Naval Battles

[orwell]

I posted this on the RTR forums as well, I figured asking two communities would be better than one.

How were naval battles actually fought during this time? Ram each other? Would it be a battle on the decks of the ship by those commanding it? A combination of both?

Also, would it be possible to make naval battles become like massive land battles? Generate a custom tile, or flat blue colored tile where the battle takes place, and the ships are treated like giant calvary/elephant battles? If it was across the ship, would it be possible to generate a tile with the layout of the ships and stats on the ships being the units you get to fight the battle with? Depending on how many ship types there are such as in the naval mod this might become a big problem, but, since naval battles themselves were a smaller aspect during this time period with, from what I understand the main purpose being trading and troop movement, might those represented be much simpler ships representing either a barbaric, eastern, greek style that are upgraded the same as a unit is? Maybe have the tile remain the same for certain factions and simply have different ships producing different stats while on the naval battle field? Would it be possible to treat them as modded siege equipment, with greek fire, ramming, and a corvus possibly?

Or is this all a flight of fancy and the ultimate answer is stuff like this is either hardcoded, the responder doesn't want to get into the hard details of doing something like this, or has my attempts at understanding modding have left me confused with this stuff just being out and out impossible.

[oudysseos]

I aint no modder but I posted something like this on the RTR forum a year ago and I was told that the main problem is that there's no way to represent the movement of ships on the water which is also moving. Scale is a problem as well.

[QwertyMIDX]

I'm pretty sure it's all hardcoded, but I'll let a more serious techie answer that.

As to the historical question, most ships in the Mediterranean (you'll have to ask Ran about Celtic ships) were designed for ramming, the Romans perfered boarding battles though and created a bunch of gadgets to allow they to board enemy ships (you can check out Polybius is you want to read about it, it starts at 1.22).

[Ludens]

A long time ago General Sun showed a couple of screenshots (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=20358) featuring naval battles in his newsletter. While they do look R:TW, I cannot vouch for the gameplay. It was the last I ever heard about it, so I don't suppose it was a huge success. It takes more to create good naval battles than just turning the chariots into ships.

[oudysseos]

Ya know an animation of a naval battle (a short one that is) would be fun. It still wouldn't be playable or anything but it might relieve the tedium.

[O'ETAIPOS]

In the early period (till about VIIIth century) ships were used mainly as troop transport.

Later ramming tactics were developed inclining change in ship construction. Mediteranian ships were primarly constructed for ramming.

At first it was just few ships trying to ram each other, but later special tactics were developed. Most famous was diekplus: ships are moving head on, when close, ship using this manevruer is making sharp turn trying to hit middle of enemy ship. It was extremely difficult and needed well trained oarsmen as the turn was to be done on extremely thight space.

Archers and javelineers were used to engage enemy before contact, and small groups of heavy infantry were to protect ships.

Romans started boarding tactic because they didn't have trained oarsmen or skilled sailors, roman ships were usually inferior to those of theyre opponents so only chance was to use well trained heavy infantry and use them in large quantities to capture enemy ships.

[cunctator]

Another interessting way to fight a naval battle was shown at Actium. Antonius had constructed a fleet of high, heavy ships, from quadriremes up to deceres,to counter the boarding tactics that were responsible for the victory of Octavians fleet over Sextus Pompeius navy. In the battle they mainly acted as artillery plattforms, while Octavians amoured, smaller, faster and more nimble ships now executed ramming attacks.


From Cassius Dio book 50:


32 So they engaged and began the conflict, each side indulging in a great deal of exhortation to its own men in order to call forth the skill and zeal of the fighters, and also hearing many orders shouted out to them from the men on shore. 2The struggle was not of a similar nature on the two sides, but Caesar's followers, having smaller and swifter ships, would dash forward and ram the enemy, being armoured on all sides to avoid receiving damage. If they sank a vessel, well and good; if not, they would back water before coming to grips, 3and would either ram the same vessels suddenly again, or would let those go and turn their attention to others; and having done some damage to these also, so far as they could in a brief time, they would proceed against others and then against still others, in order that their assault upon any vessel might be so far as possible unexpected. 4For since they dreaded the long-range missiles of the enemy no less than their fighting at close quarters, they wasted no time either in the approach or in the encounter, but running up suddenly so as to reach their object before the enemy's archers could get in their work, they would inflict injuries or else cause just enough disturbance to escape being held, and then would retire out of range. 5The enemy, on the other hand, tried to hit the approaching ships with dense showers of stones and arrows, and to cast iron grapnels upon their assailants. 6And in case they could reach them they got the better of it, but if they missed, their own boats would be pierced and would sink, or else in their endeavour to avoid this calamity they would waste time and lay themselves more open to attack by other ships; for two or three ships would fall at one time upon the same ship, some doing all the damage they could while the others took the brunt of the injuries. 7On the one side the pilots and the rowers endured the most hardship and fatigue, and on the other side the marines; and the one side resembled cavalry, now making a charge and now retreating, since it was in their power to attack and back off at will, and the others were like heavy-armed troops guarding against the approach of foes and trying their best to hold them. 8Consequently each gained advantages over the other; the one party would run in upon the lines of oars projecting from the ships and shatter the blades, and the other party, fighting from the higher level, would sink them with stones and engines. On the other hand, there were also disadvantages on each side: the one party could do no damage to the enemy when it approached, and the other party, if in any case it failed to sink a vessel which it rammed, was hemmed in no longer fought an equal contest.

