K-Mod: Far Beyond the Sword

[Lib.Spi't]

well the threat analysis of transports is an AI 'tweak' which is karadoc's bread and butter, the theory right now is that there is no real time to react to a naval invasion as the declaration of war and landing your men can all be achieved in the same turn, so you have no cahnce to engage with your navy, so winning naval superiority for an invasion is just not needed...thus why have the navies at all!

The goal (as I understand it) is to make declaring war and landing troops impossible to do in the same turn, thus giving a chance for navies to battle it out for supremacy. This gives the english\british technique of protecting the channel from invasion, (so big navy is better than big army) more value. Same with the Falklands War, there needed to be some air\naval cover\superiority as landing troops was not a quick and easy deal...
Same with the german invasion of britain, it was abandoned because they could not get air and naval superiority..

 

[karadoc]

I think making enemy waters cost more movement points would be a pretty easy change to make. The AI (as it is currently) wouldn't really plan around that change, but it would still be able to calculate the fastest way to move from A to B - so that wouldn't be too bad.

One issue though is that it might screw up galleys, because those are pretty slow anyway and they often can't avoid going through enemy waters. I suppose it would be possible to make it so that coastal tiles didn't get this penalty, or that galleys don't get the penalty or whatever, but then it starts to become more difficult to implement, and more difficult for players to pick up on.

Another idea is to make it so that moving from a plot adjacent to an enemy ship costs extra moves, or something like that. I'm sure that there are some rules like that which could make naval combat more interesting, but the AI wouldn't have a damn clue. (Again, it would still be able to get from A to B with the least possible moves, but it wouldn't know how to position it's ships to defend its territory effectively, and it might get confused if a human player made a line of ships somewhere and started shepherding the AI's invasion force away from where it is trying to get to...)

--

One side point which I think is worth mentioning is that overseas conquests are already pretty difficult. It generally takes a lot more resources and planning to wage a successful cross-continent war than it does to wage a land war (unless you're far more powerful than your opponent). I do think it's a bit cheesy that players can use naval death-stacks to travel large distances and conquer cities in a single turn. But I think it's worth keeping in mind that if players couldn't do that, then they might not bother with overseas wars at all.

It doesn't really matter how 'interesting' naval combat is if it just isn't useful for winning the game - because players will just avoid it even more than they already do. As for situations where a player needs to wage a naval war to win; that could become painful and frustrating if they can't land their troops without the enemy always having a couple of turns to move all their defenders into the right place. ... So I think that kind of stuff is worth keeping in mind when thinking about ways to change game rules.

 

[Zacar]

The movement of land units carried by transporters should probably be set to 0 if the carrying transport moves. I'm not saying that there are any big problems with naval warfare, but the carried land units currently violate space/time a bit.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I guess at the moment the question is, what is the point of ships? Other than transporting units and exploring, but if that is all they are good for then what is the point of having all those modern combat ships...with 'slow' military transports, it makes carrier air cover and naval combat cover actually matter, as you have to be able to slog in and out of land..

As to interest and winning, right now it seems like naval units are neither needed or interesting for winning the game (at least combat ones) If a player wants to win a conquest victory, then he has to do naval invasions, and he would have to win naval superiority.

 

[Charles555nc]

If you are gonna increase the time it takes to drop units via transports in/near enemy territory then you could increase the transport cargo space to balance the cost vs risk situation.

Personally, I made galleys have 3 speed...and teaching the ai to land on countries it has open borders with, to later attack the neighbor it doesnt like, would be a HUGE ai boost.

Ships choking/blockading your coastal cties is also huge...not sure where ppl got the idea that ships were "pointless"
Sea resources are largely important for keeping your city sizes up. If ships pillage them, you are in trouble.

You could make blockading cities provide the attacker with stolen gold, to make it more profitable, more useful to have a navy.

Btw any points you think I made on my long posts on the previous page valid?

 

[karadoc]

1. I noticed that guided missiles are way over powered [...]

I almost never use those things myself. It's possible that they are too powerful - I wouldn't really know. But they do 'die' after just one shot, they don't do any collateral damage, they generally can't kill anything outright unless you use lots of them (or follow up with other units), and their limited range often prevents them from being used. So it seems to me that it's probably good if they're quite powerful, because they still need all other kinds of units to back them up. I haven't done any calculations on it, but I suspect that for raw killing-power per it would be more efficient to use tanks and artillery, but obviously that depends on how many units the enemy has in its stack, and whether or not you can get your units into a position to attack them.

