The Navy (once again)

[Grand Seeker]

I would realy like the navy to get a little bit more interesting. Let me first summerise the posetive parts of the navy part of the game today:

1: Arcane Barrage
Wonderfull ship.

2: Spell-casting from seat

Both these two gives you a neat offensive abilities you can use if you rule the seas.

3: Water-walking, fireballs, water-walking summons:
Allows an alternative way of defending your shores. Great

4: Different crews: I feel that the different crews are ballanced and fun.

The negative side:
-Once you have the ManOwar, you realy dont need any other ship! And rulling the seas is basicly all about having enough ManOwars.

Compared to raiders, ships are slow.

I enjoy the ManOwar almost as it is except I would love to see:

-making ManOwar able to carry only 1 unit. Would make queen of the line more usefull.

-More ships at late age with:

-Ability to do collectoal damage.

-A ship with blitz ability and maybe combined with ok retreat abilities.

I think that blitz is realy important to have access to. If you have supperior navy in terms of technology you should be able to stop an invasion from seas. But if the enemy comes with many transports supported by many war-ships you will not be able to destroy any transports before its to late even if you win every single battle... If you have supperior navy you should be able to kill many more ships.

A neat thing would also be to be able to carry birds on ships. Sadly this will now not be allowed if the ship can carry land units in addition ???

One ide we had was also to give catapults, cannons the ability to give ships weapon promotions. Then the ManOwar could start with cannon upgrade.

Cannon could give cannon promotions:
+2 strength, -1 transport capacity

The catapult could give different kind of upgrades:
+2 attack strength - 1 speed
retreat 25% + blitz
Poison damage (skeleton crew could be imune to poison damage)
+1 Fire strength +collectoral damage

 

[Darksaber1]

Well, Skeleton Crew means the ship is running with as few crew as possible, not that the crew are actual skeletons. (Unless you're knowingly usin a pun.)

 

[Ksi]

Lmao. Skeleton crew.

 

[MalkutX]

"Yer crew be lookin' a little . . . underfed, mate."

"Arr. I be thinking that usin' skeletons be cheaper."

"What's in your head?! Ye be goin' out to sea with no one but a bunch of mindless dead lubbers what don't know a thing about sailin'?"

"Correction: mindless dead lubbers what don't know a thing about sailin' OR divvying up treasure."

". . . I think I be seein' your point."

 

[TheJopa]

Well, Skeleton Crew means the ship is running with as few crew as possible, not that the crew are actual skeletons. (Unless you're knowingly usin a pun.)

Really? English isn't my first language so I never heard of that expression.

 

[Verily]

Really? English isn't my first language so I never heard of that expression.

Yes, that's what skeleton crew means. The absolute minimum needed to sail a ship.

 

[Zechnophobe]

Yeah, that's why you can fit the extra cargo onto it.

Rather an amusing mistake I must say.

In general, though, I'd rather the FFH seas NOT get more complicated. Multi zone warfare is just a micro management headache.

 

[El_Duderino]

well i think it would add an incentive to build a navy if there were sea monsters who gave rewards for killing them, like the brainworm pearls from alpha centauri

 

[CyberChrist]

Really? English isn't my first language so I never heard of that expression.

Try thinking about it this way - you 'cut' away so much of the 'meat' from the 'body' of the crew that you are only left with the 'bones' ... the 'skeleton' crew.

 

[[NWO]_Valis]

What I would like is that later in game the see would get more dangerous [due to the AC and hell spreading] Maybe a see-hell terrain [that has no graphics, I know] could have a chance of spawning see monsters[barbarian or demonic]. The more hell terrain [see-hell terrain] the dangerous the sees are.

+ add a ship with lower strength than Man'O'War but with a 50% bonus against see monsters [around T3]
+ lower the transport capacity of Man'O'Wars [like in the OP]
+I also like the ideas with cannons increasing a ships str

 

[Nor'easter]

Here's the definition from wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skeleton_crew

Although since this is a fantasy mod, one could imagine a skeleton crew composed of actual skeletons. You get the extra cargo space because you don't need to stockpile food for your crew?

 

[Fafnir13]

Part of the problem I see is that ships tend to be near useless for most conquests until late game and, at that point, you can rush through all the techs and be at the man o' war stage almost effortlessly. People who invested early in ships end up not only have much weaker units on the seas but are also behind on their land power techs.

