A case for a revised naval unit tree

[AOS9001]

In this post I will present my idea for a revised naval unit tree. Why do I think we need one? Because sea-based warfare is an afterthought in Civ IV. Base Civ IV’s naval units were clearly thrown in by a team that either didn't know anything about nautical history or simply didn't care, with galleys turning into galleons and caravels turning into frigates, and then those turning into Higgins-boat style transports, CSS Virginia-style coastal ironclads, and then modern destroyers (nothing upgraded into a battleship or submarine if I recall). They added the trireme, ship of the line, missile cruiser, attack submarine, and stealth destroyer in BTS, which was a step in the right direction, but the naval situation was at rock bottom to start with. DoC takes it a step further with many new intermediate units, but I still think there’s still more we can do. My proposal adds more variety and choice for the player and perhaps even AI, if it's smart enough to use it. I think it would make the game more interesting and immersive without getting bogged down in over-granularity.
I have divided ships into seven categories of function: coastal warships, light warships, heavy warships, capital ships, cargo ships, submarines, and aviation ships. Let’s look at them, one category at a time. I am listing only values that are new or changed, if it's not listed, it's the same as in Dawn of Civilization as of this post. Here is a visual aid before I dive into the details:

Spoiler Visual unit chart :

Coastal Warships
As the name implies, these ships are (almost) all restricted to coast, and this is where they excel at combat. They tend to be cheap and have weak base strength, but have bonuses for fighting in their proper tiles.
I didn’t change anything about the War Galley, Heavy Galley, or Galleass. I did change the Torpedo Boat and added a new ship, the Missile Boat. The Frigate fills the gap between Galleass and Torpedo Boat, we’ll look at that later.

Spoiler Coastal warships :

Torpedo Boat
Requires: Engine, Ballistics

Currently, this unit only requires Ballistics and Thermodynamics. Since most spar torpedo (used 1860s-80s) successes were not against aware, maneuvering ships, I think having this unit represent the boats armed with the self-propelled torpedo (thus requiring Engine) would be better. It also has the potential to create a situation between two warring civs where the ironclad is nigh-unassailable by anything but another ironclad.

Missile Boat
Requires: Radar, Oil
Strength: 22
Movement: 8
Cannot Enter Ocean
2 First Strikes
Can Withdraw from Combat (50% Chance)
+75% Coast Strength

The torpedo boat’s child on steroids. Missile boats are a cheap and powerful way to defend a coast, giving production poor civs a way to fight back against industrial giants. These boats should be deadly to anything approaching the coast they defend. The best way to deal with them is with aircraft, other Missile Boats, or Missile Destroyers with the right promotions.

Light Warships
The first light warship is the Caravel, which is more for exploring than fighting. The first true light warship is the Frigate. The next proper light warship is the Destroyer, and the line ends in the Missile Destroyer. These ships specialize in escort, defending against coastal warships, submarines, and aircraft, and getting into places heavier warships really shouldn’t go (at least in reality).

Spoiler Light warships :

Caravel
Movement: 5

The Caravel’s movement has dropped to 5, from 6. In reality, lateen-rigged caravels made for good exploration ships because of their ability to sail so close to the wind; square-rigged ships couldn’t do this. Perfect for charting new routes, but they couldn’t keep up with the square-rigged ships (recall Columbus having to re-rig one of his caravels with square sails because it kept falling behind). This could also bring relief to a player playing the Mayans, it might delay European arrival from 1410 to 1430. Maybe. I also had a note about requiring gunpowder as another tech, but Leoreth went and did this a few months ago.

