Navy in Civ7: Pirates and Torpedoes

Canoes as wortwhile sea-going warship is what I said.

Canoes were numerous, but chiefly as riverine and lacustrine transports. Canoes as a meaningful coastal warship (the big war canoes of some Native people) were considerably rarer.

Canoe as a meaningful coastal warship significant enough to push the galley (much more meaningful historically in term of coastal naval operations) significantly more than a millenium after they first appeared makes no sense to me.

I never said "don't use Ironclads". We all have Ironclads in our list. I just put it in the ranged line as a heavy-gun centered unit, which it was. The craze that said rams would replace cannon was one of those baseless crazes that military designers sometime have and that end up blowing up spectacularly without ever having much military impact. It certainly should not be how we determine what kind of role the ironclad should play in game.

What I did criticize was having both 1905 dreadnaughts and 1930s battleships as two separate units while you're lumping everything from Hatshepsut's galleys in 1500 BC to the massive Roman and Carthaginian warships of the last few centuries BC as one unit, "Galley".
 
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And yet you also have galley in your list. K dude.

Attempting to poke holes in my list for not having enough galleys doesn’t cover for your list having way too many useless boats.
 
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...AGAIN, I didn't say don't use galley as a name. I don't know why you keep assuming that's what I want, but it really isn't. Makes for a nice strawman though.

Galley is perfectly fine as a naval unit - in the ancient era, where it belongs, representing the early open-decked single-row galleys. The problem is with putting Galley in the Classical, more than a thousand year after it was invented, as the only naval unit in the era (when there were a wide range of closed-deck multi-rows naval units , from lighter ones that were purely boarding-based to larger ones that had, yes, siege (and, therefore, ranged) weaponry aboard.
 
The reason why my list has only 2 galleys is because that’s all that’s necessary. There is no value in having more than 1 boat line before medieval. You have 3.
 
"Galley" is not completely generic: it refers to a boat/ship propelled by Oars instead of Paddling. The earliest illustration of oared ships is from about 2700 BCE (Egypt - coastal craft transporting soldiers) so the 'technology' is Ancient by game standards. Dug-out canoes (paddled boats) on the other hand, have been found in peat bogs in northern Europe and near Lake Chad in Africa, both dating back to 6000 BCE, so Pre Start of Game. (And later examples, still Start of Game or earlier, have been found in southeast Asia and the Americas, and somebody using some kind of propelled craft was hunting whales in Korea nearly as far back, but I don't have any details on whether we know what kind of boat they were using)

I would love to use more collective terms for early ships, from the rich maritime traditions of East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and India, but hard evidence of types of ships and characteristics is very difficult to come by until late in or after the Classical, and then it's very spotty until centuries later. There have been a lot less wrecks discovered and explored, partly because of the concentration of interest by western universities in Europe and partly because ships sinking in the Pacific and Indian Oceans end up 1000s of feet below the surface, not 100s as in the Mediterranean, and so are much less accessible.

The Canoe (paddled or sailed, not oared) is actually more generic than Galley: it refers to craft ranging from 2 - 3 man riverine dug-outs or bark-built to the Lashed Lug sea-going catamarans of the Polynesians and their Austronesian ancestors (also Pre-Classical, dating back to at least 1500 BCE) to the Western Red Cedar dug-outs of the Haida and other Pacific Northwest people, that reached 15 - 18 meters in length, just under 3 meters beam and carried up to 50 people, and may have been deep-sea craft - they could certainly operate far enough off the coast to be invisible from shore, since the Haida regularly made Surprise Visits to raid their coastal neighbors, and they have oral tales about visiting 'islands in the sea' which are probably the Aleutian chain. Canoes were craft that allowed the first deep sea fishing and whaling, from before the nominal Start of Game, so are not to be dismissed lightly or ignored, as they largely have in Civ games: they pre-date any sailing technology by 1000s of years.

Ironclads are among the most short-lived of naval vessels. The first practical such ships were laid down nearly simultaneously in 1854 CE by Britain, USA and France, and in 1876 the first Steel Hulled warship was launched, after which 'ironclad' is simply no longer appropriate to describe warships. That's 22 years, or less than 5 5-year turns. Also, since the triple-expansion compound steam engine that made real long-distance steaming possible was not invented until 1874, the ironclad is strictly a short-ranged (coastal in game terms) ship - which Civ games have actually gotten right most of the time.

