In my state of the mod, I mentioned some notes about Naval Combat:
The more lingering question is around Naval Warfare itself. Naval Warfare is a very different beast than ground warfare, the absence of movement control and terrain means that naval fights tend to be less of the "dance" of ground combat, and more of a massacre. Large fleets throw themselves at each other, and 5-6 ships a round can be lost. While the human with smart tactics will lose less than AIs, unlike ground combat its nigh impossible not to lose some ships. So attrition is a much bigger deal in naval conflict.
I don't have a problem with naval fights going differently, but it has led to an "all or nothing" mindset when it comes to navy. I play in two states right now: I either create a large powerful navy and try to project force on the water....or I never build a single naval ship (outside of exploration caravels), keep my cities inland...and just ignore the naval part of the game. Aka there is no middle ground.
Now of course the first major question is....is this a problem? Ultimately I don't think the issue is the end of the world, navies work in VP, its not "broken". But at least from my perspective, it is not ideal that navy is my focus in one game and completely ignored in the next. I would love to have a more middle ground.
G asked the question.... "could we simply increase naval health to make fights last longer?" I unfortunately don't think that is the answer, melee ships are already pretty tanky, it takes a good amount of ship hits to bring them down. But there are consequences to the way navy is set up that leads to the scenarios.
So first, lets breakdown what happens in current naval battles that explains some of the behaviors we see.
First, I'm going to list out what I believe are the major "categories" of naval engagement.
1) Open Water combat (both navies out in the open).
2) Combat with Land Support (navy battles are 2-4ish hexes from land, one side has the aid of their ranged land units, cities, and healing in friendly terrain).
3) City Siege (navy is now pressed against enemy cities, melee ships often 1 hex from city and right next to land).
4) Backstab (either due to surprise 2nd navy from opponent, or sudden war declaration from new opponent, your navy's backside is pressed by new forces).
In my next post I am going to dig into these categories and showcase how naval combats unfold.
Open Water Combat
Spoiler:
When two navies combat each other, with neither side gaining protections from land, it comes down to the raw power of the two navies. This generally starts to happen at the Corvette phase, and comes to full bloom in the ironclad/destroyer phase. Here is generally what happens:
The Line Up
If the two sides engage, what you see is a line of melee ships form up against the opposing line (assuming the opponent was using actual formations and not scattered ships (aka competent tactics). If the opponent is not its a complete slaughter but not really worth discussing, that's just bad play and the AI's tactics are good enough that it knows how to use naval formations, so we will assume that in our discussion.
The ranged ships will press on the backside of the melee ships, pelting at the opponent's melee ships.
The Corner Crush
At some point in the fight, one navy will "wrap" one side of its melee line around the corner of the other. This creates a flanking multiplier, as you can often get 4 to even 5 ships around around the single corner ship, and then the crush begins. With the flanking multiplier achieved, the navy destroys the corner ship with "relative ease".
What happens next is a stark difference from land combat. In land combat, once forces are deployed to provide flanking, their limited movement combined with the terrain often limits how much support they can provide. But in naval combat its different.
The ships that provided flanks for the corner crush now move to the next ship in line, providing flanking again...and again....and again. The ships are destroyed down the line one after the other. Because of the speed of melee ships at this point in the game you can often destroy 4 ships in an instant.
The trick is unless you have land shapes around you there is no protection from this. No ship in the game is durable enough to withstand a corner crush, and so even with very good players, they will lose ships.
The Critical Falter
When both navies are relatively equal, they either both have the ability to corner crush each other, or with some land terrain they just line up and don't have the ability to crush, so you get more traditional "ground like" combat. But inevitably one side or the other gains the advantage as ships are lost and/or reinforcements arrive.
In ground combat, terrain allows a smaller force to keep a larger force at bay, as often the larger force simply can't promote all of its strength against the smaller force. But in naval combat, there is nothing to hold back a large navy....except the bodies of the opposing navy.
So inevitably the battle changes to a "critical point". One navy shrinks to a size where it can no longer inact effective corner crushes, it has gaps in its line allowing for mid line flanks, and no longer has the "bulk" to block the enemy navy from getting at its ranged ships. This navy is no longer a viable force, it is now dead meat.