Frigate
Strength: 10
Movement: 9 (+1 with Thermodynamics)
+50% coast attack

The frigate has a complicated origin, but in short, the idea of a fast, agile, single gun deck ocean-going warship seems to originate in the Low Countries in the early 17th century (Sea Beggars on the Dutch side, Dunkirkers on the Spanish side) and was refined by the French into the ship we see in Civilization IV by the early 18th century. Frigates did not supplant the War Galleon (more on that later) or its immediate successors. Instead, the frigate now gets a bonus to coastal combat, reflecting its origin as a lightweight patrol ship (occasionally equipped with oars) and its increased agility in shallow waters, where it could run rings around heavier warships. This also lets it represent (in abstract) the pojama, xebec, and other 18th century galley-frigate hybrids used in shallow seas in Europe and abroad. Once the three-decker Ship of the Line is available, though, frigates will struggle in the line of battle on the high seas, as they should. It was considered unchivalrous for ships of the line to initiate battle with frigates by Napoleonic times. Frigates are better used for fighting pirates or local enemies in distant colonies, or as coastal defense (for example, a Frigate sortieing out of Amsterdam would be quite annoying for any Spanish War Galleons trying to blockade. This is, in abstract, what the Sea Beggars were doing in the Eighty Years’ War. Unfortunately because of spawn protection, the Eighty Years War can't actually take place in DoC!).
Thermodynamics gives the Frigate +1 movement to represent the shift to wooden-hulled screw ships in the 1840s. Such ships were being built well into the 1870s.

Destroyer (and Canadian Corvette)
Requires: Radio, Oil

The next true light warship. This unit is a representation of all destroyers with uniform caliber main guns, built from the 1910s through the 1950s. The unit is mostly fine as is, but now it unlocks with Radio instead of Electronics, as it has a Digital-era upgrade. This change also applies to Canada’s Corvette.

Missile Destroyer
Requires: Satellites, Oil or Uranium
Strength: 30
Movement: 12
Cargo Space: 2 (Carries Missiles)
Can See Submarines
2 First Strikes
Can Intercept Aircraft (30% Chance)
Can Withdraw from Combat (25% Chance)
25% vs. Missile Boat

The Missile Cruiser’s little sister, replacing the Stealth Destroyer. I basically took the Stealth Destroyer’s stats and gave it some actual missiles to carry and a bonus against the missile boat that’ll be a close match. I’m sure the Zumwalts looked like the way of the future in the mid-2000s, but that didn’t pan out in reality. No country in the world is pursuing a full-stealth warship in 2025. Even the next generation of American missile destroyers will not be so extravagant in their stealth features. The Missile Destroyer is a better representation of end-game light warships for all civs in the game, instead of an American indulgence that was too expensive to be practical. Some of you may recognize this as my continuing crusade against Firaxis’s early-2000s Americentric End of History mindset that infests this game.

Heavy Warships
Breaking with two and a half thousand years of boarding action doctrine, these combatants came to be in the early 16th century. They fight on the open seas, designed for (increasingly) long-ranged gunnery battles with other such warships. The Portuguese Carrack is the technically the first of them, but the War Galleon is the first heavy warship all civs have access to. These promote to Ships of the Line (which forks into the capital ship category too), then to Cruisers, Heavy Cruisers, and then terminating in the Missile Cruiser. They’re more powerful than the light warships, and, starting with Cruisers, cheaper than the capital ships. On the open ocean, these ships can do just about everything except fight submarines or inflict collateral damage.

Spoiler Heavy warships :

Portuguese Carrack (yeah you know I'm gonna babble about this one)
Requires: Cartography, Gunpowder
Strength: 7
Cargo space: 3
Cannot Withdraw from Combat
+100% vs. Heavy Galley, Cog, Galleass

