Seafaring PBEM

I am thinking of setting up a PBEM with the following settings and would like to know whether people would be interested. Settings are opened for discussion.

Size : 100 X 100
80% water
Archipelago.

Accelerated Production

Editor Modifs :
- 20% all ships cost
Enslave to self (or regular unit version if enslaved by a UU) possibility for all ships up to Frigate (enslaving to enslaved unit type was supposed to be done in a patch but still no news about it).
Adding Ship of the Line (from Napoleonic conquest) after Frigate nearly parallel to ironclad (less good in defense but faster).


6 players for only these 6 civs (all seafaring) :

- Byzantines
- Dutch
- England
- Scandinavia
- Spain
- Portugal

6 players (filling in more quickly than I thought it would, won't even have to post it in the "new PBEM" thread !!!).

- Loulong --- Spanish
- Akots --- Scandinavia
- Rubberjello --- Byzantines
- Rcoutme --- Portuguese
- EliitMees --- English
- Dogboy --- Dutch

Sounds interesting. How are you planning to reduce tech rate further? Apart from already double reduction in AP? IMHO, increase ship movements might be OK as well. 100x100 is a large map, and while sailing with a caravel from one corner to another, there might be nukes already around.

IMHO, don't change tech rate but dunno really.

I'd like to be Viking if possible.

I'm in. Partial to Byzantines myself. No reduction of Tech rate beyond what AP does please. Also agree with AKots about a ship bonus movement rate - - maybe all sailing ships +1, all modern ships +2?

I'm in. I'm just posting right now to reserve my spot. I will look at the civs and tell you which one I want and what settings I will agree/disagree to.

edit: Make me the Dutch. I haven't played them ever I don't think.

I thought of giving increased movement rate then I erased it because all civs being seafaring they already have a + 1 bonus. So an extra + 1 would mean 5 for a galley. Might be too much albeit I am not against the idea. A + 1 or + 2 for modern ships is definitely worth considering.
But my point is to cause naval battles, not to give vessels so high a movement rate that they can cross between islands in one turn which would then go against naval battles.

Tech rate with AP? Yep you are right ! That would be too much, idea dropped.

I thought of the possibility to add a + 1 in attack to all ships as well, so as to avoid the long painful galley era limited to mere luck or advantage for defense in combat. What do you think ? And maybe a 1 transport ability for the Curragh.

About added ships I think vikings should get the longboat too (no need to download the unit).

I am just gathering infos and discussing rules, not yet attributing civs yet. I am quite pleased to see you interested but I will wait to have 6 people really interested in it before setting it up.
And I am quite partial to randomizing civs but maybe we can sort things out, if all people prefer different civs.

So other ideas welcome and opened for vote or discussion.

Add me too. Sounds like lots of fun. Just my $0.02 but you could make all naval movement double, change the lighthouse and/or Magellan, make the movement cost for coast and sea = 2, cost for ocean = 1 to increase ship movement over long distances. If you are looking to do so. The other possibility is to jump costs to 3, make some terrain ignored by certain ships.

Add me too! I love the smell of naval battle!
In my opinion, giving increased movement and attack rates for ships would be more fun and stimulating for naval battles. Giving transport capacity to curragh sounds like a good idea too - it would be useful for early expansion since we are playing archipelago. And all ships must be cheap indeed.
Make me the English if you won't randomize - never played them before.

rcoutme said:

Add me too. Sounds like lots of fun. Just my $0.02 but you could make all naval movement double, change the lighthouse and/or Magellan, make the movement cost for coast and sea = 2, cost for ocean = 1 to increase ship movement over long distances. If you are looking to do so. The other possibility is to jump costs to 3, make some terrain ignored by certain ships.

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What do you mean by changing Lighthouse and Magellan ??

The idea of differential movement is interesting. I know it has been used in GOTM games but personally I don't have much experience with it. Any player used to the GOTM settings to tell us how it works and especially how it feels ?

DogBoy said:

I'm in. I'm just posting right now to reserve my spot. I will look at the civs and tell you which one I want and what settings I will agree/disagree to.

edit: Make me the Dutch. I haven't played them ever I don't think.

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Just saw your post (you posted just before I did).
You did set up the archipelago PBEM and I have seen we use the smae settings for size and percentage of water (great minds tend to meet ! lol). What experience did you get from it ? That could be quite useful to make this one both interesting and balanced.


@ Rcoutme : what civ did you have in mind ? If it is Spain or Portugal I will just take the last one. If it is another civ, well, that'd be more complicated.

LouLong, here are the settings I used for that game.

Standard size.
80% water.
Barbarians roaming.
Climate normal.
Temperature warm.
Age 5 billion.
Difficuly monarch

Everybody was also required to pick a seafaring civ and the AI got the rest of them. The only problem we have had is that two of us humans were on the same continent. Unfortunately for Fanste (he was on my continent), I found him early and he had the worse starting position. He was bordered by sea and marsh. He had no workable tiles at all so his starting worker had to clear the marsh. Then he built a settler to expand. I attacked the settler to get two free workers, then I attacked his capitol which was guarded by one warrior and the game was over for him, about 20-25 turns into the game. So the lesson is, if anybody gets a worthless starting position like that I allow a restart. Other than that, three humans are left and 4 AI and we are still in the expanding phase. We just reached turn 90 and everybody is still at peace.

I'll go with Portugal. I have never tried them, so it would be interesting.

This leaves Spain to LouLong again...

akots said:

This leaves Spain to LouLong again...

Click to expand...

Why is it I don't feel surprised !

