Navy Reform

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Do you guys feel okay with how warship classes are in Civ6? (or what Firaxis thinking)
Rightnow there are mainly three (acutally four) . these are more or less a carryover from Civ5 (Not sure if I pick a correct class name)
1. Assault Ships (From Galley to Destroyer)
2. Bombardment Ships (Beginning with Quadrigereme, ended with Missle Cruiser)
3. Naval Raider (This one comes abit late. beginning with Privateer, ended with Nuclear Submarine)
4. Aircraft Carrier (One of a kind).

There are also mods that restructure navy as well. AFAIK either Moar Units or Warfare Expanded added separate class of ranged warships (I don't know how they called it)
- Cruiser (Lighter ranged warship. this included Frigates and Missile Cruiser. with steel hull Armored Cruisers and Battlecruisers added)
- Battleship (Heavy ranged warships. sometimes called Capitol ships): First Rate ship of the line belongs to this category, and some mod said to add Pre Dreadnough in Industrial Era and it came before (dreadnough) battleship.

If there must be navy reform. and there should be two classes of ranged warships.
1. Which class do you like Missile Cruiser to belong to?
2. What shall be (Dreadnough) Battleship upgrade if Missle Cruiser belongs to Cruiser as a successor to Frigate of the old?
1) Battlecarrier: There were warships that serves both functions, (and sucked at any category).
2) Modern Battleship (the likes of Iowa that shoots Cruise Missiles in addition to main gun.)

Given that modern navy doctrine choose beefing up destroyers and even removed or redefined cruisers. Are Battleships REALLY obsolete (is it because too many manpower consumed compared to Supercarrier)? it took US Navy several decades to decomissioned any dreadnoughs survived the WW2 though it was proven obsolete in the face of long range missiles and naval aviation. Did the Navy being redefined today? like Carriers became bigger and bigger while cannon ships like destroyers and cruisers became smaller but can do the same thing dreadnoughs once did better. (?) (and did Cruisers systematically eliminated by modern techs too?)

 

[Galvatron]

Do you guys feel okay with how warship

No, I think it's too skinny. I understand that balancing would be more difficult with more classes, and that naval warfare isn't an emphasis in the game, like in most strategy games, but there are lots of reasons why excluding more granularity is bad. Furthermore domination of the seas is what's determined the past millennium of mankind, so it's relevant to this 'civilisation' thing we've got going.

With that being said: I don't know enough about naval combat to comment on how to redesign it.

Given that modern navy doctrine choose beefing up destroyers and even removed or redefined cruisers. Are Battleships REALLY obsolete...

According to official sources: yes. But I take exception to the reasons they give. First of all: the largest cruisers are comparable in tonnage to battleships, so the 'size' issue isn't really a real argument. And the other argument is that combat is too long ranged to justify cannonade.

The best argument IMHO is that they never were applicable to warfare. Any asset you cannot afford to lose in battle isn't an asset, it's a liability, and battleships have always been too expensive to use. They're essentially penis extensions that nations used to show how great they are.

TL;DR: Battle ships practically still exist. They're no less usable than they were in the past, although this is a contentious claim.

(is it because too many manpower consumed compared to Supercarrier)?

And materiel, and fuel... yes, basically the cost was too high, and the range of guns was becoming far too little.

...it took US Navy several decades to decomissioned any dreadnoughs survived the WW2 though it was proven obsolete in the face of long range missiles and naval aviation.

That's still obsolete. Obsolete doesn't mean unusable, it means not usuable in its designed role. Basically they send those obsolete ships into roles they can still perform. They're sent in against enemies that are not equipped to deal with contemporary threats, or relegated to patrols, training, or drills.

like Carriers became bigger and bigger while cannon ships like destroyers and cruisers became smaller but can do the same thing dreadnoughs once did better. (?) (and did Cruisers systematically eliminated by modern techs too?)

It's funny you mention that. There's been a similar discussion regarding those carriers to how battle ships were obsolete. You're not noticing an inconsistency, you're noticing how the US military has no sense of how to spend money effectively. Like I said: a ship that is too valuable to lose isn't an asset, it's a liability.

