More info from an E3 demo

need my speed said:

What if they can't hit the transports? If the water body is just too large? ORr even if they can hit it, it would be way too much work to surround the whole water body with archers or things so that the boat can't escape out of range. I'm not sure if I like the automatic transport function.

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If the 'lake/sea' is so large that a few archers can't easily hit a unit in it, then it is large enough to build a city on to build a ship of your own (buy the cheapest one, and park it where enemy units can't attack it.

(Also if there is SOME pause required on embarking/disembarking, that is time for Archers+cannons to bombard)


It is also possible that "Transport ability" will be limited to bodies of water that you have a city bordering it.

need my speed said:

What if they can't hit the transports? If the water body is just too large? ORr even if they can hit it, it would be way too much work to surround the whole water body with archers or things so that the boat can't escape out of range. I'm not sure if I like the automatic transport function.

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Of course you aren't sure, it's as cheese as a nachos order..
As it is unrealistic.

Krikkitone said:

It is also possible that "Transport ability" will be limited to bodies of water that you have a city bordering it.

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I'm almost sure it won't be like this Krikki. Imagine all the issues that might come up if you loose that sole allowing city while you are already in the water or trying to return (reembark) your units.

Ahriman said:

It doesn't make sense to both be worried that land units in the water are both too vulnerable ("Soldiers going through sea are defenseless??") and not vulnerable enough ("rival soldiers moving back and forth into the water???!!!").

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It does make sense when you consider both situations as it is expected and I already explained, the first one is an only sea situation and the second is land-sea. Same characteristic/feature worries me in two different situations because of different matters.
All in all I am not so concerned with these new transports being much more vulnerable than galleys & Galleons, the important issue here is their amphibious exploit which I already see jumping high over the roof. Hope to be wrong though.

Ahriman said:

I have no idea what you're trying to say here.
But naval units have much longer movement ranges than land units. So I don't see how you could keep away from them, particularly when you have cities and siege and support units with bombardment attacks; if they're running around into the sea and back, just bombard them to death.

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I sincerely believe you, no matter how much longer the range of naval units is, a simple peninsula situation is up to the exploit.
Bombarding could be a palliative, but arrows sinking sailing ships in water is truly unrealistic. Realism apart, It all comes down to balance of course.

Ahriman said:

I think if you are annoyed that there will be new mechanics and new situations to deal with, then you are in the minority. Civ4 will still work, if your preference is to play Civ4.

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Annoyed is not the word, this is a game and one I wasn't even waiting for, true is once i heard about it and started investigating I was surprisingly disappointed. Didn't make calculations to asses my feeling is within the minority, as you happen to have made, but if this is the case it might be a huge minority I believe.

Personally I still don't understand the objection to units converting into transports Ricci. It makes the seas much, much more important as it makes invasion from the sea much more likely. Apparently, though, people like yourself are opposed to new strategies, in which case this game definitely doesn't sound like something you should buy. Indeed, I'm guessing that the simplicity of CivRev will be much more up your alley.

Aussie.

Aussie_Lurker said:

Personally I still don't understand the objection to units converting into transports Ricci. It makes the seas much, much more important as it makes invasion from the sea much more likely.

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Making the sea much more important would be one accurate fact in my objection, as I feel seas as they are in civ iv have just the importance they deserve.

Aussie_Lurker said:

Apparently, though, people like yourself are opposed to new strategies, in which case this game definitely doesn't sound like something you should buy. Indeed, I'm guessing that the simplicity of CivRev will be much more up your alley.
Aussie.

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Aussie, making "land units" into amphibious units is the simplification here.
It is true I oppose to new strategies concerning a feature I dislike, see unfit, unrealistic, simplistic. Not because I am in general opposed to new strategies but because I am opposed to this particular new feature! You might have gotten the wrong idea because almost all that I discussed here was this same thing.