OK we have the following settings for sure :

80% water
100 X 100 map
6 civs

To be selected (please state your preferences)
- level (monarch sounds ok to me)
- barb level : I propose raging

Special settings (please vote) :

- + 1 for ancient ships, + 2 for modern ships
(seafaring civs already have a + 1).
- lower cost of all naval units (-20% or - 25%, more would be too easy, less would not make much difference).
- Double the movement of all naval units but make coast and sea cost two mov points (a la GOTM).
- make more foot units amphibious
- add the Ship of the Line (available in parallel with ironclads) and Longship (available with berserkers)
- Make all ships up to frigate have enslavement ability (ship capture). Many fleet weere actually built from captures. Of course a frigate enslaving a galley to a frigate sounds weird....
- Add + 1 to all naval units in both attack and defense.
- curragh with one transport seems OK for everyone.

About Dogboy's remark about starting positions and map, I plan to ask someone to create random maps with these settings until no starting positions is actually "bad" and so that two civs don't start on the same island.

Monarch is OK (since no AIs)
Raging is OK

- + 1 for ancient ships, + 2 for modern ships-
(seafaring civs already have a + 1).
- lower cost of all naval units (-20% or - 25%, more would be too easy, less would not make much difference).
- Double the movement of all naval units but make coast and sea cost two mov points (a la GOTM).
- make more foot units amphibious
- add the Ship of the Line (available in parallel with ironclads) and Longship (available with berserkers)
- Make all ships up to frigate have enslavement ability (ship capture). Many fleet weere actually built from captures. Of course a frigate enslaving a galley to a frigate sounds weird....
- Add + 1 to all naval units in both attack and defense.
- curragh with one transport seems OK for everyone.

Either movement bonus is OK with me. Whatever the majority wants.
Ummm...no additional units amphibious.
What are the stats of the Longships? Their movement bonus over other ships in the Middle Ages Scenario was ridiculous, IMO. Ship of the Line is cool, and enslave ability is really neat.
Sure.
Sure.

These are ok with me. Probably should not have more amphib types (make the b@astards have to plan invasions better). Raging barbs means I'll have to find my goodie huts really fast . Oh well, it happens.

I still like the idea of 2 movement points in coast and sea (with double movement). Did we want to make any sea units have 'ignore terrain' ability?

Maybe should give +2 movement for Magellan instead of +1.

If a random person is making the map, you might suggest adding a few extra little islands, just for flavor--not that important, just something I tend to do when playing low-land archipelego's.

Monarch is fine since no AIs.
Raging barbs is fine with me.
The extra ship movement is fine. Everybody benefits the same.
No additional amphibious units.
Ship of line and longship is fine, whatever majority wants.
Enslavement sounds fun.
Why bother making a +1 attack and defense to all naval units? Doesn't that just even itself out? But whatever the group wants, I will go along with it.
Curragh with transport is fine.
Agree with rcoutme about the person who makes the map adds a few extra islands. Also, should probably make it so every island can touch every other island. Not directly, but they should be able to island hop over and over and over around the world.

Proposition of the modified editor.

I reduced the cost of courthouses as well to limit a likely important corruption on that kind of map.

Mostly doubled movement rate and made coast and sea cost 2 with age of sails ships ignoring sea penalty and modern ships (except ironclad) ignoring both.

The added attack and defense changes the combat ratio mostly for galleys for when two fight it is usually pretty simple, especially on defense. The added points will make the result less predictable.

Take a look, especially those used to modding.

LouLong, just a couple of observations.

1. Ship of the Line is 4/4 a/d vs 5/3 for Man-o-War and 3/3 for Frigate, but SOL is far, far more expensive and has no bombard capability.

2. Vikings have been given the potential for Longships and Berserks, seems a little overbalanced for the Scandy player.

3. Longships are both sea and ocean-worthy, yet Caravels still sink in ocean (won't affect me since my Carracks don't) even though longships come in during Chivalry and Caravels are way out at Astronomy.

4. Most modern ships are more powerful, but the carrier remains the same. It is now weaker on defense than a destroyer. Probably should have at least cruiser defense (since most WWII carriers were originally designed to be cruisers and then changed due to the realization that carriers would dominate the surface fleets). As it stands now, even an ironclad is about as powerful on the defense.

5. Carrier only ignores sea cost (not coastal) even though all other 'modern' ships ignore both.

6. Ocean gives no F/P/C's so whoever makes the map must make sure that ocean tiles are never used by any potential city. Might be easier to give them some food or commerce just in case the map designer makes a mistake.

7. Magellan and Lighthouse only give +1 movement, even though coast and sea cost 2 mp. Might want to change one or both to +2 mp to keep them up to date with mp costs.

rcoutme said:

LouLong, just a couple of observations.

1. Ship of the Line is 4/4 a/d vs 5/3 for Man-o-War and 3/3 for Frigate, but SOL is far, far more expensive and has no bombard capability.

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Yes, I also noted. May be decrease the cost or add bombard.

2. Vikings have been given the potential for Longships and Berserks, seems a little overbalanced for the Scandy player.

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You have other traits to compensate. Otherwise Viking not very much playable.

3. Longships are both sea and ocean-worthy, yet Caravels still sink in ocean (won't affect me since my Carracks don't) even though longships come in during Chivalry and Caravels are way out at Astronomy.

Click to expand...

Same as above. Make peace with Vikings and trade for mutual benefit and you won't see zerks in your borders.

4. - Unclear.
5. - Agree.
6. - Disagree, this is the issue of balance.
7. - Agree. Good idea.