What I think would be really helpful would be having more techs that help oceanic endeavors. I'm trying to recall at the moment, but if I'm right ships like triremes don't get the bronze or iron upgrades, yes? Why not? They make use of metals in their attacks, don't they? This would allow for at least early ships to have a bit more variance in power. There could be a few more tie-ins with various techs like engineering giving ships a faster build time, trade allowing you to build merchant vessels (think great merchants only to a lesser degree, or like pirates except they get a lump sum of gold instead of pillaging a small bit every turn until killed), and maybe mithril working allowing a ship similar to the ironclad (slower than the man o' war, higher defensive power than offesive). Lot's of stuff you could do here.

And on the subject of merchant vessels and mithril-clads, there really do need to a be a few more ship types, especially late game. One could easily be something of a scout ship, with maybe double the move of a man o' war but half the combat potential. For fun, let's say it has a cargo capacity of 1 but can only carry recon, mage, or priest type units. Great for lightning fast deliveries of shadows into enemy lands, or great for harrasment with summoning mages. You'd need your own fleet of similar vessels just to catch them, encouraging better unit mix. Or perhaps there could be additional means of speeding up a man o' war? Fair winds is a decent little spell, but why not make it add, say, three movement instead of one? Would certainly speed things up on those ocean voyages. Or, looking at mithril working again, add a promotion called "mithril parts/cannons/fittings/whatever" that increases ship movement by some amount. Mithri is supposed to be lighter than iron, yes? Take quite a bit of weight off if your were to switch.
Going back to more ship types, the Octopus Overlords should get a few that only they can build, or perhaps ships that have the religion gain some benefits. It is supposed to be the domain of the OO, so why leave all the advantages as mostly coastal in their uses?

Another thing that really needs looking at are oceanic barbarians. If barbarians ships would spawn, threatening your coastal cities with raiding parties, you would not only have incentive to invest in ships but also give your ships something to gain xp off of before declaring war on your neighbors. Why should only land units get the fun of leveling up into truly terrifying versions of their lesser selves? Imagine leveling a pirate ship up to five star with a few flanking promotions before sending it off? Finally you could have pirate ship reaping in the bounty for more than a few turns before the AI offs it with a couple ships.

Lastly, the Colony Expense needs to be "DELETED!" (said using a Strongbad voice, of course) Okay, it's a really neat and realistic concept and fits great with the BtS vanilla game, but it takes all the fun out of conquering the world. Creative solutions do exist to get by the costs (I build the Mercurian Gate and gifted all the cities on that continent to him as I captured them), but it's prohibitive for making a straight-up world dominating empire. The Lanun especially suffer from it as any distant island-nations you might create get more and more costly (I think they could lose the "distance from capital" expense on any coastal cities, too, but that's another thread).
Anyways, I think it takes away more than it gives to the game and isn't any fun. What's the point of even having a navy if there's such a disincentive to doing anything beyond your own chunk of land?

Hmmm...longer post than I was expecting. Hope these ideas help kick something into gear.

 

[PapaMonkey]

Fafnir, your post made me think back on the bygone days of caravans. What if there was a merchant ship as you describe that would travel the ocean from friendly port to friendly port. The a mechanism (see below) would exist for it to generate income, but based on how far it has travelled. Your incentive is there to build it (cash) and therefore protect it.

Now several means could be employed of various levels of complexity to do this. Simple - great merchant mechanic with reduced gains. This is good because it works by farther from your capital the better and rewards based on the size of the city it reaches. A more complex manner could include a sailing from flag on the ship that would measure the distance between ports. Or a unit counter that let you get to multiple ports and then required you to take it home to get the benefits. Or a myriad of other ways. But really from the execution and micro management side - the simpler the better and the great merchant may be that solution.

To add a level of threat, have anyone who destroys/captures this merchant vessel get a 'promotion': treasure bearer. If the treasure bearer unit makes it back to friendly port, he can cash in the 'promotion' for a monetary reward himself. This introduces the threat to the unit, an incentive to threaten it via open warfare or piracy, and incentive to protect the unit.

This coupled with some of the other suggestions noted above could add some playability to the seas. Two things I want to put my vote towards is higher movements for most ships and a reduction/elimination of the Man-o-war's capacity.