What often follows is a massacre. The larger navy now gets a tremendous force multiplier against the smaller one, as it can crush while the opponent can not, and once it hits ranged ships it often requires a single ship attack with flanks to destroy them. Naval battles at this stage can generate tremendous losses, often resulting in the complete and utter destruction of the opponent's navy. Such "complete and total victories" are rarely seen in ground combat.
The Flacid Retreat
In naval combat, its imperative that one side retreats before its navy shrinks to this critical falter point. However, retreating in open water combat can be very difficult for a few reasons.
1) Boarding Party vs Dreadnought: While Dreadnought is imo the superior promotion from a combat standpoint, Dreadnought ships cannot retreat from BP ships. This is actually the reason I use BP ships as my main force. If my dreadnoughts cannot retreat from a larger navy (which on higher difficulties is the default until I have destroyed a lot of ships), then they are dead.
2) Slow Ranged Ships: While the melee ships can escape at full speed, the ranged ships cannot. So either your melee line withdraws at the speed of your ranged ships (which only works as a retreat if you are near land forms or friendly waters that can reinforce you, otherwise the enemy just reengages you), or you leave your ranged ships behind to get gobbled up.
Summary: Open Water combat allows for one navy to project its full force against the other, meaning that whoever has the larger navy generally wins. However, the openness of the terrain, and the difficulty of retreats often means that a larger navy will often do "significantly more damage" than the equivalent large ground combats generate, even managing to completely decimate the opposing force.
Combat with Land Support
Spoiler:
In this model, a defending navy is fighting against an enemy, with the assumption being the enemy has a larger, stronger force (if the enemy does not this really isn't a fight, the defender just wins in that circumstance).
Unlike open water, the defender has several advantages they can use.
1) In combat healing: "Fortified" melee ships can heal in place, giving them more durability than normal.
2) City and Land reinforcement: Cities and ranged attackers can attack to soften up the enemy navy. This puts a bit of a "timer" on the combat, if the enemy cannot tell significant damage quickly the ranged bombardment will weaken it to the point where engagement is no longer viable.
3) Defensive land formations: Smart players will use land formations to reduce the amount of enemy attacks that can target a single ship.
Coastal Support
On your main continent, your coastal cities have a solid defender's advantage if properly prepared. It is hard work to defeat a navy protected in this way, and so often I see combat going WWI style, with a "no man's land" that both navies don't cross. Now the enemy can use this to snipe trade routes and often pillage water resources, but the danger of losing your navy like in open water combat is significantly smaller.
Island Support
With islands its a bit different. The cities and ranged units on islands are much more exposed than on the coast, and navies can maneuver around to limit the amount of ranged fire they take, while maximizing their own ranged fire to kill land units.
The real note here is around the land terrain. Sometimes islands come with lots of small land pockets around them that can be a strong defender's advantage. But often its just the island, and you get the equivalent of open water combat with a weak defender's advantage, and you maintain the risk of a "total defeat".
Summary: Defender's advantage in friendly waters is real, and can be a major boon to your navy. However, the advantage varies significantly based on the terrain, from full measure on a strong coast, to almost non-existent on a small island.
City Siege
Spoiler:
Once we are at this step, the enemy navy is now pressing against the enemy city. Ideally the enemy has brought City Assault infantry that stays in the water and adds to the city attack (something the AI does not do well at this current stage), as well as ground forces that start to occupy the coast (something the AI is now quite good at doing).
Similar to the land support model, the amount of land terrain greatly influences the effectiveness of the defense. Further, the amount of water the city is connected to has a big impact.
1) 1 Water Tile: True inlet cities are very hard to take with pure navy if they are keeping up their appropriate defensive buildings, and if the defender has good skirmisher support may be impossible. Battleships and subs start to overcome this advantage in the late game but I generally find my city can hold with just a bit of land support for a long time, often not needing any naval help.
2) 2-3 Water Tiles: This is your typical "coastal settle", and its pretty hard to hold. Enemies can project force on your city very quickly, so you must have a very strong land defense to stop them, or you must counter with your navy.
3) 4+ water tiles: Island cities....which are toast. Defensive buildings can delay the enemy, but cannot stop them. You must have bring a counter navy or the city will simply fall.