In the macroscopic aspect it's worse. We all know the next war won't be fought with aircraft, tanks, and infantry, yet the American army invests in these constantly. The next war will be fought with nukes, drones, and information technology, yet America isn't investing nearly as much as it should in drones, and they're culling the school pipeline that provides them with technologists... I don't know about if they're funding rocketry though.

 

[Sostratus]

In the macroscopic aspect it's worse. We all know the next war won't be fought with aircraft, tanks, and infantry, yet the American army invests in these constantly. The next war will be fought with nukes, drones, and information technology, yet America isn't investing nearly as much as it should in drones, and they're culling the school pipeline that provides them with technologists... I don't know about if they're funding rocketry though.

I would argue that the US has and is developing the best drones in the world, and things like the mq-25 stingray (carrier based air refueling drone) will do more for carrier aviation than we can really grasp - if you can suddenly double the range of carrier jets, a lot of things come on the table. We put a ton of money into air superiority/supremacy because it'ss so OP, but you can't hold ground with a jet plane. And you can't always count on owning the air, and that's where a lot of things come into their own. No one on earth now, or in the near future can afford to fight a ground war without artillery, either. Speaking of which, technology like this is envied by the rest of the world pretty hard. Someone like @Boris Gudenuf would probably appreciate capability like this:

From a distance of 27 km (17 mi), 90 percent of the PGK-equipped German shells landed within 5 meters of the target.

If the next war has a ground component, tanks and infantry and artillery will be vital to winning it. The military could totally save tons of money on development by not being knuckleheads, but with this long era of peace, no one is willing to build out the material needed to get the costs down.

Insofar as civ's navy, as much as people enjoy adding varying amounts of realism, we do have the other game systems to consider. One of the most important ones is that we have relatively few units on the map, so there's not a great need for every niche to be implemented. I don't mind that we have 3 classes of ships, although with vanilla balancing they don't always have good roles. And there are not enough naval units in the current roster, nor are there enough land based options to deal with ships - without the equivalent of coastal guns, you cannot make the navy too good or it will mess up a lot of map types. There's no reason you cannot have the cost factor be better appreciated either - IE, battleship types are very expensive and semi OP against other stuff, but the small craft like submarines can counter them cost effectively; enter destroyer type ships. The big mismatch between civ and real life is that it doesn't take 10x longer to build a ship than a knight. "Naval strategy is built strategy," so they say.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I would argue that the US has and is developing the best drones in the world, and things like the mq-25 stingray (carrier based air refueling drone) will do more for carrier aviation than we can really grasp - if you can suddenly double the range of carrier jets, a lot of things come on the table. We put a ton of money into air superiority/supremacy because it'ss so OP, but you can't hold ground with a jet plane. And you can't always count on owning the air, and that's where a lot of things come into their own. No one on earth now, or in the near future can afford to fight a ground war without artillery, either. Speaking of which, technology like this is envied by the rest of the world pretty hard. Someone like @Boris Gudenuf would probably appreciate capability like this . . .

Just a few notes to anybody trying to critique Modern Military:
1. You are always working from Ignorance. Terminally Guided or Homing Munitions as described in the attachment in @Sostratus' post were being developed when I was at the US Army Artillery School back in 1985 and have been used in several battlefield occasions since. They have also been developed and used by European armies in weapons down to the 120mm infantry mortar. There is, quite simply, always more gong on than anybody can keep track of, unless they are doing it professionally 40+ hours a week.
2. You definitely have no idea what the military capabilities are in anything computer or electronic. For one thing, no competent military force is ever going to use their capabilities unless they have an absolutely Vital Target, because once used, the enemy knows what you can do and can develop countermeasures. You never reveal your hand unless there is absolutely nothing the enemy can do about it, which is a rare situation.
3. Many of the most devastating 'weapons' are combinations of weapons and devices that are all, by themselves, nothing special. At the beginning of World War Two, the German tanks were, as combat vehicles, pathetic: undergunned, under-armored, not particularly fast, and wretchedly unreliable. But they were part of a tactical system and a command and control system that was superb, and they had well-trained crews. Exit Poland, France, Yugoslavia, Greece, etc. In the First Gulf War the Iraqi Army had some of the technically most advanced artillery pieces in the world: "super guns" with base-bleed shells and super ogilve projectiles that outranged similar US Army guns by a large margin. 72 hours after the fighting started, there was no Iraqi artillery. To quote one Iraqi officer who survived as a prisoner, "We stopped firing our guns: to pull a lanyard was to commit suicide." The combination of Firefinder Radar, MLRS multiple rocket launchers, and digital radio communications and computers meant that from the moment you fired a shell from a gun, you had about 1 to 1.5 minutes to be at least a quarter of a mile from that place, or you died: 12 to 36 rockets would be executing Warhead Event over it, and nothing at that place would be intact or alive anymore.
4. The most dangerous weapon or weapon-system is always a Human Being. The intelligence, training, motivation and sheer bloody willingness to do what has to be done in a person is more important than any weapon you can issue to him/her. Remember, one determined teen-ager with a pistol started World War One, not all the armies and all the guns and machineguns, infantry, cavalry and battleships in Europe - and once started, not all the guns and men in Europe could stop that war either: it took intervention by a few million American troops to finish the whole thing off.

