AU 110 - Naval Power

[Objectivist]

Welcome to the Naval Power course at Apolyton University!

Difficulty: Monarch

You will be facing 5 opponent Civs in this scenario.

1. French
2. Romans
3. Greeks
4. Babylonians
5. Americans

Each of these opponents start with signifigantly more land and reasources then you do. However, you start with a key advantage that none of the other civilizations possess....... a single galley. Built by and staffed by "Eccentric" English noblemen this vessel and its crew cannot be replaced until you reach Map Making. Use it wisely, its your only hope for keeping up with the other civs in the ancient era.

There are a 10 possible points to be earned in this senario. Partial credit is to awared for partially achieving the various goals.

1/1 Having a larger Navy then any of your opponents from the end of the Middle ages until the end of the game.

2/2 Successfully blockading any Civilizations you are in a state of war with, from the end of Middle ages onward, for at least 10 consecutive turns.

2/2 Successfully using Naval units to help land forces occupy an enemy city. This means bombarding all enemy land forces in a city down to 1 hit point.

3/3 Successfully carry out any and all offensive attacks without using Tanks or Modern Armor. .3 points subtracted for every time a Tank or Modern Armor unit is used to attack.

2/2 Successfully blockading another civilization for at least 20 turns without going to war. Note: A blockage means denying a civilization's empire, or part of their empire, a critical reasource or luxury, not merely blockading one port.

Bonus points to be awarded for the innovative use of naval units, final score, and for a screen shot of the map after the game has been won/lost.

Oh, and to make things more interesting all horse reasources have been removed from the map. You will be unable to make any horsemen, knights, or cavalry. So do not direct your scientific inquires into the preqresite techs for these units unless you see some other reason to. Please post any comments or questions here. Results are to be posted under the
AU-110 Answer Key thread. I will post the key to winning this senario in that thread in the next two to four days. Good Luck, Have Fun, and hope to hear from all of you soon.

P.S. To whoever it may concern,

We are on the honor system in terms of the points, If you lie to "get" a better point score, keep in mind the only real thing youve done is lie, you havent really achieved anything.

[Theseus]

Objectivist,

Thanks for taking the iniative to go ahead and create this 'trial.'

I think there was some cross-posting or even cross-creation going on, as alexman also did so last night (using the AU Mod, which I don't know if you used in creating this game).

In general, also, we've been using a collaborative process to develop game conditions, objectives, and so forth.

That said, I like some of the ideas you incorporated:

The starting galley is a great idea, although probably unbalancing in favor of the human player, especially on Monarch. I would want to have a counter-weighted penalty of some kind.

The naval attack on cities is a very good point, and I'm going to suggest extending it a bit by requiring a Marine attack as well.

The lack of all horse-based units is intriguing, although it creates a huge gap in the 6-attack range, and is also pretty far away from 'stock civ' (part of the reason for AU is to prep for MP, which will mostly be un-Modded).

Re the point system, I don;t think we are quite ready for that, and am not even sure that we ever will be (although I like how you set it up). Thus far, we've been focused on just sharing good ideas, tactics / strategies / techniques, failures, observations on the AI, good stories, etc. It's been working pretty well.

Anyway, thanks for the effort, and welcome to AU!

[Objectivist]

Thank you Theseus,

I thought you might like to know that this map was designed with practice for mp in mind, namely it was meant to teach a number principles and concepts relating to naval power and give people practice using them. I was going to post these ideas in an answer sheet thread after the playing phase of the senario was completed however, after reviewing your comments I thought it might be a good idea to identify what I intended people to learn from playing this senario, give people a chance to look over the senario, and give them the opportunity to comment on my ideas of naval power in general, which are the following.

1. In the ancient era and during most of the middle ages naval power is only really suited for two tasks, exploration and expansion.

This is simply because during the ancient era every civilization is racing to acquire as much land as possible, and investestment in naval reasources merely subtracts from the reasources you could be putting into settlers to build more cities, into buildings to make your cites more valuable, and into land uints that could be used to protect and expand your empire. However what naval units can do during this time is allow you to expand to additional areas if your hemmed in by other civs or if you are isolated on a single island/continent. In addition naval units will allow you to explore and find any additional civs thus enabling you to trade and acquire technologies quicker. Finally naval power in this period will enable you to find and and secure reasources and luxuries that may not be available on the landmass that you initially begin on.

2. During the the late Middle Ages onward naval power comes into its owned as a force to be reckoned with. Naval Bombardment can make a signifigant difference in land battles, offensive naval units allow the control of the sea lanes between continents, and perhaps most importantly naval units can interupt the flow of trade and reasources through blockades. This last ability is perhaps the most important ability of naval forces in this era. By blockading an enemy you manage to not only limit their unit selection by restricting their strategic reasources but you also decrease the total efficiency of their empire. This is because every luxury that your opponent imports allows him to devote people and income towards productive work and reasearch that would otherwise be engaged in the production of luxuries. This, incidentaly, is why the privateer is so valuable even though it has such weak military stats, you can signifiagantly weaken another civilization without ever going to war with them. Off the top of my head I cant think of another way that you can limit another civs unit production options, reasearch speed, and income without starting a war.

3. The modern era is when the ability to blockade is finally made obsolete. This is because of three developments that render square to square naval forces less important. These developments are

a. Naval Avaition
b. Airports
c. Precision bombing


Naval Aviation, and Aviation in general allows you to reach farther inland and bombard improvements that are out of the range of regular naval units, thus limiting an enemy civs access to a reasources without the iniation of a blockade. Furthermore arial bombardment, if continued long enough will allow you to undue centuries of improvements on a civilization's countryside.

If an enemy is able to maintain air superiority, then a naval blockade might seem to be the logical solution to your problem, however this is no longer feasible in the late industrial and modern eras because of the airport. Airports allow civilizations to avoid naval blockade by simply flying the reasources. This is quite a signifigant problem and in my option the best counter to it is presented in the modern era, namely precision bombing. Precision bombing allows you to take out trade facillitating improvements such as the naval port and air port. By eliminating these facilities you eliminate the need for a blockade, simply because you opponent will be unable to conduct any shipping with areas it is not connected to by land routes.

Whew!
I hope you all enjoyed that, Im going to repost this under a naval strategy thread, so please post any comments related to naval theory there and any comments related to the senario i posted here. Thank you very much and I hope to hear from all of you soon.

[Objectivist]

ah hell with it just post everything here.