Idea for new naval system

frekk · Apr 8, 2010

I had this notion for a new sort of naval system, based on some ideas that have been thrown out here as well as some mechanics used in other games. The idea here is to abstract shipping and feature convoys and commerce in the game, without having to individually manage each particular vessel.

Naval Screen

The system would involve a new screen, the Naval Screen. In the Naval Screen would be featured off-board shipping. There would be four boxes; one for Merchant Marine, one for Commerce Raiders, one for Escorts, and one for Transports.

All merchant ships would automatically go into Merchant Marine (this would entail a new set of units, similar to civ4 transports but used for a different function). Commerce raiders and escorts would be warship units, that could be reassigned (or unassigned) from any port, with a 2 turn delay.

Merchant Marine

This would represent the merchant shipping of the nation in question. To send or receive resources from overseas (whether from colonies or through trade) would require merchant marine. Each vessel would allow 1 resource to be distributed. On whatever screen lists your resources, you would have the option to transport or stop transporting a particular resource.

Possibly, it could also be that 1 vessel would be needed as trawlers etc for each sea square that is worked for food/hammers/coins.

Commerce Raids

Commerce raiders could intercept merchant marine vessels of nations you are at war with. Raiders with hidden nationality would intercept merchant marine vessels from all foreign nations. Each raider would have a chance to make an interception every round. The raider's speed and perhaps other factors would be weighed against similar factors of potential targets, to derive a percent chance. Special promotions might come into play as well.

If a merchant vessel were intercepted, there would be a chance for two different outcomes.

One, the merchant vessel is sunk. This would mean that whatever resource it was carrying becomes unavailable to the victim in the following turn, and perhaps he will be forced to reduce the resources being transported if he does not have sufficient merchant marine to transport everything anymore.

Two, the merchant vessel and its cargo are captured. The raiding player adds the new vessel to his own merchant marine (after a 2-turn delay for refitting etc) and gains, during the next turn, any resource that was being shipped by that vessel.

Escorts

To protect merchant marine, one could assign escorts in the escort box. Escorts would act to intercept raiders. This would happen in two ways. First, they would have a chance to intercept enemy raiders every round in the same way that raiders have a chance to intercept merchant marine. Again, some ship types would be more suitable than others - destroyers, for instance, would have a higher chance of finding subs than other vessels. Second, every time a raider intercepted a merchant vessel, there would be a chance that an escort would become involved, in which case the raider would need to defeat the escort before attacking the merchant. There would be a small chance for defeated raiders and escorts to be captured.

Transports

Merchant marine could be assigned to this box (again, with a 2 turn delay for refitting and redeployment). Each vessel in the Transport box would provide 1 transport point. The total number of transport points would act as a limit on how many units could be transported by sea at any one time.

The mechanics involved would mostly be invisible to the player, like the equations for combat, although some figures would be available on a mouseover (say, Base Interception Chance on a mouseover of a raider).

Ahriman · Apr 8, 2010

I dislike taking naval mechanics out of the main screen. It means:

a) You lose any feeling of meaning between different units. How does commerce raider Mk 1 differ from commerce raider Mk 2, when you don't actually see and feel them in game, or decide when they conflict?
b) You lose control of strategic decisions. How do you tell Commerce Raider Mk 1 *not* to attack that fleet with Escort Mk 4 which will annihilate it?
c) You turn the game into a spreadsheet, with all these results happening without any particular feeling of attachment to them. Combat and conflict needs to happen on-stage, not off-stage. You need to see and feel the units.
d) You lose the ability to use on-stage air units against all these escorts and commerce raiders.
e) It sounds incredibly lame to have to build units just to transport my resources around or operate trade routes.
Why should I have to divert resources to doing this on sea, when I don't for doing it on land?
Shouldn't we be trying to encourage naval trade and transport relative to land trade, rather than penalize it?
f) I have to micromanage organizaing how resources are transported around my empire, like assigning convoys in Hearts of Iron? That was one of the most boring parts of that game.

I think having entirely automated trade routes works much better than having to manually build and assign units to them. That doesn't sound like fun to me, it sounds like tedious MM.

frekk · Apr 8, 2010

Ahriman said:
I dislike taking naval mechanics out of the main screen.

There are no naval mechanics for trade in the main screen to take out. The only naval mechanics on the main screen are for exploration, transport of land units, and the combat that is related to these two activities - all of which remains on the main screen.

There are blockades and the notion of being "connected" to your resource network, I suppose, but that doesn't change either.

You lose any feeling of meaning between different units. How does commerce raider Mk 1 differ from commerce raider Mk 2, when you don't actually see and feel them in game, or decide when they conflict?

Well, you do see them. And I'm not sure that Destroyer Mk 1 and Destroyer Mk 2 are particularly different now ... I never sense any particular individuality about my naval units, other than promotions etc (which they will still have).

And it isn't like everything in the game happens on the main screen. Your buildings don't really show up there (except as a barely-visible graphical element) ... in fact, even your Great People are only really assigned there, and then for the rest of the game, remain off-screen.