None of which has much to do with Civ games. By combining the tactical battle with the strategic movement on the Game Map the game makes a hash out of both strategy and tactics. By allowing virtually any military hardware to be built virtually anywhere with no special industrial infrastructure, the game makes post-Industrial militaries far too easy to build and deploy. By not having anything resembling supply or logistics rules or penalties in the game, it makes projecting military forces much, much too easy throughout the game. Finally, by divorcing Military Units from population the game makes Combat Bloodless: lose 20 Hoplites, there are still just as many Greek men left back home, whereas losing an army at Syracuse left every family in Athens in mourning for fathers, husbands, and sons.

 

[acluewithout]

I think the Naval Units are basically fine subject to @Sostratus ’s comments. There is a limit to how much complexity you can have and the game still being playable and fun.

There a few gaps in the current unit lines that need to be filled. Aircraft Carriers need a re-work - as I’ve suggested elsewhere, they’d work better being like the GDR where you can’t make armies with them and they get bonuses from the tech tree rather than via promotions. I think Naval Barbarians also need an overhaul and use units tailored to their role rather than generic Civ units - barbarian galleys are the worst.

More generally, I just think military in the game is always going to be a bit limited unless FXS introduce some sort of force limit or require more significant limits on unit maintenance and or deployment. Otherwise there’s just not enough design elements to further differentiate different unit classes and it’s all a bit anyway because you can just spam one unit type or another. In fairness, the new Resource rules have added a bit of depth and do force a bit of a more mixed unit approach and create bit more differentiation between units, but it only goes so far.

 

[The googles do nothing]

I would move the Submarine and add Attack Submarine to the Naval Melee. Remove ranged attack from subs. Now it's all high speed non-ranged ships.

Add Destroyer to Naval Raider and give it a ranged and Costal Raid Ability

Nuclear Submarine is in it's own class like Aircraft Carrier

 

[Galvatron]

I would argue that the US has and is developing the best drones in the world, and things like the mq-25 stingray (carrier based air refueling drone)...

Yes, the Stingray was quite an impressive piece of forward looking technology in 1993, but what has the US made sice then?

If the next war has a ground component

Lol. I think we can rule that out.

The military could totally save tons of money on development by not being knuckleheads, but with this long era of peace, no one is willing to build out the material needed to get the costs down.

I think we're going to have to agree to disagree on the future of warfare, since we clearly have different beliefs of the current climate.

...without the equivalent of coastal guns, you cannot make the navy too good or it will mess up a lot of map types.

Didn't they give artillary buffs to antinavy so they could perform this role?

There's no reason you cannot have the cost factor be better appreciated either - IE, battleship types are very expensive and semi OP against other stuff,....

I think that the lack of tonnes of units on the map is a major limitation when it comes to balancing by cost. Which is why they also balance by resource scarcity, I think.

 

[Sostratus]

Didn't they give artillary buffs to antinavy so they could perform this role?

Other than a promotion, siege units just attack a ship without any penalty. Other ranged attacks only deal half damage.
But, ships deal full value to units and other ships. This wouldn't be that awful except siege units can't move and fire, ships can.

