Greetings:
Playing in the multiplayer lobbies, I have yet to meet anyone who likes the naval combat in Civ IV. I think I can trace this back to a couple of design decisions... 1) Giving battleships collateral damage, and the taking away their ability to bombard coastal tiles and units. Also the battleships come into play way too late in the tech tree. I noticed when Civ III first came out they had battleships very powerful and very expensive, (as they were in the golden years of civI and II) but it was soon discovered that with collateral damage they could not be left so powerful, so the first patch nerfed them and they have been rarely seen since then... They are still made in games, but they die 1/3 of the time when fighting destroyers in their own coastal waters... So, what's the simple fix for this? I propose some very simple changes, that I think would really bring back some of the flavor of the old naval warfare...
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1) Battleships: 60 Strength, 6 move, 525 shields, +50% vs aircraft, Remove collateral damage, but can Bombard coastal tiles/enemy units 1 hex away (using the aircraft/bomber ability, with the appropriate explosion graphic without having the battleship flying through the air like the planes do, lol). Bombard should take 4 of the Battleship's moves, and can be used against enemy ships, so they can bombard a ship and still have a couple moves left to engage it if it doesn't flee first. Battleships should not be upgradeable from any units, and should become available at assembly line + combustion instead of Industrialization + combustion. Requires Oil or Uranium. When Players have rocketry and electronics their bombard range should be extended to 6 hexes. The current promotions of barrage I, II, III and Precision should be changed to naval equivalents that improve the damage to units/cities with the bombard action. Barrage III (or a Barrage III equivalent called Precision?) should be allowed with the discovery of Radar and could allow for collateral damage. Battleships serve as an early form of aerial bombardment, until aircraft limit their cost-effectiveness. They regain some usefullness later as bases for 'cruise missiles'
2) Destroyers: Str 20, Move 8, 200 shields, +50% vs subs, upgradeable from Frigates, triremes, or caravels. Requires Combustion and Oil, Can spot subs 40% of the time in any given turn.
3) Cruisers: Str 38, Move 7, +40% vs Aircraft, 340 Shields, Require Combustion and either Oil or Coal, upgradeable from Ironclads. Fills in the power gap between destroyers and battleships, makes ironclads more appealing, are available approximately the same time as destroyers, and serve as the primary offensive naval weapon, and, along with transports, an option for players without Oil.
4) Carrier: Unchanged, but increase cost to 225 shields
5) Subs: Unchanged. Cannot See other subs.
6) Transports. Decrease Strength from 16 to 12. Required Combustion and Oil or Coal. Upgradeable from Galleons.
7) Healing Units & Drydocks: Halve the rate of the healing of all ships more advanced than the ironclad when in open waters (not in a friendly city). Drydock then changed to +4 Experience, +35% building rate for ships, and +10% to healing rate. This effectively means ships will have to return to port for complete healing... Fast Cruisers and Destroyers will then have more usefullness as offensive weapons than the slower battleships will become more defensive in nature.
8) Heroic Epic: +60% production, bonus ONLY applying to production of ground units. This structure is probably a bit underpriced for its power as it is, and would make it too easy to crank out powerful battleships... And I've allways felt aircraft were a touch overpowered for their cost anyway, so it will help balance just a tad...)
9) Military Academy: +35% Production (Ground Units only, See above comments)
10) Airports: +35% Aircraft Production. Unlimited Aircraft can be stationed at the city. Allows 1 unit/turn to be airlifted to a friendly city with an airstrip or airport.
11) Airstrips: A new structure. Required to build aircraft. Costs 60 Shields, Allows 4 Aircraft (Any type) to be stationed at the city. Required for airlift of troops to the city via airports.
These last 2 changes effectively sets the production of aircraft back by at least the space of an advanced technology, leaving more space for the battleships to be significant, and making carriers more significant. (It also never made sense to me to be able to fly planes around without airports or air strips!!) It also makes flying troops in more realistic... A newly captured city needs time to repair the airstrip before it can be used for reinforcements. And a tiny island atoll settled just off the coast of an enemy player will take quite a while to clear the land and make a useable airstrip to serve as a base for bombing operations, although an engineer would certainly serve usefull to hurry the process...
Also, knocking destroyers down to an attack of 20 and halving the healing rate greatly softens the shock of the transition between frigates and destroyers in the game. A destroyer now will only be able to kill a couple of frigates before having to return to port to heal for 2-3 turns. Even with the reduced attack, they are still vastly superior to frigates or ironclads for their cost. Also, promoted Galleons upgraded to transports might be a bit usefull as special combat operations ships.
Some may say the cruiser and Battleship are overpriced compared to land units, and on land maps like pangea they will probably never be seen, as opposed perhaps to an occasional destroyer, but on water maps they will still be important for control of the seas, if a player is willing to 'sink' that much production into a unit of that much power, which is the way battleships went anyway... (Pun not intended of course).
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In addition, one could also use the aircraft bombard traits to give artillery the option to bombard tiles/units 1 hex away, at a cost of 1 full move point... Dunno this is optional, but might restore more of the appeal that some of the older civs had. I don't think it should be considered for cannons or catapults it would disrupt the early combat system too much. Also there would be more reason to include paratroopers, an old civ favorite, with these changes, but that also is optional.
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I am posting here in the hopes someone with modding experience will take pity on a Civ veteran and lend a helping hand... It's been over 15 years since I studied any programming languages, and I haven't used java or anything like that since then. I don't think the above changes would take ver long... Only adding 1 new unit, 1 new city building, 3 or 4 new Naval promotions... The rest should be just tweaking existing stats/ablilities, and should really bring back some of the missing flavor of naval/air warfare. If anyone is interested in helping me out with this, I would appreciate it!!
