Merchant Fleets/naval trading & combat

[Destroyer]

As mentioned about a million times, the naval part of the game is sadly lacking. The only way to stop a resource from reaching a civ is to

blockade every single port they own, which could take hundreds of ships. This is unrealistic. I would like to present my own idea which will add

realism and give you an excuse to build a ship or two.

My idea for trading across the seas, between land masses is just for strategic resources, which may no longer be traded by air:

As with the current setup, all strategic resources are available to all cities connected by road to the resource in question. To get the said resource

to another landmass (or even the same landmass, between cities not connected by road), I thought of the following idea:

Merchant fleets!

Each strategic resource allows 3 different routes between ports to be setup allowing that resource to be supplied. Each route should be plotted

exactly across the sea, square by square, even allowing all three routes between the same two ports. Then each turn, a merchant fleet will be

launched along each route. These routes may be changed at anytime, but once a ship is launched, it must stick to that route until it reached its

destination.

Merchnant fleets will be the first units to move each turn, and will have the same move rate as the fastest transport available.

The resource does not become available to the target landmass untill the turn the fleet reaches its destination. As soon as it pulls into port, all

cities connected by road then have that resource available for that turn only (any excess deliveries that turn are wasted). As a fleet is launched

each turn, after the first fleet arrives there should be a continuous supply of that resource (in peacetime).

Resources traded from AI civs will be launched in a similar way - by setting up trade routes from a valid port within their empire. These fleets are

considered to be property of the civ the resource is heading to.

During the war.....

Now this is where it gets interesting. In wartime all merchant vessels can be attacked. Trade routes can then be distrupted by enemy fleets (and

will also give a valid reason for the existence of privateers), making it possible to deny areas within a certain civ the ability to build certain units. It

will give a whole new sub game within CIV 3 which will reflect the situation in WW2, when America was sending huge amount of supplies to

Britain and Russia, and give a greater importance of maintaining a fleet, to defend trade routes.

This would probably be impossible to introduce into the curent version of Civ3, and too late to consider for the xp. But what about something

similar for Civ4.

Now, if anyone has got some cool suggestions for aircraft....

[Coracle]

Yea, we've been posting on this since December.

Naval warfare in Civ 3 is more pathetic than even in Civ 2. At least with Civ 2 we could patrol for and attack enemy transports trying to sneak spies, diplomats, or freight around. In Civ 3 it is a big bore.

Firaxis has not the vaguest idea what navies are for. I could have a hundred privateers or subs on a trade route of an enemy and it would accomplish NOTHING. The Germans almost won two world wars by attacking the merchant shipping of Britain. The Americans used many hundreds of privateers to help force the British to make peace in the Revolutionary War. In Civ 3 privateers and subs are almost useless.

Your suggestions are fine. But like with suggestions that went back over five years about the then planned Civ 3, Firaxis will ignore them. WHY?? They want the game DUMBED DOWN for the uneducated nitwits.

Hey Firaxis, I will NOT pay for any more Civ 3 products - with one exception. An ADVANCED version for people who want a more complex challenging game, people who know History, unlike you.

[Inverse Icarus]

theres many ways to impiment many naval concepts, but firaxis definately dropped the ball (no suprise there). i also think you should be able to PIRATE goods (ie intercept German oil being sent to Persia and USE it), but of course thats not in the game.

[Random Passerby]

The simplest solution, I think, would simply be to limit each harbor or airport to sending or recieving ONE resource. It's not rare at all to see a civ doing 12 or more trades at any given time; on any of the smaller map sizes, blockading just a couple ports would be enough to start hurting them, and even on large maps few civs would have enough ports that a reasonably sized navy couldn't put a dent in their shipping. It also wouldn't hurt to require a less-than-complete coverage of the coast to blockade a port.

[Destroyer]

stealing goods would be difficult to implement as the game does not define resources in amounts, you either have it or you dont.

Perhaps civ4 will implement finite resource system, where you can store resources, and building units takes up a certain number of kilos/barrels/whatever of said resource.

[notyoueither]

I'd do it the *gasp* CTP (2?) way. Or a hybrid of it.

Trade route traced on map from resource to receiving capital. If it goes over water your enemy can disrupt the trade by having a naval unit move onto the trade route and pillage it. If enough pillaging is done, the flow is stopped for the subsequent turn. If a road is destroyed, it automatically shifts to a new road route to or from the port, if all roads to a port are blocked/destroyed the flow is disrupted for the subsequent turn while the route reestablishes itself through a different port (if there is one).

[Stuie]

Originally posted by Random Passerby
The simplest solution, I think, would simply be to limit each harbor or airport to sending or recieving ONE resource.

That's not a bad idea, and probably easier to implement than some of the grandiose visions that some people have. I would think the player would need to be able to assign which resources go through which harbors/airports. There could even be some sort of harbor upgrade in later eras to allow additional resources to flow through.

