BNW naval units

[mystikx21]

The issue is more the ranged/melee versus speed.

Galleon upgrading from Galleass based on naming conventions is more a nod to the power of alliteration than the roles of ships. Renaming the galley would help there if that's the source of confusion. ...which I see is the direction the conversation went soo.... never mind.

 

[Stalker0]

If we adjust a few names we can have this lineup in Civ:

Penteconter > Carrack > Galleon > Ironclad > Battleship
Trireme > Galleass > Frigate > Destroyer

I'm going to invoke the "it ain't broke don't fix it" clause.

Thal as you stated in the beginning of the post the names don't affect gameplay, so changing them to me is unwarranted. I want to make the names as close to the core game as possible so new players can use the mod and understand what is going on.

Lets be honest, the game is abstract enough, so while the current names may not be the absolute best renditions they are close enough.


Heck I remember some of our early CEP debate, two veterans of the mod where getting confused on forges because they didn't know if the other person was talking about the mod or vanilla! We don't need such confusion just to add a tiny amount of potential historic accuracy.

 

[Thalassicus]

Do we really want to play Civilization if it only includes stuff from pop culture?

My favorite part of Civ is discovery. We have all sorts of leaders, units, and buildings, with info in the civilopedia if we want to know more.

If there's something we don't know, we can right-click to look up details in the civilopedia. If we decided to avoid unfamiliar things we'd have to remove most leaders! Would that make sense? We all know Firaxis makes mistakes, and we shouldn't hesitate to correct those mistakes.

 

[mystikx21]

Dragoons and arques aren't quite as arcane in names as penteconter as most strategy game players are modestly aware of land combat history (see the knowledge of the Spartans' "300" battle on land versus the knowledge of the the huge naval battle that accompanied it). Plus GW Infantry was lame and unimaginative so replacing that was rather straightforward.

And even dragoons still caused a fair amount of annoyance among CivUp users from the comments on those threads seeking to keep vanilla name conventions. I'd say if we are going to use a name for galleys other than galleys, it needs to be recognizable as a result.

But I still think frigates and galleons should be swapped either way. It changes nothing about their unit stats and maintains the conventions from vanilla. I would find that much more confusing (as a new player to the mod) than that galleass would upgrade to frigates.

 

[Thalassicus]

If you want a different name than Penteconter, please suggest one.

I don't get it though, what would people confuse it with? This ship doesn't exist in vanilla. The name "liburna" was unknown and people adapted. Every unit shows what it's good for on the tooltip so no one gets confused. People are smart, especially Civ players.

 

[Ahriman]

I believe you misread - I'm thinking of changing names, not gameplay.

Your proposal read to me like you are planning for the battleship or frigate not to upgrade to anything, but it sounds like I misunderstood.

And your lines seem historically inaccurate, from what I know of nautical history: I don't think frigates evolved from galleasses.
And many of the other line evolved only in a very loose sense.

The archaic word dragoon fell out of use, but it's historically accurate, so you requested we rename cavalry to dragoon and I complied. Arquebusier was another rare word we used to improve historical accuracy for muskets and rifles. It's a similar situation with galleys, triremes, and penteconters.

I don't think they're at the same level of obscurity. Many many people know what an arquebus or musket is. Dragoon still exists as a term in modern English (ever been dragooned into doing something you didn't want to?). Even terms like fusiliers and grenadiers are still around somewhat.
But Penteconter and Liburna are far more obscure. Peopel won't even know from the term that those are ships.

I don't really see a problem with having both galley and trireme anymore than there is a problem with both spearmen and pikemen, or rifleman and infantry.

But I think there is a fair point that it isn't immediately clear which of galley vs trireme should be the melee vs ranged.

One option would be to have the melee ship be called a "Ram" (or Ram Galley?), and then the ranged ship called Trireme.

War Galley is another possibility I guess.