Carracks were a little faster than Caravels due to their square rigging, they keep their 6 movement. A carrack of a given displacement had more carrying capacity than a galleon of the same displacement, due to their increased width and depth of hull, so I’m giving it 3 cargo spaces. This excellent cargo capacity caused the Portuguese to use them on their trading missions to India, China, and Japan for decades after other countries had moved on from the design (as a country with a small population, having more tonnage per sailor mattered a lot). The tall sides and towers of these ships made them very difficult for Middle Eastern and Asian pirates and navies to board, and conversely provided excellent gunnery platforms for the Portuguese, thus the 100% strength against coast-restricted naval units, as well as a base strength of 7. However, because of their heavy and deep hulls, they were slow and cumbersome compared to the Galleons of other European fleets. Their low base strength and inability to withdraw from combat will make them very vulnerable to other European civs once they discover Exploration, and the inability to withdraw from combat reflects the Carrack’s relatively sluggish handling. The 3 cargo slots, city bombardment ability, and low production cost should make them appealing for the Portuguese player to keep using, even after gaining access to faster and stronger Galleons. I think Portugal should retain the ability to produce these obsolete ships until Replaceable Parts (which unlocks the Merchantman cargo ship). It would be a thematic representation of Portugal’s brief technological and economic ascendancy from ~1480-1540, and then the long stagnation under the final three Aviz kings and subsequent Iberian Union, which only ended with the Restoration of the 1660s (which led to Portugal becoming an economic satellite of England/Britain, but I digress).
No doubt some will think this is a much too strong unit. I say Carracks should wreak havoc against civs that don’t have Exploration, and Portugal should have an incentive to keep using ships that are useful for their UHV goals but are easily bullied by Galleons and Frigates, since that’s actually what happened. Upping the carrack to 3 cargo slots is something that's been mused on in the Portugal thread as well.

War Galleon
Requires: Exploration, Gunpowder
Strength: 12
Movement: 7
Can Withdraw from Combat (25% Chance)
Can Bombard City Defenses (-8% Turn)

The vanilla Civ IV galleon 3D model is known as a “race-built galleon” in England. These ships had their forecastles cut down (razed) a deck to avoid disrupting the wind flow and give the sails more space. These were warships, so it’s irked me for twenty years that a transport unit uses a warship as its model (a model properly used in Sid Meier’s Pirates! Live the Life, mind you). Another mid-16th century English innovation was including multiple decks of guns on four-wheeled carriages that could be pulled inside the ship after firing, allowing for safe and fast reloading, a revolutionary change from previous boarding-centric tactics. Many other navies copied this practice starting in the late 16th century, and even the Spanish had started using their galleons as gunnery platforms instead of boarding platforms by the early 17th century. This unit doesn’t represent only the War Galleons of England or the Armada, though, it also represents the non-standardized ships of the line of the first half of the 17th century, thus the substantial strength of the unit. You can still see echoes of galleon architecture even in the heavy warships of the 1670s.
The War Galleon is not replaced by the Frigate. The two existed concurrently for decades in reality, with the Frigate having the upper hand close to shore and the War Galleon prevailing on the open ocean. It’ll take the Ship of the Line to replace the War Galleon.

Ship of the Line
Movement: 9 (+1 with Thermodynamics)
War Galleon upgrades to this

English Man-of-War
Movement: 10 (+1 with Thermodynamics)
War Galleon upgrades to this for England

The Ship of the Line (and English Man-of-War) are the next ships in the heavy warship line, and are in spirit the first ships in the capital ship line. They will upgrade to either Cruisers (heavy warships) or Ironclads (capital ships), depending on the player’s preference. Not much has changed about them besides gaining a little more base movement. The Ship of the Line is able to challenge a Frigate even in its preferred environment; it is a truly powerful unit. With the Ironclad being bumped up by two techs, the Ship of the Line has a longer lifespan in-game.
Thermodynamics gives the Ship of the Line and English Man-of-War +1 movement to represent the shift to wooden-hulled screw ships in the 1840s. These ships were quickly replaced by Ironclads starting in the 1860s, but if the Frigate gets the bonus, they should too.

