How to make fleets REALLY useful

**Retógenes** · March 29, 2016, 12:54 PM

Hi to all!

Yesterday, I was in the Bus, and I remembered one of the best mods (for me, the best, because its amazing campaign mechanics) of Medieval II: Bellum Crucis. In this mod, to incentivate to the player to spend resources in build a fleet, there is a script, that makes that one type of ship (the Hanseantic Coq) can have the trait "empty cellar" when you recruit them.

Well, when you move away those ships (around 4+ turns) from your capital port (or the one that are more near to your capital), this trait change to "cellar full". In this moment, the player need to take the ship and return to his homeland. When the ship is sufficient near to the main port, in the next turn, the trait changes again to "empty cellar", giving to the player a variable income (between 1000 and 10000 ducats) that only depends on how far the ship came when the trait changed to "cellar full" (random).

In Bellum Crucis we couldn't play our sea battles, but... NOW, (in Attila) YES!

My question is: Assuming that it cannot be possible anymore recruit individual ships, it would be possible to make this script work in AE in any way? (Admiral trait? Ship trait? Technology?

...)

I think this mechanic would be an amazing addition to the mod, that will force to the player to care the fleets to have an extra (and variable, that´s the way trade is

) income, and rewarding those factions that have sea power, as it happened historically.

Thanks for your attention and for your amazing work.

Sorry for any grammar mistake present in the text, english is not my native language.

Regards.

**Sir_Pee_Alot** · March 29, 2016, 02:15 PM

I would love to see also something like wood decay like they are doing in "Hellenika" plus ships sould cost resources and money.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

**Petellius** · March 29, 2016, 03:50 PM

I want to restrict navies, or at least larger vessels, to needing the wood resource and making ships super super expensive. Big fan of those ideas except the wooden one, I think that would just become annoying and stop the flow of gameplay.

**You_Guess_Who** · March 29, 2016, 04:34 PM

Originally Posted by Sir_Pee_Alot

I would love to see also something like wood decay like they are doing in "Hellenika" plus ships sould cost resources and money.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

My, The Hellenika mods DO respects the role of the seas. Those give me many ideas, thanks to link the manual.
Now, here's my suggestions. Not as complex as the previous posters', and partly inspired by that Hellenika manual and Junaidi de Bodemloze's concepts for the BACAI 4.2:

1. Increase naval movement range by 2-3 times.

2. Make High Seas Attrition penalty much harsher.

3. Land Armies, if embark from a beach and not a port, shall not be able to move for 2-3 turns.

4. Both Fleets and Embarked Armies, if idle for a turn in a port, get movement bonus.

5. Increase slots for Towers and Engines atop Polyremes.

This site is really useful: http://orbis.stanford.edu/
It says that Ostia to Carthage took only 6 days by sea if use direct route, and 2 weeks if going through coastal route.
Ostia to Alexandria took 16 days by direct route, a month by coastal route.

One can see how naval transportation is much faster than by land, and this should be reflected in-game. This is why naval movement ranges should be huge as in point (1), especially with Attila's 8 Turns per year (2 months per turn). I believe AE would have 4 TPY, correct? One of the rants many players was moaning about is that AI always ended up on a cruise trip in the Mediterranean, and accuse the seas as a source of weakness. It should not be like that, as in contrary, mastery of the seas, especially the Mediterranean, should be the backbone of Rome (or Roman factions in Attila), as the faction that controls the seas should be able to transfer troops quickly though the seas, for both excellent defensive and offensive army stack allocation. If embarked armies can travel from port-to-port quickly with the extra naval movement range, the much-hated AI Cruise Trips can be minimized. I add point (3), since a well-supplied and well-prepared fleet of ships should be able to travel further.

Also, extra naval movements means fleet movements on the campaign map can be more direct, and minimizes the propability of fleets ending their turns on the middle of the ocean. Ships of the Antiquity weren't designed as to sail the great seas, and travel were mostly coastal hops from port-to-port. Oared ships, with lots of rowers, are infamous for their short endurance - larger ships with large complement of rowers can deplete their supplies only in 4 days. Some anecdotes said that a rowing vessel can not only be seen from the distance, but smelled from the distance - the collective stench of tens of tens of rowers can be smelled from afar! This is why point (2) is needed. The fact also shape how naval conflicts were waged in the Mediterranean - it was about the control of ports, rather than the control of the seas itself; and great naval engagements were never far from the shores. Point (3) depicts the importance of ports as well.

One of the controversial decisions of CA was the insta-transport, since the AI in Shogun 2 never had difficulties with Amphibious Invasions - In fact very proficient in it even without the insta-transport. Insta-Transport means Insta-Navy as well, which was thankfully remedied a bit via the seasickness mechanism in Attila. However, It still is ridiculous how an army can get transports everywhere. There are several mods that adress this by limiting armies to be able to embark from ports, but then, why don't I suggest that as well?
Well, the problem is, how if you went on a Expedition to faraway lands to support an ally without capturing a port? That means no way back through seas, even if your ally have ports, your army cannot use them for embarking. This is why I say embarking just need to sap the movement point by 2-3 turns to simulate calling own transports from own ports/gather ships from friendly ports/apropriating ships from locals. But the AE team can just restrict port embarkation only if y'all wish.