Remember that not *all* of your naval units are going to be in this screen ... none of the functions they normally do are represented here, those are all still done on the main screen.

You certainly don't get any "feeling of meaning" from shipping that's just assumed, and is invisible and invulnerable!

You lose control of strategic decisions. How do you tell Commerce Raider Mk 1 *not* to attack that fleet with Escort Mk 4 which will annihilate it?

Well, until the modern era, this is pretty reasonable; ships that sailed off were out of communication until they returned. Even in modern times, during wartime, they often did not communicate much because of the danger of giving their position away. It would be assumed that raiders would always be attempting to avoid powerful escorts. That's why it would be more difficult for an escort to intercept a raiding submarine than a raiding surface ship, or faster raiders than slower raiders and so on.

And again, you can't "lose" control over decisions you haven't already got. As the game stands, you have NO strategic decisions as regards naval shipping (except blockading ports, which doesn't change).

You turn the game into a spreadsheet, with all these results happening without any particular feeling of attachment to them. Combat and conflict needs to happen on-stage, not off-stage. You need to see and feel the units.

It works well in other games. Imperialism 1 and 2, for instance. It certainly doesn't feel like a "spreadsheet" in those games.

You lose the ability to use on-stage air units against all these escorts and commerce raiders.

Well, you can assign carriers too. It's not like the game really models this right now, is it? Your merchant marine simply doesn't exist in the game as it is. It's just assumed, it requires no investment, and it cannot be attacked. A trade route system wouldn't change this either, unless you have actual units plying the routes, which would truly be tedious - unless the units entirely automated, in which case you can't tell your fleets to stop wandering by that airbase (nor do you get any "feeling of meaning" from them).

It sounds incredibly lame to have to build units just to transport my resources around or operate trade routes.
Why should I have to divert resources to doing this on sea, when I don't for doing it on land?

Because naval shipping has always been a big (and vulnerable) capital investment. Carts and trucks never have, on land the major public investment has always been infrastructure. In civ5, this will become an investment as roads will supposedly require maintenance costs (not to mention one has always had to produce and allocate units to create infrastructure). Why should naval shipping be free, is the better question!

Shouldn't we be trying to encourage naval trade and transport relative to land trade, rather than penalize it?

Sure, but as the game is, there isn't really any naval trade - at least not in any way you can interact with. You can't "encourage" an element yet have it totally absent from gameplay.

Transport, of course, remains in the game and on the main screen.

I have to micromanage organizaing how resources are transported around my empire, like assigning convoys in Hearts of Iron?

Nope, no assigning individual convoys. Just one box in which all your merchant marine goes - very abstracted and simplified. You don't really need to manage it as such, you just need to assign units there. No more management than city improvements (far less, really, considering each city has its own screen, but there is just one for your global merchant marine).

I think having entirely automated trade routes ...

Unless there are units, there still isn't any naval trade system that you can really control or make decisions about; it's just an extension of the current blockading rules, and not one that really makes much sense. There are fixed naval lanes for use in peacetime, which are the fastest and safest routes, but you can't really cut off trade by blocking them. Shipping didn't always follow the naval lanes in wartime. In WW2, for instance, the Germans could never hope to cut Britain off from trade no matter how many submarines they built - that was not their aim. Their aim was to sink as much tonnage as possible so that there were insufficient ships with which to conduct naval trade. Often they frequented the "Great Circle Route", which was the most direct route, and sometimes got lucky, but they were really forced to patrol the whole of the mid-Atlantic because convoys often detoured as far north as Iceland or as far south as the Azores. It's odd that you would decry "losing control of strategic decisions" and then promote the idea of forcing players to rely on fixed, automated routes they have no control over!

Ahriman · Apr 9, 2010

I agree that the Civ4 naval system isn't great.

But I think it can be improved within the main engine (and 1Upt seems promising in that), rather than taking it offstage.

If we really felt it important to explicitly model trade, then I'd consider something like the Empire:Total War system, where there are explicit naval trade routes on the map that you can block/harass by stationing a military unit on (when you're at war with them). Then if they want to unblock that trade route, they have to kill the naval units (or force them off).

A single unit doesn't block the trade route entirely, but it reduces the yield, and the more ships are blocking [Equivalent to; the more german subs in the atlantic], the lower is the yield.
The models the effect that you aren't actually using a single shipping lane, but its easier to model using a single connection.

No need to create a whole separate offstage mechanism, where you can't actually control raids on the trade routes or coordinate counter-attacks on the raiders.

There are blockades and the notion of being "connected" to your resource network, I suppose, but that doesn't change either.

This doesn't make sense to me. How do you keep blockades and resource connection in the main-screen while moving the trade that gets blocked offstage?

Your buildings don't really show up there (except as a barely-visible graphical element) ... in fact, even your Great People are only really assigned there, and then for the rest of the game, remain off-screen.

So? These happen within cities, which are on the main screen. You're creating a parallel system of trade-routes that happen over the oceans, but they arent' actually represented on the main screen terrain. Its like you're proposing underground tunnels that trade happens through, and none of the units walknig around on the surface world can interact with units in the tunnels, unless they go to a city and specifically enter the tunnel network.

