Ships

[O'ETAIPOS]

How do you like ships in current (0.74) version of EB?

Any questions, balancing problems?

Please report here.

[paullus]

I haven't gotten into many sea battles, but I like that I can build a ship in a couple of turns without breaking the bank, just to transport a ruler or reinforcements to an oversea region, and then I can get rid of it. But sorry, no comments on the balancing for sea battle.

[counterfeit]

i played for about 100 yrs with carthage,greeks,epirus n macedon and only sea warfare i encounter was @ begining (starting fleets) but after there's only few ships around.
So if u can increase the sea importance and naval warfare will be ok.

[Sdragon]

Just wondering, is it worth using a ship to blockade a port? Even the cheapest one is expensive to maintain, how big does the port need to be for the ai to lose more money than your spending? As things are when most my ports are blockaded I just leave them. The cost of building a navy that the autoresolver doesn't condemn to death leaves me feeling that it’s economically viable to let the ai blockage these places. I had a fleet of 5 of the cheapest Roman ships (huge scale) I lost a battle against a Carthage fleet with 9 men in it... Lost most of my troops. There were no admirals in the battle but the enemy had full experience while mine were all bronze. After that I decided to never compete naval wise against the ai.

[paullus]

Is there a way to put larger crews in the bigger warships? I haven't ever built above a trireme myself, but the larger the crew the better I would think, to represent the manpower importance of a fleet.

[khelvan]

The numbers don't represent crew, but rather number of ships in the fleet.

[paullus]

Yeah, I guess there's no way to represent the population loss through the pop system. Most of the rowers were low class slave types, and so probably not worth counting in the city population. But a ten ship fleet of triremes would probably have a couple hundred citizens on board, right? Actually, that could be complete crap, I haven't looked into officership on ships at all.

I was basically saying I wished you had a bigger population hit for a fleet.

[Dayve]

Well... The AI gets money from the script each turn so blockading ports is actually pointless mostly. Another problem is the AI never building ships. If that could be fixed then fleets would be good.

[edyzmedieval]

The fleets take many years to build, plus the AI doesn't build ships.

[Slider6977]

As far as balancing problems: having played Carthage in most of my campaigns, you start out with four fleets, and 5 total ships. If I can remember, the transport boats are only a 1 attack, and 4 defense unit, while all the other fleets are much more powerful, with the same unit size. Yet, transport boats cost more to build and have a considerably larger upkeep, just for being transport ships. Currently I have not had much experience with many of the fleets, but this in particular I do not feel fits with the rest of the ships.

I've modded this myself to kind of balance things out, even though I usually just disband this unit on the first turn, seeing as how I will almost never use them for roughly 5-7 years from start date. However, I do not know wheather or not any other factions start with these ships in a fleet. If so, it could be at least a small drain on their economy.

[O'ETAIPOS]

I had a fleet of 5 of the cheapest Roman ships (huge scale) I lost a battle against a Carthage fleet with 9 men in it... Lost most of my troops. There were no admirals in the battle but the enemy had full experience while mine were all bronze. After that I decided to never compete naval wise against the ai.

Do you remember what carth fleet it was?
Roman lowest level ships (oneraria) are completely useless for sea battles - they are pure transports. Imagine what would happen if group (125 in your situation) slow, sail powered round ships got attacked by good warships ...

If I can remember, the transport boats are only a 1 attack, and 4 defense unit, while all the other fleets are much more powerful, with the same unit size. Yet, transport boats cost more to build and have a considerably larger upkeep, just for being transport ships

I will check it, but from what I remember transport fleet is shared with some eastern factions that should have problems using ships. So feel free to use other cartaginian fleets instead

[orwell]

My first oberservations as a fledgling Rome is that the oneraria seems prohibitive to run until you really get a decent economy with some money to spare to keep them running. The recruitment cost seems right though. Do the more advanced ships just increase in upkeep and recruitment costs? I played with the metro+naval mod and I loved having boats that, while expensive to recruit, wouldn't kill my economy to have them, and I was always making use of them as any faction with a body of water. When their this expensive, one may as well simply march them and save yourself grief of maintaining a fleet that can survive a encounter with the AI who decided they need a 20 unit fleet of some of the finest ships.

I'm curious, is the prontecourteri, definitely spelled wrong but going inbetween the game and desktop takes forever, supposed to a another ship that just doesn't have a proper card yet? I first thought that maybe you had to buy the boats, and then bought the crew too, but that seems wrong.

[O'ETAIPOS]

Yes, Penteconterai are ships, but unit card is not there(yet) It is the greek ship, as greeks allied to Rome were providing romans with ships (it was theyre contingent instead of land forces). Cities which were doing so were called socci navales - fleet allies

Oneraria cost very much to maintain, but it is designed to disband them as fast as possible when not needed (you are just taking ships from your merchants to move armies around) - proper warships are more expensive to build, but cheaper to maintain, also they have longer build time.

also remember when playing romans that liburnes should be (and will be in next version) avaliable after marian reform, so try avoid using them if you want more history accurate gameplay .

[orwell]

I'm not too worried about historical accuracy, I follow a general pattern of it but I'm more interested in having a good time. Is it just Penteconterai that's limited to sailing the coast lines? It'll be a while before I'm really concerned with how I can move with my ships, but right now I'm trying to sail the casse and between the extemely limited, at least relative to how I'd expect ships to moveand the fact that I need to hug the coast line, its taking... well, its 254 or so and I set sail in '57, and I imagine that it'll be another year to reach britain. Somehow a journey from italy to britain doesn't strike me as a 4 year journey. Is it just the Penteconterai that's so slow, or are all ships that limited in their movement? A sea connects people, not divides them, supposedly.

Other than the movement points, I don't have any problems with the ships in EB.

[khelvan]

The fleets take many years to build, plus the AI doesn't build ships.

They do, not many, but they get built. I tested this many times and often. I would take away all starting ships, and ships would appear as the game went on.