 

[albie_123]

While I'm not going to disagree with you regarding the intelligence of Civ players (hey, I like a compliment as much as anyone ), I am going to suggest just sticking with the current names. They work, and they're easier to follow, especially the Galley - Galleass - Galleon line. Sure, it might not be historically accurate, but to be perfectly honest, neither are most of the units.

Either way, more important to me than the names is the art used. We need unique art for each unit, and if we can't find relevant art in-game, then it's time we started using outside art - the unit graphics subforum is full of it.

 

[Thalassicus]

The only time I've heard "dragoon" in my lifetime was a Starcraft unit.

 

[MrL567]

If you want a different name than Penteconter, please suggest one.

I don't get it though, what would people confuse it with? This ship doesn't exist in vanilla. The name "liburna" was unknown and people adapted. Every unit shows what it's good for on the tooltip so no one gets confused. People are smart, especially Civ players.

Here is a very easy reason K.I.S.S or Keep It Simple Stupid. It would be much less complicated if we did not change the names. Keep the names simple. Rather be a bit off then too complex.

 

[Thalassicus]

I'll leave it unchanged, then.

 

[mystikx21]

Dragoon is pretty common in strategy games as an alternative mounted unit typically used to carry rifle units around faster on battlefields pre-mechanization. (I also was familiar from SC of course). I don't think that's a problem.

The issue there is people know more about ground combat than naval history. Liburna I'd heard of, mostly from studying Roman history. Galley is a term most people are familiar with (if for no other reason than that their kitchen may be one). We could change it to War Galley/Ram Galley, something like that quite easily if it is confusing in the upgrade path (depending on which one is ranged and which is melee).

The confusion with galleons as ranged/strategic instead of frigates is the change in game function from default. I think those were fine and that upgrading Gallaess to Frigates rather than Galleons was fine also. I certainly don't see Galleons as ships capable of attacking and bombarding in a significant way. Frigates I get.

 

[xInVicTuSx]

Wow Penteconter is pretty obscure Thal... I'm always reading up on Classical history and got my BA in it and I am still pretty unfamiliar with it, probably because it was chiefly important in the archaic period.

If they are the first ship available then I guess I'm ok with it, but if they come after Triremes that doesn't make much sense as the design was already out of date by the time Triremes came along. Really if it wasn't for the Carthaginian UU then I would say Triremes be the melee ship and Quinqueremes be ranged as those two were the most popular in ancient sea warfare.

Also I don't find Dragoon or Arquebusier that obscure... Liburna is somewhat obscure, but Penteconter is obscure.

You could try Bireme perhaps?

 

[Tomice]

Stupid thing is: Bireme, Trireme, Quinquereme, ... all basically just say how the oars are arranged on very similar ships. They all fought with similar strategies.

The only difference I've found is how Athens focused on more agile ships ramming the opponent, while Sparta and Rome carried more "marines" onboard.

Ship artillery was more common than I imagined before doing some research, but I didn't find any source that they called the ships differently. Here's an interesting passage from wikipedia:

A change in the technology of conflict had taken place to allow these juggernauts of the seas to be created, as the development of catapults had neutralised the power of the ram, and speed and manoeuvrability were no longer as important as they had been. It was easy to mount catapults on galleys; Alexander the Great had used them to considerable effect when he besieged Tyre from the sea in 332 BC. The catapults did not aim to sink the enemy galleys, but rather to injure or kill the rowers (as a significant number of rowers out of place on either side would ruin the performance of the entire ship and prevent its ram from being effective). Now combat at sea returned to the boarding and fighting that it had been before the development of the ram, and larger galleys could carry more soldiers.

The most advanced ancient ramming ship was the Athenian trireme, while roman quinqueremes were larger, carried more "marines" and probably often had catapults and ballistae.

Is this a start? We plan to cut the quinquereme as Carthaginian UU anyway, do we? And Trireme/Quinquereme are established names already.

We could call the ancient melee version "ram trireme" and the catapult version quinquereme.



EDIT: Damn, we agreed that the first ship available should be ranged...

 

[Thalassicus]

We could call the melee version a "rammer" and ranged version a trireme. Or just go back to trireme and liburna, since those did sorta make sense.

