Naval Warfare

[DeletedUser]

Warning: Extremely long boring post.

I've been thinking about the naval warfare part of this game, and while I haven't engaged in it yet I'm leaning towards that it is crap.

First off, you can build defensive ships at level 13 Academy but offensive ships have to wait until level 16 Academy. This gives the defender a huge advantage in building up before anyone can even think of attacking them from overseas. Why aren't offensive and defensive ships offered at same academy level?

Secondly, the transport ships are crap. 20 units? Come on. Let's do some math here. No mythical creatures or divine powers, luck or techs are going to be included in the math just to make it easier.

Each Transport costs 14 citizens. You can fit 20 swords, slingers, archers, or hoplites on each transport ship. You can send 6.6 horsemen, 5 Chariots or 1.25 catapults.

So here is population invested for every 10 full transports:

Swords, slingers, archers, hoplites (200 units) - 340
Horsemen (66 units) - 338
Chariots (50 units) - 340

If we had 100 Chariots we wanted to send we would need 20 transport boats and the total cost in population would be 680. Over 20% of our total available population.

Now we have to build offensive ships to break through any defensive ships our opponent may have. For our example we will just use Light Ships versus Biremes. Light Ships cost 10 population against Bireme's 8 population.

So we send 10 Light ships on their way taking up 100 population. We now have invested in this little skirmish 780 population. Our ships run up against 15 Biremes which the opponent has 120 population invested in. We lose all our Light Ships and 2 of our transport boats. The Defender has won and still has 3 Biremes. So now we have lost a total of 160 population already and 12540 in resources.

I'm not sure if at this point we will continue since our transport ships are alive. Let's say we do get to continue the attack on the city. Now we are down to 90 Chariots to go up against our opponents wall and forces. Don't forget he has probably had several hours notice and time to prepare.

If our opponent has a level 6 wall and 100 swords and 100 archers waiting for our 90 chariots we will kill all of those and walk away with 18 chariots standing to bring us home loot of a whopping 1152 resources. We've lost another 360 in population for a grand total of 520 population lost and another 69120 resources to bring our grand total to 81660. With what we do get to bring home we are down just over 80k in resources.

What will it take to kill all our chariots with a level 6 wall? 100 swords, 90 slingers and 100 archers. And who honestly is going to just have a level 6 wall and only swords, slingers and archers as defense at this point.

Can someone explain to me why it would be a good idea to invest in offensive ships and mount a mass naval campaign against anybody? How does this not promote islands with only 1 active player left standing and stagnancy in the game when attacking from the sea costs so much time, population, and resources for so little gain and with such a slim chance of winning anyways?

 

[DeletedUser]

I was coming to post about how I thought fire ships where under powered for their cost in men and materials ,but will tack it on to yours as I guess it is a naval query


Fire ship

Attack 20

Defence 1

Speed 5

What good is that to anyone

 

[DeletedUser]

It's very good ... for defenders.

One fire ship will set on fire ... one enemy ship, i'm not very sure what is the "preference" for the firemen, but if is the best oponent ship, then a trireme could be a very good target.

Minx, you have a point, it's very hard to conquer another active player from other island, but there are many ways around to reach your goal ... just use your imagination, i know it's very "bloody".

You would realize that the way naval battles are, can be a good thing. It's harder ... so players with imagination and team play will have a good advantage.
The way i like it.

That would force players to plan their strategy better, to have a good base on your island, and after that to make your way to other islands.

When you have more than one city, and/or have close teamplay members, the fun begins, and can make diffrent tactics to overcome the diffrence betwen naval attack and defence.

I know you'll find more than one tactic who would work.

 

[DeletedUser]

Let's say you want to take over an active player and you have 2300 free slots for units.

you want some tiny defense to help yourself against attackers. 400 slots gone.
you want some chariots since they are so good against swords. 1200 slots gone.
you want the necessary transportships. 55 ships. 385 slots gone.
you want some offensive ships to break through, but also need defensive ships to keep the village for 24 hours. 20 Triremes, 320 slots gone.