Cruiser
It’s fine as is, no changes. I’m putting it here for completion. The Cruiser is clearly meant to represent the protected and armored cruisers of the late 19th and early 20th century. However, there’s an awkward gap between it and the Missile Cruiser, so I propose…

Heavy Cruiser
Requires: Infrastructure, Radio, Oil
Strength: 32
Movement: 12
Can Intercept Aircraft (30% Chance)
Can Withdraw from Combat (25% Chance)
Can Bombard City Defenses (-16%/Turn)

This new ship fills the gap the Cruiser’s obsolescence leaves. It is not as great an escort as a Destroyer, but it can hit harder and can do bombardment missions. It is not as strong as and can't do collateral damage like a Dreadnought or Battleship, but can go faster, intercept aircraft, and withdraw from a losing fight like a Destroyer. “Light” and “heavy” cruisers are distinctions referring to gun size in the London Naval Treaty of 1930, I’m using “heavy” here to hearken back to the Heavy Galley, Heavy Spearman, and Heavy Swordsman unit upgrades of the Medieval era. I put it under Infrastructure with the Transport so that it doesn’t immediately replace the Cruiser.

Missile Cruiser
No changes to this unit, it’s fine as is. Why is it slower than the Heavy Cruiser? It’s a trend you see in the real world, cruisers reached their apex speeds in WWII (the Japanese Mogami hitting 37 knots on speed trials), and have gotten slower ever since as weapons and sensors take precedence over tactical mobility.

Capital Ships
At least, the queens of the seas, at least until Carriers show up. These are the strongest (and most expensive) naval units, capable of crushing anything except a coastal warship ambush or an opportune submarine attack. As a rule, they can all inflict collateral damage and do more city bombardment damage their heavy warship counterparts. The first spiritual capital ships are the Ship of the Line (and English Man-of-War), but they have divergent upgrades available to them as we saw above. Should the player choose the Ironclad upgrade path, here’s what they’ll find.

Spoiler Capital ships :

Ironclad
Requires: Thermodynamics, Ballistics

The advent of rifled naval artillery preceded the armoring of ships and was concurrent with the beginning of use of steam engines in ships, therefore it makes sense to me to make both of these techs the requirements for this unit. Pushing Ironclads up to Ballistics lets the Frigate and Ship of the Line continue being useful for longer and take advantage of that movement bonus from Thermodynamics. The Ironclad's reign was historically brief, staring with the French Gloire of 1859 and including the steel-hulled pre-dreadnought battleships of the late 1880s through 1906 (I think it would be nice to use a 3D model from a little later in history than the broadside ironclad but that’s just me). These ships were around for less than 50 years before being utterly supplanted by something much bigger and better…

Dreadnought
Requires: Pneumatics, Refining, Coal, or Oil
Strength: 36
Movement: 8
Causes Collateral Damage (4 units) (max. 50%)
Can Bombard City Defenses (-16%/Turn)

The first all big-gun warship, which spawned an economically debilitating intercontinental arms race that directly contributed to WWI breaking out. It’s slower than the battleship because of its relatively primitive boilers and turbine engines, but it still packs a punch and is extremely dangerous to anything but another dreadnought or battleship. Or a plane, or a submarine, which are how quite a few dreadnoughts met their end in reality. I chose Pneumatics and Refining as the required techs because of the advancing gun technology and fuel oil-fired boilers that were used on the original Dreadnought (and Refining also unlocks the Cruiser, this unit’s lighter counterpart).

Battleship
Requires: Synthetics, Infrastructure

With the addition of the Dreadnought unit, the Battleship unit now represents the fast battleships of WWII, like the Iowa, Yamato, or Bismarck. It now also needs Infrastructure so that Heavy Cruisers and Transports can be built alongside it. These ships are somewhat outclassed by Missile Cruisers in terms of utility, but if you can defend them from submarines and planes they’re still useful for softening up city defenses when you can’t get land-based siege units in (see: how the US Navy used its Iowas until the 90s).

Cargo Ships
They move things from place to place. What more needs to be said? Well, I actually have plenty to say. The Galley and Cog are untouched, but the changes begin with the Galleon. The Merchantman (which the Dutch Fluyt now replaces for that civ), Steamer, and Transport come next, with the self-defending Landing Platform being the Digital-era end of the line.