If you try to engage a frigate with a bombard in open terrain, the bombard will get shredded. Until you have air units, there's just no good land based answer to ships.

I think that the lack of tonnes of units on the map is a major limitation when it comes to balancing by cost. Which is why they also balance by resource scarcity, I think.

I consider production cost and resource use to be part of "cost." It's just not a lever that Firaxis has used in civ6 - naval units, like land units, have a cost almost strictly determined by what column of the tech tree they fall on (although some did get small rebalancing.) So Battleships cost the same amount as an infantry unit, subs cost more than that, destroyers cost more than both. Same thing with heavy cavalry units often being just marginally more expensive.
Even within the 3 classes we have, they could make naval ranged units the "heavy cavalry" but make them a lot more expensive (+50-100%), and the resource users, but also much more powerful. As an example. Maintenance costs are also all pretty similar, which is something else that could really be adjusted.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

Even so.
1. Frigate and Ships of the Line are different. (back to the Age of Sails). The first Ships of the Line specimen appears in the mid or late Renaissance Era, with the earliest examples were simply elongated Galleons,
why you proposed that (in other thread) Ships of the Line should be in Industrial Era?
2. If Naval Ranged and 'Battleship' / 'Naval Bombard' classes are to be separated. What class should Battlecruiser belongs to?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Other than a promotion, siege units just attack a ship without any penalty. Other ranged attacks only deal half damage.
But, ships deal full value to units and other ships. This wouldn't be that awful except siege units can't move and fire, ships can.

If you try to engage a frigate with a bombard in open terrain, the bombard will get shredded. Until you have air units, there's just no good land based answer to ships.

And this directly points out the deficiency of the Game Design: IRL, ships were wretchedly vulnerable to Land Fortifications (NOT Units, which a Ship of the Line or Battleship could almost always out gun locally). The 18th century maxim about ships was that "Only a Fool would fight a Fort." Because while you were chipping bits of stone out of the masonry, they were putting hols in your hull and shredding your rigging with red-hot shot heated in furnaces, and in a very short time you were on fire and they were breaking for Lunch. In the 'Battleship Era' it was also the Mine and Torpedo Era, so closing with the Fort or coast was simply not an option: the French and British lost three battleships in one day trying to force the narrow Dardanelles strait in one day.

So, at the very least the game needs a Coastal Fort construction that is exceedingly dangerous to ships within its range, available at the very beginning of the Industrial Era and Upgradable in the Modern Era with a mechanism representing the mine barriers and shore-mounted torpedo installations.

I consider production cost and resource use to be part of "cost." It's just not a lever that Firaxis has used in civ6 - naval units, like land units, have a cost almost strictly determined by what column of the tech tree they fall on (although some did get small rebalancing.) So Battleships cost the same amount as an infantry unit, subs cost more than that, destroyers cost more than both. Same thing with heavy cavalry units often being just marginally more expensive.
Even within the 3 classes we have, they could make naval ranged units the "heavy cavalry" but make them a lot more expensive (+50-100%), and the resource users, but also much more powerful. As an example. Maintenance costs are also all pretty similar, which is something else that could really be adjusted.

My personal preference is to show the specific and expensive Industrial Installations required to build the 'Capital Ships' of each era after the Medieval Era. Starting in the Renaissance there was a 'class' of ships called (at the time and later) "Great Ships" - the Carracks, later Galleons, mounting the first batteries of heavy guns and exceeding their contemporaries in size and tonnage by 50 - 100%. These were insanely expensive to build. When Scotland built its only Great Ship, the Michael in 1511 CE, it cost the equivalent of a year's income for the Entire Kingdom. It practically bankrupted the Scots!
Later, both England and France had special Shipyards to build Ships of the Line, because each such ship required 50 to 100 acres of forest in timber, several hundred tons of cast iron guns, and hundreds of pulley-block tackle for its rigging. Building even one was a major industrial effort requiring specialized workshops, foundries, ropeworks, mills to make sailcloth by the acre, and hundreds of skilled wood and metal workers.
That is a continuous Effect. Throughout the 18th century, the Height of the Ship of the Line era, England built virtually all of her 'battleships' in just a few shipyards, primarily Portsmouth and Southampton, and France built virtually all of hers in Toulon and Brest.

