Discussion of methods for increasing the value of navies

[AbbieRevo]

Consensus on these forums seems to be that of all the types of units in the game, naval units are the least useful, with naval UU's, UA's and SP's being among the least valued.

This runs contrary to history, where navies have been a decisive strategic element of the success or failure of campaigns from Xerxes's failed invasion of Greee, the Roman Civil war between Augustus and Antony, the failed Spanish invasion of England, the American Revolutionary War (the first one ), and very notably in both World Wars.

The root cause of this discrepancy between Civ V and Historical reality, I believe, is in the corresponding discrepancy between the historical value of waterway in trade and supply, and their representation in Civ V, which is mostly as a geographical barrier, and little else.

Im hoping to stimulate a discussion regarding means by which the value of navies to successful gameplay can be increased.

 

[Roxlimn]

The chief problem is that the AI's naval acumen is even worse that its land acumen. I've used waterways in Continnts map to devastating effect. The importance is definitely there, but it always feels a little like cheating because the AI is so bad at it.

 

[basta]

Programming the AI to be at all effective in naval combat is basically impossible--it's simply too complex.

That said, embarked AI units should not be able to be "erased" simply by running them down with a caravel. This mechanic is wildly OP.

Secondly, they should be going somewhere once they are embarked, and preferably en masse, not just floating about their shores like they're on a beach holiday.

 

[insaneweasel]

Here are some ideas:
-Make ships do a LOT more damage to cities. Triremes are a joke, and even a squad of battleships/destroyers barely do enough damage to a decently-sized city to justify their cost. If ships did 2-3 times more damage to cities, navies would have an automatic boost. It would be historically accurate too.

-Drastically boost the plunder from blockading. If you could get 300 gold from 5 turns...

-Have more types of ships...privateers, galleons, etc

 

[isthmus]

I'd prefer blockades to have more effect than they currently do..
Some ways of acheiving this would be to:
a) Prevent cities from attacking naval units
b) Increase penalties from blockades, maybe as well as blocking sea tiles it should reduce food and happiness.
c) Teach the AI and barbarian ships to recognise that blockading a city is a good idea rather than moving out of blockade range every turn.

To counterbalance this, coastal cities should be made more powerful - some of the greatest cities in both history and modern times are coastal. Maybe up the coastal tile yields, or trade route bonuses. This way a coastal city becomes more valuable, but requires at least some naval defense to preserve its advantage.
Currently coastal cities are percieved weak usually, unless they have more than one sea resource. Harbours and seaports improve resources quite nicely but normal sea tiles are pretty rubbish...

 

[Furycrab]

How bout simpler ideas, like giving Naval units incredible resistance or immunity to City Bombard. Right now it's not very profitable to harass a city since it's not only a slow process, but a few turns of being in range of the city and you already have to turn tail... All the way to friendly territory.

 

[AbbieRevo]

I'd prefer blockades to have more effect than they currently do..
Some ways of acheiving this would be to:
a) Prevent cities from attacking naval units
b) Increase penalties from blockades, maybe as well as blocking sea tiles it should reduce food and happiness.
c) Teach the AI and barbarian ships to recognise that blockading a city is a good idea rather than moving out of blockade range every turn.

To counterbalance this, coastal cities should be made more powerful - some of the greatest cities in both history and modern times are coastal. Maybe up the coastal tile yields, or trade route bonuses. This way a coastal city becomes more valuable, but requires at least some naval defense to preserve its advantage.
Currently coastal cities are percieved weak usually, unless they have more than one sea resource. Harbours and seaports improve resources quite nicely but normal sea tiles are pretty rubbish...

I think this is closer to the heart of the issue, and ties back to my original point that there is little value to the sea besides as a barrier. I think there should be some better reflection of sea trade. Perhaps a separate system of trade routes, lucrative, but subject to blockade. Along with a rebalancing of the economy to make a certain amount of maritime commerce essential to a well rounded strategy.

 

[Lose]

ship blockages increase your GPT??

 

[basta]

^Well this is more about coastal cities than the OP's subject of fixing navies, but anyway, a huge first step would be to put some production in sea tiles to make coastal cities more worthwile.

 

[JWAT44]

if a city is blockaded you should lose long term trade items from a civ not connected directly by land for each blockaded city unless you have more coastal cities than trade deals. this leads to big navies and naval engagements all over the world no matter what map type which is very historically accurate without hurting gameplay.

 

[stealth_nsk]

1. Increasing blockade value is good idea. I think the best way to implement this is to encourage naval trade routes even more with Commerce tree. The latest patch done good thing to Trade Unions in boosting sea buildings, and not so good thing by boosting road trade routes as well. I'd expect slightly more, like +1 Happiness from Harbors and Sea Ports on one of Commerce SP.

2. Yes, increasing value of naval bombardment is good idea. I'd say it needs increase not only in strength, but in range also. So modern ships will have, say, 6 range and be able to reach even cities away from coast, as it were initially designed. I wonder why devs declined the initial design and whether there were other fixes for this.

3. The AI don't need to know the full naval combat. It needs small set of maneuvers implemented better - like blockading, bombarding and escorting.

4. And, surely, more value for coastal cities by increasing sea production/resources is good idea.

3.

 

[AbbieRevo]

^Well this is more about coastal cities than the OP's subject of fixing navies, but anyway, a huge first step would be to put some production in sea tiles to make coastal cities more worthwile.

Well I guess what I'm thinking is that the problem isn't the actual mechanics of naval combat (which is more closely related to TACTICS) but the lack of reasons to use a navy in the first place, that is a matter of policy for enforcing your war goals, that is destroying the ability and desire of an enemy to continue the war (which belongs o STRATEGY).

