Probably Improved Gameplay Mod

What about ironclad gets 3 moves, ocean-going, and a combat bonus vs. ship of the line and frigates?

Is there any historical reason why ironclads should not get a bonus against these sorts of ships ?

The 3 move and ocean going should not cause much trouble. I'm not sure for a specific bonus against frigate and ship of the line, it may turn ironclad into destroyer, i.e. unit that eat wood ship as breakfast.

I would advice to try first without bonus, and see if they are still too weak ; for now I tend to loose a lot of battle with ironclad, but simply the fact that they can group themselves far more easily will help survivability.

You may get them at 8 strength, +100% against frigate and ship of the line. This way, the privateer would be rather strong against them ; it's a little out of place, but the pirate's way of attacking should work rather well against ironclad, so it may be an option.
 
PoM > if you want to try steam ships easily, I have a module including them and pushing back a little bit the following generation of ships (using the ships from Wolfhanze mostly).
 
What about ironclad as this:
3 moves, ocean-going, 12:strength: (as is now), 100:hammers: (as is now) and -50% attack vs. privateer? Maybe even -100% vs. privateer.

The ironclad would have as many moves as the ship of the line. The ship of the line costs 120:hammers:. Frigate costs 90:hammers:. If we ignore combat promos, ship of the line would be just as good against frigates as ironclads would be, meaning the ship of the line is not completely useless.

Or perhaps the above ironclad should be increased to 120:hammers: so it costs the same as the ship of the line. The ironclad would be better than the ship of the line but the ship of the line would have been around a bit longer and will have some promotions while the ironclad is new and can't be upgraded from anything else.
 
Ships of the line and ironclads show up at about the same time in the tech tree, depending on what order you research MS, Steel and Steam. I'm therefore concerned that if you make ironclads as good as or superior for everything except fighting privateers that there will be little reason to ever build SotL. Frigates would be better for countering privateers than SotL anyway.

I don't know of any logical reason why ironclads should be at a disadvantage against privateers in a fight. In reality their only difficulty would be in catching them.

I'd prefer Ironclads keep their intended role in the game as coastal defense units.
 
I don't know of any logical reason why ironclads should be at a disadvantage against privateers in a fight. In reality their only difficulty would be in catching them.

Well, you don't know very well how privateer were operating.

Ship of the line and regular navy were using cannon to destroy people from a distance. They use slow ship.

Privateer use fast ship, does not use well cannon, and rely on boarding.

Boarding an ironclad is not exactly the difficult part, since they are so slow and clunky ; and once aboard the ironclad were not having exactly the crew to resist well. Historically it never mattered much, because privateer were long-dead by the time ironclad came out ; but they are reason for wich privateer would not be at a disavantadge against ironclad.

Do't forget that ship of the line have a bonus against frigate and not priateer because from the start, clunky navy fare rather poorly against privateer.

The problem of ship of the line and ironclad doing the same job is a semi problem for me. Ship of the line came with a tech that I would rush rather often, because grenadier are not too shaby, especially if I'm not interested in printing press. OTOH, to rush ironclad, you need steam power and steel. Steam power is after rifling, meaning it's far after. The reason for which ship of the line are most of the time ignored is only because they are not really better than frigate, and came after. And that is very difficult to correct.
 
Can't wait for CAR mod to be integrated into this mod, as this mod runs slow after gone to medieval era here on my computer.

it will also be nice if you add some worker exp and promotions to make them work faster and be able to defend themselves... similar to what Fall Further has.
 
Can't wait for CAR mod to be integrated into this mod, as this mod runs slow after gone to medieval era here on my computer.

it will also be nice if you add some worker exp and promotions to make them work faster and be able to defend themselves... similar to what Fall Further has.

One tip I'd give is to make sure you turn off PLE in BUG options. PLE causes huge slowdown when selecting stacks IMO - I always turn it off. If the mod is packed as it is meant to be, PLE should be disabled by default anyway.
 
PLE isn't the real culprit; it's all the little doodads we added to the plot list (mission tag, promotion indicator, upgrade indicator, move bar). You can turn each of those off until you get to a speed you like. Likewise you can turn them on without PLE and get a slowdown.
 
PLE isn't the real culprit; it's all the little doodads we added to the plot list (mission tag, promotion indicator, upgrade indicator, move bar). You can turn each of those off until you get to a speed you like. Likewise you can turn them on without PLE and get a slowdown.

Ok. That makes sense.
 
@EF, PoM: What does PLE stand for, please? :)
 
Plot List Enhancements. Go to the options screen (ALT + CTRL + O) and select the Plot List (or is it Unit Icons?) tab. On there are several checkboxes that control how the unit icons of the selected stack look.
 
For some inspiration on the naval progression, you could search through Wolfschanze's old thread. Or the Merged Mod, which is built around that mod's graphics, and uses more or less the same naval progression.
 
Plot List Enhancements. Go to the options screen (ALT + CTRL + O) and select the Plot List (or is it Unit Icons?) tab. On there are several checkboxes that control how the unit icons of the selected stack look.

Thank you!
 
Well I don't see that last part fitting into the creator's vision of this mod, kind of an odd suggestion frankly!

It's not really odd, it help build our improvements faster if he added the promotions for it, and not only that, be able to defend themselves (up to 3 :strength: max if he added the promotions for them).

I still getting bad lag, even when my plot list is already turned off, i'm still getting lag from this slow intel pentium 4 3.00 GHz computer.
 
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.
 
Elkad, really, it's far too complicated for nothing. The only good point is talking about ironclad that does not need astronomy, that's right and can be a problem. But adding so much new sea unit is pointless in my opinion ; most of theses chips does not serve any purpose. It's hard to have some way to get both ironclad and ship of the line usefull, so, really, I find silly to add so much things.
 
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