most effiecent way to trade. For example, in theory, early industrial era Europe COULD have traded with areas like present day India by transporting goods over land. Of couse, the oceans provided quicker and cheaper travel. If these oceanic trade routes are important (or even ocean based recouces like oil or whaling), it would be strategically important to protect/disrupt them. Hence, a naval-focused military would be a viable option in some circumstances.

2) Increase efficency of transporting troops by sea: Airlifting/paradropping troops is IMHO too effective in menacing overseas civs. If transport ships are important, than so to is protecting/destroying them. Submarines become more important. This also makes the sub-hunting destroyers (almost completely useless in previous games) more desireable. Destoyers should also be relatively more swift to fuction as cheap scouting units/trade disrupters.

3) Enhance the effectiveness of bombardment from capital ships: If a civ achieves naval superiority, the amount of damage they can inflict on the coastal cities of enemies should be devastating, allowing a much smaller army to attack the city succesfully.

I think that especially in certain situations (island or long coastline nations), a strong navy should be a better alternative/complement to huge armies. I am new to this forum, so I hope I did not repeat too much from what has been previously stated.

I concur. Britain was a major power mainly because of her sea power. I can't see that making the difference in Civ.

Also, naval movement, especially later years, seems to slow. I'm pretty sure a battle ship could circumnavigate the globe in a year these days, but in Civ, it takes 7 or 8(depending on your map).

yeah i totally agree. I think the trouble is that it's been a challenge to make the naval part FUN... you haev this HUGE expanse of ocean that's all basically the same, and it's so easy for units to evade detection...

I think to make naval aspect fun, they'd have to have some kind of varying "terrain" equivalent, or allow ships a LOT more movement points, or allow ships to attack ships within a 3x3 area of them, or .... I mean, I'm not a game designer so I suck at coming up with these ideas, but i think the main problem is that they have to make naval fun and it's hard to..

Maybe if they had some sort of trade lanes or something which were important to protect or the other guys could do some real damage. Like you have to use your navy to protect your supply lines or something. But I agree. Naval Combat definately must be more important. At the moment sea units function like land units on water, maybe they need to find another way for them to work? (i.e. like how air units work differently to land units... not that i'm suggesting they make sea units work like air units)

I agree with you on that one.

I keep thinking why does my domination of the sea in almost every game of civ I've played had only little or no effect on the outcome of a war?

I hope they'll try and improve the naval warfare aspect.

Well, using differential movement costs for coast, sea and ocean tiles, you can seriously boost all of your ancient and middle ages navy movement without seriously unbalancing the game-even in civ3 conquests. For instance, if you had a trireme with 6mp, but made sea squares cost 2mp, and oceans 3, then suddenly triremes become an EXCELLENT way to move units along the coast (and attack coastal cities), but are crap for sea or oceangoing. Middle Ages units, though, would IGNORE sea movement costs, thus making them better for longer journeys, but not for transoceanic ones-which need to wait until the age of magnetism!
I know that only solves one problem, out of many, but I figure its a start!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

I think the question here we should be asking is: How can we make water squares important?

Once we figure that out we can work backwards to figure out a way to make naval combat an important part of the game.

Well let us think about this in historical terms. In WW1 the seas were important for a few reasons: a) convoys were what kept Britain alive, b) both Germany and Britain could have been hit hard by a naval attack on their seaside cities, and c) they needed to ferry troops across, particuarly from the US.

Notice that all of these three are basically the points suggested by seveb?

The problem with the current Civ games is that only c) is the one that really is important. It's fun as hell building as super island and then sinking every transport that tries to deploy there. Trade won't ever be as major a factor as it is in real life, but the new idea of trade routes means you could at least have some attempt to manipulate them with a navy. As for the use against ground targets, they really need to be a little more scary so that you get this nasty fleet pounding the hell out of you, and the advantange is that ground units can't touch em.

At the moment you can blockade enemy harbours. If you put a ship on all sea squares next to a city they can't trade through their harbour.

Markus6 said:

At the moment you can blockade enemy harbours. If you put a ship on all sea squares next to a city they can't trade through their harbour.

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Hmm... well, that's one start -- they should make it such that ONE ship is sufficient to blockade. But that would also require trade to increase in importance enough that people would actually WANT to blockade.

Another issue is that civ4 is trying to REDUCE the # of units -- this principle makes it even harder to make naval interesting (unless they suspend that rule for naval units; i.e. drastically reducing hammer cost for building ships)

Then again, now that they have reduced the # of land units, transports will be even more important. I still think that ships should have a hugely increased line of sight (on the ocean) and a way of attacking from farther away -- that way when people transport troops they will actually build actual naval units to protect the transport (oftentimes, I just take a risk)

The only problem, Markus, is that you need SOOOO many ships simply to completely block a single harbour-which makes it a fairly pointless exercise. If you had a single 'trade route' which your naval units could intercept, then we would be in business.
We also know, though, that Civ4 will have waterborne improvements, so that WILL help, but I hope the trade route idea gets in too!!

Yours,
Aussie_Lurker.

Aussie, is it not that you only need to block the tiles that give the city access to the sea (i.e. the 8 tiles directly next the the city). In which case you'd only need 3 ships for a city on a straight coastline. Admittedly I've never used this tactic and usually there'll be lots of harbours to block before it makes any difference.

Just a question for aussie lurker...I havn't seen anything about waterbourne improvements. Was there anything more specific or was it left vague?

There has been mention of offshore platforms becoming a tile improvement rather than a city improvement. Other than that, I don't remember any.

From the screen shots you need fishing nets over fish and whalers over whales etc. These are tile improvements, like the ranches over horses, that will be created by a workboat.

Some suggestions to increase naval importance (but they'll have to be modded in now):

1. Navy is more important when you start discovering the oceans and other continents and islands then when everthything has been discovered. So,
a. Let those islands that have been discovered (limited to say not bigger than 3-4 tiles in a large map) by your nation first become your without having to establish a city there but instead a small establishment (say using a worker). In later ages these islands can serve as your naval/air bases, or major toursist spots giving you income or you can just sell them off to countries willin to pay for them. (btw Ireland is doing so right now for some island it owns)
b. An option to keep it secret that you have met another nation. The present negotiation table makes us reveal all that we have. So you can trade with the new nation for a long time gaining a lot from them in terms of resources luxury or if they are weak you can colonize them or wipe them out without other civs having any idea about it. But ofcourse, other civs should also have some spy mechanism to find out what we are upto.

2. Introducing nuclear submarines which have a launch range around that of tactical nukes would be good option.

3. Finally when you are discovering seas, you can spend some money if you have discoverd them for the first time to mark those ocean tiles as your teritorry and then guard them. You can only fish/oil in your teritorry and hence having more ocean tiles means a more profit.

4. Charging for trade routes through your ocean tiles.

5. Having more sea based rsources: oil, fish, salt(from every tile of sea), etc. etc.

The_Architect said:

2. Introducing nuclear submarines which have a launch range around that of tactical nukes would be good option.

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Did you miss this in Civ 3?

Belcarius:
Yes, but these do not have nukes whereas in real world, nuclear submarines of USA and Russia can launch nuclear attacks till great range, Hence damage should be atleast 300, with a much greater range.

Well I don't know which version of Civ you play but in my one you can load nuclear subs with up to one tactical nuke. Very useful for keeping extra firepower hidden from an opponent.

I agree with you sea trade routes. They have them for land (roads), why not water. The key would be to create a special (larger) naval zone of control to represent fleet actions which are usually half about locating the enemy. The ZOC would block the trade route, same as pillaging a road.