I don't think the AI makes good use of missiles.

2. Battleship collateral damage imo should be largely nerfed (for fun and for balance) and hammer cost increased.

I'm not sure why you think it would be more fun if battleships had less collateral damage. The collateral damage of battleships is pretty much the only thing that can counter naval death-stacks. I think it's pretty important that battleships have significant collateral damage.

3. In my save I have buffed subs and attack subs, maybe slightly too much, but they were almost useless before (although 50% withdrawal is boss) since they come with radio and not combustion where they should be (ww1).

I buffed them too awhile ago, but only by a little bit. (Their +10% ocean attack is from K-Mod.) They probably could use a bit more though. I still reckon the +attack thing is the way to go for buffing subs, so maybe I should increase it to 15, or even 20. ...
I'd like for there to be just a straight +attack bonus without tying it to particular terrains, but no such xml value currently exists, and I'm not sure its worth adding one. I suppose subs could have an attack bonus for coastal terrain as well as ocean - but then their list of bonuses would be even longer... (I just think it looks bad when those lists are really long.)

5. I think machine guns should be able to get interception promotions, or a base increase in interception chance- merely from the fact that bombers and fighters obliterate armies. Something needs to calm down the well organized ai bomber/fighter attacks until Sam infantry can replace the machine guns.

I disagree. I think that would devalue SAM infantry and fighters. I think the rush for fighters & bombers is an interesting dynamic at that phase of the game, and the interception ability of SAM infantry is basically the only reason to get them in the first place. I think it's probably good that there's a window of opportunity for players to crush their opponents with superior technology at that late stage of the game.

6. The ai seems to love paratroopers way more than marines...I have only seen the ai use paradrop once this game...(and I gave paratroopers a 70% evasion chance).

They'll build marines if they're intending to use them for an overseas war - but if they aren't, then paratroopers are generally better. I'd build paratroopers rather than marines for land wars too. I guess the real issue is that they AI isn't very good at paradrops...

8. Could it be something like the ai not making enough transports because the asset value and power of transports is small when competing against the value/power of subs/battleships/destroyers?

No, that's not the reason. The AI tries to build as many transports as it needs to carry all the units that it wants to invade with. If it doesn't have enough transports, that's probably because it doesn't have enough invaders, which is probably because its economy isn't strong enough or it's building too many defenders or something like that. The AI organisation for naval battles isn't great, but I think the best way to make the AI more successful in overseas battles is to make it more economically efficient in general. For example, reducing the number of defenders it keeps in its inner cities and stuff like that. But obviously that could lead to other weaknesses...

--

The movement of land units carried by transporters should probably be set to 0 if the carrying transport moves. I'm not saying that there are any big problems with naval warfare, but the carried land units currently violate space/time a bit.

Are you suggesting that, for example, marines shouldn't be able to attack a city from a boat if the boat has moved that turn? Or are you just thinking about units that are unloaded directly into friendly cities and can then go on to use their full normal movement?


--

Finally, let me just describe what I have in mind when I say "naval death-stack", just to make sure people know what I'm talking about. What I have in mind is a large group of battleships + carriers + transports. The Carriers are filled with fighters (obviously), the transports are filled with marines. A large stack of those things can deliver a crushing victory even over much larger civilizations. The strategy is roughly like this: if you see any enemy ships, air-strike them with all your fighters and then destroy them with your battleships. If there are no enemy ships, then take an enemy city: bombard with the battleships, air-strike with the fighters, and then kill the defenders with marines. Only move a single marine to finally capture the city. If the enemy civ is bigger than you, then just raze the city because you probably won't be able to hold it. If you are bigger, then keep the city and air-lift in a strong defender. (You may still need to retake the city later with marines again if the enemy still has heaps of land units.)

The gist is that with a stack like that, you can essentially kill any ships and capture any coastal city without taking any losses - except for the single marine that is left on the land when you raze the city. It's a devastating tactic, and once it gets rolling it's difficult to counter without nukes.

 

[noto2]

I think making enemy waters cost more movement points would be a pretty easy change to make. The AI (as it is currently) wouldn't really plan around that change, but it would still be able to calculate the fastest way to move from A to B - so that wouldn't be too bad.

