Increasing ship costs

[Iskandar]

What is your experience with naval warfare? If I ever decide to get into it, I find it most of the time ineffective - in my current Roman campaign I tried do something useful on that front and blockaded all carthaginian ports, but I had to fight off enemy fleets more often than enjoyable/realistic. Especially when the Gauls joined the fun and started producing senseless amounts of ships.

What if ships' maintenance costs were higher - fleets will be more scarce and therefore more precious commodity, just like it used to be. Plus, it would reduce the chance of an illogical war breaking out on account of some fleet blockading a port just because it can.

[Tiberius Tosi]

Just a question but, is there a way to make it so ships that are created in blockaded ports cannot leave that port without having to fight your ship? It seems a little wierd to me that someone could sneak lots of ships through a blockaded port, certainly it has been done before but, it is a major inconvenience in the game when you have a full blockade and they just sent their fleets to the middle of the sea.

[Jamey]

Just a question but, is there a way to make it so ships that are created in blockaded ports cannot leave that port without having to fight your ship? It seems a little wierd to me that someone could sneak lots of ships through a blockaded port, certainly it has been done before but, it is a major inconvenience in the game when you have a full blockade and they just sent their fleets to the middle of the sea.

That's hardcoded - there's nothing we can do to change it.

If you want to be cheesy, you can attack the ships inside blockaded ports. Just select one of the ships in your fleet and then click to attack on the fleet inside the port. This will cause a battle between your whole fleet and the blockaded fleet. Problem is, the AI will rarely or never build up a fleet larger than one ship before sending it out.

What is your experience with naval warfare? If I ever decide to get into it, I find it most of the time ineffective - in my current Roman campaign I tried do something useful on that front and blockaded all carthaginian ports, but I had to fight off enemy fleets more often than enjoyable/realistic. Especially when the Gauls joined the fun and started producing senseless amounts of ships.

What if ships' maintenance costs were higher - fleets will be more scarce and therefore more precious commodity, just like it used to be. Plus, it would reduce the chance of an illogical war breaking out on account of some fleet blockading a port just because it can.

I find naval warfare frustrating because it normally takes two attacks to sink an enemy fleet no matter how large your advantage is or how surrounded the enemy fleet is. It feels like chasing waterbugs skittering around the surface of the Med.

I normally build small fleets - 3 to 6 ships. I scatter them around my ports and use them to sink any enemy ships that come near me. I gather multiple fleets when needed. For the record, any ship with troops on it that approaches my coast counts as an enemy unless I really need to maintain an alliance with that faction.

I don't think changing the cost of ships would have a large effect on it. The problem I have is that the AI continually produces ships that you have to kill no matter how stupid it is for them at that time. Carthage tends to be the major offender on this as Numidia is devouring them, but other nations do it, too.

Also, I now avoid blockading enemy ports. The AI can't handle breaking blockades (it builds 1 ship fleets to go after 3+ ship blockades...), so I avoid abusing the AI limitation there.

[Quinn Inuit]

Yeah, the AI can be ridiculous with its fleets, but I'm not sure how to stop that. One problem is that the AI has a substantial hard-coded combat advantage, so I don't go into a fight without at least 3:2 odds in my favor. 3.3 makes ship stack spamming a little harder, since prices are increased and you have to build up pretty far to get to the good ships.

Should we change ship stats in any way?

[Wien1938]

Much bigger crews. Reason being - naval warfare was really expensive in manpower and money. Athens has a large fleet but cannot afford to pay the rowers, so most it sits in mothball.
A single trireme needs 170 rowers, 10 crew and 10-20 marines.
A single penteres/quinquereme needs 300 rowers, 50 crew and 120 marines (according to Polybios). These were the equivalent to battleships in the early 20th century.

The ships should also cost a lot more.

[decimator22]

I think you can add a bigger number of units for each ship, as well as the cost. The probel is somewhat as other have already posted is the massive ships the AI makes, and the bad part is there maximum 2 in each ship.

[Quinn Inuit]

I see. Two questions, though.
1) Can the AI handle substantially increased costs? Its naval section does weird things sometimes, and I'd hate to bankrupt a faction with high-upkeep boats that it can't stop itself from building.
2) Why did the RTR team make the ships so small and cheap? I suspect they had a reason.

