Any new stuff with the Navy?

[cerebus]

Historically navies were built to protect or pillage sea-going trade. Look at all the loot the Spanish brought back from the new world. In CivIII terms you can't loot or kill the ocean going trade of another civ, once a harbor is built all the wealth just flows freely over the water. The Japanese in WWII invaded many islands to gain their nature resoureces, oil, rubber, etc. They then had to ship these items back to the industries that needed them in Japan. This gave US subs the oppertunity to sink them and deny Japan those resources.
I think that when you have a harbor that is trading with other cites or civs, trade ships should be created automatically that will phyiscally move the goods from city to city. These trade ships would be made when the trade route is opened, maybe for a one time gold cost to open the trade route but not shield production, and are in total control of the computer not the player!!!
The player can find out what is on the ship and where it is going and can asign a ship of his to convoy with it to its destination for protection. Other civs and barbs can attack these trade ships, shinking or looting them, to distrupt trade and resources.
Civs would be more apt to build navies to protect all their island wealth

 

[steviejay]

cerebus, that would be amazing! it would be very similar to CTP, with the blue trade routes.

The idea of having trade ships would be really cool cause it would really improve the realism, you might even be able to force shortages upon the Civ, where say they only have enough Uranium to make 3 ICBM's or something like that, just like Germany during WW1, the British Navy stopped any supplies getting to the German Empire so they could not fight effectively.

I hope that is added to C3C cause it is a really good idea and would make games on Huge maps really interesting cause you would need a huge navy to keep an eye on all of your trade routes

 

[LouLong]

Actually it is much better an idea than in CTP because in CTP the trade line was there all the time so you would need to destroy it every turn + it was not physical so no looting either.

Now the pbs :
- do you use these transports only between two civs or for your own supplies as well because then that would make an awful to of them (AI time + player time increases) ?
- the destruction of a convoy means capture of resources (in gold or brought home ?) or destruction of them ?
- then you should not be able to build another convoy the following turn (there should be a few turns disruption) ?
- how do you set up the protect convoy thing ?

 

[cerebus]

the trade ships would be created every so often, you wouldn't have to use shileds and set city production to build them. they have a destination city and they can't hold any other units. to protect them you can move any number of other ships other them and there would be an option of "join convoy". along with resoureces they can also represent the gold in taxes that are contributed by islands

 

[steviejay]

I think convoy's would be really good cause its a bit unrealistic that you build a harbour on the other side of the planet and then automatically you can use as much of the recource as you want

 

[frekk]

Originally posted by Pembroke
I think that the biggest problem in the nautical aspect of civ is not any lack of units but the lack of strategic objectives, i.e. there simply are too few worthwhile jobs you can do with your navy. Your land units are essential: you can't win the game, indeed you can't even survive, without having adequate land forces whereas a navy is basically a "nice to have" and necessary really only when ferrying troops and settlers across the seas.

A navy isn't _necessary_: you can win without it, and usually without too much trouble either.

This is, of course, ridiculous. Navies and sea battles have played a major role in OTL history and the control over the seas and sea routes were important. Ships were much more than just ferries carrying people.

What we need are jobs for our ships: controlling trade routes, pirating trade routes, protecting your own routes, projecting influence both cultural and political, capturing enemy vessels, raiding coasts for slaves and gold, guarding your coasts and keeping it free from foreign powers (and I mean _without_ having to build that ridiculous "Great Sea Wall Of China"), and all the other many things that ships were designed for in the first place...

Make navies useful in the game and the players will build and use them. Otherwise they are just "sugar coating".

Yep, I totally agree. IMHO some of the solutions I can think of would be to give all ships - even galleys - ALOT more move points, to reflect their mobility aspect (at least up until the modern age). A second thing I would do, if it was possible, is allow them to blockade harbours somehow.
I dont know how I would fix it, but I have alot of problems with the Age of Sail the way it is now. I never build frigates etc because they become obsolete much too fast, but in the real world, these types of vessels exported European culture and power to the entire world, and did so for about 250 years. In the game they're obsolete about 10 turns after you have a useful number of them and yet, battleships hang around forever. Battleships in real history lasted from shortly before the turn of the century to the end of WW2 at which point they became obsolete (although the US maintains a few as flagships, they aren't really necessary or effective and have no real role that something else doesn't do better).
Another thing is that Carriers don't seem to have the revolutionary effect on naval war that they should have unless you mod planes for lethal bombardment of sea units. IMHO that ought to be default. Aircraft are lethal to naval forces.

