Poll & Comments: Post-July 2017 naval game

[Tekamthi]

What the forum's take overall on recent naval game & related overhaul? I've noticed many comments in the last few release threads on this issue, but none have coalesced into any coherent discussion. For example, from July 27 thread:

@Gazebo imagine a little poor kid cowering in a corner; the current "move after attacking" is like a bunch of bullies lined up in a queue, they just throw a single punch each, move down the queue and then the next one comes up; they can destroy ships and cities in a single turn with out giving you the chance to do anything as long as you have the numbers. I feel it made them even more powerful rather than balanced. naval warfare used be quantity vs quality, but now its almost exclusively just quantity, especially with frigates that require no resource.
I reckon "move after attacking" should be removed, that way earlier ranged ships are used for naval warfare only, backed by their melee sisters. once you upgrade to a higher tier, then you can try having a go at cities.
or if possible, only allowing them to move one tile after attacking, that way they can retreat to safety, without giving the player/ai the ability to shuffle too many ships to a single position.

Yup, ranged ships are dominating more than ever. If the compromise isn't feasible/preferable, then siege units should lose their penalty against naval. Give cannons and up a buff against ships and there would still need to be a counter, which melee fails at. Melee ships take too much damage and are near worthless against defended cities. Attacking makes them lose a big chunk of HP upfront and they're left sitting there to take more. They get sent back to heal while ranged slogs through the rest.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, when every time you ask yourself the question "Should I use the melee-ship to attack the city for some extra damage?" the answer is 'No', that's a real problem. Yeah there are some exceptions, the Carthage unique ship and the dutch seabegger can terrorize coastal cities, assuming the cities don't have state of the art defensive buildings. But those ships are both absurdly over-tuned.

This is a problem and I don't really know what the solution is.

I play Marathon (+CBOEE) and I feel the same.

Something has to be done about naval/siege new rules. Here is the real issue from my point of view.
Thx to HalfEmptyMug for its brillant analysis and suggestions.

 

[Tekamthi]

Early poll results support my suspicions... here's a few scenarios I've been experimenting with as a solution (very much still WIP).

1. reverted all naval units to ranged only (ie vanilla civ 5). Unit types are now fast/weak & slow/strong. Assigned existing naval ranged ai to all. Changed/added promos to embarked land infantry units to fill certain niches previously filled by naval melee. (ai doesn't use these very effectively, but its no worse really than their squandering of naval melee previously).

2. modded all naval units to have both ranged & melee attack. same unit types as above. No ai changes (from early observation, ai still seems to play these as melee and ranged respectively).

I'm also working in added coastal defense utility for citadels/forts, and a return of civ 3 coastal fortress for city improvement. Probably a lot more to come if I follow through here, although I can't say I've found a clear winner yet.

Anyone else modding in their own naval solution since the July update?

edit: minor wording changes for clarity

 

[Gokudo01]

let's wait before interpreting the results.

 

[Tekamthi]

agreed..

i've already been tweaking for a few weeks though... enough to say that the changes i've tried so far are not, on their own, gonna fix things. Can't hurt to discuss in meantime, especially to isolate what the weaknesses of current system are.

From what i've read, complaints seem to focus on:

• balance between too-powerful naval attacks on one extreme (ie england with great lighthouse and other circumstances) vs ease of knocking out coastal naval units at the other extreme (fast ranged against attack-immobilized naval melee, etc.)
• utility of naval melee is lacking throughout the game, but especially endgame.

 

[nekokon]

July update for naval was so so, but the newest patch (August 7th ) got a nice fix for that already:

Promotions:

• Naval Misfire now 25% (was 33%)
• Boarding Party I-III: standardized combat strength bonus to 15/15/15; flank now 50%(was 25%)
• Coastal Raider I-III: removed Gold bonus - added 'Damage from Cities reduced by 20%' to each rank.
  • Melee naval units should be a greater coastal threat and should be less likely to die from city assaults. They're still faster than naval ranged units but, since they can't move after attacking, they're more like battering rams.
  • Denmark's UA now no longer overlaps with a basic promotion line (yay), while the Glory Hounds promotion now has a much more specific role.

Melee ships are no longer too strong that they can 2-shot ranged ships, but also not too weak they would kill themselves attacking cities, and the AI won't have to deal with "moving after attacking" which it can't really handle.

