More info from an E3 demo

[Aussie_Lurker]

No to mention that with 1UPT your would have to build one transport per unit you want to ship, which would be a major drag. The old transport mechanic simply would not be viable in civ5.

That's a *very* good point Trias.

Aussie.

 

[Never]

Stop complaining about navies in Civ 5 when it's clearly evident they'll be a lot better and fun than Civ 4. Seriously I can't see how anyone could argue Aussie's logic on this one, transports were tedious and annoying. Naval warfare in Civ4 did not exist. The only reason I ever built navies was to make myself feel powerful.

 

[TheNiceOne]

I agree with you Ricci, taking away a unit for transport and having units able to transform into sailing ship is a definate simplification, and one of the main reasons I gave away Rise of Nations.

You mean like the horrible simplification of not having train or transport plane units, and having units able to transform into trains or transport planes? Yes, those features of CIV I-IV was truly simplistic and broken

The naval aspect is something that has never been developed well in civ, and think this is a step in wrong direction, although hope I'm proven wrong.

Since it is a step closer to the land and air aspects, there is good reason to think they will work better, after you get used to them, IMHO.

 

[StStutter]

I honestly don't see any game breaking aspects of these transports either. I've agreed pretty much 100% with everything Aussie has said. It will be impossible to safely transport an army over seas without a powerful navy. I am confident that a couple of war ships would be able to tear through the rickety transports. Therefore a powerful navy will be essential to waging any intercontinental war, as it is IRL.

Also, the vulnerability while disembarking makes perfect sense. Why was Hitler's Europe a fortress that required an incredibly intricate D-Day to breach? Because disembarking was dangerous.

 

[Ahriman]

Seriously I can't see how anyone could argue Aussie's logic on this one, transports were tedious and annoying. Naval warfare in Civ4 did not exist.

Agreed, Civ5 offers the first real chance in the series of making navies matter.

I don't really like the idea of navies being floating artillery batteries that can devastate on-shore units including on non-coastal tiles (this was never really the case), but I can see how its one way to make navies matter.

My one hope though is that they beef up naval trade routes and create a system where commerce raiding matters, so that navies can commit a decent amount of economic warfare. But this has been discussed to death in previous threads.

 

[timtofly]

A couple of things come into play here. The first one is no more spamming units. I doubt at least in Vanilla you will not have a flotilla of tens of units/transports much less hundreds. I can see less than five "arriving" at your coast. I doubt the AI will hold off any longer than that. Hopefully they will not send one at a time. It sounds like the "great empire building" of the first few versions of CIV are over. You will spread out from one central area instead of having multiple circles of culture. While the placement of troops will be more strategic, it should be less "war-like".

As your culture boundary grows you will have a navy defending your shores and you will have to get to new shores with your navy and transports. I do not see the ability to send out hundreds of these to be rebuffed by hundreds of opposing units. Maybe the modders will fix this, but besides the 1UPT, there are other hints (cost, maintenance, length to build, unhappiness, etc.) that show Civ 5 will be less militaristic.

 

[Commander Bello]

Stop complaining about navies in Civ 5 when it's clearly evident they'll be a lot better and fun than Civ 4.

Clearly evident?

Seriously I can't see how anyone could argue Aussie's logic on this one, transports were tedious and annoying. Naval warfare in Civ4 did not exist. The only reason I ever built navies was to make myself feel powerful.

I am missing one point in this whole discussion:
When I am launching a big maritime attack, crossing the ocean, not only will I have to move all my transporters (the units), but all the protectional warships as well.
And all of this has to be coordinated.

I foresee a quite tedious micro-management here.

 

[Ricci]

Once again you give two posts which are utterly contradictory Ricci. If naval transports were so *perfect*, then why couldn't the AI handle them properly? Why aren't human players making more use of them (& this is coming from someone who also plays a fair number of MP games btw)? Why aren't navies & naval combat a far greater feature of the game in Civ4-the way they are in history? The fact is that, after FOUR iterations of the game, the designers *finally* figured out that having to build both units & transports was a big disincentive to waging intercontinental warfare. BtS made a stellar attempt to make it more viable & interesting, but could only get so far. So, unless you can give me a *real* reason for being against embarkation, then I sticking to my original premise-that you simply hold a BLIND HATRED of anything new & interesting!
Aussie.

