The new tech requirements for destroyer and battleship sound pretty reasonable to me. It's pretty disturbing how quickly destroyers can appear in some games and definitely having them appear before rifling is a bit absurd. The two changes would also go well with the new unit by extending its period of use. It also gives a boost to steampower which IMO is a bit of a boring/weak (for its cost) tech at the moment.
Elkad, can you expand on the suggestion by pointing me to what unit art you'd use and trying to be more specific about what attributes it would have?
I've looked at a couple other big mods that i forget (wolfshanze maybe?) that had a whole host of new naval units and art. I didn't really look at exact hammer costs or anything. Just seems to be a huge gaping hole in naval techs, and it doesn't seem we'd need 30 new ships, just one or 2. (or maybe 8..). I'm no art person, and without some agreement it might be a change to this mod you'd even entertain, hashing out exact values for combat and such seemed a waste.
As of I, I would rather balance the sea unit issues by making the existing steamclad more worthwile. Something along the line of giving him +1 move, the ability to go to ocean and maybe some strength bonii (not necessary I think, even if the somewhat low odds against wood navy is sometime irritating).
The transport between galleon and transport seem useless to me, and severely reduce the dutch UU usefulness, in my opinion. And privateer are also somewhat impacted by a strength 10 transport that early.
Ironclads don't even require astronomy. And at that point, there sure weren't global supplies of bunker coal available, which meant you ended up chopping trees a lot. I sure don't like changing that to ocean-going (unless there was a way to require supply lines and escort ships, which sure doesn't belong in this mod)
Incidentally, why don't all combustion ships take Astronomy? Until Radio, you can't tell where you are at sea without it.
The naval advances in the Steam Era were crazy fast. Steel, rifling, breech-loading guns, metallurgy, smokeless powder, paddlewheels, propellers, torpedos, explosive shells, hardened armor-piercing shells, the steam engine itself, double-expansion engines, triple-expansion engines, oil-fired boilers, steam turbines, and a whole host of other things. Machine guns and auto-loading rifles are boring compared to the naval changes from 1850 to 1950.
Simple version.
Ironclad - No change, upgrades to Cruiser
Steam Transport Steam+Astronomy. Requires Coal. Str8, Move 4, Cargo 3. Upgrades to Transport.
(Early) Destroyer. Railroad+Rifling+Astro. Iron+ (Coal or Oil). Str 24, Move 7. 12% bombardment, 30% intercept, can see subs.
Cruiser. Combustion+Astro+Rifling. Coal or Oil or Uranium (can civ do 3 optional resources?). Str 30, Move 6, 16% bombardment, 20% intercept. Upgrades to Missile Cruiser
Transport. Combustion+Astro. Coal or Oil.
Battleship. Reduce speed to 5. Require Artillery. No upgrade path.
Combustion. +1 movement to all ships. (similar to Refrigeration bonus).
You could skip the combustion +1 movement and give everything another movement point (giving back the point I stole in many cases). If you wanted, you could swap my new destroyer and cruiser around somewhat, so destroyers are where people expect them to be.
A complicated version would start looking like a ww2 mod.
Armored oceangoing ships of the line, steam dreadnoughts, battlecruisers, Qships (transports w/bonus vs subs), gun changes at rifling, physics, artillery, rocketry and robotics, free sentry bonuses at radio (radar), dozens of upgrade choices at AL, Industrialism etc, etc, etc... Not in the scope of this mod by far. Probably not really in the scope of Civ4 even. You'd need a better refit system than just buying upgrades for one.
(as is now), 100
(as is now) and -50% attack vs. privateer? Maybe even -100% vs. privateer.