 

[Rowger]

Early poll results support my suspicions... here's a few scenarios I've been experimenting with as a solution (very much still WIP).

1. reverted all naval units to ranged only (ie vanilla civ 5). Unit types are now fast/weak & slow/strong. Assigned existing naval ranged ai to all. Changed/added promos to embarked land infantry units to fill certain niches previously filled by naval melee. (ai doesn't use these very effectively, but its no worse really than their squandering of naval melee previously).

2. modded all naval units to have both ranged & melee attack. same unit types as above. No ai changes (from early observation, ai still seems to play these as melee and ranged respectively).

I'm also working in added coastal defense utility for citadels/forts, and a return of civ 3 coastal fortress for city improvement. Probably a lot more to come if I follow through here, although I can't say I've found a clear winner yet.

Anyone else modding in their own naval solution since the July update?

edit: minor wording changes for clarity

I'm interested in your solution. If it ever turns into some sort of mod I would love to try it.

 

[Tekamthi]

July update for naval was so so, but the newest patch (August 7th ) got a nice fix for that already:
Melee ships are no longer too strong that they can 2-shot ranged ships, but also not too weak they would kill themselves attacking cities, and the AI won't have to deal with "moving after attacking" which it can't really handle.

There is at once a problem with melee being not very useful for attacking cities, which this change addresses; but also a problem with naval being even more powerful in certain situations than before against coastal targets. Buffing naval melee will only make the latter extreme worse I think. Worth more testing though for sure, would love to hear any feedback re: where this latest change leaves us....

 

[Dawnpromise]

I'm okay with the new ranged ship mechanics. Still don't see what purpose melee ships have other then having more movement.

Melee ships are good for exploration and body blocking, and not much else.

 

[Owlbebach]

Personally i do not like new ships, i think it was better with 2 range. However, in my personal games i increased Dromon / Galleas speed to 4 and with 4 they seem to be nice, with 3 they seem useless.

Also melee ships seems a bit useless too, you really need 6 ranged shops and 2 melee ship at maximum.

Regarding to suggestion, recently i was discussing it with my friend and he came with an idea that seems very interesting to me, because it make sense theoretically and will make naval combats different from land one.

The idea is to give all melee ships a special promotion - The Grappling Hook.
Whenever a ship (any ship) is in the tile near melee ship it has a debuff that represents that the ship is boarded and there is a fight going on. When under this debuff, the ship has two options: 1) perform an attack (both melee and ranged) and loose all moves; 2) move away from the attacking ship, but only for 1 tile (similar to Zone of Control, but works even if running away).

This will introduce an interesting mechanics where you need to hook enemies ranged ships with your melee ships, and when your own ranged ship is hooked - you have to move it away and replace with melee ship, or perform an attack and leave it exposed.

 

[Gazebo]

Personally i do not like new ships, i think it was better with 2 range. However, in my personal games i increased Dromon / Galleas speed to 4 and with 4 they seem to be nice, with 3 they seem useless.

Also melee ships seems a bit useless too, you really need 6 ranged shops and 2 melee ship at maximum.

Regarding to suggestion, recently i was discussing it with my friend and he came with an idea that seems very interesting to me, because it make sense theoretically and will make naval combats different from land one.

The idea is to give all melee ships a special promotion - The Grappling Hook.
Whenever a ship (any ship) is in the tile near melee ship it has a debuff that represents that the ship is boarded and there is a fight going on. When under this debuff, the ship has two options: 1) perform an attack (both melee and ranged) and loose all moves; 2) move away from the attacking ship, but only for 1 tile (similar to Zone of Control, but works even if running away).

This will introduce an interesting mechanics where you need to hook enemies ranged ships with your melee ships, and when your own ranged ship is hooked - you have to move it away and replace with melee ship, or perform an attack and leave it exposed.

Way too complicated for the AI.

Gonna step in and note that we're not pursuing any more large-scale changes to VP's naval combat. It is already leagues better (get it?) than vanilla, and serves the role it was intended for. Perfect? No. But Civ is not a perfect platform to build on. We've done what we can.

G

 

[Owlbebach]

Way too complicated for the AI.

Gonna step in and note that we're not pursuing any more large-scale changes to VP's naval combat. It is already leagues better (get it?) than vanilla, and serves the role it was intended for. Perfect? No. But Civ is not a perfect platform to build on. We've done what we can.

