Tanks can swim !

[Captain Pugwash]

After the right techs/civics have been obtained, all units can cross the oceans on their own without the use of ships. I was wondering why the developers decided to do this. Does anybody have any suggestions ?
They must have had a reason.

In Civ4, the last version I used to play, you had to load units onto transport ships to cross the ocean. This worked well enough and made overseas battles more difficult as they should be. You had to have loads of transport ships and escort ships and I found it quite fun to organise the logistics. It had more realism to it and ships of all kinds had more significance in the game as a result. It also meant that Continents map was quite different to Pangaea to play whereas now the units can move wherever they like, the difference is not so much.

Anyone have an idea why they changed it ? I can't figure it out.

 

[isau]

The change that eliminated "transport ships" was an almost industry-wide change in the 4x genre. I think a lot of developers just decided that transport ships were
1) not worth the micromanagement
2) outside the capabilities of AI.

 

[Siptah]

It was like that in Civ V as well. I guess they found transports to be tiresome.
The thing is, it would still be a big difference between getting to a fight on land or on sea, if the AI would just build some navy. Submarines sink tanks quite well, in Civ VI as in Civ V. But since the AI doesn't build them...

 

[Leyrann]

I believe it also had to do with switching to 1 upt.

 

[Siptah]

I believe it also had to do with switching to 1 upt.

Shhhh! You know how easily such a comment can derail the thread and make it go on pointlessly without an end.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

After the right techs/civics have been obtained, all units can cross the oceans on their own without the use of ships. I was wondering why the developers decided to do this. Does anybody have any suggestions ?

No idea, it's one of the daftest, immersion breaking things in the game IMO.

 

[Zuizgond]

Because it was supposedly too hard to code an AI that uses transport ships.

 

[Lanthar]

I also liked the transport ships from Civ IV and earlier.

I remember reading when they removed that from Civ V, like others have mentioned, that it was very difficult to get AI to use transports correctly. If a simple gameplay change like that can eliminate some micromanagement and enable to AI to do sea invasions a little better, I'm for leaving transports out.

I did enjoy the logistics of massive naval invasions in Civ IV, though. Due to Civ IV's stack of doom combat, you needed a steady stream of artillery and troops to keep any attack going, which meant securing sea lanes with enough ships to keep subs away from your vulnerable transports.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

1 UPT and transports don't mix well.

If you need 1 transport for each unit it's a major hassle (not to mention it's kind of pretense at that point; you can effectively just say the embarked unit is on a transport and have done). If you allow multiple units on a transport you have a functional way to violate 1UPT to great tactical effect.

Civ 4's model was less micro intensive since entire waypointed stacks could then be loaded simultaneously (no pathing issues --> much fewer inputs to cross oceans in civ 4, and in fact this was less micro intensive than air lifting in that game), but when it comes to civ 6 so long as we're using 1 UPT transports don't make sense and embarking is the best option to implement.

 

[Rosty K]

Because it was supposedly too hard to code an AI that uses transport ships.

Now it became too hard to code an AI that uses any ships. Some potentially disturbing conclusions can be made

 

[Disgustipated]

Because it was supposedly too hard to code an AI that uses transport ships.

Well they did it in SMAC and that was over 17 years ago. I have trouble believing it can't be done. Of course the AI wasn't great at amphibious invasions in SMAC, but I have seen them done. The biggest problem is they wouldn't build enough transports.

 

[Siptah]

I like how embarkation can save your workers from barbarians.

I've also read suggestions that embarkation should only be possible in harbors and coastal cities. But that could easily be a nightmare to do with larger armies - and you have no possibility to flee from foreign lands. No, really, I like how it is in civ VI - the cliffs bring in another element that makes it better than V in that respect.

 

[Leyrann]

I like how embarkation can save your workers from barbarians.

I've also read suggestions that embarkation should only be possible in harbors and coastal cities. But that could easily be a nightmare to do with larger armies - and you have no possibility to flee from foreign lands. No, really, I like how it is in civ VI - the cliffs bring in another element that makes it better than V in that respect.

Ah yes, the cliffs. So easy to forget, yet such a great aspect of the game.

 

[Zuizgond]

Well they did it in SMAC and that was over 17 years ago. I have trouble believing it can't be done. Of course the AI wasn't great at amphibious invasions in SMAC, but I have seen them done. The biggest problem is they wouldn't build enough transports.

Of course it's possible to develop an AI that can deal properly with transport ships but as they don't want to spend time on AI coding they just removed transport ships and made every unit 'embarkable'. They chose to spend most development time on flashy graphics, animated leaders and voice acting... Oh and selling DLCs.

 

[Arms Longfellow]

I don't miss it. I seriously doubt it's AI related, it's probably just eliminating the tedium of loading stuff into transport ships. The first game that I remember making this change was Rise of Nations, although that was an RTS (and designed by Brian Reynolds of Civ fame).

 

[Returning Lurker]

No, skip good!

 

[joncnunn]

Transport ships that can only ever hold one land unit wouldn't make sense; but would simply be a level of meaningless micro to build them, move them one at a time to where land units currently are, load one at a time, move one at a time to where you desire them to be, and unload one at a time.
And as stated above, a transport that could hold more than one effectively violates 1UPT and so all transports were the first things to go after the decision to go to 1UPT was made.

What would be possible without breaking 1UPT and introducing the above massive micro would be having an abstract concept of navy transport capacity and once you reach that number of embarked units you aren't allowed to embark anymore until some disembark.

 

[Pythakoreas]

I don't miss it. I seriously doubt it's AI related, it's probably just eliminating the tedium of loading stuff into transport ships. The first game that I remember making this change was Rise of Nations, although that was an RTS (and designed by Brian Reynolds of Civ fame).

Civilization has been trying to implement more and more stuff from Rise of Nations since Civ5 G&K. That game was ahead of its time.

BTW I've run across an invasion ferry of 10+ units heading towards my territory from a prince AI. I'd say this is a major improvement over Civ5. But still, they didn't bring naval escorts with them so I got to slaughter them.

 

[Leyrann]

Civilization has been trying to implement more and more stuff from Rise of Nations since Civ5 G&K. That game was ahead of its time.

BTW I've run across an invasion ferry of 10+ units heading towards my territory from a prince AI. I'd say this is a major improvement over Civ5. But still, they didn't bring naval escorts with them so I got to slaughter them.

I only know the Rise of Legends spin-off, but considering how long I've been playing it and how good it is... Very much ahead of it's time indeed.

 

[king of nowhere]

In civ4 I routinely saw invasion fleets of upwards to a dozen fully loaded transports with escorts. of course, that was at deity. and the main limitation was that the AI would just lash at you with whatever it had available.instead of building more until it had enough.

Anyway yes, with 1upt making transports would become too much of a hassle. though maybe one could build "transport ship" projects that are not units but allow one more of your units to embark, in the same way that you build weapons of mass destruction but they are not physically anywhere, you just gain the capacity to use them. and maybe whenever you lose an embarked unit at sea, you also lose a transport ship. Problem with this system is that is just increases the cost of an amphibious invasion, without adding anything useful to the game