 

[dexters]

The problem I see with this is that it gives human players too much advantage since I doubt there will be enough programming hours to devote to this to program an AI capable to doing this against each other and against human players.

 

[Schmek]

I'm not sure but if you place your ships on every watery square around a habor, it is blocked,... So you can actually block a harbor, it will not matter much for trade unless you block all harbors of an island, but still I believe you can

 

[frekk]

Originally posted by Schmek
I'm not sure but if you place your ships on every watery square around a habor, it is blocked,... So you can actually block a harbor, it will not matter much for trade unless you block all harbors of an island, but still I believe you can

I think so too, but it should be much easier than that - like 1 (war)ship in any adjacent tile.

 

[Pembroke]

[Ed.: This is weird. Now my post was added to the middle of this thread instead at the end...]

How about these:

Blockade: Instead of surrounding a city completely with ships, you park any amount of ships you like near a city (the city radius or perhaps at most one square further) and give the command "blockade". This will have the sea trade from that city to have an X% chance of being blocked for that turn the percentage being proportional to the number of ships on blockade duty. Historically no blockade was ever completely succesfull and even a very light blockade had some effect.

Pirate #1 : You give a ship the command to "pirate" and it will sail randomly in free waters "attacking" those invisible enemy merchantmen, e.g. each turn you will get a small cut siphoned off from other civs' treasuries, perhaps proportional to how close to a civ you are. This has the advantage that the implementation would be rather simple to do.

Pirate #2: The sea trade routes between the civs can be toggled visible in the map (e.g. shortest route as calculated by the path finding algorithm or something) and to pirate you park your ship on a route of your choosing and give the "pirate" command. This has the advantage that you can target specific civs (i.e. gold only stolen from them) and that you can go hunting pirates raiding your trade routes.

Coast Guard : With this command your ship assumes patrolling duties around the square you parked it. The ship doesn't move but it has now a Zone Of Control similar to the Civ2 land units, i.e. a foreign ship can not move from one ZOC square to another ZOC square unless it attacks. This way you can keep your coasts reasonably well guarded without having to completely fill your coastal waters with ships.

Capture : Separate the attribute "capturable" from the attribute "defenseless" and make the former conditional on losing the battle. This way you could flag all your pre-modern ships "capturable" meaning that if they lose a battle against another ship they are captured by the winner. Nice addition: give it a 50% chance of success, i.e. half of the time the losing ship changes ownership and half of the time it sinks. Defenseless ships could still have a 100% chance of being captured, though.

Coastal Raid : In addition to bombardment the ships can also attempt a "coastal raid" operation against a city. If succesfull you get randomly some gold, a slave, destroy production, or destroy an improvement, e.g. similar to what happens when a barbarian unit enters a city: treasury loss, population loss, improvement/build loss. The chance of success should depend on defending units and city improvements, which would finally make it worthwhile to build those coastal fortresses...

 

[one_man_assault]

All theese ideas are great. In archipeligo (spelling?) maps navys are very important for defense. Yet defense shouldnt be the only purpose of a navy. Trade routes like the ones in CTP or even Galactic Civilization is the way to go. Ships should be properly automated to secure theese routes that way we wont have to micro-manage every ship entering and leaving your ports (well some folks like mirco-managing but I think there should be limits) Air Sea and land bombard ment should become lethal. It may be overpowering but thats exactly why we should have them. Pea shooting artillery inflicting one hp loss to a spearmen isnt exactly realistic...

 

[Hellfire]

Anyone thought about perhaps giving boats additional movement points on larger maps? One reason navies are so useless is because once you have a presence on all continents, all you need is an airport to shuttle your units across the world.

I also like the idea about giving navies a job. Perhaps you could use a navy like a blockage. You can't trade through sea squares where ships of someone you are at war with are currently residing.

 

[WillJ]

Originally posted by Hellfire
I also like the idea about giving navies a job. Perhaps you could use a navy like a blockage. You can't trade through sea squares where ships of someone you are at war with are currently residing.

If I understand you correctly, you can already do that (and you don't even have to be at war with the blockade's victim).

 

[Sarevok]

Id like to see that convoy thing...alot

 

[frekk]

Originally posted by one_man_assault
All theese ideas are great. In archipeligo (spelling?) maps navys are very important for defense. Yet defense shouldnt be the only purpose of a navy. Trade routes like the ones in CTP or even Galactic Civilization is the way to go. Ships should be properly automated to secure theese routes that way we wont have to micro-manage every ship entering and leaving your ports (well some folks like mirco-managing but I think there should be limits) Air Sea and land bombard ment should become lethal. It may be overpowering but thats exactly why we should have them. Pea shooting artillery inflicting one hp loss to a spearmen isnt exactly realistic...