One issue though is that it might screw up galleys, because those are pretty slow anyway and they often can't avoid going through enemy waters. I suppose it would be possible to make it so that coastal tiles didn't get this penalty, or that galleys don't get the penalty or whatever, but then it starts to become more difficult to implement, and more difficult for players to pick up on.

Another idea is to make it so that moving from a plot adjacent to an enemy ship costs extra moves, or something like that. I'm sure that there are some rules like that which could make naval combat more interesting, but the AI wouldn't have a damn clue. (Again, it would still be able to get from A to B with the least possible moves, but it wouldn't know how to position it's ships to defend its territory effectively, and it might get confused if a human player made a line of ships somewhere and started shepherding the AI's invasion force away from where it is trying to get to...)

--

One side point which I think is worth mentioning is that overseas conquests are already pretty difficult. It generally takes a lot more resources and planning to wage a successful cross-continent war than it does to wage a land war (unless you're far more powerful than your opponent). I do think it's a bit cheesy that players can use naval death-stacks to travel large distances and conquer cities in a single turn. But I think it's worth keeping in mind that if players couldn't do that, then they might not bother with overseas wars at all.

It doesn't really matter how 'interesting' naval combat is if it just isn't useful for winning the game - because players will just avoid it even more than they already do. As for situations where a player needs to wage a naval war to win; that could become painful and frustrating if they can't land their troops without the enemy always having a couple of turns to move all their defenders into the right place. ... So I think that kind of stuff is worth keeping in mind when thinking about ways to change game rules.

These are good points. I want to say this though: as it stands, if I need to wage intercontinental war, it's incredibly simplistic. Whether my needs are to cause a capitulation for a conquest victory or simply burn cities to thwart a cultural victory, the methods are usually the same.
All I need to do is build a ton of transports and a few battleships, and fill them with infantry/artillery and go and land my troops and start burning cities. An alternative might be to use marines and battleship bombardment. If the game gets really late I might then start nuking cities and using a marine or two to go in and actually raze them.
Point is, I never need carriers or an air force and I never need to worry about naval combat at all.

However, if these changes were imlpemented, and I couldn't simply launch a super cheese attack by razing coastal cities on the same turn as I declared war, I'd be forced to use things like carriers and fighters/jet fighters to soften up targets before invading. I wouldn't mind that at all. Some of the most fun I've had in Civ are the few times the game has gone late and I'm fighting a game-ending war with air-air battles.

I'm a fan of the strategy of making the smallest change possible and seeing how it plays out rather than drastically altering the game in one step, which I believe is also your philosophy. I don't think it would be a radical change to simply prevent players from declaring war and landing a naval invasion on the same turn. A one turn delay would be a small change, but it would allow players to actually use their air force and/or navy to engage in fleet to fleet battles, and theoretically it would allow this for the AI as well.

As it stands, the only way to do this currently, is if several factors are all present:

- there must actually be a significant amount of ocean between the player and their attacker. The Battle for Britain couldn't happen in civ, because the English Channel would probably be only a few tiles wide, and thus a transport could simply cross and dump its units in a single turn, with no chance of interception.

- the player runs scouting missions with their carrier based air force every single turn, likely having to use 3-4 units, each time it takes a few seconds, adding up to 10-15 seconds of game time to do this simple task.

- the player spends another 10-15 seconds of game time per turn investigating the ocean tiles around their various scout ships

- after spending 20-30 additional seconds per turn simply scouting for an invasion fleet, the player sees a large fleet in the ocean that appears to be heading straight towards the player. Then, even though it is the player who is being attacked, the PLAYER MUST BE THE ONE TO PRE-EMPTIVELY DECLARE WAR ON THE ENEMY FLEET IN INTERNATIONAL WATERS. This has serious implications for diplomacy, especially when things like defensive pacts are taken into consideration.

 

[vedg]

Hi!
Although I have just registered here, I have read many of the previous posts.
And I have played Civ a lot too

I came up with possible naval mechanics solution:
1. When naval transport moves, all it's passengers lose all movement points. Doesn't affect fighters or missiles. This change by itself solves most of mentiened problems, next 2 are optional (to improve consistency).
2. When land unit loads in transport / unloads from transport, this transport loses one movement point. Transport has to have at least one movement point to allow loading / unloading unit.
3. When transport and unit are in the city on the same tile, loading / unloading unit doesn't affect this unit's movement, but affects receiving transport's movement. If unit changes transport on the water tile, it's unclear if it should lose movement points – can be implemented in different ways.
4. City bombardment already takes one movement point. It could also be disabled if there was at least one movement point already lost (as an analogy to land units loosing all movement points, when transport moves). This would prevent complete city defenses removal on the turn, when war was declared (this would be particularly important if enemy troops can reach that city using land route).

