Brainstorming thread for improving Civ III's naval aspects

[monkspider]

Let this thread serve as a platform for voicing ways to improve Civ III's much-maligned naval aspects. Obviously, as it is now, it is both tedious and uneventful (how often have naval battles ever played any kind of reasonably significant role in any of your games?).
The main problem holding back naval combat is that since it is so slow, most players (and AIs) never really getting around to doing anything interesting with it. One possible way that this could worked around is to give all ships from magentism on the ability to cross shallow water much faster (perhaps even in the case of industrial age and modern vessals, the ability to cross them without movement penalty). It is certainly annoying to build a battleship in a city on one side of the continent that takes 13 turns to reach the other side. With this proposal naval vessals could be ready on command, and make defending your waters against foreign invaders much more interesting.

Perhaps Firaxis can learn a thing or two from this thread, so voice your ideas!

[Nubclear]

Re: Brainstorming thread for improving Civ III's naval aspects

Originally posted by monkspider
Let this thread serve as a platform for voicing ways to improve Civ III's much-maligned naval aspects. Obviously, as it is now, it is both tedious and uneventful (how often have naval battles ever played any kind of reasonably significant role in any of your games?).
The main problem holding back naval combat is that since it is so slow, most players (and AIs) never really getting around to doing anything interesting with it. One possible way that this could worked around is to give all ships from magentism on the ability to cross shallow water much faster (perhaps even in the case of industrial age and modern vessals, the ability to cross them without movement penalty). It is certainly annoying to build a battleship in a city on one side of the continent that takes 13 turns to reach the other side. With this proposal naval vessals could be ready on command, and make defending your waters against foreign invaders much more interesting.

Perhaps Firaxis can learn a thing or two from this thread, so voice your ideas!

I don't build up any navy because....well, it's not powerful enough to merit it. I mean, I do build some ships just in case a war starts and stransports are coming, but other than that....Its just useles..

[Darkworld Ark]

One way to boost the nessecity of a Navy would be to have Trade Routes & Piracy like in CTP, that way you need to have a Navy to protect your goods.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

In reality, most naval battles happened in cities. With the except of Trafalgar, most of the RNs victories came against ships anchored in harbors.

In civ3, there needs to be some incentive to make you want to build ships. I think that you would see much more naval battles if there was no fog of war on the ocean. That way you could set up your ships to intercept the enemy's and you could see where they are/are heading. There would be more naval battles that way.
To increase the use of naval units, they would have to be each 1 movement point faster. Bombardment by ships should be more effective (heck, they've got the biggest guns traditionally.) This would make not having a navy a big mistake, because your shores will be bombarded accuratly during war. If the AI would sail in big flotillas (frigates/caravals, destroyers/battleships/carriers/destroyers/aegis) then the human could concentrate his units on them (if you know where they are) and then there would be big sea battles.

[alva]

In civ3, there needs to be some incentive to make you want to build ships. I think that you would see much more naval battles if there was no fog of war on the ocean.

I did expect Firaxis to give us something like radar in PTW: I.E. sonar, something to push back FOW.
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[alva]

A very early naval unit would be welcome too,
even with a movement rate of one. Could be very handy in certain cases; transport a settler to a near island for example.

[The_Aussie_Lurker]

I concur with Darkworld Ark that we DEFINITELY need actual, visible, trade routes in Civ3 (a la CtP). Then they could have a new flag-can attack and or disrupt trade routes. This would then give you more realistic piracy and embargoes! For instance, if you just attack a trade route, then you get gold but the trade route remains intact (piracy), if you disrupt the trade route, then you get no gold, but the trade route disappears (embargo!) I actually don't think that this should be automatic, but should have a chance of success based on the relative strengths of the attacking vessel and the trade route it's attacking! By trade route strength I mean that, you should have to build trade units for every new trade deal you want to sign. Like CtP these units would be immobile but, unlike CtP, they would have a defense strength, reflecting their ability to defelect a naval attack!
Aside from that, I think that increased MP's for naval vessels, increased Bombardment strength and rate and increased HP's for ironclads and up (to reflect Arnour) would also be great ideas!!

Yours,
The_Aussie_Lurker.

[vondrack]

OK, my two cents here:

1) an early vessel (ADM=1/1/1) would be a bless, that's right. Something like a Raft, Canoe or Coracle (pun intended... ).