In Civ4, you could get away with *totally* ignoring your navy & not face any negative consequences-that's not just bad for game-play, its had for historical realism too. Units won't be *amphibious* because-as they explained during the demo-they're inactive for A WHOLE TURN before they turn into transports-at which point they'll be highly vulnerable to attack by even the weakest of sea or land-based units. Its pretty fair to assume that these units will be equally vulnerable when they're turning back into land units (unless they have a promotion that specifically allows for amphibious attack). This will open up a whole host of new naval strategies for both the attacker & the defender, ones which didn't exist in previous iterations of Civ. As I said, I can't see any *REAL* reason to complain about this change-aside from a morbid hatred of anything new or different-in which case I'm surprised you've stuck with the Civ genre for this long.

Aussie.

It's not a horrible mechanic -- Master of Orion used something similar -- but it is a little bit of a "dumbing down" of the naval game. The main reason you could ignore your navy in Civ IV is because the AI wasn't sophisticated enough to coordinate naval fleet tactics... and even having a navy was no guarantee against sea invasion, because the movement rates of naval units (especially later in the game) are high enough that a transport can often hit the coast and unload before you can even see it coming. The new mechanic may overcome the first problem, but it will probably make the second problem even worse. In addition, inland lakes or bays will no longer pose much of a barrier to infantry, as they can just load up on boats and cross them.

The counter to this seems to be making them extremely vulnerable, but if naval units can't stack, then they're going to be very hard to protect.

It will all depend, of course, on how well it's implemented.

AriochIV said:

It's not a horrible mechanic -- Master of Orion used something similar -- but it is a little bit of a "dumbing down" of the naval game. The main reason you could ignore your navy in Civ IV is because the AI wasn't sophisticated enough to coordinate naval fleet tactics... and even having a navy was no guarantee against sea invasion, because the movement rates of naval units (especially later in the game) are high enough that a transport can often hit the coast and unload before you can even see it coming. The new mechanic may overcome the first problem, but it will probably make the second problem even worse. In addition, inland lakes or bays will no longer pose much of a barrier to infantry, as they can just load up on boats and cross them.

The counter to this seems to be making them extremely vulnerable, but if naval units can't stack, then they're going to be very hard to protect.

It will all depend, of course, on how well it's implemented.

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Just a few things: (1) you can stack a non-transport naval unit with a transport, but in order to defend a large number of transports you'll probably need a relatively large, diversified navy spread over several tiles. This leads to (2) because your navies will *by necessity* be more spread out, it will make it much harder for attackers to just "slip by" due to a combo of high movement rates & a very small silhouette. (3) When embarking & disembarking, land units are going to be very vulnerable to attack-if you're the attacker, then you'd best bring some good support units to clear a beach-head prior to landing your main force. If you're the defender, then you'd best bring to bear a good combo of offensive & defensive units to drive the attacker back into the sea. (4) Bays & lakes will still serve as an impediment because, unless the attacker can also somehow get strong naval units into these areas, then the transports will be *extremely* vulnerable to all kinds of attacks. Sometimes I think people's opposition to these new mechanics is because they choose to see them *only* through the prism of previous iterations of Civ-rather than seeing them as part of the broader changes in Civ5 (like ranged units, 1upt etc etc).

Aussie.

Aussie_Lurker said:

... This will open up a whole host of new naval strategies for both the attacker & the defender, ones which didn't exist in previous iterations of Civ. As I said, I can't see any *REAL* reason to complain about this change-aside from a morbid hatred of anything new or different-in which case I'm surprised you've stuck with the Civ genre for this long.
Aussie.

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Didn't think this was necessary Aussie, but I'll give you an example of one *REAL* reason to complain about this change-aside from a morbid hatred of anything new or different:

Given something considered perfect (for our purpose we shall say here transports a la civ iv) one can complain against any alternative (new or old) simply because he knows the perfect something can't be surpassed; still, and independently, one can have a morbid hatred for the new!!

Of course this is not my opinion of transports in civ iv, I have other reasons to complain, more arguable if you like, still very real.