On point (5), take a look on this:
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...A-s-ship-model
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...models-editing

I say this is one of community-made modding breakthrough that is very much overlooked. The modders that tried it can be counted by hand. It is true that creating entirely new collisionmodels, EFlines, camera positions and such are still not viable; however, adding additional slots for towers and engines are very much possible, even though not straightforward. The converter works for Attila models, believe me, I've tried it, and Attila's models_naval table is still identical to Rome 2's.
Back at Empire, Napoleon, and Shogun 2 Total War, a naval unit is comprised of several kinds of sailors: Officers, Marines who can use ranged weapons, Seamen who can only melee, and Crews who...crews the guns and engines. After Rome 2, this is not the case, a naval unit can only have one kind of crew. So, in R2 and Attila, there is no mixed crews - so how about using autonomous engines and towers to simulate that mixed crewmembers, in particular the ranged complement? The main crew shall be the melee boarding marines without having to make it a dual-purpose melee-missile unit.

**Thee Dugster** · March 29, 2016, 08:30 PM

Originally Posted by You_Guess_Who

My, The Hellenika mods DO respects the role of the seas. Those give me many ideas, thanks to link the manual.
Now, here's my suggestions. Not as complex as the previous posters', and partly inspired by that Hellenika manual and Junaidi de Bodemloze's concepts for the BACAI 4.2:

1. Increase naval movement range by 2-3 times.

2. Make High Seas Attrition penalty much harsher.

3. Land Armies, if embark from a beach and not a port, shall not be able to move for 2-3 turns.

4. Both Fleets and Embarked Armies, if idle for a turn in a port, get movement bonus.

5. Increase slots for Towers and Engines atop Polyremes.

I can't really see the reason for the third point if I am honest. I think the system they have now, where you can't move that turn, is fine. Why would you stay 6 months on a beach? The largest navy in the world that time would not take that long, to my knowledge.

For the fifth point, if you mean you can add more artillery to a ship, then I believe you are forgetting something; a ship has to maintain a certain crew number, or it can't function correctly, and it has to be under a weight limit. Artillery are heavy, and so are people. Consider this the same as adding bombs or turrets to heavy bombers in WW2; you have to find a good balance, and what they have right now I think is fairly realistic. Having two or three catapults on a single ship is ridiculous.

Otherwise, all of these would be excellent additions to the game, though I have not personally tested the naval combat, only the land combat (and that was a good long while ago).

**You_Guess_Who** · March 30, 2016, 09:35 AM

Originally Posted by Thee Dugster

I can't really see the reason for the third point if I am honest. I think the system they have now, where you can't move that turn, is fine. Why would you stay 6 months on a beach? The largest navy in the world that time would not take that long, to my knowledge.

Even a turn is too easy, and this make the AI do too much Cruise Trips at sea. The problem is the "middle of nowhere" part of the equation - If this only possible near ports then I wouldn't mind.

Originally Posted by Thee Dugster

For the fifth point, if you mean you can add more artillery to a ship, then I believe you are forgetting something; a ship has to maintain a certain crew number, or it can't function correctly, and it has to be under a weight limit. Artillery are heavy, and so are people. Consider this the same as adding bombs or turrets to heavy bombers in WW2; you have to find a good balance, and what they have right now I think is fairly realistic. Having two or three catapults on a single ship is ridiculous.

Hmmm, True. Too heavy engines and naval weaponry did give serious risk to ships, for instance how Corvus-armed ship capsizes easily in rough seas.
This is why I think only great polyremes like Hexeres, Hepteres, and Octeres would have 2 or more tower/engines, which we know those ships did have more than one tower/engines combination. And even that, the castles and engines are known to be broken down and stowed away in normal voyages outside of battles, to be safe.

**Retógenes** · March 30, 2016, 09:47 AM

I think that the biggest problem, concerning to fleets, is the issue that they are absolutely useless in both Rome II and Attila. In ETW/NTW/S2, at least you have the possibility to "park" the ships in the anchors scattered around the limits of the map, and you at least receive income for invest in fleets and control those points.

But now, you simply focus your income in build a powerful land army to conquer the world. Then you embark them in instant transports (Even when the AI corner your forces, you simply go to the sea, and goodbye!) and your problems are gone.

The only incentive to have fleets is the blockade of ports, so, the addition of this mechanic ("Empty cellar"-"Full cellar") to the mod would be simply awesome, to force to the player to choose wisely were he spends his income.

But I repeat, I don't know if the introduction of this mechanic would be possible in any way in AE.

Regards.

**ReaperXM** · March 30, 2016, 12:18 PM

1. Make nations depend more on trade income
2. Make sea trade routes very profitable
3. Make raiding these trade routes cut off 80-90% of the income for that trade route

**Petellius** · March 30, 2016, 01:13 PM

That could work. There is also the fact that besieging should now take much longer, so would likely need help from supporting naval fleets to blockade and starve the populous.

**Garensterz** · March 30, 2016, 08:55 PM

Originally Posted by Petellius

That could work. There is also the fact that besieging should now take much longer, so would likely need help from supporting naval fleets to blockade and starve the populous.

Is it possible to tweak the CAI to make their besieging turns much longer or at least stay until city starvation? Because I noticed in vanilla Rome 2 and Attila the CAI often attacks a city quite instantly, it'll be lucky if they besiege a city longer than 3 turns.

**Petellius** · March 31, 2016, 04:55 AM

Yes i think it should be, but ABH might know more.

**Alfonzo over Innsmouths** · March 31, 2016, 11:50 PM

Or alternatively, increase the effect of piracy in neutral, shared and controlled waters, increase income from maritime commerce, and increase the benefits of patrolling. That way if you build maritime commerce buildings, you'll really only get lots of denarii from it if you actively patrol.