Naval combat short

[Evie]

I mean if it's par of an all-unit system, I can sort of see it, and then it would make sense to sneak very early planes and subs (et, 1900-1910) in the 1800s tier to complete their line. I don't much like it, but there's sense to it.

 

[The Fanatical]

I understand why Fleet Commanders are unlocked in the Exploration Age, the focus of the Exploration Age is the sea and well...exploration, so it is fitting that the unit appears in the age that will let it shine the most, but does it feel inaccurate to someone else? Naval commanders existed in Antiquity. Perhaps the unit should have been included in Antiquity with a cap (two Fleet Commanders) and the limit should be lifted in the Exploration Age where their bigger numbers would be more crucial and beneficial. I'm actually looking forward to such a mod after the game's release.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

Biplane into helicopter into drone
Zeppelin/baloon into bomber
Fighter into jet

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I understand why Fleet Commanders are unlocked in the Exploration Age, the focus of the Exploration Age is the sea and well...exploration, so it is fitting that the unit appears in the age that will let it shine the most, but does it feel inaccurate to someone else? Naval commanders existed in Antiquity. Perhaps the unit should have been included in Antiquity with a cap (two Fleet Commanders) and the limit should be lifted in the Exploration Age where their bigger numbers would be more crucial and beneficial. I'm actually looking forward to such a mod after the game's release.

Fleet commanders existed, or at least some are listed, going back to the Classical Era, but they didn't command much in any 'fleet' battle. Even the British Royal Navy, which probably spent as much effort as anyone on Naval Command and Control, was still fiddling with a workable flag system to send and receive messages and orders right up to the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars around 1800. And even when they got a system that worked, it only worked for about 5 miles in really clear weather before everybody started filling the air with black powder smoke, when the range dropped to maybe a quarter mile if you were looking in the right direction . . .

Earlier 'fleet commanders' were for getting a bunch of ships to a designated Battle Place at roughly the same time with some idea of what they wanted to do. Once the battle started, nobody commanded much of anybody who was more than shouting distance away and in direct line-of-sight of the 'Flagship'.

It's actually pretty appropriate that the in-game Naval Commanders are relegated to the Exploration Age, when presumably they could (in theory) take advantage of the Fleet Instructions issued by various navies in the 17th and 18th centuries and the flag systems developed in the 18th and 19th centuries to actually Command a Fleet.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Reference in-game air units.

Civ VII seems to be going back, at least in some ways, to Civ V with the addition of both biplane 'fighters' and biplane 'bombers'. The fighters I can see, sort of: there was a great deal of development of both air-to-air combat and air reconnaissance assets in 1914 - 1918, and air reconnaissance and even aerial spotting for artillery was pretty wwell developed by the last year of the war.

Ground attack from the air - not so much. The Imperial Germans actually built 'Schlachtflugzeug' specifically to drop light bombs and strafe enemy troops on the ground, but while they harassed a lot of troops, there's not much evidence that they did as much damage aas, say, a well-timed artillery barrage could do. The multi-engined bombers like the German Gothas and British Handley-Page types took enormous resources to build for the time and did remarkably little damage for the amount of effort expended. The German Zeppelin raids were actually much more effective against British cities, an even they were more of Morale attacks than actual destruction.

In short, if the game had to have pre-1930 aircraft, a single-engined biplane 'Pursuit' or reconnaissance aircraft and maybe a Zeppelin bomber for the sheer novelty would be enough.

The monoplane aircraft of the 1935 - 1950 period (pre-Jet) covers a tiny time period in game terms, but were the first aircraft to be able to seriously affect warfare - either by damaging enemy cities, industry and civilian morale or by increasingly stifling ground units' movement and supply and demolishing their combat strength through attrition. On all fronts, by 1943 a ground unit simply could not move in daylight in the face of enemy air superiority without taking heavy losses, an entirely new dimension in warfare.

One possible way of reflecting the '3 tier' system the game is displaying without too much artificiality might be:

Tiers:
1st: Biplane pursuit aircraft: acts as both an airborne Scout and can attack other aircraft

2nd: Monoplane Fighter: Has same capabilities, but can also attack Ground Units directly and extends range of ground Artillery

3rd: Strike Fighter - 1960s and later jet aircraft that can both perform air superiority and ground attack functions, and with an 'ultimate upgrade' can attack targets many tiles away with 'smart' missiles and glide bombs

1st: Multi-engine Biplane (as we've seen) can attack Happiness in cities directly (Morale Raids) or attack Ground Units.

2nd: Monoplane Multi-Engined Bomber: can attack enemy cities, settlements, ground units. Attacks on cities can destroy or damage Buildings.

