Naval units are difficult to fit in historical 4X games due to the lack of meaningful actions to do with them

EL had a fantasy setting which allowed for great solutions to the problem: monsters and caretakers as neutral enemies and outposts on the sea regions that provided missions and useful resources when captured by force so even from the very start it was worth investing into ships as one could gradually snatch resources at sea

This is not the case in a historical setting and it would be odd to have riches lying around at sea or neutral factions roaming the waves with more advanced or larger fleets then the main civilizations clearly without purpose.

So I was looking at the game with a sea-expansion heavy play-stile in mind with Phoenicians and Carthaginians:

Phoenicians get a unique ship and can start building fast it seems but the ships can:

- Only travel shallow water (else attrition)

- Cannot establish outposts (maybe if it embarks land units?)

- Can explore but there are very few island like formations (at least in Lucy)

- Does not encounter opposition (As expected) as no neutral units or weather or AI to endanger it

My proposal for quick fix using the games already existing excellent innovations:

- Allow all ship units to establish outposts just like land units can with the exception that they can only create these on the shore (for practical reasons)

- Make sure that all maps generated contain some islands with special resources to make their discovery and colonization worth the effort. These should be part of a sea region for reasons explained later

Some ideas to actually give meat to naval units outside of enabling colonisation in later ages and protecting or deterring invasion forces:

Updated List based on discussion (Updated 20.01.2021):

- Place ship research in earlier phases of eras and introduce Galleon to ease transition between Carack and Man o War:

     Combat units:

         Ancient Early: Pentekontere 22/4/1 (combat, movement, range)

         Classical Early: Quadrireme 28/4/1

         Medieval Early: Carack 39/5/2

         Early Modern Early: Galleon 49/6/2

         Early Modern Late: Man o War 53/6/2 (maybe slight increase to combat here)

    Transport Units:

        Ancient Early: Tansports Galley 18/2/1

        Medieval Mid: Cog 33/3/1

        Early Modern Early: Fluyt 41/4/1

- Generate seas within continents, and islands of various sizes within these seas to allow for nations across the continent to more rapidly converge on each others sphere of influence, establish/raid each others trade routes and thus make building of large amount of ships a worthwhile investment right from the start of the game due to the race to control as much as possible from these sea regions:

Single Continent:

Two Continents:

Green sea tiles are shallow water and any ship can pass through without attrition

Purple dots are resources unique to islands

- Remove pop prerequirement for building ships

- Allow trading of food and make it more important strategically to increase importance of constant trade for large empires with large army and the incentive to raid them

- Marines to be generated to participate in tactical combat on land instead of the ships to avoid exploits based on restricted ship movement and range and allow ships to protect attack cities along shoreline

- Introduce ownership of sea regions (like in EL) where the faction with a Trading Post in a region controls that region - Current trading system cannot make use of this

-  Allow creation of Trading Posts or outposts by naval units. They cannot be upgraded to cities until the late middle-ages and the more are connected with each other the more money AND influence they produce. Since only one Trading Post can be established per sea region, it becomes preferable to build out your network ASAP before the AI gets to your regions

- Some neutral (minor) cultures should develop into pirate nations if near a lucrative Trade Post and should start harassing the ships and ports in their region. They should not destroy the port but sack it causing loss of resources. This lat point is important as it is thematic and motivates the factions to keep fighting ships close to the most Valuable Ports at all times but not having to actually fear loosing them completely if they are not protected perfectly

The above should allow for naval ships to be very useful right from the start even if there is nothing to fight with them as they are building the trading network of the faction over sea.

Naturally once factions get sea borders the fighting can start for Trading Posts only leading to naval wars if these are located on islands which is a logical step if the coastal region is aleady controlled by another faction while you are building out your sea-trade network

Attrition on high-sea should remain as is - it makes sense even though it is very restrictive but tech seems to elevate this over time so its ok

I think the concept like this would fit nicely into the existing logic used on land expansion and would cause much more action on the seas as well as generating historically accurate scenarios :)

Wholly agree. Basically, naval units should be able to interact with more than only naval units - that is, interact with things on land.

Based on many IRL naval battle usages as well as game mechanics, I could think of below suggestions:

-  Naval Units can establish outposts (or with the cost of 1 unit?), but only an Outpost directly on the coast.

