Sailing the Harmless Seas

[loocas]

Has there been any discussion about making the seas more dangerous? Why are there never any barbarian ships? The game would improve from having barb ships attacking your coastal cities and water units and improvements. How about incorporating this into any or all of the ways barbs are created: randomly in fog, in barb cities, or improvements-- (there could be barb-only pirate coves that spawn dragon ships, or even pirates). I miss Sailor's Dirge, but even then it was just a matter of building two dragon ships to take her down if she came, and then there was no more use for your ships.

Is this an issue in Civ4 too? I don't remember. Are there any mods that address this?

 

[El_Duderino]

i agree with you i posted this in the lanlun suggestion post - its a barbarian pirate hero
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=6800227&postcount=40

 

[Monkeyfinger]

All barbarian heroes have that problem. Which makes sense when you think about it. What happens when someone, by himself, tries to take on a fully fledged empire, no matter how badass he is? He gets put down hard before he can cause any damage.

Sailor's dirge sounds like it was fail, so does some new kind of pirate hero. The real solution would be to make normal sea barbarians more common. Maybe let things like sea serpents attack coastlines, instead of just chilling in the ocean.

 

[WCH]

I had one game where barbarians ships were pretty damn common, and my naval units often got sunk trying to cross long distances. It was on a Terra map where the AIs and I occupied the main continent, barbarians ruled the archipelago to the south, and the other continent was pure wildlands. I guess there were enough barbarian cities on the coast that they just built lots of ships.

Barbarian world + raging barbarians + wildlands. Was a pretty good balance at sea. That was the only game where it worked out well, though, usually it's too mild. So yeah, increasing barbarian naval spawn would be good.

 

[Lady Wandbender]

you could tie it in with coastal cities, when a coastal city reached money XX or pop XX or both, or whatever critera you wanted to set, you coud spawn a pirate ship + crew, or a swarm of mini-seadrakes, or water elementals, or bill gates in a speedo and a rebreather, whatever you wanted to do.

I had seen sea settler's in the unit file, so I'm assuming sea cities are in the game, you could do a lot with those with sea barbs too.

 

[Bad Player]

If I get my pirate campaign running I want to reintroduce the Merfolk empire (from FFH1 but modified) which act a bit like barbarians.

 

[loocas]

All barbarian heroes have that problem. Which makes sense when you think about it. What happens when someone, by himself, tries to take on a fully fledged empire, no matter how badass he is? He gets put down hard before he can cause any damage.

Sailor's dirge sounds like it was fail, so does some new kind of pirate hero. The real solution would be to make normal sea barbarians more common. Maybe let things like sea serpents attack coastlines, instead of just chilling in the ocean.

My thought exactly. A new barb hero is unnecessary. I like Sailor's Dirge, and she can still be a threat at times. Sea serpents attacking cities would be good. I think it's AI_ANIMAL that tells them not to? An kraken that doesn't attack cities would be fun as well.

I had one game where barbarians ships were pretty damn common, and my naval units often got sunk trying to cross long distances. It was on a Terra map where the AIs and I occupied the main continent, barbarians ruled the archipelago to the south, and the other continent was pure wildlands. I guess there were enough barbarian cities on the coast that they just built lots of ships.

That's what I want. I player should have to have quite an escort to bring a ship of settlers across the ocean. There should be a war at sea before any attacking fleets can unload there armies on land.

There's no need for new civs, and new units can wait until the barbs and the ai civs are properly schooning around. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=274621 is a related thread with good suggestions, especially OO benefits to coastal cities. I think there's definitely a modmodule to be made here, and I'd love to do it, I'd just need a lot of advice on what.

Here's what I suggest:
-Randomly spawning barb ships. Dragon ships early on, pirates later.
-Removing tech requirements for a warship for barbs, so a coastal city can build them immediately.
-Make sea serpents attack coasts
-Salty wenches for everyone

 

[Inkling]

my suggestion, i don't believe i've seen this suggested before...

we already have a crime rate for cities, right. if we call pirates criminals, then it makes sense that the higher the crime rate in these cities the more likley you are to see pirates. Then you change how they are spawned, instead of coastlines still engulfed in the fog of war, which vanish far too quickly to ever see substantial pirate presence, they would appear in the ocean just outside the cultural borders of cities that have a high crime rate.

you then either keep ships near these high crime cities or lower the crime rate with appropriate buildings. higher crime rates spawn larger ships or spawn them more frequently, etc. and it might even draw in the global crime rate.

