A theory on how ships and crews might work on Rome II

[SamueleD]

During a discussion regarding army limit that soon verged on controlled unit limit and reinforcements on this thread http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...am-gona-defend I tried to understand how ships might work as reinforcements (meaning land troops), here is what I came up with.

By looking at the unit info that appears in the Nile battle when he mouses over a ship I have developed a theory. There are ship types like "Assault quinquireme" or "Missile Penteres" or "Artillery Penteres" or "Flagship octeres". The ship type defines the model of the ship, it's abilities, like ramming, stats like speed, hull, etc. and also what kind of crew it can have; as an example the "Artillery Penteres" can have onagres or ballistas and the "Assault quadreme" and "Flagship octeres" can carry a unit of infantry, like a legionary cohort or a unit of egyptian infantry. I have no idea of how you can decide what unit will make up the ship's crew, I suppose it will be managed in the new army/fleet recruitment system. So basically the ship can be used as a military ship for fighting a naval battle with other ships or as a transport ship and disembark its crew, while becoming effectively useless for naval fights as it's empty (maybe you'll also be able to re-embark the crew on board). This idea is consistent with the tooltips of the battle (my main evidence), with the possibility of using ship crew for amphibious assaults and with the shared army/navy 40 units limit. An army, instead, when prompted to go on water, would basically build generic transport ship, useless for naval combat and only intended to be used to land troops.
Essentially we could see a separation between ship type and ship crew, which would be a great innovation. If I am correct this new system would give a lot of flexibility on what your navy is like and what kind of armament it carries, especially to barbarians and factions that don't have highly developed navies, who could simply fit the same ship type (in which they are limited) with a type or another of infantry or archers that would use flaming arrows.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Flagship Octeres tooltip compared to Egyptian Infantry tooltip, notice the same melee stats and the same description, also abilities seem to be carried over

Missile Penteres tooltip compared to Egyptian Archers tooltip, notice the same description, also abilities seem to be carried over

Artillery Penteres

Artillery Quinquireme

Assault Quadrireme, compared to legionary cohort, again same meele stats and similar abilities (not testudo of course)

Based on the images I provided an argument against my theory could be that the number of soldiers on land differs from the numbers of the crew but that can have two explanations:
1) The land unit size was set differently form the naval unit size
2) The soldiers that make up the ship crew are essentially the same as their land counterparts, but the size of the unit varies depending on the ship type, so they are not exactly the same unit.

Thoughts?

[Rezza]

It seems like you got a valid point here. Good analysis. I am guessing that we can have 40 land units in battle and 20 Naval units.

[SamueleD]

It seems like you got a valid point here. Good analysis. I am guessing that we can have 40 land units in battle and 20 Naval units.

I'm leaning more towards the 40 units, counting both ships and land units, as ships can effectively be considered as land units if I'm right, but hey, let's hope you are right and we can get a grand total of 60!

[Rezza]

I'm leaning more towards the 40 units, counting both ships and land units, as ships can effectively be considered as land units if I'm right, but hey, let's hope you are right and we can get a grand total of 60!

If you watch closely on the unit tab in the E3 footage. There is a completely seperate land and naval tab. They both have the equal amount of space reserved for them. Thats where i move my assumption on.

[AngryTitusPullo]

If you watch closely on the unit tab in the E3 footage. There is a completely seperate land and naval tab. They both have the equal amount of space reserved for them. Thats where i move my assumption on.

Yeah but each is set to (numbers)/20 so we get to control max 2 stack where each stack is max at 20 units. No difference from Shogun 2 except that each stack is now separate rather than all max 40 units in a long single row.

I guess with this new set up the 2nd stack army/general will also be able to received traits and exp unlike the Shogun 2 style where the general of the first stack only received the bonuses.

[Zipzopdippidybopbop]

Good work lad; you've clearly put your head into it.

+rep

[SamueleD]

Good work lad; you've clearly put your head into it.

+rep

Thanks

[Eofor]

Great to know that landing ship crews to fight land battles has been confirmed.

[torongill]

You can't have more than forty units under your control, land or naval. You can look at the ships as transportation device or equipment - if the crew leaves it then it is not a unit anymore.
You can in fact have forty naval units, if you have two naval stacks - in fact that would mean you can have up to 80 ships(assault quadreme have 2 ships per unit.)

And yes, of course, naval units can disembark and participate in land battles - otherwise how can you capture a port? The only difference is that they are a different unit of legionaries - you can call them marines if you want.