AriochIV said:

It's not a horrible mechanic -- Master of Orion used something similar -- but it is a little bit of a "dumbing down" of the naval game. The main reason you could ignore your navy in Civ IV is because the AI wasn't sophisticated enough to coordinate naval fleet tactics... and even having a navy was no guarantee against sea invasion, because the movement rates of naval units (especially later in the game) are high enough that a transport can often hit the coast and unload before you can even see it coming.

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I mostly agree Arioch, would add that completely ignoring your navy keeps yourself out of invading or colonizing over seas except in a full peace situation. AI not only is not sophisticated enough to handle invasion but also doesn't block your shores as it should (most of the times not at all). All this ignoring of your naval force doesn't apply obviously to MP, which happens to be my primary gaming anyways. In this case unless you are mainly an inland empire you are seriously screwed in so many ways if you do so.

Once again you give two posts which are utterly contradictory Ricci. If naval transports were so *perfect*, then why couldn't the AI handle them properly? Why aren't human players making more use of them (& this is coming from someone who also plays a fair number of MP games btw)? Why aren't navies & naval combat a far greater feature of the game in Civ4-the way they are in history? The fact is that, after FOUR iterations of the game, the designers *finally* figured out that having to build both units & transports was a big disincentive to waging intercontinental warfare. BtS made a stellar attempt to make it more viable & interesting, but could only get so far. So, unless you can give me a *real* reason for being against embarkation, then I sticking to my original premise-that you simply hold a BLIND HATRED of anything new & interesting!

Aussie.

Here's an example of how "perfect" naval transports were in Civ1 to Civ4. Once you built a few naval transports (a grueling exercise, but it could pay off-especially in SP games), ou can stack several units into each one (an entire invasion fleet). Then stack all your military naval units on top of the transports & slip them through to your enemy's lands (easy to do given the fast speed & small profile of a 1-tile invasion fleet). As interception was almost impossible, there was little point in building a navy of your own-except to play the same trick-so actual naval battles were extremely rare-or after the fact. So much for the PERFECT system of Civ1 to Civ4. In Civ5 because (a) transports are completely defenseless; (b) you will need to spread your navy out if you want more than 1 land unit invading &/or you want more than 1 naval unit defending your transports & (c) naval units will all have ranged combat abilities, we will almost certainly see a much greater chance of interdiction & pitched naval battles, not to mention some pretty major action needed to secure beach-heads. Sure, once in a BLUE MOON a unit might be able to escape into an inland lake large enough to escape bombardment & destruction but (a) it'll be pretty useless as a tactic & (b) I doubt that any lake will be sufficiently large to put the unit outside the range of most ranged attackers.
So this one remote possibility seems a pretty lame rationale for opposing a system which will actually make navies worth while building, rather than something you only attend to on very rare occasions.

Aussie.

A lot of this argument is based on speculation. We don't know how fast naval units are in Civ V, or whether they're any more "defenseless" than a typical transport unit vs. naval warship in Civ IV. Land unit movement speeds have been nearly doubled in Civ V (which I think is a great move), but it's not clear what this means for naval unit movement.

The "transport" paradigm is as old as the original Empire game, and it does make a certain amount of sense. Whether the new system works in the new game depends on a dozen things that we don't know, and probably won't know (given the stingy information release) until we see the game.

[longer post lost to the ether]
Transports in previous editions were a double barrier to ocean-crossings:
1) they were the only logistical mechanic in the game represented by a unit (we were not required to build "train units" to use railroads, nor cargo planes to airlift or drop paratroopers)
2) Not only did we have to build them - we had to coordinate their rendezvous with our troops in order to launch our invasion.

The end result of this mechanic was that the real cost (to the player) was time spent micromanaging build queues and unit movement. It wasn't harder, or riskier, nor did it require more skill - it was simply more of a nuisance. That, in my opinion, is a poor way to balance or implement a game mechanic.

The primary problems with seaborne invasions have always been distance, and supply and support. I think there are better ways to represent that (distance based unit maintenance, for instance)

Given the 1UpT system in Civ V, I think the embarkation mechanic is rather elegant.