In 1910, for Battleships or Battlecruiser 'capital ships', there were only 7 countries in the world that had shipyards that could build them. - And 2 other countries, Japan and the Netherlands, that could start building their hulls, but could not manufacture the big guns, armor plate by the 100s of tons, or massive engines and boilers required for them (3 out of 4 of Japan's first 'dreadnaughts' were built in Japan with engines and guns from Britain, and they couldn't even do that much until 1918).

So, my answer would be:
1. Bring Ship-of-the-Line back to the game as the early Industrial Era Ranged ship: while the first Ship of the Line was converted from a Great Ship in 1660 and the idea of the Line of Battle that defined the Ship-of-the-Line was promulgated in 1653 CE in the English Navy's Sailing and Fighting Instructions, most of the "Ships of the Line" before 1700 CE were converted from earlier Great Ships
2. To build a Ship-of-Line you could, therefore, either Upgrade a Carrack or Galleon (either one would be the Renaissance Ranged Ship) OR you would need a Shipyard adjacent to an Industrial District - to represent the concentration of specialized production required for these ships.
3. To build Battleships (and Battlecruisers, if anyone wants to add them) and later, Aircraft Carriers, you would need a Shipyard adjacent to an Industrial District with a Factory. Realistically, in 1910 - 1940 most countries had no more than 1 - 2 locations where they could build such Capital Ships: only Britain and the USA had a half-dozen or more each.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Even so.
1. Frigate and Ships of the Line are different. (back to the Age of Sails). The first Ships of the Line specimen appears in the mid or late Renaissance Era, with the earliest examples were simply elongated Galleons,
why you proposed that (in other thread) Ships of the Line should be in Industrial Era?

See above. While the first 'Ship-of-the-Line', the Sovereign of the Seas, was built as a Great Ship (a race-built Galleon, to be exact) in 1637 CE, or during the late Renaissance Era, it was converted to a Ship of the Line in 1660 CE with all of its Big Guns firing broadside, in 'line of battle'. The majority of all the Ships-of-the-Line ever built from the start as such were built between 1700 and 1830 CE, so firmly in what Civ VI considers the Industrial Era.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

^ So it means De Zeven Provincien began as Race Built Galleons because it looks alot like that?

 

[Galvatron]

Other than a promotion, siege units just attack a ship without any penalty. Other ranged attacks only deal half damage.

I think that's more of a meta flaw than an actual flaw in game design. They solve lots of roles through 'promotions', despite the fact that those same promotions are needed to perform the role you want the unit to perform. In this case a bombard must already have killed and fought sea units... before it can fight and kill sea units.

If you could access that promotion without first doing its job before it could do its job it'd be a lot better. The reason why they nerfed ranged attacks vs. ships is good though. I was getting tired of my Triremes getting phasered by archers.

But, ships deal full value to units and other ships. This wouldn't be that awful except siege units can't move and fire, ships can.

That's a good point. But it is somewhat mitigated, unsatisfactorily, by how melee ships can't attack land. There's also the fact that the range of bombard units doesn't keep up with ships...

Overall I'm not sure the 'can't move and attack' is working for siege units. It seems to me they tend to get blown apart very easily... but that's not exactly the point of this thread.

I consider production cost and resource use to be part of "cost."

Sorry, I meant to say maintenance, not general cost.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

^ So it means De Zeven Provincien began as Race Built Galleons because it looks alot like that?

The original De Zeven Provincien, yes, was a 'race-built Galleon' in configuration, built in 1664 - 1665, originally carried 80 guns, later 76, which makes her right in the 'middle class' of Ships-of-the-Line of the next century (the "74" carrying 74 guns, was the most common class of SoL in both the British and French navies in the 18th century). De Zevern was something of an 'outlier' for the Dutch Navy, since the majority of their ships were lighter, shallow draft vessels derived from the 'Frigatten' commerce raiders of the late 16th century. That is undoubtedly why she served as a flagship for the Dutch fleet in the second and third Anglo-Dutch Wars in the 1660s and 1670s.

 

[Galvatron]

Even so.
1. Frigate and Ships of the Line are different.