Remember that not *all* of your naval units are going to be in this screen

This also seems weird; there are now invisible units going around attacking your stuff, that your main-screen naval units are helpless to attack.

Well, you do see them. And I'm not sure that Destroyer Mk 1 and Destroyer Mk 2 are particularly different now ... I never sense any particular individuality about my naval units,

I can feel a big difference between a modern destroyer and an age of sail frigate, because if the former encounters the latter it will blow it out of the water without breaking a sweat, and I can see that happen. If they encounter each other offstage and make some dierolls and the frigate dies, I don't actually get any feeling of difference.

Well, until the modern era, this is pretty reasonable; ships that sailed off were out of communication until they returned. Even in modern times, during wartime, they often did not communicate much because of the danger of giving their position away. It would be assumed that raiders would always be attempting to avoid powerful escorts. That's why it would be more difficult for an escort to intercept a raiding submarine than a raiding surface ship, or faster raiders than slower raiders and so on.

This is a weird argument, given that you can control all of your units all over the world.
The situation I'm worried about is this; suppose you have an Age of Sail frigate and the enemy has a modern destroyer. On the main screen, you control your frigate, and so you can get it to try and run from the destroyer. But if you've assigned your frigate to commerce raider and they've assigned their destroyer to escort, you have no way of telling the captain of that frigate not to try attacking the convoy protected by that destroyer.

It works well in other games. Imperialism 1 and 2, for instance.

Never played these, sorry.

And again, you can't "lose" control over decisions you haven't already got. As the game stands, you have NO strategic decisions as regards naval shipping (except blockading ports, which doesn't change).

In the main game, you get to choose when to fight. And see above about blockading.

In civ5, this will become an investment as roads will supposedly require maintenance costs

I haven't seen this from any developer or magazine preview.
But the point remains, we don't want to bias things towards using land trade, or away from encouraging naval trade to move resources. It shouldn't be harder to use the oceans to move a resource relative to land.
Its hard enough to have a maritime empire in Civ4, why make it even harder by having to require hammer investment in order to even keep your overseas posessions supplied with resources?

Moving goods by sea has always been far cheaper than movnig them by land.

Sure, but as the game is, there isn't really any naval trade - at least not in any way you can interact with. You can't "encourage" an element yet have it totally absent from gameplay.

There are naval trade routes (more valuable than land) and blockades. These aren't powerful enough in civ4, but they can be tweaked rather than thrown out entirely.

Nope, no assigning individual convoys. Just one box in which all your merchant marine goes - very abstracted and simplified.

I do not understand how this would work without a significant degree of MM.
Suppose you have fewer merchants than the number of resources*overseas cities. How do you choose which resources get transported, and which cities get supplied, without any MM?
I guess this is what I am afraid of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transportation_-_Imperialism_II_game.JPG

It's odd that you would decry "losing control of strategic decisions" and then promote the idea of forcing players to rely on fixed, automated routes they have no control over!

Choosing where to move my military units and choosing which battles they fight is an interesting decision. Choosning trade routes... isn't. So I like how that gets automated for the player (pick the trade routes that maximize yields).

* * *
I appreciate that you're trying to make the lackluster naval play more interesting, but I don't think that creating an entirely new system that runs parallel to the main game world (and yet does not interact with it) is the right way to go.

FWIW, I do think that a multi-turn "rebase" command between ports is an interestnig one worth considering.

frekk · Apr 10, 2010

Ahriman said:
AThis doesn't make sense to me. How do you keep blockades and resource connection in the main-screen while moving the trade that gets blocked offstage?

If you set up a blockade around a city, the merchant marine aren't going there. The merchant marine is the basis of the global network that's moving your trade around; blockaded ports are cut off from this global network. Blockading isn't raiding, they aren't pursuing merchant ships and hunting them down, they're just preventing them from entering an area.

I think part of your conceptual difficulty here lies in the fact you haven't distinguished between blockades, and commerce raiding - for instance, your trade route system has blockades set up in the mid-Atlantic, which is absurd and never happened. It's simply too vast for a blockade. Instead, commerce raiders (whether sloops or subs) went after targets of opportunity on the high seas.

You're creating a parallel system of trade-routes that happen over the oceans, but they arent' actually represented on the main screen terrain.

No, there is no parallel system of trade. It's the same trade network as used in civ4; to be connected to the global trade network you have to be able to trace a route, by road or river or sea.

none of the units walknig around on the surface world can interact with units in the tunnels, unless they go to a city and specifically enter the tunnel network.

Yes, its an abstraction. However, at least you can interact with merchant shipping, which is something you can't do currently or in the kind of trade route system you're proposing. In these systems, merchant shipping can be blockaded, but it can never be interacted with in any way, shape, or form - you can't build it, attack it, or anything else. What are privateers going to do now? Attack frigates? Or sit in one spot blockading a route and wait for the frigates to show up?

This also seems weird; there are now invisible units going around attacking your stuff, that your main-screen naval units are helpless to attack.