Actually artillery is quite realistic. Artillery doesn't actually destroy armies. It kills a small number, nothing even that signifigant. What artillery DOES do in war is cause what's called "suppression" which means that the unit under fire is unable to move, receive effective orders, etc, and is in a very poor defensive position, highly susceptible to a concerted attack. In civ this is represented quite well by the nonlethal artillery.

However - aircraft should *definately* be lethal to ships. Ships are extremely vulnerable to airborne attack. As far as artillery - coastal guns are notoriously ineffective against shipping, for a variety of reasons. In my scenarios, only ship-to-ship and air-to-ship bombardment is lethal.

Another thing I do to reflect the value (historically) of naval operations is to increase dramatically the movement of naval vessels. Galleys stay at 3 moves, but caravels go to 4, galleons 6, frigates 7, privateers 8, battleships transports carriers and subs 10, and destroyers and Aegis at 12. On a very large map this seems to be realistic. In the real world, on a large earth map, in the time it takes cavalry to move along roads the length of, say, New England (about 1 turn) a galleon ought to be able to cross the Atlantic with time to spare. Certainly where there are no roads it should be much much faster to move forces by sea than by land.

But the main problem I have is blockades. You shouldn't need to surround a harbour in every square to form a blockade. One warship ought to be enough - given that the warship unit probably represents a small fleet of such ships, except perhaps in the case of battleship or carrier. I have on experiment to try, which is to set the warships with a zone of control, and see if trade is blocked in the zone or not. If this works, I might not have any complaints at all.

 

[SuperBeaverInc.]

I think that the navy should definetely be improved. It would be great to have giant naval battles like in real warfare (Jutland, Coral Sea, etc.). I almost never build navies anymore. I usually build enough transports to carry the force I want to send across the coast, and add in a few escort ships to protect it. As well, air units should be given lethal bombard against naval units. WWII showed that a strong air force launced from a carrier could do great damage to an enemy fleet. They also need to get some new sea units. Before buying Civ3, I had never even heard of the Man o' War(I heard of the jellyfish, but not the ship ) Dreadnaughts should be Englands UU if they are going to have a naval unit, or at least make it available. An upgraded Carrier to Nuclear-powered Carrier would be nice.

 

[Vietcong]

a number of new unist shold be added, like the ship of the line, maby a patrol boat unit (it whold be weak but made for scouting. like a scout on land).. subs shold be able to cary cruis misales ect..

 

[MarineCorps]

I would like to see another transport unit that appears in the modern age with the ability to carry 10 or 12 units it should also be a little faster (a hovercraft or that hydrofoil the navys testing perhaps). 2 or 3 new warships also would be nice to have(as to what they would be, I have no clue). As an add on to what Pembroke said, a escort command/battle group command would be useful.

 

[FlakJacket]

Originally posted by Pembroke
What we need are jobs for our ships: controlling trade routes, pirating trade routes, protecting your own routes, projecting influence both cultural and political, capturing enemy vessels, raiding coasts for slaves and gold, guarding your coasts and keeping it free from foreign powers (and I mean _without_ having to build that ridiculous "Great Sea Wall Of China"), and all the other many things that ships were designed for in the first place...

On the trade routes thing, and specifically blocking them, why not give naval units a Zone of Control- say one square surrounding them- for this? This would reflect the ship patroling that nine square area for enemy freighters. It would mean you only had to space them every three squares instead of a solid line- so it'd go ship, sea sea ship, sea seas ect.

Of course since that represents a fair area of sea, why not make it so that there's only a 50/50 chance or so of the warship stopping shipping- and the trade route- in the eight squares surrounding it.

Then if you want a heavier blockade you could overlap ZoC- say ship sea, ship sea, sip sea etc.- and that'd up the chance of catching enemy shipping and closing the trade route to something like a 65/70 chance. Or use the solid wall if you want to guarentee it.

Link it up with the earlier suggestion of being able to toggle it so you can see on the map where trade routes are, or are at least possibe, and I think something like this could be fun.

 

[MarineCorps]

Oh yeah the transports should be able to carry APCs. Think about it a transport carry 8 APCs, with 10 units in each APC, a single transport could carry 80 units.