Game mechanics benefits:
1. No sudden naval attacks → no need to scout the sea in search of sneaky invasion fleet.
2. Fleet can actually defend borders.
3. Side, which launches the attack, still has the benefit: it can use fighters from carriers or missiles / nukes first.
4. As far as I remember, all naval units have enough movement points to fully load or fully unload in one turn. If not – some movement points could be added or cargo space reduced.

Real life similarities:
1. Fleet can actually defend borders (again ).
2. Loading / unloading troops takes time – some supplementary smaller boats have to be used for that. Loading / unloading / launching aircraft doesn't depend on carrier's movement. As for missiles – launching does not depend on transport movement, but loading / unloading could be time-costly too. Missiles mechanics should probably be implemented in the simplest way.

Possible problems:
1. Difficulties in implementation.
2. AI would probably be unable to fully adapt for these mechanics changes.

 

[noto2]

transported units losing movement points while the transport moves on the ocean could work, but it seems to be a complicated solution whereas simpler ones have been proposed.

Karadoc rightly pointed out that amphibious assaults take a lot of resources. I never understood why ships can carry so few units... in other strategy games transport ships can carry far, far more units. I would be fine with boosting all transport capacities by a factor of 5, even, there's no need for so many transport ships.

Could we use a very simple solution and a hybrid of ideas proposed, to both slow down the speed of modern ships (especially transports) and extend the cultural borders into the ocean? Right now cultural borders extend about 3 tiles offshore, and transports get, what, 5-6 movement? If transports were reduced to 3-4 movement and culture extended 6 tiles offshore, that would greatly improve the situation, I think.

 

[Horatius]

Ocean borders could work as a "zone of control", meaning that naval units crossing it during war could lose part of the movement points with the rest being as normal and that would be enough for me.

 

[Charles555nc]

1. Ai rarely ever uses naval stacks of death. And when it does, it is about a quarter of the size humans use, and the death stack leaves immediately after dropping off the units (which arent as many units as the human uses).

2. The ai doesnt know how to use battleships effectively vs human naval death stacks. It does not seem to have any organized defensive ideas with naval units, except in the case of small carrier stacks which only have 4 or 5 units max.

3. Ai doesnt know how to drop in ppl's land with open borders rather than dropping right on top of the enemy.

These problems seem worse than just slowing a human death stack one or two turns. But thats just my opinion.

 

[Cruel]

Personally, I made galleys have 3 speed...and teaching the ai to land on countries it has open borders with, to later attack the neighbor it doesnt like, would be a HUGE ai boost.

Cool, would be a great addition to the K-mod this skill.

1. Ai rarely ever uses naval stacks of death. And when it does, it is about a quarter of the size humans use, and the death stack leaves immediately after dropping off the units (which arent as many units as the human uses).

2. The ai doesnt know how to use battleships effectively vs human naval death stacks. It does not seem to have any organized defensive ideas with naval units, except in the case of small carrier stacks which only have 4 or 5 units max.

3. Ai doesnt know how to drop in ppl's land with open borders rather than dropping right on top of the enemy.

These problems seem worse than just slowing a human death stack one or two turns. But thats just my opinion.

I agree.

I don't think the AI makes good use of missiles.

If the enemy civ is bigger than you, then just raze the city because you probably won't be able to hold it. If you are bigger, then keep the city and air-lift in a strong defender.

And it seems to me that the AI does not take into account for example the resources available in their surroundings or the wonders of the city or the impact of its economy (high maintenance cost) for the decision to hold it or not.

 

[noto2]

Charles, way back, like a year ago in this thread, I brought this topic up and my main problem was that that it was too easy for me to do this to the AI, not that I was worried about the AI doing it to me.

My current game is a perfect example. I'm Roosevelt, and Joao had a GNP, MFG, size, and military lead for most of the mid game, but good diplomacy kept him off my back. He could have gone for a space race and it would have been a challenge to catch him, but he went for culture instead, ramping up his culture slider. I then pulled ahead in tech.

He has 25 cities to my 14 and his land is amazing. His power score is 2.4 to mine. His military is enormous. But guess who's going to win? Me. 2 of his culture cities are on the coast. I don't even have to break a sweat. I'm going to drop ICBM's on his coastal cities and raze them with marines. We both have 30 ICBMs but 26 of his are in 4 coastal cities, so in one turn I'm going to wipe them out.

