Should a steamship be dropped?

[phungus420]

From here:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=8351985&postcount=181

I see the argument and agree sort of. In terms of gameplay (not historical accuracy), LoR could easily drop the Protected cruiser and rebalance the destroyer escort and ironclad battleship around that change. It would work, and would most likely make things cleaner.

But here is the issue, first I took alot of heat for removing the pre-dreadnought, so I know alot of users like the steamship naval period. Second it is historically accurate, that period of time saw a rapid change in naval design, and ships were going obsolete litterally as they left dock as new inovations in naval warfare were being made. The game kind of works well here with this going on, and it seems right to me to have patchwork navies in the late industrial period.


So I don't know. You decide. Should LoR drop the protected cruiser and clean up the current steamship naval period a bit, or is it good as it stands now?

 

[De Begerac]

Good as it stands!

Cyrano

 

[StMikael]

Keep the protected cruiser.

Just like you said, the steamship navies of the late 19th century were patchwork fleets consisting of a few state-of-the-art ships and a lot of inferior and obsolete vessels. In my latest game (marathon) I entered a major naval war and found that I only had funds enough to upgrade some of my old ships. I was forced to fight with ironclads, protected cruisers, dreadnoughts and modern battleships. It made for a very interesting war, actually.

 

[JohnMK]

Let's keep it. Also, I miss the pre-dreadnought, but I'm not exactly all worked up over it.

 

[Gresharas]

My concern is about playability. I like historic accouracy [hell, most time I play on lower diff like prince and drop science to 0 to "keep the pace with history"] but I often fear that an excessive accuracy might lead to less playability, like other mods aroud that are more accurate, more slow paced, more a lot of things and in the end you cant play them because of it.

Also, civ4 is very western-centric about the development of mankind but sometimes you manage to make a nice culture that resemble different ones only by skipping a few techs. In the actual era [industrial and above] the tech development it is almost railroaded instead. So much for the units - you hardly have now empires that can, say, flight but are unale to field state-of-the-art tanks.

Of course it is all due to personal flavor

 

[Roland Johansen]

The only issue I have with it is the balance between the contemporary units 'protected cruiser' and 'destroyer escort'. The destroyer escort is available 1 tech later but has a better speed, defeats the protected cruiser in direct combat and is better against other steamships (both of them are in the steamship category). With the position in the tech tree, you might think that the 'protected cruiser' is quickly upgraded to the dreadnaught which is slower and stronger than the destroyer escort, but this ship actually requires various extra technologies from different parts of the tech tree. Of course, the destroyer escort is also slightly more expensive than the protected cruiser, but it still makes the 'protected cruiser' a bad unit to build. It's obsolete shortly after construction (due to being inferior on all points) and cannot be upgraded to a unit which isn't obsolete.

Given the tech requirements, it seems that the destroyer escort is meant to represent a lighter faster ship which is produced en masse (assembly line requirement) while the protected cruiser is a heavier slower ship which isn't so easily produced en masse (no assembly line requirement).

Stats:
Protected Cruiser: 24 , 5 , 155
Destroyer Escort: 20 , 6 , 20% withdraw chance, 5% aerial interception odds, +50% vs steamships, 180
(both are of the steamship ship class)

Another weird thing is that the dreadnaught which obsoletes the protected cruiser (it upgrades to it) has far better odds against the destroyers escort as the protected cruiser. So apparently the destroyer escort isn't really thought of as more powerful than the protected cruiser in that comparison.

Stats:
Dreadnaught: 28 , 5 , causes collateral damage, 5% aerial interception, +25% vs destroyer escort, ranged bombardment, 230
(this is a capital ship class)

It's all a bit weird and doesn't add up. I would prefer a destroyer escort without the +50% bonus vs steamships and a more expensive protected cruiser (more expensive than the destroyer escort). The dreadnaught could get the +25% bonus vs all steamships instead of just the destroyer escort. As it is now, the dreadnaught doesn't easily beat the protected cruiser.
Maybe, the protected cruiser should also get the 'causes collateral damage' special then as it moves inbetween the ironclad battleship and the dreadnaught which both have this special.



