BNW naval units

[ExpiredReign]

I understand why embarked units are easier to kill.

There stats are dramatically changed while they are in that state.
Which why I can't see the need to give naval units an extra buff.

I am not asking for a Modern Armour unit to keep its strength when it is in the water.
It should be penalized. And it is.

Re-read what I said.

And sorry in advance if this sounds harsh.

 

[Stalker0]

If a Civ, never having built a navy, can still move their army from one continent to the other despite the enemy Civ having a navy of -any- significance (even if it is outdated), there's something wrong.

I'll disagree here. If i have a navy i'm still going to kill your embarked units. Now it might take a bit more effort if they have their full strength, but i will still do it.

Further, naval units that can bombard land are stronger than same tech ranged units, they are still worth building.

 

[Thalassicus]

@ExpiredReign
Consider two ships:

13 ship A
13 ship B

With no other bonuses, who is better at attacking embarked units?

 

[ExpiredReign]

The inherent benefits or qualities of MELEE or RANGED ships isn't in question.

The embarked unit is at a disadvantage against both BEFORE any bonuses are given.

To give the MELEE ship a bonus against embarked units because it is a 'hunter' just seems to be too much.

Embarked units should not be comparable to any ship, and I'm not saying anything like that.
I just want to understand the rationale behind giving an already superior unit an advantage against a weaker unit when it doesn't need it, and a different type of unit, the RANGED naval, doesn't have it.

But I'm not advocating wholesale change. If I can't understand it. All's well and good. There is a lot of things about this game, modded or not, I don't understand.
I will still happily play it and just wonder.

 

[Thalassicus]

We want melee ships better at sea than ranged ships, since that's the only thing they can do. Is that true if you look at ships A and B?

 

[ExpiredReign]

I know I should give an answer for this question but I really can't see the relevance to embarked units.

So I will just say let's move on.

 

[mitsho]

*raises his hand eagerly* I know the answer, I know the answer

Melee units take damage when attacking those embarked units, making them weaker in regards to them and requiring more healing time.

You could also give a malus to ranged ships vs. embarked units, would result in the same thing...

 

[Thalassicus]

There are two ways to balance melee & ranged ships:

Ship A: 8 + 25% vs land units
Ship B: 8

Ship A: 10
Ship B: 10 - 20% vs land units

These have similar results. I think bonuses are more fun than penalties, so I chose the first approach.

 

[Stalker0]

There are two ways to balance melee & ranged ships:

Ship A: 8 + 25% vs land units
Ship B: 8

Ship A: 10
Ship B: 10 - 20% vs land units

These have similar results. I think bonuses are more fun than penalties, so I chose the first approach.

Keep in mind that later naval ranged units require strategic resources, so they don't need the strict balancing as early navies do.

I just played with the 3.17 version, I currently feel that the galley and galleases are too strong. Their ranged strength is already great, they do not need a 50% vs cities as well.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Ok. I'll wade into this again.

Firstly. I have never seen any embarked unit sufficiently damage a naval unit to warrant the additional firepower MELEE ships now have.
So why the need to give them a buff?

MELEE ships, by their nature, must take 'some' damage. How much is too much? That is how much until we say "they need a buff against embarked units".

Secondly. I have been frustrated by embarked units that seem to defy the attacks of my ships and somehow survive. (damn missionaries spreading their subversive propaganda.)
So if the intent is to make embarked units easier to kill. Why not lower the defenses of the embarked units? That way RANGED ships can get them too.

Thirdly. I can't believe I ever clogged this discussion with this question.
Surely more productive discussions could be happening?

Sorry guys.

 

[albie_123]

What we're trying to do is give melee ships the hunter role, which involves anti-embarked.

If we let ranged ships do it too, it lessens the importance of melee ships.

 

[ExpiredReign]

What we're trying to do is give melee ships the hunter role, which involves anti-embarked.

If we let ranged ships do it too, it lessens the importance of melee ships.

Strange as it may sound. I know what is trying to be accomplished here.

But I took the 'Hunter' role to be primarily against other "Ships". Embarked units, IMO, shouldn't even warrant a mention.

I don't see how either giving 25% against Land units to RANGED or removing it from MELEE makes 1 iota of difference to the roles of either type.

These pesky little embarked units should mean nothing to either type!

Having said that I am quite willing to be in the wrong camp and move to put this to rest.

Any objections?

 

[Ahriman]

I suggest that if we are giving melee ships a bonus vs embarked units (which is reasonable) then we also significantly increase the embarked strength. That way we get everything we want: melee ships kill embarked units faster than ranged ships do, melee ships don't take much damage from attacking embarked units, but embarked units don't die in a single hit.