And the peculiar Ram Fixation of the late 19th century was based on one event: the ramming of one ship by another at the Battle of Lissa in 1866. Since this was the only naval battle between fleets of major European powers (Austria and Italy - sort of major) between 1815 and 1914, it was analyzed to death and everybody decided that Rams were the Way To Go, even though gunnery ranges rapidly increased from about 1000 meters in 1815 to 6 - 9000 meters by the end of the century

The problem with separating the Dreadnaught from the Battleship is that the ships themselves were notoriously slippery: In the same year that the first Dreadnaught was launched, the first Battlecruiser was also launched, a ship that had the later Battleship's speed and almost as heavy firepower. Then all the slower Dreadnaughts that survived WWI and the Naval Limitation Treaties were Upgraded with more powerful engines, oil-fired boilers, antiaircraft protection, and sometimes new gun mounts allowing much longer ranges for their main guns. So IF you decide to have Dreadnaughts and 'Fast' Battleships (the term that was used at the time), the Dreadnaughts last from 1906 to 1918 (12 years) and after that they must be allowed to be Upgraded into Battleships to be at all accurate to their IRL models. Unless you also intend to have the Battlecruiser as a separate type (and since they built more of them than everybody else in the world combined, it really should be a British UU), it scarcely seems worth the time and effort for an extremely ephemeral Dreadnaught warship type in game terms.
 
A simplified model for naval units:
LIGHT SHIP*Canoe*PenteconterLembosGalleyXebecBrigantineDestroyerCorvette
HEAVY SHIPQuinqueremeCarrackGalleonFrigateBattleshipCrusier
SUBMERSIBLEHunter SubNuclear Sub
CARRIEREscort CarrierFleet Carrier
**Canoe** is an exclusive unit avaible only for those civs that gain the "maritime society" title by picking an acuatic food sources for their first settlement. The historical base for this unit are the fleets of war canoes from the Carib and Maori.

NOTE: This lines are not mean to be an ideal historical classifications, but a easy to identify set of forms and names.
 
I'd love to remove Monitor-style ironclads from the list honestly, because they don' fit any of the main unit category, but there's that quasi-mythological stature to them in civ largely because it's based on US pop culture history and the Monitor and Virginia/Merrimack loom large in that so I think that removing them is unlikely to ever take.

I think lumping them with pre-dreadnaughts is the best to hope for there. Especially as that unit is otherwise hard to name.
 
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There is pressure to name boats so they don’t descend into [descriptor] [boat] as a naming scheme or start listing different sailing rigs as if that presents an intelligible technological progression a la “sloop” or “brigantine”. Boat names like the “ironclad” and “dreadnought” offer an advantage here. They are evocative of a certain era of naval development that saw improvement in one or more areas while also offering a name that doesnt end in -ship or some other cumbersome adjective-noun compound idea.

Ironclads evoke a jump forward in ship armour. Dreadnoughts were at the confluence of decades of gunnery, armor, and propulsion advancements that finally appeared in a single capital ship that obsoleted everything that came before it. It also helps that both of these ship designs actually saw combat in important battles, whereas many of the advances with other ship designs were showcased in either very unequal wars (eg steam frigates debuting in the first opium war) or were invented and then obsolete before any war occurred (eg the pre-dreadnoughts).
 
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The problem with separating the Dreadnaught from the Battleship is that the ships themselves were notoriously slippery: In the same year that the first Dreadnaught was launched, the first Battlecruiser was also launched, a ship that had the later Battleship's speed and almost as heavy firepower. Then all the slower Dreadnaughts that survived WWI and the Naval Limitation Treaties were Upgraded with more powerful engines, oil-fired boilers, antiaircraft protection, and sometimes new gun mounts allowing much longer ranges for their main guns. So IF you decide to have Dreadnaughts and 'Fast' Battleships (the term that was used at the time), the Dreadnaughts last from 1906 to 1918 (12 years) and after that they must be allowed to be Upgraded into Battleships to be at all accurate to their IRL models. Unless you also intend to have the Battlecruiser as a separate type (and since they built more of them than everybody else in the world combined, it really should be a British UU), it scarcely seems worth the time and effort for an extremely ephemeral Dreadnaught warship type in game terms.
This effectively proves my point.

If relevance and efficacy were the only metrics for what the name of the modern era ranged ship should be, then “Battlecruiser” would be a top pick. But it has “battle-“ as a prefix and “-cruiser” as a suffix, so it will bleed in with a “battleship” unit and a “missile cruiser” or whatever other kind of cruiser elsewhere. The alternative is have a “dreadnought” unit, and everything sounds and feels more unique.
 
I'm honestly not against having both dreadnaught and battleship (though I'm not in favor of an expanded atomic age).. They were both significant units, and, between the two of them, covers about 50 turns of the game, make sense enough.

My point isn't that they shouldn't be in. My point is that if the 50-turn, 50 years period from the creation of the dreadnaught to the death of the battleship warranted two heavy surface ships, then there is no defensible reason to say the galley is sufficent to cover the 3200 years, roughly 105 turns period between the creation of the first galleys (2700 BC) and the end of the Classical period (500 AD).

Especially when players are going to spend a lot more time playing the ancient-classical era of the game than the modern-atomic era, because the late eras of the game are generally seen as the less interesting ones, and players pursuing rapid victory may not even reach that part of the game. That to me implies that unit diversity and variety in those early stages of the game should be a high priority, not an afterthought.
 
