Hereś my two cents worth: I´ve done some testing of changes to naval combat and found that the AI can handle some drastic changes quite nicely.
By doubling the movement rate for modern ships like destroyers and transports, made it a greater challenge to defend, as the AI would forever be dropping off small invasion forces anywhere far away from your forces in your homeland. It made it necessary to keep screening forces around at all times since in many games I rarley bother with a navy if I can march there.
By increasing the A/D/M from the 1-2-4-8 progression they currently use to a 1-2-4-8-16-32 and increase the number of ships from the Galley-Galleon-Ironclad-Destroyer-Battleship to include more technological steps like 1st Generation Destroyers (WW1), 2nd Gen (WW2) and 3rd Gen (AEGIS) and having their attack and movement increase along with it, made for some more interesting challenges as you will find battles against technologically inferior oppenents much more ´realistic´ where a WW1 Destroyer will blow an Ironclad out of the water every time when they are in open water. The difference in attacks being an Ironclad used solid iron shot and a destroy had larger guns firing HE shells.
This still doesn´t fix the problems of the AI never building harbours until the 1400´s (if they live that long) and the lack of anything related to trade. I think we need something like the Caravans from CTP2 and trade routes shown on the map to make naval power politically and economically useful.
After all, without Drake´s privateers, Elizabeth would never have had the gold to do much of anything during her reign. And the Spanish would never have built the Armada to go after her if the privateers hadn´t hurt their economy so badly. At the end, the Spanish were totally reliant on the gold they were extracting from South America to keep their kingdom going.
I think I will have to see if the editor will let me spec out merchant ships. It would be nice to see a tradeship necessary just as a road is for establishing trade between ports.
D.
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