Does the air change effect missiles? If those are no longer supply capped i may start building them more
Ranged Naval Units
- Thread starter CrazyG
- Start date
Does the air change effect missiles? If those are no longer supply capped i may start building them more
Yes. Also, I forgot to mention that I'm making Ironclads etc. use Iron as a resource instead of Coal. Coal will now be an economically-strategic resource.
G
tu_79
Deity
I'm sorry to come late to the discussion.
Can we talk roles, please? It seems to me that we are trying naval to be something different for each ones.
Should we go historically, or just focus on interesting gameplay?
Ranged naval is a sailing cannon to me. Cannons are not very good at hitting mobile targets, unless they are very, very close. I would use ranged naval in the same way I use siege units: tearing down city defenses and breaking entrenched units.
Their problem with them being so dominant inland could be alleviated by removing indirect fire promotion.
Melee naval are faster units that carry marine soldiers. It seems to me that their main role is to counter ranged naval. Whenever we try them to be useful for something else, it's just capturing cities what comes to mind, and here they compete with ranged naval in being useful against cities.
So, what other things can a ship do?
Scout. The changes to sight are a step in this direction.
Pillage. Maybe only melee naval should be allowed to pillage. That would not make more than one melee ship necessary, though, the same as we currently need one melee to capture the city. But that gives melee an exclusive role, which is good, in my opinion.
Kill embarked units. This one is not very realistic, but it could be another exclusive role.
Escort. This one requires that melee is really destructive against ranged naval, so melee naval is required to protect the fleet. This also requires that ranged naval to not be good in naval combat, or they won't need any escort at all.
With this roles, a ranged naval fleet can take down cities, but it is very vulnerable by sea and siege land units. They can support a land invasion if the terrain is flat.
A melee only fleet can't think of capturing cities on their own, but would excell at naval defense, escorting embarked units and removing any enemy fleet.
A mixed fleet is required for naval dominance.
If these roles make sense to you, here's some settings that could fit:
1 Have ranged naval have very low combat strength, but an excellent bonus versus cities and entrenched units.
2 Let ranged naval units shoot at two tiles and lose the turn, like siege units, but forbid indirect fire and extra range. Replace these promotions with something that allows the unit to survive longer.
3 Ranged naval can't pillage or shoot embarked units.
4 Ranged naval gets only 1 range sight.
5 Let melee naval have high ranged defense. They should only fear other melee ships and siege attacks.
Ps. It looks like G is already testing some changes. I don't think I like how galleases are so different from frigates, but the rest sounds good. The issue with 2 range dromons could be solved in other ways, but losing the ability to shoot and move makes the unit line incoherent, imo.
Can we talk roles, please? It seems to me that we are trying naval to be something different for each ones.
Should we go historically, or just focus on interesting gameplay?
Ranged naval is a sailing cannon to me. Cannons are not very good at hitting mobile targets, unless they are very, very close. I would use ranged naval in the same way I use siege units: tearing down city defenses and breaking entrenched units.
Their problem with them being so dominant inland could be alleviated by removing indirect fire promotion.
Melee naval are faster units that carry marine soldiers. It seems to me that their main role is to counter ranged naval. Whenever we try them to be useful for something else, it's just capturing cities what comes to mind, and here they compete with ranged naval in being useful against cities.
So, what other things can a ship do?
Scout. The changes to sight are a step in this direction.
Pillage. Maybe only melee naval should be allowed to pillage. That would not make more than one melee ship necessary, though, the same as we currently need one melee to capture the city. But that gives melee an exclusive role, which is good, in my opinion.
Kill embarked units. This one is not very realistic, but it could be another exclusive role.
Escort. This one requires that melee is really destructive against ranged naval, so melee naval is required to protect the fleet. This also requires that ranged naval to not be good in naval combat, or they won't need any escort at all.
With this roles, a ranged naval fleet can take down cities, but it is very vulnerable by sea and siege land units. They can support a land invasion if the terrain is flat.
A melee only fleet can't think of capturing cities on their own, but would excell at naval defense, escorting embarked units and removing any enemy fleet.
A mixed fleet is required for naval dominance.
If these roles make sense to you, here's some settings that could fit:
1 Have ranged naval have very low combat strength, but an excellent bonus versus cities and entrenched units.
2 Let ranged naval units shoot at two tiles and lose the turn, like siege units, but forbid indirect fire and extra range. Replace these promotions with something that allows the unit to survive longer.
3 Ranged naval can't pillage or shoot embarked units.
4 Ranged naval gets only 1 range sight.
5 Let melee naval have high ranged defense. They should only fear other melee ships and siege attacks.
Ps. It looks like G is already testing some changes. I don't think I like how galleases are so different from frigates, but the rest sounds good. The issue with 2 range dromons could be solved in other ways, but losing the ability to shoot and move makes the unit line incoherent, imo.