Nice collection! Just a few tweaks and comments:
Recon:
The Liburnian was such a quintessential Pirate craft throughout the Classical period that it cries out to be a specific Barbarian Boat. Lembos, on the other hand, was a generic (Greek - in Latin it is Lembus) term for 'any light warship' - specifically, lighter than any polyreme, including the Trireme, so a nice term for the lighter recon types we want to depict.
Melee:
The Quadrireme was the main warship of the eastern Med for less than 70 years, and as a 'melee' ship was completely outclassed by the Quinquereme, which could carry more marines (120 to 75) and was more stable, better protected, and had a higher deck giving a tactical advantage in boarding actions. The Quinquereme was the definitive Melee Warship, used extensively by Rome, Carthage, and the Hellenistic Greek states for 400 years (399 BCE to Augustus' time).
The Galleass was primarily a design to mount a gun deck above a rowing deck of oarsmen, providing relatively heavy cannon broadside with the use of either oars or sails for propulsion. It's a bad choice for a Melee ship, then, because it's metier was firepower - and that's how they were used in their most famous action at Lepanto in 1571 CE. The Carrack, on the other hand, was a true 'melee' ship from the late 14th century (1380 - 1410: first illustrations and mentions). Examples from the 16th century carried only 5 - 22 'anti-ship' cannon, but also 64 - 79 'anti-personnel' swivel or large hackbuss-type guns and large contingents of troops to board and take enemy ships: classic Melee Tactics.
Ranged:
The larger-than-Quinquereme Polyremes (Deciremes, Heptiremes, Octaremes, etc) all are shown with towers fore and aft for missile troops and were stable enough platforms to mount catapults on them for siege work against coastal cities, so a good choice for the Classical Ranged Ship.
Instead of the Carrack, however (see above), the two better candidates for a Ranged ship are the Cog (Medieval: 13th - 14th centuries) or the Galleon (mid-16th century). From at least the early 14th century the Cog mounted towers for missile troops fore and aft and at Sluys (1340 CE) English Cogs swept the decks of the French galleys with arrow fire, turning the battle into a massacre. On the other hand, the Galleon hull from 1530 CE on was the first hull designed from the start to carry large 'ship killing' cannon and the 'race-built galleon' developed in England later in the same century was the hull that developed into the Ship of the Line after the middle of the 17th century.
"Missile" ships:
The terms Missile Frigate, Missile Destroyer and Missile Cruiser are essentially interchangeable. The Ticonderoga Class Missile Cruisers are smaller than later Missile Destroyers and ships and classes of ships have been reclassified constantly for the past 30 years. The only distinct type is the (Missile) Corvette, a much smaller ship which, at east in Swedish service, uses a collection of stealth techniques to be invisible or nearly so while carrying a formidable array of anti-ship, anti-submarine, anti-aircraft missile systems. This would make a good alternative 'Recon' type for the Information Era, complete with a submarine-like ability to be invisible unless you are adjacent to it.
What happened to anything bigger to Triremes after the Republic of Rome, and later Roman Empire ruled the entire Mediterranean sea as well as North Atlantics? After the end of Roman Civil War which happened after Iulius Caesar is murdered by mass stabbings in Senate. and ended few decades before Jesus Christ was born? Roman Historian (or so) cited that much of Roman Naval Might joined wrong sides (Marcus Antonius maybe? a person who dated Cleopatra VII and ALMOST going to be the Pharaoh of Egypt. again this is not what Republic is pleased) and when the Mark is defeated, so gone a large portion of navy sided with him. What's left to Octavius is a fleet of smaller warships like Moners (the likes of Lembos and Liburnia. Romans also use this term for their lightweight warships). The other reason is that with Rome became absolute ruler of Mediterranean and North Atlantic. and there's no rivals capable to do bigger warships so the needs to build anything bigger with more crews than trirers are diminished. (no longer worths investments and maintenance.). The late Roman Imperial Fleet consisted mainly of Biremes and Triremes, and the design philosophy did changed as well... Dromons and Chelandes which became Byzantine premier warships are considered LARGE by Late Roman and even Medieval Standard and later formed a basis of the later evolutions of galleys (Italian Galea Grossa, or 'Sweeps Galley'), to the Late Republic era however, these are considered SMALL.
I'm not including Nemi pleasure ship. which.. too bad a WW2 victim presumably to either Allied bombings or Fascist Italian arson to deny Allies a prize. it is surely superheavy polyreme but a peasure boat and not battleship (Polyremes are indeed BBs of the Classical Era).
In Civ6 Terms. (Modding only)...
1. What are better candidates for 'Melee' ships and 'Ranged' ships in classical era?
A. Lembos for melee and Quadrireme for Ranged. (Moners like Lembos coexists with Bireme and Trireme as melee ships)
B. Trireme for melee and Quadrireme for ranged (a 3d asset project. actually 'Quadrireme as presented in Civ6 has THREE banks with LESS oar than Civ5 Trireme. also graphical representation is very ill presented as the top deck oars aren't manned AT ALL.)
C. Quadrireme for melee and Polyremes (Anything bigger then Quinqueremes) that can fit with catapults
And IF Polyremes is to replace Quadrireme as ranged choice. what should ranges be? One or Two hexes?
EDIT: Is 'Olympias' a best example of Trireme to be referrence for game designing or modding purspose?