Proposal: Raft (1/1/1), may sink at sea (with a probability higher than that of Galley), can never ever enter ocean squares. Transport capacity: 1. No prerequisites, but may be built in coastal cities only, of course (but coasts of inland lakes count, too).
Note: should we decide to call this naval unit a Coracle, I suggest it is subject to culture flipping...

2) improved diversity among the naval units. I mean - currently, battleships (18/12/5) are better than destroyers (12/8/5) in every single aspect (um, yes, they're more expensive to build, but that is just about it...). I'd suggest making destroyers faster (M=6), or adding a new unit called Cruiser (faster than the Battleship, but lower A/D values) so as there is at least a bit of strategy involved. As it is now, I am building battleships only (from the very moment I am able to, that is).

Interesting side note: apparently, it was intended in this way, since the printed manual shows Destroyers at 16/12/6 and Battleships at 24/20/4.

Proposal:
Destroyer (8/8/6-4/1/2), nerf down - early one, no need to be a long-lasting powerful naval unit. It would be enough to make it toast ironclads easily.
Battleship (18/12/5-8/2/2), leave as is.
Cruiser (12/8/6-6/1/2), lighter in armor/guns, but faster, more manoeuvrable than the Battleship (comes at the same time).

I would not oppose increasing the movement by 1 for all naval units. Would probably be ok.

3) Nerf the ability of land-based artillery to damage vessels. As soon as I conquer my continent, I just build some decent artillery, a perfect railroad network and then... just feel safe. Almost any coastal bombardment can be easily repulsed (and heavily punished) by bringing in the land-based arty - you will easily bring the bombarding vessels down to 1hp and then finish them off with one or two destroyers created especially for this purpose, normally anchored in the safety of your havens (returning there right after sinking the half-dead enemy vessel, thus never really risking anything). I believe that this should not be possible.

Proposal: lower the success rate for the land-to-sea bombardment significantly (to, say, one fourth of what it is now, or less). Although I hate this argument, this would even probably me more like in the real world... IMHO, it is rather difficult to seriously damage a vessel with the land-based arty fire.

4) give submarines a bombard capability against vessels; I am not sure if this can be implemented easily, but it would greatly increase their usefulness. Basically, I am talking about allowing submarines to torpedo enemy vessels. I would not allow subs to sink vessels, unless they engage in a non-bombard attack, though.

5) introduce modern naval warfare; this is what I miss from Civ3 VERY MUCH. I have always thought that the current implementation of modern naval air warfare has much to be desired...

Proposal:
5a) tie Carriers to Flight, not Mass Production.
5b) add a new unit called Naval Bomber (0/2/4-4/0/2). Lethal Bombardment against shipping, can be rebased to carriers. Comes with the Flight. Regains (full?) health if spending a whole turn aboard a carrier.
5c) add a new unit called Naval Fighter (4/2/4, no bombard); can be rebased to carriers, can be assigned recon and air superiority missions. Comes with Flight. Regains (full?) health if spending a whole turn aboard a carrier.
5d) prevent regular Bombers from being carried by carriers.
Note: I guess the regular Fighter might be used instead of my Naval Fighter, too.

My intention is to introduce aircraft capable of sinking ships, while not making Fighters/Bombers too powerful. My Naval Bomber (or Dive Bomber, or Torpedo Bomber) would be great against shipping, but vastly inferior to the regular Bomber in bombing raids aimed at land-based targets.

6) add Rebase option to modern (Destroyer+) vessels. Vessels could be rebased to cities with Harbour only. I think this might save us the tedium of moving a fresh new battleship manually around the whole continent, while not introducing "sea railroads" and disbalancing the game.

I know that many ideas of mine could be implemented with the editor. I apologize for that, but I have never played with it and frankly, I do not plan to. I prefer playing the vanilla game, just applying patches. It is pretty difficult to discuss strategies and get tips/help, if you are playing more or less a different game than all the others. My point of view only, though.

More ideas may be in the pipeline, but I have to do some real work now...

Cheers

[NeoStar]

Quite a few good ideas here

I also find it hard to find incoming transports. I'd like to see a 'patrol' system implemented to allow the ships to go up and down bombarding anything they see. Those extra buttons on the PTW screenshots have got me hoping...

And give them blitz...

And 1-2 more movement...

And AEGIS 3-4 range cause it has missiles...

That'll make them more important quicksmart

[Goret]

Hi To All

my 2 cents in this matter....

