Question on Water (Sea) Regions

[Templar Spartan]

I have a rather simple question: What is the point of having separate sea regions in a Total War game? Will it tie in to the battle map somehow? Edicts? Medieval I had them, if I remember correctly, but I also seem to remember armies moved more like Risk or a Paradox title in Med I, so it made sense then.

[Argon Viper]

I think it affects trade. Controlling all of the land region that border a sea region would give you control of that sea region and increase your trade across it.

[HusKatten]

I don't think that fleet will move in a risk kind of manner, but while they move freely they do occupy sea regions - just like an army occupies land regions. We really don't know anything about the functionality of the sea regions other than that you can hold them and use them to intercept trade, iirc.

Argon Viper: That sounds sweet if that is the case.

[Stingray1399]

I can't tell you what CA had in mind, but I plan on throttling sea trade, taking fees for safe passage, and otherwise declaring control of a fluid space.

[Dirty Harry]

it abstracts important sea issues that can't be properly represented by ship units like trade, piracy and overall influence and allows for interceptions of intruders.

[Serger989]

I am very curious on how ships will move through regions and what it will mean in terms of controlling them. Also they have not shown sea regions for the Caspian sea or the Arabian sea, I would like to know if they will have them and if not, why that is and what it will mean for the ones that do (it also looks like there are no coastal towns on the Caspian shores for ship creation ).

[Caelifer_1991]

My guess as regards sea regions are that navies will have a defensive stance like armies and when utilised it will allow them to intercept any other navies entering the region.

[Serger989]

That makes a lot of sense actually. But I wonder if you get a benefit for controlling a region, like an economic boost maybe? Especially if it is protected by a navy?

[Caelifer_1991]

I doubt you get an implicit economic boost just for holding a region, but rather that you can trade through it unimpeded. I reckon the point of introducing the regions was primarily to solve the issue seen in Empire that you couldn't really defend the coast line. In Shogun II it wasn't an issue because ships couldn't move far enough away from the coast to just go around your navies and land anyway - thus completely ignoring them as in Empire; and in Napoleon the dramatically reduced turn length's (time-wise) reduced movement points to such an extent that it at least reduced the problem. With Rome II however and it's 1 turn per year system, it was somewhat of a necessity to introduce a region system, otherwise it would be like Empire where you really needed about 20 separate navies to cover the entire coastline of Britain for instance and thus prevent the possibility of a landing, rather than just being able to destroy the navy that landed troops the turn after.

[Serger989]

lol Empire was hilarious with the navies... I mean don't get me wrong I liked the game. But as soon as I controlled a moderate amount of territory (I mean, a part of the 13 colonies and all the islands, playing as Great Britain), I had enough money to blockade every port in the whole game at once to prevent anyone from ever making a ship. But we also don't know how the movement will be based on 1 turn per year (since it was only done to accommodate a time span of 250bc to 50ad for 300 turns, and we can play beyond that, so 300 turns may not even be enough time to control everything). We look at that and assume we will travel massive distances instantly, but we really don't know, we may not even be able to go from Petra to the Nile in 2 turns, we just don't know completely. Though if sea regions are there for a defensive purpose (never thought of that), it would be pretty interesting.

[Argon Viper]

I think the difficulty has always been implementing naval warfare in a turn based system. On land, it's easy enough. The movement speeds are relatively low, there are choke points you can control, and the zone of control is wide enough that you can make a significant difference.

As far as ships, however, naval warfare is based around movement on an essentially unimpeded surface. You have to make use of currents and wind direction, but there are very few real "choke points" or terrain features and navies can circle each other for weeks before they finally make contact.

Especially since the region we have here has such small water distances, I know I have often gamed the system to load troops, move them, and disembark them all in one turn in order to slip a large army past a superior navy. Not exactly realistic, but effective.

To do something about that, they need to expand the zone of control (call it a patrol, I guess) and I imagine the regions have something to do with that.

HusKatten, I think that's probably more my hope than anything I've actually read, but it would make sense and be very awesome.

[HusKatten]

Credits to CanOmer for the amazingly informative map.

You can see that many sea region borders correlates pretty well with their adjacent land regions. In order to control and benefit 100% from the sea regions trade you'll have to own its adjacent land regions. If you want to control the Levantine Sea, you'd have to own Salamis, Antioch, Tarsus, Tyros and Jerusalem. Just as the land regions are part of a land province, they're also part of a sea region.

We can also see that the Persian gulf has its own region, and we know from screenshots that ships can occupy the Red sea. Holding the Arabian coastal settlements would maybe give you great trading incomes from the Indian ocean. If a system like this was introduced, then i'd piss my pants.

I'm just worried how storms will be presented. Let's say you have to hold the regions by having a navy present there, then that navy is very exposed to storms. I usually keep my ships at port until a threat is coming in order to reduce the chance of losing my navy to a storm. Hopefully the owning of the sea regions are based on the land regions you own. This little speculation got me more excited than any official news have made me so far, haha!