Something else I've noticed: in the current version, Frigates are melee and Galleons are ranged. I think it makes more sense the other way around. In particular I'm thinking of the Spanish armada, where the English frigates had to keep their distance and use their superior gunnery against the Spanish galleons, which had poor guns but lots of soldiers on board and so were desperate to try to close to boarding range.

This is the most iconic frigate vs galleon matchup in history.

 

[mitsho]

I'm okay with that.

Though your reasoning makes sense, the Galley-Galleass-Galleon upgrade line seems to make some sense to me. It's easier to remember and not create confusion in comparison to if the unit names "switch" lines. Of course we can do other names for Galley and Galleass as well...

In the end, there's something to be said for both version, but civ's naval warfare is already a huge abstraction, so I'm fine with a bit of wonky names-effect relations

 

[mystikx21]

Concur the frigate/ galleon name is confusing.

I don't see the problem with melee naval bonus against embarked units. It will rarely come up against a player, embarked defence is already 2x vanilla, and it mostly helps the AI (which defends ships poorly and manages troop movement poorly near coastlines). I'm not following how the alternative would be desirable except for realism concerns. The needs of the AI tend to trump the needs of the few.

 

[Thalassicus]

Switching the ship lines gives us:

Trireme -> Carrack -> Frigate : slow ships
Galley -> Galleass -> Galleon : fast ships

I'm not sure this makes sense. Frigates were light ships built for speed, not heavy and slow. It also makes triremes slower than other galleys, which is weird, because the greater number of rowers on a trireme offered it greater speed.

We might be able to fix it if we can think of other names for the ships. We can rename galley to raider. I used the word "galley" because Firaxis prefers to name units by construction, instead of naming by role. What could we rename the Galleass to? It was a rare type of ship.

> new thoughts below

 

[Ahriman]

Trireme -> Carrack -> Frigate : slow ships
Galley -> Galleass -> Galleon : fast ships

I don't think people think about these primarily as fast or slow, I think they think about them primarily as melee or ranged.

The galleass I think should be ranged. It was a mobile weapons platform, not a rammer, whereas IIRC carracks were more likely to still engage in boarding actions.

I would say:
Melee = Trireme -> Carrack -> Galleon -> Ironclad -> Destroyer -> Missile destroyer
Ranged = Galley -> Galleass -> Frigate -> Dreadnought -> Battleship -> Missile cruiser.

If it would help, change frigate to Ship of the Line. That makes more sense as the heavy strategic resource requiring unit. But galleons should be melee.

I don't think that anyone is confused by galleasses not upgrading to galleons. The word root is the same, but I don't think the ship design history is. Galleons were big cargo ships for sailing across the oceans carrying lots of stuff. Galleasses were heavy ships with oars for carrying lots of firepower around the Mediterranean.

 

[Thalassicus]

Thinking about this from a new perspective, the names don't affect gameplay. This means we can make ship evolution, names, and roles to follow a close path to what happened. Let's find something similar to the two main evolutionary ship paths:

______ Cog > Hulk > Carrack > Galleon > Ship of the Line > Ironclad > Battleship > end
Penteconter > Trireme > Polyreme > Galleass > Frigate > end

Modern ships like torpedo boat destroyers are new concepts that did not evolve directly from previous categories of ships. For Civ purposes we can tack those onto the end of the frigate line. Most pre-cannon ships fought with ramming and boarding, while post-cannon ships fought largely at range, so ranged and melee were not separate paths we can use to classify ships. The historical distinction was fast or slow.

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

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

Technically triremes evolved from penteconters, but there's no perfect ancestor we could use for the Carrack. The penteconter appeared first historically, so it's an appropriate ancient-era ship, even if its upgrade to the Carrack is a bit weird.

 

[Ahriman]

I don't think we should be trying to model historic evolution of hulls. What people care about is what they use the ship for, and the biggest difference in that is ranged vs melee.

Having ship lines that do not upgrade to their modern equivalent would be immensely frustrating. It would be very bad for AI gameplay too, to have their age of sail navies become obsolete.

It is much more fun for cavalry to upgrade to landships, even though their purpose is different (mounted units with carbines were never about breaking entrenched dug in foes, which is what landships were for). Similarly, it is much more fun for age of sail ships to continue to upgrade.

Nobody knows what a Penteconter is. We should avoid very arcane unit names.

Creating lots of different lines that don't upgrade all the way through is needlessly complicated and frustrated for players.

 

[Thalassicus]

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

Triremes are a type of galley, like dragoons are a form of cavalry. 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. The word "galley" applies to any rowed ship, like "cavalry" applies to any mounted soldiers. It's a category instead of a type of ship. Penteconter refers to a specific type of ship which evolved into polyremes.

If people don't know what a dragoon, arquebusier, or penteconter is, I always put detailed information about new words in the civilopedia.

Penteconter is the best term I could find to describe ancient ships, but if you can find a more accurate word, I'll go with it.