First of all, the navy system as done in CIV III is wrong from the start :
1) Naval Move proceeds like Ground Move : From the very beginning, a horse move almost as fast as a galley ....( ok double with the lighthouse !). At the End of the game with Roads and RR well, a tank may well go the whole world around, still the BB will move 5 or 6 hexes.
2) Can t make Armies or I should say, Task Force. You can t group naval units like you can with armies ( I know they are much discussed around here but any way, they are usefull )

The think is that naval moves should be treated differently from ground moves by using Naval Zones. Naval Zones would be a group of Hexes defining a Zone in which ships could go.
Each Ships could reach any number of naval zone : let s say a galley could move 3 Zones while a battleship would move 6 Zones.
If you divide the sea hexes in NZ ( Naval Zone) ,with on earth, let say, 3 zones in med or 5 in Atlantic from North Europe to East Coast, a galley could go from Spain to Lebanon in one turn and try to go acros atlantic in 2 turn with the risks to be sunk in the open water. You could also have coastal NZ or Open Water NZ for bonus purposes like Port forteresses or movement for galley.

The advantage of this system is that each time you move units in NZ others ships currently at war with you could try to intercept ( with advantges with Task Forces ).
Sub could intercept in adjacent Zones, carriers would drastically improve your naval ability etc...

Trade could be trace throught NZ which could be blockaded and so on....

No more could you sunk the IA's ships by using artilleries from land.... You would have to use Ships and planes!

In fact Naval units could be very usefull and long term investment to protect trade ( which is historical ) or simply to rules the Land by ruling the sea....

Well just my two cents anyway

[monkspider]

lol just imagine if Firaxis included a Coracle unit as sort of an inside joke. Wouldn't that just beat all?

[Ijuin]

I would like to see ships have a "naval superiority" option that acts like the Air Superiority mission. In essence, a ship assigned to Naval Superiority will automatically attack any enemy ship (enemy that you are at war with) that comes within its "operating range", which would be equal to its movement per turn (for example, a ship that moves five spaces per turn would have a range of five). The ship would automatically return to its original position after engaging the enemy ship, provided that it survived the encounter.

[RedBird]

One of the things I liked about CivII was the added defense of the Aegis against air units. This forced stacking.

You couldn't send carriers out alone because they were too weak against any other ship. And battleships were not sufficient to protect the carriers when cruise missiles were available (I liked Civ2's cruise missiles much better than CivIII's). You always had to have an Aegis in there to protect against cruise missiles, and yet the Aegis by itself was not sufficient because an enemy battleship could take you out if you didn't have a battleship. So you had to have a bit of everything in the square, and that tended to make it more realistic (like modern day task forces).

Certainly the lack of lethal bombardment has weakened the role of naval units in CivIII. In CivII I used my ships a lot to pick off units on the coastal squares. What's the point in CivIII. Unless it's part of a coordinated attack they'll just heal up.

PS: I like these ideas about trade routes. I've never played CtP so I'm not familiar with that system, but some of those ideas sound good. Having actual, drawn, trade routes (which could be interupted) would certainly give ships a significantly more important role.

PS2: while I don't so much like the idea of zones I do agree that it seems unrealistic that your tanks can cross your continent in a split second, but your ships take forever. Probably the best way to fix that though is to remove railroad movement as it is rather than changing ship movement.

[TheBirdMan]

-->RedBird

Try to play a CTP game - preferable with the MEDMOD4.13 from WesWhittaker.

Only real things missing there is the missing AI-abilities to invade from sea and to use a carrier as it should be used.

Oh yes - and then the AI can't find out to use nukes either. That is actually the only thing I miss in my CTP-games from my old CIVII days.

[Colonel D.]

Superb post, Vondrack! Your ideas would greatly enhance the naval game. I recently wrote an epistle in another forum on the whole naval issue, which I will try to recapture below.

Naval Movement:

I agree that this is really broken for precisely the reasons mentioned in the threads above. When a Panzer unit can move from one end of a continent to another and a battleship (BB) requires 10 turns to do the same, there is a severe disconnect between the scale of the ground and naval games.

One way to fix this would be to make ground movement more costly. For instance, it should cost movement points to entrain and more to detrain. While entrained, the moving ground unit would have 0 attack or bombardment capability. A "light" unit, such as infantry or riflemen would perhaps only cost 1 mp to entrain/detrain. Heavy units -- like mech or armor -- would pay a higher penalty.