Spoiler Cargo ships :

Galleon
Movement: 7

The galleon was born from a combination of lateen and square sailing rigs, with the high-sided hulls of carracks and sleek lines of the caravel, sacrificing cargo capacity for speed and agility. Unlike what English propaganda would have you believe, the galleon was not a lumbering beast; they were in fact quite nimble compared to prior ship designs (i.e. the Portuguese Carrack, which this cargo ship slightly outdoes in strength and speed, without giving up its withdrawal chance, unlike the Carrack). Here's the model from Sid Meier's Pirates! Live the Life that would have been more appropriate to use, but Firaxis goofed the 3D assets again (remember in vanilla how they confused Qin Shi Huang and Kublai Khan's leaderheads?).

Merchantman
Requires: Geography, Replaceable Parts
Strength: 8
Movement: 8 (+1 with Thermodynamics)
Cargo Space: 4
Can Withdraw from Combat (25% Chance)

For much of nautical history, ships were made to both fight and carry cargo. This began to change in the second half of the 16th century, and warships and merchant ships permanently diverged in design starting with the Dutch Fluyt. The merchantman represents purpose-built cargo ships used by the European imperial powers from the latter half of the 17th century into the steam age. It carries more than a Galleon, and is a little faster, though it has not improved in base strength. I put this ship under Replaceable Parts because it’s usually the first third row Renaissance tech Europeans get, and it goes with the late Renaissance musketeer unit it’ll probably be carrying to Asia and the Americas for colonialism. Like the Frigate and Ship of the Line, this ship receives bonus movement from Thermodynamics.
Some might ask, do we really need another Renaissance cargo ship? Well, for a good chunk of the Renaissance you’re using the Galleon, and the Steamship has been pushed up in tech, so yes, we do need another Renaissance cargo ship. Besides, there's two different light cavalry in the Renaissance era and two different coastal warships in the Medieval era, why not two cargo ships too?

Dutch Fluyt
Requires Economics, Exploration
Strength: 8
Movement: 8 (+1 with Thermodynamics)
Can conduct Trade Mission in foreign ports? (generates Great Merchant points in capital, gets consumed upon use?)
Cost: same as galleon

Because the Merchantmen of the other European empires were inspired by the Fluyt, I’ve given it the same stats as merchantmen, but it will be available earlier for the Dutch, (hopefully) ahead of the other European powers. These ships were specialized for trade and not made for conversion to warships, built cheaply and quickly, crewed with the bare minimum of sailors, and the Dutch were the first to do this in Europe. I think giving them a Galleon-priced Merchantman that can explore rival territory and can be built one tech row early for cheaper will help them jump-start their empire from a single city.
I’ve seen the idea thrown around about letting certain units conduct trade missions for gold as a way of fulfilling the UHV. This seemed too straightforward for the Dutch, so I thought why not tie the Fluyt to their UHV by letting it generate great merchant points in Amsterdam? This would help with their goal directly and give the player reason to spam these ships like the Dutch spammed them in the 17th century. Increasing the number of Great Merchants in Amsterdam goal would probably be required to balance this ability, but I think it’d be fun. Especially if great merchant points generated scaled with distance and size of foreign city, giving the player major incentive to send these ships all the way to China and Japan, like the Dutch did in reality. It’d make establishing safe harbors like Batavia more important to keep your Fluyts safe from barbarian pirate units. For balance’s sake they would be consumed upon completing this mission (these ships weren’t built to last more than a decade or two anyway, in reality).

Steamship
Requires: Engine, coal
Movement: 9

Steam transport did not become economical until the compound steam engine matured as a design. Ocean-going paddlewheel steamers make their appearance in the 1840s and steamers without sails start appearing in the 1870s. It would take until the 1930s for pure steamers to make sail power entirely irrelevant for global commerce.

Transport
No changes to this unit.

Landing Platform
Requires: Telecommunications, Oil
Strength: 20
Movement: 10
Cargo Space: 5
Can Intercept Aircraft (30% Chance)
Can Withdraw from Combat (25% Chance)

A Digital-era cargo ship. Landing Platform Docks (I’m shortening it to Landing Platform for the sake of space) are troop or vehicle transports that can deploy landing craft from a bay inside the ship, without any need for cranes or nets or ladders. They also often come with means to defend themselves from aircraft, making them less vulnerable than the transports they replaced.

