Merchant Fleets/naval trading & combat

[MiloMilo]

Wrylachlan, in the end I'm not going for realism, I'm going for better use of navies and coastal fortresses. I admit though, that a weakness in my idea is that I don't know exactly what coastal fortresses do; I have never built them. What I envisioned to work with the ideas set out above is that the CF would slightly weaken nearby ships, but not sink them. They would make it easier for your own navy to chase away blockading ships, but could not do it alone.

[MiloMilo]

Destroyer, Random passerby's idea would mean that if a civ had 12 port cities and was getting 4 resources to its capital from overseas, you could blockade 10 of their cities and thereby reduce them to getting only 2 resources from overseas. Sure, if you blockaded 7 nothing would happen, but it makes partial resource blockades at least possible.

EDIT: And, the issue would be moot by the time you have bombers, because then airports could be built and blockading would no longer be possible -- unless you precision-bomb their airport, which is how we do these things these days.

[Jon Shafer]

IIRC, if you have road link with another neutral power, and they have a harbor, you can still trade overseas. By the time that trade becomes really important, and there are harbors everywhere, all civs are linked by roads, therefore making all suggestions obsolete... unless Firaxis fixes this.

[Destroyer]

Air transport has never and will never replace sea transport. Oil tankers are the biggest example, you couldnt just bolt a couple of wings on and ask them to fly. Air transport tends to only be used for passenger and mail, and other small things on a basis of urgency. I think airports should not be used to supply trade routes full stop, as their capacity could never reach the same levels as ports.

Im just trying to think of a way to make the game more enjoyable and strategic, and I dont think spending hundreds of resources on ships just to use them to blockade ports is worthwhile or realistic.

I agree with costal fortresses. They are useless. AI in my experience does not attack cities by sea. How about using costal fortresses outside cities to protect against ground landings a'la D Day

[wrylachlan]

West Berlin was supplied solely by aircraft for a significant amount of time... but at a staggering cost, so I agree that this is the exception that prooves the rule.

Airports should not give trade network status. Or maybe only for luxuries, not strategic resources. Flying in Mink coats to make the rich happy is concievable, but flying in enough iron to build a group of tanks is not.

And my take on what the coastal fortress is for is to prevent naval ships from bombarding the city to soften it up for an assault, not to prevent blockades.

I also agree that with the ability to use peaceful nations harbors, none of these new blockading ideas really work. Maybe it should be more restrictive - you can use the roads of another civ you're at peace with, but you need an MPP or military Alliance to use the harbors... though I don't know if even that would be enough to make blockading useful.

I think there are really 2 seperate (though related) issues going on:
1.) How do we change the mechanism of blockades so that they are a more useful and strategic during wartime?
2.) What can we do to encourage and make strategically necessary a greater use of naval power?

1.) I think the simplest way to deal with blockades is to allow one ship in the 21 tile radius create a blockade. And as someone above suggested: if a city is blockaded it looses any commerce from sea squares. Or you could just flat cut the commerce in half. And this is in addition to the current function of blockades blocking trade routes. The bottom line is if your city is blockaded you loose money so it is in your best interest as an attacker to blockade as many cities as possible and as a defender you want to keep that from happening = strategically interesting.

2.) The question of how to encourage the use of naval power is a slightly more complex one. I think a number or little adjustments would all add up to greater use of naval power:
a.) somehow get rid of the rolling RR attack exploit, and generally make land-based assault slightly slower. This would encourage more amphibious assaults. Which would require naval protection for the transports = greater use of the navy.
b.) increase the power and range of air-power or increase the total capacity of carriers. Again, this will encourage more carrier use, and trickling down, a host of escort ships.
c.) anti-aircraft on ships, so that a defender can only do so much with their bombers before they have to field their own navy.
d.) slightly increased naval bombardment power.

I don't think that any one of these things is earth-shattering, but together they would lead to more strategic naval battles.