Embarkation too simplified?

[Podtxt]

What about embarkation? Firaxis took extremely play-friendly solution so we can embark anywhere anytime in 1 turn. Its not ok for me, too unrealistic and makes my unit suicide cause they are taking automatic route trough a lake too close to enemies shooting forces. I can look after fighting units, but i lost so much automated workers on this lake its helpless (if one dies, another goes the same way, calculating that the 1-turn embarkation is officient).

I thought about some ideas, hope any of them will look appealing to you:

1. Units can only embark from cities (perhaps some building for it?). Makes coastal cities more valuable. Generates problems: embarking whole army takes some time (not sure if a problem for real) and once you disembark, on foreign island, you cant go back.

2. Units can only embark from inside your borders. There is no more problem with embarking many units at time, but you still cant run from far away island. It makes scouting seas with land units very weak, cause on sea they cant see much and once they landed its no going back.
Unless: you can also embark from friendly/allied CS and open bordered civilizations.

3. Embarking costs very little sum of gold. You are buying ships after all. Makes interesting situation that sometimes you cant assault enemy trough sea cause of empty pockets.

Also i thought about super-realistic solution that units have to stand on a forest for a while and then slowed by 50% pull this ship to sea, but this seems to detailed for civilization game, and building ships from wood is over after renaissance.

Im looking forward for your thoughts.

 

[Dunkah]

I have always thought that units should embark from Cities as well. However there should also be a promotion that allows for slow embarkation as well.

Standard embarkation is when a troop jumps into a transport ship. This should be done in a city and the transports can move as fast as or close to the rest of the fleet. The unit is still a civilian unit and cannot fight but can be in the same hex as a war ship so can be protected.

Rubber boats/ Dingy/ Small Craft should be allowed on coast lines lakes and coast lines. This represents the unit jumping into assault boats, small pleasure craft, rafts, skiffs canoes etc. and allows them to move 1 tile per turn.

Debarkation could be limited to cities unless you have the Smal Boat Promotion in which case you can jump off and assault a shore line.

Promotions could allow bonus to attacking from water, extra movement for fast craft (2 per turn?), no mbarkation cost etc.

But I don't know if the AI would be able to handle it.

 

[Ahriman]

But I don't know if the AI would be able to handle it.

This basically kills all of the proposals.

As the OP witnessed with his automated workers, the unit AI is very weak. Adding any extra complications or mechanics that it doesn't understand just makes it worse.

 

[Tomice]

Like many issues, this is purely AI-dependent

Any complication of embarking probably means that the AI will be even more uncapable of launching oversea attacks.

It would also be a very significant effort to change this:

- "Core" file modding: often more bugs and incompatibility
- Lenghty discussions about details of the new concept (IF common ground is found at all)
- long testing period necessary



Personally, after initial scepticism, I like the new system. It helps improve gameplay enough to make me look over the weirdness behind the concept.

 

[mystikx21]

I'm basically fine with the new system as well. It tends to start out as having to embark on friendly territory, but once embarked, you can keep getting back into the boats. Not every conquistador burns his ships.

You still have incentives to clear the seas for embarked units as vulnerable to counter-attack, the point of building weak transports in previous versions of Civ, and can still defend them with naval ships as needed as of GK, something also possible in previous versions.

The embarking problem is not the system, it's the unit AI and how poorly it handles movement in confined spaces. Adding new layers doesn't sound like a recipe for helping that AI get any better.

 

[Zaldron]

I actually happen to really like embarkation pretty much as it exists and don't feel it needs additional restrictions. I'd probably be willing to entertain a test of "pay 10 gold to embark" or something like that but the other two options you presented seem extremely restrictive to how you can move around.

 

[mitsho]

I do like the system of embarkation very much. It's easy to understand, reduces micro-managment and does make sense in a roundabout way. Of course some of the results of the AI is ugly (and has been around from the first hour of civ V), but we have to live with that mostly.

I personally don't really get the complaints about "it's not realistic" for a game where we have whole army divisions compromised of swordmen f.e. But I don't think that discussion leads particularly far and on the other hand the "AI-can't-handle-that" argument is a killer one already.

 

[Anvari]

Just think about it. Every unit is able to embark when they have 10 or maybe a year time to prepare. Don't loose track of the timescale.

Embark is fine as it is, everything else would just make it unnecessarily complex. It costs a lot of possible movement and your units are very weak and can't attack anything.

Normally i'm a fan of changes. But sometimes we should stick to a unrealistic thing, Civ is a game after all and it's not very fun if the map screws you, so you can't embark every again. And that would have happened a few times already to me, if these changes would be ingame.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Seems like a lot of changes (needlessly) to try and fix an AI problem.

Surely a more robust solution involves adding a value of aversion to embarkation to the AI's pathfinding.

This would mean, not just a simple check of turns it takes to enter - cross - exit the water, rather a more complex check of avoiding water if enemies are within x tiles etc. or even if it takes 4 turns to go around a lake or 3 turns to go through it the AI should choose the 'dry' option.

Devising and implimenting an effective AI I fear is not for the faint at heart.

 

[mystikx21]

I think the current solution of increasing embarked unit strengths was a way to get at this problem already.

Unit AI would certainly help a lot more, but I agree it doesn't sound any simpler to fix at that level.

 

[ExpiredReign]

Just had a look around at options for the AI's poor route choices.

WHoward has created a mod that provides for changes to embarkation to workers.

Have a look what he has done.

However, as the routines for route finding are controlled within the games DLL it requires the use of a modified DLL to function properly. Whilst that in itself is not a problem, only having 1 modified DLL at a time is.

End result. Unless we ALL come to a consensus about what any future DLL is included in this mod contains, it looks like fixes to problems like this are in the hands of talented individuals like WHoward.

Edit:
On second thought, there doesn't have to be a consensus, provided the functions in the DLL are there, whether from us or somewhere else, it only needs Lua to call those functions into OUR mod. It might even be possible to pool a whole lot of functions from all over the place into this DLL and modders from any project can call it's functions.
That is however another project. Maybe some of us with C++ skills could look into that.

 

[redwings1340]

To be fair, 1 turn is several years in game time. I can easily see how they would take that turn to chop down a few trees and build boats, or get some somehow if there are no trees where they are embarking from. Or, they just can get some ships from some people who just happen to live in the area where there isn't a forest, even if the people aren't associated with an empire. It fits well with the game mechanics, after all, you can send out a scouting party and have them give you instantaneous data from halfway around the world in the ancient era. I don't really see a problem with the current system.