Treasure Fleets should need reach a port to unload their cargo; trade winds?

[Bactrian]

In the Exploration Age livestream that introduced treasure fleets the devs noted that they only needed to reach any tile within your borders to unload their cargo. I think it would be better (and more immersive) for them to need to reach a port on your home continent. This would allow enemy players to somewhat better predict where your ships might be and thus drive naval combat and/or investments into navies.

BONUS:
Since the Exploration Age is basically the age of the sailing ship, I think it would be very cool if an expansion could add a light simulation of the trade winds. Something like +2 movement in the direction of the winds within a certain band of tiles and -2 movement when trying to move in the opposite direction.

 

[AriochIV]

While it might seem more logical to have a Treasure Fleet unload in port rather than just in your territory, I don't think it would actually change gameplay. I don't think hunting down enemy treasure ships in their home waters is going to be a very healthy tactic for the hunter.

Setting up a trade winds simulation on a randomly generated map would be a lot of development effort for something that would not improve gameplay. It seems like global movement is already going to be somewhat tedious given the slow speed of the Age of Sail units (Cogs and Carracks only have a movement of 3); getting stuck in a situation where you might have to crawl home against the winds at an even slower speed would probably just frustrate most players, as well as potentially bamboozling the AI. More realistic is not always more fun.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

While it might seem more logical to have a Treasure Fleet unload in port rather than just in your territory, I don't think it would actually change gameplay. I don't think hunting down enemy treasure ships in their home waters is going to be a very healthy tactic for the hunter.

Setting up a trade winds simulation on a randomly generated map would be a lot of development effort for something that would not improve gameplay. It seems like global movement is already going to be somewhat tedious given the slow speed of the Age of Sail units (Cogs and Carracks only have a movement of 3); getting stuck in a situation where you might have to crawl home against the winds at an even slower speed would probably just frustrate most players, as well as potentially bamboozling the AI. More realistic is not always more fun.

- Especially since speeds and times in Civ have always been grossly out of synch. With a minimum Time Scale of 1 year per turn, ships already take decades to cross between continents. Adding to that simply increases the Unreality of it all, since the longest known voyages in reality were the circumnavigation of Africa for an Egyptian pharaoh in Classical Era and Magellan's 'Round the World tour in the Renaissance both of which took about 3 years - a fraction of a single Civ turn in either time period!

 

[Bactrian]

While it might seem more logical to have a Treasure Fleet unload in port rather than just in your territory, I don't think it would actually change gameplay. I don't think hunting down enemy treasure ships in their home waters is going to be a very healthy tactic for the hunter.

True, but I envision players having to make a choice between sending treasure fleets on less predictable, more circuitous, and thus potentially safer routes, or beelining the fastest but most predictable path. Since resource early are better than resources later there's a tradeoff to be made here.

Setting up a trade winds simulation on a randomly generated map would be a lot of development effort for something that would not improve gameplay. It seems like global movement is already going to be somewhat tedious given the slow speed of the Age of Sail units (Cogs and Carracks only have a movement of 3); getting stuck in a situation where you might have to crawl home against the winds at an even slower speed would probably just frustrate most players, as well as potentially bamboozling the AI. More realistic is not always more fun.

I guess we'll just have to disagree. I think there's inherent value in making players adjust to things outside their control rather than streamlining things.

 

[Disgustipated]

It remains to be seen if the AI can actually intercept treasure fleets. In the stream the other day, Confucius wasn't actually at war with Spain, so who knows if they would have declared war and nabbed that treasure fleet if it was unescorted. As for the players, I'm guessing both in SP and MP, players will just be hovering their ships right outside cities with those treasure generating resources in anticipation of treasure fleets forming. Though depending on how smart the AI is, we might have to hang back a little outside of visual range if they are actually smart enough not to send a treasure ship out unescorted.

 

[AriochIV]

I guess we'll just have to disagree. I think there's inherent value in making players adjust to things outside their control rather than streamlining things.

Interesting complications can improve gameplay, but you have to balance the work required to implement it versus the benefit to gameplay. Trying to generate wind patterns on a random map is a big ask, and has the potential for all kind of unexpected gotchas. If you end up in a position where your only route home from the distant lands has to go against the wind, that's not an interesting complication, it's just pain.

 

[Bactrian]

Interesting complications can improve gameplay, but you have to balance the work required to implement it versus the benefit to gameplay. Trying to generate wind patterns on a random map is a big ask, and has the potential for all kind of unexpected gotchas. If you end up in a position where your only route home from the distant lands has to go against the wind, that's not an interesting complication, it's just pain.

See I think that'd be honestly awesome! Imagine picking Spain and expecting to run a big colonization game and then, oops!, the winds don't favor you. All of a sudden, you've got a Spanish player maybe focusing on their home continent rather than an overseas empire.

In general, I have the most fun when I'm reacting and trying to make the best of a bad hand. Planning from the start to play a certain type of game is not nearly as fun for me.