Not really. When the Frigate emerged they were basically a change in the meta, so to speak, that emphasised speed and manoeuvre. They dominated for a short period, which made them the de facto 'battleship' for a day.

2. If Naval Ranged and 'Battleship' / 'Naval Bombard' classes are to be separated. What class should Battlecruiser belongs to?

I'm not an expert, but I'd say that battle cruisers would be heavy cav, and battleships would be bombard.... cruisers would be light cav? I think? I'm not an expert on seamen.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

Not really. When the Frigate emerged they were basically a change in the meta, so to speak, that emphasised speed and manoeuvre. They dominated for a short period, which made them the de facto 'battleship' for a day.

The word "Frigate" originally applied to Privateers for the Dutch operating out of Dunkirk in the 1580s (Spanish Armada Time): shallow-draft, fast coastal-only ships. As is typical of warships, they kept getting bigger but kept the same name. By 1600 CE or so the Dutch were referring to Ocean-gong "Battle Frigates'. By 1650 the term was being used for any warship with only one gun deck. Just to keep everyone (including naval historians) confused, some ships with 2 gun decks were called 'Great Frigates'.

The first 'real' Frigate, was the French Medee, built in 1740 CE, with one continuous gun deck from stem to stern, three masts, full ship-rigged. She was capable of up to 14 knots speed, which made her almost twice as fast as the average Galleon or Carrack of a 100 years earlier. She was the model for the mass of frigates built by everyone for the next 90 years or so: 1 gun deck, full ship-rigged, very fast, suitable for commerce raiding and protecting and scouting for the Big Boys, the Ships of the Line.

I'm not an expert, but I'd say that battle cruisers would be heavy cav, and battleships would be bombard.... cruisers would be light cav? I think? I'm not an expert on seamen.

Battlecruisers were Sir John Fisher's brainchild (the same man who built the first Dreadnaught Battleships for the Royal Navy). The idea was that they would be as big or bigger than the Dreadnaughts, with about the same firepower but much faster so that, in his phrase: "They could outrun anything they couldn't outfight". Unfortunately, the early Battlecruisers sacrificed a great deal of their armor protection for the extra speed, so at Jutland in 1916 three of them blew up as soon as they were hit. As the Dreadnaught Battleships got faster, the entire point of the Battlecruisers got lost: by 1920 the battleships were just about as fast as the Battlecruisers, so the surviving Battlecruisers were under-armored Battleships.
The most useful thing about the Battlecruisers turned out to be the fact that they had hulls long enough to support a decent Flight Deck, so a lot of the surviving Battlecruisers after WWI were converted into Aircraft Carriers: 3 in the Royal Navy, two each in the Japanese and American navies. Ironically, many of the surviving Battlecruisers were sunk by Carrier Aircraft in WWII!

"Heavy cavalry" is a good term for them, though, as long as you remember that no heavy cavalry could survive rifle or machinegun fire - the Battlecruisers, likewise, could not survive Battleship fire as it turned out.

 

[Lonecat Nekophrodite]

The word "Frigate" originally applied to Privateers for the Dutch operating out of Dunkirk in the 1580s (Spanish Armada Time): shallow-draft, fast coastal-only ships. As is typical of warships, they kept getting bigger but kept the same name. By 1600 CE or so the Dutch were referring to Ocean-gong "Battle Frigates'. By 1650 the term was being used for any warship with only one gun deck. Just to keep everyone (including naval historians) confused, some ships with 2 gun decks were called 'Great Frigates'.

The first 'real' Frigate, was the French Medee, built in 1740 CE, with one continuous gun deck from stem to stern, three masts, full ship-rigged. She was capable of up to 14 knots speed, which made her almost twice as fast as the average Galleon or Carrack of a 100 years earlier. She was the model for the mass of frigates built by everyone for the next 90 years or so: 1 gun deck, full ship-rigged, very fast, suitable for commerce raiding and protecting and scouting for the Big Boys, the Ships of the Line.



