View Full Version : Creative Assembly ships and shipping
Ships and Shipping
1. they give you a glimpse of what is in another factions provinces,
sometimes you can "read" the units in the army stacks, and the buildings,
sometimes you can't - figured this out, finaly, It has to do with naval superiority in a sea region - see further down in this thread
2. they protect your shores from seaborne invasion, if you have ships in all the sea regions adjacent to a province you cannot be invaded from sea.
3. they allow you to conduct sea invasions,
providing the enemy player has no ships guarding his shoreline
note:- you need a port in the originating province only!
4. they stop pirates raiding your merchant fleet
- if you have no warships in a sea area your merchant fleet won't go there! = no trade!
5. if you are at war your ships can interrupt troop redeployments by the AI attempting to use port to port movement,
6. if you are at war, your ships can interrupt trade flow through a sea region - this last one really annoys me, it does not matter how heavily you outnumber the enemy fleet, your trade is cut. Full Stop.
If it's a catholic faction, and you are a catholic faction the pope WILL chuck a wobbly when you sink enemy ships,
This is a PAIN, the English used to "privateer" (fly a black flag) to sink shipping and interupt trade without being able to be blamed for it.
and if you sink a ship at sea who is really going to know WHO sunk it?
A Fix?
If you outnumber the enemy fleet your trade should still get through, at least a percentage of it, based on how much you can outnumber the blockading fleet.
[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 09-26-2002).]
Hosakawa Tito
09-26-2002, 03:55
I especially agree with your last statement barocca, one little enemy ship should not stop all your trade. Also be aware that an enemy can still sneak attack you by sea, your blockade won't take affect till after the attack. Hasn't happened to me yet, but I've, ahem, pulled it on the Spanish and Egyptians hehe. I can't wait for the patch to fix the problem with the Caravel not being able to go into deep water. Makes trading and attacking in the Med a real pain for everyone but the Muslim factions.
The Pope can be a busy body about "accidents" at sea. Playing as the English, I made a massive Naval attack on the fledgling French Navy. I wiped them out in one turn, sunk about 6 ships. The Pope warned me to stop and I did. French Navy ? What French Navy my dear Pope ? hehehe
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Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell so that they look forward to making the trip.
I'd also really like some level of tactical combat for the navy. I mean, I spend thousands on my fleet, and then all I get when it fights are little pop-ups with casualties listed.
It really wouldn't be THAT hard to modify the battle system to do medeival fleets; hell even 1:1 flagship battles like in Centurion would be fun.
As it is I feel kinda cheated when I throw 20 ships at a Byzantine fleet of 12 around Constantinople and only get numbers for victory.
The Black Ship
09-26-2002, 04:42
Have you noticed certain seas are nearly impossible to clear? I was trying for 20 years to sink the Egyptians camped out in the Tyrrheian Sea..not once did my forces actually engage the enemy. There must be some random number generator concerning engagements...but 20 years!!!
Well, I'm not sure if it's the sea or the ship, but I spent damn near half a century trying to get rid of a Byzantine Dromon flitting back and forth along the Egyptian coast. I actually exterminated them in the end JUST to get rid of that ship.
In the campaign game I'm coming to see the naval aspect as that most in need of a fix. It's such a massive part of my strategies, but it feels like an after thought tacked onto the game.
Which is too bad, because if it were more developed it could be so cool.
I mean I just finished a MASSIVE naval beatdown. I figure over the course of the past five years over fifty ships must have been sunk in the struggle between myself (England) and Byzantium for the Med.
The actual land battles were a footnote, skirmishes between my encircled garrisons and the small Byzantine army, followed by a crushing series of overwhelming blows as the sea clared and my main armies from France made their landings, first in Italy, then Greece and the the Middle East.
The war was won, and lost, at sea; yet for such a vast conflict it felt rather. . . hollow.
Being able to examine another factions lands is based on naval superiority!
If you have more ships in a region than they do you can "spy" on their territory and armies!
Which means the game can recognise naval superiority,
so allowing a percentage of trade past an attempted blockade where you have superiority should be possible!
Lets just hope they've thought of this for the patch...
With single ships break your fleet into a ton of singles, and eventually an engaement will occur - eventually,
We need to be able to target an enemy ship and have the fleet actually chase it down across sea regions,
being able to task an attack from neighbouring regions should also be possible, with a greater chance of interception should the enemy fleet try to jump into the chasers originating region!
In such a case The Popup regarding attacks needs to remind the player that should the enemy fleet move into another sea region the Players fleet will pursue it,
just so the Player doesn't get all bent out of shape when they accidently cut their own trade route because they tasked their entire fleet to chase...
BertrandDuGuesclin
09-26-2002, 13:30
Quote Originally posted by barocca:
Ships and Shipping
6. if you are at war, your ships can interrupt trade flow through a sea region - this last one really annoys me, it does not matter how heavily you outnumber the enemy fleet, your trade is cut. Full Stop.