 

[avalonnn]

Another thing that really needs looking at are oceanic barbarians. If barbarians ships would spawn, threatening your coastal cities with raiding parties, you would not only have incentive to invest in ships but also give your ships something to gain xp off of before declaring war on your neighbors. Why should only land units get the fun of leveling up into truly terrifying versions of their lesser selves? Imagine leveling a pirate ship up to five star with a few flanking promotions before sending it off? Finally you could have pirate ship reaping in the bounty for more than a few turns before the AI offs it with a couple ships.

a very good idea. When The Black Wind is near you, it's quite a game changer.

Why not have a ghost ship mechanic, where any time a ship sinks with at least one unit on board, a barbarian or undead version of it can appear a few turns later?

In many maps, the barbs disappear as the land is settled. But with the ocean barbarian mechanic, the barbs would never disappear. This, however, could be a problem too. As it is now, the barbs appear in late game only when cities have just been conquered, which is nifty (no guerilla warriors, thnx) because the barbs are caued by the collapse of civilization in one area.

So, a good idea, but one that would take a lot of work, IMHO.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Well, I think all these ideas are pretty good. I like em all.

But I wanna throw out a problem I see. The AI never seems to build a large navy. Maybe they'll garrison some ships in port (to fight Privateers) or build some Privateers (most annoyin ship ever, btw), but they never send a large invasion force across in a Fleet. Now, I don't know bout you, but I think warfare becomes a whole lot more real and more scary when you know the enemy's gonna send a Fleet and a large army against you. Cuz I don't know how many times I've been at war with a nation on a different continent and I'm the only one who ever sends a Fleet and large invasion force.

 

[Grand Seeker]

You just totaly destoryed my day with the skeleton crew. I did not know.
I realy enjoy my old vision of the skeleton crew

About the AI: in regular BtS I have seen the AI build realy huge navies.

Barbarian ships (undead ships) would be welcome but not a must.

In the early days there exist several ships which all might be worth building. Except maybe that ships are too slow. Espesialy in the early days.

If one tries to speed up the ships we will enter a problem that a ship meight go from one city, over to the other continent, drop of their units and return in safty afterwords. I would realy realy hate to not at least get one shot at them before they drop of their cargo.

Is it possible to make dropping of cargo (units) take an entire turn? Then you could realy realy speed up ships, without having the problem that transports could do anything particulary risk free.
Then you would realy need a navy cuz its fast, but still you need protection for your transports cuz they have to stay at the location you want to unload units one entire turn. Which might be dangerous.

I think the arcane barrage is a great ship, the key is to protect it. The ability for mages to strike at harbor cities is a key reason to build a navy. You also have pirots to steal gold. I enjoy the caravan ship ide So all in all there exist some good reason to use navies.

Regarding bronce/iron weapons for ships: ships could as I said have a set of unique weapons creating more options at late age without increasing the number of ships. For example the frigate + cannon or catapult or something could be made competative to the manowar. Thus you dont need art for more ships.

Other random ides:

I what could be realy fun was a 'faster' water-walking unit. Wildshaper for example. That would be realy cool.

Units and ships which cannot enter cities. I hate the fact that all ships almost allways are stationed in ports. A ship or unit which cannot enter port could be stronger to compensate. I think that would open up the game play. There would be more navy targets to strike down.

 

[westamastaflash]

I see the AI building fleets of Triremes - which are quite useless when i sack the city and the Triremes all burn...

 

[cyther]

I always thought that you had some death mage come abourd and control the ship with skeletons. But the seas are a bit to simple and dominated by man o wars so changes would be nice.

 

[Darksaber1]

Actully, just a few hours ago I was cut-off from sea resoracaes by half a dozen AI galleyies for about twenety turns. My problem was I have forgotten to build ships. Fortunatly, I was able to turn out two Man O' War to sink them. The AI build galleyies and such, but seem to ignore latter ship-techs.

 

[rocklikeafool]

Actully, just a few hours ago I was cut-off from sea resoracaes by half a dozen AI galleyies for about twenety turns. My problem was I have forgotten to build ships. Fortunatly, I was able to turn out two Man O' War to sink them. The AI build galleyies and such, but seem to ignore latter ship-techs.

Yeah, that's another problem. They don't upgrade any 'obsolete' units, specifically naval units in this case. Of course, there's a whole nother thread on this somewhere. But this is jus nother example, imho.