ZoC for naval units needed

[GlobularFoody]

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm tired of my embarked units being cheesed to death by the lack of of Zone of Control (ZoC) for naval units. Enemy ships can just sail past your combat ships and insta-kill your units. Are we really supposed to build enough ships to surround our embarked armies?

 

[Scios]

ZoC would be a cool feature, maybe make it like intercept?

 

[pirsq]

It's also a little silly that my citizen can't work my fish when there's a barbarian nearby, even when I have a boat on that same tile protecting it.

 

[Camikaze]

This could be a good solution to issues people have with embarkation. The major complaint seems to be that units are killed off all too easily, so this would help prevent that. However, I can't help but think that this was by design.

 

[War_Pig]

have the ships you have protecting the units out farther so you can see their navy ships before they can see your embarked units.

 

[dexters]

From a strategy/games perspective, there needs to be risk/reward on both sides of the coin.

Send massive convoy supported by warships or run the gauntlet (think Tokyo express scenarios during the battle of guadalcanal)

On the defensive side, the arithmitic should be about numbers. How many to defend?

The current problem with embarkation is that AI loses many units with no defensive screens becanse it could be land units crossing via sea to another land location to avoid congestion.

So 1 or 2 ships can destroy an entire army.

ZoC or turning embarked units into transports w/ defensive values are good solutions.

Essentially you want the attacker to suffer some damage so they cannot keep killing embarked units ad infinitum, and you want the player embarking those units some calculus on what to bring defensively to the table. Obviously, making embarked units have a minimal of defense is a good solution, but you can couple that with warships that have a ZoC so you don't have to literally build a wall around your embarked units.

The current issue is the ease with which embarked units are picked off (almost exploit level in human hands) and the difficulty in bringing defenses to bear when an invasion force has to face a navy.

Both issues IMHO hurt the AI more than human players, but since 'immersion' is a factor, I think a human player bringing a few destroyers to shepherd an invasion only to see a a barb ship, a destroyer or what have you pop out of the fog of war and knock off units even if you have a defending destroyer in range may also understand the cheapness factor of it.

 

[ColinTH]

To dexters - nice post, I can't disagree with anything you have mentioned.

To the op.

I have played 1,000 hrs of archipelago maps on all levels with many different Nations. (England have more embarked unit movement.)

I have lost countless numbers of embarked units whilst exploring, well that is fine, probably true to real life of the age.

I very rarely loose an embarked unit whilst invading.

1 - Build a Navy.

2 - Bombard Cities/coastline, clear the sea along the invasion passage .

3 - Block ports.

4 - Escort embarked units. - If your Navy is powerful enough you may only need 3/4 embarked units.

When I play as England, I build three triremes ASAP build the Great Light House, find a city state, attack it until I have double attacks, ability to heal away from friendly territory and range,(now make peace with the CS) upgrade to Ship of the Line ASAP, now I have control of the seas for hundreds of turns.

 

[GlobularFoody]

I think the main thing about this, and why I made this thread, is the random barbarians popping our of nowhere. The AI Civs rarely ever build ships in my games to attack my invasions, but barbs never seems to stop building them. I don't really mind too much if the few ships an AI civ manages to produce kills one of my embarked units, but for some reason they let barbs build destroyers which can go on killing spree before being stopped.

But yeah, doing anything to make it harder to kill embarked units will only hurt the AI as it is now, maybe they can beef up it's naval capacity in a later patch.

 

[ori]

Moderator Action: moved to Civ Ideas