Opinions on my Naval Unit changes (mostly attack and def) (balance)

[scratchthepitch]

Oh indeed I agree you could end up with 60 or 70 different modern era boats if you go to that length which would spoil the fairly simple gameplay.

The units in Civ are pretty badly done, but you don't need to go to that amount of detail to improve the game. I've found that each new tech level of units needs to be about 50% stronger than the previous level, or the combat RNG results don't give enough worthwhile combat results to make upgrading to the new level worth it. Due to the cheesy combat RNG and that you are limited to 1000 in unit offense and defense, there is not too many different steps in unit advancement you can use.

I took the lazy way out in modding the game and just reused existing units. First thing I did was take away the country specific units so I could have about 30 extra units. I also kept land units as land units, etc. (in case there was extra programing attached to them that cant be changed related to that, though I don't think there is). After that I completely rearranged the unit set-up according to historical eras. Since I limited units to their original environment, there were not many air or sea units to play around with, but there is enough to represent the advance of technology that's a lot better than the stock game.

Since this thread is about sea units, I'll limit this to the changes of these. Galley is level 1 tech warship, curraugh represents the ancient transport ship. Due to lack units, I used the curraugh to be the transport for the whole of the sailing era. When the medieval era kicks in, galleys upgraded to dromons, which are the warship of that era.

About the time of the Renaissance, I start using 2 types of ships to represent warships. The caravel and the carrack. The carrack represents a major battle fleet, while the caravel represents lighter, but more mobile naval deployments. The difference between these types is that the carrack is stronger (by about 50%), but slower. The galleon and privateer are similarly pared and so are the frigate and manowar. Those 3 stages cover the historical sailing age from about 1400 to 1860. Each line upgrades separately.

At that point, frigates upgrade to destroyers and manowar to ironclad. Due to lack of ship units, these represent naval ships from 1860 to around the 1920's, the first several generations of the historical steam era. The curraugh at this time upgrades to transport, which will then be the transport for the rest of the game.

The next pair are cruisers and battleships. At this point, ships begin carrying aircraft, so I used the battleship unit to represent the mixed carrier/battleship task forces of WW2 and soon after. Submarines appear at this time and are the typical diesel/electric types of WW1-2. Cruisers then upgrade to aegis and battleships to carrier and these are the modern age final examples. Also the ballistic missile subs appear, though they do not make the earlier subs obsolete (so there can still be an inexpensive alternative to nuclear suds, as there still is now.

When modding these changes, I considered the ships not to be representative of individual ship types, but of fleets, made up of several types. I originally added 1 HP to the units of each tech advance, but found out that units will only repair 1HP per turn. That wrecks the use of HP since it's absurd to have units repairing for that long. So I modified the HP to +1 at gunpowder, +1 at ironclads, +1 at WW2 and finally +1 for modern age. While far from ideal, the above modifications I find make the basic game play much better for a minimal amount of effort. For individual scenarios where the region or time period is smaller, you can go into a lot more detail.

 

[Bluemofia]

When modding these changes, I considered the ships not to be representative of individual ship types, but of fleets, made up of several types. I originally added 1 HP to the units of each tech advance, but found out that units will only repair 1HP per turn. That wrecks the use of HP since it's absurd to have units repairing for that long. So I modified the HP to +1 at gunpowder, +1 at ironclads, +1 at WW2 and finally +1 for modern age. While far from ideal, the above modifications I find make the basic game play much better for a minimal amount of effort. For individual scenarios where the region or time period is smaller, you can go into a lot more detail.

A suggestion:

You can continue to use the original +1 HP for each tech advance as you originally did, and simply reason that the increasing complexity of the ships requires additional work to fix them effectively. Afterall, a newly established city is probably going to have a lot of trouble servicing a nuclear submarine, aircraft carrier, or a battleship effectively.

The presence of harbors will allow the repairs to finish in one turn, representing dedicated repair shipyards and adequate infrastructure to fix ships.

 

[GamezRule]

This game needs shipyards and drydocks. Once again, that could make thing overcomplex.

 

[scratchthepitch]

A suggestion:

You can continue to use the original +1 HP for each tech advance as you originally did, and simply reason that the increasing complexity of the ships requires additional work to fix them effectively. Afterall, a newly established city is probably going to have a lot of trouble servicing a nuclear submarine, aircraft carrier, or a battleship effectively.

The presence of harbors will allow the repairs to finish in one turn, representing dedicated repair shipyards and adequate infrastructure to fix ships.

Thanks, it had been a few years since I tested that and I ran a new test to check it out. Gave galleys 10 extra HP and then ran a battle between them. Took a quite a few tries to get past the RNG bias (mine kept losing), but moved the damaged ships to a city with a harbor after the battle. They were in the red. It took 2-3 turns to bring them back to full HP strength. It looks like a harbor can repair about 4 HP per turn. I assume barracks and airports would then work the same for their types. It's not full repair in one turn, but it certainly is enough to be reasonable for what I want. I can reduce the spread of offense/defense points between units of different levels from 50% down to 25-33% now and use bonus HP to give higher tech units that extra power over older units. That will mean I can have a few more levels of units. Thanks for the heads up.

 

[Elephantium]

I think there could be a happy medium between Civ's "6 ships" and "60-70 unit types". Split the Industrial/Modern warships into just 2-3 generations and add a few new vessels to fill missing roles:

Coal-powered DD, CA, BB, plus torpedo boats (cheap, enough attack to threaten a BB, defense comparable to an ironclad)
Oil-powered DD, CA, BB, CV ("see invisible" for ASW would start in this generation)
Nuclear aircraft carriers plus guided-missile cruisers and destroyers, plus assault motorboats for a taste of asymmetric warfare

I also like the idea of giving all naval vessels lethal bombard and enslave -- in the AA, you bombard to sink and attack to try to take a ship as a prize. In the Industrial Age, DDs would have a weak bombard (enough to take out torpedo boats but not enough to seriously threaten BBs) and a decent attack (to model their own torpedo attacks).

I'm still not sure how to allow the weaker DDs to act as screening forces for the stronger BBs other than keeping a circle of them around the tile with the battleships.

I'm also in favor of expanding the air units a bit. I'd like being able to build pure recon planes and having 3-4 stages of planes -- open-air biplanes (for both fighters and bombers), enclosed planes, jets, and stealth planes.

Hmm, satellites as units would be nice, too. I doubt the game engine can do much to model them, though -- too many problems with things like "How did the Spearman take down the satellite unit above that unguarded town?" or "how does a WW2 bomber kill a satellite?"

 

[scratchthepitch]

I also like the idea of giving all naval vessels lethal bombard and enslave -- in the AA, you bombard to sink and attack to try to take a ship as a prize. In the Industrial Age, DDs would have a weak bombard (enough to take out torpedo boats but not enough to seriously threaten BBs) and a decent attack (to model their own torpedo attacks).

I've been using enslave on most land and sea units for a long time. The only ones who don't have it are units like subs and artillery which you wouldn't normally associate with being able to capture other units. Captured land units become workers, sea units become curraghs or transports with the industrial age ships and later. This reduces the tedium of making so many workers and transports if one wars a lot.