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Naval Gameplay – A post to help William's plea for more naval abilities

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3 years ago
Jun 4, 2021, 2:50:05 PM

During yesterday’s stream, naval gameplay has been discussed, and William (Lead Game Designer) was kind enough to provide some really good feedback and explanations on the topic.


I’m intentionally referencing him here (and taking his word for pleading), as friendly and kindly as possible of course, because if I understood correctly what he said yesterday, it seems or it is implied that some part of naval gameplay is not subject to change upon release (but, please, I’ll be very happy if I’m wrong or understood him wrong yesterday).


// - Here’s the transcript if you don’t want to bother watching/listening, from 37’33’’ to 39’34’’ :


Rogan : Another question : “Are you guys thinking of expanding the ability of naval units to be able to initiate land battles or sieges, if a unit or city tile is adjacent to the sea tile ?”


Will : Yeah. So something I’d really like and I’ve wanted to see for a while. The problem of covering an island entirely in districts, so that it’s not possible to land troops, was something that, very much occurred to me while thinking of the systems early on. And I think it’s something that kind of, you know, we put it to one side and didn’t implement it in the first iteration. It’s something I’d really like but we don’t have it yet. These are things that I would like to see.

Other things like being able to attack a land army with ships, I’m a little bit more hesitant. Just because I’m concerned it might lead to battles in certain circumstances which are a little bit, kind of, anticlimatic, where you just have, like, all these ships that are like “Oh, I wanna shoot you” and all the land units are like “No, I’m gonna stay, you know, in this forest and just wait for the time to run out”. So I’m a little bit concerned about allowing battles to be initiated when the defender has a clear way of essentially denying an actual battle from happening.

However, if you have embarked units in that army and you want to launch an attack on a city, that’s something that I’d like to see, but you know, it really is going to depend on how much pleading and crying I do and how much, again, all of these things need to be looked at. You know, so much to do, so little time ! 


//


I know a lot has already been said and proposed about naval gameplay, but upon discussing once again in Discord, some of us think that some naval abilities (either not implemented yet, bugged during OpenDevs, or not planned to be implemented at all) were missing in both Lucy and Victor OpenDevs.


So, to support Will’s plea yesterday on stream, I’d like to voice again and emphasize on one concern :


- Embarked units should be able to land on fortified city tiles, provided there are no units standing on it. That's particularly true for island cities, where all land tiles are covered with fortified districts, making such cities unsiegeable and unattackable by sea. Alternatively, a second requirement could be that the player has to destroy the tile's fortifications first, before being able to land. Mortar, Artillery and later on aerial support would be pretty helpful in this case, since they provide a way to bombard and destroy those island fortified tiles at a distance, prior to engaging your embarked units.


Hope you can take it into consideration for release, that would really add more flavour and incentivize players and AI to invest into naval gameplay.


Cheers !

Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Jun 10, 2021, 11:24:21 AM
Maybe the embarked units should be forced to wait for a round before embarking or something? For balance's sake? Cuz that kinda defeats the defending ability of fortified tiles in island territories. Or restrict the ability to non-cavalry units, like it is on land. Of course, the artillery bombardment mechanic I am fully behind.
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3 years ago
Jun 10, 2021, 2:01:32 PM

I don't know why do you call it "plea", he wasn't pleading for anything, he kindly explained several game design issues as for why naval involvement into land battles is limited for now.

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3 years ago
Jun 10, 2021, 5:45:20 PM
Ellaxarion wrote:
Maybe the embarked units should be forced to wait for a round before embarking or something? For balance's sake? Cuz that kinda defeats the defending ability of fortified tiles in island territories. Or restrict the ability to non-cavalry units, like it is on land. Of course, the artillery bombardment mechanic I am fully behind.

That would be pretty fair indeed, and quite consistent with how it already works with land units having to spend a turn before entering a fortified tile.


Sublustris wrote:

I don't know why do you call it "plea", he wasn't pleading for anything.

Oh, sure, he wasn't. Or, rather, he was jokingly saying that he would have to do a lot of "pleading and crying" to the other devs, ideally to have such a feature in-game for release (allowing embarked units to launch an attack on cities and/or land on fortified tiles).


Since devs are well aware of those issues/flaws in naval gameplay, I'm just taking him at his word/the opportunity to make one more plea to have that specific feature in-game.


Updated 3 years ago.
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3 years ago
Jun 11, 2021, 3:45:24 PM

Navy gameplay is discouraged because there is no reward for costal placement except like building an habor.

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3 years ago
Jun 12, 2021, 12:20:45 AM
Waykot wrote:
Alternatively, a second requirement could be that the player has to destroy the tile's fortifications first, before being able to land. Mortar, Artillery and later on aerial support would be pretty helpful in this case, since they provide a way to bombard and destroy those island fortified tiles at a distance, prior to engaging your embarked units.

I mentioned this Back in the Victor Feedback thread about Naval Combat: Quickest, and easiest, way to fix the issue of not being able to embarked on city tiles on an island covered in them is to give ships the ability to bombard outside of battle. As, currently, only the late Industrial artillery support unit can do that starting in Industrial era (It can do that really really well, by the way).


More naval units being able to bombard would definitely raise their worth. 

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3 years ago
Jun 12, 2021, 2:30:33 AM

Something like a mortar ship in Age of Empires?

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3 years ago
Jun 12, 2021, 8:02:49 AM
Changlini wrote:

... is to give ships the ability to bombard outside of battle.

[...]

More naval units being able to bombard would definitely raise their worth. 

I would very much like that as well. Starting from Early Modern Era onward, Gun Platform's ships (either generics or emblematics) would definitely benefit from this ability.


That would also fit their historical usage as military forces (as in directly engaged in naval battles and naval support for embarked units) and diplomatic pressure forces (as in blockading, trade routes plundering, weakening distant outposts/settlements) -- based primarily on Early Modern western countries history onward, that is.

Updated 3 years ago.
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