[orwell]

Thank you for the information concerning how they fought. An animation would be interesting, but I'm not sure how'd you go about making one either like in shogun, or the opening of RTR featuring a actual battle since there's nothing currently there. Making them like calvary or another unit is one way, though I don't know if that would be worthwhile. The idea of it being similar to a siege battle I'd like to pursue instead, since I feel it would better represent the differences in combat. The romans would have a corvus so that they could get close and board, while celtic ships have a ram that would batter the roman ships, taking damage as a siege device would. Instead of ships just being something you can recruit by building the proper infrastructure, use a timber resource to determine your building points allotted, possibly with a very small base number that can be expanded each turn to represent the ability to import wood from other regions as I understand was done by the Egyptians/Ptolemiacs. Possibly apply this to all sieges in general, I somehow doubt that huge wooden constructions were used in sieges in the desert.

Could any modder give their thoughts on this? Something to be explored, or is it just out and out impossible.

[Keba]

I know there was a group making a Naval Battles mod over at SCC. It sort of faded into the past, things were sounding optimistic, and the mod dissapeared some time later.

Naval battles are possible, but they do not look good. For one, it requires changing the texture of the ground to be blue (and no matter how hard you try, it looks ugly), the ships are designated as chariots to the game. Unfortunately, they also act like chariots, executing those funny turns and other erratic behaviour. Also, it would require a lot of model space to make naval battles possible (models for the crew, the ships themselves, many, many kinds of ships). Plus, I'm not sure the engine could handle very complex ship models.

The corvus would be impossible to make, ships armed with ballistae and archers can only use one (as the engine supports only one ranged attack per chariot). The idea with siege engines is also not very feasible (you could either make a ship a ram or a siege tower, not both, plus, on the land, all rams and siege towers would suddenly become ships).

[We all need someone]

This is somewhat unrelated, but I had a nice brainstorm. How about a unique local naval unit for the Venetii? Eh??? Take 'em over as Aedui or Arverni, and ye gets Venetii shipbuilding prowess?? Because the Baugadaus(or whatever) are lame.

[oscar.k]

oke hear is a idea when whewil make naval battels how its most luke like

[oudysseos]

If real time naval battles aren't possible under the current architecture, is it possible to modify the current naval battle method a little? What I mean to say is can more variables be introduced into the current 'Risk' style battles? There wouldn't be any little pentaconters rowing around the screen, but could we mod a little more control over the situation, before the auto-resolve?

[O'ETAIPOS]

What do you mean exactly?

[oudysseos]

Not sure what's possible- it just occured to me that if we can't have actual battles, there may still be some way to improve the current system. It often seems kinda random to me. I haven't gotten terribly deep into a campaign in EB yet (waiting for the patch- god now I know what a junkie feels like), but I had several long-running campaigns under various versions and sub-mods of RTR and establishing naval supremacy was never very hard. A full stack (or even a half stack) always seemed to do the trick, so it seems that numbers are the main determinant in the auto-resolve.
What I'm suggesting/asking is, is there any way to change that?
Can we work within the auto-resove framework and still improve the realism? Can any of the traits/ancillaries apply to navy Admirals?
Could we have 'Naval Reform' events that improve naval performance?
More storms, more random disasters (your/the A.I.'s ships struck a reef and went down with all hands, how sad).
It is possible to prevent ships from remaining out at sea indefinitely?
These are some brainstorms only. Another idea is could a mini-game from another source be ported into EB? There are some ship-combat games (Sid Meier's Pirates, e.g.). Is there something in the public domain (~:joker: ) that could be used to create even an arcade-style ship game? Maybe that's not a very good solution.
Anyways, Ni dhéanfaidh an saol capall ráis d’asal as we say in Irish. You can't make a racehorse out of a donkey.

[QwertyMIDX]

This is somewhat unrelated, but I had a nice brainstorm. How about a unique local naval unit for the Venetii? Eh??? Take 'em over as Aedui or Arverni, and ye gets Venetii shipbuilding prowess?? Because the Baugadaus(or whatever) are lame.


Already exists.