The Navy (once again)

[CyberChrist]

Would making Privateers, Ship of the Line and Man o'War national units, be a help to the whole naval problem - or just make it worse?

 

[rocklikeafool]

Um...I'm sure it'd do anythin, imho. The AI doesn't tend to fill out all its National Units, in general. (There are exceptions, but that's nother argument.) I think the AI would still jus put them in port to defend against the event of a naval invasion, which will only come from the player's direction.

 

[Grand Seeker]

I hate the fact that almost all ships are at harbor at any given time. I want the ships to be usefull at sea, not in harbor. Dont know how to do that ...

 

[rocklikeafool]

Well, somehow the AI have to be coded to build AND use navies. Navies are sposed to engage in battles, dammit, and carry large invasion forces. I think the problem is the AI rarely (tho it's gotten a lil better) does anythin other than defend with their units; they jus camp em in their cities and send a stack of 7 or 8 to your door every once in while. I ain't never seen fearsome armies like 25-40 units (in several stacks, course; and all of em up-to-date with the technology that civ has at that particular moment) comin towards me. And trust me, that's usually wat you need against a warmonger such as myself who fields large armies for invasions.

 

[AljayBoy]

How about limiting the amount and/or type of ships able to dock in cities?

A - In other words, a city with no Harbour or Shipyard could only have 2 ships able to dock in it at any 1 time, increase that to 4 with a Harbour and increase it again to 8 with a Shipyard.

B - Or it could be changed to vary with type, so you can have 6 early ship types (Galleys/Triremes) able to dock at any one time, 4 medium sized ones (Galleons/Frigates) and 2 large type (Man o' Wars/Queen of the Lines).

C - You could have a combination of A and B.
Although I'd imagine the AI would be happier dealing with the 1st option.

And of course the amounts I've stated do not have to be the ones that should be used. A further thought, maybe the amounts (of ships able to dock) could be changed depending on map size?

Not sure how easy it would be to code (imagine option A to be relatively simple) or how the AI would handle it (again, option A should be the easiest for the AI) but any of those options should go some way to buff the naval side of FfH.

 

[Grand Seeker]

First: In regular cIV BtS I have seen the ai come towards me with a huge stack of ships. Ofcourse they send them in ONE huge stack of ships. Great, as I had modern ships and he did not this was going to get fun I thought. Wrong. I won all battles I could but could not sink the transport ships because I did not have ENOUGH ships. Then he landed with all his troops. I should have been able to prevent that, but I did not.

This is realy why I realy want blitz to be easier awailble. If you supperior navy with
support from fireballs or something you should be able to destroy more than one ship per ship you have. Hopefully by having easily blitz available (either through a special ship, or through weapon promotions) it will be more important to have a good navy rather than a large navy.

Today a good navy is a navy with as many ManOwars as possible.

How about limiting the amount and/or type of ships able to dock in cities?

I realy, realy love this ide. Maybe ManOwars and Queen of the line could take 2 spaces.

Queen of the line is useless as it is now cuz the ManOwar can carry 2 units, and is faster. Cut the cargo of ManOwar down to 1 and maybe the Queen of Line would be usefull again.

 

[Ekolite]

I think the Arcane Barge needs something else. Yeah it can shoot fireballs, but I can easilly just fill a Queen of the Line with 8 Fireball mages and suddenly Arcane Barges look slightly pointless. I think they should get fairwinds, and possibly a unique spell summoning 3 skeleton units that are stronger then the ones mages summon. These skeletons would start with amphibious and water walking, allowing easy amphibious attacks.

 

[Darksaber1]

How about limiting the amount and/or type of ships able to dock in cities?

A - In other words, a city with no Harbour or Shipyard could only have 2 ships able to dock in it at any 1 time, increase that to 4 with a Harbour and increase it again to 8 with a Shipyard.

Not sure how easy it would be to code (imagine option A to be relatively simple) or how the AI would handle it (again, option A should be the easiest for the AI) but any of those options should go some way to buff the naval side of FfH.

Shouldn't be too hard, since in BtS you are limited to two or so planes if you don't have an airport, and then you can have six or so with an airport.