2. What are better candidates for 'Melee' ships and 'Ranged' ships in Medieval era?
Sure Cogs (as well as eastern 'paddle ships , the Qianli Chuan千里船) shown in a chinese Wuxia flicks will be medieval choices. but Dromons and Chelandes as well as less standardized Langskipps including continental derivatives (French Nefs, so often protrayed as 'capable of sails propulsion only and doesn't need oars propulsions') are premier warships of that era. (French Nefs are one such examples)... one issue is that..
2.1 Cogs (as well as bigger Holkes) are still smaller than Mediterranean biggest war galleys of the same era. (Italian CS even evolved Byzantine Dromons further, ultimately created Galea Grossa as dual purpose ships (Freighter and heavy warships, capable to mount catapults and even trebuchets! later switched to big guns)
2.2 'Dromons' are also used by everyone else around Byzantium. referring to similiarly large galleys regardless of origins (Arabians, Italians, or Northern Europeans like French, English, and Scottish).
Are you sure that Cogs can still be Ranged warships? and what about Melee choices? Dromon or what?
2.3 What are 'Naves' actually?
nef_croisades.gif

3. Or did the definitions of 'Polyremes' changed by that time and did Galea Grossa also the 'same' Polyremes built with different hulls, (Usually) Lateen sails and dimensions (same lenghts but wide rather than tall) or what?
4. Regarding to missile ships.
4.1 Corvette tend to be smaller than frigates and did have a very limited land attack capabilities. 'Missile Cruiser' in Civ6 is actually Soviet era missile corvette, a very light variants which serves as a better successor to 'Melee ships'. and did see action even as late as 2010s^
New_upgrade_for_Russian_Navy_Nanuchka_class_Project_1234_Guided_Missile_Corvette_925_001.jpg

And this is around the same size and capability as the late HTMS Sukhothai (Sunk in December 2022) with rather limited inland attacking capabilities compared to something like Burkes, Ticoes, and Chinese Type 055 (The 'Renhai', Chinese, as well as Indian often mistranslated the 055 (and Indian counterparts) as 'Battleship' despite that these have no armor AT ALL). Burkes, Ticoes and the 055 are all have inland long range attacking missiles (or options to do so) but Nancy and Sukhothai didn't.
EDIT2: My 'Trireme' model under construction, it tooks almost a week in modelling which in the same time I have to do research.
Trireme Civ6 Mod WIP.jpg
 
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(though I'm not in favor of an expanded atomic age)
The Atomic and information ages were split off from the Modern Age in Civ 5, which was 13 years ago, and that division was kept consistent in civ 6.
In both games, 'Atomic' covers WWII era weapons and technology, like monoplanes, machines guns, etc. Everything in that era fits comfortably within the 1930s to the 1970s. A span of 40 years.
The Information era is often dated to start in 1970, so if we are still in that era then we have been in it for 53 years, longer than the Atomic age. If civ 7 were announced tomorrow it would still probably release in 2 more years, making it 55 years.

I think the final era in the game is getting a bit long in the tooth, and it's not like we haven't seen considerable developments in tactics and technology in the intervening years.
My point isn't that they shouldn't be in. My point is that if the 50-turn, 50 years period from the creation of the dreadnaught to the death of the battleship warranted two heavy surface ships, then there is no defensible reason to say the galley is sufficent to cover the 3200 years, roughly 105 turns period between the creation of the first galleys (2700 BC) and the end of the Classical period (500 AD).
Yes, because the eras get shorter as the game goes on.

There is a perfectly defensible reason: The classical era covers a long period of time while the Modern and Atomic eras do not. The late game also has to carry forward all the unit lines that have been unlocked up to that point and maintain their relevance. If a mainline unit like naval ranged or melee doesn't get regular upgrades then that portion of the game stagnates for dozens of turns. Meanwhile you are justifying multiple unit line unlocks in the classical era seemingly for no other reason than that the classical era is a long stretch of IRL time. That argument ignores that this is a video game first and a lesson in classical antiquity's naval history ... 10th? In any case, barely anything changed re: naval combat in those 2700 years; every 400 years or so they would figure out how to put 1 more deck of rowers onto a virtually identical galley. Sorry, not a huge deal in my books.

