Lots of good discussion here. I knew the naval change would be controversial, which is why we're doing this beta.
I understand the idea of making naval combat more strategic, but lets look at this from another angle: The whole point of the war is the seizure of cities. You do not start a war if you do not want to capture cities, thats just waist of production and money for units, you don't want to do this.
With that said, lets take a look at naval units role in a war. Previously naval units were very strong and you were forced to build naval army if you want to capture a coastal city. Otherwise you have no chance of capturing it, your army will be destroyed from sea! With the new units (even with move after attack) they can do almost nothing to land units. Once you've dealed with land army, you can take a city no matter how much naval force your enemy has. In worst-case scenario you can just stand near the city and shoot naval units forever as they can't strike back. Same thing with defending cities, well-placed city can be attacked from 2 tiles only, 1 trireme and you are safe against unlimited naval army. Seriosly, thats a bad change.
Naval units pre renaissance can't and shouldn't be taking cities solo. It just doesn't make sense. You can only park on coastal tiles, you can't maneuver all that much, etc. Range 2 naval units can menace the coastlines in such a way that there's no recourse for the land player if they get overwhelmed at sea. Range 3 or 4 naval units made this worse.
The biggest reason for this range change, however, is the recent changes to how fog of war works. Vision, screening, and unit cycling were all changed such that a single unit can move and cycle at sea to reveal everything to the player. With no mountains or features to block things the sea becomes wide open. So all naval combat is a shooting gallery. Pushing things to range 1 makes naval combat much less trivial. Does it make naval sieges harder? Yes. Especially early game. But, historically and strategically, you should not be engaging in pure naval invasions prior to astronomy. It doesn't make sense. Navies can lose wars alone, but they can't win wars alone. That's a historical truth.
Hidden patch notes?
- Naval Target Penalty (RCS penalty when attacking naval units) increased from 25% to 33%.
- Now Siege units receive Naval Target Penalty.
Yes my notes cut off for some reason. Siege units got the penalty because they can park out of range of naval units for most of the game and deal damage without the naval unit being able to fire back.
dont be overzealous, progress is almost fine, i played brazil progress in immortal and won in 340 turn. I won with india too(emperor) diplomatic victory while building the last part of my spaceship in 364 turn.
Progress needs a good bump early on but it's overall fine.
About the naval change, I don't like it. Overall navy needs to be impactful not an optional secondary game that you can ignore if you are not playing on archipelago. As it stands, navy has got no impact on war until industrial. boats are awful to take cities now and bad to clean up the coast. it's a mini-game that you play on the ocean until peace is signed. then you can move your land units to the next land mass.
But cool, AI handle it better.
See above. Navies aren't optional. They are very powerful for their era, they blockade, they steal gold, block trade routes, deal additional damage, and get major city attack bonuses. Melee naval units are especially useful now.
No indirect fire for field guns yet?
Naval changes look decent,
I'm testing the indirect fire change.
I don't want to judge the naval changes just on paper until I actually try them out, but IF beta testing proves ships are now less effective, then maybe introducing a new resource consuming "siege" ship with a longer range (and low CS???) can be introduced by the times the frigates show up? We'd have a melee corvette, 1-range resourceless frigate and an iron-consuming SOTL (we can give the longbowmen back to England).
I am usually against senselessly adding new units, because if we have too many units, they do not feel enough distinct from each other. But this could make sense and unlike for example the scout line, there are plenty of ship 3D models to pick from.
That's a profound amount of work. Most likely no.
I've played like 150 turns and after all the hotfix versions, it seems much better now. First policy cost is very high though, so maybe the ruin should give more, especially considering the might of monuments? Culture ruin could safely give 50% more than it does now. The AI seems less weird when it comes to expansion and it's way more natural (in this one game, so maybe a coincidence), but imho expansion costs could go to pre-nerf version. It seems good anyway. Monument +2 culture does well to make the strong early gamers not as impressive and strengthen the weak. Aside from some AI bugs I've reported, all seems good and Epic speed feels way better than it used to. Seems like a good job except for disappearing tile yields, but I will play more to say for sure.
Glad to hear it is improved. I've been working on it.
For those complaining about naval changes, I've just quitted a game because Harald brougth some dromons and they destroyed my archers (are dromons stronger?). Dromons are moving like skirmishers. Two of them, and they fire twice to the same unit I placed on the shore. They are even firing against my city, and getting out of range after shooting. Actually I quitted after seeing the huge army that came after the ships, but I need more testing before saying naval is worse than before.
EDIT: Why have catapults Naval penalty? This was the only land unit that could stop ships.
See above for siege unit change. And yeah, people need to test the naval change.
G
