How do I possibly get my land units across the ocean? I see in the description of some of these ships that they can transport land units, so why is it when I have them all together in an army, the land units become "lost at sea" while the boat they're "on" or rather that they're part of the same army of does NOT become lost at sea. Then after a turn passes, the land unit(s) are lost and the ship remains. Makes no damn sense. If someone can please explain to me what I am doing wrong, I'd surely appreciate it. Thanks!

I don't think merging boats + land units is a thing.

You just have the land units self-embark. As you said, they will become lost at sea and disappear. How to get around that is through careful planning and exploration of coastal areas. Also higher techs give longer land unit movement at sea. I think they all start at 2 hexes, but go up to 3 naturally. Then you can add the "swift" trait +1, along with the Colussus great wonder +1.

Not sure if there's any other way yet.

g1nt3r wrote:

How do I possibly get my land units across the ocean? I see in the description of some of these ships that they can transport land units, so why is it when I have them all together in an army, the land units become "lost at sea" while the boat they're "on" or rather that they're part of the same army of does NOT become lost at sea. Then after a turn passes, the land unit(s) are lost and the ship remains. Makes no damn sense. If someone can please explain to me what I am doing wrong, I'd surely appreciate it. Thanks!

The problem you're experiencing comes from the fact that the game has two kinds of boats which are not clearly designated in the tech tree. The first kind of boat is the kind your city builds that pops out into a harbor. The Carrack is a city-built boat. The second kind of boat is one that your unit turns into when it gets in the water. The Transport Galley is an example of this kind of boat. Regardless of which kind of city-built boat your military unit is grouped with, your unit will always turn into a unit boat. That means that even if you have a deep water city-built boat, your units traveling with it will die in deep water if you haven't researched the necessary tech for a deep water unit boat. City-built boats provide absolutely no benefit to military units traveling over water. I've expressed what I think about this non-intuitive, unrealistic, and game-unfitted system so many times elsewhere in this forum, that I'll refrain from mentioning it again here. Needless to say, I get why people are confused.

Units don't embark onto ships, they create their own ship counterparts, called transport vessel's. It is a bit confusing but basically there's a basic 2 movement transport galley and then later you get in era 4 I think, the ocean crossing transport vessels.

However, if you pick Vikings in era 3, you can get an ocean-crossing transport vessel early, that is one of the big bonuses that they get, being able to cross oceans much earlier than the rest of the cultures.

this is really strange... I thought i was able to merge a ship and land unit. And the army had the movementpoints of the ship. I think that was a caravel. (victor opendev)

and the other point, which dont fit to your explanations is the fact, that there are the Unit class naval transport. for what do you think are they, if not for transport of land units??

FrankTheTank wrote:

this is really strange... I thought i was able to merge a ship and land unit. And the army had the movementpoints of the ship. I think that was a caravel. (victor opendev)

and the other point, which dont fit to your explanations is the fact, that there are the Unit class naval transport. for what do you think are they, if not for transport of land units??

Yeah naval transports are what your land units turn into when embarking. You can't build naval transports otherwise, they just magically appear when you move a land unit onto sea.

It is weird and I do personally find the ships kind of a bit too late in terms of tech, even the vikings get theirs kind of late all things considered, but that's a bit of a disconnect between turn count, tech level and era stars.

Thanks for all the reply's, I get it now. I just misinterpreted what "Boarding Vessel" meant. I thought it meant to "board" that vessel, but it really means to "board" an enemy vessel during combat. My mistake. Thanks again fellas. Great game btw! Been really enjoying it!