[WTP] Quick questions

No, that is not really correct.

It is actually very immersive that land units in a city hardly get damaged by sea bombardment of a single ship.
It would definitely never be possible to kill all men - at most hurt or maybe kill a few men by debris (wood or stones) flying around.

In many cases such villages or cities simply gave up before an enemy ship actually openend fire - the threat itself was enough to surrender.
But not to protect their lives but to protect their homes (or stores) which were incredible effort and expensive to rebuild.

Also most of these colonial cities hardly had any loyalty to their home country anymore - or only very little.
They hardly cared who they had to pay taxes to - as long as it was not more than what they had to pay before.

And what you also do not consider:

Normally the ships did not even want to shoot into the city center where most of the troops might have been placed.
Shooting a city if at all would have hurt the civilians that would never have forgiven such a crime, not really the troops that may not even have lived there.

The attackers / conquerors normally wanted to capture the city intact with all infrastructure, all workers and also all stored goods.
Why destroy something so valuable if you can simply destroy the less valuable defenses and then capture the city by killing the 50 defending land troops?

We are not talking here about "large scale" war in the early days of colonization in 16th century. The major goal was to destroy the enemy troops at all costs but to conquer with little damage.
We are more or less talking about a crew of maybe 80 sailors and 50 professional soldiers conquering a small village or city with a few professional soldiers defending it and a few colonists maybe also taking arms.

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As @Nightinggale explained ships with cannonballs could hardly really attack Land Units in a City because a City is too much space.
Or the colonists simply moved a few 100 meters further inland - e.g. behind a hill out of reach of the cannons.

The only thing that then could still be damages were the walls, the harbour and maybe even the city center.
We are not talking about explosive wide range rockets or wide scale artillery bombardment of the modern age with massive kill potential.

It was basically a waste of ammunition trying to hit small moving troops 100 meters away in a city center with cannonballs.
As I tried to explain, the only thing you could really hit and damage with certainty was big non-moving objects like e.g. walls or fortifications.

Once own troops were approaching the city walls the ship could not continue to fire anyways.
It would have weakened the moral of the own troops just the same to have debris (stones and wood) flying around.

And troops outside the walls without any houses were in much bigger danger to be hit by debris (stones and wood).
Mostly because the debris exploded to the outside side of the walls where the cannon balls hit and not to the inside.

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And even if it was immersive:
Sometimes immersion needs to stand back behind gameplay.

If it was possible that Man-O-Wars would bombard the troops in a city to death,
there would be no chance to defend a City against REF in War of Independence.

The REF Man-O-Wars would simply lay waste on all defenses and then only 1 REF Unit could easily conquer all Cities on the Coast.
Also AI could not cope with something like that - a Human player would easily kick the butt of any AI if this would become possible.

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Summary:

No, it is not immersive that a ship on the coast could really do any serious damage to troops on land.
Doing damage to walls or fortifications is very realistic though and weakening moral is realistic too.

On the other hand, cannons in a fortification of the city doing serious damage to a ship at the coast is very realistic.
It was simply big and slow enough to be hit by cannons and holes in a ships hull were often deadly for the ship itself.

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And even if it was immersive that Ships bombarding a City could damage Units:
Very bad idea for gameplay and AI. (Sometimes a game needs to simplify a bit.)

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That is a modern warfare mod and thus naturally plays by totally different rules.

Please do not try to always think in "modern logic" for a mod that plays in 16th century.
Modern artillery bombardment and real explosives did not exist in 16th century.

At most you had shrapnel ammunition which was basically only a "close combat" ammunition for open terrain and complete nonsense to use at a distance of e.g. 200 meters against a city with walls.
Chain-balls would have been equally stupid because their direction was hard to calculated and they were basically only used to destroy sails of ships and thus immobilize them.
Normal cannon balls were only effective as I said against big unmoving objects and you needed to fire really masses of them to have a chance to hit a human - which was simply too expensive.

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Even the actual effectiveness of cannon balls on open terrain combat of e.g. 18th century is heavily disputed. (Which is the reason most armies had so few of them in usage.)
Most historician agree that they only were effectiv against moral and discipline and very ineffective considering actual human live tolls.
Only close combat shrapnel really caused live tolls but was normally also consider a last means when otherwise everything was lost since it could hit own troops just as easily.

Again "fire", "gas" and "explosive" ammunition of the modern age were simply non-existent ...
Only once they existed and were cheaply produced in indutrialized ways real bombardment of land troops on open terrain or in cities became a thing.

 

Well, realistically a ship in one square should not be able to hit the broadside of a barn, nor even a whole city that is in another square. Even in gigantic maps the distance from midpoint of square 1 to square 2 is *kilometres* not metres.

Historically in the early game ships were still expected to board each other after they had fired their (short-range) cannons (of many different sizes and calibers but too small to hurt stone walls a kilometre away). Quite similar to infantery tactics of a later age - one musket volley and then charge them with bayonets to rout them when they falter due to the impact of the volley. Those "cannons" were mostly antipersonnel weapons to deter boarders or to clear the enemy ship´s deck for boarding and most not even able to punch through a ships hull because fielding a heavy gun on a high fore- or aftcastle of a ship could mean that the own ship would founder if that heavy gun would be fired.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_artillery#Age_of_Sail
They had still to develop several decks and gun ports in ships.

That got better after bronze cannons were introduced and spread during the late 15th/early 16th century.

From the 17th century onward heavier guns were used on lower decks, e.g.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36-pounder_long_gun
and even those could fire at maximum 3700 metres but effective range was half of that.

