The were warned...

[BIOGENETIC]

I think manual unit transportation would clash badly with 1upt, but I don't like embarkation either.

How would transports work? Would you unload one unit at a time? If so, that's a hassle. Would you unload them all, space permitting? If you're unloading more than three units, one of them would unload far from the transport.

That being said, I played Rise of Nations back in the day and always HATED it (purely from a roleplaying and realism perspective) when my units just walked to any section of the coast they pleased and then presumably built their own boats instantaneously, sailing off across the ocean seconds later.

 

[AfterShafter]

'Morning Buttercup,

I'll pass on responding to some of the less substantial one-liners you've put in here, but, let's give this a go.

They most certainly did. If someone has to repeat something a thousand times on civ'fan'atics them I'm pretty damn safe in assuming they are repeating the same thing to thousands of 'fans'.

Oh really, so the poster was being exasperated at a non-mass of fans then? Hyperbole? Yes, that would be what I was responding to.

No, he obviously didn't. If someone near you says "Oh, I've done that a million times" you *obviously* don't assume they've literally done it a million times. Thousandth time, same deal. Seeing as you pretty openly admit this is a case of hyperbole, and hyperbole literally means "use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech," it seems a bit silly to continue on as if the poster in question were talking about his pitched battle with thousands of posters. He used a simple figure of speech, and you've blown it far out of proportion. But, on to other things.

You take a step back. No he didn't, he said very little...

Nope, he didn't. Read it again.

Their case was so damn good that they lost?

No they didn't. They got myself and others thinking again on a subject I'd put to rest. The Civ developers are active in this forum, this forum has proven to have a direct impact on the patching and development processes for the Civ series in the past. If this is a topic people are really interested in and this continues to generate discussion, this could be the start of a big win for people holding that position. You make some crack about my "staying positive" at the end of the post, but, you should give it a try here. You might just find you get your way. What you're doing now? Not likely.

Um... isn't it a bit late? Hasn't the horse already bolted?

Nope. See above.

LOL.

Don't laugh. Several discussion sessions in this forum have led to direct changes in patches, and the people who make this series have a presence here. If there is a good idea that the fans want that the devs can do, they've shown they at the very least are aware of it. Heck, large sections of patches for Civ IV were taken almost directly from user made patches that appeared in and were dispersed through this forum. The ability to save social policies, which was at one point going to be removed from Civ V in a patch was hastily re-added as a game option after a lot of good discussion took place in this - and these days, the 2K forum as well - forum.

You don't say...

which is qualified by:

Have you ever heard of a Pangea map? I believe you already had that choice with or without 'embarkation'...

"Have you ever heard of Pangea?" is a pretty bad solution. Water has potential to be interesting space with a lot more to do - and just removing it is not a particularly satisfying solution. Go figure, we're on page two of a thread where a good number of people are basically saying "I don't like how water transport is treated now" and this is the first time someone has said "Well just use Pangea!" Why? It's not constructive, and everyone knows it. The goal isn't just to remove parts of the game you're not happy with, but find ways to make it better. Which leads to...

So micromanaging 20%-40% of the world's tiles for the sake of a few extra gold is an awesome idea but the concept of making a vessel to transport armies from A to B is somehow a pain in the butt?

I don't recall saying "just for a few extra gold," and my apologies if I did. Again, my example of a treatment of the ocean I enjoyed a lot was SMAC - there was a tremendous amount to do in the water there. Heck, there was a whole water civilization. Obviously we can't have something that goes to that degree in Civ, but, I think water could be a lot more interesting than some big empty blue arena separating the civs.

You later on mention the trade caravan way of doing things and, that was what originally got me thinking - but, I had more a water roadway system in mind. It's not entirely beyond the realm of possibility for there to be a much, much more robust ocean system in place that gives us reasons to look beyond the shore other than to get to another piece of land. A "built" trade route system - shipping lanes, navigated areas, whatever they would be - would potentially allow access to one square islands with resources, good fishing/whaling spots that could provide a bunch of different resources serving different purposes well before we even started to think about oil, and serve as a way to establish trade routes. On top of that, they'd give us something to do in that 40% or so of the map which we currently care about just to prevent ambushes on our land, and because it's between us and someone else's land.

What were the words you use? 'something that gets in the way of what I do care about', 'pointless blue expanse', 'all it does is keep me from the land where I actually do things'...

Again...

Ever heard of a Pangea map?

Dealt with already.

As for the merits of the trade what-not-thingy, in previous civs you could block trade by positioning ships in the close-to-shore trade route and declaring war, this ended once a tech had been discovered which rendered all the ocean safe to travel in. As for harvesting deep sea resources then there were/are options to build Oil Rigs, Commercial Platforms. As for improvements to 'trade', what you suggest is not so different from Civ 2 where you would create Trade Wagons which established land trade routes, you're simply moving the concept into the sea, which would have been an awesome advance to Civ 2 for Civ3, what a shame they just ditched the land route wagons for Civ3, doesn't bode too well for your idea I'm afraid... but well done for staying so positive...

