Agree/Disagree - Naval improvements should be in the next expansion.

[Abayonett]

Just curious. I think naval should be next expansion. I'm a little surprised we haven't seen a naval overhaul yet as it feels like the least developed part of the game. Everyone using the same ships is weird and the AI has to cheat because it can't use the system in place.

I tend to play as a naval power in my games and fighting a naval war against an equal AI country is maddening. It seems once the AI starts to lose it takes its ship and hides in the middle of the open ocean where I have to take 10-20% attrition damage just to run them down. Plus, that little open ocean zone in the Bay of Biscay is the bane of my existence. You would think that during the golden age of exploration someone could sail from Ireland to Portugal without wrecking their ships.

P.S. I will not be offended if you disagree with the topic, just trying to gauge thoughts on this. Also, this is whether you think naval should be next, so if you would like to see a naval overhaul, but have something else you think is more important, feel free to disagree.

EDIT: By "next" I am referring to the expansion after Cossacks. I assume Cossacks is mostly done since we are getting DDs about it.

Here is a screenshot to illustrate my point:

Yep, naval game play and mercenaries should be overhauled, there are so many things that can be done to improve them.

 

[paulatreides0]

There actually literally were such pools, a naval manpower pool would be comprised of registered sailors, not a general pool that you turn into soldier as the manpower pool is. l

Yes, those pools did exist, but you can say the same thing of pretty much anything that required a skilled job. There was a set pool of sailors. There was a set pool of military officers too. Cavalry had set pools that depended on the number of horses and (at least early on in the period) how many guys could afford to pay for their own horses. Hell, there was a pool of artillery operators. Should we simulate those too? Pretty much every job had a finite pool, but we had to examine why those pools existed.

Unlike a manpower pool (or a horse pool), which simulates that you have a finite number of people who can serve with your given population, the specialized jobs your population can do does not depend on some arbitrary pool. It depends on how much you are willing to invest into their recruitment and education.

In other words: if England can only recruit 50k men, then England's army can never exceed 50k men. However, England can, if it chooses to spend the money and time, make these men whatever it wants. They could all be sailors, they could all be officers, hell, they could all be military signal flaggers. One limit is a hard limit forced upon you by the fact that you only have so many people, the other is a soft limit enforced only by what you can and want to afford in terms of time and money. The game represents both of these limits well enough in terms of manpower and building cost/time.

So yes, yes, those pools existed. But they were generally only relevant in times of *emergency*, when you couldn't spare a couple of months or years to train new crew to man your ships and you needed men who already knew how to sail and needed them fast. Which is why impressment was only really a thing during wartime, and generally even then only when wars were going rather badly for you. During peace time there as no such issue, as Britain, for example, had ample time to take random guys off the street and train them to be sailors - which is what the majority of sailors were to begin with.

The argument could be made that ships should draw manpower from the general pool, and that's a fine argument. Even the argument that they should draw maintenance costs from the manpower pool can be made. However, the need for a separate pool would just needlessly obfuscate the game and introduce a mechanic that is useless the vast majority of the time.

However, having them draw from their own manpower pool is unnecessary. The player's choice to build and maintain their fleet is enough simulation for that aspect. Abstract the training of sailors as a cost to train them that is part of the maintenance cost.

you can lose your entire fleet and it'll make your fighting efficiency better, the next time.

And...that is actually rather realistic. You learn lessons from losing, more so than winning usually, so one would expect that in a similar scenario in the future you would do better. That makes perfect sense, in fact, that's how much of military scholarship works.

The big set back though is that you just lost your entire fleet. Which means you are vulnerable and unable to do anything at sea until you can rebuild your navy enough to actually do anything, which would take a couple of decades at the very least and a tremendous amount of money.

The limits are ducats, time, and provinces.

And historically, these were the limits as well. Navies have always been cost-limited, not manpower-limited. It was due to time and cost that impressment happened, for example. I do think ship types should be more varied, with big ships like 2nd and 1st rates only being able to be built by specific provinces with specific improvements to allow the construction of such large behemoths, though. But yeah, generally, what limited the size of your navy was: 1) how much you could afford, 2) how much time you had to build, and 3) how many places you had where you could build at once.