Bigben34
Playing in the multiplayer lobbies, I have yet to meet anyone who likes the naval combat in Civ IV. I think I can trace this back to a couple of design decisions... 1) Giving battleships collateral damage, and the taking away their ability to bombard coastal tiles and units. Also the battleships come into play way too late in the tech tree. I noticed when Civ III first came out they had battleships very powerful and very expensive, (as they were in the golden years of civI and II) but it was soon discovered that with collateral damage they could not be left so powerful, so the first patch nerfed them and they have been rarely seen since then... They are still made in games, but they die 1/3 of the time when fighting destroyers in their own coastal waters... So, what's the simple fix for this? I propose some very simple changes, that I think would really bring back some of the flavor of the old naval warfare...
----------------------
1) Battleships: 60 Strength, 6 move, 525 shields, +50% vs aircraft, Remove collateral damage, but can Bombard coastal tiles/enemy units 1 hex away (using the aircraft/bomber ability, with the appropriate explosion graphic without having the battleship flying through the air like the planes do, lol). Bombard should take 4 of the Battleship's moves, and can be used against enemy ships, so they can bombard a ship and still have a couple moves left to engage it if it doesn't flee first. Battleships should not be upgradeable from any units, and should become available at assembly line + combustion instead of Industrialization + combustion. Requires Oil or Uranium. When Players have rocketry and electronics their bombard range should be extended to 6 hexes. The current promotions of barrage I, II, III and Precision should be changed to naval equivalents that improve the damage to units/cities with the bombard action. Barrage III (or a Barrage III equivalent called Precision?) should be allowed with the discovery of Radar and could allow for collateral damage. Battleships serve as an early form of aerial bombardment, until aircraft limit their cost-effectiveness. They regain some usefullness later as bases for 'cruise missiles'
2) Destroyers: Str 20, Move 8, 200 shields, +50% vs subs, upgradeable from Frigates, triremes, or caravels. Requires Combustion and Oil, Can spot subs 40% of the time in any given turn.
3) Cruisers: Str 38, Move 7, +40% vs Aircraft, 340 Shields, Require Combustion and either Oil or Coal, upgradeable from Ironclads. Fills in the power gap between destroyers and battleships, makes ironclads more appealing, are available approximately the same time as destroyers, and serve as the primary offensive naval weapon, and, along with transports, an option for players without Oil.
4) Carrier: Unchanged, but increase cost to 225 shields
5) Subs: Unchanged. Cannot See other subs.
6) Transports. Decrease Strength from 16 to 12. Required Combustion and Oil or Coal. Upgradeable from Galleons.
7) Healing Units & Drydocks: Halve the rate of the healing of all ships more advanced than the ironclad when in open waters (not in a friendly city). Drydock then changed to +4 Experience, +35% building rate for ships, and +10% to healing rate. This effectively means ships will have to return to port for complete healing... Fast Cruisers and Destroyers will then have more usefullness as offensive weapons than the slower battleships will become more defensive in nature.
8) Heroic Epic: +60% production, bonus ONLY applying to production of ground units. This structure is probably a bit underpriced for its power as it is, and would make it too easy to crank out powerful battleships... And I've allways felt aircraft were a touch overpowered for their cost anyway, so it will help balance just a tad...)
9) Military Academy: +35% Production (Ground Units only, See above comments)
10) Airports: +35% Aircraft Production. Unlimited Aircraft can be stationed at the city. Allows 1 unit/turn to be airlifted to a friendly city with an airstrip or airport.
11) Airstrips: A new structure. Required to build aircraft. Costs 60 Shields, Allows 4 Aircraft (Any type) to be stationed at the city. Required for airlift of troops to the city via airports.
These last 2 changes effectively sets the production of aircraft back by at least the space of an advanced technology, leaving more space for the battleships to be significant, and making carriers more significant. (It also never made sense to me to be able to fly planes around without airports or air strips!!) It also makes flying troops in more realistic... A newly captured city needs time to repair the airstrip before it can be used for reinforcements. And a tiny island atoll settled just off the coast of an enemy player will take quite a while to clear the land and make a useable airstrip to serve as a base for bombing operations, although an engineer would certainly serve usefull to hurry the process...
Also, knocking destroyers down to an attack of 20 and halving the healing rate greatly softens the shock of the transition between frigates and destroyers in the game. A destroyer now will only be able to kill a couple of frigates before having to return to port to heal for 2-3 turns. Even with the reduced attack, they are still vastly superior to frigates or ironclads for their cost. Also, promoted Galleons upgraded to transports might be a bit usefull as special combat operations ships.
Some may say the cruiser and Battleship are overpriced compared to land units, and on land maps like pangea they will probably never be seen, as opposed perhaps to an occasional destroyer, but on water maps they will still be important for control of the seas, if a player is willing to 'sink' that much production into a unit of that much power, which is the way battleships went anyway... (Pun not intended of course).
-------------------------------
In addition, one could also use the aircraft bombard traits to give artillery the option to bombard tiles/units 1 hex away, at a cost of 1 full move point... Dunno this is optional, but might restore more of the appeal that some of the older civs had. I don't think it should be considered for cannons or catapults it would disrupt the early combat system too much. Also there would be more reason to include paratroopers, an old civ favorite, with these changes, but that also is optional.
-------------------------------
I am posting here in the hopes someone with modding experience will take pity on a Civ veteran and lend a helping hand... It's been over 15 years since I studied any programming languages, and I haven't used java or anything like that since then. I don't think the above changes would take ver long... Only adding 1 new unit, 1 new city building, 3 or 4 new Naval promotions... The rest should be just tweaking existing stats/ablilities, and should really bring back some of the missing flavor of naval/air warfare. If anyone is interested in helping me out with this, I would appreciate it!!
Bigben34