Half the reason civ 6 combat is so unenjoyable is because the tech tree is so sparse, and it allows entire unit lines to fall into obsolescence for more than a full era. The reason why the modern and atomic eras both need a ranged ship is to prevent the naval game from going stale and reward a tech advantage. This isn't a problem in Classical because any ship you unlock that early will have to be weak so that better things can unlock after it.
Especially when players are going to spend a lot more time playing the ancient-classical era of the game than the modern-atomic era, because the late eras of the game are generally seen as the less interesting ones, and players pursuing rapid victory may not even reach that part of the game. That to me implies that unit diversity and variety in those early stages of the game should be a high priority, not an afterthought.
Are we even playing the same game? There is no reason to have so many naval unit lines unlocked in the early game when all they can do is shuffle around the thin bands of coastline. The naval combat is vestigial at that stage of the game and doesn't open up until deep ocean travel unlocks in the medieval or Renaissance eras. There is no value in frontloading the game with useless chaff no one will build. Filling the early eras with ship types to satisfy a need for more Classical Mediterranean naval history would just pollute the early tech tree with ineffective components.

Furthermore, saying that no one will get to see later unit unlocks because they never reach those components is a self-fulfilling prophecy. Maybe if the game added game concepts more consistently, and maintained them with more regular upgrades it would have a more enjoyable progression and people would play it longer? Perhaps the reason no one likes those later eras is because the game is so frontloaded with garbage?
 
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@Boris Gudenuf beat me to the punch. My current wishlist for naval units:
View attachment 653096

Note: Melee ships always unlock late in the era while ranged units would unlock at the start of the era.

A polyreme seems oddly specifically Mediterranean. I've never been satisfied with how the civ franchise just takes overtly Mediterranean boats and nomenclature as the baseline.
I'm also undecided if a fast, quick raider unit that emphasizes maneuverability over ramming, or a massive ship that can act as a platform for siege weapons is the best base substrate for a default ranged unit. The Chinese placed mangonels on ships during the Three Kingdoms period, similar to Alexander's assault on Tyre, but Byzantine Dromons emphasized ranged combat and avoiding boarding, and they used a Lembus galley as their base design. Otherwise, the emphasis on melee combat is so firmly established until cannons that merely being a ship that's not designed for ramming or overt melee action seems like the best one could do for a pre-renaissance ship.

Regardless, from my own playtesting and experience with the franchise, there just isn't a need for 2 naval unit lines until at least medieval anyways. You rarely have the economy for it, ranged units can't easily maneuver to strike at enemy ships until they are allowed to enter deep ocean, and there is very sparse historical justification for it.

I can't imagine what value separate recon line would bring to the standard melee/ranged dichotomy. I just don't know what they would even do. Civ 6 already has the general problem of navies being virtually useless; it's hard enough finding a decent reason to build boats in most civ games, let alone 3 separate lines worth of them.

The submarine line would be suitable for that 1 range attack slot. As you said yourself, torpedo ranges are relatively short. I would give the line less mobility than the standard naval and melee lines, no ability to attack land (obviously), but a large 1 range attack and a chance to critical hit.
This is a referrence to Civ6. I don't realy agree much. Either 'Renaissance/Earlymodenr' or 'Industrial' era has to be extended so to cram BOTH SOTL and Ironclad as one category.
This is when Privateer is left off.
1. Galley is ANCIENT warship, think of Argo and Mycenean fleet that attacked Troy and a ship that Odysseus did use and ultimately wrecked in a Circe isle (possibly what Old Greeks called Gibraltar, my conjecture actually. no one in Greeks of his day dare to sail beyond that point westward to Atlantic into Azores. and Odyssey movie did describe Circe's isle very much like Gibraltar, though the modern name is North African Arabic means Gabriel's Rock (Which 'Gabriel' did the Moors referring to? an archangel or a leader of any kind?) )
2. Classical Era is the day of Polyremes. Phoenicians discovered solutions to work around galley limits by adding rowing seats atop of the existing storrey, creating Biremes/Dirers (Which one is 'Greek' and which one is 'Latin' terms?)
Naval battles of that time are melee intensive, boarding is common, but ramming is preferred solutions particularly in the Mediterranean, where galleys were made with ram prowl below the waterline and the design lasts for several centuries until the late Roman Empire. which Spars (a piece of wood jutting out of the ship to the front, placed above the waterline) replaced Ram bows. lack of ranged warship maybe acceptable but I still not agree either. there were heavy polyremes (Bigger than Quinqueremes) capable of mounting tall towers and catapults (lithobolos, which are more 'ranged' type of catapults and not ones with single arm ones that lobs stone with centrifuge force.). but melee is still primary naval combat. Romans (and maby Carthageneans too!) even fitted retractable boarding plank called Corvus (Crow). one that has iron fangs at the other end, made to hook with enemy ship rim or to grapple with enemy very deck planks!
3. Industrial choices
3.1 Melee could be Protected Cruisers (They're fasters, 'melee' ships tend to be relatively fast and agile)
3.2 Naval (your 'Ranged' class).. there are TWO units: Ships of the Line -> Ironclad (of Pre Dreadnought design)

Also Lembos is Classical choice, in case of medieval it is handover because the origin is in Classical Era. a hard choice there may be even no successor in Medieval Era or the successor could be Dromon! (Byzantium ship has to be renamed. i'd say 'Fire Ship'). but cogs are also used in Melee to the greate effect in addition to the shooters in Battle of Sluys in 13th Century.
 