So - if technically possible - no ship whatsoever should be able to bombard anything on land at the start of the game and only in a later age/era/technology level e.g. "Bronze Cannons"+"multiple shipdecks"+"gun ports"
should major warships gain that ability.

 

I cannot make sense of the auto transport mechanics, as I can't simply make it work and the transports (I have tried Treks or Wagon Trains) just go to my only coastal city and just remain there without doing anything. At first, I believed it was because I was using the vanilla storage mechanics, but it still happens when I turn on again the new storage mechanics. I saw the video about auto transport, but still I cannot establish a single route between two cities, even less between more cities.

 

@Jorge Tamay
You'll have to start a new game if you change any setting in GlobalDefinesAlt.xml since those settings are not parsed and reloaded when loading an existing save (they are effectively per-game constants). I agree that this should probably be documented somewhere...

 

Regarding the recent discussion on combat I'd just like to state that both me and @raystuttgart are very keen on remaking the combat system. Specifically, ranged combat (and a lot of other novel mechanics) is something we both want to introduce but we're currently too busy to work on that.

 

Count me in on a wish for that as well. I might not have been vocal about it recently, but I have talked about it once in a while over the past years.

 

Given that each tile represents enormous amount of land/sea, won't it break immersion? I personally hate the direction Civilization series went after IV, and it would be very disappointing one of its distinguishing (and very stupid, in my opinion) features being introduced to WTP.

 

Please read this here before directly panicking.
You are imagining a "ranged combat" that I have no intention to create.

I am not planning to duplicate Civ5 / Civ6 Combat System.
That is also why I call my system "Attack Ranges" and not "Ranged Combat".

 

@raystuttgart you alleviated my fears, looking forward to seeing this feature implemented. (=

 

Im trying to read up on some game mechanics of wtp. Can someone explain to me if its possible to gain founding fathers annother nation has already aquired? Is this possible and how?

 

Yes and no.

1. Only one - the first - Nation (Team) can get a Founding Father. It is then lost for all others.
Basically it is the same as Vanilla and Original Colonization of 1994 until here.

2. There is however the "New Founding Father System" which is activated by default unless you select "Use Old Founding Fathers System" in Game Options.
If this is activated all Founding Fathers a Nation has acquired get available again if that Nation is fully elimiated from the game - meaning completely dead.
Then the other Nations can fight for those Founding Fathers again. (But then of course only one - the first Nation - can get it again.)

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Summary:

1. Only1 Nation can get a Founding Father or better say have it at the same time.
2. If that Nation is eliminated from the game the Founding Father gets available again.

 

Ahh, completely dead means every single unit/city is dead? Also is it possible to start the revolution after you archieved domination victory or rather what are the conditions to start the revolution except 50% liberty desire?


Thanks for the answer, what a great mod. This was the first game i ever played (my father showed it to me), its really great to explore new things in a very familiar setting!

 

Did WTP got a land unit like the privateer to hidden attack other faction? I thought the native marcenary are a good unit to take this part and disturb other faction without declare war.

 

Is there a way to speed up AI's turns?

 

A) Make the mod more performant by modding
B) Play on smaller maps with less AIs

Otherwise, no.

 

We optimize the code again and again. The problem is that for the most part there is no simple to alter slow code. It's the combined effect of thousands of lines of code. Improving speed by 1% over and over eventually adds up. There are also ways to get more than 1% at a time, but we (well mainly I) did the quick to code ones already. This means you might see noteworthy boosts in the future, but then it would have been months in the making.

Other than really digging into the code to optimize, there is nothing to do other than playing on smaller maps. The slowdown scales exponentially with map size. Not only will twice the size has twice the number of units and cities, each unit will also have more options regarding where to move, making handling each unit slower. I never play on gigantic maps because I dislike the wait, but it's entirely up to you if you feel like the gameplay value makes it worth the extra waiting time.

 

Much faster CPU. Disable "show enemy moves" in the options.

 

Hey all, great mod.
Was wondering if you had any plans to implement a storage system similar to classic? In classic, sale of over storage is based on a max storage that applies singularly to each good stored.
I began to find the transport of goods to my harbors for sale overseas, or any sale that required the movement of goods on my part tedious in late game. I stopped moving goods around to speed up turns and within a few turns none of my cattle and or sheep producing cities had any cattle or sheep left, actually, none of my cities had any cattle or sheep left. Both of those goods are cheap selling goods that require minimum amounts for production. It seems to me quite strange that any city would sell off cattle, sheep or horses as a priority, as opposed to stockpiling the good to at least have a surplus production, since those three goods are the only ones requiring a stockpile to even produce. We can apparently have stone and wood just accumulate to the extent that the creation of man made mountains would be feasible, but we can't maintain a stock of livestock without micromanaging.
cheers

 

Storage system was like that in the original Col2 game (without mods). The same as it was in the classic. I don't see why this would be reverted back. It is not the root issue in here in my opinion.

The real issue #1 here is not how storage is allocated but how storage overflow is handled. At the moment, I agree, it is handled in a very unsatisfactory way. Lost sheep are a small concern when a few (forcefully) donated furs can cause immediate loss of full stacks for units / construction. Your scout came in with 50 horses? Well, now one is thrown away and the scout cannot remount. Your line infantry joined the fields for a turn? Well, we just had to throw away a few muskets and blades and there is no longer line infantry so good luck with that..

In a more positive note, fixing (improving) the storage overflow is on my personal modding TODO list. It is so very annoying. And additionally, I have been lately making some improvements to automatic transportation, which might make it possible to keep the goods flowing without so much painful micromanagement. Do not hold your breath though, all this takes time before it might end up in a potential release.

 

I am looking forward for that - long awaited.