judgement said:
#3: at very least, give ships some chance to be lost at sea if they move through the wrong tiles, not just end their turn there (the chances would have to be decreased a little relativet to the current odds, of course). Currently, a galley can safely cross two tiles of sea/ocean - I think crossing even one should involve a little risk. Also, I'd have a (much smaller) chance that early ships can be lost even when in the proper terrain. This could be related to random events (the topic of a differnt thread) such as a hurricane or even just a major storm.
Good idea. It will reduce the chances to discover an island or continent very soon in the game, the known "suicide galleys" tactic.
judgement said:
#5: This one's easy: two cities connected by a river should be able to trade just as if they were connected by roads or harbors.
It's a known feature in Civ4, isn't it?
General Porkins said:
one way to do #4 is to have trade routes like in CTP with the same type of piracy, however this would alter the trade system. i think privateers should take away a small amount of gold per turn they are in another civs territory. the amount of gold could be determined only by the commerce in pirated civ's cities with harbors. otherwise their could be another 'random event' type action with some percentage of happening when the privateer ends its turn in other borders where the privateer takes away a larger amount of gold in one turn rather than a percent each turn
a more complex addition would be to require a privateer to return to a friendly port to actually return the gold to its civ. each privateer could stockpile only so much gold at a time. this would help the problem of a pirate hiding off in some remote location and stealing gold away without ever being found
Good idea. But I'll do some changes: I think it's better privateers becoming "special units", when it's made it cannot return to any city and it cannot be in the same tile where there are another units that aren't privateers. It will stop the exploit of using "escort", to protect privateers from being attacked.
Privateers wouldn't need support, steal 1gpt when in territorial waters (or at least 3 tiles away from any city) and 3gpt when in neighbour tiles to any city. Maybe privateers could even steal a random trading resource you don't have. Eg: Persia is getting furs from Russia and you place a privateers in persian waters, you'll have a chance to stole these furs from them in each turn your privateers stay in persian waters. It will force people to create a naval force, at least to avoid privateers from stealing gold and resources. What do you think, people?
Masrim said:
#3 While storms were a contributing factor in "lost" ships at sea the main culprit were ships actually being lost. Since astronomy or sailing by the stars had not been developed and the sextant had not yet been created ships were at the mercy of the weather. And I do not mean storms.
Picture yourself out in a sea or ocean with no land in sight. Now picture an overcast day where it is impossible to determine the location of the sun. Now decide which way is north east west or south. Next to impossible with nothing to get your bearings by. So when the game says your ship was lost at sea it does not mean that a storm took the ship and you lost it, it means the ship got lost.
I think a neat little thing they could add is tht occasionally when you lose a ship at sea, maybe it is not really lost. Make the game turn the ship invisible and set it to some random location where it will pop up in x # of turns and you get your ship back. Would be kind of neat to get a ship you thought lost, back in say 12 turns on the other side of the world with no way of knowing how to get back home.
Nice idea, but the odds of getting the ship back must be low, or people will throw lots of ships with settlers only to find new land. There should be 2 messages, one for ship shrinking (as there's in Civ3) and another for ship lost contact, so you won't know when it will return. When astronomy tech is known, all lost ships may reappear. And of course, these ships (and all units within) will still spend support while they are lost in ocean. Obviously, when these lost ships keep going in ocean squares, they'll have a chance to shrink. Maybe you can get one in ten lost ships, so it won't become a exploit
.
, although maybe have it be about 3-5 turns, and with some restrictions... i doubt a curragh would really survive a 'lost' journey across the open ocean. But it would definitely be neat if the ship popped up in an area you haven't explored, and you could take it over from there.