"Galley" is not completely generic: it refers to a boat/ship propelled by Oars instead of Paddling. The earliest illustration of oared ships is from about 2700 BCE (Egypt - coastal craft transporting soldiers) so the 'technology' is Ancient by game standards. Dug-out canoes (paddled boats) on the other hand, have been found in peat bogs in northern Europe and near Lake Chad in Africa, both dating back to 6000 BCE, so Pre Start of Game. (And later examples, still Start of Game or earlier, have been found in southeast Asia and the Americas, and somebody using some kind of propelled craft was hunting whales in Korea nearly as far back, but I don't have any details on whether we know what kind of boat they were using)

I would love to use more collective terms for early ships, from the rich maritime traditions of East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa and India, but hard evidence of types of ships and characteristics is very difficult to come by until late in or after the Classical, and then it's very spotty until centuries later. There have been a lot less wrecks discovered and explored, partly because of the concentration of interest by western universities in Europe and partly because ships sinking in the Pacific and Indian Oceans end up 1000s of feet below the surface, not 100s as in the Mediterranean, and so are much less accessible.

The Canoe (paddled or sailed, not oared) is actually more generic than Galley: it refers to craft ranging from 2 - 3 man riverine dug-outs or bark-built to the Lashed Lug sea-going catamarans of the Polynesians and their Austronesian ancestors (also Pre-Classical, dating back to at least 1500 BCE) to the Western Red Cedar dug-outs of the Haida and other Pacific Northwest people, that reached 15 - 18 meters in length, just under 3 meters beam and carried up to 50 people, and may have been deep-sea craft - they could certainly operate far enough off the coast to be invisible from shore, since the Haida regularly made Surprise Visits to raid their coastal neighbors, and they have oral tales about visiting 'islands in the sea' which are probably the Aleutian chain. Canoes were craft that allowed the first deep sea fishing and whaling, from before the nominal Start of Game, so are not to be dismissed lightly or ignored, as they largely have in Civ games: they pre-date any sailing technology by 1000s of years.

Ironclads are among the most short-lived of naval vessels. The first practical such ships were laid down nearly simultaneously in 1854 CE by Britain, USA and France, and in 1876 the first Steel Hulled warship was launched, after which 'ironclad' is simply no longer appropriate to describe warships. That's 22 years, or less than 5 5-year turns. Also, since the triple-expansion compound steam engine that made real long-distance steaming possible was not invented until 1874, the ironclad is strictly a short-ranged (coastal in game terms) ship - which Civ games have actually gotten right most of the time.

And the peculiar Ram Fixation of the late 19th century was based on one event: the ramming of one ship by another at the Battle of Lissa in 1866. Since this was the only naval battle between fleets of major European powers (Austria and Italy - sort of major) between 1815 and 1914, it was analyzed to death and everybody decided that Rams were the Way To Go, even though gunnery ranges rapidly increased from about 1000 meters in 1815 to 6 - 9000 meters by the end of the century

