New NESes, ideas, development, etc

[das]

The point is that seapower should be comparable, if not superior, to the army in terms of usefulness, at least for a large part of the world.

Depends on time and space.

Anyway, two points:
- Building up a fleet. You could generally either commission privateers or confiscate trade ships for your own use; you don't have to actually build a fleet and many people didn't;
- River flotillas. Those tend to be badly ignored, but they were very important in regions with large rivers. Don't recall exactly, but I think Assyrians used them while campaigning against Marduk-apla-iddina II the Incredibly Annoying? River fleets figured prominently in Chinese civil wars (and in the Russian Civil War, though that last one is notable for some of the most bizarre weapons, tactics and techniques ever and so isn't a good example). River boats were at least as important to the (early) Cossacks as horses.

 

[North King]

River boats in Ancient China were full-scale warships anyway; there is no reason they shouldn't be treated as such (I <3 flying tiger warships). But yes, river warfare needs to be done more frequently. As for building a fleet, sure, you can commission or confiscate trade ships, but that usually only works on the smaller scale. Take the galley wars of the 16th century, or the Peloponnesian Wars, or anything in between, and war fleets are a lot harder to get your hands on. Good ones, anyway.

 

[North King]

Yes but the fleet is badly mishandeled ain't it?

I mean the amount of succesfull naval landings and so forth just boggles the mind....

In what, real life, or NESing? Trying to blockade someone in the real world was nearly impossible so long as galleys were used; the amount of manpower to man even one ship meant that they had to put in every night, so you could not possibly maintain a blockade around the clock. Hence why most people were able to slip past them, and hence why one of the main dangers to fleets was being destroyed on their beaches (as the Athenians found out).

 

[Thlayli]

The First Punic War is an ideal case study for pre-modern naval warfare, imo.

 

[North King]

The First Punic War is an ideal case study for pre-modern naval warfare, imo.

What, Romans copy Carthage, build ad nauseum until they destroy the enemy through sheer weight of numbers? I suppose I'm being a little hard on them, they certainly did illustrate quite nicely most aspects of naval warfare. On the other hand, I think the Peloponnesian struggle is generally considered the classic case.

Interestingly, while we can see definite ancient-medieval-early modern-modern parallels in land warfare between the West and, say, China, it seems that the periodization of naval technology would follow much different patterns.

 

[Dachs]

What, Romans copy Carthage, build ad nauseum until they destroy the enemy through sheer weight of numbers? I suppose I'm being a little hard on them, they certainly did illustrate quite nicely most aspects of naval warfare. On the other hand, I think the Peloponnesian struggle is generally considered the classic case.

The Peloponnesian War didn't evince the same kinds of technical innovation, though a few isolated examples (Arginusai, Aigospotamoi, Kyzikos) are notable tactically. It's certainly useful, but the First Punic War's clashes pretty much run the gamut of interesting and/or useful developments in technical and tactical naval warfare, which is always interesting, and they continue to prove many of the strategic naval truisms (the difficulty of blockading any more than, say, one or two ports effectively even with an extremely large fleet being pretty big here).

Plus it was on a much larger scale, and everybody likes big numbers.

 

[bombshoo]

Wasn't there some huge battle on a Chinese lake in the middle ages? I don't know much beyond that (it is not my area of expertise at all) but it seems like it might be interesting case study in tactics, though I doubt in overall strategy.

 

[Dachs]

Well, there was a pretty big, pretty famous one in the Yangtze some time ago (specifically, 208), Chibi; a combined land offensive and naval battle on the river, followed by a rather Napoleonic disastrous retreat. Yes, it is an interesting case study.

 

[North King]

Wasn't there some huge battle on a Chinese lake in the middle ages? I don't know much beyond that (it is not my area of expertise at all) but it seems like it might be interesting case study in tactics, though I doubt in overall strategy.

There were quite a few battles, but I mostly know only of the general tactical progression rather than the individual wars and battles.

 

[Terrance888]

River boats/ Gunboats are used in the Americal Civil War.

 

[bombshoo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lake_Poyang here is the battle I was thinking of. It is considered one of the largest battles ever, but overall was not as spectacular as I remembered.

 

[Thlayli]

The Southern Song were particularly apt users of riverine naval technology. I seem to remember mounted trebuchets on paddle-wheel boats, or something like that. Interesting stuff.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Go here to see the previously posted "update maps with pop ups" idea made real for historical maps.

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7956980&postcount=1

 

[Kal'thzar]

thats awesome, I looked through the code.

They seem to have used DHTML (which I am not familiar with) from here http://www.dynamicdrive.com and some basic javascript.

They defined all the areas on the maps via pixel points to define rectangle shapes (presumably you could also have others). Then on mouse over the pop up box appears.

 

[carmen510]

Word on the street is that Empire Total War is pretty good, even if it does need a supercomputer to run.

I heard it had a whole host of problems, including:

1. AI Problems, as usual. Wait for 6 months of patches or so.
2. Pathfinding issues, so units literally walk in circles to go up 10 meters.
3. No more Family Tree, if you cared about that.
4. Problematic naval combat stemming from issues 1 and 2.
5. Frequent crashes.

 

[Thlayli]

I'll let Dachs (the resident Total War enthusiast) field those claims in WWW.

 

[das]

Does anyone have any good ideas as to how to deal with heirs and dynasties in general? I.e. how and whether to track them (it usually is not at all worth the effort, except maybe in the more short-term and highly-detailed NESes; problem is, however, that sometimes it is, and when it is, it really is, if you know what I mean), and who should determine them - the player or the mod? Any additional problems I forgot here?

 

[Kraznaya]

Does anyone have any good ideas as to how to deal with heirs and dynasties in general? I.e. how and whether to track them (it usually is not at all worth the effort, except maybe in the more short-term and highly-detailed NESes; problem is, however, that sometimes it is, and when it is, it really is, if you know what I mean), and who should determine them - the player or the mod? Any additional problems I forgot here?

Let the player choose them as they see fit for their own nation, but let the mod always evict the heart of all aspiring King Ryans.

 

[Thlayli]

Does anyone have any good ideas as to how to deal with heirs and dynasties in general? I.e. how and whether to track them (it usually is not at all worth the effort, except maybe in the more short-term and highly-detailed NESes; problem is, however, that sometimes it is, and when it is, it really is, if you know what I mean), and who should determine them - the player or the mod? Any additional problems I forgot here?

See: DaftNES 2 leadership system.

 

[das]

That really isn't enough. What about more distant relatives? Dynastic marriages and their implications? The succession law, and changes in it? Look at the so-called Feudal War in 15th century Moscow; how would you simulate it or a similar event (because those tended to happen in countries with Rurikid-style succession, which were reasonably numerous - Turkic and Mongol successor states come to mind, especially in the western half of the Genghisid empire, but technically almost all barbarian kingdoms went through that stage of succession within the clan instead of the immediate family) in a NES?

How to handle succession if acting from the paradigm of player=ruler, anyway?