Here's an example of how "perfect" naval transports were in Civ1 to Civ4. Once you built a few naval transports (a grueling exercise, but it could pay off-especially in SP games), ou can stack several units into each one (an entire invasion fleet). Then stack all your military naval units on top of the transports & slip them through to your enemy's lands (easy to do given the fast speed & small profile of a 1-tile invasion fleet). As interception was almost impossible, there was little point in building a navy of your own-except to play the same trick-so actual naval battles were extremely rare-or after the fact. So much for the PERFECT system of Civ1 to Civ4. In Civ5 because (a) transports are completely defenseless; (b) you will need to spread your navy out if you want more than 1 land unit invading &/or you want more than 1 naval unit defending your transports & (c) naval units will all have ranged combat abilities, we will almost certainly see a much greater chance of interdiction & pitched naval battles, not to mention some pretty major action needed to secure beach-heads. Sure, once in a BLUE MOON a unit might be able to escape into an inland lake large enough to escape bombardment & destruction but (a) it'll be pretty useless as a tactic & (b) I doubt that any lake will be sufficiently large to put the unit outside the range of most ranged attackers.
So this one remote possibility seems a pretty lame rationale for opposing a system which will actually make navies worth while building, rather than something you only attend to on very rare occasions.
Aussie.

Come on man, look how much writing you would have spared if only you would have read completely my post. Were I said about transports being perfect in civ iv:

Of course this is not my opinion of transports in civ iv, I have other reasons to complain, more arguable if you like, still very real.

 

[Dunkah]

So what does defenseless mean? I think it means that units cannot attack another units or defend. This does not mean that one shot and they are dead, (like settlers and workers in Civ IV). So shooting at a unit in it's transport form does not mean death. It may take several shots to kill.

Also have we seen land based ranged units actually able to kill anything? I have seen them and heard of them being able to "soften up" other units. If this is the case could naval units firing onto shore even kill land based units or only cause "so much damage". Same goes for cities attacking with ranged attacks.

 

[Ricci]

Fellow posters, lets not polarize the discussion here because I believe it is in no one's best interest. We are all clever civ players giving our opinion on what we know and speculate about this new game. So, nobody is saying the game will be broken or even poorly balanced regarding this new amphibious feature. Neither it has been said that the previous system (civ iv) was flawless. We all have to accept the fact that what is fun and interesting to some people can perfectly be boring, over simplified or too unnecessarily complex to others.
I personally rather have realism to simplification, having to endure in good terms with tediousness, but I need to assume any degree of modeling a game requires. I was ok with air lift, parachuting, and trade routes as simplified as they were in civ iv, this systems worked pretty fine at the expense of not having tactical game play concerning trade routes, and very little with air combat and parachuting (ranged air superiority, trade routes blockades, etc). For some reason naval logistics/system was given more importance than the above mentioned, I clearly agree, naval might was crucial in much of our world history and it is fun to have it prioritized against trade or even air combat (I believe some people will rather have air combat better modeled for instance). Any ways, ships and army were always "built" separately in reality, we encounter any number of examples of empires having a grand standing army and no navy, and the other way around, transports being a great and important part of the fleets. Taking away transports might be perfectly balanced and may even be "flawless" as we will learn ahead, or it may include any number of new problems which will have to be patched and maybe repatched as previous civ versions showed us to have developed; I incline to the latter here. In any case, the fact that it will be less realistic already displeases me big time, lets hope at least it makes out for an excellent game-play...

 

[Schuesseled]

So what does defenseless mean? I think it means that units cannot attack another units or defend. This does not mean that one shot and they are dead, (like settlers and workers in Civ IV). So shooting at a unit in it's transport form does not mean death. It may take several shots to kill.

Also have we seen land based ranged units actually able to kill anything? I have seen them and heard of them being able to "soften up" other units. If this is the case could naval units firing onto shore even kill land based units or only cause "so much damage". Same goes for cities attacking with ranged attacks.

Ranged units can kill, we've seen it, and the units in naval transport modes and great generals take damage, so maybe not a one shot delio.

 

[duckofspades]

I like the idea of getting rid of transports, for the most part. But thier are some good issue's people bring up. Thier is a problem with unloading and loading on any tile in the map.
When taking horse and infantry units it isn't that big of a deal. However Tanks, and heavy weapons do change this. The allies built a mobile harbor for d-day. But then the germans planed to just seize already existing boats for Sealion, the invasion of England. However the allies also simply unloaded right onto the beach head, mobile harbor got damaged in storm. Tanks, heavy weapons, infantry etc. So this is what I think they should do. The only real issue I see is that thier is no advantage to capturing a port to unload to vs just unloading onto a seized beach head. Except of course you now have +1 citys and opponet -1 citys.
- All units can turn in to transport like game is set to do
- Self transporting units can load & unload from city with harbor or a fort.
- Some transport units are added into the game for differnt ages.
- A unit which is using a actual transport unit can load and unload from any tile.

This isn't a perfect fix but I think it's a good starting point. I really feel like they nailed navys being important this time around. Love the one unit per tile as well.

 

[AriochIV]

I would certainly hope that you need to load from a port city, but I think you'll have to be able to unload anywhere for the mechanic to work at all.

Clearly evident?

Yes, I got a chuckle out of that too.

