Transport ships

[Sine Nomen]

I have a proposal for a mod that somebody, possibly myself, will probably make in the future. I'm curious what other people think.

I haven't played through Civ V extensively, so I can't comment on the effect on gameplay, but I cannot stand the 'embark' feature for land units. It's absolutely ridiculous, not to mention completely unrealistic and ahistoric. How many times in history has a country's inadequate navy prevented its superior land force from conquering an offshore enemy? This has been the case in all eras - think Xerxes and the Greeks, but particularly in Britain's history. If overseas invasions were as simple as pushing your army into the water, it would have been invaded by Spain, France and Germany at various points in time. If China wanted to invade Taiwan, could its tanks just swim over the strait? Of course not. I realize military naval units can destroy undefended embarked units, but removing the need for dedicated transports is absurd. And when the units embark, where are the ships carrying them supposed to have come from? And where do they go when they disembark? The whole idea seems incredibly boneheaded to have come from Firaxis.

Do you guys agree? Is there any rationale for keeping the current system? Bear in mind that I'm not making this argument from a gameplay standpoint, so no suggestions that I 'give it a chance' please.

 

[Abremms]

I do not agree, I think the embarking system works quite well in the game. With all do respect, you say that you have not played civ 5 much, then complain about the system on the grounds that its inaccurate to real life. I don't really know where you are going, this is the modding forum, you are talking about changing game play, but you aren't making the argument from a game play standpoint? I can't suggest that you "give it a chance" even though you clearly haven't, and thus any game play arguments i could make are off limits.

here is a game play argument anyways: construction takes time in civ 5. A lot of time. its bad enough building up an invasion force and a fleet to protect it. you propose that I should then spend another few dozen turns building transports? that's adding tedious and unnecessary hoops to jump through. The rationale for keeping the current system is because it is simple, it plays well, and (believe it or not) adds another layer of strategic depth that i do not think you would have if you used transports that could carry multiple units and defend them selves (a la civ IV, since I assume that's the direction you are going.)

Anyways, you asked for opinions, and that's mine. It doesn't really matter though, since as long as a mod is playable and does what the author says it does, there is no such thing as a bad mod and I'm sure someone will be interested in it.

 

[Saarud]

I agree with Abremms I think making units able to embark is a brilliant design. Not only because it's easier for the player but I imagine it will be much easier to create good AI strategies without the use of transport ships.

However transporting soldiers across bodies of water has never been a riskfree operation. Not only because they risk being sunk by the enemy but mostly because of hard weather. I can see two solutions for that 1: Make an event that has a % to sink an embarked unit or 2: Have embarked units lose health every time they end their turn in the sea.

 

[AdmiralKirk]

I somewhat agree with both points of view here. I think embarking is an excelent way to solve the transport ship choke point problems, however I also think the one shot kills for embarked units is also a poor game play choice.

My opinion for a solution went something more like this. Any embarked unit that is attacked that is within 1 tile of a military vesel, said military vesel will take all damage insead of the embarked unit. If this damage destroys the military vesel, the emarked unit is also destroyed. This would allow embarked units to be more easily protected with a realistic military escort. It certainly doesnt take an entire battle ship to protect one tank, and having said tank sunk while an entire battle ship is only 1 tile away is also somewhat unrealistic. Of course this is a game not real life and realism takes a back seat to good gameplay which i agree with. However I think the 1 tile away protection mechanism would make for excelent game play as well without people going into a rage because thier entire fleet of death robots being escorted by a fleet of carriers and battle ships was just sunk by a small group of triremes...

 

[Lord Shadow]

I disagree, Sine Nomen. I see it as a positive form of streamlining.

I believe the realism argument loses a lot of strength when you realize you've never needed to build carriages/trucks to make proper use of roads, trains to transport units across rail networks and transport airplanes to airlift troops (in Civ4, at least, since I've yet to see an airport in Civ5! ).

So why's the removal of dedicated sea transports suddenly generating complaints when nobody ever said anything about any of the aforementioned logistic concerns? Just because players were used to having said ships around, ever since Civ1. Realism has nothing to do with it.

 

[dannythefool]

It could be hard to make the AI re-learn how to use transport ships...

 

[BelmontHalo]

I thought it was a cool idea until some of my industrial era embarked ships were taken out by an ancient era trireme that was wandering around. It's extremely frustrating, especially since you can't hide them under a combat ship. Every time I put one in the water I worry a random barbarian ship is going to pop up and wipe out my whole army. Maybe I'm missing something since I still haven't finished my first game. I play on Marathon/Huge Maps so it takes a while.

all I'd really want is to just give them some defense and after each era increase what they have. I don't expect them to be able to take on a warship, but just some kind of survivability would be great.

In civ 4 I liked to have a strong navy and attack from the water and this makes it kind of annoying.

 

[Abremms]

I thought it was a cool idea until some of my industrial era embarked ships were taken out by an ancient era trireme that was wandering around. It's extremely frustrating, especially since you can't hide them under a combat ship. Every time I put one in the water I worry a random barbarian ship is going to pop up and wipe out my whole army. Maybe I'm missing something since I still haven't finished my first game. I play on Marathon/Huge Maps so it takes a while.

all I'd really want is to just give them some defense and after each era increase what they have. I don't expect them to be able to take on a warship, but just some kind of survivability would be great.