[decimator22]

Well I could do some beta testing with the cheap ships and see what it does. Just give me thefiles I nee to overrite and will post results tomorrow(?)

[Iskandar]

I agree with Wien1938 about the costs. The ship crews, however, are another matter - it might be that battle casualties are not calculated by percentage of engaging crews, then we'd have to fight the same fleet again and again until we sink it. Right now we can do this with 2 to 3 battles and I'd like to see this number reduced, rather than increased.

[Jamey]

I see. Two questions, though.
1) Can the AI handle substantially increased costs? Its naval section does weird things sometimes, and I'd hate to bankrupt a faction with high-upkeep boats that it can't stop itself from building.
2) Why did the RTR team make the ships so small and cheap? I suspect they had a reason.

1) We'd have to experiment with ship costs. I'm not sure I'd want them much higher - I already wind up spending a lot on fleets. A Quinquireme costs roughly the same amount as an elite land unit to build and half of an elite land unit to maintain.

2) More men per ship means more battles to sink a ship. It makes the skittering fleet problem worse.

Much bigger crews. Reason being - naval warfare was really expensive in manpower and money. Athens has a large fleet but cannot afford to pay the rowers, so most it sits in mothball.

I think game balance is going to win over realism on this one. I already accept that land units in the game really represent more men than they describe. I can do the same with ships.

A single penteres/quinquereme needs 300 rowers, 50 crew and 120 marines (according to Polybios). These were the equivalent to battleships in the early 20th century.

Here is a nice website about WW1 naval vessels:
The HMS Dreadnought (British battleship from 1905) had a crew of 700.
The Invincible Battlecruiser class (1906) had a crew of 779.
The Devonshire Cruiser class (1902) had a crew of 655.
The Prinz Adalbert Cruiser class (1904) had a crew of 586.

I'd say that puts a quinquereme at the light end of the armored/protected cruisers of the day. Light cruisers tend to weigh in around 200-300 crew. Since the Prinz Adalbert Cruisers were 400 feet long and 10,000 tons, the point that these are large ships is well taken.

[Quinn Inuit]

Hmmm, Jamey's got a good point about why the troops numbers might be low. We do have a lot of problems with fleets never dieing right now. Increasing troop size might make it vastly worse.

[Wien1938]

You're right about the problem of "skittering" fleets. Game balance, here meaning making naval battles more decisive should come first.
Would lethality be increased by a substantial increase of the attack over the defence?

[despot_of_rhodes]

May be it´s just me, but i find the naval battles in RTR/ExRM quite frustrating.
The AI seems to have hard cored advantages in sea battles, and then, playing even only on hard difficulty, one need to have at least 3:1 superiority, to get a victory. And that one costs a lot, because, even if i agree, that ships should be expensive, one almoust can´t fight next time with the same fleet, without at least one ship going to be sunk by AI fleet - so no gaining expirience at all, loosing your best ship, loosing the whole fleet, because it´s too weakend by previous battle(s).

In ExRM the damage done on ships seems to be bit better then in original RTR, but still, its rediculos, how frustrating it can be, when your multiple star admiral on corvus quintereme and support ships gets sunk by 2 gallic BOOTs!

May be i´m really inept..., but in vanilla, i used to hunt enemy fleets with multiple own fleets, positiond on right points of the map, and to destroy them totaly

Btw: the pirates never retreat - is this feature hard cored? If not, this could solve all the problems, making each naval battle dicisive

[Jamey]

May be it´s just me, but i find the naval battles in RTR/ExRM quite frustrating.
The AI seems to have hard cored advantages in sea battles, and then, playing even only on hard difficulty, one need to have at least 3:1 superiority, to get a victory. And that one costs a lot, because, even if i agree, that ships should be expensive, one almoust can´t fight next time with the same fleet, without at least one ship going to be sunk by AI fleet - so no gaining expirience at all, loosing your best ship, loosing the whole fleet, because it´s too weakend by previous battle(s).

I find that for the most part a stronger fleet wins. Because of the small unit sizes, you will get unacceptable casualties on occasion. I've learned to live with that because my recollection of vanilla naval battles is much less rosy than yours.

rediculos

I don't know why, but that particular misspelling is a ridiculous pet peeve of mine...