The consequence of this creates a somewhat binary scenario:
a) A player that settles their cities in limited but defensive positions often doesn't need a navy to defend them. This removes the need for defensive navies but often removes large amounts of potential "good" city sites.
You could argue the same happens in ground combat. My counter would be the prevalence of islands on many maps that are "untenable" to take due to this issue.
b) A player that settles in more open cities (especially islands) must invest in a large navy if you hope to protect their property, as they now have significantly weaker defender's advantage, and risks the open water "total destruction" concern.
Summary: City Sieging is majorly impacted by the "exposure" of the city to the water, and can range from a nigh impenetrable city to a city that cannot mount any effective defense. This hugely changes the amount of naval investment to mount an effective defense.
Backstab
Spoiler:
This is a scenario that is rarely "intended" but does happen a fair amount. Often you are engaging the enemy, perhaps in a city siege scenario. Then suddenly the enemy shows up with a new fresh navy (something the high level AI is adept at doing), or you get a new war declaration from a new enemy, who comes with their own fresh full navy.
In ground combat, things are often "linear". You press out from your cities against the enemy, or retreat towards your cities. Even in coastal assaults, you press into the city, or back to your navy.
So when you are backstabbed on the ground, you still often have a clear retreat path back to your territory if needed, and that path is rarely blocked. For the enemy to cut you off now exposes them to your city attacks and reinforcements. It does happen, but in my experience its rarer. In the scenario when an enemy is attacking you from a new direction (perhaps a far away city), your defenses and terrain can often greatly slow down the enemy. Though they may not be able to hold, they can hold out long enough for fresh land troops to arrive. Later eras make this even easier with first roads, then rails, and eventually airports for quicker travel and reinforcement.
Backstabs on water are much more deadly. If you are attacking an enemy and you get backstabbed with a new enemy, sometimes your retreat path is not fully clear and doesn't directly lead back to friendly territory. Since formation is so important in naval battles, you often cannot form melee lines to protect from all sides, and so your ranged side gets crushed. Having to deal with 2 navies just magnifies the corner crush scenario, and can very quickly lead to annihilation. Retreating from 1 enemy is hard enough, but sometimes it is completely impossible to retreat from 2 different fleets.
Further, because of the City Siege issues noted above, some cities do not last long against an aggressive navy. Even if you had the proper navy to defend, if that navy is tied up with an enemy....or has already been beaten up in recent fights, it may not be available or strong enough to defend. In those scenarios exposed coastal cities can fall quickly.
Ultimately this leads into more binary scenarios. In order to project naval force, you have to REALLY have the numbers, both to stand up against a singular force, but often to defend territory and deal with multiple navies at once.
Summary: Backstabs magnify some of the existing naval concerns. The ability to get overwhelmed and destroyed by an enemy navy, as well concerns about coastal defense are magnified when you consider 2 or 3 enemy navies instead of 1. While on ground, limited territory reduces your exposure to multiple enemies, open water allows for many enemies to combine force against you.
Ok so that long post summarizes the scenarios. Working through them I have some thoughts on what are the keys to adjusting naval combat and some ideas on answers. We will look at those in the next post.
Breaking down the Problem
Now that we have looked at how naval battles play out, I tried to break down what I think are the key issues in naval combat.
1) Larger Navies have too strong of a force multiplier: The corner crush relies on gaining tremendous leverage, allowing multiple ships to get pulverized in short order.
2) A lack of defensive benefits: In ground combat, a fortified unit gains defensive advantages and the ability to heal some damage, and with citadels can even project offense while defending. In naval combats, the ability to reposition ships and strike first is far superior.... aka offense and mobility completely trumps defense.
However that said, naval ships near land already have decent defensive magnification, so we don't need to target that, but around more general ship combat.
3) Naval ships recover too slowly. Naval ships have delayed medic promotions compared to ground. Naval conflicts tend to be quicker than ground combats and so the effect is multiplied. While ground forces can often heal and return to a conflict, damaged naval ships are often out of the engagement. This again furthers the advantage of a large navy that can afford to send ships back and not shrink to the "critical threshold".
4) City Defense varies too wildly depending on the amount of exposed coast. As it is right now, either a city is too tanky at 1 tile, or its too exposed at 2-3 or 4 tiles. While this occurs with ground combat as well, the effect is magnified on the water.