I like this especially, since Pillaging is especially important for naval since it can let them heal.
pineappledan
Deity
As long as you are also going to argue for siege units getting thei pillage taken away too. I’m not really down for this change... not being able to attack embarked units also makes no sense to me. The rest seems similar enough to what G has proposed
SpankmyMetroid
Prince
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2016
- Messages
- 320
I suppose it’s a moot point since we’re trying to scrap moven’shoot, but what was the rationale behind removing the strategic resource requirements for frigates? It would attempt to prevent spam that leads you to be able to attack a coastal city 10 times a turn by rotating. Isn’t that one of the reasons frigates are so dominant compared to it’s later ranged interations?
tu_79
Deity
That's because the important part of my post is not the specific proposal, but the roles.
Would you think that siege units need to not be able to pillage to differentiate its role from the other land units? Do you ever pillage with a siege unit, by the way?
So, do we agree on the roles, or do you think that ranged naval should be naval skirmishers for a while, then naval archers? Do you think naval melee should be able to take cities on their own, provided they are enough?
With current G proposal, a range 2 frigate with extra range, and maybe indirect fire, is able to defend a coastal city from land attacks 3 tiles inland. The same frigate just needs a swap of a caravel to reveal 3 tiles inland, and then bombard with all ranged naval in range, to dominate 2-3 inland tiles.
However, reducing RCS to half and boosting city damage to 2x would make ranged naval only performing finely against cities and entrenched units. That's fundamentally different. It's not the same an all around unit that fights better at this or that, than a focused unit you absolutely must have against coastal cities but it's not very useful against other units.
As I see it, without a proper exclusive role, both ranged and melee naval would compete for the same things, and there would be always one winner that makes the other unit almost irrelevant. If the roles are too narrow, then the units aren't interesting either, because I might not build the units that only serve for a purpose that I'm not going to use. In that regard, ranged naval could have some support role in coastal defense too, just not killing every unit in sight without retaliation.
ridjack
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2017
- Messages
- 1,000
Should we, like, wait and see how the AI handles naval combat when they're actually building navies before pushing ahead with fundamental changes to ranged naval units? Right now the issue with naval combat is not HOW they use the ships; it's that they simply DON'T. It really doesn't matter how badly the AI uses a move n shoot Frigate if it only ever builds like five ships total and I'm coming in with 30+:
I know a fix for this is already in the works from G's posts in the main patch thread, which is why I feel like it would make more sense to wait and see what developments we get from changing that particular variable before adding another one.
Spoiler :
I know a fix for this is already in the works from G's posts in the main patch thread, which is why I feel like it would make more sense to wait and see what developments we get from changing that particular variable before adding another one.
Should we, like, wait and see how the AI handles naval combat when they're actually building navies before pushing ahead with fundamental changes to ranged naval units? Right now the issue with naval combat is not HOW they use the ships; it's that they simply DON'T. It really doesn't matter how badly the AI uses a move n shoot Frigate if it only ever builds like five ships total and I'm coming in with 30+:
Spoiler :
I know a fix for this is already in the works from G's posts in the main patch thread, which is why I feel like it would make more sense to wait and see what developments we get from changing that particular variable before adding another one.
Bigger AI navies will actually just increase the tedium of the shoot and scoot mechanics. Getting rid of that is, I think, a positive step.
G
Should we, like, wait and see how the AI handles naval combat when they're actually building navies before pushing ahead with fundamental changes to ranged naval units? Right now the issue with naval combat is not HOW they use the ships; it's that they simply DON'T. It really doesn't matter how badly the AI uses a move n shoot Frigate if it only ever builds like five ships total and I'm coming in with 30+:
Spoiler :
I know a fix for this is already in the works from G's posts in the main patch thread, which is why I feel like it would make more sense to wait and see what developments we get from changing that particular variable before adding another one.
There was a time when the AI would build a big navy, and I saw the same issues. I would just build my monster fleet, kill there’s, and then just take the cities out with impunity. Or...the AI would do it, and take out my cities with impunity.
pineappledan
Deity
I do, yes. I tend to set up my siege on pillageable tiles so they can pillage/shoot in a turn if they need to tank 1-2 hits from the city
Talking about what role dromons and galleases should fill in naval engagements specifically in regards to their IRL counterparts is a bit pointless because neither of these ship types were common or useful enough to comprise an entire naval role in their own time period. Dromons, as they exist in the tech tree, are an anachronism. missiles in naval comabt weren't really popular, much less effective, until the introduction of cannons. The Galleass was a novelty at best. They were far too expensive and there ere far too few of them. They were created by a minor mediterranean power trying to contend primarily with pirates. The shoot'n'scoot role fits these about as well as any other design.
Serious gunnery, with long range engagements and missile weapons destroying vessels, rather than boarding actions, began with the English and Dutch navies in the late 16th century. The warship classification systems, as portrayed by the frigate and corvettes, evolved soon after. At this point, tiered banks of guns still weren't very effective at long ranges. targeting from carefully aimed guns on the top decks of ships was employed in this period, mostly by the French, as a way of harassing enemy ships and damaging them just enough to force them to make expensive repairs, but couldn't ever manage to do enough damage to destroy or disable a ship. For this tech level, the shoot'n'scoot certainly makes the most sense to me.