You're not helpless; you transfer them to escort duty.

I can feel a big difference between a modern destroyer and an age of sail frigate, because if the former encounters the latter it will blow it out of the water without breaking a sweat, and I can see that happen. If they encounter each other offstage and make some dierolls and the frigate dies, I don't actually get any feeling of difference.

You can and will still have fights on the main screen between destroyers and frigates. The trade system is in addition to everything that already happens. And if it's just graphical presentation on the main screen that you're worried about, there's no reason it couldn't pick a random high seas hex and display a battle between the units there.

if you've assigned your frigate to commerce raider and they've assigned their destroyer to escort, you have no way of telling the captain of that frigate not to try attacking the convoy protected by that destroyer.

Sure you can. All you have to do is have behaviour settings for escorts and raiders. Easy.

Never played these, sorry.

They're quite good. Dale (the fellow who did ranged bombard and Dale's Combat Mod for civ4) is planning a civ 5 conversion of many of the mechanics.

Its hard enough to have a maritime empire in Civ4, why make it even harder by having to require hammer investment in order to even keep your overseas posessions supplied with resources?

Meh, that's just a matter of scaling hammers to allow for expanding the game in this way. Non-issue.

I don't think it really makes it harder to have a maritime empire, anyway. It makes it easier - now you can truly rule the seas. Being able to annihilate your opponent's merchant marine is a huge part of having a maritime empire; the fun part, actually, and it's absent from the game (and the high seas blockade system you're proposing).

I do not understand how this would work without a significant degree of MM.
Suppose you have fewer merchants than the number of resources*overseas cities. How do you choose which resources get transported, and which cities get supplied, without any MM?
I guess this is what I am afraid of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Transportation_-_Imperialism_II_game.JPG

That's actually not nearly as bad as it looks, but it would be much easier in Civ - simply for the fact that you're not going to have 423 units of 26 different resources. Even with quantified resources, I expect 10% that many units will be considered alot - and you're only going to be moving a fraction of that by sea in most cases.

Ahriman · Apr 10, 2010

for instance, your trade route system has blockades set up in the mid-Atlantic, which is absurd and never happened. It's simply too vast for a blockade. Instead, commerce raiders (whether sloops or subs) went after targets of opportunity on the high seas.

Not at all. Like I said, a single unit doesn't blockade the whole area. A single unit decreases commerce income by a small amount. A second unit decreases it more (they cover more ground, capture more ships), a third increases it more again.
You may put your units on tiles in the middle of the Atlantic, but that is a convenient representation means of assigning them to commerce raiding on ships travelling between cities in Europe and cities in North America.

You're *representing* commerce raiding activity, but you're doing it in a slightly abstracted but much simpler way that doesn't magically remove units from the main screen.

You seem to have conceptual difficulties on this.

However, at least you can interact with merchant shipping, which is something you can't do currently or in the kind of trade route system you're proposing. In these systems, merchant shipping can be blockaded, but it can never be interacted with in any way, shape, or form - you can't build it, attack it, or anything else. What are privateers going to do now? Attack frigates? Or sit in one spot blockading a route and wait for the frigates to show up?

You can interact with merchant shipping in my model by assigning units to particular commerce raiding areas, and then enemies can come attack them on the main map.
In your system there is no actual interaction that the player sees. You may have a whole bunch of probabilistic outcomes (probability of encountering an enemy, probability of escaping, etc.) but the player will never see those, so they're useless. Its a black box system where all they see are themselves throwing units in and getting casualties out.

And... yes, a bunch of frigates sent to chase down a privateer *should* be able to chase it off and get it to stop harassing your trade routes.

. And if it's just graphical presentation on the main screen that you're worried about, there's no reason it couldn't pick a random high seas hex and display a battle between the units there.

Its the graphical representation plus the lack of human interaction. In the main screen, I get to use unit positioning, bombardment, withdraw chances, etc., and I get some influence over which particular fights I involve in.
Your system doesn't allow me to order my age of sail frigate not to suicidally attack that modern destroyer.

Sure you can. All you have to do is have behaviour settings for escorts and raiders. Easy

Sounds complex and MM-intensive to me. And passive "modes" are not the same as actually controlling your units.

It makes it easier - now you can truly rule the seas.

You can rule the seas... by building a big navy of escorts and then removing them all from the main map, so you don't see them anywhere. Yeah, that sounds fun.

Meh, that's just a matter of scaling hammers to allow for expanding the game in this way.

I don't understand your point. No matter how you scale hammers, you're making trade between cities free if they have a land connection, and expensive if you don't. That biases you towards a land empire, and away from a naval one.

I think your design is fundamentally fail because it removes the activity into an offstage mechanic making die-rolls in the background, without meaningful interaction with the player.
Like playing a spreadsheet.

Not fun.