The problem with separating the Dreadnaught from the Battleship is that the ships themselves were notoriously slippery: In the same year that the first Dreadnaught was launched, the first Battlecruiser was also launched, a ship that had the later Battleship's speed and almost as heavy firepower. Then all the slower Dreadnaughts that survived WWI and the Naval Limitation Treaties were Upgraded with more powerful engines, oil-fired boilers, antiaircraft protection, and sometimes new gun mounts allowing much longer ranges for their main guns. So IF you decide to have Dreadnaughts and 'Fast' Battleships (the term that was used at the time), the Dreadnaughts last from 1906 to 1918 (12 years) and after that they must be allowed to be Upgraded into Battleships to be at all accurate to their IRL models. Unless you also intend to have the Battlecruiser as a separate type (and since they built more of them than everybody else in the world combined, it really should be a British UU), it scarcely seems worth the time and effort for an extremely ephemeral Dreadnaught warship type in game terms.
1. So 'Canoe' should be Pre-galley combat vessel available from the beginning too? did Haida combat canoe a long watercraft?
2. Then 'Ramming' should be 'ability' that's activated separately for Ironclads and still hull warships of the late industrial era?
3. What are more appropriate upgrade lineage of Ironclads? and since Ironclads are ranged (the earliest American examples are even classified as 'Gunboats', also early seagoing ironclads are small. no bigger than Sixth rate frigates (??) or armed with very few guns (CSS Stonewall, later IJN Koutetsu (Iron Armor))
By that time even 'Corvettes' can have iron armor and stean engine and labelled as 'Ironclads'.
In the same time. while it is logical (and possible) to literally convert SoTL into Ironclads. I don't know if SoTL are indeed converted this way and how powerful it is?
After 1870, battleship design phillosophy shifted towards turret based. preferred minimum 'Main battery gun counts' is Four (Two by the fore, another by the aft, all on rotating turrets (fore and aft castles of the 19th C?). Alternatively one big gun in each turret as follows (One in the Front, Another at the rear. both turret mounted. One to the port and the other to starboard, either turret or casemate). as well as the introduction of midship tower bridges (features that passed on to more modern ships to these days, there may be one, or two (fore and aft) ).
And what to do with 'Dreadnoughts'? particularly with 'Battleships' in Civ series are in fact 'Superdreadnougths with the first of its kind launched in 1910
While HMS Dreadnough (and early Coal firing dreads, like Carolinas, and Minas Gerais) are launched before 1910 (?) and did made others obsolete (the first to have 12 inches/ 36cm main guns), they too became obsolete within a decade with bigger ships mounted with even bigger guns and powered by oil firing steam turbine engine. 'Superdreadnoughts' (oil fired, equipped with 14-16 inches guns (38-40 cm guns) were introduced a decade later had quickly replaced early Dreads. but did not evolve further. with the last examples of Superdreadnoughts (Iowa class) retired in 1992, basic designs are differed to HMS Dreadnought but not much differed to HMS Elizabeth. nor gun layouts are much differed to Japanese Yamato class (the latter had insanely BIG main guns. 51 CM!!)
What are comparative performances between early Dreads (Pre 1910), and Superdreads?. Did Jutland a clash between early Dreads or battles of Superdreads actually? did graphical representations of BB as Iowa Class fitting?
 
The Classical era lasts 40 turns. That’s reasonable for one unit.

But the Galley dates, as Boris pointed out, as far back as 2700 bc - 2200 years and 65 turns before the classical era.

Galley belong into the ancient era. Canoe should at best be the graphic used for land units at sea in the early game. And different units (quiquereme and polyreme) fill in the melee and ranged classical worlds.
 
The Classical era lasts 40 turns. That’s reasonable for one unit.

But the Galley dates, as Boris pointed out, as far back as 2700 bc - 2200 years and 65 turns before the classical era.

Galley belong into the ancient era. Canoe should at best be the graphic used for land units at sea in the early game. And different units (quiquereme and polyreme) fill in the melee and ranged classical worlds.
Nailed it.
The "canoe" should not be a separate unit, it should be a Graphic indicating that AT LEAST Scout/Recon Units, Workers and Settlers can cross shallow waters from at or near Start Of Game: the Aegean Islands were settled between 9 - 6000 BCE, Crete had cattle and sheep transported to it by 5000 BCE (so, probably something more like a raft rather than a canoe, but let's not get picky). By about 2700 - 2500 BCE regular infantry units can be transported the same way (the Egyptian illustration shows troops on galley transports by 2700 BCE).
Naval Mobility should have always come much, much earlier in the game than it has: "Sailing" as a Technology should be preceded by some kind of "Boating" Tech to enable water-crossing.

And a lot of the other 'naval problematic' Units could be solved by relegating them to Uniques (or whatever Civ VII uses for that concept).
For examples:
The Austronesians between 3000 and 1500 BCE had navigation techniques, a form of lateen sail and 'catamaran' hulls that enabled open-ocean travel and started their colonization of the Pacific Islands. That is an extreme naval ability not matched, as far as I know, anywhere else in the world, so should be a Austronesian/Polynesian/Maori/Tahitan, Pre-Historic Taiwanese Unique.

There are a few Civs that had truly massive civilian trading ships very early: there are illustrations on seals from the Indus Valley Civ of great ships with towers and evidence that they traded across the Indian Ocean with Mesopotamia by 2500 - 2000 BCE. Rome had 1500 ton capacity grain haulers trading between North Africa and Rome by the early Imperial period. So, some Special seaborne Trade Capability is warranted for some Civs, which doesn't have to involve a general Tech or everybody with a tile of water next to a city.

A great many specialized hull-sail-capacity combinations started in a single place/Civ and quickly spread to everybody in contact: the Trireme warship spread so fast we are still debating whether the Phoenicians or the Greeks first developed it - both had it almost simultaneously. All the later Polyremes - same thing: everybody who had the means and need to build a navy built the best ships they could afford: Quadriremes, Quinqueremes, hexaremes, deciremes, etc. The most Civ-specific of them, in fact, was the Quadrireme, developed by the Carthagenians but then dropped in favor of the Quinquereme within 50 -= 70 years (2 - 4 turns in Classical Era).
Caravels, Carracks, Galleons all started in one place (Portugal, Genoa, Spain respectively) and quickly became Universal: only specific developments, like the Portugeuse Nau, Spanish Trade Galleon (a specific type for the New World fleets) or Englsh Race-Built Galleon need to be singled out, if desired, as UUs or the basis for UAs.

