Britain/England - Modern Age Civilization speculation

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

So far.... there were not so many revealed Age III yet. BUT it doesn't mean it doesn't worth any discussions.
With this new rules. New UU Rules (that availables eary or mid Age, and all have superior iterations once an enabling technology or civic is researched.

What should UU be?
A. Redcoats. (Infantry class replacements, available earlier)
- Problems is that the term is only hold true for the Tier 1 when they were indeed wore red uniforms. At Tier 2. with Magazine Rifles became common weaponry, they no longer wore reds, instead they adopt a kind of light brown called Khaki (a hindi word means 'dust') and became more generic.
B. Dreadnoughts. (Warships)
- The Royal Navy loves this name so much. they applied this name for various warships since 1573 for a 41-gun Race-built Galleon. and usually 'The Most Powerful Combat Ships' of Royal Navy tend to get this name. The most remembered was however, a word that means 'All Big Gun Large Battleship' since HMS Dreadnought of 1906. which firmly defined what 'Battleship' is, the definition that lasted even today as any combat ship armed with offensive weaponry that's at least 150 meters long, 25 meters wide and 8 meters draught, ,externally armored hull, and armed with a battery of at least three 'big guns battery turrets' (of at least 20 centimeters calibre, each battery has at least two guns).

Dreadnought (disambiguation) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The term even adopted for a nuclear powered submarine of 1960.
And even a naval engineering contest hosted by Royal Navy for new generation Combat Ship (of either Frigates or Destroyers classifications, maybe Cruiser even).

https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/inventions/dreadnought-2050-concepts-showcase-warships-of-the-future/news-story/d27f8d290eeca312935a71edd5845c8d

Mine is Option B, since this this signifies what British Empire once was--Sea King.

Moderator Action: Changed title to make it clear this is not official --NZ

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

I predict that Britain will be unlocked by Mughal.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I predict that Britain will be unlocked by Mughal.

Mughals are also in the Modern Age so that wouldn't work.

I expect the Redcoat as the UU and the Civ civilian UU to be a Royal Marshal, unique land sea and air commander. If they decide to not go military heavy, they also have a massive list of British Engineers to choose from.

 

[Evie]

The Dreadnought (at least the one notable use of the name - the Royal Navy recycling names is nothing of particular interest) is about as far removed from as good unique as it gets. While the design was in fact revolutionary, it was no British revolution: the first person to publicly propose the design was an Italian naval engineer, the first country to approve one for construction was Japan, and by the time the Dreadnought itself was on the slipway the United States had also approved their own design. Dreadnought just had the fortune of being the first to be completed. Then the moment the Dreadnought came off the slipway, everyone and their mother started building more of them, with more revolutions following, and within five years the Dreadnought (and its American and Japanese counterparts, Michigan and Satsuma) were already obsolete, completely outclassed by newer, mightier ships all-gun ships. By the time the first World War came around, neither the Dreadnought nor the American Michigan were significant participants in any of the actions of the war, relegated to secondary roles.

Honestly if I were to pinpoint an early twentieth century British naval innovation as a British UU, it would be the Battlecruiser. They were much more uniquely British in concept (Germany and Japan copied the idea, but few others did), suited to needing to protect the massive commercial line of an immense sea empire (even if, in the event of war, they were actually misused in the main battlefleet, to their sorrow). One of them, the Hood, was the emblem of the Royal Navy for the Interwar period, making it a national shock when it blew up during its duel with the Bismarck at the Denmark strait. And while they might not have given their name to every ship that followed, the Battlecruiser were nonetheless a significant evolutionary step in the development of big-gun warships, presaging the final evolution of the battleship into the Fast Battleships of the 1930s and 1940s, which combined the armor of a battleship with the speed of a battlecruiser and the big guns of both.

 

[Vitruvian Guar]

Mughals are also in the Modern Age so that wouldn't work.

I expect the Redcoat as the UU and the Civ civilian UU to be a Royal Marshal, unique land sea and air commander. If they decide to not go military heavy, they also have a massive list of British Engineers to choose from.

My bad, I meant Chola

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

The Dreadnought (at least the one notable use of the name - the Royal Navy recycling names is nothing of particular interest) is about as far removed from as good unique as it gets. While the design was in fact revolutionary, it was no British revolution: the first person to publicly propose the design was an Italian naval engineer, the first country to approve one for construction was Japan, and by the time the Dreadnought itself was on the slipway the United States had also approved their own design. Dreadnought just had the fortune of being the first to be completed. Then the moment the Dreadnought came off the slipway, everyone and their mother started building more of them, with more revolutions following, and within five years the Dreadnought (and its American and Japanese counterparts, Michigan and Satsuma) were already obsolete, completely outclassed by newer, mightier ships all-gun ships. By the time the first World War came around, neither the Dreadnought nor the American Michigan were significant participants in any of the actions of the war, relegated to secondary roles.