 

[rocklikeafool]

First: In regular cIV BtS I have seen the ai come towards me with a huge stack of ships. Ofcourse they send them in ONE huge stack of ships. Great, as I had modern ships and he did not this was going to get fun I thought. Wrong. I won all battles I could but could not sink the transport ships because I did not have ENOUGH ships. Then he landed with all his troops. I should have been able to prevent that, but I did not.

That's one thing I always loved bout the AI in BTS. It was interestin to fight them. Ya know, "wat's the AI gonna do next" sorta thing. But in FfH, it's too predictable. The whole "ok, now the AI's gonna do this" thing sucks balls, man. I want some unexpected battles and some brutal wars. Not jus me goin and beatin the hell outta their garrisoned units. I mean damn! Come on.

 

[Annex]

In my games the ai usually dont have a problem building modern navies of decent size. They especially love to make Privateers, which just end up instantly dying at the hands of my ships protecting my sea resources. Privateers give me a slight advantage not because i use them, but because the ai wastes production building them for failed plundering missions.

 

[rocklikeafool]

The problem is the AI only ever seems to build Privateers. Then they never build large invasion forces. So, that is my complaint in the simplest and most concise terms I can put it.

 

[Fafnir13]

The annoying thing about the AI and privateers (and any hidden nationality unit, really) is that they attack you without thinking. As far as I can tell, they will just attack the nearest thing regardless of the benefit to them. I at least will save my HN units for guys I don't like/am planning to go to war with. Bleh, just annoys me, especially when I'm moving my guys near their territory to help them out.

I think the Arcane Barge needs something else. Yeah it can shoot fireballs, but I can easilly just fill a Queen of the Line with 8 Fireball mages and suddenly Arcane Barges look slightly pointless. I think they should get fairwinds, and possibly a unique spell summoning 3 skeleton units that are stronger then the ones mages summon. These skeletons would start with amphibious and water walking, allowing easy amphibious attacks.

How about we just go ahead and give them the arcane I & II promotions (once proper techs are researched of course). In theory, there's an actual mage of sorts on board the ship. He should be able to do more than just blast away with fireballs, right? Problem would be that you could use the free xp to just gain combat promotions....oh bother. Um...maybe just grant various spells with research? Say, summoning skeletons with Necromancy, fireballs with elementalism (or fair winds with fireballs being a default freebie), and I can't think of what else for the others. Too make it even more complicated, maybe each nation's arcane barges will cast different spells based on their starting mana/racial flavor. Meh, probably going a little too far there.
Just make more boats that do the magics! Yeah...that works.

 

[CyberChrist]

The problem is the AI only ever seems to build Privateers. Then they never build large invasion forces. So, that is my complaint in the simplest and most concise terms I can put it.

So why wouldn't making Privateers a national unit help on that problem then? Seems pretty hard to say for certain without actually having tested it.

Also, making the 2 other big naval unit types national would force the players to diversify their fleets as well (instead of going all Man o'War).

 

[Grand Seeker]

The nice thing about arcane barrage is that you get fireball right out of the bat. You dont need to level up mages and you dont need fireballs.

When that it said, I dont think it would hurt much giving Arcane Barrage a few more spells (like fair winds etc.)

Suggestion: could fair-winds also give blitz?

 

[Ahwaric]

I agree that in curerent state you do not need anything else than man-o-war in the late game. Frigate - slow and weak, galleon - just one more cargo space, queen of the line - even galleon is better.

I tried to chnge it it my mod and after many tests came to this:
Man-o-war - strong but slow ship, no transport capacity
Frigate - weaker but faster, comes earlier, 1 cargo
Galleon - basic transport
I got rid of the queen of the line. The name is stupid (line ship is a combat one, not a transport) and I prefer 2 galleons (strength 6x2, cargo 3x2 moves 5 cost 150x2), than 1 queen (strength 5, cargo 6, moves 3 cost 225).
So, I put the clipper (galleon upgrade) in - it only has 2 cargo, is quite weak, but is really fast (8).
All this ships can be build at the end of the game as galleons and frigates do not go obsolete.

Strength of the ships was increased. I also gave all combat ships bombard city defences ability, ranged attack (range 1, man-o-war has 2) and do collateral damage. Also can get blitz.

From my experience and what people tell me it spices naval combat a lot, also AI is better at using it. Still many privateers though, so I think a national limit might be a good idea.
I agree that arcane barge can use more spells or some boost for the existing ones.