G

You're the boss)

 

[Enginseer]

It's a pretty easy solution. Melee Naval ships now project 2 tile ZOI making it extremely difficult for a ranged ship to run away and melee ship to engage on hit and run attacks.

Forces that your melee is on the front contesting the ZOI and your ranged is on the back just waiting for everything to end.

We can then include a naval promotion that allows ships to ignore ZOI.

 

[Giza]

The current naval warfare is much better than before, but I'm for tweaks.

Melee ships should be stronger, especially vs ranged ships. This should force naval warfare to require a mix of ranged and melee. If you leave a ranged ship without a melee escort, you should be screwed.

Also, melee ships seem to be more fragile to naval ranged attacks, which does not make sense. They should also be able to better defend from naval ranged attacks. They should be tough to kill.

My suggestion would be to add the concept of healing when killing a unit to melee ships (maybe after boarding party II or III).

PS : I did not try the last update yet.

 

[Gazebo]

It's a pretty easy solution. Melee Naval ships now project 2 tile ZOI making it extremely difficult for a ranged ship to run away and melee ship to engage on hit and run attacks.

Forces that your melee is on the front contesting the ZOI and your ranged is on the back just waiting for everything to end.

We can then include a naval promotion that allows ships to ignore ZOI.

That's a bigger issue than you think, performance-wise. Expanding ZOC checks to two tiles would wreck performance, especially late-game.

G

 

[CrazyG]

How about just giving melee ships something like cover as a free promotion? I would also tone down the RCS of the dromon

 

[Gazebo]

How about just giving melee ships something like cover as a free promotion? I would also tone down the RCS of the dromon

Watching the AI right now, I'm actually really happy with the current naval balance. The AI is doing quite well with the new melee promotions.

G

 

[Tekamthi]

Watching the AI right now, I'm actually really happy with the current naval balance. The AI is doing quite well with the new melee promotions.

G

Thanks for replying G, and to all the devs that have contributed elsewhere to VP as well.

I agree things were working pretty well on my last playthrough, and we are greatly improved over previous. While i see some issues that persist, I tend to agree that the current implementation may be the pareto efficient state after all -- but I'm not quite ready to settle on that conclusion. My thread here is intended to support my own modding as much as the main VP effort. You guys have inspired me to brush off some years-old modding skills, and I'm hoping for ideas from anyone else thinking on this issue. Truly not trying to rock your boat or nothin, G

I've personally enjoyed the recent update(s) quite a bit -- I locked in on 'good' in the poll, but it was a toss up w/ 'great' -- however compared to the new air game, which now feels appropriately complex, tactical and maybe a little more accurate to reality, the naval game is feeling somewhat blunt and contrived. I can't shake a nagging feeling that all the pieces for a truly great naval game are already in VP, and just need some xml and light lua work to bring out.

Here's the perspective I'm coming at this with:

• I have a rough idea of what the AI can and can't be expected to do. Any changes must work w/in existing VP ai & mechanics -- though I haven't done (and will stop short of) any .dll work, so I don't have a truly intuitive understanding of the current limitations at that level. My LUA work thus far has been very light, too, for that matter, though I wouldn't mind spending some more time there. Anyway, where I've found an idea doesn't work with existing VP framework so far, I've scrapped it (eg both ideas I posted previously in this thread).
• I'm not a fan of the current strong fast melee boats and glass-cannon ranged boats as models for real world navies. Most things in civ I can wrap my brain around as a macro'd out model of reality -- but not this one. Now I'm no war historian, but as I understand things, Civ/VP's melee boats were historically small and fast, more or less what we have; but what we've designated as ranged boats were generally larger, intimidating, stronger warships. I especially struggle with these supposed large fragile ships w/ attack and move, while faster, smaller faster ships don't. I know you'll give me 100 examples of other things in civ that don't measure up to reality in response.. but the existence of one flawed system is not a supporting argument for another one in my mind.
• Attack and move generally makes the combat feel faster and more dynamic; this is good for naval. Naval battles should feel more fluid than land battles; overall the right direction for tweaking naval game AFAIC. At the same time, I'd prefer to avoid making naval just a horses-on-water game.
• Being able to focus more firepower w/ attack and move has become a problem in some cases, and is not fun to play on the receiving end (losing a strong full hp unit in one turn should be a rare case, but is even more common now for both naval units and coastal land units). Defending player needs counters to this (beyond just building new units), or some other mitigating feature(s) added (rather than reverting attack and move).
• AI uses a lot more melee boats than human from what i've seen. While ai may be balanced vs each other, there is something off here. They tend to use melee naval as suicide attackers very commonly. Human does not.
• Range 1 limitation is good for separating land domain from sea while ranged are still dangerous to coasts (this has grown on me the more i've played, very critical change imo). Melee boats need some way to interact w/ coastal land units -- or SOMETHING to be more relevant & useful throughout the game.