I would also like to see Privateers have some sort of impact on trade. Right now they are completely impotent. Is there some flag in the editor to allow them to perform blockades?

Oh, and while we're at it, the Costal Fortress needs to have a range of two. Come to think of it, I've NEVER seen a Costal Fortress actually have any impact on anything. Hmmm.....

[wrylachlan]

I totally agree that trade routes overseas need to be represented by a unit.

I think the simplest way to do this would be to have a transport with the resource icon in the middle for identification. In order to trade that resource you would have to build the transport - in the build menu it would show:

Transport
Transport - Iron
Transport - Furs
etc.

There are two ways you could go with these transports -
1. Require a transport to land every turn you want to use the resource.
2. Abstract it out and just make one transport per trade route.

Though 1. would be more realistic, I'm not sure it would be any fun micromanaging all those transports. I think that abstracting it out would be the way. Make one transport per trade route, and as long as it is moving back and forth between the trading cities the trade route is "open".

The whole process would essentially be automated. You build the transport, use the new "Trade with" command, choose the city to trade with, and the transport starts going back and forth between the cities automatically.

You can even do it in the Trade advisor's screen. Choose your resource, click "establish trade route", and the closest city with a harbor automatically starts building the transport and when its done automatically starts the trade route.

When you are not in wartime there should be an option to toggle the transports invisible. You don't need to see them. But if you want to do some privateering on someone elses trade lines, you can toggle them visible again.

And to defend them in wartime, just stack them with other units and use "trade with" and the stack becomes a convoy.

I know a lot of this has been said before, but my essential idea was abstracting out the trade route to just one transport per route to avoid micromanagement while still making naval superiority a more powerful factor in the game.

[MiloMilo]

I don't think trading needs to be represented by a unit. It can be represented by an improvement, which it is now. But it should be done a bit better.

In terms of blockades, how about this: assume that each city with a harbor only has _one_ harbor (that's all that was built, right?). With only one harbor, you should only need one naval unit to blockade it. So the rule should be that if you have one ship adjacent to a city, it will block all trade there. Obviously it won't stop ships from entering and leaving, but it seems like a good compromise. To block all of an opponent's trade you will only need one ship for each of their ports. And when blockades of become feasible, it will make the stupid coastal fortress useful once again also.

But wait! That's not all. Combine this with the idea of only allowing each harbor to trade in one resource -- I'd say, one strategic resource and one luxury. Then, even if you can't block all of the enemy's ports, at least you can block some. The trade advisor screen could tell you what resource is coming into which harbor.

If some of your harbors get blockaded, conquered, or destroyed by bombardment, you would be able to choose which resources come in through the free harbors. So if you have horses and iron coming in, but only one port left free, you would have to choose which you want.

If, on the other hand, you have more ports than resources coming in, and an actively trading harbor gets blocked etc., the resource moving through there should automatically move to a free one.

I don't think this would be so hard to implement. Are there any issues with it that I haven't foreseen?

[Stuie]

You could even take it one step further, and require the Civ to build a) the Harbor and b) the facility to deal with a specific import. So to trade for horses, you would need to build Stables to handle the massive influx of horses experienced at the harbor.

[MiloMilo]

WOW!
I just realized the (only) value of privateers! Because their nationality is suspect (in the old Sid Meier game Colonization (a great one) enemy privateers actually showed up black, so you really couldn't tell who was attacking you. Is this game the same?), you can park them in other countries' territory without declaring war. Which means their only real use is actually to blockade! I suspect they were designed this way.
I also suspect that everyone else already knows this, and my grand realization is not such a big deal.
Oh well...

[IthacaMike]

Originally posted by MiloMilo
WOW!
I just realized the (only) value of privateers! Because their nationality is suspect (in the old Sid Meier game Colonization (a great one) enemy privateers actually showed up black, so you really couldn't tell who was attacking you. Is this game the same?)...

Not exactly. The Privateer appears white (like the barbarians) but if you turn on Show Team Colors then unit is surrounded by a ring that shows who owns the unit.

I _like_ your ideas about how to implement naval strategy. The changes I'd make would be that the harbor's connection to the trade network get turned off if the enemy naval unit is within the city's 21 tile production zone if you are at war with that Civ. This would make Submarines really annoying. Privateers are always at war with everyone but the owning Civ.

In addition to the naval blockade powers of a Privateer I'd have them capture all the commerce production from the coast/sea tiles of an enemy city and return half to owning Civ. Comerece raiding and all that.

Mike G

[MiloMilo]

Thanks Mike. I don't know though; I feel like to properly blockade a port your units should right in their harbor, thus in an immediately adjacent tile. I guess it wouldn't make much difference, though, as long as you extended the range of a coastal fortress as far as blockading ships can sit.

W/r/t privateers, in Colonization (damn but that was a good game! Too bad I lost my copy...) you actually had to transport trading goods around on your own ships, and if a privateer sunk your ship it would steal your cargo. The same system could (and should) be abstracted in Civ3 by just giving you 50 gold or so every time a privateer wins a naval battle.