And also because it makes warfare happen in two parrallel systems that don't interact. Naval battles happen on the main screen *and* in your offscreen world, but even if they're in the same theatre they can't interact with each other.
I just think its wrong to have military units that don't actually have any main-screen

The designers have said that one of their key design philosophies is "what you see is what you get". By moving units and interactions here into an off-screen world, I think this goes against their philosophy pretty hard.

frekk · Apr 10, 2010

Ahriman said:
Not at all. Like I said, a single unit doesn't blockade the whole area. A single unit decreases commerce income by a small amount. A second unit decreases it more (they cover more ground, capture more ships), a third increases it more again.

But that's still just a blockade, not raiding. You're not actually reducing the naval capacity of your enemy at all. Those losses are temporary - as soon as you're forced off the route, the enemy bounces right back as if nothing had ever happened. You can't actually inflict any lasting damage whatsoever.

Also, there's no point to raiding with hit-and-run craft like privateers, subs, and so on under this system. There's no advantage to swift craft; as long as they're "raiding" they're sitting ducks. You're better off using the most powerful sorts of craft, battleships and whatnot - the ones you would normally use for a blockade, since that is effectively what you're doing, not commerce raiding. Whether the blockade stops all trade or just costs a certain number of coins per round doesn't change the fact that it is just a blockade, which is something the game already features (in a much more streamlined and realistic form).

Plus, with these automated trading routes, will you have just one crossing each major body of water, or will every port be connected to every other port? If you did have just one route, then a land empire (something like Russia) with just one tiny port is going to get hit by your commerce penalty just as hard as a peninsular or island civ with nothing but major port cities.

You can interact with merchant shipping in my model by assigning units to particular commerce raiding areas, and then enemies can come attack them on the main map.

Hmmm. So I have to directly manage each individual merchant ship? And if I assign a merchant ship to a trade route that extends across the entire Pacific, I can just have it sitting in a hex outside the harbour in LA the whole time?

I never knew longbows played a big role in the Battle of the Atlantic, but it looks like they will in this system!

The problem with allowing this to happen on the main map and feature merchant units at the same time is that if you can place the merchant craft anywhere along the trade route and have it act as if it is plying the route, you can just sit it in the most defensible spot on the entire route and leave it there, covering it with ranged bombardment, short-range aircraft and whatnot.

You could have it so that you have to actually move the merchant craft along the trade route, but this certainly sounds tedious.

You could automate it, but then it would probably do stupid things like wander into sub-infested waters it should move around and so on.

There just isn't any reasonable way to have on-board merchant units that I can see.

Your system doesn't allow me to order my age of sail frigate not to suicidally attack that modern destroyer.

The default behaviour should be set such that your frigate will attempt to steer clear of an ironclad or man-o-war, never mind a destroyer. You'd have to dial up to 'suicidal' to get it to do that.

Sounds complex and MM-intensive to me.

Hardly. There would be a control for the default behaviour, so it's just one click.

You can rule the seas... by building a big navy of escorts and then removing them all from the main map, so you don't see them anywhere. Yeah, that sounds fun.

Well, you certainly couldn't rule the seas that way. Your ports could still be blockaded (rendering your entire merchant marine useless), enemy fleets could still land troops on your shores, your maritime resources could be pillaged, and all the usual things that happen in the game on the mainscreen. You'd still need just as many naval units on the main screen as before.

I don't understand your point. No matter how you scale hammers, you're making trade between cities free if they have a land connection, and expensive if you don't. That biases you towards a land empire, and away from a naval one.

Land trade between cities isn't free anymore. Roads are going to cost maintenance per turn, according to what people are saying about roads. Sea trade would offer you a way to connect cities without paying road maintenance every turn.

Naval trade will therefore be free for those who have merchant marine, while land trade will always cost money - particularly as the number of cities you build begins to increase and your road network is forced to grow. Naval trade will, of course, require you to build some units but these assets are a one-time expense, not every round. Each merchant, once built, will transport goods for free every round, indefinately.

Not only that, but these assets could also (if balance warranted it) generate gpt or commerce - they are merchant ships, after all!

Because this system overlays the existing game, rather than replacing anything in it, it demands the player to build units he wouldn't otherwise build. This is why hammers have to be scaled up, to allow for this increased expenditure of hammers. If you prefer, think of them as assets (like buildings or space station parts or like that) rather than units.

The designers have said that one of their key design philosophies is "what you see is what you get".

I'm sure they didn't mean they want to get rid of off-board functions and assets; that would mean getting rid of things like the city screen, diplomacy, the spaceship, etc.

Ahriman · Apr 10, 2010

Also, there's no point to raiding with hit-and-run craft like privateers, subs, and so on under this system.

Sure there is. The subs are much harder to force off the trade route, because only a few units can even locate them, so they're possibly the best raiders. Privateers can raid enemy trade routes even when you're at peace.

You're not actually reducing the naval capacity of your enemy at all.

So what? If you want to reduce their naval capacity, then go sink their warships. Its not like they'll be able to hide them in cities anymore. If they build a navy, you'll be able to attack it. If they don't, then you can choke their trade routes forever.

The only issue is that the trade route blockage needs to have significant economic consequences. This can be achieved through stopping resource flow connection, and through making naval trade routes valuable enough that they are a significant part of your economy.