Btw: the pirates never retreat - is this feature hard cored? If not, this could solve all the problems, making each naval battle dicisive

All rebel faction armies are completely destroyed when they lose a battle. That's hardcoded and cannot be changed.

[Quinn Inuit]

Attack is already pretty substantially higher than defense, so I'm not sure increasing the disparity will do much good.

AFAIK, the AI has a substantial hard-coded advantage in naval battles. I saw a developer say something about this a long time ago.

[Iskandar]

So, I tinkered a bit with the ship stats. I didn't have the time or resources to conduct many tests, but...
I reduced the secondary hp - it either didn't work, or it was a marginal improvement.
I increased all morale to 20 (so units fight longer = more casualties) - didn't notice any substantial improvement.
Doubled attack values - slight improvement in casualty rates.
Reduced crews - that was the most significant improvement. You'll still need at least two battles for most fleets, but not many more.

Then I dug a bit about ancient naval warfare. It seems that biremes and later triremes relied mostly on ramming, whereas bigger ships got better protection and larger marine body. They were clumsier on the other hand, so ramming was harder to use and being successfully rammed was still possible, if the enemy had faster and lighter ships. So, upon these foundings I made the following changes in the EDU:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;; Naval Units ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

type naval biremes
dictionary naval_bireme
category ship
class light
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 6, 0, 1
ship light warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3,square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 36, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 0, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 7, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1400, 230, 50, 70, 450
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian


type naval triremes
dictionary naval_trireme
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 8, 0, 1
ship light warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 40, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 1, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1800, 280, 80, 110, 720
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian

type naval quadrireme
dictionary naval_quadrireme
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 10, 0, 1
ship flagship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 30, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 2, 3, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 3, 2200, 300, 210, 310, 2010
ownership carthage

type naval quinquiremes
dictionary naval_quinquireme
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 12, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 24, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 2, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 3, 2400, 400, 130, 200, 1290
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian

type naval corvus quinquireme
dictionary naval_corvus
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 12, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 28, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 2, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 3, 3000, 430, 150, 220, 1440
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian

type naval deceres
dictionary naval_decere
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 12, 0, 1
ship flagship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 20, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 1, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 5, 3400, 700, 210, 310, 2010
ownership slave

type naval boats
dictionary naval_boats
category ship
class light
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 6, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 38, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 0, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 800, 135, 40, 60, 360
ownership barbarian

type naval large boats
dictionary naval_large_boats
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 8, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 34, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 1, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 1400, 150, 80, 110, 720
ownership barbarian

type naval pirate ships
dictionary naval_pirates ; Pirate Ships
category ship
class light
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 6, 0, 1
ship light warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 40, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 5, 2, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 1500, 50, 60, 90, 570
ownership slave

Basically, crew numbers represent the marine corps on the ship with larger ships having more marines. On the other hand, smaller, more agile ships get better attack, all attack values ranging 20-40. Also, smaller ships get little to no armour and better defence skill, whereas larger ships get more armour but less defence skill, all ending up with a value around 5 (well, except pirates, they were supposed to be better). And I reduced the autoresolve hp from 5 to 1, on the chance that it does influence calculations.

Ovreall, smaller ships sink faster, but mostly because of smaller crew numbers. I have yet to try many small against few large ships scenario.
I haven't changed recruitment/maintenance cost, because it was my goal first to determine how can we make naval battles more decisive. I might do that later, but I've got two exams at the uni in the next two weeks, so I'll be just popping in on the forums, no games for me.

Anyway, Quinn, Jamey, anyone else, of course, have a look, try it out and tell what you think.

EDIT: It might also help if we change the soldiers to something other than roman_velite - I don't know if there is such feature, but in land battles they seem to have high casualty recovery rate. I'm also not entirely sure on the norale values, since I tested it with big crew numbers and it was hard to conclude whether there was any effect.

[Jamey]

EDIT: It might also help if we change the soldiers to something other than roman_velite - I don't know if there is such feature, but in land battles they seem to have high casualty recovery rate. I'm also not entirely sure on the norale values, since I tested it with big crew numbers and it was hard to conclude whether there was any effect.

