Unrealistic Water Crossings

I have noticed something in EB that is unrealistic and bothers me. Its the ability of land units to cross water to get to islands, for example, from Italy to Sicily or vice versa. So why was this not allowed in vanilla rtw but allowed in EB? Since the goal of the EB2 team is to be as realistic as possible then I hope this wont be allowed in EB2.

Its unrealistic because the soldiers certainly didn't swim 2 and a half miles (the shortest distance between Italy and Sicily in the Strait of messina). So the most realistic thing would be to build ships to transport troops. Same goes for Bosporus and Dardanelles straits in Asia Minor, (even though the distances arent as long as compared to strait of messina, there are bridges there now and for a reason).

The reason i don't like this is because and island that can only be reached by ships is invaded by armies that have magical horses that can swim long distances and are composed of Olympic swimmers. So please, please take this unrealistic feature away from EB2.

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Originally Posted by Newstone

So why was this not allowed in vanilla rtw but allowed in EB?

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It was in vanilla rtw. They are called landbridges and are available in all TW games (afaik).

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Its unrealistic because the soldiers certainly didn't swim 2 and a half miles (the shortest distance between Italy and Sicily in the Strait of messina).

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True.

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So the most realistic thing would be to build ships to transport troops.

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Or commandeering local vessels (fishing ships, trading ships) to ferry troops across the short distance. This wouldn't work for long distances (as the time for each trip would make the journey for the whole army take too long), but works fine over short distances.

Landbridges will be reappearing in EBII as they are entirely realistic representations of armies using local resources to overcome relatively small obstacles.

Foot

Yeah I really don't have a problem with them, I just imagine that my soldiers used local ships like Foot said. If there was a 'bridge' across the English channel in this time period, that would be pretty unrealistic, but across the Straits of Messina, or the Sea of Marmara between Thrace and Asia Minor, then I don't see a problem.

And if you are defending the island or wherever the bridge is, you can block it with a naval fleet. I'd be irritated if you couldn't block it and these fishing boats were able to somehow cross a blockaded area, but since that's not the case I really don't see a problem once again. I do think the crossing between Ireland and Scotland in EB might be stretching it a little, but for game play purposes it makes sense because Casse really needs all the help they can get. Their roster isn't really as good as the mainland Celts until later, and on top of it they have a habit of sitting on their hands for the first hundred years.

Ancients even used bridges made of ships, so in a sense they did walk on water ^^

I'm a huge fan of the landbridges. I'm glad to see they will be appearing once more in EBII!

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Originally Posted by CashMunny

Yeah I really don't have a problem with them, I just imagine that my soldiers used local ships like Foot said. If there was a 'bridge' across the English channel in this time period, that would be pretty unrealistic, but across the Straits of Messina, or the Sea of Marmara between Thrace and Asia Minor, then I don't see a problem.

And if you are defending the island or wherever the bridge is, you can block it with a naval fleet. I'd be irritated if you couldn't block it and these fishing boats were able to somehow cross a blockaded area, but since that's not the case I really don't see a problem once again. I do think the crossing between Ireland and Scotland in EB might be stretching it a little, but for game play purposes it makes sense because Casse really needs all the help they can get. Their roster isn't really as good as the mainland Celts until later, and on top of it they have a habit of sitting on their hands for the first hundred years.

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Actually, I dont think that you can block them; it's not impossible, just very difficult. I was playing as the Carthies a few month back and after securing Sicily I attempted to block the strait with a fleet. Unfortunately, The Romans kept besieging Rhegion and kept losing and for some reason the AI decided to withdraw the surviviers to Sicily so small stacks of depleted units kept 'washing up' despite the fact that I had a barrier of ships in place!

Exactly, that's the only problem I had with the landbridges in EB. I hope they will fix this for EBII.

In EB they had to be "diagonal" to work, in M2TW there are some green arrows and ships can stand on them, so should be ok...

Yep, i had a problem with them until I realized that it was a representation of the units using local resources to go very small distances. no reason to build a fighting ship unit to go 5 miles, so the army constructs quick flotillas

The green arrow landbridges can be blocked, which is why we will use them .

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Originally Posted by Foot

It was in vanilla rtw. They are called landbridges and are available in all TW games (afaik).

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What? I'm quite sure there were no landbridges in RTW Vanilla the last time I played it. I know I was surprised to see them in EB.

