There should be a coal powered ship after an ironclad, perhaps with assembly line, it could have 20-24 str. That would be good for game balance, and would be historically accurate as well. I mean, there were massive battleship battles in the Russio-Japanese war, and they were all coal powered. There is zero representation of the age of coal in the game, other than that lame ironclad. It's just really exploitable because destroyers, at 30 str, are invincible to anything before them.
Well, this was part of my motivation. The difficulty is... if the coal-fired ships can stand up to destroyers, even at a hammer disadvantage, they'll still obliterate str-8 wooden ships with laughable ease. If, say, a Dreadnought is str-30 (even match with a Destroyer, but more expensive) and an Armoured Cruiser 20-24, you'll still need an ungodly number of Frigates to sink a cruiser. On land, the worst strength hikes between generations of units are about 50-60% - Musketman to Rifleman to Infantry to Tanks. But at sea, you've got a factor of nearly 4 between Frigate/SoL and Destroyer.
Two generations of coal ships? There just isn't enough tech tree not to be obsoleting units every time you turn around.
I think the least worst situation would be to delay the Destroyer and reduce its astronomical 30
a little, introducing the
20 Torpedo Boat as in one of the early Dr. Null proposals. This gets the Dreadnought and Armoured Cruiser down a little in
as well, keeping the Dreadnought a reasonably even fight with a Destroyer. Then if the Ship of the Line gets a bit more
, perhaps 10 (reducing the bonus against Frigates proportionately), you might just be able to hold off an otherwise weaker opponent's Armoured Cruisers with wooden warships.
Hmmm. Perhaps three coal warships, total, making the naval units:
Galley, Trireme, Caravel, Galleon: as Civ 4.
Man of War: 4
, 2
, 65
, Guilds and Compass, not ocean-going, nicked wholesale from LoR.
Ship of the Line: 10
, plus 20% against sailing warships (or all other sailing warships if this somehow makes SoL vs SoL demented), otherwise as Civ 4.
Paddle Steamer: 6
, 4
, 100
, Steam Power, Astronomy, Coal or Oil, capacity 4, also nicked from LoR.
Coastal Monitor: Civ 4's Ironclad, renamed.
Ironclad: 14
, 4
, 120
, Steam Power, Astronomy, Steel, Iron, Coal or Oil.
Armoured Cruiser: 20
, 5
, 170
, Steel, Steam Power, Astronomy, Assembly Line, Iron, Coal or Oil.
Dreadnought: 27
, 5
, 230
, Steel, Steam Power, Astronomy, Military Science, Assembly Line, Iron, Coal or Oil.
Torpedo Boat: 18
, 6
, 130
plus 20% vs Dreadnought, Battleship: Combustion, Oil (unlike a Destroyer, cannot be fission-powered).
Destroyer: 27
, 180
, also requires Radio, otherwise as Civ 4.
Battleship: as Civ 4 but requires Radio, to avoid the case where you can build BB but not DD.
Why don't the warships require Rifling, let alone Artillery? Neither do Civ 4's Destroyer and Battleship... and in practice you're going to have teched Rifling by then. Or maybe add it to all four of the Armoured Cruiser, Dreadnought, Destroyer, Battleship? Also I think you might be able to build Battleships without Steel. If so, fix that.
So how's this work out? When your opponent brings out Monitors and Ironclads, you've got half a chance to fight on with Ships of the Line, which are actually good for something now. Even Armoured Cruisers can be brought down by sufficient numbers... or you might be up to Ironclads by then. Torpedo Boats are still sheer death on wooden navies, and can be used in pairs to sink Armoured Cruisers and Dreadnoughts (you get one of them back, so you come out ahead on
.)
You're not that likely to build Dreadnoughts, but you might - if you don't have Oil, or if you teched Military Science because Ships of the Line are a little better now. Everything's a bit crammed in, but that's inevitable given the amount of tech tree we have to work with.
Also, I think some of the tech requirements are unnecessary, which needs checked - I can't believe some of those Dreadnought techs don't implicitly require Astronomy, but I'm on a very slow machine and can't conveniently check the whole tech tree, sigh.
.