Most recently, I've implemented the following, starting with a fresh version of latest VP release (ie scrapping any previous changes), and sticking to only low-hanging XML stuff:

1. unit types are fast light melee and slow strong ranged (changed just the ranged boat CS and production cost here; think floating fortress). Melee get attack and move too; all naval units get some chance to withdraw
   • still tuning withdraw rates, but the idea here is to add to the fluidity of naval battles, while giving more effect to small/fast vs large/strong distinction. Withdraw is rare on land; hoping that having it more common at sea will make naval game distinct, while only using a function that already exists in-game.
   • Right now the defender's withdraw works against melee attacks only -- might look at changing this to ranged as well, if I can stay in LUA for this and not dll. I'm hoping withdrawals will overall mitigate effect of attack and move queueing up many attacks on same target.
2. all naval units get +CS when adjacent to other units.
   • ie a benefit from working as a fleet, or with support from shore, rather than individual units (but against ranged as well, rather than melee-only benefit from flanking). Attempting to balance small groups of fast boats taking on the 'floating castles' idea from above.
3. Melee boats get a 'heavy charge' ability. Ranged boats get a 'withering fire' ability.
   • again i'm working under the theory that withdrawals will mitigate the effect of attack and moves stacking attacks on one target. Withering fire especially will allow coastal land units a chance to escape, and makes up for not having a defensive withdraw from ranged attack (or one that I've found so far) in XML.
4. All boats get a minor citadel-like damage adjacent units effect. The smaller, faster melee less-so than large ranged ships.
   • my vision here is that any warship is almost a floating fortress. Gives melee some option to influence coastal land tiles. I'd like to add ZOC on coastal tiles too.
5. All boats immediately adjacent to friendly city get -CS effect. City gets small +CS effect.
   • combined w/ the small citadel dmg effect above, boats can be useful to defend coastal cities, but at a cost. Kinda thinking of having ships in-port here. Might add a +1 yield to gold in tile too, thinking of sailors coming into city to buy stuff, and give less-useful melee boats something to do.

Anyway I have more in mind to support the above, especially re: fortresses, citadels, and city defense vs naval; but these will take more than XML, and more free time, which I won't have enough of for a few weeks yet.

 

[tu_79]

For sail units, current system is almost realistic. Trirremes have lot of warriors inside, dromons cannot have that many because they have a small catapult attached. So when they meet, trirreme warriors kill dromon crew. And that catapult is quite inaccurate to sink other ships, but they spit fire that burns the sails and kill the soldiers, and may be used against land units too.

For modern age, it changes. Ironclads no longer fight by boarding, but they shoot their cannons, the same as dreadnoughts. The difference is that some are cheap, fast units, designed to protect and sink bigger ships, relying on torpedoes and machine guns, while others are expensive slow hulky battleships that mount huge artillery cannons or missiles.

Given that the lack of terrain makes sea combat less tactical, the mix of short/long range units is the only thing that spices it a little. In another game, modern escort ships could be fast produced, short range units, while battleships could cost three times and be long ranged and deadly. But here, in civ5, all units have same maintenance costs, and the extra cost is represented by strategic resources requirements.

A small option for spicing things further could be to let escort ships move faster when on shallow waters.

As an example of modern units:
[Ironclad: Mov-5, CS-40, Cost 600, 1 coal, may hit and move]
[Cruiser: Mov-3, CS-35, RCS-60@2, Cost 1100, 1 iron, deep waters cost -33% mov]

 

[nekokon]

I wonder how the AI handle submarine. If they can be taught to use them differently than normal melee ship we can go rock - paper - scissor on sea too.
Just noticed that they have <OnlyinDomain> flag, so they can't attack (and die to) coastal city, so we can probably turn them into the main anti naval melee unit. In the past there were many cases harassment and ambush from swam of small ships destroyed large fleet so it's not totally historically incorrect. We can make them available earlier as disposable coastal defense (cheap and weak with no invisibility until submarine, but got the same attacking bonus).