I'm going to take out 4 of his core, best cities in one turn, take out almost all of his nuclear force, and a lot of his military. His retaliation won't matter, this will knock him completely out of the game, and I'll launch the ship.

A lot of factors combine to make this cheesy. The ability to declare war and drop marines on a city on the same turn is cheesy, so is the ability of 1 unit to raze a huge city in 1 turn...etc...etc oh, and he has a huge navy too, but my navy is almost nonexistent, I don't need a navy because I'm just going to sink his bajillion ships in port when I raze the city.

 

[Zacar]

Are you suggesting that, for example, marines shouldn't be able to attack a city from a boat if the boat has moved that turn? Or are you just thinking about units that are unloaded directly into friendly cities and can then go on to use their full normal movement?

That marines could not attack from a boat if the boat has moved. Ideally we should be able to say when and where something happens. Currently the beginning of the turn for the carried units doesn't happen in any exact location, as they have a full turn worth of movement in any location where the carrying unit happens to go during that turn.

Setting the movement of carried units to 0 if the carrier moves is a simplified solution:

the most exact solution is to drain the movement of both units independently in percentages of the max movement while the carrier-carried duo moves.. for example with max movements 7 (carrier) and 3 (carried), moving one tile would cost 1/7 of 7 = 1 for the carrier and 1/7 of 3 = 3/7 for the carried unit..

there is probably no need for such accuracy and the way the game rounds fractional movement violates time/space there.

One in-between solution is to remove 1 movement for all units in the stack if 1 tile is travelled. This would allow a transport to act as a bridge over one tile, for units with >1 movement. vedg lists similar detail examples of the same base idea.

I don't really have strong opinions about vedg's points of unloading/loading time, but I can see one time/space inconsistency there that I didn't think of earlier: a land unit that consumes most of its turn in movement over railways (for example), can board a transport during the beginning of its turn, hence the transport can move with increased "real" speed and get the land unit much further than the turn "should" allow.

In a case like this the "accurate" time that the transport should have left after loading is (carriedMovement/carriedMaxMovement)*(carrierMovement/carrierMaxMovement) or something similar.. being too accurate would cause me quite a headache I think. The most simplified solution would mean setting the carrier movement to 0 during loading (again, irrelevant whether the carrier is on sea or in city).

transported units losing movement points while the transport moves on the ocean could work, but it seems to be a complicated solution whereas simpler ones have been proposed.

I think that at least on a concept level, removing movement of carried units is simple and sensible. It is elegant in the sense that it solves the reaction problem by only focusing in having time/space well defined for a unit.

I don't know if anyone finds the space/time consistency concept as interesting as I do. Following it would probably have some effects on carried air units (radiuses?) as well, but I'm not sure if I have ever played with air units.

extend the cultural borders into the ocean?

Note that this would change the time civs acquire contacts - depending on the map.

the ability of 1 unit to raze a huge city in 1 turn

A bit different topic, but it seems like a good point. I wonder how it would change the game if city-razing was slightly more similar to constructing a building - so that it would consume many turns, depending on city size, and that it could be done even after the initial conquest (or even for own cities).

 

[Lib.Spi't]

Yeah I always thought that razing a mega city in 1 turn with one unit was always a bit off, the time it takes for a city to get that big... I wonder if it would be possible to set a limit on city razing size, so if yo wanted to raze it you would have to starve it first...

 

[vedg]

@Lib.Spi't, razing city limit is already implemented in MMod:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=482015
But it raises problems on it's own too – starving city before conquering it does look unnatural and unrealistic.

@Zacar, while I agree that more accuracy would seem better, it has downsides:
1) Difficulty - you can't even find absolutely correct complicated solution. So if it even exist it would probably be too difficult to explain in Civilopedia, not to mention difficult to implement.
2) Removing 1 movement for all units in the stack if 1 tile is traveled has the downside: if borders are not too broad or if there are neighboring borders and only one tile has to be traversed through enemy territory, sneak attack could still be launched and this is something everyone wants to disable...

I like the idea of setting transport's (not airship carrier's) movement to 0 when loading units - it's a viable simpler alternative to reducing movement points by 1. My complicated idea with removing movement points would probably be difficult for AI to adapt for and might cause strange AI bugs. Note though that setting transport's movement points to 0 has the following downside: transport could have moved a long distance (spent all it's movement) before loading. With my conception of required moves it would be unable to load any units in that same turn.