it would be nice if the AI for these ships could be modified so that they would seek out the richest areas to raid, not simply hassel their starting location. it would also be nice if the ratcheters guild could play some part in this, specificly buying off the pirates so they leave you alone.(the ratcheters is the crime one right?)

i'd also like to see these ships crewed, i.e. troops on board who can make landfall and attack.

note that this may require a new vessel, since early ships are coastline locked, and ships would likely have to be spawned in the ocean to be out of the borders, or else just forget that requirement and spawn them on the coast regardless of the cultural borders.

ofcourse i'd also like to see the crime rate have more of an impact for land locked cities, instead of the change for events, possibly spawning late game barbarians, but thats another topic.

 

[WCH]

Tying crime rate to barbarian spawn rate in surrounding fog of war would be very interesting. No need to tie it to pirates only, way I see it.

 

[Caradoc]

Sea serpents attacking the coast would be a bit extreme, I think, since it is quite some time before you get a vessel that can take them out (Frigate). In fact, I'd like to see them stay in deep water and not come near the coast at all.

I'd love to see Barbarians launching Dragonships and Pirate Ships, and for those to carry crews -- some with Amphibious promotions.

(And bring back the Dirge!)

 

[TheCowSaysMoooo]

I think that part of the problem with seas in FfH (and vanilla, for that matter) isn't necessarily that there aren't enough things to fight, it's that there's little incentive to bother fighting in the first place. The only reason most people ever build ships (outside of role-playing the Lanun, etc), is to go attack a specific continent. Build one boat, explore, find an enemy, build enough boats to carry your army, then you're done with the boats.

There needs to be more incentive of some sort to actually venture out into the seas and try to control them. Some sort of special resource that's harvested by a work boat or whatever (even outside of cultural borders) and can be pillaged by boats, so you have to maintain a fleet around it to fend off rivals, or... I don't know. Something though ;-)

 

[eerr]

seaborne attacks sound awesome, perhaps a mid/endgame horde "schedualed" to arrive...

 

[WCH]

There needs to be more incentive of some sort to actually venture out into the seas and try to control them. Some sort of special resource that's harvested by a work boat or whatever (even outside of cultural borders) and can be pillaged by boats, so you have to maintain a fleet around it to fend off rivals, or... I don't know. Something though ;-)

Yes. In vanilla civ, I almost always play on Archipelago, for precisely this reason; on Archipelago, there are sometimes pretty intense naval conflicts. On any other kind of map, there are never any. Reason it works on Archipelago is that, for one thing, it's much less likely you can just get your units to march to their destination -- since each continent might only have five cities on it, you need to make a beach-head somewhere, even once you can airlift units.

Also, since chances are nearly every city in the game will be coastal, a strong navy means you don't need to have any artillery units whatsoever; let your ships do the bombarding. So, you build ships to patrol your borders, ships to escort your transports, ships to bombard, and ships to sink enemy transports. Works nicely, makes for a good game.

This doesn't work in FFH, though, because FFH is all about XP gained from fighting barbarians... on archipelago, there's no wilderness, and therefore hardly any barbarians. So I play on continents, and ignore the navy.

 

[A_Hamster]

I think that part of the problem with seas in FfH (and vanilla, for that matter) isn't necessarily that there aren't enough things to fight, it's that there's little incentive to bother fighting in the first place. The only reason most people ever build ships (outside of role-playing the Lanun, etc), is to go attack a specific continent. Build one boat, explore, find an enemy, build enough boats to carry your army, then you're done with the boats.

Basically, power projection. But isn't that what it boils down throughout history? The maritime powers have maintained fleets in being to protect their commerce and when necessary, defend their national interest (or even acquire more "interests"). One could simulate this by detailing overseas trade more and enforcing the need to maintain supply lines to overseas colonies and armies, but that seems like a tedious detail that would detract from game play.

As for the thread topic, while there's no barb galleys as in basic civ, it does seem that the AIs do exploit Privateers fairly well. I'm forced to maintain large navies to defend my coasts from these "pirates" I know full well are coming from the Bannor. (We'd had sterling relations for almost the entire game, so I found it odd.) And don't get me started about Hannah, Falamar, and Faeryl. Even in basic Civ or BtS, I've never had to maintain such large navies. So (at least in my yet limited experience) the seas of Erebus are not harmless.

