Landing operations - realistic or not?

[Kriku]

His army was stalled for 4 years. You cannot ship tens of thousands of soldiers in boats.

Timeline could be altered together with the map size.

 

[sghiminini]

I think that the transports were cut out because of the 1 unit per hex rule. You would have to have as many transports as land units which is not good. Lifting the restriction to a somewhat larger limit (2-6 for instance) would allow transports and be more realistic.

If I remember correctly, you can still board fighters onto aircraft carrier. That's clearly a 4 units (the aircraft carrier plus up to 3 fighters) on single hex.

If that can be done, then I think there will be a way to mod transport as well....

 

[Babri]

I do not actually think that the AI disabilities were caused by the transports. AI is weakest when estimating the size of a force which he needs to conduct a successful operation. Transports did not let him use a stack of doom which was his main weapon. He could make troublesome landings when given sufficient bonuses allowing the production of transports; the stacks of doom were also possible only if he was given bonuses. AI is very weak without bonuses anyway.

I will disagree with that. I've seen AI using dozen of transport ships & landing a stack of 20 trebuchets & few maceman/musket etc i.e landing a weak stack of doom. The problem was that AI was not sure what to load in the ships first & what can be delayed. And intelligent human would have landed like 20 muskets 5 trebuchets. Transports indeed caused problems for the AI. Now with proper navy AI can unleash his wrath of big forces more easily.

 

[Seven05]

I have a strong stomach feeling that landing operations have always been over-simplified and unrealistic. The current approach that there is no need for special transport units does not make it better at all.

There is also no need for you to have special transport units to represent commercial trade. Why have one but not the other? Or is it ok for that oil resource to magically travel across the globe but you should have to build one unit to ship another unit three tiles over some water?

Second, the very idea that an army does not need a fleet to get off a coast is ridiculous. For instance, Napoleonic army was trapped in Egypt because Nelson destroyed the transports.

This won't be a problem. That navy that would have destroyed the emptry transports can simply sit there and destroy the full ones as they appear. So to avoid those losses you won't embark, net result is the same.

I could care less about the AI but I will definately enjoy no longer having to shuttle units around on a stack of transports. I'm sorry but I never once thought to myself how much fun it was going to be to get to use transports.

 

[Kriku]

There is also no need for you to have special transport units to represent commercial trade.

Caravans were replaced with the commercial trade model only in Civ4. Military units have not been replaced with some abstract model so far.

 

[Seven05]

Caravans were replaced with the commercial trade model only in Civ4. Military units have not been replaced with some abstract model so far.

They were never required to move resources.

 

[migkillertwo]

I think when it comes to amphibious landings we should use something like Civ IV's approach, where only certain units or certain promotions give a unit the ability to fare in an amphibious landing. I also agree that units should be close to a city to embark, as it would make a lot more sense because it could easily be just an abstraction for the civilian merchant navy transporting troops (as was the case historically. In fact, even today the Navy doesn't run transport operations, a private firm manages all the transport needs of the Army and Marines) It really doesn't make sense, and I think amphibious landings could be a lot more fun if you have to fight over a port city in order to invade another continent. Remember why Rommel fortified Calais?

 

[Kriku]

They were never required to move resources.

However, they could move food.

 

[Kriku]

I for one liked the Civ4 fortresses which acted like airfields and ports very much. If they could have been built into enemy territory, they would have been ideal.

 

[Zhahz]

Gameplay + Fun > realism.

Shafer is a pretty bright guy. I trust him and Firaxis to design a good game a lot more than I trust any armchair dev's take on one tiny aspect of the big picture.

Threads like this, that question slices of the game here and there, are ultimately kinda silly.

It's not like Firaxis just picks random ideas out of thin air and says, let's put this in the game! (Kinda like what some forum threads would seemingly have them do.) They try different ways of doing things, examine them in the whole, and keep what works best for the whole - what works best for gameplay and fun.

 

[Kriku]

For me, a good game is a realistic game. That's the reason why I prefer Civ over Warlords.

Firaxis does certainly not pick random ideas out of the air, but they are liable to overlook details. Things like disembarking onto the hills are outright annoying. Think about the Battle of Marathon, for instance.