After that, gunnery, powder, and rifling on cannons makes guns far more accurate and dangerous, even at extreme ranges. Cruisers and battleships could certainly fulfill a naval siege role at these tech levels, with subs and melee filling the gap for the rest. The age of the ironclad was brief, as it didn't take long for cannons to catch up to armor plating. After that, naval engagements between even the smallest military vessels are, at their very closest, hundreds of meters apart. WWII battleships would shell targets at ranges of 5-8km. The Japanese Yamato class had the longest firing range at approx 10km.
Only 2 tiles inland, and they can't move afterwards, so they will have to tank whatever retribution being on a coastline will entail, unlike now. I don't see this as being any sort of problem.
Range was taken off as a valid promotion ages ago, and Indirect fire is locked to battleships, if memory serves; I don't think it is available to naval ranged units, except as a free promotion. The current suggestion is that they won't be able to hit anything but coastal, even with 2 tiles of range. It will functions like hills do to block archers.
Being a ranged unit and being able to hit land targets at all is already a pretty valid basis for a naval role. No matter how dominant a melee navy unit is over its ranged counterpart, it can't project damage inland.
Last edited:
tu_79
Deity
Maybe I should revise my strategies. I just rotate units and let melee pillage, since they are who take the hits.
You put it as if ranged navel didn't exist priot to XVIc, so it may as well not exist dromons or galleases. But since they exist, we could make use of them. In my ongoing game I just took a carthaginian city with two dromons. It was a minor city, right, but I didn't use land units.
Point taken. That would work as well.
But the opposite is true. If the ranged ships have strength enough to kill land units in coasts, then they have the strength to kill naval melee. Put enough ranged ships in a fleet and we're back to a couple of naval melee units for basic escorting. We've been cycling around units strengths again and again, and I think the reason could be that the roles of both naval units are sharing too much. Especially sea dominance.
Part of the reason for this, is that the focus of navy in Civ is land. There isn't a strong mechanic in civ for what real life navies do. For example, sea trade is an incredible economic factor in real life. In WWII, the German U-boats ability to kill trade ships in the Atlantic was a major part of German power at that point in the war. Those aspects are are a footnote in Civ V....that is nothing to do with the mod, but how the game is designed. Land is the name of the game, and navies are just a support for that.
So with that in mind, ranged ships are the ships you want to build. They are the ones that can do the "real job of navy", aka affect land. Melee ships...are the ships you have to build. We have had periods of the mod, that melee ships were strong enough that have a ranged only navy was suicide against a player focusing on melee. And that is a reasonable niche for both ships.
So if with this change, melee ships become "weak" again, I am confident we can reestablish them as anti-ship vessels with adjustment....because we have done it before. And once you ensure that no fleet is safe without melee support, than melee ships maintain a niche for use.
ridjack
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2017
- Messages
- 1,000
While I can't see a clean way to accomplish this, it sorta feels like a lot of issues could be mitigated if naval units and embarked units simply couldn't capture cities? This would require you to land your army safely before the city could be taken, and would allow your navy to take their intended role of supporting that. It makes sense to me; I can't claim to be exceptionally well versed in history, but I don't think navies typically took cities on their own?
Actually, I can think of one way to accomplish it, though it has its own slew of new issues: allow a city to be considered coastal (with all that entails) if settled one tile away from the ocean. Navies can't take them but are needed to escort the army and clear the way for a beachhead, plus can provide supporting fire along the coast.
This is mostly random nonsense with little to no thought put into it. Please feel free to pretend I didn't post it.
Actually, I can think of one way to accomplish it, though it has its own slew of new issues: allow a city to be considered coastal (with all that entails) if settled one tile away from the ocean. Navies can't take them but are needed to escort the army and clear the way for a beachhead, plus can provide supporting fire along the coast.
This is mostly random nonsense with little to no thought put into it. Please feel free to pretend I didn't post it.
tu_79
Deity
I would pretend to not have read this if you can't explain how to take island cities with this proposal
ridjack
Emperor
- Joined
- Mar 12, 2017
- Messages
- 1,000
I would pretend to not have read this if you can't explain how to take island cities with this proposal
That was actually the main reason I said I couldn't see a clean way to do it, then amended that with the notion of allowing coastal cities one tile away from water. Solves both issues, although I'm fairly confident it's unfeasible or undesirable for any number reasons I haven't considered.
I like how Tu said it, a frigate should be a cannon on the ocean. Threatening to cities is an important role. It can also hurt other ships and land units, but shouldn't be great at those roles. I should be worried about letting frigates take hits from melee the same way I worry about cannons.
My question is, how does the only target coastal lands work with lakes? Because you can actually put naval units (even battleships) in lakes, will land next to lakes be targetable as well?
My question is, how does the only target coastal lands work with lakes? Because you can actually put naval units (even battleships) in lakes, will land next to lakes be targetable as well?