Check this out in Empire:Total war. One of the few things they did right. Naval trade is *hugely* profitable, so even the temporary blockage of their trade routes does major economic damage.

And there is a long-term consequence in the sense that they're losing gold that they're never going to get back. How is that different from losing hammers that they're never going to get back?

[Also keep in mind, it isn't even realistic that you could do more damage than cutting off trade flows entirely, because if they wanted, they could just stop running all their merchant ships and keep them in port. The only reason why they keep trying to run goods is because doing so is more valuable than the risk of losing the ship.]

So if I assign a merchant ship to a trade route that extends across the entire Pacific, I can just have it sitting in a hex outside the harbour in LA the whole time?

I don't understand what you mean here.
If you have a trade route across the Pacific from Los Angeles to Tokyo, then I can block it with military units sitting on the route just outside of LA the whole time, yes. Why is that a problem?

I don't see what *merchant* ships need to be explicitly modeled.
So there isn't a merchant ship sitting anywhere.

I never knew longbows played a big role in the Battle of the Atlantic, but it looks like they will in this system!

Again I don't quite see your point. If you're saying that land-units have bombardment attacks that can hit naval units close to sure, I'll agree that I think its a bit weird, but its not a killer, because you can still attack the trade route by sitting on the trade route out of range.

In effect, the invisible/implicit merchant ships have to travel the whole route, while those attacking the route can locate at any point along the route. Which is as it should be.

The problem with allowing this to happen on the main map and feature merchant units at the same time is that if you can place the merchant craft anywhere along the trade route and have it act as if it is plying the route, you can just sit it in the most defensible spot on the entire route and leave it there, covering it with ranged bombardment, short-range aircraft and whatnot.

Where are you getting the idea that there are some explicit merchant craft that can just sit at a single point?
Have you played Empire:Total War? If not, please let me know and I can describe the system in more detail.

You'd still need just as many naval units on the main screen as before.

If you still need just as many on-screen units as before, AND you need offscreen units, then what you're doing is reducing the feasibility of a maritime empire, because you're increasing the total cost of the units you need to run it.
If I have to have escorts AND an on-screen fleet, thats a huge investment.

Roads are going to cost maintenance per turn, according to what people are saying about roads.

Please link to a magazine preview or developer who has said this. I have seen no such thing. People's musings or preferences on forums do not constitute what the game will be.
There *has* been an indication that hexes with roads in them will have lower tile yield, but nothing like maintenance cost per turn. If you don't work that tile, you don't get any penalty.
Personally I don't like this system at all, but I like a road maintenance system even less. Roads should be an economic booster, not a maintenance cost.

Yes, but I'm sure they didn't mean they want to get rid of off-board function

I'm sure that they *did* mean that they want to keep off-board functions to a minimum.

I note as well that you don't address any of the crucial flaws, such as the whole inherent problem of having two separate zones of units in the same geographic area, and of the same type, that are utterly unable to interact.

frekk · Apr 10, 2010

Ahriman said:
Sure there is. The subs are much harder to force off the trade route, because only a few units can even locate them, so they're possibly the best raiders. Privateers can raid enemy trade routes even when you're at peace.

Subs will be very easy to locate - you'll already know where they are along a line by the fact they're blocking the sea lane. Privateers may be able to raid neutral trade routes, but they too will be sitting ducks for frigates - which is why they aren't currently useful in the game, unless your opponent only has galleys and triremes. As you say frigates ought to be able to take down privateers, but only when they can manage to catch them - this will be tremendously easy when the privateer isn't raiding the high seas, but blockading a fixed route, just as it is tremendously easy now with the current blockade system. Neither of these ships is as suited to blockading as a larger and more powerful warship such as a battleship.

So what? If you want to reduce their naval capacity, then go sink their warships.

But what if I want to reduce their merchant fleet? Since it's not only not on the board but it doesn't even exist, it can't be done. Strangle their trade routes all you like, their merchant fleet is still unlimited, invisible, and invincible.

The only issue is that the trade route blockage needs to have significant economic consequences.

There is no such thing as "trade route blockage" ... you can't blockade the whole mid-Atlantic, you can only blockade isolated areas around ports, at chokepoints such as channels and so forth. More commonly, however, nations at war cruise the high seas seeking to seize or destroy targets of opportunity. This is what the Battle of the Atlantic was, for instance. U-Boats did not block anything; they exacted a lasting price on Allied shipping, sinking merchant ships permanently rather than just temporarily denying them passage.

And there is a long-term consequence in the sense that they're losing gold that they're never going to get back. How is that different from losing hammers that they're never going to get back?

Commerce rewards for naval trade don't have to be unique to one system or the other. If there are commerce rewards for a merchant marine (which makes sense) then every ship lost entails not just the loss of a few coins that round, but the loss of income permanently, never mind hammers.

I don't see what *merchant* ships need to be explicitly modeled.

If you want to interact with merchant shipping, they have to be. You can't interact with something that isn't even there.

In effect, the invisible/implicit merchant ships have to travel the whole route, while those attacking the route can locate at any point along the route. Which is as it should be.