So, don't get too overwhelmed with details about Ironclads with turrets versus barbettes and smooth bore versus rifled versus breechloading guns or 'aphract' versus cataphract triremes in ramming versus boarding actions in 429 BCE west of Cyprus: in the game we have the option of ignoring a lot of stuff that just didn't last long enough to matter, or making them specific to a Civ (sometimes the Only Civ) that used them, or used them in a way different from everybody else.
 
You will never get me to agree that the Mediterranean’s galley designs should be generalized to the rest of the world. Sorry.

The Mediterranean is uncharacteristically calm, basically a large saltwater lake. The wealth of shipwrecks and the western world’s preoccupation with its own history notwithstanding It is unrepresentative of the progression of naval history. If anything, history proves Mediterranean boat designs to have been a dead end. Independent shipbuilding techniques in the Baltics superseded and replaced the Mediterranean ship designs, which barely managed to make the transition into open ocean travel. If the civ franchise needs to pick 1 naval tradition to generalize to everyone else then the Scandinavian shipbuilding traditions are a more coherent and complete progression. their designs graduated from small shallow water lash-lug boats into larger and more sophisticated seagoing vessels that were taken up and iterated upon in other parts of Europe. The progression of the knarr to the cog, to the hulk and the carrack, into the age of sail is smoother than jumping around from Mediterranean to Northern European ship designs and back again.

TL;DR - adding numerous Mediterranean galleys as default ships is an uncritical display of Euro-American philhellenistic fetishism
 
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And a lot of the other 'naval problematic' Units could be solved by relegating them to Uniques (or whatever Civ VII uses for that concept).
For examples:
The Austronesians between 3000 and 1500 BCE had navigation techniques, a form of lateen sail and 'catamaran' hulls that enabled open-ocean travel and started their colonization of the Pacific Islands. That is an extreme naval ability not matched, as far as I know, anywhere else in the world, so should be a Austronesian/Polynesian/Maori/Tahitan, Pre-Historic Taiwanese Unique.
Why should the Austronesians’ many diverse and successful boat designs be the exception while Mediterranean cultures are the rule? The situation could easily be reversed; the decision to choose one over the other is just pro-western partiality.

Neither shipbuilding tradition actually continued to dominate into the present day, after all. The modern ship designs that span the globe since the 15th century trace their roots back to the Baltic and North Atlantic.
 
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Highly advanced galley development unique to the Mediterranean? Assorted Atakebune, Panokseon and Geobukseon would like a word...

The decidedly un-Mediterranean Japan and Korea developed advanced galleys too. We know this, because we have historical records of the existence of those ships, and their use in warfare.

What we don't have records off is all the steps that came before this. But assuming they went directly from the simple single-deck open-design galley to either of those model is about the same as assuming (if we didn't have records of Roman shipbuilding) that Galley design went straight from the basic galley to the Renaissance Galleass : a wholly unsafe and not very reasonable assumption. It's excessively likely that galley design out in East Asia was extensively diverse, too - we just don't have the records of what they build before the Panokseon and Geobukseon.

If we had better or more generic names than the Mediterranean ones for more advanced galley designs, I'd be happy to use them. But erasing the diversity of galley design worldwide because we only have mediterranean terms to represent that evolution is taking rejection of eurocentrism well into "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" territory.

As for the alleged "death" of Mediterranean tradition, given that nearly all the naval breakthrough heralding the Age of Sail came from Portugal (caravel, carrack, galleon...) and that the extensive use of the (Mediterranean, and very much associated with galleys) Lateen Sail by Portuguese designs show most resoundingly that they did use Mediterranean tradition in their new designs, I find that very hard to credit. The ships of the Age of Sail blended elements of various traditions ; they did not exclusively belong to one.
 
As for the alleged "death" of Mediterranean tradition, given that nearly all the naval breakthrough heralding the Age of Sail came from Portugal (caravel, carrack, galleon...) and that the extensive use of the (Mediterranean, and very much associated with galleys) Lateen Sail by Portuguese designs show most resoundingly that they did use Mediterranean tradition in their new designs, I find that very hard to credit. The ships of the Age of Sail blended elements of various traditions ; they did not exclusively belong to one.
Additionally, a lot of the innovations that fueled Portugal's preeminence in the Age of Sail were made by sailors originally from Genoa whose expertise came from sailing the Mediterranean. Virtually all the major technological developments and techniques of the Age of Sail were developed first in the relative safety of the Mediterranean, with the major exception of the volta do mar, which was developed by trial and error as a matter of necessity.
 
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