Brainstorming Solutions
So with this list in mind, lets talk about some ideas to solve them. Ideally we want solutions that are scalpel focused on naval combat, and don't heavily impact land vs water.
Larger Navies have too strong of a force multiplier
1) Remove the flanking bonus for naval ships. The corner crush utilizes flanking bonuses to magnify the ship attack. Removing flanking bonuses reduces this advantage. That said, it also reduces the advantage of tactics, which does weaken the human advantage over the AI (though the AI does use these tactics the human is still superior at it).
Naval Combat has limited defensive benefits
1) Make Atolls impassible to ships (effectively 1 hex islands that cannot be settled). This would increase the terrain complexity of water a bit and allow for more tactics to beat superior fleets.
2) Grant ships the ability to fortify (aka +25% defense). The idea is to give some benefits to the ships that are remaining in formation as opposed to the ships moving around the corners or who are pressing in on the initiative and attacking. It allows defenders to "hold their ground" and stay strong against superior numbers. This also helps against those backstabs, because sometimes the enemy navy hits you right off before you have had a chance to react.
Naval Ships Recover Too Slowly
1) Give ships medic at tier 2 like ground forces. I don't see any reason ships can't get the same healing rate as ground forces, especially since they can't heal in open water.
2) Allow ships in city (aka in port) to recover even quicker. This could be a benefit of the harbor, seaport, arsenal, etc. Its a hospital like benefit for naval ships to heal up quicker and get back in the fight.
City Defense varies too wildly depending on the amount of exposed coast
1) Update the Harbor and Seaport to say: "+X CS to the city for every coastal tile adjacent to the city".
What we are doing is scaling the city defense more dynamically. A well protected inlet city doesn't get a major boost (which is a complaint some people have with the current model). A more exposed island city gains a little extra to try and help it hold against the greater forces it will be facing.
This also helps the "lake problem", where a lake city gets a stronger defense than other land cities, now you could remove the harbor boost for that entirely if its desired.
2) Add in an old building from Civ 2. Coastal Fortress (requires 3 or more costal tiles adjacent to the city): City gains +30% RCS against ships.
I think there are likely better solution that don't require entirely new buildings, but just showing an old school answer to the problem.
1) Make Atolls impassible to ships (effectively 1 hex islands that cannot be settled). This would increase the terrain complexity of water a bit and allow for more tactics to beat superior fleets.
Atolls can completely block exploration before Caravels
If ships that can't move in deep water are made able to move into atolls (they're smaller ships after all), there might be buggy interactions when you upgrade a Trireme/Galleass in atolls.
1) Give ships medic at tier 2 like ground forces. I don't see any reason ships can't get the same healing rate as ground forces, especially since they can't heal in open water.
I guess the question is, how important is this? Depending on the map, sometimes I can explore quite a bit of the map before caravels, and sometimes only a little. So if I have a scenario where on a particular map I happened to get blocked by Atolls, is that really a gamebreaker?
Medic makes no sense for ships. Just make the Supply promotion available earlier.
From a RL standpoint, medic doesn't make full sense for ground forces either. The idea that a unit could be brought up to "full strength" by natural healing is already a bit absurd, as clearly it would require reinforcements in RL to do that. So I don't think medic as a "ship repair" is any crazier.
That said, I would also be fine with the notion that ships get supply as a default at some point, that seems another reasonable way to boost healing. It would however give attacking fleets far from home a new advantage....whether that advantage is actually a bad thing is worthy of debate.
Why not make atolls rought terrain instead of impassable? Maybe -2 movement? Enough to discourage moving into them, but not enough to block early exploration.
I like the idea of a coastal fortress, but I dont like the dynamic CS idea for harbour
I think introducing more ocean terrain types will change the "featureless plane" of naval combat into something better suited to this mod.
Archipelagos could be added as a terrain type with a movement penalty.
Atolls, as pineappledan noted, can be made into a terrain with movement penalties.
Coastal tiles and sea tiles could gain navigation bonuses or penalties depending on technology.
Ocean currents and trade winds can be added to have a movement penalty or bonus.
