Ruling the sees

[Grand Seeker]

Does the navy need some love and attention?

First let me summerize what I find is posetive about the FHII's sea combat:

1. Arcane Barage & spellcasters at sea
I enjoy this unit a lot, because it gives you the oportunity to damage and destroy land units from the see. Same goes for spellcaster on a ship.

2. The different crews:
I feel that each crew gives a significant boost and a significant penelty. This is very nicely done.

3. Waterwalking:
I enjoy the fact that you can use fireballs+ waterwalking ability to defend your shores. It gives you a fun option to defend against navy assults.

This three things make the seas fun.

No over to the negative side:
What I dont like is that once you have the ManOwar, its realy no point to build any other ships to rule the seas. The ManOwar is
1: strongest
2: fastest
3: it can carry your units.
Since I find speed so very important at seas, I think the Manowar needs some
alternative. Yes fregate is cheaper, but I still think that whoever have most ManOWars rules the seas, and the only counter is to get more ManOWars yourself. Arcane barrage is a great ship, but in late era they are to wounderable if you dont have enough manowars.

What I would love to see:
-A ship (or monster) which is realy fast, can escape combat both ofensive and defensive, but which is significantly weaker than the manowar.

-A ship which starts whith the blitz ability.
This is inspired from a game from normal civ IV where the AI entered my terretory with a few transports of some kind and a lot of poor wooden ships. I had battleships and destroyers and could easily destroy the wooden ships, but only 1 per ship I had Which ment that he could invade me even though he had a significantly worse navy. Blitz would have helped a lot. And the argument holds also holds for FHII I suppose. Its extremly boring have a better navy without the ability to destroy your opponents.

-The queen of the line is supposed to be a good 'transport' but could it be improved? I havent used it much and dont remember the stats, but in my experience I did not need it cuz ManOwars could be used instead. Is it to slow?
-Reduce the amount of troops a ManOwar can carry down to one (?).

-Maybe some counter to the ability to hide ships inside ports:
With fast ships you can strike your oponent and move either to one of your cities or out of the enemies range. I use this all the time, and this is partly the reason why speed is so extremly usefull. Cuz with speed you dont have to worry about the counter attack afterwords.
What could be done:
i) introduce a sea unit which would strike ships at port
ii) introduce a unit which makes the enemy stop after it has attacked the stack. (so the defender gets the possiblity to be hit back!)
iii) Introduce a strong ship/unit which cannot enter cities.

-From a fantasy point of view I would also enjoy a underwater ship, aka a woodenship under water. It could be 'invisible', 'hidden nationality' and could transport a few units. Would be great for supprice assults...

 

[Bad Player]

It'd be good if there was a raging barbarian sea monsters option in the game menu too...

 

[rusty217]

I like these ideas, making more variety to the ships would make it better than just building Man O Wars.

And how about an Esus only upgrade to the hidden nationality ship?

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I just got a great idea: Let Water Elementals carry DOMAIN_SEA units as cargo. This would let you transport ships and Krakens from one body of water to another. I find this is currently one of the least useful summons, and this is a very useful and thematic change. I see no reason why a ship couldn't sail on the animate water while it raises itself out of the sea and crosses an isthmus to another sea.


You could possibly also let it submerge (like Krakens), thus be able to carry ships without being detected. I suppose that the water could create a large bubble in itself for the crew to survive in, right?

This is very easy to implement requiring only XML changes, but unless a very minor (1 statement) SDK change is made it could be very bad; unless units are made to unload their cargo when their duration runs out before they die, then all the cargo dies with it. If you always remember to unload the units, then there is no problem, but it is easy to forget. I found this out when working on my modmod, where I lost 3 heroes at once because I forgot to manually unload them from my Dimensional III summon.



I think that the Amurites should have an Arcane Barge UU with access to more spells, at least Air.

I agree that the Largest, most powerful ships should be slow, while weaker ones should be much faster. It might be good for ships with large cargo capacities and those with high strength to be different.

It might also be nice for the largest, strongest ships to carry DOMAIN_SEA cargo. Small, weak ships that might not be able to navigate the open seas could be loaded into it for protection.

 

[sylvain5477]

I just got a great idea: Let Water Elementals carry DOMAIN_SEA units as cargo. This would let you transport ships and Krakens from one body of water to another. I find this is currently one of the least useful summons, and this is a very useful and thematic change. I see no reason why a ship couldn't sail on the animate water while it raises itself out of the sea and crosses an isthmus to another sea.

Excellent, please PM Kael or the team about this idea !

 

[xienwolf]

Problem still remains that a water elemental has 1 and lasts 1 turn for most people. So assuming you could move the ship onto land to load itself on the Elemental, you have to have both ranks of Spell Extension in order to move it more than 2 Tiles. Doesn't seem all that great to me overall. Unless we allow ships to be abandoned on land and they just have to sit there and wait for a new elemental to pick them up the next turn and continue carrying them.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Problem still remains that a water elemental has 1 and lasts 1 turn for most people. So assuming you could move the ship onto land to load itself on the Elemental, you have to have both ranks of Spell Extension in order to move it more than 2 Tiles. Doesn't seem all that great to me overall. Unless we allow ships to be abandoned on land and they just have to sit there and wait for a new elemental to pick them up the next turn and continue carrying them.

