How do we improve the maritime side of Civ 4?

[GeoModder]

Two tiles bombardment range would be much in comparison with the general reduced movement rate of land units. And of course, if battleships are allowed to inflict damage on land-based improvements, then artillery should be able to return the favour.

[Fosse]

A way to emulate the often pointed out concept:

Land kept people apart, seas brought them together.


Change things so that distance maintenance fees over water are dramatically reduced compared to a similar number of land tiles.

On an Earth map a capital at Washington DC shuld pay a lot less to maintain a city at Lisbon than one at San Antonio.

I don't know how distance maintenance is calculated right now. If it's just a straight tile modifier then going overseas hurts. If it's a movement rate thing - so two equidistant cities would pay a different amount if one is roaded, then simply making all water tiles count as a movement modifier for the purpose of calculating maintenance fees should do it. I recall in Civ 3 settling over a body of water made corruption much worse than simply settling the same number of tiles away on the same landmass.

[MilkmanDan]

Originally posted by Fosse
A way to emulate the often pointed out concept:

Land kept people apart, seas brought them together.


Change things so that distance maintenance fees over water are dramatically reduced compared to a similar number of land tiles.

How about make harbors act like courthouses? Maybe lesser effect for balance, but would make coastal cities, even far flung ones, cheaper to maintain while leaving ones in away from the coast at normal levels.

On other comments, do agree that the miltary and transport units do need some flair/separation/fun. I've suggested in another thread the ability to capture enemy ships up to and including the age of sail. Perhaps past that, but as range, rate of fire and damage have increased, it's become near impossible to get in close enough to board modern naval units. Modern navy needs some tweaks to get it differentiated. Hard to start without getting way too much into it as modern navy ties to aircraft and that's another thing that could stand tweaking.

[Optimizer]

I have made Fishing boats buildable on all water tiles, and changed the build orders so that it takes some time, but does not consume the work boat.

Maybe we should experiment with adding Merchant Ships (or Marinas) as a commerce-increasing terrain improvement on coast squares, too.

This could also make piracy interesting. Privateers would pillage the enemy's fishing boats and merchant ships if not guarded by the navy.

[ghen]

How about a real merchant ship unit, when it comes within 1 tile of a remote city it 'picks up' commerce.. and then when it returns home it dumps it off into your coffers.

[pauli]

i don't have much confidence in the ai being able to handle anything significantly more complicated than we have now.

How about make harbors act like courthouses?

a rather curious idea, given the historical link between docks and corruption.

[xxFlukexx]

Well for one I think we need a real reason to have a fleet and a reason to protect the ocean and the coast. I think we need some kind of commerce bonus to the sea, 2 commerce per coast tile is hardly worth going for or protecting much. Having a workboat make fishing boats all along the coast is an idea, but it still makes your fleet just protect the coast. Without a reason to protect your sea and invade the enemies sea, naval units will remain as transport babysitters and occasionally bombarding cities cultural and walls % defenses. The thing is, if I totally own the sea and you do not I should get some sort of advantage.

I always liked the RoN style of sea resources(it's always good to steal ideas from a great game), sea resources were extremely good and naval battles were vicious. Fishing and Whaling spots were spread out through the entire ocean. 4 types of naval vessels for each era, heavy ship, light ship, fireship(suicide!) and siege ship. Siege ships didn't enter until about Renaissance, and fire ships got phased out around then too, replaced by subs. Light ships counter fire ships and transports(well everything counters transports, but light ships the best) Heavy ships counter light ships, fire ships counter heavy ships, siege ships counter cities and some land bombardment(not much but some. Carriers also need a big boost in Civ4, in RoN they were quite nasty, super expensive, but nasty.

I think naval blockades are pretty good, they sure starve coast-hugger cities very well. If you could somehow code it so they can blockade a city from trade routes, that'd be great.

As for speed changes, yeah those would be nice I guess, early naval units are terribly slow, but I like the speed of destroyers and battleships, they move fast enough for me(I play on Standard size maps usually)

Sea Pirates, animals, lower maintenance costs, and a new sea resource or two doesn't really interest me. Huge sea battles and trying to sneak in a transport hear and there, using your fleet as a distracting device, doing raids with your navy, sending lots of transports and having them fly in around a huge naval battle, now that's what interests me, sure wish it would be in Civ someday.

[swat-spas2]

RON did have awesome naval fights. Just the fight to destroy a dock could be a lethal environment in the early game (fire ships, ack!). CIV has some issues if you're not playing on continents/archipelago. However, the historical usage of a navy is these 3.

