Galleys in oceans

Thoughtful Thug

Thoughtful Thug

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To me I was annoyed to see that in Civ IV your galley was restricted to only travelling in coastal squares. In Civ III, galleys can travel on ocean squares but can be lost due to the chances of a storm or a giant sea monster.

Some apparent reason, I love taking chances of sending them out early in the game to discover islands or other land mass. It doesn't seem right when you are playing the game and you see a land within reach, but can go to it because you are prevented to move on the ocean tile like one cannot move land units on mountain terrains.
 
So long as the chances of losing the vessel are ~50% per turn, then this is a good idea. Because the whole idea of not allowing galleys to travel on oceans is that it was very hard to do so. We don't want ancients discovering the Americas, for example. So having a chance of losing your galley of 50% per turn would mean that you can take limited risks if you deem them necessary, but that an extended voyage is very unlikely to be successful.
 
I think that even a tiny chance to survive to the Americas is too much for a galley. That could mean that if the player or the AI were very lucky, the Portuguese could lost their right to priority to the Americas, which would be horrible for the game balance IMO. My suggestion: make another tile type "almost-coast", which is otherwise the same as ocean, but galleys can enter it, and change every ocean tile that is adjacent or nearly adjacent to a coast tile to be an "almost-coast" tile.
 
If the chance is 50% survival per turn, and it takes, say, 10 turns to move to the Americas, then the chance of getting there is less than 0.1%. Meaning that a galley will only get to the Americas 1 in 1000 games, and even if it does, it will only be carrying two units at most. And the risk of losing a settler and an accompanying unit along with the galley should prevent this from happening even more so.
 
Camikaze said:
If the chance is 50% survival per turn, and it takes, say, 10 turns to move to the Americas, then the chance of getting there is less than 0.1%. Meaning that a galley will only get to the Americas 1 in 1000 games, and even if it does, it will only be carrying two units at most. And the risk of losing a settler and an accompanying unit along with the galley should prevent this from happening even more so.
Click to expand...

I think that even 0,09765625% is too big a chance, because, for example, one might try it once a game and eventually succeed. But that's just my opinion and I really don't want to start a fight about is it too big a chance or not.
 
I think keeping the galley's restricted to coastal tiles is alright by me. This represents what I have come to learn in my basic history classes (I'm no expert), that ships of that caliber and time period usually kept within eyesight of land.

Maybe galleys can enter ocean regions for a single turn? I'd be okay with that.

Give the galley a 1 turn restriction to ocean tiles (or it sinks) and a 1/2 chance it will sink anyways to boot.
 
Pete Atoms said:
I think keeping the galley's restricted to coastal tiles is alright by me. This represents what I have come to learn in my basic history classes (I'm no expert), that ships of that caliber and time period usually kept within eyesight of land.

Maybe galleys can enter ocean regions for a single turn? I'd be okay with that.

Give the galley a 1 turn restriction to ocean tiles (or it sinks) and a 1/2 chance it will sink anyways to boot.
Click to expand...

I am always for accuracy on regarding the history of navigation; however, if one does play on a non standard earth map, then why not allow such features as galleys moving on ocean tiles?

How about this proposition: The more movements per turn that a galley moves on an ocean square, the more increase of the chance it sinks per movement in one turn? That is 3 movements per turn.
 
Galleys can enter ocean if the tile is inside your cultural borders. This is actually a bit fun, if you have a scenario with Land-Coast-Ocean-Coast-Land it can be very important to control the ocean tile since it means that you can send boats over to the other continent while the guy on the other side cannot.

I'm fine with the current rules on this and a random chance that the galley disappears seems just annoying and to luck dependent.
 
Thoughtful Thug said:
I am always for accuracy on regarding the history of navigation; however, if one does play on a non standard earth map, then why not allow such features as galleys moving on ocean tiles?

How about this proposition: The more movements per turn that a galley moves on an ocean square, the more increase of the chance it sinks per movement in one turn? That is 3 movements per turn.
Click to expand...

I don't think it's an issue of just historical accuracy. I'm not opposed to your idea, and I think I'd be ok with it, as long as the chances to sink increased the right amount per turn. To the point where after X turns, the galley will sink 99% of the time. I would prefer X to be a pretty small number.

It is also an issue of supplies with these vessels. Can a galley make a voyage across the ocean with the limited cargo room it has for food and water?