Honestly if I were to pinpoint an early twentieth century British naval innovation as a British UU, it would be the Battlecruiser. They were much more uniquely British in concept (Germany and Japan copied the idea, but few others did), suited to needing to protect the massive commercial line of an immense sea empire (even if, in the event of war, they were actually misused in the main battlefleet, to their sorrow). One of them, the Hood, was the emblem of the Royal Navy for the Interwar period, making it a national shock when it blew up during its duel with the Bismarck at the Denmark strait. And while they might not have given their name to every ship that followed, the Battlecruiser were nonetheless a significant evolutionary step in the development of big-gun warships, presaging the final evolution of the battleship into the Fast Battleships of the 1930s and 1940s, which combined the armor of a battleship with the speed of a battlecruiser and the big guns of both.

NAH!
1. Q: Why Dreadnought is chosen name?
A: This unit can begin as Ships of the Line. (this warship FXis loves to mislable it as Frigate all the times. something a no do to me, this due to different roles. Frigates were fast attacking warships and sometimes did what pirates likes to do most, and even outdid them! Ships of the Line (AKA. Man of War, though the name can also mean any kind of warship regardless of their roles in any navy.) ). Then Ironclad, later the most famous 'All Big Gun Battleship', and ultimately superior missile warships.
2. Q: Why I don't agree with Battlecruiser being British UU?
A: They were ultimately converted to be an actual 'Superdreadnought' battleships. By the time HMS Hood went to action, this ship was already known as 'Battleship' rather than 'Battlecruiser'. And even so thier speeds became the same. but armor and guns upgraded. Those didn't became REAL BB instead became Aircraft Carriers (converted), such as USS Lexington. the 'Battle Carrier' if you will.

https://www.history.navy.mil/browse-by-topic/ships/aircraft-carriers/uss-lexington.html

 

[Haig]

These have been spotted in Civ videos, maybe one of them a British UU. Spitfire fighter would also be possible.

My pick would be Dreadnought, they are such a cool concept.

 

[Evie]

Dreadnought are absolutely cool (and super-dreadnought all the more so), but they're about as far from a unique unit as it gets - three different countries (plus an engineer from another) all came up with the concept separately at around the same time, and the only thing unique about Dreadnought is that it was completed a little earlier than the others. Given that the *whole point* of the Dreadnought is that it was such a revolution that every ship afterward across the world was built along those lines, having it be a unique unit feels entirely out of place.

That said, that unit picture would be a very poor illustration of a dreadnought - or any specific model of battleship ever, really. It seems to be an ungodly hybrid of a Dreadnought (which had a similar layout for its main big gun batteries of five twin turrets, three along the centreline and two on the wings, but no secondary battery to speak of), and a pre-Dreadnought (which used similar layout for a large secondary battery of 8-12 guns, often in single or twin turrets, spread on the wings, but would usually have a much smaller primary battery of 4-6 guns). Here we have a ridiculously top-heavy design with a 5x2 main battery and a 8x1 secondary battery, waiting for a moderate wave to send it to the bottom, or a few rounds of fire to run it out of ammunition. Given the combination of features from dreadnought and pre-dreadnought, I would suspect this is the generic battleship unit, representing all battleship design for the 1890-1918 period. This also makes me tend to think the Dreadnought is not the British UU, because if it were they would have wanted to give the generic battleship a different main battery layout to make them easier to tell apart.

Now, as to your reply, Lonecat.

First, while some people have disputed the classification on the basis of capacity compared to other ship that existed at the time, and it has been informally called a battleship, Hood was formally considered a battlecruiser by the Royal Navy for most of its existence, remained that way, and most naval experts nowaday concur that she still was. While on paper, her armor looked to be closer to the low end of other battleships existing in the 1920s, she was also the first (and, because of the Washington Naval Treaty, last) of a whole new generation of much, much larger capital ships (the difference between Hood and the next-largest battleship or battlecruiser afloat in the 1920s is essentially an entire Dreadnought!). Compared with planned battleships of the same 40 000+ tons generation, such as the British N3s, American South Dakotas (1920 version), Japanese Kiis and Tosas, Hood is significantly underarmored, but noticeably faster. She is much closer to the Battlecruisers of that generation (Amagis, Lexingtons, G3s) in both armor and speed. So, yes, I stand by what I said: Hood was a battlecruiser.

But even if you insist she is not, then I can only point out that everyone who argues for her being a battleship agree on one point: she's a fast battleship, then - representing a transition from the battlecruiser to the fast battleship, exactly as I pointed out.