The fanboys need to relax a little; we're just discussing a new mechanic that we don't yet understand, and we're doing that by considering the potential problems. And of course we're using Civ IV as a base for our discussion, because that's all we have to go on at present.

 

[Never]

Agreed, Civ5 offers the first real chance in the series of making navies matter.

I don't really like the idea of navies being floating artillery batteries that can devastate on-shore units including on non-coastal tiles (this was never really the case), but I can see how its one way to make navies matter.

My one hope though is that they beef up naval trade routes and create a system where commerce raiding matters, so that navies can commit a decent amount of economic warfare. But this has been discussed to death in previous threads.

Definitely. Some sort of on-screen trade route view or something where you can pillage/blockade would bring Civ 5 onto the next level. Here's hoping they implement something like it - surely they must know doing so will help make the game surpass Civ 4.

Clearly evident?

Yeah man. Haven't you watched the preview videos? They look sick. Not just how aesthetically by the way.

I am missing one point in this whole discussion:
When I am launching a big maritime attack, crossing the ocean, not only will I have to move all my transporters (the units), but all the protectional warships as well.
And all of this has to be coordinated.

I foresee a quite tedious micro-management here.

The same can be said about land units as well thought can't they. It's this whole 1upt system. Personally I think it'll add a bit of epicness to the game as well as obviously improving the whole tactical aspect of warfare.

I mean the two things that really lacked in Civ 4 was 1. warfare (especially modern warfare), and 2. navies.

Basically something was fundamentally wrong with the unit system. And I think they've hit the nail on the head with 1upt. Who knows that, maybe they have found the solution only to create a bigger problem?

 

[Never]

The fanboys need to relax a little; we're just discussing a new mechanic that we don't yet understand, and we're doing that by considering the potential problems. And of course we're using Civ IV as a base for our discussion, because that's all we have to go on at present.

Right...

Thanks for the heads up there, like, I'll be sure to keep relaxed in the future.

Look all I'm saying is that it seems to me to be quite evident that they have addressed a lot of the short-comings of previous Civs in terms of navies. 1upt, ranged attacks (that can kill), and insta-transports, make me feel that navies are going to be really bloody good.

What I can't understand is how anyone can defend Civ 4's navy system. It was crap. Yes I admit problems may arise in Civ 5 but so far the naval system looks pretty good. As Ahriman said, here's hoping they add the icing to the cake with a wickid naval trade system.

 

[Ricci]

Never, I sincerely wonder if it is the same game we both played titled CIVILIZATION 4.
People have complains, likes and dislikes which I concur with or not, yours are sometimes so off the hook that you keep me doubting.

 

[jfuesting]

With 1UPT and every battle not being to the death, you're not going to need dozens of units. And with the manner in which resource-dependent units will be handled, you likely won't be able to make them anyway. No units in cities, with their defensive stats being an inherent trait, you won't be able, or need to have dozens of units stationed there to protect them. Consequently, you won't need dozens and dozens of units to conquer the city. An enormous army would likely be too big and slow to position itself properly to take advantage of the terrain, and would be quickly picked apart.

Of course, we don't really know how it will turn out, but removing the boring SOD juggernaut may be the single greatest feature ever added to civ games.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Arioch, the moment you start using pejorative terms like "fanboys", then you've lost the argument in my opinion. There are things about Civ5 that I DON'T LIKE (the removal of Civics, Religion & Espionage being chief amongst them), but that doesn't prevent me from seeing the obvious game-play benefits of this new naval transport system. Also, though we don't have *all* the information about Civ5, we have *enough* information not to judge the naval chances purely through the prism of Civ4. We *know* that some units (all naval units) will have ranged combat capabilities, we *know* that the 1upt system will apply on the sea as well as on land & we *know* that units no longer die first time. These 3 things alone would suggest that the odds of getting an entire invasion force across the ocean-unmolested-are going to be very small. Indeed, these rule changes would make it fairly imperative for an invader to *crush* their opponents navy *before* bringing any significant land-invasion force across the seas. That alone will make naval battles for more likely-& a great deal more interesting IMO.

Aussie.

 

[AriochIV]

Aussie, I'm not trying to "win" any "argument," I'm posting my thoughts on what we know about the new system and speculating about how it works. If you can't entertain opposing viewpoints without ranting in caps and blasting people for being ignorant or filled with "blind hatred of anything new & interesting," then expect to be labeled a fanboy.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

The problem, Arioch, is that those like yourself-who are against auto-transport-have not given any *solid* justification for why they hate the new feature. Everyone who has given their support for it has *backed up* that support with some solid reasons for why they believe it will improve the naval aspect of the game-usually backed up by other changes they know will be in the game. So, in the absence of solid justifications, then I'm left with the view that your opposition is nothing more than knee jerk reaction against anything that changes up the format which existed in previous games. If the game designers were to listen to such opposition, then all we'd be getting is Civ4b, not Civ5.

Aussie.