Given that 1UPT is also an innovation I never liked, and viewed as unnecessarily, "gamier," than many, loading units onto ships like in Civ1-3 (and, 4, I guess, though I've never personally played 4) seems much more intuitive and workable to me.
I actually really like the way Old World does it because you need ships to pass over ocean tiles but they basically turn the water in land for the purpose of movement so you can still transport your entire army with only one ship, depending on the amount of water you need to cross.
I think you mean Civ1-4 had it best, not just Civ4, because I believe it was effectively the same loading, transport, and unloading with need for naval escort mechanic in all of them, and the AI could really work them, often with surprising efficiency and ruthlessness.
Yes, but I only played Civ 3 and 4. Civ IV is still the best in the series, and then V and VI made it so there is almost no need to build any naval ships.
There are a LOT of military units, in reality, that do not FIGHT (or are strongly discouraged from it, or even disallowed by regulations, from trying). Not only transport, but recconaisance, logistics, medical, quartermastering, base and field infrastructure, engineering, etc. Very few militaries REALLY have the Klingon, WoW Orc, or Starship Troopers Mobile Infantry doctrine where everyone is a frontline combatant first, and something else second. Even in terms of, "playing a game," the idea that every military unit, "fights," leads to oversimplified, counter-intuitive, or bizarre scenarios, especially in the hands of the AI (not that gameplay in Civ iterations is alien to those, but still).
Indeed, in Civ2 and Civ3 (and Civ1, though I haven't played that for AEONS), you could take one or more Ancient and/or Medieval land unit on a pre-Exploration Era ship (even if they had a good chance of sinking in the deep ocean, the point is, you coat hug), and unloading, grabbing goody units (which could increase your war party, give you settlers, or even fully-settled cities), and even mark areas on your map for future cities to send settlers to, and classically go, "a Viking," - a pleasure, ironically, Harold Hardrada in Civ6 is denied by game mechanics.
Yeah, I agree, Hardrada is one of the vanilla civilizations that could use an improvement.
Sorry, what are you saying that Hardrada is denied by game mechanics?
In earlier games in the franchise, one could put an ancient age military unit on an ancient age boat and send it along the coast of the continent or Pangea land mass. It's not quite the same as coastal raiding, but the "goody huts" / tribal villages often had worthwhile contents: gold, or a new tech, or even a settler.
That's actually Harald's ability, not something unique to the Longship. Harald can use any naval melee unit to pillage.
Yeah, Norway isn't that interesting of a Civ but you can have fun with them in the right circumstances.
I've hit a bug (I think it's a bug) in a couple Civ 6 games where I've been able to order galleys across deep water after researching... whichever tech it it lets you build caravels, but without actually upgrading them.