-  Naval Units can ignore closed borders on water. (Buff exploration)

-  Naval Units can participate in land battles when next to the coast, attacking units directly on the coast. Ranged Naval Units can bomb inland units and defenses within range.

-  Naval Units can ransack land-based Quarters directly on the coast (or it will take a longer time?). Ranged Naval Units can bomb inland Quarters within range, which can damage their defense value, and lower the stability of the city. (Reflecting coastal raids and bombardments)

-  Naval Units should have a combat str bonus (+3?) when attacking embarked units. (Reflecting naval interception, counter landing attacks)

-  During a war, parking Naval Units next to enemy Harbors will deny that Harbor from generating yields (or reduce the stability of the city). (Reflecting naval blockade; can force enemy navy into naval battles as well)

-  Ransack a Harbor will also ransack all the land-to-naval Trade Routes passing through that territory. (Reflecting disruption of port infrastructures)

Zumwalt wrote:

It would be cool to introduce marine mechanics when ships could land troops that would only operate a certain distance from ships. This will help protect ship-based outposts more effectively.

This is a very cool idea :)

It would serve many purposes:

1. Protecting outposts/cities as you have mentioned above which is great if you ahve them on remote islands as no land units need to be produced and moved to these only to protect them from native land units - excellent streamlining and makes sense historically as well

2. The mechanic would also allow for ships to reinforce armies when they are close to land battles AND sieges withouth the DEVs having to give the ships all range attacks and havign to figure out how to generate the tactical maps with land and sea

3. Preventing exploit of moving your units outside of ship firing range which would otherwise render them pracitcally useless during attack if the camp is not on the shore

4. Marines would be good fighters but could have half the strenght of normal division 50 instead of 100 to represent their smaller number and better training ad discipline

5. All ships could generate the same type of marines thus even special ships like fire ships could support units effectively - marines could have their own research items to have their art and combat value upgraded

6. Ships overall value would increase considerably due to the above making them valuable investment especially for expeditions and island hopping conquest

Ranged ships should just be able to attack land units (maybe at penalty).  Having “marines” only seems useful as something to hold the “flag” location. (which seems ok...have Marines be a unit that can land, build outpost, hold position, and get back on ship, but that’s it.

Krikkitone wrote:

Ranged ships should just be able to attack land units (maybe at penalty).  Having “marines” only seems useful as something to hold the “flag” location. (which seems ok...have Marines be a unit that can land, build outpost, hold position, and get back on ship, but that’s it.

Correct: their primary purose woul be to allow all ships (whatever the type evne fire ships or raming ships) to support land battles and or protect cities/outposts when there are no land unit nearby

Creating outposts cold be done by UI updates as well: allowing the shipsto create outost in hexes next to it instead of standing on hte hex as is the case for land units right now - it needs some tewaking but it likely doable withouth having to enable them to dispatch a land unit to do so

It is a huge advantage to be able to hold a postion though that should not be undersetimated: both when defneding and attacking, the limited range of even ranged units likely causes naval units to be become useless unless the capture location is in range for them from their sea-tile. E.g.: when defneding it is enough to concentrate only on land units and then simple move out of their range to render them completely useless evne if the flag is in their reach - the obvious exploit options againt even ships that coul fire from the sea seems like a huge elephant in the room

Having them being represented as a lnad unit instead forgoes the entire problematic and changes them to an expesive investemnt that will liley never really turn the tide on a land battle to a likely support asset that will easily make a difference on coastal battles or even be able to hold down cities/outpost all by themselves making their investment very much worth it which is the ultimate goal of these proposals

Bringing in a sea trade mechanic is unlikely at this point of the development if it hasnt been planned already (maybe in expansion) but changing the way ships particiapte in battle might have a fighting chance to still make it into the game and turn these units around

Another low-hanging fruit from the proposals might be to allow ships to create outposts in tiles next to them: this would put them on par with the current land units (which are already a huge innovation from previous 4X titles allowing for combat units to act as colonisers - building dedicated setllers is such a wast of time - I love it and wish that ships get the same treatment :))

Thanks guys to the insight: observed the trade agreement as described above:

1. After buying resources from an AI empire, a route from the resrouce to the player is displayed

2. During trade the player can choose land or sea trade where hte hint states that sea trade is cheaper but it was the opposite case in all obeservecd cases as sear tade was more expenesive - this is a blancing issue, wrong hint or simply due to distance being longer for trade route dont know but if not resolved it further decreas ship relevance

3. Players do not seem ot be able ot sell anything even at the highest trade agreement level (might be a limitation of the beta)

4. After trade route is establsihed, the additional resoruce is added to the player "inventory" immidiately but havnet seen any sign of trade posts caravans or ships after several turns so cant tell how and if they can be intercepted (hint states that they can)

Now this trade system is very unique as resources are not accumulated (like in most 4x games such as Galactic Civizations games or even Endless Legend) but represent a kind-of production capacity. The goal seem to be to streamline the resource management system and boil it down to availabiltiy for unit production and trade.

Units either dont requie any resources, or they requrie 1 or 2 strategic resources - What is odd in this idea is that the resoruce onyl needs to be available at the time of production and is irrelevant afterwards (unless the player wants to produce more such units) - this decreases the relevance of trade at least for strategic resources

Luxury resources might be much more temptive to trade if only one unit of each type has an effect on an empire and the rest are usueless unelss traded but these dont seem ot be tradeable yet

Overall this system of trade is very unique but also seems to not support the construction of ships: even if traded via sea (which is currently more expensive) and if trade ports and ships are created on the map (which I couldnt find), there doesnt seem to be any activity on the seas that can disturb them and evne if they are disturbed, the necessity for (at least) strategic resoruces is not that high espeically once the couple of units that need them have already been produced (which ecan be done within 1 turn via buyout) and the palyer only needs to upgrade them going forward

Also noted: when player attacked the AI from whom resoruces were traded, the rotues remained intact -these routes need to break down at times of war

A universal income of money would have been solid system as it can be made so that it generates more revenue then conquest would: even if the above trading scenario works perfectly well, it will still be much more lucrative to conquer the other empire simply take their reosuces and save the money that would have been spent on trade route and protecting the route

The best trading system I have even seen was in Seven Kingdoms and was laughably simple: Only two mayor resoruces in a kingdowm: Food and Money. Food is only produces by farmers in towns and money is produced by all non-soldier pops and products being sold on the market (there were 3 types of  products ta could be mined refined and sold). Food was needed for poeple to not starve and if not enough food, everyone would slowly die. Money was needed to upkeep everything from buildings to soldiers and if not enough money, buildings fell apart and soldiers deserted. The trade in that system simply went and allowed the buy and sell of food, and some treaties for money that is it. Raw materiel and products could not be bought or sold via diplomacy only in markets where the entire transaction was automatic. The resulting system was fabulous and you coudl actualyl win a game withouth having a notable military just by being the bread backet of the most powerfull kindom(s) who dared not to attack you with their military consuming 2-3X the food they could produce themselves :)

But back to ships being relevant the existing system needs even more boosters to make nqaval units relevant

1. Make sea trade actualyl much much chepaer then land trade

2. Ensure at least trade port are generated (ships are not necessary just for showing the route as viusal feedback)

3. Have neutral factions target trade ports and distrupt lucrative routes

4. Assign secondary gain from trade (money is out as the routes already have cost which is unfurtanate) so there is alwas something lost

5. Require strategic resource also for unit upgrade and healing - if no sufficent amount available, the unit cannot heal or be ugpraded

This is only for trade, which as mentioned should only provide a small amount of reson for naval units to be built and maintained

The trade system would have been the largest and most tirvial factor to rectify naval units existence but is unlikely to change so it is even more important to give more purpose to them now that that option seems to be out:

- Exploration: more shallow water access and more intersting island formations that should always contain something of value (resource). Maybe outright increase the width of shallow water tiles and thus alow more land formations to be reached via starting ships

- Anomalies are fine in the firtst age but hey need to scale up considerably at sea to be worth at later ages

. Allow colonisation with ships (same as land units)

- Marines instead of the ships themsleves participating in land battels to make them always usefull there and prevent exploit of their limited range and movement (cant leave sea tile)

The last two seem to hold the most promise now