This is exactly something that should never ever happen (not with a player nor with AI):

This is important so that naval units have any sense to them:

1. Allow movement of units along claimed contential territory. If, not then movement is completely blocked and there is no exploration, expansion and situations like abovve that make no sense. Note a ship cannot be destroyed outside of own territory so that ship is stuck there for ever and pulling its upkeep

2. To achieve this either:

A: Treat sea tiles differently such as in case of territory claimed by outposts: units can still freely traverse it

B: Extend continental shelf and do nto claim it entirely so the claimed territory can be circumnavigated

Think about this: if naval units are free to roam the seas, then they can be use to explore and colonies. They are also free to sack improvements yes and that is VERY GOOD. Pirace is a perfect tie in for diplomatic grievances AND it necessitates combat ships to protect ones own resoruces and trade routes at sea

If ships are not allowed to enter claimed sea territory then resources and trade routes are safe meaning no pirace meaning no need for defense force AND no exploration with ships that take forever to research and build, require coastline+reseearch+built port, consume a pop and have an upkeep cost of an entire land unit which can also claim territory while a ship cant...

Ok finally found an AI empire that has been building combat ships and not too outdated ones on huge map 10 competitors and the 5th difficulty level

Here the AI has managed to produce 3-4 full stacks of Carracks (no other ship types) and have even seen they have attempted a naval invasion against an independent city (and failed)

So the code exists but something is holding the AI back from building (and using) their ships in general

Here is an excellent setup that is lacking in some key areas:

This map has been geneated with chaotic continent placement and shape

The good:

+ Large bodies of water within the continent heavily encourage trading via sea and exploring sailing tech

+ Island in the middle offers strategic advantage to those who aim to control the area aroudn the sea

To be improved:

- Always place some strategic resurce on islands like this to give them clear strategic value even beyond area of control aroudn the sea which depends on trade and ownership situation (might not generate conflict depending on circumstances)

- Place sea rsources on the inland shallow water

- Always avoid having a single hex width for any continent or sea region. Always. The reasons for this are numerous but here are some examples:

1. Single hex can easily be blocked by varous terrain features especially cliffs

2. Fighting a battle in a single hex bottleneck is not very fun. We can have bottlenecks in between rivers, forests and even cliffs as the armies can overcome these wtih smart positioning but a single hex widht continent or body of water just feels unnaturally tight

3. Ownership around the contents of a single hex sea region are problematic logically: if the two sides are controlled by two different factions only one can have control over the pass.

Now this could be a cool strategic consideration but is not logical and intuitive as it means that the owner of the other side has no right to sail next to their own shore :)

It would still be possible to block passage for other factions by owning both sides of the shore (just like in realy life) but ownership of the straights on this example highlight just how random tihs currently turns out

- Most importantly: ALWAYS LINK INLAND SEA TO THE OCEAN. I dont know if this needs a list of reasons why that is important but jsut to mention the probably most cricial reason: It negates the need to code complex AI algorithm for managing inland sea differently from bodies of ocean. The AI should build and station fleets here just like in the ocean if it has valie (which it should with the above changes) and the ships are not blocked entirely (which they shoudlnt with the above change of removing single-hex passes) and having the inland seas connected with the ocean body would allow to transition these assets in between theaters negating the need to consider how much effort may go into a particual inland sea reagion or on which side of the continent region to buil the harbor in the first place

Edit:

Sure enough here is the first blocked passage from the same map:

The math is this: The gameplay benefits of connecting two inland seas together far outweight any sense of such a passage when its being bloced (no benefit)

Solution: Do not generate narrow 1 hex continental bridges like this and if they are allowed to be created, make sure they have the width or geography to be passable at minimum (but ideally dont do not create them at all)

Come to think of it, Panama canal is a thing... so how about letting us make it a thing in game. Whether by having a repeatable that straight up converts a land tile to an ocean tile, or what essentially amounts to a train station / airport mechanic between ports (requireing specifically connected ports of course, not just any of them).

But it seems to me at my moment of posting that even with any alterations to how landmasses vs oceans spawn and adding canals naval units still don't really have a point. The only thing driving use of naval units is the want of curiosities, which only matters so long as their's enough ocean nobody has vision over. Cities are almost never coastal so they can't help attack/defend, and even when cities are coastal its not like the ship can get inside the city.

I would say that ships at least need to be able to drop outposts on coastline tiles, otherwise they just don't feel like they matter. If not that then there should be something we need ships for. But right now no matter what was done to improve ship movement, I still wouldn't actually want to spend industry building any

TheSong wrote:
But it seems to me at my moment of posting that even with any alterations to how landmasses vs oceans spawn and adding canals naval units still don't really have a point. The only thing driving use of naval units is the want of curiosities, which only matters so long as their's enough ocean nobody has vision over. Cities are almost never coastal so they can't help attack/defend, and even when cities are coastal its not like the ship can get inside the city.

I would say that ships at least need to be able to drop outposts on coastline tiles, otherwise they just don't feel like they matter. If not that then there should be something we need ships for. But right now no matter what was done to improve ship movement, I still wouldn't actually want to spend industry building any

Yes I had this very same feeling tight from the betas: there nees to be something for naval units to do beyonf curiosities at sea and exploring (the latter is admittedly pointless in most cases to be honest as we are not allowed to colonise anyhow and we get full exploration by signing shared map agreements)

Dropping outposts on the coastline would not only make a lot of sense (since armies can drop outposts as well in this game) but would also be crazy thematic as in real world we could also only create outposts on the coastline and those outposts needed to expand or move inland (which is already allowed in the game via move order :))

And yes, even with creating outposts, ships might not be worht it untill industrial age: this is where trading should come in

Sea routes need to be super cheap to create compared to land routes, need to be super porfitable to destroy (to encourage piracy and havign to protect them with ships that are both expensive and take time to build) and there need to be some automated piracy at least for the most profitable routes generated by independent poeple living around the coastline of these routes (thematic, logical and ties in ground combat as well as factions are now motivated to deal with these factions in order to secure their trade routes

The final piece in the puzzle is placing strategic resources on all large islands and som unique luxury resources on them as well to actually froment creation of the sea routes georgraphically

Once all of this is done we would be encoruaged to sail out ASAP, create outposts to get critical resources (or buy them) and then protect our vital rotues, or plunder those of others

I would even go as far as to allow setting sail for land units right from Ancient Era: that would in many ways negate the need to create an outpost creation mechanic for land units but would not be too immersive to behonest and migh lead to many land units being stuck in endless voyages or lost by the AI at the beginning