 

[Mr Jon of Cheam]

If you wanted a mechanic like that, wouldn't currents work better than winds?

 

[Bactrian]

If you wanted a mechanic like that, wouldn't currents work better than winds?

I don't think so, the trade winds had an enormous influence on the Age of Discovery and the Age of Sail.

That said, I would love more modeling of Earth systems in general, especially during map generation. That could include currents (California Current and North Atlantic Current, for example) but I think as a thing to be directly interacted with during gameplay they'd be a lot harder to make comprehensible to players.

 

[gdr_willter]

Wind and current system will make sense only when the naval units have far enough base speed. ±1~2 on base 4 sounds terrible, but same on base 7 sounds reasonable.

 

[Siptah]

Wind and current system will make sense only when the naval units have far enough base speed. ±1~2 on base 4 sounds terrible, but same on base 7 sounds reasonable.

Yes, mechanically, it seems better suited for a game like Age of Wonders than civ. But maybe we‘ll see storms temporarily blocking passages or random events that allude to currents or trade winds.

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

A wind/current mechanic affecting travel times works in Port Royale 4, but that game is at a much, much more detailed level with time scales in the days and weeks rather than Years and the entire map confined to the Caribbean and its coasts.

At Civ scales, it simply makes no sense. And especially it makes no sense to prohibit some sea-going vessel from going in a given direction because of 'currents' or wind direction. Trade Winds aside, Europeans crossed the Atlantic from Norway, England, France, Spain and Portugal, and after 1500 CE they did so in Caravels, Carracks, Galleons and fishing boats - and the last were by fishermen from England, France, the Basque country and Portugal. Which of those are you going to unrealistically prohibit from crossing the Atlantic once they had the ships that could make the trip and the sailing expertise?

And if you aren't going to prohibit any of them, why bother with the mechanic? It becomes a minor irritant rather than a game affecting system.

Yes, Trade Winds had an effect - so did major river mouths and the treacherous currents they produced, reefs, silting up of harbors, sailors' mutinies, bad decisions by individual ship captains - but that doesn't mean they all belong explicitly in the game.

 

[Bactrian]

At Civ scales

I mean, nothing at all makes any kind of scalar sense in this game. We already accept that it takes an army centuries to walk across a continent, so is a ship crossing an ocean so different?

 

[Boris Gudenuf]

I mean, nothing at all makes any kind of scalar sense in this game. We already accept that it takes an army centuries to walk across a continent, so is a ship crossing an ocean so different?

It isn't, which is why an extra negative to its movement makes no sense at Civ scales of time and distance.

 

[Bactrian]

It isn't, which is why an extra negative to its movement makes no sense at Civ scales of time and distance.

And yet some units move faster or slower than others. Clearly there is some value being placed upon movement speed in the game.

 

[Krikkit1]

It isn't, which is why an extra negative to its movement makes no sense at Civ scales of time and distance.

In that case trade winds that enhanced speed only (reduced movement cost if you enter the hex from the right side) would be good

 

[bbbt]

See I think that'd be honestly awesome! Imagine picking Spain and expecting to run a big colonization game and then, oops!, the winds don't favor you. All of a sudden, you've got a Spanish player maybe focusing on their home continent rather than an overseas empire.

In general, I have the most fun when I'm reacting and trying to make the best of a bad hand. Planning from the start to play a certain type of game is not nearly as fun for me.

So if you pick say Mali in Civ 6 and get a start with no desert tiles, you play it instead of restarting (or Inca and no mountains, Canada/Russia and no Tundra,.etc)? I certainly restart in that case (and I'd guess a lot of players do). Being unable to use my unique bonuses I don't find very appealing...

 

[Bactrian]

So if you pick say Mali in Civ 6 and get a start with no desert tiles, you play it instead of restarting (or Inca and no mountains, Canada/Russia and no Tundra,.etc)? I certainly restart in that case (and I'd guess a lot of players do). Being unable to use my unique bonuses I don't find very appealing...

Correct. I never restart. I always play it out.

ETA: I treat being able to use my unique bonuses as a goal. So, in the case of Mali, I might expand toward a desert, using the civ's preference for those areas as a way of grabbing territory with less competition. I enjoy that kind of gameplay where I have to put in effort to get the most out of my civ.

 

[Zaarin]

That said, I would love more modeling of Earth systems in general, especially during map generation.

As neat as that would be, simulating climate, currents, and wind patterns at anything beyond the most basic level requires supercomputers. (Believe me, as a world builder I've looked into it. ) "Most basic level" here means programming deserts to appear east of mountains in the northern hemisphere and west of mountains in the southern hemisphere because the program says to, not because the generator can actually predict that's the rain shadow. Still, from comments they've made, it sounds like they've worked in some of those ideas into the map generation program.

 

[Evolena]

I believe the maps in Old World have something like that, with Lush terrain being on one specific side of Mountains, representing rain patterns?