--I had some massive problems posting this comment so it is heavily edited. I wrote here to wait with comments
I have a few problems with video.
R2 - majority of showed content is from first year. I agree R2 launch was very problematic from many reasons but right now especially with latest patches it is not so tragic trainwreck. Plus I was playing R2 and naval combats from day1 (heck even did some small mods for R2 like adding harpoon trireme - it is not ingame due to often bugs ...) and the rate of naval bugs was quite low. Yup,they could happen but it was never in every battle. 1 of 10, 20? more likely...
Darren is missing overall point why naval combat worked so well in Empire and not later. Except Empire, all other games are not true high sea/deepwater actions. They feel like coastal/shallow waters. In Empire there are actual continents and trade theatres. Napoleon, Attila, Rome 2...we are sailing around Europe. ToB...just around Britain. Shogun 2...just around Japan banana. This is main issue with naval combat in Napoleon and FotS. While the combat is great, the campaign part...you are just blocking ships and protecting your part of map around Europe or Japan. In shortly you can have land empire not caring to much about navy. This is also true for Wh1 and 3K, there is simply no reason for many faction to use actual naval. If 3K was featuring Korea and Japan, then perhaps but unless the naval travel would be way way super advantage or only possibility how to reach certain parts of map, only then players would probably use it regularly. Again I love naval combat and would love its return in form of Empire II
Wh1-2 I have actually different arguments which were usually not so visible but which are probably even more true. Firstly do you guys understand what is naval combat in Wh lore? It is as ridiculous as is the Blood Bowl game. There is everything. Magic ships, flying ships, vikings, gunpowder ships, rotting carcasses of dead sea monsters, floating cities... Basically each race has 3-5 unique models usually with unique functionality. Which is at the top paired with second more generic problem. CA never solved properly issue how to depict transports vs professional navy ships. Issues like ramming in R2 and sea sickness are dirty tricks, but things like depicting tranporting artillery units, cavalry, elephants...You can justify that those won´t participate except maybe human parts..And now imagine all various monsters from Wh lore crawling all around different ship designs. How do you animate that? Trolls on Dwarf size iron clads? Sea Hydras, Giants? Because in Wh you cannot justify leaving some units under deck...At best it would require combined naval/land battles but what if one side wins naval part while second land part? Who wins? Navy?
Thus saying I would love some naval combat in Troy and future TWs. However I need campaign map that would justify usage of it. Which is something like:
Empire:
Wh lore:
Only Wh2 and probably Wh3 (Empire2) are reaching such continent/water complexity in my eyes. I would love Naval combat in every TW yet not everyone really needs it if there are almost no penalties when you lack it. Like seriously look at 3K map. Unless there are conditions like in real history,that armies require river navy to move around..if the land is almost as traversable, there are not many reasons to deploy navy. This is not argument that navies are useless. I want map changes to make them important! In Napoleon I can play British Empire with just a few ships. The trade system is simplistic and very often the ships are only tranports. Firstly CA needs to create maps and reason for navies to exist, to matter. Without that..Honestly how much different would be Shogun 2 without navies? ToB? FotS has at least naval bombardment, Rome2 combined battles not caring how much bugged you think they are, Empire has trade theatres and without armed escort, trade ships would sooner or later be sunk unlike in Napoleon.. Still imagine Rome2/Attila campaign maps. You can easily move from Rome via Syria and back to Carthage without need for actual navy. I want navy to matters to ravage coastlines, port settlements and more.
And now to 3K. To me it looks like CA ed up once more like with Norsca. And 3K active players dropout is due to it, which can be described as content drought as of lately. We had pre-order DLC and just one normal DLC which is mediocre. I still don´t have problems with game and will wait because we have the same birth problems with Wh1 and its weak DLCs like pre-order WoC, Wood Elves, Beastmen and Norsca for Wh2. Yet now everyone is praising Wh2 to be finally great. It took time to get there..(which is not saying CA should not finally learn to lower number of similar problems as R2 had problems, Attila too, Wh1, Wh2..now 3K still problems ) I´m just waiting for Korea and other interesting stuff..because all the negatives were listed rightfully. Low variety in everything.