Naval units could perhaps move faster (+2 mp) when in deep ocean squares. But, for reasons described below, I think this bonus should never apply to sailing or rowing vessels.

On the other hand, there should also be MORE movement restrictions in the early game. One of my biggest pet peeves with Civ 3 is that by the time I can build an explorer, I don't need him, because I already know the whole world. Triremes -- even with the LIGHTHOUSE WOW -- should NEVER be allowed in the deep ocean (even to move through) nor be allowed to stop in a sea square. Triremes should always have to end their turn in a coastal square (not merely to reflect their relative flimsiness in comparison with Caravels and Galleons, but to emulate the need for triremes to put ashore to replenish food and especially water for its large crew).

Ironclads would also be required to end their turns in coastal squares -- never being able to move into -- much less stop in -- a deep ocean square.

Naval Units and Aesthetics:

Whenever I see combat between a trireme and a battleship and the BB takes damage, I want to just turn off my computer and go mow the lawn or something! To fix this I think the game aesthetics would be dramatically enhanced if vessels "morphed" as each new era arrives. Thus, a trireme would morph into a galley in the middle ages, and into a gunboat in the industrial age, and perhaps a patrol boat in the modern age. The unit capability would remain the same -- to include movement restrictions -- but the image portrayed in the game would be much more palatible.

Aircraft Carriers (CVs) should move faster than BBs until nuclear propulsion is discovered. Moreover, CVs should (as was said in a thread above) be able to carry only naval aviation. I hate seeing the image of B-17s flying off the deck of my CVs.

Surface Naval Combat:

Ships which are damaged in combat need to suffer movement penalties as well as reduced combat strength. I hate it when I hammer an enemy BB down to its last hit point and it blithely sails over to one of my cities and destroys a city improvement and then glides away -- at full speed! The Civ 2 naval combat was better in this respect -- although I do like it better that sinking any one ship in a stack does not sink the entire stack as in Civ 2.

Continue to permit bombardment between ships -- but allow that bombardment to have a CHANCE of sinking the targeted vessel -- especially if a BB is bombarding a transport, ironclad, DD, or other smaller vessel. Close attack should also remain an option as is currently depicted in the game.

ASW

Submarines a very poorly depicted in the game. Firstly, only ASW vessels should be allowed to attack submarines. A moving BB, CA, transport (etc.) that bumps into an enemy sub should receive a spead of torpedoes for its effort. Moving DDs or other submarines, on the other hand, would be able to detect and attack an enemy submarine.

Here's how it would work. Submarines would only be able to attack or be attacked via bombardment. Thus, if a BB bumped into an enemy Sub (SS) then the BB would receive a bombardment attack. If a moving DD spotted a sub, it could ignore it or attack it by bombardment (I'd love it if Firaxis would depict this as a depth charge attack!)

A moving surface vessel that encountered a neutral SS would simply become aware the square is occupied and move around. (See below, however, for deep diving subs).

Moreover, submarines need to be further developed to depict the two basic types as well as emulate the differences between propulsion methods. The two types of subs are attack and ballistic missile (boomers). The two propulsion systems are: diesel and nuclear.

A diesel boat (SS) has to surface to recharge its batteries. Nuclear powerded subs (SSNs) rarely have to surface when on patrol. To emulate this in the game, I would have two depths a sub could move into when in the deep ocean squares.

Diesel subs would always have to remain at the shallowest depths (which I would depict by putting a sky-blue box around the sub icon -- the same color as is used for coastal squares). A sub at this depth would be vulnerable to any ASW vessel that detected it.

Nuclear subs would have the opportunity to dive deep when in a sea or deep ocean square. A deep-diving sub would be depicted with a dark blue square around its icon and this sub would be invisible to any vessel moving over it. I'm not sure how this would be programmed but perhaps the deep diving sub would be placed in a box off the map and the square it occupies would have a different color outline that only the owning player could see. At any rate, this would permit you to park nuclear powered boats where they are essentially invulnerable -- as in real life -- a HUGE advantage if you do this with your boomers (SSBNs).

Deep diving subs would not be entirely invulnerable, however. They could be found by a deep diving attack sub (SSN). If an SSN is deep -- having the dark blue square around its icon -- and it moves into a square where an enemy sub is hiding, then normal combat would occur. Note: I think sub-to-sub combat is the only time this should be an exchange of fire as is currently depicted in the game.

I'll end this here and write some more in a different post.

Colonel D.