 

[Ahriman]

Yes, I just figured it out in my previous post If the 1 unit per hex rule cannot be modded to 5 units per hex rule or something similar, then we really cannot have transports.

So wait, you realized that requiring separate transports would fail as a mechanic in a 1upt game, but you're going to go ahead and keep arguing for it anyway?

 

[Kriku]

No, I argue for restrictions on troop overhaul (the ports and hills issue). I agree that the 1upt rule does not allow transports.

That's another reason why I think that the 1upt rule is not good. If we could alter that rule, it would be great to have transports back, but we do not know if altering the 1upt is possible.

 

[GeoModder]

If you really want transports back, the 1upt rule isn't the problem for loading up a transport in one turn as long as units of the same domain class can be stacked like fighters and missiles do on (some) naval vessels. All land units have at least 2 movements, so except for a situation where a transports sits on the end of a peninsula you could load up to 6 units in a transport in a single turn.

 

[chaotoroboto]

I mean, there's a lot of sticking points in this thread, but I have to say: On the huge earth map that shipped in Civ 4, GEORGIA, HALF OF ALABAMA, BOTH CAROLINAS AND NORTHERN FLORIDA take up TWO TILES. So in real life, you're talking about 3 major ports - Savannah, Jacksonville, and Charleston - ON ONE TILE.

But that entire tile of land isn't really ports. Even with Atlanta and Charlotte (in addition to the 3 or 4 million people in the 3 cities above) it's mostly timber and farm land.

Civ is a simplification. A tile represents a gigantic swath of land, whatever scale you use. When making decisions like "Will I work this with a trading post or a fort or a mine" you decide not which one of those things that tile is, but which one will define the character of the land.

 

[deanej]

I mean, there's a lot of sticking points in this thread, but I have to say: On the huge earth map that shipped in Civ 4, GEORGIA, HALF OF ALABAMA, BOTH CAROLINAS AND NORTHERN FLORIDA take up TWO TILES. So in real life, you're talking about 3 major ports - Savannah, Jacksonville, and Charleston - ON ONE TILE.

Sure, the argument works in more densely populated areas, but how about Alaska?

 

[Lyoncet]

Sure, the argument works in more densely populated areas, but how about Alaska?

I think this is the point where it becomes more a question of making things needlessly complicated and confusing (You can embark anything, but only until you have big things, but then you can too, unless there aren't many cities. And then maybe the cities need to be bigger to get the units on since they need bigger harbors, after you start needing cities in the first place). Realistic? No, but it's such a minor issue (IMO) that it hardly warrants that level of obfuscation.

 

[chaotoroboto]

Sure, the argument works in more densely populated areas, but how about Alaska?

Well, I don't think that most people would consider the Southern US densely populated, although it surely beats Alaska or Wyoming. And some of that tile density is an artifact of the projection that the map designers mimicked, and some is based on making vastly different geographies competitive.

Alaska on that same huge earth map? Mostly mountain. What isn't mountain is tundra.

So when you improve your areas, you can build mines - and there's a lot of mining in Alaska - or you can build a cottage - and there's lots of small towns in Alaska. They don't have rigid guidelines - oh, here's a small town, now exactly 800 miles away there's a mine - they occur all over the place, and as the person working, I dunno, Juneau or Anchorage, you set the workers to build mines and cottages where you need them, to reflect which of those types you have chosen to emphasize, to highlight.

And if you're a commie, I guess you could have workshops, since that'd be the only way to grow a city in Alaska above a size of 2.

 

[Lyoncet]

And if you're a commie, I guess you could have workshops, since that'd be the only way to grow a city in Alaska above a size of 2.

Poor Alaska; it would have been one contiguous, bustling metropolis by now if only it had stayed part of the USSR.

 

[Alarconte]

I think the most important thing to think about in terms of realism in the new auto-embarkemt, is the question of time. When the turns are 100, 50 or 10 years... Is sure that any tribal/early civilization can take an army to the seas. Included in Alaska. Years is a lot of time to move resources and built temporal infrastructures.

In all the history great boats were built in land and moved miles and miles to the sea.

In modern time, You pay a half-dozen subcontracted agencys to built zodiacs for your armada, and in a year you have a decent way to move your troops by sea. No need to talk about refubirshing civil transports for military use.