If it's a catholic faction, and you are a catholic faction the pope WILL chuck a wobbly when you sink enemy ships,
This is a PAIN, the English used to "privateer" (fly a black flag) to sink shipping and interupt trade without being able to be blamed for it.
[This message has been edited by barocca (edited 09-26-2002).][/QUOTE]
The English jst gave some sort of 'licence' to pirates to attack trading ships which belonged to a faction with which they were at war. They also provided them with safe ports and in exchange for this they got back a part of the profit. However they didn't do this too appealing I read a number of examples of pirateers who felt out of favour with the Enlish and had to flee elswhere due to the English being put under pressure.
Maybe we can include this 'licence' system?
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http://ecole.sables.free.fr/Personnage/Duguesclin/duguesclin6.jpg
connétable de France
né à La Motte-Bröons (Côtes d'Armor) vers 1320,
mort en 1380 à Chateauneuf de Randon (Lozère).
Hosakawa Tito
09-26-2002, 19:08
I believe it was called Letters of Marquis. If a privateer was caught by the English and couldn't produce zee papers, they were strung up. And communication being so slow sometimes the unlucky privateer attacked a former enemy nation that England had made a peace treaty with, causing an international incident. The offending privateer was then an outlaw and executed if caught.
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Diplomacy is the art of telling someone to go to hell so that they look forward to making the trip.
GilJaysmith
09-26-2002, 19:15
Quote Originally posted by IXJac:
It really wouldn't be THAT hard to modify the battle system to do medeival fleets; hell even 1:1 flagship battles like in Centurion would be fun.
[/QUOTE]
Why does everyone seem to think that it wouldn't be hard to do this?
Our estimates ran at a minimum of six man-months of work, which would then require lots of testing and balancing to produce something which you wouldn't be sneering at as being primitive, "why did you waste your time doing something so crap", etc etc ;-)
Gil ~ CA
[This message has been edited by GilJaysmith (edited 09-26-2002).]
Gregoshi
09-26-2002, 20:00
Definition:
"Easy" - commonly used to describe any task which you personally don't have to perform.
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Gregoshi
A Member of Clan Doragon
[This message has been edited by Gregoshi (edited 09-26-2002).]
Kernel Panic
09-26-2002, 20:20
I do sympathise GilJaysmith.
Its all to easy to under-estimate the complexity of a "simple" code change.
You could go open-source and let us do it for you ;-)
Quote Originally posted by GilJaysmith:
Why does everyone seem to think that it wouldn't be hard to do this?
Our estimates ran at a minimum of six man-months of work, which would then require lots of testing and balancing to produce something which you wouldn't be sneering at as being primitive, "why did you waste your time doing something so crap", etc etc ;-)
Gil ~ CA
[/QUOTE]
Well, I'd pay for it if you ever do do the work and produce it as an expansion. Watching a dozen galleys burn off the Golden Horn is worth fifty of my dollars.
But I suppose I'm thinking of it from the perspective of non-professional mods.
[This message has been edited by IXJac (edited 09-26-2002).]
Gregoshi
09-27-2002, 09:00
Back to Barocca's original items, number 6 in particular. Is there a reason why one ship can effect a blockade against two or more ships? Shouldn't the smaller fleet have its trade routes blocked while the large fleet has (partly?) open trade routes? I know, a bigger fleet doesn't mean a better fleet.
For purposes of discussion, could ships be treated like special agents with missions? "Attack" (already in game), "Protect Shipping" (to keep trade routes open), "Raid Shipping" (to disrupt enemy shipping). Like a spy defaults to "spying/counter spying" when not assigned a task, the ships could default to "Protect Shipping".
The above is probably non-sense, I'm just trying to spark a little discussion.
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Gregoshi
A Member of Clan Doragon
Swisspike
09-27-2002, 12:39
Gregoshi, I think your ideas have merit.
I like the idea of different missions for your fleets.
In a war, I want to destroy the other country economically, while attempting to maintain my own fleet.
If I have 6 ships in an area, it is for a reason. I would like to have the ability to use 2 to protect my merchants, and the rest to disrupt his.
The English made a career out of this for centuries.
ToranagaSama
10-07-2002, 10:15
GiljaySmith,
"...something which you wouldn't be sneering at as being primitive...."
Just throwing out thoughts, there's primitive and then there's primitive.
Hoping this might make it "simpler" (which is different than easy), how about, as a model, taking a look at Total Annihilation's "sea battle" engine.
For one, its not "3D" so that should cut the modeling.
For two, its damn good! with NICE effects and with all things considered something closely approximiating that should be QUITE satisfactory for the community.
I could be wrong, but has anyone done sea battles with such "game" qualities; or graphic quality for that matter.
Wonder if it would be possible to "aquire" the rights to the engine.
MajorFreak
10-07-2002, 12:51
wow. six-man-months? wooooooeeeeeeee. ah well, maybe for next version. (sure would love a more detailed diplomacy subgame as well while yer at it)
*g*
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