Let's wait for karadoc's opinion on these matters. It's the only one that really matters since he would be implementing only things, which he believes are both reasonable and simple enough.

 

[Charles555nc]

I love the activity on this thread How about some changes to cvcityai.cpp re minimum city defenders? Along with the navy changes. I also find it a little too easy to back stab the ai on land (and sea) if it is fighting someone else.

Changes in bold.

int CvCityAI::AI_minDefenders()
{
int iDefenders = 2;
int iEra = GET_PLAYER(getOwnerINLINE()).getCurrentEra();
if (iEra > 1)
{
iDefenders++;
}
if (iEra > 3)
{
iDefenders++;
}
if (((iEra - GC.getGame().getStartEra() / 2) >= GC.getNumEraInfos() / 2) && isCoastal(GC.getMIN_WATER_SIZE_FOR_OCEAN()))
{
iDefenders++;
}
return iDefenders;
}


This will make base city defenders to 2 and then increase that by 1 during medieval period and by 1 at the industrial period (I increase my number if city defenders around those time periods myself, and even more for hereditary rule). Having wonders and being coastal will increase the minimum defenders number further.

EDIT: Huge request! Can we make seige exp from citadels immune to being obsolete? I think nerfing the bonus exp to +3 or +4 (from +5) would balance that. I hate having to avoid economics.(or tell me how to do it)

EDIT 2: Ai naval drop mistake with an under sized stack (save). (maybe the ai should wait for larger stack or a large raze increase chance for limited trans continental wars.

 

[noto2]

I think I get the time/space discrepancy idea and I like that solution, except that I'd rather it be all or nothing. If a transport moves even just 1 tile, any units it's carrying should have their movement reduced to 0, and if a unit boards a transport that transport's movement should be 0 for that turn.

In order to compensate for all this, I think it would be reasonable to increase the carrying capacity of transport ships.

That solves the instagib city problem, but these ideas don't solve the whole aerial/naval combat problem, where ships can close in on another fleet and attack it, in one turn, even if that fleet has carriers and fighters. The range of fighter aircraft is barely longer than the range of ships, so carrier vs carrier combat is basically nonexistent. Now that I think about it.... I can't remember ever having a carrier vs carrier fight in a game of civ... ever, in 8+ years of playing this game, not once, ever.

 

[Lib.Spi't]

I wonder if you could make a carrier fighter, instead of the standard fighter, with increased range and vs ship strength with a negative to land attack...I don't know that is probably again in the realms of a ship combat mod comp.. but would this in anyway create carrier vs carrier, fleet vs fleet warfare, I wonder if fleets need benefits like ranged combat, to make the Zone of control much larger, and therefore making ocean theatre control, a much bigger deal and make fleets in the open ocean much more of a threat and something that has to be actively dealt with...

 

[noto2]

The problem simply boils down to the fact that this is a turn based game and there is an imbalance in what can be done on your turn as opposed to your rival's turn. It happens in land based combat as well... you could have 20 cannons and 20 rifles, and your opponent attacks with just 10 cannons and 20 rifles, but he has the first strike and wins, with all that collateral damage... whereas in reality we would have to ask why your 20 cannons couldn't just return fire.

The imbalance on land is relatively minor, however. At sea, fleets can move 6-7 tiles and do all kinds of things in one turn. It's nearly impossible to counter, which is why I never bother to even try and the AI certainly never manages to do so.

In long games on large maps, with 20-30 cities in each empire, and a big intercontinental war, I often lose a few cities to AI attacks simply because it's too boring to try to defend every single city I have from coastal attack... it's way too time consuming. I just try to do far more damage to my rival than he does to me, and I protect key cities like the capital.

The real problem is just the sheer speed at which things happen. Imagine if land based warfare was that crazy. Imagine if axemen had 5 movement per turn, and horse archers had 8, and catapults had a ranged bombardment of 8, keeping other things in the game the same. Just try to imagine that kind of warfare. In a single turn your rival could blast most of your cities from the border with his catapults, then ride in with horse archers and raze them before you even had a chance to react. It would become a game of whoever strikes first wins. This is what happens with naval warfare.

Notice that tanks and chariots move at the same speed, whereas naval units increase in speed as the game goes on, and become ridiculously fast.