Battlecruisers were Sir John Fisher's brainchild (the same man who built the first Dreadnaught Battleships for the Royal Navy). The idea was that they would be as big or bigger than the Dreadnaughts, with about the same firepower but much faster so that, in his phrase: "They could outrun anything they couldn't outfight". Unfortunately, the early Battlecruisers sacrificed a great deal of their armor protection for the extra speed, so at Jutland in 1916 three of them blew up as soon as they were hit. As the Dreadnaught Battleships got faster, the entire point of the Battlecruisers got lost: by 1920 the battleships were just about as fast as the Battlecruisers, so the surviving Battlecruisers were under-armored Battleships.
The most useful thing about the Battlecruisers turned out to be the fact that they had hulls long enough to support a decent Flight Deck, so a lot of the surviving Battlecruisers after WWI were converted into Aircraft Carriers: 3 in the Royal Navy, two each in the Japanese and American navies. Ironically, many of the surviving Battlecruisers were sunk by Carrier Aircraft in WWII!

"Heavy cavalry" is a good term for them, though, as long as you remember that no heavy cavalry could survive rifle or machinegun fire - the Battlecruisers, likewise, could not survive Battleship fire as it turned out.

So if 'Warfare Expanded 4 Moar' Naval unit class is implemented. then 'Battlecruiser' should be in the same class as 'Battleship' (Naval Bombard) because.... IJN converted many to Battleships ?

And early Carriers are all have big guns as if it could double any other warships in gunfight. When carrier became more dedicated by the WW2 (Big guns removed to add more space for warplanes) and it proved better that way. Why the likes of USS Lexington or some others (as shown in Civ6) still have big guns mounted? And why Soviets even perpetuated the 'battle carrier' concept long after WW2 is over?

https://nationalinterest.org/sites/...public/main_images/A303 (1).jpg?itok=isze_K9c

Also what comes first?
- Venetial Galleass (armed with cannons)
- Civ 5 Galleass with round forecastle (is it the same as Venetial variants? and who else built and use it too?)
- Galleon

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

So if 'Warfare Expanded 4 Moar' Naval unit class is implemented. then 'Battlecruiser' should be in the same class as 'Battleship' (Naval Bombard) because.... IJN converted many to Battleships ?

And early Carriers are all have big guns as if it could double any other warships in gunfight. When carrier became more dedicated by the WW2 (Big guns removed to add more space for warplanes) and it proved better that way. Why the likes of USS Lexington or some others (as shown in Civ6) still have big guns mounted? And why Soviets even perpetuated the 'battle carrier' concept long after WW2 is over?

Not just the IJN: while her first 'class' of Dreadnaughts was actually the Kongo class of Battlecruisers, later all rebuilt to 'fast battleship' capabilities, the Royal Navy also kept 3 Battlecruisers to World War Two, all operating like Battleships.
The Lexington and Saratoga, US Navy Carriers, were laid down as Battlecruisers in 1920, converted to Fleet Carriers (CVN-2 and CVN-3, respectively), and so had more gun armament and more hull armor than 'ordinary' fleet carriers. The Japanese at virtually the same time also launched a class of Battlecruisers that had to be scrapped because of the provisions of the Washington Naval Limitations Treaty, so they converted two of the unfinished ships (the Amagi and Akagi) to Fleet Aircraft Carriers. There were also Battleships converted to Aircraft Carriers in Japan and France. All of these conversions resulted in 'aircraft carriers' with more armor and heavier guns than were strictly necessary for carrier operations.

The Soviet/Russian Kiev Class of "Heavy Aircraft Cruisers" were an attempt to everything on one hull. They carried up to 30 helicopters or STOL aircraft, but their flight decks weren't long enough for 'regular' jet strike aircraft, so they also carried about 8 different types of missile launchers for antiaircraft, antiship, antisubmarine, or cruise missiles.
They aren't alone, though: the majority of 'aircraft carriers' in the world today do not have flight decks long enough for regular fixed-wing aircraft: they carry helicopters or STOL aircraft. The dozen or so American "Supercarriers" have more flight deck space than all the other 'carriers' in the world put together, because only two other countries (France and Britain) have built 'true' long flight deck aircraft carriers.