Submarines
There’s very little that’s changed about submarines. I’m adding one new unit: the Nuclear Missile Submarine.

Spoiler Submarines :

Nuclear Missile Submarine
Requires: Nuclear Power, Laser, Uranium
Strength: 28
Movement: 10
Cargo Space: 3 (Carries Guided Missiles)
Invisible To Most Units
Can See Submarines
Can Move through Impassible Terrain
Can Explore Rival Territory
Can Withdraw from Combat (75% Chance)

I always liked subs being able to carry missiles in vanilla BTS, even if they messed up the models and made the WW2 submarine carry them. The Nuclear Missile Submarine trades raw power for the missile capacity, and require Laser so that you can immediately start putting Guided Missiles on them. RIP Tactical Nuke.

Aviation Ships
Carriers, the new queens of the sea (at least for now, the 2020s is taking warfare in a very strange direction). Probably some of the last units you’ll be able to unlock in DOC, for the 2% of players who play to the Global era. Currently we only have the Carrier, then the American Supercarrier. I’ve added the Modern Carrier to the lineup, which the American Supercarrier replaces.

Spoiler Aviation ships :

American Supercarrier
Requires: Nuclear Power

Because America is #1, Leoreth gave the USA an absolutely great third unique unit. Currently it requires uranium, but not nuclear power, which is a little odd. I’m changing it to make this a replacement unit for the second carrier unit in the game (under my proposal). The Americans get access to their unique unit a few techs early, as no one else could field anything remotely similar as the USS Enterprise (CVN-65) or the Nimitz-class until the 2020s. Luckily DoC tech rates move more quickly than reality on average.

Modern Carrier
Requires: Superconductors, Aerodynamics, Oil or Uranium
Strength: 24
Movement: 10
Cargo Space: 4 (Carries Fighters)
Can Intercept Aircraft (30% Chance)
Starts with Medic I, Sentry

It’s basically the American Supercarrier, but with one less cargo slot. This is a reflection of the rest of the world (China primarily, but France, Britain, India, and Russia are all trying) catching up with America’s real life tech and production lead in the 21st century. America will enjoy at minimum a four tech lead on other civs before their supercarriers can be matched, assuming everyone reaches Nuclear Power around the same time, which they won’t. The name Modern Carrier hearkens back to the Modern Armor in vanilla Civ IV.

Assorted comments and ideas that don't fit anywhere else:

• This is a very Western-centric viewing of naval technology and its progression (still a step up from the original's Americentrism). Unfortunately the truth is that changes in Indian Ocean and East/Southeast Asian naval technology progressed far slower than Western naval technology did, which began to rapidly accelerate after 1450. Western naval superiority allowed Europe to dominate the world's oceans for centuries. The era of global European sea dominance, that began with a crushing Portuguese victory at Diu over the Mamlukes and Gujuratis in 1509, would only be ended with the Japanese driving the Royal Navy from Ceylon in 1942. And the Japanese had to adopt Western technology and industry to do it (hey, that's their UHV goal!).
• It would be neat if capital ships (starting with Ship of the Line, or maybe just England's Man of War to make it feel more special, since the British sure love to bombard places) could do airplane-style bombardment missions against ground units. Of course the range would be one tile adjacent, and the damage wouldn’t be as severe as aircraft bombardment, especially for early ships. Why? Because Civ IV doesn’t let siege units attack from cargo ships. This makes attacking one tile island cities a pain in the behind until you get bombers.
• It would also be neat if there was a naval fort building the cities could make, that lets land-based siege units attack ships one tile adjacent. Gunnery duels between warships and forts were certainly a thing that happened in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Heck, a Norwegian fort sank a German cruiser in WWII (with a torpedo, but the guns played a part too).
• A “chance to capture” mechanic for defeated warships would be very in-line with real history. The last capital ship to be surrendered/captured on the high seas was in 1905, the flagship of the Russian fleet at Tsushima (the one that survived long enough to surrender at least). So perhaps starting with Dreadnoughts and Global era naval units, the capturing mechanic would go away.
• Torpedo Boats and Missile Boats could also be able to detect submarines. This could represent subchasers and naval trawlers in abstract and provide coastal warships more to do in the global and digital eras.
• Unrelated to ships, I think the stealth bomber unit should be replaced by the “jet bomber” for the same reasons I want to replace the stealth destroyer with the missile destroyer. Even for the USAF, the single stealth bomber operator as of 2025, the conventional F-111 and B-52 saw far more action than the B-2 stealth bomber. Just more of Firaxis’s End of History early 2000s Americentrism at work.