I do not want to advertise my mod here, but these simple changes really change a lot.

 

[Fafnir13]

Suggestion: could fair-winds also give blitz?

Ooooh....I like it. Might be a tad potent for a level 1 spell at that point though. Perhaps a casting time of a few turns, then it remains in effect as long as the adept is on board?
Another thought: if there is an air elemental on board, the ship gains the benefits of fair winds and then some. It would make sense.

 

[rocklikeafool]

So why wouldn't making Privateers a national unit help on that problem then? Seems pretty hard to say for certain without actually having tested it.

Also, making the 2 other big naval unit types national would force the players to diversify their fleets as well (instead of going all Man o'War).

Because then they'd jus build the max of Privateers, send em out, lose em, and build more. They'd never send out, for example, a fleet with Man O War, Galleons, and Queen of the Line (complete with invasion forces). So, it'd jus be a case of the AI only havin, maybe 10 Privateers.
As for your 2nd point, I never jus use Man O War. I use almost all of the Naval Units, except Privateers (cuz those annoy me) and Caravels (tho I do use those in mid-game to explore). Maybe other players jus use Man O War. But if that happened, I think a large amount of players would complain, myself included.

 

[CyberChrist]

Because then they'd jus build the max of Privateers, send em out, lose em, and build more. They'd never send out, for example, a fleet with Man O War, Galleons, and Queen of the Line (complete with invasion forces). So, it'd jus be a case of the AI only havin, maybe 10 Privateers.

You are pooling together 2 issues and discarding this suggestion for 1 of the issues on the basis that it wouldn't solve both the issues.

1) AI builds only Privateers: How would you know what the AI would build if it was limited in numbers on the Privateers? I mean the AI sends out other ships before they can build Privateers. Anyway, this would be a simple XML change.
2) AI doesn't engage in building and making use of naval invasion fleets: That is a whole other and far more complex issue (that I agree would be nice to have handled better) - but also one that will almost certainly require some serious SDK coding.

As for your 2nd point, I never jus use Man O War. I use almost all of the Naval Units, except Privateers (cuz those annoy me) and Caravels (tho I do use those in mid-game to explore). Maybe other players jus use Man O War. But if that happened, I think a large amount of players would complain, myself included.

Well if that is true then I don't really see why you would object to this idea - and it seems that many other players DO resort to building just Man o'Wars.

I don't see why the naval top units shouldn't have the same restrictions as the landbased top units. All for the good of strategy and diversification IMO.


However I wouldn't mind seeing the whole national units scheme expanded to work more like the # of prereq buildings system (ie. 3 Frigates required to build 1 Man o'War etc.). While this would limit the # of the top units you could build it wouldn't rule out the possibility of having large amounts of these units beyond the current hardcoded max.

 

[Grand Seeker]

The problem with manowars are that they are both the fastest and the strongest.
And on top of that they can carry 2 units (which given the speed is quit ok)

The point is with manowars you can strike and get to safty. Which means that the manowars survives for a much longer time, gets easier XP, etc. etc.

A 'faster fregat' and slower manowar will obviusly balance these ships much better.

Also the balance between ships may increase with a limit on ships at harbor. Then it will be much harder for the strongest ship to gain xp through, strike and move to harbor methode. Maybe a larger amount of cheaper ships may be an option to the strongest ships. Or atleast possible.

Somebody said that giving blitz to fair winds is to much for a level 1 spell. Maybe so, but blitz is one of the things I want to have easy access to for my ships. To be able to use blitz effectivly you realy got to weaken the enemy units before you stirke. Cuz if you dont, you wont be able to strike x2 anyway. Blitz needs support to work, so I actually dont find blitz that overpowering at all.

But having blitz available for ships, you may atleast employ some more diffictult and fun tactics at sea. Ie. a fast blitzer supported by fireballs requiers at least 2 types of units.

 

[Chip56]

Then it will be much harder for the strongest ship to gain xp through, strike and move to harbor methode.

Thats why I remember the good old Alpha centauri times, where you could use ships to attack other ships in the harbour. No invincible ships that can strike whenever they want without fear of retalation.

Also ships should get bombard like in alpha centauri: You can bomb units down to 50% but cant kill them (The arcane barge however could keep the fireballs to be able to kill units)