Well, I for one always try to get extension promotions ASAP, and would probably do so even more if changes like these made it more powerful. (Plus, in my modmod there would be other promotions passes on to summons that boost movement)

I kinda assumed that the archmage would be on the ships tile when it summons the water elemental. (I forget, can cargo be carried by units in another units cargo? I assume this would work the same way as birds carried by rangers on ships, but I don't remember whether that is possible.) I'm not sure if you could move the ship to land to load it or not. The way it would currently works, if the elemental is still on a land tile the ship would be left there. (Assuming you include that minor SDK change. Otherwise I don't think it would let you unload while on land, and so the ships would be destroyed.) If it is by the coast, it would be able to move into the water by itself. Otherwise, it would be stuck until another water elemental is summoned to carry it.

I'm not sure that is a problem.

 

[Blackmantle]

it doesnt work. Only unloaded vessels (of whatever type ) can board other vessels.

As to the threads suggestion i whould like more interesting seas as well.

But with boats stranded after the elemental vanishing (which whould be just what should happen if the Elemental disapears after all) i reek "boat on land confusion" (*sad to have seen citadels as Waterways going* as well )

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Yeah, I thought that might be the case.


I don't have time to test it, but I think removing the

	if (getCargo() > 0)
	{
		return false;
	}

in bool CvUnit::canLoadUnit(const CvUnit* pUnit, const CvPlot* pPlot) const in the DLL would probably fix this. It would also allow you to transport rangers carrying hawks again.


When I have time I'll look into this, and maybe also see about allowing for Flying Ships (if I recall, a ship with the flying promotion still can't cross normally passable land, and can't fly over land at all while carrying cargo), and to let you rebase air units like in vanilla instead of BtS.

 

[Roghar]

The water elemental suggestion is cute but doesn't really address the OP for spicing up sea battles a bit and opening up the vessel selection

Adding a permanent Fair Winds to Arcane barges is a nice touch for Amurites, like it

I think it would be good to give privateers a strong withdrawal chance, both offensive and defensive. That is in line with what they are and makes them a more viable alternate for combat.

A drop of 1 in Man-O-war cargo capacity would probably improve the relative usefulness of the Queen of the Line

Blitz for vessels could be a spell effect, either air or water, 2nd level. Not sure who should have it or what it should replace, maybe water 2? Water walking isn't that often useful and could be kept as an OO special

 

[Grand Seeker]

I dont realy see the big point of having water-elements able to carry ships to land. And as Roghar said, it doesn't really spice up sea battles at all.
Besides, we have through spellcaster and arcane barrage allready a fine ways to use your navy for other things than just transporting units.

How about:
Give blitz to manowar, reduce its carrying capasity down to one.

Increase the speed of queen of the line

Give priviteers 40% retreat ability in ofensive and defensive.
This will make priviteers grusomely irritating, as they should be. With 2 promotions they get 80% retreat ability if I'm not misstaken. Question:
is there a cap on the retreat ability or could one teoreticaly reach 100%?
I think there should be a cap of 90%...

Create a arcane barrage UU with air magic.

New ships:
Great Dragon Ship: move 2, str: 14, collectoral damage Carry capasity 2 units.
With collectoral damage ability you can easier combine it with a manowar to
realy take out many ships... But its darn slow.

Underwater Ship: National unit, max 4.
Hidden nationality, invisible, can carry 3 units, str 4 movment 3.

 

[Grand Seeker]

Just one other thing, can one put eagles on a ranger in a ship? Can one station eagles on a ship?

If not, we should definitivly create a ship which can carry birds.

Noahs ark: National unit Max 1 (?) move 3 str: 4/8 can carry 2 birds, can carry up to 3 animals. Can summon 1 permanent animal each round. Which animal you get could be random, or determind by race.

 

[Mewtarthio]

That'd make the Grand Menagerie pretty easy to get.

 

[Grand Seeker]

That'd make the Grand Menagerie pretty easy to get.

I agree that it would make it too easty to get But right now it might be to difficult? One could make it so it only summons the most common animals but not the rare ones. For example the list of animals could be lion, wolf, bear or sharks? Or one could have the list also be dependent on the race.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

I'm pretty sure you can't have a unit carry cargo of multiple domains, so you can't have a boat that caries both land animals and birds.

Plus, a Noah's Arc national unit is just a bad idea.


I believe that rangers with birds could travel by ship before BtS (taking up 2 cargo slots), but not now. I think I can change this back in the SDK, and will try when I have time.

 

[Calbrenar]

I really love navy and I really want to read this thread but there's too many uses of the word "see" and it's driving me crazy lol. I will try again tonight.

 

[Grand Seeker]

"too many uses of the word "see

My bad. I'll try to use sea from now on

Birds on boats would be nice, but its not a major thing realy. Creation of a alternative to Man O War is more important ofcourse.

 

[Roghar]

I think the Grand Menagerie should be renamed Noah's Ark

 

[rusty217]

I think the Grand Menagerie should be renamed Noah's Ark

Noah's Ark = big boat?

Grand Menagerie = big zoo?

I think it should stay as is...

 

[smjjames]

also, christianity does not exist in FfH and calling it Noah's Ark doesn't fit into the fantasty theme here. Rusty has a good point there anyways.