In Conclusion
I have zero expectation that any of this will ever be used or implemented. It's simply wishful thinking that's been on my mind for the better part of a decade. Since Hickman888 asked me to post, and 1.18 is mostly done, the time seemed right to post this. What does everyone else think? Am I onto something here, or am I just a delusional nautical history enthusiast going off about things no one cares about?

 

[Hickman888]

This was a very interesting read, I did enjoy reading it.

I like your changes, and I like your proposals for news units, filling in some technological/strategic gaps in the unit upgrade tree. Do you have any thoughts on the promotions currently available to Naval units? For example, with Land units, we can give our units promotions like Shock, Pinch, etc. to tailor them for fighting a specific unit type. But for Naval Units, if I for example have a Destroyer that I want to promote to specifically be a Submarine killer, there's not a promotion for giving him +25% vs Submarines.

Also, while on the subject, Great Admirals could be really fun.

It would also be neat if there was a naval fort building the cities could make, that lets land-based siege units attack ships one tile adjacent. Gunnery duels between warships and forts were certainly a thing that happened in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Heck, a Norwegian fort sank a German cruiser in WWII (with a torpedo, but the guns played a part too).

I also think this is a neat idea. It'd have to give +25% strength for the Siege units, because they're generally understrength compared to Naval units. Also, I remember seeing an idea floating around awhile ago, suggesting a Naval Base type of improvement to be built on the Islands feature. I think that also would be neat.

It would be neat if capital ships could do airplane-style bombardment missions against ground units. Of course the range would be one tile adjacent, and the damage wouldn’t be as severe as aircraft bombardment, especially for early ships.

Yes! This would so much for increasing the importance on maintaining Naval Supremacy.

I noticed your link for Sid Meir's Pirates! Live the Life didn't work for me, so maybe check that.

 

[AOS9001]

This was a very interesting read, I did enjoy reading it.

I like your changes, and I like your proposals for news units, filling in some technological/strategic gaps in the unit upgrade tree. Do you have any thoughts on the promotions currently available to Naval units? For example, with Land units, we can give our units promotions like Shock, Pinch, etc. to tailor them for fighting a specific unit type. But for Naval Units, if I for example have a Destroyer that I want to promote to specifically be a Submarine killer, there's not a promotion for giving him +25% vs Submarines.

Also, while on the subject, Great Admirals could be really fun.

I also think this is a neat idea. It'd have to give +25% strength for the Siege units, because they're generally understrength compared to Naval units. Also, I remember seeing an idea floating around awhile ago, suggesting a Naval Base type of improvement to be built on the Islands feature. I think that also would be neat.

Yes! This would so much for increasing the importance on maintaining Naval Supremacy.

I noticed your link for Sid Meir's Pirates! Live the Life didn't work for me, so maybe check that.

Yes, I did toy with the idea of naval-specific promotions, such as a coastal combat promotion, a submarine hunter promotion, etc.

Great Admirals is also a neat idea!

Here's the galleons from the Pirates! game:

Notice the larger forecastle versus the war galleon (what civ uses as the transport galleon):

This has been bugging me since 2005, lol.