AriochIV said:

A lot of this argument is based on speculation. We don't know how fast naval units are in Civ V, or whether they're any more "defenseless" than a typical transport unit vs. naval warship in Civ IV. Land unit movement speeds have been nearly doubled in Civ V (which I think is a great move), but it's not clear what this means for naval unit movement.

The "transport" paradigm is as old as the original Empire game, and it does make a certain amount of sense. Whether the new system works in the new game depends on a dozen things that we don't know, and probably won't know (given the stingy information release) until we see the game.

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Actually, Arioch, we've had it confirmed that (a) units converted to naval transports are utterly defenseless (like a settler or a worker) & (b) that during embarkation, land units are highly susceptible to attack. We also know that naval units have ranged bombardment capabilities & that the same stacking limits apply on sea as apply on land. As I said, the combination of these last two factors will make it almost *impossible* for an enemy to slip past a half-way decent naval blockade.

Aussie.

Where was this confirmed? The E3 demo video shows water-embarked units having taken damage, implying that they are not utterly defenseless like a settler or worker.

I agree with you Ricci, taking away a unit for transport and having units able to transform into sailing ship is a definate simplification, and one of the main reasons I gave away Rise of Nations.

The naval aspect is something that has never been developed well in civ, and think this is a step in wrong direction, although hope I'm proven wrong.

Instead of making naval warfare more exciting or relevant, I'd be inclined to disregard a defensive navy altogether, and instead invest the hammers on small groups of defenders placed near the coast to wait on any invaders. Then use these to attack them while they are in Aussies's "utterly defenceless state". Previously, a civ with a large standing army but small navy, didn't have power projection, but could defend their nation with their large army. Now, all you need is a large army, which can be deployed anywhere due to the fact every offensive unit is also a transport.

You are also removing the tactical advantage in destroying a retreating navy (after a suprise attack were they declare and attack on the same turn a la Pearl Harbour) and having the invasion force stranded with no reinforcements. This then allows the defenders able to break them down over a period of time, because once they disembark, their transports dissapear!

As i said, I hope I'm proven wrong, but from the, admittedly little, info we have at this point, this change more than any other worries me.

In this video: http://bit.ly/bEailD, Dennis Shirk mentions that units converted into transports will be *defenseless*, *civilian* units. The screen cap you're showing doesn't prove this claim incorrect. There could be any number of reasons why the unit in that screenie is only damaged & not destroyed. Either way, it suggests that embarked units cannot fight back & are easily destroyed, thus making their defense vitally important.

AljayBoy: Has it occurred to you that (a) Naval units can bombard the coast, & thus might make mincemeat of your small group of defenders on the coast? & (b) that not all units will be utterly defenseless when they disembark. No doubt units with an amphibious attack promotion might be able to make short work of your small group of defenders. Also don't forget the limitations placed on said strategy due to 1upt.

The more complaints I hear about this new mechanic, the more convinced I am that its based on people who insist on judging the change by CIV4 standards. As Thyrwyn rightly points out, naval transportation is the *ONLY* form of transportation that requires the player to build a separate unit for the purpose of transportation, which is what has made naval warfare the poor cousin of the Civ Franchise. IMO, putting naval movement on an equal footing with land-based & air-based transport is a step in the RIGHT DIRECTION toward making navies more important.

Aussie_Lurker said:

The more complaints I hear about this new mechanic, the more convinced I am that its based on people who insist on judging the change by CIV4 standards. As Thyrwyn rightly points out, naval transportation is the *ONLY* form of transportation that requires the player to build a separate unit for the purpose of transportation, which is what has made naval warfare the poor cousin of the Civ Franchise. IMO, putting naval movement on an equal footing with land-based & air-based transport is a step in the RIGHT DIRECTION toward making navies more important.

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No to mention that with 1UPT your would have to build one transport per unit you want to ship, which would be a major drag. The old transport mechanic simply would not be viable in civ5.