 

[ExpiredReign]

I can't believe the level of discussion around the propriety of ship names.

It does not matter what a unit is called. Other than the education of the player.

If you honestly believe people who know what 'arquebus' are, can't figure out what 'pentecoster' are. Then you are deluding yourselves.

Thal, if you want to change them, change them.

But, if the way a unit is used is going to change, that needs to be discussed.

If I start a game and, without being aware of changes, select say a "Galley", in the hopes of pounding coastal settlements and barb camps only to find on use it has now morphed into a MELEE only ship-killer. I will be p****d. (Actual ship name in example is just for argument. Not meant to relate my preferred role.)

On the other hand if I look for my "Galley" and find it is now called something else. I'll go "Oh really, I did not know that, that's interesting." And then quickly get back to playing. If the role of ship fits my purpose at the moment then that is fine.

I did it with 'arquebus'. I did it with 'dragoon'. I could do it again with any other unit.

For all it matters the line of ships could be called: "Sleepy, Dopey, Happy, ... Doc".




[Sorry. Didn't sleep well. A bit edgy this morning.]

 

[mitsho]

I'm thouroughly confused with regards to names now. Have to agree with ExpiredReign, pick one and be done with it.

Btw. has the Caravel been scrapped? It has been a staple name in civ games so far and often is equalized with "ship to reach other continents with".

We can start with Bireme as the first (ranged) one, then the trireme (three rows are obviously more advanced than two ) and then go towards Caravels, Galleasses, Galleons, Frigates and so on.

Different issue:

Raiding Trade Routes by Barbs (and AI players) is too easy in that it goes too fast. We have higher movement at sea so it's easy to move in onto the route for an enemy ship. That means even if we have a few ships in the ancient era, we can't kill the unit in one turn. And that is all it takes often. Is it possible to require raiding taking two turns? (also what use is there for the iconed unit moving along the route, the trade route can be raided anywhere, right?)

 

[Stalker0]

Raiding Trade Routes by Barbs (and AI players) is too easy in that it goes too fast.

I was going to mention this myself, is anyone else having a lot of trouble protecting long trade routes? Even with a navy, unless i am manually following a trade ship it seems extremely difficult to avoid them getting picked off. Is there a follow command or something of the sort that would help?

 

[stackpointer]

I don't really understand the resistance to changing the names of the ships. Part of the Communitas is flavor changes. In GEM, the names of various buildings, units and even technology names were changed for flavor reasons. If players new to the mod isn't using the tooltips to check buildings/units/technologies stats then they'll have a hard time since there are much more significant changes than just name changes.

 

[mystikx21]

Stack, this seemed pretty clear why there's some resistance.

If I start a game and, without being aware of changes, select say a "Galley", in the hopes of pounding coastal settlements and barb camps only to find on use it has now morphed into a MELEE only ship-killer. I will be p****d. (Actual ship name in example is just for argument. Not meant to relate my preferred role.)

- this. Which mostly applies to the frigate/galleon issue.

The galley/pentecoster issue doesn't really bother me, as with other renames, it is a much simpler adjustment to say "hey what's that, oh it's a galley with a strange name". It may be confusing, and may not be advised in all cases, but it is a much simpler change to adjust to or fix if it is confusing. The frigate/galleon swap is a lot closer to submarines being melee instead of ranged because it changes the roles, and does so in an ahistorical way for that. I don't really see "galleons" trolling down the coastline bombarding things, or being a "strategic" naval unit.

 

[Ahriman]

I have no problem in principle to changing names, but the names that we go with should make sense to the player, based on historic or plain English reasoning, or how things work in vanilla.

In the absence of convincing reasons to change (and eg there are convincing reasons to have early game ranged ships), I think we should stick with vanilla names. Which means that frigates are the age of sail ranged ship. It's easier to to change privateers into galleons than it is to change frigates too.

But this isn't that big a deal, it's a low priority issue. I think we've spent too much time here already.