 

[loocas]

I think that part of the problem with seas in FfH (and vanilla, for that matter) isn't necessarily that there aren't enough things to fight, it's that there's little incentive to bother fighting in the first place. The only reason most people ever build ships (outside of role-playing the Lanun, etc), is to go attack a specific continent. Build one boat, explore, find an enemy, build enough boats to carry your army, then you're done with the boats.

There needs to be more incentive of some sort to actually venture out into the seas and try to control them. Some sort of special resource that's harvested by a work boat or whatever (even outside of cultural borders) and can be pillaged by boats, so you have to maintain a fleet around it to fend off rivals, or... I don't know. Something though ;-)

Sounds like the starbases in Final Frontier. I like that idea, but don't think any of the resources would be worth the trouble. Perhaps mana or a high-commerce resource like pearls might be worth fighting over?

 

[Inkling]

I think that part of the problem with seas in FfH (and vanilla, for that matter) isn't necessarily that there aren't enough things to fight, it's that there's little incentive to bother fighting in the first place. The only reason most people ever build ships (outside of role-playing the Lanun, etc), is to go attack a specific continent. Build one boat, explore, find an enemy, build enough boats to carry your army, then you're done with the boats.

There needs to be more incentive of some sort to actually venture out into the seas and try to control them. Some sort of special resource that's harvested by a work boat or whatever (even outside of cultural borders) and can be pillaged by boats, so you have to maintain a fleet around it to fend off rivals, or... I don't know. Something though ;-)

i would propose 3 relatively minor changes to the game

first is increase value of coastal towns, i.e. more trade routes or, better still, more valueable trade routes(right now land trade routes and ocean/sea trade routes seem to be worth about the same as far as i can tell and that seems grossly inappropriate) if overseas and coastal trades were worth more, that be real incentive to protect coastal cities and blockade/raid them.

second is better AI. I don't see the AI, especially barbarians, bothering to bloackade and pirate. if they do, it should be more frequent.

third is increased pirate presence. you have a reason to protect them, now you need something to protect them from.

at the very least, then everyone maintains something of a fleet and you are going to have to fight for controll of the seas before you ever hope to transport that army across the water.

 

[ophite]

My thought exactly. A new barb hero is unnecessary. I like Sailor's Dirge, and she can still be a threat at times. Sea serpents attacking cities would be good. I think it's AI_ANIMAL that tells them not to? An kraken that doesn't attack cities would be fun as well.



That's what I want. I player should have to have quite an escort to bring a ship of settlers across the ocean. There should be a war at sea before any attacking fleets can unload there armies on land.

There's no need for new civs, and new units can wait until the barbs and the ai civs are properly schooning around. http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=274621 is a related thread with good suggestions, especially OO benefits to coastal cities. I think there's definitely a modmodule to be made here, and I'd love to do it, I'd just need a lot of advice on what.

Here's what I suggest:
-Randomly spawning barb ships. Dragon ships early on, pirates later.
-Removing tech requirements for a warship for barbs, so a coastal city can build them immediately.
-Make sea serpents attack coasts
-Salty wenches for everyone

I think I have a solution to the Sailor's Dirge unit: give it the Summon Skeleton ability, and (later), the ability to cast Summon Wraith. That would give it the ability to become more than just a random pillager-of-sea-improvements; it would be something closer to a weak, sea-mobile Barbatos -- the only truly scary barbarian in the game.

-- ACS

 

[Roghar]

I love the idea posted above of tying barbarian spawn (land and sea) to city crime rate. Perhaps for a high enough crime rate they could even spawn within cultural borders? Combining that with better AI in Ice will hopefully help. There seem to be quite a few barbarian ships around, and they are annoying especially when pillaging, but the AI is just bad with ships.

 

[Farmer Bobathan]

Yah, the idea of barbarians spawning based on crime rate would add a really interesting function to that little used mechanic.

 

[WCH]

After reading the Barbarians thread, in which a new player was complaining about the barbarian hordes, it occured to me that I always get annoyed when barbarians stop spawning in the midgame due to all available land being taken up. Solution to this is obvious: barbarian galleons loaded up with tier 2 and the occasional tier 3 unit. Have them spawn fairly frequently, make them unload near random coastal cities. Would also help encourage having a navy, to keep them out of your bays and the like.

I really hope Kael is reading this thread, the utter stoppage of the barbarian threat in the midgame is the thing about this game that's the most disappointing... the hordes get you in a defensive mood throughout the game, and then they suddenly stop, and so does the source of XP for units that aren't being sent to war.