I just want to quote Wikipedia:

Early sailors had few navigational tools. Most ancient and medieval shipping remained in sight of the coast for ease of navigation, the availability of trading opportunities, and coastal currents and winds that could be used to work against and around prevailing winds. It was more important for galleys than sailing ships to remain near the coast because they needed more frequent re-supply of fresh water for their large, sweating, crews and were more vulnerable to storms.

As ships hugged the coast and threaded through archipelagos rather than risking the open sea, they had to be designed for maneuverability. The ability to travel without regard to the direction or strength of the wind became a sine qua non for daylight expeditions across open water. Massed oars provided maneuverability and reliable propulsion.
Click to expand...

In an issue where the galley occupies a coastal tile and want to travel through coast->ocean>coast, I think it would be ok to let the galley try to cross a single tile of ocean. But once you start talking about more than one tile, than I get a little more hesitant about the issue.
 
In Civ 3 the suicide galley was an exploit, along with the trading of contacts. One of my favorite ploys was to suicide galley to the other continent and then trade contacts for big tech. However, the total impassability of ocean by galleys stinks, when you can see another land but not travel to it. It should be that a galley dies if it ENDS its turn in ocean, but can travel ACROSS ocean as long as it ends its turn in coast. Thus increased movement can increase range across ocean.
 
Pete Atoms said:
But once you start talking about more than one tile, than I get a little more hesitant about the issue.
Click to expand...

This won't really be an issue, however, if it is severely worked against in the form of chances of losing the ship. Even a 50% chance makes it next to impossible, so perhaps an exponentially increasing chance of failure between 50% and 99% per turn would make this even more of a barrier to abuse and unrealistic situations.
 
The chance was taken out for a good reason. People (myself included) would reload until they got the result they wanted. I don't see how any percent will stop this.
 
It seems like too much of a waste of time to reload 1000 times to get the result you want, which may be of no distinct benefit. I don't really think we should base ideas on preventing people with too much time from reloading over and over again. I mean, the same thing goes with any RNG element, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't include them, does it?
 
Teching to Optics aren't that complicated, although it takes its time. You focus on exploration instead of an early economy, but you shouldn't get both. I think the game does this with very nice balance. I do fail to see Machinery as a prereq for Optics though.

What I don't like is the AIs work boat bonus.

Edit: Oh, maybe you need machines to grind the optical glass?
 
warpstorm said:
The chance was taken out for a good reason. People (myself included) would reload until they got the result they wanted. I don't see how any percent will stop this.
Click to expand...

Unless, you specifically tell civ to randomize the seed on reload, civ will store the random seed with the game, so any random events will play out exactly as they did before on a reload. Randomizing the seed on reload would considered cheating by most players. And if you are going to cheat you might as well WB yourself a destroyer at the start of the game.
 
Trias said:
Unless, you specifically tell civ to randomize the seed on reload, civ will store the random seed with the game, so any random events will play out exactly as they did before on a reload.
Click to expand...

Sure, but all you need to do is change the order of your actions so that a different order of numbers are pulled from the hat to get the effect without changing the setting. In Civ3, it was too tempting to not cross that one tile of sea to get to the other continent that I could just about see.
 
Camikaze said:
If the chance is 50% survival per turn, and it takes, say, 10 turns to move to the Americas, then the chance of getting there is less than 0.1%. Meaning that a galley will only get to the Americas 1 in 1000 games, and even if it does, it will only be carrying two units at most. And the risk of losing a settler and an accompanying unit along with the galley should prevent this from happening even more so.
Click to expand...
Is this math correct for the northern approach? as taken by the Vikings?
It doesn't seem like it should be so hard... I mean, the Vikings did get there, well before astronomy was put into play by them. You can go from Ireland to Iceland to Greenland to Newfoundland...
I think they should allow travel with risk. Perhaps even if it is just a civ trait, or even a unique unit that get to try this, which would limit things...
Let's go further back... Look at the original settling of Australia, leading to the Aborigines... they took a chance to get there. That goes for all of the Polynesian islands too...
 
Actually, the northern route (on closer investigation) is only 4 turns. So, there would be a 6.25% chance of success. Which is probably a little too much, but still reasonably realistic. If we made it a 60% chance of failure per turn, it would be 2.56% chance of success, so that would probably be more acceptable, given that the Vikings did find America. And what you say about the Pacific Islands is correct, although it would've taken many expeditions to get their, and in civ terms, these would, for the most part, only represent a move or two in ocean, as opposed to five or six.
 
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