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Originally Posted by Rahl

What? I'm quite sure there were no landbridges in RTW Vanilla the last time I played it.

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Yes, R:TW is the only TW game that does not have landbridges.

Those M2TW landbridges can be blocked with both fleets and armies. Parking just one unit to one end of the landbridge will stop a full stack army crossing it. That's why I like them there!

Well if you can block "land bridges" in EB2 thats not a problem for me any more, thanks for the help.

The real problem that bothers me is that a full stack army should be able to embark onto a smallest vessel and carried across the Mediterranean.
Hope it's possible to restrict it to something like one unit of troop per ship, but I fear it might be impossible though.

Well, I always imagined that those "ships" are abstractions for entire fleets.

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Originally Posted by Delta146

Well, I always imagined that those "ships" are abstractions for entire fleets.

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Or the tall dude is an abstraction for entire armies.

~Jirisys ()

Well, I meant more in that each ship that you can recruit is actually a little fleet, which is kind of how EB did things anyway since they call them fleets rather than ships.

Yeah each ship represents several. Rome had hundreds of individual ships at various points in its wars. Would be weird to be required to build each one in the game. In my campaigns building 20-30 "fleets" is a huge naval presence and can be quite costly to achieve. I actually think the costs of most ships initially should be raised but upkeep lowered as regular maintaining wasn't incredibly expensive then but launching and the occasional refits were. Since a small fleet of quiremes costing less than a couple unit of peltasts seems unreasonable.

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Originally Posted by Ichon

Yeah each ship represents several. Rome had hundreds of individual ships at various points in its wars. Would be weird to be required to build each one in the game. In my campaigns building 20-30 "fleets" is a huge naval presence and can be quite costly to achieve. I actually think the costs of most ships initially should be raised but upkeep lowered as regular maintaining wasn't incredibly expensive then but launching and the occasional refits were. Since a small fleet of quiremes costing less than a couple unit of peltasts seems unreasonable.

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Nevermind the ship itself. What of the crew?

~Jirisys ()

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Originally Posted by jirisys

Nevermind the ship itself. What of the crew?

~Jirisys ()

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Well, the majority of the crew would be slaves. But the marines certainly would have to be paid...a lot.:laugh4:

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Originally Posted by Populus Romanus

Well, the majority of the crew would be slaves. But the marines certainly would have to be paid...a lot.:laugh4:

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The actual cost of hiring/paying the marines/crew and the fleet itself=price, paying for repairs and the stuff and pay for the marines/crew=upkeep, hiring and replacing downed ships and crew/marines=retrain

~Jirisys ()

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Originally Posted by Ichon

I actually think the costs of most ships initially should be raised but upkeep lowered as regular maintaining wasn't incredibly expensive then but launching and the occasional refits were. Since a small fleet of quiremes costing less than a couple unit of peltasts seems unreasonable.

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From our internal forums:

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It's true that building a ship was expensive, but the cost of paying the crew was even more so. The ancient sources indicate the cost of building a trireme was about a talent, and outfitting the vessel cost another talent. Paying the crew cost about a talent per month. So the maintenance cost for a full year was 6 times the expense of construction and outfitting. Even if the vessel was crewed for only half the year it would have been 3 times more expensive to crew than to construct. In practise, the Athenians crewed only as many vessels as they felt they needed and kept large numbers of uncrewed ships in reserve. In an emergency, the reserve vessels were re-outfitted and manned.

While large mediterranean states maintained standing fleets, these tended to be small compared to the fleets they built in wartime.

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Foot

Well I don't know that much about Athenian vs Roman navy but my 1 impression was that Athenian and most Greek states were crewed by free men while the Romans used slaves. That might be a wrong impression but it would change the cost of labor I'd guess.

Also sailor was a respected occupation among Greeks- not as much among Romans. Though if all the factions share ship types it wouldn't make sense to have different costs anyway.

I've read that typical wages for a middle class Hoplite were 40 drachmas a month? And its roughly 6,000 drachmas per talent? So 1 talent would pay 150 men for a month. So if a single trireme cost 2 talents and we figure a ship/fleet represents 10 ships then 20 talents to build- another 1 talent for repairs per ship over 6 months and crew of 200 per ship upkeep would be 90 talents for 6 months.