2305 slots gone. what do we get for that?
300 chariots, 200 swords, 200 archers, 20 Triremes, 55 Transport ships.

The triremes are easy to block,
the chariots are easy to block,
it's easy to get defense in between triremes and chariots, since timing is not possible in grepo,
it's easy to kill off the remaining triremes.

Later you just flood an enemy, but from the first village what do you do to take over a medium sized enemy?? Espacially if you do not have a level 40 farm?

 

[DeletedUser]

That's exact the point.

If you are the one under attack, you are active, and another active player want to take your city, it should not be easy.

It would be easy with inactive players.

But if you realy want to take an active player out, then you need to team up with other members, or take another city, and then play smarter.

P.S. Minx, transport boat cost only 7 citizens, that is half on your first estimation, and plus ... there are ways when you don't need them, to take a city from an active player, that is in another island that your first base.

 

[DeletedUser]

Yes I'm well aware of teamwork and other means of taking cities. And it should not be easy to conquer someone from the sea but this is ridiculous.

Even with team work the battles are instantaneous. There is no reinforcing your units with other players troops. You have what you have.

The cost of naval warfare is too high. I'll just be building some defensive ships as a nice wall against anyone stupid enough to try to take my city by sea.

Also, you didn't address anything about when there is only 1 player left on each island (is it really a good business move to encourage each player to make 19 other people quit the game) and all their spots are now able to be colonized that the only thing you have to loot for resources is 8 farming villages. 8 farming villages with a max loot of 6k per run. It's SimCity.

Sea warfare sucks and nobody can tell me differently.

 

[DeletedUser]

If there is 50 attacks and the enemy has a slow transport ship in each of those attacks to hide the pure naval forces and the pure transport ship forces I can still only block the colonization ship by keeping ground forces (maybe 2-3 brimeres) in the village. If it is a naval force + colo it won't start the attack, if it is ground force with colo, the briremes will block it, if it is a mixed attack force it'll be weak anyway.

And if the attacker is stupid enough to send fast naval attacks and slow transport ship attacks I can just block the transport ships very cheap.

You are forced to attack with mixed forces and even with 50 attacks all mixed, you still have good chances of not taking over a single active village. If you have really good teamwork on the offensive side you have a chance, if there is only the slightest form of teamwork on the defensive side you are screwed.

Some funny aspects: If you attack a village with ground troops in it you cannot kill a transport ship with a fireship, if there aren't any ground troops you can kill it though. Prevents the harvesting of transportships in early stages, but is somewhat unlogical.

 

[DeletedUser]

This is all nice and theoretical, but I'm a n00b. How the heck does naval war work? My opponent (no fair reading this Francois!) has like 20 transport ships in his harbor and I just built a bireme. It seems my attack strength (24 x 1) is better than his defense strength (1 x 20). But it won't even run in the simulator. And when I actually try to send it says I need more population to make an attack with. What do I have to do, send transport ships? Is there naval combat without land combat at all?

 

[DeletedUser]

I personally like the sea battle system/pop cost

You are all way to focussed on old habits of not having oceans and your vision seems to be limited to ground assaults.

What I would like to see is a extra unit, Catapult Ships, ships that can dmg wall/buildings of the defender.

 

[DeletedUser]

transport ships should not take any population, and they should carry 20 units, not 20 population (so you could fill 1 transport ships with, say, 20 minotaurs... instead of needing 2 ships for 1 minotaur, seriously, how does that even work??? upper body on one ship and feet on the other??)

 

[DeletedUser]

If you want it realistic

Then it did work as the ancient greeks had a warship built by Ptolemy Philopator consisting out of 2 ships.

This ship had a crew that was almost twice as large as that of the largest aircraft carrier we have ever built! Athenaeus describes other very large ships and boats of antiquity. One ship had a catapult designed by Archimedes that could hurl a 55 kg (120 pound) stone over 180 m (600 feet).

----

Now that's what I would like to see in a future update, catapult ships.

Back to the 0 pop for transport ships, so if you send transport ships with support/attack troops and all troops get killed... how will they return if they don't have a crew ? They need a pop cost imo.