[SamueleD]

@torongill so I suppose that the tabs we have seen will be used one for each of the armed forces under your command (be them army or navy), as opposed to Shogun way of putting it all together... or will it be used just for separating army form navy?

But, rather than being about the limit of units under your command, or disembarking my main point is about the (hypothetical) new system of manning the ships, which would be a great innovation, in my opinion.

[Lockcaps]

I would very much like Jack to clarify this, because it's an important question. In one of the interviews one of the CA guys say "you can disembark units to fight on land, but that might not end up so well" (something like that) - does this mean that disembared units suffer penalties to their stats?

Here is another interesting quote:

"Remember a naval unit is made up of not only the ship but the crew on it and any artillery it may have. There will not be 200 different ships, but there will be different crews for each of the cultures, along with variants of ships within a faction that some may have artillery on and others won't." (http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=#post12740540)

So it's either like this - There's the ship, the unit you've attached to it as crew (infantry/archers), and then there's artillery (of your choice?) and each of these can be controlled individually

-OR-

All ships require a crew (archers/infantry), and some of the ships have artillery on them baseline. Artillery does not count as an individual unit and you can't disembark them or anything like that. On a normal Trireme, there's only the ship and archers/infantry. On an "Onager Trireme" there's the ship, the onager, and archers/infantry.

[SamueleD]

@Lockcaps Thanks, I had never read that post by Jack, I guess that confirms my theory.

[Azmodin]

Maybe they just mean with that it doesn't end well if you disembark them that they need time to drive to the beach, land the ship and then jump of and in this time they are maybe very vulnerable to attacks.

Or as they are more like marines they have lighter equipment ( I don't think heavy armours would be usefull on boarding fights mobility would count more there) and as a land unit not such a big size as normal land units (but this seems to be different, romans have less size and egyptians a bigger size).

Atleast if you disembark the ship crew maybe some troops stay on the ship to defend it.

[torongill]

Lockcaps, Occam's razor works very well in this case - you won't have 200 different ships. That for me means the following, easily visible from the video as well - you will have a limited number of ship variants, but there will be some combinations, which will make for different ship units. For example - You have a Pentere ship variant. - you can recruit an archer pentere, artillery pentere or an assault pentere. These are three different units that you can recruit. That way you can go with smaller type of ship models, but display a great variety of recruitable units.
I would guess that the bigger the ship, the more combinations there will be - for example an artillery octere could have two Balistas(seen in one screen from the battle of Carthage) and the crew can be not basic gunners, but heavy infantry and so on. Or the Roman assault Octere could have six scorpions as well as a crew of 180 legionaries.

And of course the more variation you have, the more interesting combat will be - Some mastodons would probably have the speed and maneuverability of an island, but could feature multiple engines that create such a barrage that if you want to sink it you'll need multiple ships attacking from multiple sides, or say four ships with archers.

[SamueleD]

Some mastodons would probably have the speed and maneuverability of an island.

I'm trying to imagine how "barbarian" ships might be: sturdy, comparatively little, possibly fast, propelled by wind alone, better than galleys when the wind is high and the sea rough, hard to be rammed, unable to ram, but with the possibility to be fitted with archers for fire arrows or various tiers of infantry for boarding action.
Mediterranean factions will instead sport rower based ships (triremes and such), possibly much bigger and armed with artillery, capable of ramming, independent form the wind, but vulnerable to rough seas.
Essentially even factions with little variety of ships (meaning the ship model/class) will be able to field some variety of tactical capabilities (due to different crew types), which is good, so you can get some sort of balance and historical accuracy at the same time.

[Lockcaps]

I hope we can build http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessarakonteres and fit it with several of these:

[SamueleD]

I hope we can build http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tessarakonteres and fit it with several of these:

Then we make an entire fleet of them and use them to obliterate a city during a siege , the great advantage is that you still have an entire army of land soldiers to send through the (many) gaps.

[torongill]

Why on earth would you want something like that?

I'd rather have three with one quarter the weight that still throw big enough stones to break the boat or even better - forty scorpions and three smallish balistas that can throw bear claws.

[SamueleD]

Why on earth would you want something like that?

For the sake of overkill and total destruction (in a siege)

But I agree that forty scorpions would be pretty awesome in a fleet action, to decimate the enemy crew.

[Lockcaps]

Why on earth would you want something like that?

I'd rather have three with one quarter the weight that still throw big enough stones to break the boat or even better - forty scorpions and three smallish balistas that can throw bear claws.

Why?

Because it's glorious, that's why!