Since we can't disband the crew when ship not in use in the game I figure half that is fair since in a 6 month period of the ship in service it might actually only be at sea for 3 months. Depending on conversion to game currencies then roughly that could be 1,000 build cost and 2,250 upkeep for a single "fleet" of tiremes. Seems a bit much unless the economy is radically altered so maybe half that? 500 build cost and 1,125 upkeep?

If it were a Roman ship and slaves were prisoners of war or criminals whose cost was quite cheap would wages be half or even 1/3 of a Greek ship? Although the initial Roman fleets used free sailors so the cost would have been equivalent.

Anyway- after looking into it I am convinced that most times the upkeep cost would be more than the initial construction costs by a large factor- my impression originally was based on thinking most of the crew other than officers and marines were slaves.

slaves were used in ships but not in warships i believe at least until the imperial era romans used citizens or auxilia to row the warships since it demanded alot of training and willingness i mean many pirate groups where more powerfull then kings at given times and those pirates gave caesar and pompey a thriumph each so using slaves in warships seems counterproductive

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I've read that typical wages for a middle class Hoplite were 40 drachmas a month?

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while Petekonter and smaller ships were often rowed by zeugites or even hippeis(ok just in fairytales^^) Trireres and above were rowed by the lower classes which consequently demanded less wager. still this is ONLY Athens not Sparta, not Rhodos and not the seleucid empire of which I do not know if they used slaves or citizens.

Well I thought for Athens the different classes all rowed... maybe on different oar banks but- lots of differences in wages could make a large impact though over a 6 month period. I can't imagine the team will make many different ship types for each culture as that could take many unit slots. Not that naval combat and navies weren't important- they were decisive in many campaigns but the auto battles in MTW2 removes much of the impact of special units per faction. So I'd guess they will settle from some representational average. Probably with upkeep tilted a bit more than construction costs as even slaves had some cost and not everyone on the ship were slaves.

I was just pointing out this one because I think the rest is somewhat correct, afterall depending on ship you also have marines/soldiers, officers, sailors and occasionally specialists in varying number it's not just a chunk of 150 Hoplites. wikipedia says:
170 rowers
10-20 sailors and officers
10 soldiers(they say archers and Hoplites tho it is not clear if those were Psiloi or hoplites with a bow ;) )

As Foot pointed out earlier, the crossable land bridges represent the ability of armies to utilize local trade and fishing fleets to cross short distances. However, the recruitment of mercenary ships also could represent this exact same type of event, but with less restriction and more flexibility. With that in mind, is it really necessary to have land bridges? Mercenary ships appear to be an altogether superior solution to the same problem.

naaahhh, It's something completely different to press some fishermen and merchants to get your Huge Army over the strait of messina than to mobilize a large contingent of seaworthy transport ships to traverse "open" waters(remember when crossing a short distance ships can be reused and are only borrowed for some days). An action like that would also have a large impact on local sea trade.

Plus Landbridges are also availible for Diplomats Spies etc. who would have used local transports for a few Drachma rather than waiting for a friendly fleet to come by.

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Originally Posted by Ca Putt

naaahhh, It's something completely different to press some fishermen and merchants to get your Huge Army over the strait of messina than to mobilize a large contingent of seaworthy transport ships to traverse "open" waters(remember when crossing a short distance ships can be reused and are only borrowed for some days). An action like that would also have a large impact on local sea trade.

Plus Landbridges are also availible for Diplomats Spies etc. who would have used local transports for a few Drachma rather than waiting for a friendly fleet to come by.

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Indeed, and once said area is no longer a frontier, I would imagine ferries would exist to take people across short sea straits. I wouldnt be happy if I had to recruit a fleet every time my family member needed to get from Syracuse to Rome in time for the next elections or to start his edcation. (Although Im only slightly less unhappy about doing that if he were the governor (or son of) for Africa or Hispania Inferior, but thats another debate...)

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Originally Posted by Ichon

my 1 impression was that Athenian and most Greek states were crewed by free men while the Romans used slaves.

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That's a misconception. During most of our time period, Roman warships were crewed by proletarii - citizens who did not have enough wealth to qualify for service in the army (Polybios 6.19). The Roman navy also used vessels supplied by the allied greek city states of Magna Graecia. These vessels would hae been crewed by free greeks.