Transport Ships

[The Wise Coffin]

I think that the mechanics if the tranport ships are really dumb!
First, its more stronger than actual battle ships; Second, they should be recruited like a normal ship in a port, not instantaneously happearing whend you click on the ocean! In my opinion this gives the game a feeling of no limits.

Pls mooders or Creative Assembly, make this feature, because i think is more historical and gives the player more challenge.

[Xanto]

I would imagine that one of the reasons CA did this is because it's generally easier for the AI to handle transporting units when a game is set up like this. Total War has always had issues with the AI not using transport ships, perhaps CA seen this as a solution.

I'm not excatly fond of the idea, (never have been it other games that do the same) but if it makes the AI act smarter then I can live with it.

[Dunadd]

Generally agree with you. I think an army should be able to move onto transports by requisitioning merchant ships, but only at a port city - and those transports should be fragile sailing ships with no oars and no rams, which should stand no chance in a sea battle against warships.

Being able to convert a land army into a powerful fleet of warships and on top of that not even having to go through a port to do it makes it very unrealistic.

[B. W.]

An advanced navy will clean the slate of those transport ships. This is one of the few things that R2 got right. I just don't understand all the complaints about it. Roman and Greek transports will destroy barbarian navel ships since they weren't good ship builders. I wish people would complain about the real issues with the game like the UI and the screwed up building tree, not to mention the battle AI.

[The Wise Coffin]

I understand what are you saying, but there are already more than 10.000 people complaning about that!
So i am complaning on other issues.

[Dunadd]

An advanced navy will clean the slate of those transport ships. This is one of the few things that R2 got right. I just don't understand all the complaints about it. Roman and Greek transports will destroy barbarian navel ships since they weren't good ship builders. I wish people would complain about the real issues with the game like the UI and the screwed up building tree, not to mention the battle AI.

Any navy should wipe the slate with them, small, large, advanced or not - but it doesn't, because an army in transports outnumbers most navies 4 or 5 to 1 and whether you auto-calc or fight the battle the transports will annihilate your navy. Historically ancient transports were merchant sailing ships with no oars, no rams and little or no manouvreability.

To build ships with hundreds of rowers each and rams took time and money - and a lot of pay for the trained oarsmen. Ancient armies couldn't just commandeer an entire fleet of ships with oars and rams in a day.

Being able to convert a huge army instantly into a huge fleet of oared warships with rams anywhere is an issue.

[Destraex]

Here is an exert from one of my other threads, I too am annoyed at the "insta fleets".

Here is a picture of the battle of ecnomus. You can clearly see that the transports are in tow. In Rome2 of course they are completely self sufficient warships.
Apart from ecnomus anybody who knows of the naval battle of Utica in 203bc during the second punic wars will also find a description of how roman transports lashed themselves together and had an advantage fighting from the taller transports
until the carthaginians managed to tow them away - DOES this sound like the warships transport fleets of rome2?

Utica: Battles of the greek and roman worlds by john drago montagu
He ordered all of his warships to be brought close inshore. Then, on the seaward side he lined up the transports four deep. These he lashed together (with gaps between the groups of four) securing planks on top to provide a passageway down the line. Althought the Carthaginians had naval superiority, they were dilatory in pressing their attack, deferring it until the morning after their arrival. As Livy says, what followed bore no resemblance to a sea fight. The Roman transports were taller than the enemy's hips, giving the Romans the advantage of height in firing missiles at their adversaries. After a period of punic unsuccess, the enemy started to grapple the transports in an attempt to tow them away, forcing the Romans to cut bonds between their ships. About 60 of the transports were towed awayin this fashion, a feat which the Carthaginians regarded as a source of much rejoicing in view of their recent string of distaters. Livy, 30; 10



P.S. Has anybody successfully swept oars yet?

[Praetorian349]

Well, to be fair, historical armies used to raise fleets of transports within weeks to traverse oceans.

Julius Caesar constructed a fleet of transports to travel to Britain.

When you have an army of 10,000 trained soldiers/carpenters/engineers/ing magicians building some sailing ships isn't a big ask, especially when a turn is a year. A year is plenty of time to do it.

[The Wise Coffin]

The transport ships could be recruited like the mercenaries.

[nameless]

Well, to be fair, historical armies used to raise fleets of transports within weeks to traverse oceans.

Julius Caesar constructed a fleet of transports to travel to Britain.

When you have an army of 10,000 trained soldiers/carpenters/engineers/ing magicians building some sailing ships isn't a big ask, especially when a turn is a year. A year is plenty of time to do it.

Militaries also commandeer civilian ships for their own uses as well.

[Destraex]

Praetorian by question is if they are building warships why do we have to wait a turn for other warships?
Also why are we building warships instead of transports?

Also these magicians were not building anything as complicated as warships in general. Remember that it took the Romans capturing a Carthaginian vessel to become good at it. Therefore they would need skilled shipbuilders to do anything more than basic.

[The Wise Coffin]

Its true, the romans didn´t know how to build war ships.

[Praetorian349]

Praetorian by question is if they are building warships why do we have to wait a turn for other warships?
Also why are we building warships instead of transports?