Reefs, with severe movement penalties, could be the new home of Coral and Pearl luxuries. Perhaps it should use all remaining movement points.
Sargasso Sea terrain could offer a small movement penalty or perhaps be a new natural wonder.
Storm terrain could be added with a line of sight penalty and a movement penalty. The storm represents an area of sea known for bad weather, not one specific storm that lasts millenia.
Volcanic islands can be modeled by repurposing Krakatoa or otherwise allowing mountain terrain to spawn on small islands. Having a volcanic island chain of three or more tiles could shape an engagement at sea, especially near a reef.
The ships themselves need another look; I cannot provide much comment on yet, so I have a few questions.
Are players generally content with the land-sea accuracy penalties?
Are players generally content with air-sea combat in the late game?
Are players generally content with the role of each ship line?
Would a Naval Treaty world congress resolution to limit tonnage address any issues that exist?
Some of the movement complications suggested here are interesting, but I don't think do much to address the original basic complaint: that naval combat is a numbers game. I doubt that can be changed with realistic changes.
One idea I just thought about. What if ranged ships (lets say starting at Galleass, because those ships could still use some help) automatically came with Splash II (the reason its Splash II is so they couldn't immediately pick up the Splash I promotion). Splash becomes more effective the more enemies you have, so in theory it could be a counter against a larger navy. Now of course the larger navy could get more splashing attacks, so it may not help, but it would be an interesting idea to test. It would also give ranged units a bit more oomph to combat the wall of naval melee. And it gives the human something tactical to do with their actions to maximize success.
Why not make atolls rough terrain instead of impassable? Maybe -2 movement? Enough to discourage moving into them, but not enough to block early exploration.
In theory we could consider this for all sea resources, effectively saying that the resource isn't just "fish" but its a "small island with a lot of fish near it". You could also give defense bonus on that terrain ala rough terrain on the main land. I think the idea is cool for Atolls but the issue of course is Atolls are rare in many cases, but if we did for all sea resources suddenly you have a decent impact.
If the flavor is too much for bare resources to be "rough", perhaps this could be a bonus for applying fishing nets to it. Effectively we are saying the nets are a little bit more than just some dudes fishing, but its actually a bit more organized and defensible. Therefore invaders get slowed and get no bonus, whereas the home team can take advantage of them.
If we did go with this method, would we want the benefit to also blocked ranged attacks (aka hill style), or just serves as a movement impairment/defense bonus?
Part of what lets a huge navy to wreck a smaller one so fast is their high mobility. Compared to land combat, naval warfare in the game resembles tanks on a wide open field. Any opening can be exploited with ease. I don't think some sparse rough sea tiles will change that.
Another factor is the long line of sight that naval units can have. Finding where the enemy ships are is very easy, so openings in their formation are quickly found, often with just one ship and without risks.
Naval units also don't follow the compromise between firepower, armor and speed that naval designers had to deal with. As a general rule, high mobility in naval warfare came at expense of either firepower or armor, unlike land combat, where horses and vehicles allowed for both heavier equipment and higher speed relative to foot soldiers. So, when an opening is found, the ships don't just hit there in the same turn it is found, they also hit hard.
A way to limit how lopsided naval battles tend to be would be to reduce the movement and LoS of naval units, as well as rework the many modifiers for both to provide something else. If the game needs a fast ship, it is better to have a naval recon line (high mobility, low CS), instead of forcing melee units to perform it.
A way to limit how lopsided naval battles tend to be would be to reduce the movement and LoS of naval units, as well as rework the many modifiers for both to provide something else.
1) People already complain about how long it takes for naval ships to get around the world even on Standard Size (I can't imagine it on Huge). So slower ships would compound the problem, and make it nigh impossible for you to react to naval attacks on your holdings, you would have to leave a navy around each area you want to protect, and that is simply too expensive at the moment. I don't think you could implement that without some additional means of getting ships around the map quicker. It would be kind of cool if you could effectively "gift" your naval units to your own cities and get them them over somewhere in a few turns....wouldn't be perfect but its an idea.