I really do like the fact that ships advance quickly during this period. The game represents history and does this by making unit matchups different during various time periods of the game. The medieval land troops for instance are very varied with some very offensive and some more defensive and strong castles. The gunpowder era from riflemen to infantry is very defensive with focus on mainly one or two types of troops (infantry and cavalry) and defensive structures can be bomber away easily. And later you get a diversification again with tanks, various types of infantry and gunships.
If every game period would show a similar matchup of 3-4 units in a rock paper scissors system and units would always obsolete after the same number of technologies, then the game wouldn't represent history and be more boring.

 

[morchuflex]

The problem is that ships in CIV work independently from each other. Escort destroyers and later destroyers should be escorts to capital ships, as their name states. But in Civ, everything is a capital ship...

 

[Shadowhal]

now that I played through this stage at least once I could give a somewhat qualified statement and I have to say I'm still not too sure. yeah, these are a lot of ships in a short amount of time, but then, that's what it was like in reality. and it doesn't necessarily hurt gameplay. it's just that they don't particularly do anything special. they're just strong and relatively mobile.

 

[GoodGame]

Ambivalent feelings. I like the idea of keeping it all in, since effort was put into getting it right, to begin with. My ambivalence comes from turn lag, and I probably ought to just be playing the 'light' version, so this era is one I'll often retire early in just to escape the turn lag.

 

[phungus420]

Just so people are aware, when 0.9.8 is released, the Protected Cruiser will be cut. This isn't because the Protected Cruiser is useless, it's because the Ironclad Battleship is, and the industrial era ships are still slightly too crowded (also the Destroyer Escort will be tweaked slightly). I know the poll says not to, but having examined this further and played a couple AI autoplay observation games, it's apparent this change is needed. I'm not a fan of having extra units out there that no one uses, and right now that's the case with the Ironclad Battleship.

 

[caliban02]

Just so people are aware, when 0.9.8 is released, the Protected Cruiser will be cut. This isn't because the Protected Cruiser is useless, it's because the Ironclad Battleship is, and the industrial era ships are still slightly too crowded (also the Destroyer Escort will be tweaked slightly). I know the poll says not to, but having examined this further and played a couple AI autoplay observation games, it's apparent this change is needed. I'm not a fan of having extra units out there that no one uses, and right now that's the case with the Ironclad Battleship.

I think it's a good move. That phase in the naval tech tree is really crowded.

 

[FriendoftheDork]

The problem with the Ironclad battleship is that it requires another tech than the ironclad cruiser and gunboat (the latter is totally useless). Thus I got Protected cruisers before I got the ironclad battleships, and saw to my suprise that the battleship upgraded to the crappy cruiser which is easily destroyed by the Destroyer Escort.

If you insist on leaving out the Pre-Dreadnought you might consider dropping the references to it in the civopedia of the other steam and pre-dreadnought era ships.

 

[phungus420]

The change has already been made in 0.9.8, there is no Protected Cruiser any longer. As far as the civilopedia goes, they are more historical references. However if someone wants to re write any civilopedia article, they are encouraged to do so. Just submit it to me, and so long as it's accurate and superior to the current text being used I'll update it. But I'm not going to go through and edit all the civilopedia articles, that's just boring and tedious work, which I do not get paid to do.

 

[FriendoftheDork]

The change has already been made in 0.9.8, there is no Protected Cruiser any longer. As far as the civilopedia goes, they are more historical references. However if someone wants to re write any civilopedia article, they are encouraged to do so. Just submit it to me, and so long as it's accurate and superior to the current text being used I'll update it. But I'm not going to go through and edit all the civilopedia articles, that's just boring and tedious work, which I do not get paid to do.

Shame shame. Oh well. It will probably be a while before I try that version then.

BTW is it easy for me to get the pre-dreadnought back in? My only skill in modding is reading a text file and changing numbers