The idea of the aircraft carrier as a battlecruiser "upgrade" is, for its part, difficult to take seriously. You'Re mistaking the reuse of a handful of hulls (including one battleship!) that were rendered impossible to complete by the Washington Naval Treaty, or useless by war evolution (such as the British Courageous or the third Yamato) for aircraft carrier designs into some kind of much wider connection that never actually existed. The practice was never limited to battlecruisers, but was instead done with "whatever hull we have that we don't need"', and by and large (excepting whatever the british Courageous were), involved taking ships long before they were anything more than a hull - not taking completed warship and turning them into a different kind of warship. Lexington and Saratoga only ever existed as battlecruisers in the dreams of their designers, and the same goes for Akagi (and Kaga as a Battleship). The only sort-of-exception is the British courageous, and no one can make head of tail of those ships, because they were an abomination designed with a very specific (and poorly thought out) mission in mind that never panned out. Battlecruisers never "evolved" into aircraft carriers as a design.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

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These have been spotted in Civ videos, maybe one of them a British UU. Spitfire fighter would also be possible.

My pick would be Dreadnought, they are such a cool concept.

The problem with the 'Dreadnaught' is that Everybody built them. They were, as Battleships, the measure of a navy's battle strength, like the Ships of the Line were in the 18th century. That makes them very bad choices for a Unique Unit, since by definition 'Uniques' are not available to everyone to build.

As @Evie above, and I on other occasions have posted, the Battlecruiser as a British Unique is a far better prospect: they built the first one in the same year they launched the HMS Dreadnaught, and they built a total of 14 of them while the entire rest of the world built only 11. Battlecruisers were built to have the same big gun armament as Battleships but more speed - and, unfortunately for several of them that got into gunfights with battleships, less armor.

But the Battle Cruiser as a ship could still have a Unique Upgrade: Britain, Japan and the United States all converted planned or built Battle Cruisers into Fleet Aircraft Carriers, the next Capital Ship of the 20th century. The reasoning here is that the Battle Cruiser, unlike earlier Battleships, had both the hull size and the speed needed by fleet carriers, and the Japanese Akagi and US Lexington and Saratoga, arguably the most successful conversions, carried as many aircraft as purpose-built aircraft carriers (60 in the Akagi, 75 - 80 on the US ships).

Admittedly, Civ has never bothered to provide sensibly naval Upgrades: the idea that a quadrireme galley hull could be converted into a Caravel sailing hull as a particularly egregious example, but Ironclad to Destroyer and wooden Frigate to Steel Battleship, so an acyual conversion that was accomplished as a real-life 'upgrade' carries little weight, except that it provides an in-game advantage for the Unique.

 

[Evie]

Eh, I don't buy the carrier upgrade. Most of them were a side effect of the Washington Treaty, and involved very incomplete ships (and one of thrm ended up being a battleship conversion instead of a battlecruiser conversion, when the originally planned battlecruiser was lost in the Kanto earthquake). The rest were...whatever the Courageous were (beside a terrible idea). I see battlecruiser and battleship following largely the same upgrade path, personally - presumably to either missile ships or fast battleships, a niche unit.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Eh, I don't buy the carrier upgrade. Most of them were a side effect of the Washington Treaty, and involved very incomplete ships (and one of thrm ended up being a battleship conversion instead of a battlecruiser conversion, when the originally planned battlecruiser was lost in the Kanto earthquake). The rest were...whatever the Courageous were (beside a terrible idea). I see battlecruiser and battleship following largely the same upgrade path, personally - presumably to either missile ships or fast battleships, a niche unit.

In that case, I see no advantage to building the Battle Cruiser or providing it as an alternative. Their only advantage was tactical speed which is negated (as it was disastrously at Jutland) by inferior protection. A Unique without an in-game advantage over what it replaces would be something different in Uniques, but not, I think, a desirable difference.

 

[Evie]

I mean, I honestly don't see Britain having a twentieth century UU as a good direction for them, overall. It doesn't really fit their golden age, nor the age where they built that golden age, but rather an era of desperately clinging to power as the empire faded and other powers rose. Their UU belongs earliervin the age.

But that aside, UUs seldom are particularly deep accurate reflection of the actual pros and cons of the represented unit - they're some kind of iconic unit of their country in that era granted some vaguely related bonuses as a general representation of their civilization's historical success in a particular time window.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

The problem with the 'Dreadnaught' is that Everybody built them. They were, as Battleships, the measure of a navy's battle strength, like the Ships of the Line were in the 18th century. That makes them very bad choices for a Unique Unit, since by definition 'Uniques' are not available to everyone to build.