Problem is, they never win battles

[wrylachlan]

Originally posted by MiloMilo
Thanks Mike. I don't know though; I feel like to properly blockade a port your units should right in their harbor, thus in an immediately adjacent tile. I guess it wouldn't make much difference, though, as long as you extended the range of a coastal fortress as far as blockading ships can sit.

I disagree that coastal fortresses should be able to reach far enough out to take out blockaders. This really isn't historically acurate as it was never necessary for a blockader to get within cannon range of the shore. They just waited for the merchant vessel to leave port and then attacked in the open water.

Also giving the coastal fortress that power makes it unneccessary to build a navy to protect your ports.

[Destroyer]

My original idea was founded on the idea that navies are almost pointless, and have no real impact on the game, and cause it would be nice to blow up something worthwhile, rather than sinking each others Battleships.

Realistically, blockading would not work during war time after the invention of bombers (if they could bomb ships)!

The whole blockade idea would be flawed if you used just one harbour, as you could just change the route next turn to another harbour over the otherside of the landmass. How many harbours does each civ have on average on a large landmass?

[MiloMilo]

Wrylachlan, in the end I'm not going for realism, I'm going for better use of navies and coastal fortresses. I admit though, that a weakness in my idea is that I don't know exactly what coastal fortresses do; I have never built them. What I envisioned to work with the ideas set out above is that the CF would slightly weaken nearby ships, but not sink them. They would make it easier for your own navy to chase away blockading ships, but could not do it alone.

[MiloMilo]

Destroyer, Random passerby's idea would mean that if a civ had 12 port cities and was getting 4 resources to its capital from overseas, you could blockade 10 of their cities and thereby reduce them to getting only 2 resources from overseas. Sure, if you blockaded 7 nothing would happen, but it makes partial resource blockades at least possible.

EDIT: And, the issue would be moot by the time you have bombers, because then airports could be built and blockading would no longer be possible -- unless you precision-bomb their airport, which is how we do these things these days.

[Jon Shafer]

IIRC, if you have road link with another neutral power, and they have a harbor, you can still trade overseas. By the time that trade becomes really important, and there are harbors everywhere, all civs are linked by roads, therefore making all suggestions obsolete... unless Firaxis fixes this.

[Destroyer]

Air transport has never and will never replace sea transport. Oil tankers are the biggest example, you couldnt just bolt a couple of wings on and ask them to fly. Air transport tends to only be used for passenger and mail, and other small things on a basis of urgency. I think airports should not be used to supply trade routes full stop, as their capacity could never reach the same levels as ports.

Im just trying to think of a way to make the game more enjoyable and strategic, and I dont think spending hundreds of resources on ships just to use them to blockade ports is worthwhile or realistic.

I agree with costal fortresses. They are useless. AI in my experience does not attack cities by sea. How about using costal fortresses outside cities to protect against ground landings a'la D Day

[wrylachlan]

West Berlin was supplied solely by aircraft for a significant amount of time... but at a staggering cost, so I agree that this is the exception that prooves the rule.

Airports should not give trade network status. Or maybe only for luxuries, not strategic resources. Flying in Mink coats to make the rich happy is concievable, but flying in enough iron to build a group of tanks is not.

And my take on what the coastal fortress is for is to prevent naval ships from bombarding the city to soften it up for an assault, not to prevent blockades.

I also agree that with the ability to use peaceful nations harbors, none of these new blockading ideas really work. Maybe it should be more restrictive - you can use the roads of another civ you're at peace with, but you need an MPP or military Alliance to use the harbors... though I don't know if even that would be enough to make blockading useful.

I think there are really 2 seperate (though related) issues going on:
1.) How do we change the mechanism of blockades so that they are a more useful and strategic during wartime?
2.) What can we do to encourage and make strategically necessary a greater use of naval power?

1.) I think the simplest way to deal with blockades is to allow one ship in the 21 tile radius create a blockade. And as someone above suggested: if a city is blockaded it looses any commerce from sea squares. Or you could just flat cut the commerce in half. And this is in addition to the current function of blockades blocking trade routes. The bottom line is if your city is blockaded you loose money so it is in your best interest as an attacker to blockade as many cities as possible and as a defender you want to keep that from happening = strategically interesting.

2.) The question of how to encourage the use of naval power is a slightly more complex one. I think a number or little adjustments would all add up to greater use of naval power:
a.) somehow get rid of the rolling RR attack exploit, and generally make land-based assault slightly slower. This would encourage more amphibious assaults. Which would require naval protection for the transports = greater use of the navy.
b.) increase the power and range of air-power or increase the total capacity of carriers. Again, this will encourage more carrier use, and trickling down, a host of escort ships.
c.) anti-aircraft on ships, so that a defender can only do so much with their bombers before they have to field their own navy.
d.) slightly increased naval bombardment power.

I don't think that any one of these things is earth-shattering, but together they would lead to more strategic naval battles.