3rd: Strike Bomber - B-52 and later aircraft, can carry Nuclear weapons or bombs/missiles that can strike fvrom tiles away against any ground target

That takes into account what we've seen so far: the bipane one and multi-engined aircraft and the monoplane fighter and assumes that they plan to upgrade both at least one more time.

 

[The_J]

Seems nobody is interest in that ships can apparently now again capture cities?

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

Seems nobody is interest in that ships can apparently now again capture cities?

It's reassuring to see, but since galleys can do that in Civ 6, I think most of us assumed it would be the case here as well.

 

[AriochIV]

Seems nobody is interest in that ships can apparently now again capture cities?

It's been that way for a while now... a non-change doesn't seem especially worthy of interest.

I understand why Fleet Commanders are unlocked in the Exploration Age, the focus of the Exploration Age is the sea and well...exploration, so it is fitting that the unit appears in the age that will let it shine the most, but does it feel inaccurate to someone else? Naval commanders existed in Antiquity. Perhaps the unit should have been included in Antiquity with a cap (two Fleet Commanders) and the limit should be lifted in the Exploration Age where their bigger numbers would be more crucial and beneficial. I'm actually looking forward to such a mod after the game's release.

Restriction in Antiquity to coastal hexes dramatically limits the opportunities for fleet-on-fleet action, so the limitation of admirals to Exploration Age seems to be a practical one. With the scale of Civilization, you really need deep water access to have significant fleet actions.

It's similar to religion in that, sure historically they existed earlier, but the mechanics as represented in the game didn't come into play until later.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

The bomber appears to be a Handley Page Type O, if anyone is interested.

 

[The_goggles_do_nothing]

You could take cities from sea with land units too. In civ 6 I had the AI ram units over and over into a costal city until they took it.

It looked like there is hand-to-hand combat between ships in the video. If when pillaging you can attack a land tile with a melee ship it make them vastly better.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

The bomber appears to be a Handley Page Type O, if anyone is interested.

- And to put the biplane 'heavy bomber' in perspective, the British "Independant Force" never made a raid with more than 40 aircraft at a time, and the HP Type O could carry just under 1 ton of ordinance to a range of about 500 km. The most damage any of them ever did, as far as I can tell, was when one aircraft dropped a bomb that hit an ammunition warehouse in a German–occupied French city and rocked the entire town.

Compared to the B-17's capacity of 2 - 4 tons of bombs and 1500 km range just 25 years later, and the ability by 1943 to mass formations of up to 1000 bombers, the difference in potential is striking.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Raise your hand if you hate shorts,

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

You could take cities from sea with land units too. In civ 6 I had the AI ram units over and over into a costal city until they took it.

It looked like there is hand-to-hand combat between ships in the video. If when pillaging you can attack a land tile with a melee ship it make them vastly better.

"Attacking a land tile with a melee ship", especially up a navigable river, is almost the definition of "Viking". Makes the apparent absence of any separate Norse/Scandinavian Civ in Exploration Age all the more striking, IMHO.

 

[JNR13]

To me, the big thing from this short seems to be the first hint at Modern Age mechanics - looks like consumable fuel resources are back and will probably play a central role.

I always liked the power system in VI but it suffered from the game being decided by then. This is one of the key issues they want to tackle with the novelties of VII, so if the game is still tense by then and each age has its gameplay more custom-made for that particular time, I can definitely see a return of the power and resource consumption system in a much more critical role.

 

[Disgustipated]

It's reassuring to see, but since galleys can do that in Civ 6, I think most of us assumed it would be the case here as well.

With Navigable rivers this ability will be more significant than in Civ 6. Something civs/leaders with bonuses to those rivers should watch out for. But I'm under the impression that any walled district has to be captured, so that may not be possible with ships alone.

 

[Evie]

- And to put the biplane 'heavy bomber' in perspective, the British "Independant Force" never made a raid with more than 40 aircraft at a time, and the HP Type O could carry just under 1 ton of ordinance to a range of about 500 km. The most damage any of them ever did, as far as I can tell, was when one aircraft dropped a bomb that hit an ammunition warehouse in a German–occupied French city and rocked the entire town.

Compared to the B-17's capacity of 2 - 4 tons of bombs and 1500 km range just 25 years later, and the ability by 1943 to mass formations of up to 1000 bombers, the difference in potential is striking.

And then a short 17 years after the B-17 the B-52 comes around and a single one carries a full squadron of B-17s worth of ordinance. Evolution did not slow after WW2.

