(9-VT) workboat is "captured" on pillage

[Tekamthi]

Proposal:

- workboats continue building water improvements as per status quo
- workboat can be captured and functions same as worker captures, except only by water domain units
- barbarians can pillage water improvements
- on pillage, workboat-built improvement is destroyed and pillager gains a workboat at the pillage plot
- workboat can change port

Rationale:

There is a derth of naval targets and objectives, let's improve the workboat and use it to increase depth of naval play.

Counter proposal to

Thread '(9-WD) Workers Can Improve (And Barbs Can Pillage) Sea Resources, Delete Work Boats'

Jan 11, 2026

Proposal:
- Remove Work Boats as a unit.
- Barbarians are allowed to pillage sea resources (they are currently disallowed from doing so).
- Workers can improve sea resources upon learning the prerequisite techs.
- Polynesian Melee and Gun units use the new build time for Fishing Boats (they currently build them instantly).

Improvement​	Build Time​
Fishing Boats	500 (6 turns on Standard)
Offshore Platform	700 (8 turns on Standard)

Rationale:
- It's not particularly fun...

• Recursive
• Replies: 23
• Forum: Failed Proposals

• 

edit: amended for simplicity

 

[FPXI]

I like this better. One issue I can see though is that 10 turns is going to be a pretty short time to go get the boat in a lot of early game situations. That IS a good incentive to build early naval units, but might be a little more annoying than we'd like. Like this idea a lot though.

 

[Stalker0]

MAGI: @Tekamthi Needs more clarification on "military naval unit of the era". It could be perhaps "highest tier naval melee of the owner" or something like that

 

[Tekamthi]

MAGI: @Tekamthi Needs more clarification on "military naval unit of the era". It could be perhaps "highest tier naval melee of the owner" or something like that

Sure lets go with that -- OP updated

 

[Stalker0]

- on pillage, workboat-built improvement is destroyed and pillager gains a workboat at the pillage plot
- after ten turns in barbarian control, a workboat converts to highest available naval melee of the improvement/workboat owner

@Tekamthi got a new confusion to fix.

First sentence, you are saying the pillager gets the workboat. The second sentence implies it might be for the imporvement owner, which is the original person.

Who is getting this workboat?

 

[Tekamthi]

@Tekamthi got a new confusion to fix.

First sentence, you are saying the pillager gets the workboat. The second sentence implies it might be for the imporvement owner, which is the original person.

Who is getting this workboat?

i intended this as the owner in the same way worker has an owner even when captured ie original player that created it -- in this case it would be the owner of the pillaged improvement/plot

 

[azum4roll]

While technically possible, I'm not sure of the implementation details of creating a new unit and then immediately assigning it to a new owner, AND converting said unit to another unit 10 turns later.

UX-wise, the captured work boat would need to have a highlight (and turn count) so everyone knows it'll turn into an enemy boat in X turns. A promotion isn't adequate (think of the non-EUI players!)

Can the captured work boat be used to improve a sea resource?
What happens if Civ C captures a work boat that belongs to Civ B but originally owned by Civ A?
Can a work boat be captured before improving a resource?

 

[Tekamthi]

Can the captured work boat be used to improve a sea resource?

Can a work boat be captured before improving a resource?

yeah they should function and capture much like a worker does, except only by its own domain ie naval units

is there any reward for disbanding a workboat rn? maybe we add one or increase w/e it is now...

What happens if Civ C captures a work boat that belongs to Civ B but originally owned by Civ A?

it should ideally get the same 'return to player/keep it choice' as worker

UX-wise, the captured work boat would need to have a highlight (and turn count) so everyone knows it'll turn into an enemy boat in X turns. A promotion isn't adequate (think of the non-EUI players!)

i think we could make do with the functionality of Plot:AddPopupMessage() on mouse hover and maybe on human turn start, or other triggers.

I'm not sure of the implementation details of creating a new unit and then immediately assigning it to a new owner, AND converting said unit to another unit 10 turns later.

can't we just spawn as the pillaging player then use unit:SetOriginalOwner(), or dll equiv? Or... the unit conversion is somewhat an optional aspect of this proposal -- we could leave it out for simplicity

edit: amended out the unit conversion aspect for simplicity and ~parity with worker capture

 

[hokath]

MAGI have voted this as too speculative.

Proposal Vetoed

 

[Recursive]

Timestamp post to arrange all the threads in a neat order.