The reason this doesn't exist is because the economic model of the game is largely at odds with reality, in regards to the proper use of water.

 

[Optional]

Like what someone already asked; what is this blockade value?

The reason this doesn't exist is because the economic model of the game is largely at odds with reality, in regards to the proper use of water.

this is very, very true.

In Civ 5 the situation is worse than in previous editions of Civ. That's because of getting rid of the trade route requirement for resources, and also a bit because of how tech trading now works.

Some random brainstorming:

How about getting rid of the requirement for sea resources having to be within a city's borders to be able to gain them? We've got workboats now, why do those resources still need to be within a city's cultural borders as well? Like this it's still all about who owns the land, rather than who controls the sea, even with regards to sea resources. If just the workboat would do, some resources could also be placed a bit further out, and you would more likely need a navy to successfully protect those resources for your use.

A destroyed barbarian galley could perhaps result in a seawreck which required a excursion by boat to loot it.

 

[AriochIV]

The chief problem is that the AI's naval acumen is even worse that its land acumen. I've used waterways in Continnts map to devastating effect. The importance is definitely there, but it always feels a little like cheating because the AI is so bad at it.

I agree 100%; the only reason you don't need a navy is because the AI doesn't have one. Even when it builds ships, it's totally incompetent at using them, for either attack or defense.

 

[Steelyglint]

Ideas;

1) Make naval units much much better at bombarding the land: one bombardment from a ship against a land unit of equivalent era can do major damage or kill the unit. Make the range of ships firing inland much greater. So you can shoot something within 5 tiles if it's on the land, but you have to be within two tiles to shoot something on the sea
2) Make sea tiles better, so blocking them off actually has a noticeable effect
3) Increase speed of embarked land units to that of the most modern ships available, so if an AI's sea border is not constantly being patrolled then an amphibious invasion will be more sudden and so more deadly
4) Make ships have some of the same bonuses when fighting as land units (flanking, Zone of Control), but make their ranges bigger (i.e. a unit on the sea loses all its movement points when it moves between any two tiles within a 2- or 3-tile radius of the nearest enemy)
5) Melee naval units to make naval fighting more like land fighting
6) Increase AI flavour for building naval units with the idea of attacking with them, not just for exploration
7) Increase naval units' ability to completely take out an embarked invasion force. One idea for this might be to make it so that there is no limit to the amount of units a ship can destroy in a turn. This would mean an upgraded Caravel with the GL and ship movement SP could take out a mid-sized army on its own in a single turn if the flotilla is undefended
8) Underwater cities and sea monsters

 

[Roxlimn]

Arioch IV:

I think that a large part of the confounding problem is that Civ 5's (and every previous Civ's, to be honest) naval warfare model is broken to hell and back. It's impossible to code AI for a broken system.

The way it is in Civ 5 now, the guy with the better navy at the point of contentration will always win, and the larger or better his naval advantage, the larger will be the skew. There is no way for a smaller navy to score an upset, or otherwise act. Compare this to the much-improved land warfare model where a very small army can hold off a larger army indefinitely if the terrain is favorable.

In every respect that's bad, Civ5's lack of naval combat terrain features makes it like Civ4's stacked naval combat, and having less units and more fiddly control just makes it more tedious.

These are the factors that contribute to make naval combat broken (and thus impossible to code acceptable AI for it):

1. Little to No terrain
2. Massive movement Every ship in the fleet can concentrate fire on one ship, because it can always maneuver to a favorable spot
3. No movement control Every ship can move to any tile without movement penalties. Ships do not control tiles the way land units do
4. Ranged Combat Every ship fires like a ranged unit. There is no variety, no tactical alternative. Imagine the land combat if every unit were an Archer. Terrible, right?

 

[AriochIV]

What you say is true, but the naval AI breaks down at a much more basic level than that. It's not hard to code behavior where a ship attacks an enemy ship, but the AI can't even handle that.

Case 1: I am coming at an island (on archipelago map) with about 6 embarked units escorted by only one caravel. Uh oh, I see an enemy frigate. Does the frigate attack my caravel, or attack my embarked units? Neither. The frigate flees and I never see it again.

Case 2: AI is launching a massive amphibious assault against me. I have only a pair of caravels, and the enemy has four or five destroyers and a lot of embarked units. I send my caravels to attack his embarked transports, and the AI destroyers completely ignore my ships and process to bombard my coastal land units. Two caravels wipe out the entire invading force, and most of the enemy destroyers eventually are sunk by ranged fire from cities and ranged land units -- but only because they just sit there shelling the entrenched infantry and ignore the things that are killing them.

 

[jjkrause84]

Idea: bring back transports. I HATED using them...but we SHOULD find them limiting and a bit of a pain. Once you build transports you are naturally encouraged to try to protect them (hence navies).

It's only one small step...but perhaps a crucial one.

 

[Becephalus]

Sea trade is not important enough, for much of history it has been orders of magnitude safer/easier/cheaper to trade over sea then over land.

A more realistic trade/supply/logistics system would elevate naval warfare to its proper place.

 

[zephyrtr]

Embarked units should need to be shot and sunk, like other boats -- the main difference being they can't fight back. Running an embarked rilfeman over with a trieme is just silly. Whenever embarked units get a move boost, they can also get a defense boost. That's one.

The other, certainly is the AIs ineptitude in the water.

Another is coastal cities have problems getting production, and generally just don't yield as much as landlocked cities. I even strategically place my coastal cities so they have preferably only one coast tile at start. I think we need another bonus resource for coasts, and let maps spawn them a little more frequently.