Also what comes first?
- Venetial Galleass (armed with cannons)
- Civ 5 Galleass with round forecastle (is it the same as Venetial variants? and who else built and use it too?)
- Galleon

More Quick Bits of Renaissance Naval History:

First, cannon-armed predates the Galleass. The Venetian Navy was mounted Bombard-style heavy guns on the bows of galleys as early as 1380 CE, when a Genoese admiral was killed by a Venetian galley's cannon fire during the Battle of Chiogga (that battle, in fact, is the first recorded instance of a cannon being used at sea in Europe)

The Galleon appeared first, by a narrow margin. The first mention of a Galleon is in 1517 CE, and it is of a Spanish Galleon "copied from a Venetian Galeone" BUT the Galeone was a combination oar and sail craft to hunt pirates. It wasn't until about 1550 CE that the Galleon is described definitively as a sailing vessel, with a longer, narrower and and lower hull than a Carrack, 3 masts with the mizzen lateen-rigged like a Carrack's, but useful as either a warship mounting up to 'Demi-Cannon' (32 pounders) or as a merchant ship. Only a generation later, in 1570, John Hawkins built the first Race-Built Galleon in England, which was the prototype for the hulls that later formed the Ships of the Line in the next century.

The Galleass is also first mentioned around 1550 CE, developed from the "Great Galley", which was a high-sided merchant galley using both sails and oars. Take out the cargo, use the deck above the oarsmen to mount a broadside cannon array, and you had the Galleass. Their combat debut was the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, where the Ottoman Turks discovered that trying to board one of them was suicidal while trying to out shoot it with a Galley was only a slightly slower way to Go With God.

The Galleass was quickly copied by Everybody in the Mediterranean: The Ottomans called the type a Mahon and built them by the 1590s, 4 Neapolitan Galleasses went to England with the Spanish Armada in 1588 (and only 2 came back: the North Sea was not kind to big top-heavy oared ships), and Venice and Genoa were both still using them as late as the early 1700s.

Most interestingly, the Indonesian Sultanate of Aceh also built 'Galleasses" in the 17th century, At leas, they were big sail and oar ships with a high freeboard and up to 100 cannon mounted to fire broadside and forward. BUT most of the 'cannon' were small swivel guns to repel boarders: only about 15 - 20 were what Europeans would have called Naval Cannon by then (12 - 25 pounders).

That means, in game terms, the Galleass should probably be a Ranged Warship (Renaissance Era), while if anybody puts the Sultanate of Aceh in the game they could have a 'Galleass' that was a Melee Warship, since theirs were built more for boarding actions (each carried, apparently, over 300 troops) than fire fights.

As to the rounded stern, that is definitely depicted in a Galleass shown in a French engraving of 1690 CE, but to my knowledge, there is no illustration or detailed description of a 16th century Venetian Galleass to say if they had the same feature. On the other hand, there are several academic works on the Venetian Navy and seapower and shipbuilding if anyone who reads Italian wants to delve into them for more information.

Don't ask me to: I have my hands full at the moment with Russian and German translations that have Nothing To Do with computer gaming!

 

[AsH2]

..
Don't ask me to: I have my hands full at the moment with Russian and German translations that have Nothing To Do with computer gaming!

So how would you implement all that info in a 4X game?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

So how would you implement all that info in a 4X game?

I think I posted this somewhere before, but here goes:

Renaissance/Early Modern Era:
Naval Melee: Carrack
Naval Ranged : Galleon
Venetian UU: Galeass (Ranged)
Spanish UU: Trade Galleon

Early Industrial Era:
Naval Melee: Frigate
(which can be Upgraded by the end of the Late Industrial Era to a Steam Frigate)
Naval Ranged: Ship-of-the-Line

Late Industrial Era:
Naval Ranged: Ironclad (degraded in Ocean tiles because of lack of range)

Modern Era:
Naval Melee: Destroyer
Naval Ranged: Dreadnaught Battleship
(which can be Upgraded to a Fast Battleship, increased speed and changed Maintenance Requirement from Coal to Oil )
British UU: Battlecruiser (which can be Upgraded to an Aircraft Carrier)

The Caravel was a much smaller vessel than those I've talked about, really more of a strictly exploratory 'scout' than a trade or fighting ship. The Portuguese who invented it had to Upgrade/Enlarge it to the Nau to make it useful for trade or combat.

All of this is assuming the Civ VI system, which I don't think is really optimal, but the required changes (IMHO) are another topic entirely.