As @Evie above, and I on other occasions have posted, the Battlecruiser as a British Unique is a far better prospect: they built the first one in the same year they launched the HMS Dreadnaught, and they built a total of 14 of them while the entire rest of the world built only 11. Battlecruisers were built to have the same big gun armament as Battleships but more speed - and, unfortunately for several of them that got into gunfights with battleships, less armor.

But the Battle Cruiser as a ship could still have a Unique Upgrade: Britain, Japan and the United States all converted planned or built Battle Cruisers into Fleet Aircraft Carriers, the next Capital Ship of the 20th century. The reasoning here is that the Battle Cruiser, unlike earlier Battleships, had both the hull size and the speed needed by fleet carriers, and the Japanese Akagi and US Lexington and Saratoga, arguably the most successful conversions, carried as many aircraft as purpose-built aircraft carriers (60 in the Akagi, 75 - 80 on the US ships).

Admittedly, Civ has never bothered to provide sensibly naval Upgrades: the idea that a quadrireme galley hull could be converted into a Caravel sailing hull as a particularly egregious example, but Ironclad to Destroyer and wooden Frigate to Steel Battleship, so an acyual conversion that was accomplished as a real-life 'upgrade' carries little weight, except that it provides an in-game advantage for the Unique.

If you are against Dreadnought as being British UU (British Royal Navy loves the name so much, the first ship named as such was an Elizabethan race built galleon. one or two Ships of the Line was named Dreadnought, an Ironclad was also named Dreadnought, Nuclear Submarine is also named Dreadnought. even the next gen hitech frigate/destroyer project is named such)
then what should be their UU in this game?

Redcoats? nah. the name only holds true at the first tier when they actually wore red coats or tunics. and there were different iterations
- Pike and Shotte
- Fusiliers (and Grenadiers)
- Rifleman
- Magazine Rifle Infantry (Briefly)

Judging from whatever graphics we've seen to date. 'Redcoats' can only be either Pike and Shotte (or Musketeers, depending on what name FXis might use), Fusiliers (or Linear Infantry), or Rifleman (depending on what labels FXis want to use or even if Rifleman did return as separate unit between Fusiliers and 'Infantry').

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Calling it now: No Modern Brits in the base game.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Calling it now: No Modern Brits in the base game.

Ono! what did they become now? English or what?

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Redcoats? nah. the name only holds true at the first tier when they actually wore red coats or tunics. and there were different iterations
- Pike and Shotte
- Fusiliers (and Grenadiers)
- Rifleman
- Magazine Rifle Infantry (Briefly)

Judging from whatever graphics we've seen to date. 'Redcoats' can only be either Pike and Shotte (or Musketeers, depending on what name FXis might use), Fusiliers (or Linear Infantry), or Rifleman (depending on what labels FXis want to use or even if Rifleman did return as separate unit between Fusiliers and 'Infantry').

Redcoats do make the most sense if we look at them upgrading through different tiers. The "redcoats" were worn from the 16th to the early 20th century.

It would be a funny move if they decided to go with the Highlander.

Ono! what did they become now? English or what?

Mexico was just confirmed meaning one of potentially Russia, Germany, or Britain is out of the Modern Age on release. Out of the three Britain is already partially represented by the Normans.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Ono! what did they become now? English or what?

They became absent.

 

[Evie]

The British Royal Navy loves the names Revenge and Enterprise/Enterprize even more than Dreadnought. Victory would probably be way up there too except they loved the 1765 one so much they decided keeping it for 260 years was even better than making new ones. They love, as it turns out, a LOT of names. It's like they have been naming ships for five centuries or something.

There's nothing unique about the RN recycling names (or the USN, or the MN, or...any navy actually, for that matter).

 

[Xandinho]

Mexico was just confirmed meaning one of potentially Russia, Germany, or Britain is out of the Modern Age on release. Out of the three Britain is already partially represented by the Normans.

Can you imagine if one more of them isn’t included at launch and we end up with only two European civilizations in the Modern Era, following the pattern of previous eras?

I still think Germany feels very out of place without a minimally coherent transition, especially if it turns out that the Normans also lead to America.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Can you imagine if one more of them isn’t included at launch and we end up with only two European civilizations in the Modern Era, following the pattern of previous eras?

I still think Germany feels very out of place without a minimally coherent transition, especially if it turns out that the Normans also lead to America.

5555+

But the introductory features video of Civ7 said something about London (Capitol of United Kingdom today)--Began as Roman Outpost, then Anglo Saxons, and Vikings (With Harald Silgurdson maching his last march to claim English Throne), later Normans under Guilliame de Normandie made it his seat of power. And eventually, Englishmen emerged as distinct civ.

Watching Age II Introductory Videofeed now. Benny Franklin leads Normandy