Ship chaining

[DaveV]

Ship chain: a line of ships, spaced so that they can transport units across a stretch of water in a single turn. Picture a relay race, where each ship passes the unit to the next ship in line.

I've found ship chaining to be possible, but extremely frustrating, in Civ III. For example, trireme A, with two horsemen on board, moves its three spaces and ends its turn atop trireme B. I wake up the horsemen, then tell them to load. Fine for the first horse, but the second asks me which trireme it should board, giving me the choice between two triremes, each of which already has one passenger. Since there's no home city (alas, Civ 2, I knew you well!), I have no way of distinguishing between the triremes and am reduced to guessing. And I inevitably guess wrong. What used to take a few seconds in Civ 2 now takes several minutes of stumbling and false starts, until I finally achieve what I want through sheer luck.

There's gotta be a better way. Enlighten me, o great ones!

[Willem]

Well I haven't tried it, but in Civ II I used to be able to pull up alongside another Transport and pass the units across to it. Is that no longer possible?

[DaveV]

Willem - probably, but in Civ 2 (and, most likely, in Civ 3) that transfer from ship to ship would use up the unit's movement. If you want to ride more than two ships, or have movement left when you reach your goal, you have to engineer the transfer without moving the ground unit.

[Unregistered]

Humm. I consider this an exploit & wouldn't do this one myself, but...

Anyway, they way around your problem is to use the right click. Observe the position of the transports in the list. They will be listed in that same order in the list you get when your unit asks you which transport to board. For example, I right-click on the stack & see that the transport I've just moved that has zero moves left is listed ahead of the transport with five moves left. Now wake your unit & tell it to load. Double-click on the second of the two transports listed. This should load it on the correct ship. Btw, I don't think the position of the ships on the list changes, so whichever one you load the first unit into (as you noticed, for the first unit it's easy) should be the one you continue to load into for all the following units.

Hope that helps,

[Marquis de Sodaq]

DaveV, I've never missed when I ship chain. I've always chosen the second ship listed as the new one to load into. Either I've been very lucky, or the ship that already moved is always listed first.

Yes, moving from a ship to a ship on another tile uses up the movement point of the unit. End of move.

[barefootbadass]

I thought about this the other day, but assumed it wasn't since it was such a well known 'feature' of civ 2. I wouldn't call it a exploit, you still have to have two ships for each 3-5(depending on ship movement) tiles you want to be able to move if you want to transport a full load of troops every turn. If you are using caravels to cross 21 squares from one of your coastal cities and land on the enemy continent in one turn, that's 7 caravels(I think) to get 3 across every other turn and 14 if you want them arriving every turn.

[Worthingtons]

Hmm, Interesting discussion here, But people can move units half way the globe with Railways, I'll bet that the ship price involved at least equals the cost of a line of railway the same stretch.

[Unregistered]

I think the Marquis is right about the last ship moved being the first in the list. Hadn't noticed that before. Makes sense though, it does appear to be a stack implementation.

Good point about the railroads v ship chain. I guess my test for exploitation is, does the ai do it? If not, then I tend to think of it as an exploit. Doesn't mean I won't sometimes do it.

[barefootbadass]

Originally posted by Unregistered
Good point about the railroads v ship chain. I guess my test for exploitation is, does the ai do it? If not, then I tend to think of it as an exploit. Doesn't mean I won't sometimes do it.

I haven't seen it do this, although it does tend to keep the seas busy shuffling units around with transport/ironclad combo, although the beauty of the chain is that your units can cross the sea and get off of the vulnerable transports without having to spend an ai turn in them.

[Skanky Burns]

Im not so sure about the list ordering, in my experience that hasn't been the case, although I was testing with land-stacks.

But regardless, one very easy way to never miss with ship-chaining would be to alternate the ship types. Have a caravel as the first link, then galleon, then caravel, then galleon, then....

That way each ship wil have a different name.

[nickersonm]

Sounds like a Battletech Command Circut.

[Blaupanzer]

Last unit to enter the square will be on top when the list is accessed immediately after that move in that same turn. Useful info in several situations, but not applicable beyond that period. Land/air units reorder when the next one moves anywhere. The two ships can be told apart that way.

I've never seen any evidence that the AIs do any at-sea unit transfers.

[barefootbadass]

I tried this this afternoon to be able to move a force quickly across about 15 squares of ocean(one was a land square on a narrow island that I put a city on just so my ships could avoid going around). It works very well, using 11 caravels 3 units cross per turn.

Anyway, there is a decent amount of micromanagement to it, but once you figure out where the units are in the queue, its always the same. Basically your ship arrives on trade-off square. And then you wake up the units in it and load them onto the bottom one on the list. Then that one moves on and the middle one moves back where the first one came from so you are ready to do it next turn. Two boats at each 'node' with the last node being next to your landing point, and one in the city they are embarking from.

[Sharkyy]

If the AI doesn't do this, at the very least it should be part of the game.... maybe a nice patch?.... this is the most realistic way to improve transport time in the game- whereas it takes up to 10 turns to transport units accross the world in CivIII, it took the U.S. about 2 months or so after September 11th, why not add that level of realism to the game?

Not only that, but the strategic aspects of the change would be staggering. Navies would need to be larger and more diverse, you could win a war with reasonable naval tactics as opposed to something closer to blind luck in trying to find their convoys in the current system. Finding your opponent's troop-shipping lanes would be vital to winning an intercontinental war, and defense of your own lines would be nearly as important.... a great idea, i think.

And if the AI does this now, how exactly would one be able to confirm that? In most games i've played, the AI hasn't been in the tech/econ/militarily hegemonic position necessary to attempt a long-range chain of transports and costly defense units.

[Dida]

it take the USA 2 months to calm down and plan out the attack. The transportation part take less than a week.