In civ 4 I liked to have a strong navy and attack from the water and this makes it kind of annoying.

you have to protect them with warships, keep some in close and some in a wide spread around them to spot incoming ships before they can get in to your transports. when you do spot on incoming hostile ship, move one of your warships to a tile adjacent to the hostile between it and your transports. with Zone of Control, the hostile won't be able to move past your warship at more than 1 tile per turn. and if its AI it will most likely turn and fire on your warship, allowing you to fire back and sink them.

there's that strategic depth i talked about in my earlier post here, i like it and i would hate to lose it. besides, Songhai transports do defend themselves. If you really don't want to have to plan your naval maneuvers in such depth, I'm sure it wouldn't be that hard to spread the Songhai UA among the other civ's.

 

[BelmontHalo]

oh, no, I know how to defend them and I like having that kind of depth. I enjoy the combat and strategy in V a lot. I'm just saying that having absolutely no defense on your transport ships is very annoying and doesn't really make sense. You shouldn't be able to just mow them down instantly, especially with a unit from several eras back. And if you're on the offensive, it makes it too easy to take out the AI since they don't really have good tactics like making a formation around your transports. At least not that I've seen.

I just think they should have a little bit of defense, and then have it increase with each era. They should at least be able to do a little damage before they die and be able to protect themselves from way outdated ships.

 

[MerakSpielman]

In one of the xml files you can set the percentage chance of a combat vessel successfully sinking an embarked unit. It's set to 100 by default. I'm not at my computer right now so I can't remember exactly where, but it's there.

I didn't see any way for transports to do any damage in return.

 

[CyberChrist]

The Embark mechanism is utterly ridiculous on so many levels, but the problem is that there is no way the AI would be able to handle a true naval transport system - seeing as it is only barely able to cope with waging war using the Embark mechanism as it is!

In theory it should be possible to use LUA to make checks to deny Embarkation under circumstances where being able to Embark would be clearly absurd (reaching the barren shores of uncharted waters etc.) and to add a monetary cost to Embarking outside of your own territory - making it increasingly more costly to Embark the further away from friendly territories your units are - but there is not much else that can be done before the source code for the DLL is released (that I can think of).

 

[Asylumer]

I have a proposal for a mod that somebody, possibly myself, will probably make in the future. I'm curious what other people think.

I haven't played through Civ V extensively, so I can't comment on the effect on gameplay, but I cannot stand the 'embark' feature for land units.

I've played 45 hours so far and the new system destroys a whole level of strategic thinking that came with having actual boundaries at the ocean which must be planned around. The worst devaluation comes from the smaller mini-seas or channels where normally people wouldn't build ships. Whereas before they would shape the way a war was fought, now they're little more than speed bumps you can use to avoid a fortified choke point. Forget Thermopylae, the Persians would just put on their Ship boots while the Greek Navy was fighting their own and walk around the Spartans from the sea.

It is the single worst decision I've seen from an intentional game design standpoint.

Also, I'm not 100% positive, but I believe Melee units cannot attack other Embarked units. I seem to recall an instance where my Songhai knight cavalry UU couldn't reach a group of archers who had just turned into ships and were sitting on the coast. I'd test this further but the AI doesn't tend to oblige my requests to sit in the water.

Note: This criticism only applies to military units. Settlers and workers, especially workers, don't bother me as much.

I was also considering a mod to re-implement transports, though as said, it will probably also require modification to the AI so they can use the things.

 

[Edgecrusher]

As far as teaching the AI How to use it.

In the Civ5UnitAIInfos.xml entries, there is an entry for "UNITAI_ASSAULT_SEA", which was the AI tag assigned to the Galleys, Galleons and Transports in Civ4.

Now, if this will work? I dont know, I havent had much of a chance to play around with any actual modding, mostly because I cannot seem to get the whole Modbuddy business working. I have however, spent alot of time dicecting the XML files, getting any idea as to what tags do what, and what tags aren't used at all, making notes on what to test.

I suppose the easiest way to test it out would be to, say use the Art tags for the Barbarian Galley and make a new unit, buildable by normal civs, giving it this aitag, in addition to the UNITAI_SETTLER_SEA, UNITAI_WORKER_SEA, etc... and see what happens.

also FYI, most of the UNITAIs from Civ4 are in there UNITAI_PIRATE_SEA, (privateers) for example. From memory, it seems the only ones that were taken out were the tags for Spys and Missionaries.

 

[meteora 888]

I agree with Sine Nomen: across-sea invasions should be more difficult and the navies should be more important for victory. But what I think is that a dedicated transport ship, able to carry several land units but still vulnerable, would be a better idea. Just imagine: you are transporting 3 or 4 tanks, and a barbarian galley passes trough the area... In a single turn, you could loose a huge attack force! It would be the summum of realism...
I do have an idea of how to do it. Look at missiles and airships: they are actually transported by carriers, missiles cruisers and submarines! I am pretty sure that the base of the ability to "transport cargo" is based on Civ4's transport ability and it should be exploitable. There is still the problem of how to re-learn the AI to use these transport ships, but it is certainly possible since Civ5 engine and scipts are based on the precedent games. I am new at modding, so I'll try at my best, but I hope someone will have a simillar idea and a lot of time to spend because it seems pretty difficult to me!