Also some tweaks to go along:
- Ranged will have high dmg, 2 ranges, low defense and mobility (still retain move after attacking). They will be stronger vs normal melee ship because of range attack, good vs city and land unit as usual, and weaker against mini boats with their high mobility, high dmg when attacking and swam tactic (because of cheap production, think "2-uses missile").
- Melee will have average dmg and mobility, but high defense (+35% cs when defending) good for siege (reduce dmg from city, might need to tone down a bit). They will be the main meat shield, weak to ranged ship, but can take quite a beating thus highly effective against mini boats.

This way we can promote the 3-way relationship without touching "bonus vs type" much. The main different between land vs naval warfare would be tactical terrain vs formation (which is historically correct)
As human player you will need a few high level ranged ships for offense and a lot more melee for siege or defending against mini boats by shielding ranged ship, and maybe bring some of your own subs to harass embarked units (thought they will die really fast and much better at defending your cities - still die fast but can get replaced quickly, plus big chunk of zone control from pure number). As AI I don't think they ever have problem with spamming more and more units, and horde or mini boats ,while wouldn't be too hard to break through as they take only 1-2 hits to go down, can do some significant dmg to unprotected ranged ship which is the main source of dmg to coastal city, thus making coastal defending much easier. For AI's coastal offense, even thought they can't use proper formation I think they're pretty good with the new promotion already, and human player can't use the same mini boats spam strategy against those melee ships.

Only problem would be reducing unit cap for those mini boats so that it's viable to spam them. And possibly remove "run when low health" for them would help, or we can just make them into true 1-use suicide boat (which, also historically correct)

 

[Tekamthi]

For sail units, current system is almost realistic. Trirremes have lot of warriors inside, dromons cannot have that many because they have a small catapult attached. So when they meet, trirreme warriors kill dromon crew. And that catapult is quite inaccurate to sink other ships, but they spit fire that burns the sails and kill the soldiers, and may be used against land units too.

I think our use of "dromon" as a name here actually doesn't really fit the role it has at all. As I understand it, they were in reality maybe smaller than triremes.. an evolution maybe of the "galley" in its post-trireme form. They were not a class of warship that commonly supported seige weapons. The later era distinctions tend to follow the large/small format I described previously. So maybe i'll just suspend belief here altogether... or maybe mod the dromon to a trireme-caravel in-between, and find other ranged models. I'll accept your explanation as the logic at play here for now, even if we don't find a direct historical analog.

I wonder how the AI handle submarine. If they can be taught to use them differently than normal melee ship we can go rock - paper - scissor on sea too.
Just noticed that they have <OnlyinDomain> flag, so they can't attack (and die to) coastal city, so we can probably turn them into the main anti naval melee unit. In the past there were many cases harassment and ambush from swam of small ships destroyed large fleet so it's not totally historically incorrect. We can make them available earlier as disposable coastal defense (cheap and weak with no invisibility until submarine, but got the same attacking bonus).

The idea of adding more naval units IS interesting, but I had scrapped it a while back as too far outside current VP paradigm. Using the existing submarine framework would be an interesting way to maybe drag it back in.... I don't know if I share this vision altogether just yet, though. Will think on it more.

I've already found that I had too many changes implemented at once to really be able to distinguish which ones needed further tuning. I've reverted back to VP's melee and ranged ships, but with the added withdrawals (both def/off) for all naval units, and attack/move for melee. Turning some of the other aspects on/off as I go for comparison. I think the withdrawals is what i was looking for, probably don't need to change much else. The effect of stacked attacks on same units does seem to be lesser, though its still there on cities of course, and on trapped units that can't withdraw. Adds a whole new aspect of "trapping" enemy fleets against the shore, and considering how/which way your units might withdraw at end of turn encourages smart positioning & formations.... benefits the human player though of course, but not overwhelmingly so.

Any comments on where I might run into problems with frequent withdrawals in naval combat from more experienced devs/testers? Plays well so far. AI doesn't make any considerations towards this, but it seems to suit their existing decision-making just fine.