I don't have time to look at this today, but I did want to comment on this. My experience is that casualty recovery has a total number, roughly half of the casualties with a healing ancillary. Recovery occurs primarily based on the chronology of the battle - the first casualties are healed and later casualties are not. I've never seen unit type affecting this order. I just suspect that velites and other skirmishers tend to have casualties early in battles, which leads to this theory from people.

[Quinn Inuit]

Jamey is correct. Killed first = healed first. I've had this work with all kinds of units, and sometimes even planned battles to take advantage of this.

Iskander: I like your ideas on this, but I'm concerned about making the large ships excessively difficult to kill. I mean, they should be harder to kill than smaller ones, but I'd hate to see them become functionally unkillable.* Could you run some more tests when you get the chance? If you want, try using a test game with Britain and giving yourself tons of cash to build ships and send them to fight in various places.


*The pirate ships initially had this problem in RTRPE 1.8 (1.7?) and earlier (including Gold), but either Marcus Camillus or Florin (IIRC) cut their crew complement down to make it less of an issue.

[Iskandar]

Well, I've done some more testing. I changed the crew number of quinqiremes and quadriremes to 40 on huge, only the corvus has now 48. I've been doing a few turns in the beginning with Carthage, since they have large and diverse starting fleet. I can say that pirates are dying easier now and heavy-class warships are not undefeatable. They tend to do better over time though - they lose the first battle (of equal crew numbers), but a fleet of smaller ships takes more casualties, so if they meet again, the heavier ships prevail. In any case, personally, I'm satisfied with the status quo. Here is my current EDU state:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;; Naval Units ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

type naval biremes
dictionary naval_bireme
category ship
class light
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 6, 0, 1
ship light warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3,square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 36, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 0, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 7, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1400, 230, 50, 70, 450
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian


type naval triremes
dictionary naval_trireme
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 8, 0, 1
ship light warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 40, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 1, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 2, 1800, 280, 80, 110, 720
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian

type naval quadrireme
dictionary naval_quadrireme
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 10, 0, 1
ship flagship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 30, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 2, 3, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 3, 2200, 300, 210, 310, 2010
ownership carthage

type naval quinquiremes
dictionary naval_quinquireme
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 10, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 24, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 2, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 3, 2400, 400, 130, 200, 1290
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian

type naval corvus quinquireme
dictionary naval_corvus
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 12, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 24, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 2, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 3, 3000, 430, 150, 220, 1440
ownership roman, greek, carthaginian, eastern, egyptian

type naval deceres
dictionary naval_decere
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 10, 0, 1
ship flagship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 20, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 3, 1, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 5, 3400, 700, 210, 310, 2010
ownership slave

type naval boats
dictionary naval_boats
category ship
class light
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 6, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 38, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 0, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 800, 135, 40, 60, 360
ownership barbarian

type naval large boats
dictionary naval_large_boats
category ship
class heavy
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 8, 0, 1
ship heavy warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 34, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 , 1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 , 1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 1, 4, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 1400, 150, 80, 110, 720
ownership barbarian

type naval pirate ships
dictionary naval_pirates ; Pirate Ships
category ship
class light
voice_type Medium_1
soldier roman_velite, 6, 0, 1
ship light warship
attributes sea_faring
formation 1.2, 1.8, 2.4, 2.4, 3, square
stat_health 1, 1
stat_pri 40, 0, no, 0, 0, melee, blade, slashing, none, 25 ,1
stat_pri_attr no
stat_sec 0, 0, no, 0, 0, no, no, no, none, 25 ,1
stat_sec_attr no
stat_pri_armour 5, 2, 0, flesh
stat_sec_armour 0, 0, flesh
stat_heat 0
stat_ground 0, 0, 0, 0
stat_mental 6, normal, untrained
stat_charge_dist 30
stat_fire_delay 0
stat_food 60, 300
stat_cost 1, 1500, 50, 60, 90, 570
ownership slave

I'm gonna tinker a bit with the recruit/maintenance costs now. I think I'll start with increasing them by half, see how it goes. I'm trying to better balance Rome and Carthage anyway, so I'll be running some 20 years in a couple of british campaigns.

[Quinn Inuit]

That sounds promising. One question, though: what's your goal for increasing costs? Do you think naval warfare would be more realistic (or at least less pirate-infested) if we reduced the costs, or do you think the AI would just go crazy?