No, it is not as it should be. If those attacking the route are blockading at the port, as you can do in civ now, it makes sense - but anywhere else - why wouldn't the ships just detour around?

Have you played Empire:Total War? If not, please let me know and I can describe the system in more detail.

Sure, but perhaps in another thread. Talking about the in-depth mechanics of two different systems is derailing this thread and garbling the transmission, such that neither proposal benefits and I'm sure the average reader will not be able to make heads or tails of which is which at this point. Should probably stick to discussing this system in this thread and that system in another thread - a new one, or perhaps one of the many others about trade routes that have inevitably cropped up (there were a bunch when civ4 was announced so I presume there are probably a few about now).

If you still need just as many on-screen units as before, AND you need offscreen units, then what you're doing is reducing the feasibility of a maritime empire, because you're increasing the total cost of the units you need to run it.

It's a simple matter of increasing the rewards. Any time you want to expand the game into new elements, you're going to be increasing the total cost - for instance, in civ4, spreading a religion increases your total costs relative to not having religion in the game, but because it comes with rewards, it's still worthwhile. This is true for any sort of new feature you're going to have if it comes with costs. It's simply a matter of providing rewards, and it's done with every new element featuring costs. Not an issue.

Please link to a magazine preview or developer who has said this. I have seen no such thing. People's musings or preferences on forums do not constitute what the game will be.
There *has* been an indication that hexes with roads in them will have lower tile yield, but nothing like maintenance cost per turn.

Roads through a resource have been indicated to lower tile yields. For obvious reasons this cannot result in the kind of no-sprawl roads that have been reported nor the idea that you don't want more roads than necessary - it can only discourage roads on resources. It is speculative that roads will have maintenance, but it's awfully strong speculation based on the evidence. There has to be some mechanic to reduce sprawl, and this is really the only one that has been consistently advanced as a solution (for years now). Keep in mind Shafer is (or at least was) a very active member of this community and almost all of the ideas in Civ5 were things that were being proposed in threads just like this, shortly before the release of civ4.

I note as well that you don't address any of the crucial flaws, such as the whole inherent problem of having two separate zones of units in the same geographic area, and of the same type, that are utterly unable to interact.

We already have that flaw, because the merchant fleet is simply assumed but isn't actually present and can't be attacked or interacted with in any way at all. It can be blocked, but that's all. Just because it isn't currently represented by any units doesn't mean it's not there; obviously it is or you wouldn't be able to transport resources by sea.

Ahriman · Apr 10, 2010

Subs will be very easy to locate - you'll already know where they are along a line by the fact they're blocking the sea lane.

But they could be anywhere along the route, they could *move* each turn, and they could step off the route if you seemed to be getting near them.

Privateers may be able to raid neutral trade routes, but they too will be sitting ducks for frigates

So? If frigates come hunting for them, they should run. Privateers shouldnt' be able to stand up to read warships.
Remember it takes multiple attacks to kill units, so you can run with them back inside your own borders.

But what if I want to reduce their merchant fleet?

I say again, so what?
Why is being able to do this an important design goal?
The purpose of the War of the Atlantic wasn't to weaken Britain after the war was over, it was to cut off access of the supply routes to Britain for the duration of the war.

There is no such thing as "trade route blockage" ... you can't blockade the whole mid-Atlantic, you can only blockade isolated areas around ports, at chokepoints such as channels and so forth.

You're being deliberately obtuse. I use "trade route blockage" as short-hand.

Again, the system I have in mind is that yes, you move your warships onto the trade route to reduce its effectiveness (again, not a 100% blockade from a single unit), but this is simply an abstract way to represent that the unit you are using is hunting down merchant vessels over the scope of the potential paths they might take.

So you have the effect of commerce raiding, but without having to take military units off the board and put them somewhere else where they cannot be targeted directly.

If you want to interact with merchant shipping, they have to be. You can't interact with something that isn't even there.

Sure you can. Look at Empire Total War. Trade routes are created between cities, but you don't have to construct merchant vessels to man those routes. [Though you can also create merchant vessels to create new routes, but that's not an aspect I'd incorporate.] You interact with merchant shipping by moving military ships onto the naval trade routes.
Ta da! I have a system where military units interact with merchant shipping without having model them explicitly.

If those attacking the route are blockading at the port, as you can do in civ now, it makes sense - but anywhere else - why wouldn't the ships just detour around?

Because though the unit may be sitting there, that is just an abstraction. What the raiding vessels are *really* doing is hunting for the merchant vessels wherever they may be.
So you can't "sail around".
But! You can attack those raiding vessels with your own navy directly, using the normal mechanics for naval units attacking each other.
So you get the role of merchant trade, raiders and escorts, all without needing to create a separate offstage world, and creating 2 parallel systems of naval warfare.

So for example, if I were ww2 Germany, I could move subs onto the trade route between north america and Britain. This would reduce the value of those trade routes, potentially to zero and cutting supply. You in turn could send destroyers out to try to find the subs and attack them.