1) Deny the sea to an enemy, destroying communication or resupply from outside sources
2) Destroy the enemies navy and thus prevent them from doing the same to your communication and supply
3) Use the power of naval superiority to strike an enemy at any point from any time, forcing the army to spread out to be everywhere or to simply surrender part of the battlefield.


Here's the game problem, the navy is not important enough to build and once the other guy's navy is dead, there isn't much point to your own. I would not mind allowing navy units to attack cities in a manner similar to bombers (50% damage limit, probably using an amphibious penalty too), particularily once you reach frigates with longer range guns. Shore bombardment is not a new idea, but its whole-lot more effective once you get some cannons on a ship.

Second (or instead) the blockade needs to be alot more harsh just to make a navy more useful. Simply pillaging your fishing boats and then starving off part of your city's food supply isn't enough. Yeah you can really shut down a city or two and perhaps slow the rest of an empire with the fish/crab/clam issue.. but a city under a blockade is not a happy place. Think of a city under siege on land, it's cut off from things that it relies on and expects to have. I would rather have a happiness penalty that grows per turn (like a war discontent) up to a max (based on difficulty) than a per square problem..this in addition to the loss of actual tile usage.

One other thing, transports shouldn't be able to attack.

[Optimizer]

Here are some easy-moddable features which promote naval activity. I have been testing most of them.

* Increasing most ships' movement rate by 2 (already said this)
* Raising the cost of roads and railroads - coastal trade connections are more important now
* Allowing Fishing Boats to be built on any coastal square, giving +1 food
* Allowing Merchant Ships (using the Whaling boat graphics) to be built on any coastal square, giving +1 prod & +1 commerce. These take 10 turns to build, and they yield 20 gold for pillage.

The first thing you would do when war starts should be robbing the enemy's mechant fleet. Not sure whether the AI understands this, though.

[ghen]

The AI is decently good at pillaging during wartime, but I do notice two failings in their navy:

If you place any defender above a galley on a resource they won't go for it to pillage.. so you can move the ship on and off the resource to make the AI go back and forth endlessly in the water.

And secondly, if we make the navies that much more important I doubt the AI would actually build more naval units. This is seen when you play an island map and assume naval control of the map the AI won't even try to fight back, instead sending single ships on suicide missions to your resources, or sending transports with a couple defenders to your shores. No actual navies to try and take back an area. Thus, once you destroy the AI's original meger selection of ships, you own the seas forever with even a limited fleet.

[Mandla]

Originally posted by ghen
The AI is decently good at pillaging during wartime, but I do notice two failings in their navy:

If you place any defender above a galley on a resource they won't go for it to pillage.. so you can move the ship on and off the resource to make the AI go back and forth endlessly in the water.

I've seen the AI mount some pretty effective attacks on my oil rigs. I once stacked an oil rig square with 3 battleships, a couple of destroyers and a carrier with jet fighters and the AI waited until it had a large fleet and destroyed all my units and the oil rig in one turn.

[Melker63]

A very good programming/design-rule: KISS = Keep It Simple, Stupid.

One enemy war-ship within any specific coustal city harvest-area always and AI-automatically blockades upto 3 harvested ocean/coustal-sea tiles. Two WAR-ships present, then upto 6 ocean/coustal-sea tiles is blocked. And so on.

Condition: Blockades can only be done during wartime, and only by a WAR-ship. Tradeships no good.

[Optimizer]

One problem in Civ 3 is the fast land exploration during the beginning of the game. To encourage players to explore the seas instead, I have delayed Scouts (to Mathematics) and Explorers (to Astronomy).

To make them worth building, I allowed them to enter rival territory. The Explorer also got Sentry.

[Impaler[WrG]]

I think a better solution would be the equivilent scout/explorer type unit for the Ocean as well, perhaps "Canoe"

[Trifna]

I didn't look at it so much so I might miss some points, and it's probably not something changeable.

But personally, I thought that adding a radius would change quite alot. It permits to
1- Take control of ports (depending on opposing maritime forces)... and any maritime strategic points
2- Not let anyone just pass through a bunch of ships as if it was a speedboat
3- Permit "specific missions" within radius if useful (submarine search, intercept-like...)
4- Give the characteristics typical of modern ships (and strategy!), (5) including this capacity of inter-protection and (6) combined and balanced fleets


Maybe for CiV