2) If you drop speed you can certainly drop LoS, but I generally think losing LoS once again compounds the problem. LoS is what allows you to keep distance without an enemy navy without accidentally running into them. Generally the first person to attack in a naval engagement gets a big advantage, so if your fleet stumbles into move range of another fleet and you run out of movement, this gives the enemy fleet a chance to pounce. The AI is actually really good at sneaking into blind spots, if you are not fully on top of your spotters you could get wrecked. So I would want to maintain a good LoS greater than the move range of the fleet, whatever that new move range would be.
One idea I forgot to add in the OP was moving the mine field earlier in the tech tree. The mine fields speed reduction can actually be a major defender's advantage, so having it earlier could be an option.
One idea I just thought about. What if ranged ships (lets say starting at Galleass, because those ships could still use some help) automatically came with Splash II (the reason its Splash II is so they couldn't immediately pick up the Splash I promotion). Splash becomes more effective the more enemies you have, so in theory it could be a counter against a larger navy. Now of course the larger navy could get more splashing attacks, so it may not help.
In theory we could consider this for all sea resources, effectively saying that the resource isn't just "fish" but its a "small island with a lot of fish near it". You could also give defense bonus on that terrain ala rough terrain on the main land. I think the idea is cool for Atolls but the issue of course is Atolls are rare in many cases, but if we did for all sea resources suddenly you have a decent impact.
If the flavor is too much for bare resources to be "rough", perhaps this could be a bonus for applying fishing nets to it. Effectively we are saying the nets are a little bit more than just some dudes fishing, but its actually a bit more organized and defensible. Therefore invaders get slowed and get no bonus, whereas the home team can take advantage of them.
If we did go with this method, would we want the benefit to also blocked ranged attacks (aka hill style), or just serves as a movement impairment/defense bonus?
I think the atoll idea makes sense, although again won't significantly affect the original issue raised. All the stuff about sea resources or fishing nets slowing naval vessels, though, is unrealistic. Common sense and history tell you that military vessels have priority.
One idea I forgot to add in the OP was moving the mine field earlier in the tech tree. The mine fields speed reduction can actually be a major defender's advantage, so having it earlier could be an option.
This is a good idea with regard to coastal defense. It could both be introduced earlier, and buffed in later eras. By buff, I mean ships taking damage on top of being slowed. That's more realistic anyway.
Instead of fortify bonus and flanking bonus why not give ships a defense penalty per adjacent ship (friendly). A fortified ship makes no sense at it is implying an anchored ship which is an easy target which is easy to spot on open ocean compared to infantry in forest hills. A ships best defense is to move but with more friendly ships around it it can move less and the enemy can just target the general area and will likely hit something. With many enemy ships around it the enemy need to be better at targeting to actual hit something (and not themselves) hence no defense penalty.
This doesn't fix the cornering thing you mentioned but it actually makes lone ships stronger due to removal of flanking and making ships in formation weaker. This could allow you to split up your navy into smaller pieces and attack enemy from front and side/back. (no idea if it works)
Other options is no zone of control at all and remove the boarding thing entirely as to give the whole navy a chance to flee.
having said that an issue I have with naval warfare is that melee ships are far to powerful in city attack especially once they have blitz. (with the right polices and wonders out of the gate). You can just cycle them as they can move in, attack twice, move out. 1 coast tile is all that is needed. Either they should always be able to move after attacking or no movement once all attacks are used up. But blitz adds an attack and the possibility to move after attacking which can be more powerful than the actual second attack.
While some naval units are a bit too strong out of the box imo I would guess that lack of terrain is the main issue and I like the idea of atolls/resources as blockers.
I also agree that the boats/no boats play is a big benefit for human players.
i've probably repeated all these ideas in some thread or another already, but i share similar concerns as OP and others here -- though much improved, the naval game remains bland, particularly due to flat, never-changing movement and sight values in all ocean/coast tiles. Ignoring some more drastic past experiments, beyond the already-mentioned "add terrain" suggestions, some semi-feasible ideas:
1) add weather (eg storm/hurricane) as a terrain feature that generates in ocean/coast for a few turns, reducing movement and visibility in some tiles temporarily
2) similarly, have turns with seasonal ice, but only away from equator, ie making a distinction between warm/cold-water ports
3) ice blocks vision similar to forest
4) movement bonus on owned/friendly naval trade route tiles
5) movement bonus from nearby/adjacent owned/friendly buildings (ie lighthouse)
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