Civ development hasn't proven to be some linear "Oh, we've done that before already, we can't do it again" process. Civ IV took out multi-square spanning attacks from land units after Civ III did it, and here we are in Civ V bombarding from squares away. Obviously, what Civ IV did had little bearing on what Civ V did. Some manner of constructed trade route system was taken out from previous Civs? It's only gone until the devs think it's a good idea. And go figure, they're here, reading this forum.

And, I'd like to add, *you* are simply moving that concept into the sea with comments like "So micromanaging 20%-40% of the world's tiles for the sake of a few extra gold is an awesome idea." I'd like to see a much more robust system put in there on top of the existing empty-oceans state. If I've got to fight over water, give me more to do in it. Is that really so hard a pill to swallow? And frankly, my idea is probably at best so-so... So maybe someone has a better one.

Lastly, you've trashed a lot of peoples' ideas in this thread. What ideas do you actually have to put forward yourself to throw around and possibly one day make the series better? Worst that happens is they don't get put into the game.

 

[Funky]

Not that it's my concern, but Buttercup, I feel your pain. If I can offer you any kind of advice, then let it go. These "discussions" rarely lead anywhere. Logic and good arguments are powerful weapons in battles where the participants are bound to these same weapons, however in scenarios like this one they are useless.

 

[Pisskop]

So for the record... Micromanagment is something 'we' wish to ove away from?

---

This isn't starcraft or warcraft, this is a turnbased game where you typically get all the time you need to run your agenda. Are you really too lazy coordinate the movement of units across an ocean, or even to the next cities? There is even an auto-move feature for the non-combatents! Maybe the game should support auto-war-waging as well? Just let the ai play in your steed!

Transports and 1upt is a bit of clash, but that does not mean that you should join those crawling out of the woodwork in claiming that they never had a point or strategic importance. Methinks you naysayers with the standard 'too much work/thinking arguement' would be better served watching the military channel (or the cartoon networks).

 

[AfterShafter]

Funky - seriously? Thinly veiled accusations of the dastardly other side shunning attempts at reasonable discourse and logical arguments? Do you have anything to contribute, or did you just feel like coming in and stirring the pot a bit - ironically making no attempts at reasonable discourse or logical arguments yourself?

Pisskop, nothing even close to what's on the record there. You're putting up a straw man to support your position, and I'd be shocked if it wasn't intentional.

That aside, it's not an issue (for me) of being too lazy to micromanage. Again, I love micromanagement in the context that you see most of it in Civ. I'm a terraforming nutcase, enjoy tactics on land, used to lovingly sculpt each stack of doom to be an untouchable pillar marching through enemy lands (gooo protective)... But to me, water activity in Civ IV, and previous Civ games, seemed a bit like adding micromanagement to cover up the fact that a very significant portion of the map is basically empty space. Micromanagement for the sake of micromanagement, if you will.

Not only is there nothing but combat on the ocean really (no cities, only coast bound resources and they are not particularly diverse, next to nothing to build), but the combat itself is less complex and interesting (less unit variety, no diverse terrain types, no transit methods to consider). In short, water sucks. So when I'm conducting a war against an opponent, carefully moving my units through forests for cover, backing up with siege, mounted units roving to pick up stray units trying to sneak around the back of my formation, and then I hit water, the fun ends - until I hit land again. Then I used to need to tediously construct transports and escorts, load up, and then send them across featureless terrain with far less unit variety than land. The sad thing is, the water is less interesting out of combat than in combat, and it's far less interesting than land when compared in combat.

This is obviously unavoidable to some degree in virtue of the history Civ abstractly mimics - but I think it could be improved upon drastically. Or, do you disagree that Civ water is, in itself, pretty darned boring? And, if you do agree that it's rather boring, rather than accusing people who have gripes about it of disliking micromanaging, perhaps you could toss out some ideas on how to improve it? If I - we - found water interesting, perhaps we wouldn't be upset about devoting a lot of micromanaging effort towards it.

I am not too lazy to micromanage. I just don't like micromanagement for the sake of micromanagement. Put that on the record, not that straw man heading your last post - ok?

 

[AfterShafter]

Just a thought... What do people think of a middle ground? Keep embarkation similar to what it is now, but make it so that embarked units always die in one shot when attacked by combat vessels. On top of this, allow the construction of transports that share a square with embarked units, and when "carrying" land units on water, the units move farther and can defend themselves?

I always hated having to build a ship just to get a worker across a one square of water early game, when I had no intention of engaging in naval affairs at that point. Allowing both embarkation and transports would do away with that, while giving people a variant of the transport experience from earlier Civ games.