(And more meaningfully, even modern fighters carry 2 or 3 B-17s worth or ordinance)

 

[JNR13]

With Navigable rivers this ability will be more significant than in Civ 6. Something civs/leaders with bonuses to those rivers should watch out for. But I'm under the impression that any walled district has to be captured, so that may not be possible with ships alone.

This also makes coastal settling more viable again if you plan to turn the settlement into a city, since protecting it from getting captured by sea along is now possible by walling a second district that's not next to water. As a town it will still be as vulnerable as usual though.

 

[gdr_willter]

Reference in-game air units.

Civ VII seems to be going back, at least in some ways, to Civ V with the addition of both biplane 'fighters' and biplane 'bombers'. The fighters I can see, sort of: there was a great deal of development of both air-to-air combat and air reconnaissance assets in 1914 - 1918, and air reconnaissance and even aerial spotting for artillery was pretty wwell developed by the last year of the war.

Ground attack from the air - not so much. The Imperial Germans actually built 'Schlachtflugzeug' specifically to drop light bombs and strafe enemy troops on the ground, but while they harassed a lot of troops, there's not much evidence that they did as much damage aas, say, a well-timed artillery barrage could do. The multi-engined bombers like the German Gothas and British Handley-Page types took enormous resources to build for the time and did remarkably little damage for the amount of effort expended. The German Zeppelin raids were actually much more effective against British cities, an even they were more of Morale attacks than actual destruction.

In short, if the game had to have pre-1930 aircraft, a single-engined biplane 'Pursuit' or reconnaissance aircraft and maybe a Zeppelin bomber for the sheer novelty would be enough.

The monoplane aircraft of the 1935 - 1950 period (pre-Jet) covers a tiny time period in game terms, but were the first aircraft to be able to seriously affect warfare - either by damaging enemy cities, industry and civilian morale or by increasingly stifling ground units' movement and supply and demolishing their combat strength through attrition. On all fronts, by 1943 a ground unit simply could not move in daylight in the face of enemy air superiority without taking heavy losses, an entirely new dimension in warfare.

One possible way of reflecting the '3 tier' system the game is displaying without too much artificiality might be:

Tiers:
1st: Biplane pursuit aircraft: acts as both an airborne Scout and can attack other aircraft

2nd: Monoplane Fighter: Has same capabilities, but can also attack Ground Units directly and extends range of ground Artillery

3rd: Strike Fighter - 1960s and later jet aircraft that can both perform air superiority and ground attack functions, and with an 'ultimate upgrade' can attack targets many tiles away with 'smart' missiles and glide bombs

1st: Multi-engine Biplane (as we've seen) can attack Happiness in cities directly (Morale Raids) or attack Ground Units.

2nd: Monoplane Multi-Engined Bomber: can attack enemy cities, settlements, ground units. Attacks on cities can destroy or damage Buildings.

3rd: Strike Bomber - B-52 and later aircraft, can carry Nuclear weapons or bombs/missiles that can strike fvrom tiles away against any ground target

That takes into account what we've seen so far: the bipane one and multi-engined aircraft and the monoplane fighter and assumes that they plan to upgrade both at least one more time.

But considering that still many torpedo bombers untill WW2 (especially in Europe) were biplanes which are technically the products from WW1 or interwar period, and the short shows the biplane air raid toward the naval unit, I'm okay with the WW1 style attack plane.

I mean if it's par of an all-unit system, I can sort of see it, and then it would make sense to sneak very early planes and subs (et, 1900-1910) in the 1800s tier to complete their line. I don't much like it, but there's sense to it.

To make it clear, I originally understood your first post like as you want to skip WW2 air units. That's why I told about "full of leaps"

Anyway I'm not so worrying about it, we don't know yet even how much unit tiers will be there in Modern Age.

 

[Eagle Pursuit]

All this WW1 plane research makes me wish the German UU is an Eindecker. Bring on the Fokker Scourge!

 

[Evie]

Oh heck no. It's WW*1* I would skip if we had to skip one, or reduce to a minor representation otherwise. WW2 aviation is the big one.

However, as far as torpedo bombers, we can pretty much replace "many" with two and "especially in Europe" with "only in the Fleet Air Arm". There were technicallyothers, but the Fiessler ended up a prototype carrier plane without a carrier,, and the Nakajima B4Y and Blackburn Shark were already basically relegated to training planes by that point, And while it's true the Swordfish and Albacore did serve through the war ( and the Swordfish especially was the little amazing underdog that could), they were all single-engined, not two-engined thing like the unit shown in game.

All this WW1 plane research makes me wish the German UU is an Eindecker. Bring on the Fokker Scourge!

Also would take an AEG G IV for the german bomber model please (and would be easier than the alternatives to model in 3D: unlike the rest, there's an actual survivor of those!)