It's a simple matter of increasing the rewards. Any time you want to expand the game into new elements, you're going to be increasing the total cost - for instance, in civ4, spreading a religion increases your total costs relative to not having religion in the game, but because it comes with rewards, it's still worthwhile. This is true for any sort of new feature you're going to have if it comes with costs. It's simply a matter of providing rewards, and it's done with every new element featuring costs. Not an issue.

I don't understand what you're saying here. You sound a bit like hclass.

It is speculative that roads will have maintenance, but it's awfully strong speculation based on the evidence

Umm... no its not. What evidence? Its just pure speculation.

We already have that flaw, because the merchant fleet is simply assumed but isn't actually present and can't be attacked or interacted with in any way at all.

We do NOT have a flaw where I can have warships in the north atlantic on the main screen, and you can have warships in the north atlantic offstage, and my units cannot attack yours.
That is a huge and crippling flaw.

[Another unintended consequence of your system. Suppose I have a moderate navy and you have a large navy. In Civ4, if I want to same my navy from yours, I can leave it in my cities. We can probably agree that this is lame. In Civ5, with 1upt, your navy will be vulnerable, I'll be able to hunt it down and attack it. But with your system, I can simply take my "on-screen navy" that is under threat and shuffle it off onto escort or commerce raider duty, where it is immediately invulnerable from your onstage navy.]

And where can you add units to this offstage world from? Any tile? Only your territory? When they return from the offstage world, where do they appear? The same tile they left from? My coast? Some other random place?

Anyway, clearly neither of us are going to persuade each other. It would be interesting to see what other people think.

frekk · Apr 10, 2010

Ahriman said:
Sure you can. Look at Empire Total War.

Could you read my post again, please?

Talking about the detailed mechanics of two completely different proposed systems in the same thread in the manner you are doing is making things much too confusing for anyone who might be interested in either of them. I suggest we separate them into different threads, for the sake of a coherent dialogue that other people will be able to understand.

frekk · Apr 10, 2010

Ahriman said:
Its just pure speculation.

No, its inference.

We do NOT have a flaw where I can have warships in the north atlantic on the main screen, and you can have warships in the north atlantic offstage, and my units cannot attack yours.

There is just a different flaw where merchant shipping can never be attacked.

Also there is no "North Atlantic" anything other than the one on the main screen, nor are your units ever prevented from attacking mine - they just have to go to where mine are to do so. Offscreen, the units are "roaming" - sort of like a subatomic particle before its superposition is collapsed, they have no particular location. They aren't necessarily in the North Atlantic; they could be in the South Atlantic, or the North Sea, or the Gulf of Mexico. To find them, you refit your ships for commerical raiding duty in port and set out to roam the high seas yourself.

Suppose I have a moderate navy and you have a large navy. In Civ4, if I want to same my navy from yours, I can leave it in my cities. We can probably agree that this is lame.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_in_being

In Civ5, with 1upt, your navy will be vulnerable, I'll be able to hunt it down and attack it. But with your system, I can simply take my "on-screen navy" that is under threat and shuffle it off onto escort or commerce raider duty, where it is immediately invulnerable from your onstage navy.

No, because there's a delay. Read the OP. Also you'll have difficulty transferring your entire fleet to the convoy box all that quickly, due to 1upt. Basically you're only going to be able to transfer 1 ship every 3 turns in each port that you have.

And anyway, if my fleet is stronger than yours such that you feel the need to run and hide, why is the convoy box going to be any safer? I'll probably have lots of warships there too. Why wouldn't I?

And where can you add units to this offstage world from? Any tile? Only your territory? When they return from the offstage world, where do they appear? The same tile they left from? My coast? Some other random place?

It's described in the OP.

I don't understand what you're saying here.

Let's say we're back in civ3 days, and I want to add religion. But its going to cost the player something to build those missionaries that he didn't have to build before.

So how do we offset that cost?

Simple, we introduce benefits into the system so that building missionaries generates something for the player to make it worthwhile.

It's the same anytime you want to expand the units in the game beyond what would presently be built by the player.

Let's apply your logic to introducing missionaries into the game:

If you still need just as many combat and civilian units as before, AND you need missionaries, then what you're doing is reducing the feasibility of religion, because you're increasing the total cost of the units you need.
If I have to have regular units AND missionaries, thats a huge investment.

Doesn't make much sense, does it? The additional cost of the missionaries is offset by the benefits they're going to bring. It's just a matter of balancing. It's the same thing with adding some merchant marine to the game. Yes, it's going to cost you something to build it ... but since you'll gain new benefits, such as extra income, it will be worthwhile if it is balanced properly.

The same applies to any new element we want to add. If we want to add, say, a system of satellites and space-based weapons then yes, you will have to build all your regular units AND these other ones but it's just a matter of giving them some balanced benefits so that they are attractive to build.

frekk · Apr 10, 2010

double post

Idea for new naval system

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

Ahriman

Tyrant

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

Ahriman

Tyrant

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

Ahriman

Tyrant

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

Ahriman

Tyrant

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

Ahriman

Tyrant

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

frekk

Scourge of St. Lawrence

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