Also these magicians were not building anything as complicated as warships in general. Remember that it took the Romans capturing a Carthaginian vessel to become good at it. Therefore they would need skilled shipbuilders to do anything more than basic.

Yeah mate, I'm not arguing that the transport ships aren't ridiculous. They need to be nerfed or overhauled. And it makes sense that it should take a year for them to construct the ships.

But when an army is told to construct ships it's invariably going to be faster than at a docks. Dockworkers would be few in number, while in a legion there are 6,000 working pairs of hands. And around 5,300 of those pairs of hands have been building infrastructure and works of engineering all of their military careers.

The ships they construct would not compare to those of a professional shipbuilder, but they would definitely be constructed fast.

[Maelbox]

Yeah mate, I'm not arguing that the transport ships aren't ridiculous. They need to be nerfed or overhauled. And it makes sense that it should take a year for them to construct the ships.

But when an army is told to construct ships it's invariably going to be faster than at a docks. Dockworkers would be few in number, while in a legion there are 6,000 working pairs of hands. And around 5,300 of those pairs of hands have been building infrastructure and works of engineering all of their military careers.

The ships they construct would not compare to those of a professional shipbuilder, but they would definitely be constructed fast.

That's a pretty big speculation. I'd wager that the shipyard would build those ships faster than the effort of a combined legion, even with 1/10th of the manpower. Why? because not only are they already versed in building ships thier entire lives but they access to every tool of their trade, from cranes to proper beds to support the ships whilst being built through to the smaller materials needed such as nails, rope, among a hundred other things. Then take your legion and tell them to build a fleet. Of the few who had even seen a transport vessel before, how many do you think know how to actually construct a ship to the specifications required and the quality needed to not sink after being boarded? Ships tend to be a little more intricate than a camp wall.

Further than that, let's say for argument's sake they happened to have a few trained and experienced ship engineers with the army who were able to draw up designs, detail the long list of materials they'd need, organise work teams, etc. How are they going to construct the ships themselves? They could make cranes like Caesar did to build the bridge across the Rhine but they would need to be far more complex and probably numerous. Not to mention Caesar was a pretty smart dude - I doubt any random barbarian tribal leader who'd probably never seen a crane before could do it. I couldn't even tell you the rest of the minute details that went into building ancient vessels so I'm not going to try speculating but as you can probably see it's a little more difficult than simply rocking your army up to the nearest beach and telling them to get a move on, even with a whole year to do it.

[Dunadd]

That's a pretty big speculation. I'd wager that the shipyard would build those ships faster than the effort of a combined legion, even with 1/10th of the manpower. Why? because not only are they already versed in building ships thier entire lives but they access to every tool of their trade, from cranes to proper beds to support the ships whilst being built through to the smaller materials needed such as nails, rope, among a hundred other things. Then take your legion and tell them to build a fleet. Of the few who had even seen a transport vessel before, how many do you think know how to actually construct a ship to the specifications required and the quality needed to not sink after being boarded? Ships tend to be a little more intricate than a camp wall.

Definitely. Zero historical evidence for Imperial legions let alone Republican ones being capable of building large sailing ships let alone oared warships. They could build boats at the most. Building ships was a skilled, specialised job that only shipbuilders could do - and rowing it was also a skill that legionaries lacked.

EDIT : Well maybe not zero. I vaguely remember something from Caesar's Gallic Wars about building a fleet to fight the Veneti (Gallic tribe that controlled the English Channel through their ships). Found this web page saying he ordered Crassus to build a fleet, but it doesn't say whether the fleet was built by legionaries or ship builders. I'd have thought they'd need ship builders to direct legionaries doing the labour at the least.

[Kinjo]

They should have used merchant/roman cargo type ships for transports instead imo.

[Destraex]

I would be happy enough with that as long as they were sail based transports. I think the best we will get is a mod with a new model that removes the ram and adds a sail while slowing it down to a crawl and making its primary role escape or if lucky board.

That will leave the issue of not being able to re-enforce normal warships compliment of marines with legionaries.

[Darth the Great]

I would be happy enough with that as long as they were sail based transports. I think the best we will get is a mod with a new model that removes the ram and adds a sail while slowing it down to a crawl and making its primary role escape or if lucky board.

That will leave the issue of not being able to re-enforce normal warships compliment of marines with legionaries.

Dear Sir, I have to agree with it

[MKeogh]

My big problem with the insta-amphibious armies feature is that there are seemingly no limits on its use which has played havoc with the campaign game. The AI is not using this feature in any acceptable form: leaving armies for "years" just sitting in transports, abandoning vital provinces by fleeing to the sea, and launching too many Sands of Iwo Jima assaults on coastal towns which has reduced the number of actual field battles much to the game's detriment.

Some other people have suggested some interesting ideas in order to limit the AI's use of this feature such as as requiring researching a tech in order to use it and/or limiting the creation of an amphibious fleets to only armies sailing out of a friendly port (and maybe even limit it more to a certain type of military port.)

Sadly, my guess is that CA is thinking the amphibious army feature is WAD and thus we won't see any significant changes to its use which would be a shame because I think this poorly implemented feature has badly hurt Rome2's campaign game.

[The Wise Coffin]

That would be really good!