 

[WiseMan999]

Just a thought... What do people think of a middle ground? Keep embarkation similar to what it is now, but make it so that embarked units always die in one shot when attacked by combat vessels. On top of this, allow the construction of transports that share a square with embarked units, and when "carrying" land units on water, the units move farther and can defend themselves?

I always hated having to build a ship just to get a worker across a one square of water early game, when I had no intention of engaging in naval affairs at that point. Allowing both embarkation and transports would do away with that, while giving people a variant of the transport experience from earlier Civ games.

Or maybe embarkation only works in coastal tiles. Also with respect to your idea the transports would need to be able to either defend themselves fairly well which doesn't really make sense from a realism perspective or be able to share a tile with other "combat" ships.

Actually, now I think of it why not have two options. You can build transports but have the option of whether to arm them and sacrifice some speed or do the opposite. Could be an interesting choice, especially if the AI actually used it's navy effectively.

 

[mercury529]

I personally enjoy the naval aspects of civ 5 more than previous incarnations. That said, I think there is still room for improvement.

Perhaps they could take a slightly different approach (this is just a brief thought and likely has some flaws in it):

1.) Any land unit can embark by entering the ocean through the border of one of its coastal cities. This embarking offers a one way (no longer capable of re-embarking once landed) but free transport mechanism.

2.) A unit can also embark via naval unit. Each naval unit in the game will have some capacity (0 for some) and an embarking radius. So long as the capacity of a naval unit hasn't been reached and a unit is in the embarking radius, it can embark by entering an ocean tile in the embarking radius.

Units embarked in this manner may receive movement bonuses provided they remain within the embarking radius of the ship. Promotions could be available to boost the capacity, radius, and movement bonus of the ships.

3.) New transport-specific naval units could be added to the game that have superior capacity, radius, and/or movement to the naval units currently in the game.

4.) Naval units will also have escort capabilities. Any embarked units within the escort radius of a naval unit will not be insta-killed by naval units that attack it. But embarked units that travel unescorted will still be insta-killed by naval units.

I think an approach like this (but more thoroughly thought through) may provide a little more balance. It still allows for unescorted embarking, albeit with some new restrictions. It introduces a new mechanic for transporting land units more flexibly, efficiently, and safely. And it does so in a way that works with 1 UPT and without introducing excessive micromanagement.

 

[binhthuy71]

I personally enjoy the naval aspects of civ 5 more than previous incarnations. That said, I think there is still room for improvement...

Interesting ideas. I hear that there will be some changes to naval units in G&K. You can look in the G&K sub-forum to see what they might be. The caveat is that the patch that is currently available is a beta so the production patch may be a bit different.

 

[Kabloosh]

I don't know. I hated the manual transport option.

I think limiting embarking to yours or allied cities would be cool. Allow destroyers and battleships to pick up units too just in case you need to retreat from a location.

Also bring back airports mainly for infantry type units only excluding mechanized infantry since they seem to be an armor type unit anyways. Paratroopers should be changed to modern infantry and use airports and aircraft carriers to do paratrooper drops for both infantry and modern infantry since paratroopers existed in WW2 as well.

 

[Honos]

I miss having transports.

 

[AfterShafter]

There are some neat ideas in here, and what's nice is that some of them keep embarkation while adding transports, AND they're even possibly viable for this Civ game in a patch/expansion, rather than waiting for a while new Civ iteration.

I quite like embarkation only working on coastal tiles (wiseman). It solves the problem of having to build military grade boats for just hopping a one square channel to work a resource. Also, from a realism perspective (for me a relatively low priority, but not for everyone) it could be looked at as abstractly representing all of the non-military craft that fill the waters around a civilization. I mean, there are more boats on the ocean than military ships, work boats, and transports, and they're just not represented in the game as is.

Wiseman and Mercury both have some neat ideas on including transports and keeping embarkation. I'm not as big a fan of having embarkation being city to city only, and I'm more a fan of Wiseman's coastal-only limitation.

Also, Wiseman, I don't suggest that transports should be able to defend themselves as well as combat vessels, but rather, whereas embarked units could defend themselves at all, transports would have marginal defense, whereas combat vessels would likely beat the snot out of them still. It would just keep land units from being veritable shark bait in the water.

Yeah, some neat stuff... Embarkation is an idea which I like, and I'd never really thought of having it and transports in the same game before this thread. Perhaps it's something for devs to consider - transports still have proponents, and some of us like embarkation. Take the strengths of both, and put them in the same game. So, Civ VI? Big patch for V like you used to do for IV?

 

[mercury529]

Wiseman and Mercury both have some neat ideas on including transports and keeping embarkation. I'm not as big a fan of having embarkation being city to city only, and I'm more a fan of Wiseman's coastal-only limitation.

Oh just for clarification since it may not have come across, my idea on embarkation was to allow embarking only from within a coastal city borders but allow landing anywhere once embarked. So it's more of a one-way ticket rather than a city-to-city mechanism.