But you you can just borrow a sack of ducats, and build a ship of the line in every coastal province you own, (Victoria does this better with big naval bases) and in a few years you've rebuilt your entire fleet, better than before; just gather it up.

And this is a problem...how? This is, for example, exactly what the British did several times in history. The game does need a better way to simulate the importance of ship yards for building large ships, but outside of that, it's not that ridiculous. Hell, the bank of England was established to fund the navy. It was literally established so that the Brits could borrow a sack of ducats, build a ship of the line on every available shipyard, and have a brand new navy in only a couple of years, better than before.

Adding time to construction is a good solution as it stands now though, it took years to construct some ships of the line, though galleys shouldn't take more than a year to build.

A heavy ship takes about 730 days to build, which is about 2 years. Frankly, I wouldn't mind if the bigger heavy ships took longer. But that would require a more nuanced system where it differentiates huge triple deckers from, say, smaller 1 deckers.

Composite archers were the primary offensive means in the Ottoman navy at the time, losing all of them gutted their primary means of actually fighting at sea. As I said they rebuilt most of their fleet but they avoided confrontation for years.

Yes, I know. That's not what I argued. Regardless of where those composite archers had been lost they would have been difficult to replace. Even if they had lost the composite archers on land, they would have been equally difficult to replace. This is because archers in general are very costly to train in terms of both time and money. This is part of the main reason why guns replaced bows in Europe even though bows had drastically higher effective ranges (with regards to accuracy).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I disagree. Civ V, as inferior to EUIV as it is, does make navy more important than in EUIV. Hell, once in Civ V I turned a country into a 3rd world nation by taking half of their country with only 4 ships. Granted, they were already an entire era behind me, I still took more land than in EUIV with nothing but navy

I'm inclined to agree. The civ series makes navies more important than EU IV. Even as far back as Civ IV you could easily lose the game in MP if someone loaded up a bunch of transports, put them between your coastal cities, and insta-burned whichever one you garrisoned insufficiently. The mobility got to the point where the defender was at an acute disadvantage, in a game where ordinarily the reverse was overwhelmingly the case. In Civ BE the boats hit so freaking hard that they're game-changing, which makes 3 major titles in the series in a row where a naval advantage by itself could decide the game outright on half or more of the map types.

Navy is important in EU IV, but not the kind of important where Morocco can permanently cripple Spain without even landing serious forces on the Iberian peninsula.

As an aside, I'm not sure what people are talking about wrt "ships should take long to build". They do, default for a heavy ship in the game is ~700 days in many cases. You can bring that down by investing in naval infrastructure but you need a ton of coastal provinces + infra to build a giant fleet of heavies quickly, and a ton of money. As an abstraction it's no less plausible than, say, standing armies of 150k on multiple nations in 1600 just chillin' in peace time.

 

[aitaituo]

There are no significant naval reworks planned for The Cossacks/1.14, but it's something we plan to look at in the future.

Good. I'm tired of the British landing their entire army at Gallipoli just to flaunt their attrition magic.

 

[Shadowstrike]

One thing that the game already does well is that the in this period, the merchant marine turned into the navy in wartime (i.e. because they were the same ships that we pressed into service). I'd like to see that preserved, so that you have to balance off the costs of suddenly turning your trade fleet into a war fleet.

 

[bbqftw]

Depends on whether you're in a position to keep a transport stack parked in the coastal zone for a prolonged period.

If you are, then your navy lets you significantly circumvent zones of control, in much the same way that military access can on land.

Of course, but does one really have the reaction time to avoid getting ganked out of fog of war while locked into sieging a fort? Keep in mind that due to shattered retreat mechanics, losing a battle in this situation can mean a wipe since armies sometimes won't retreat onto transports.

If you can field a strong enoug naval landing force that this is not a threat than you can win easily conventionally.

 

[Ixal]

One thing that the game already does well is that the in this period, the merchant marine turned into the navy in wartime (i.e. because they were the same ships that we pressed into service). I'd like to see that preserved, so that you have to balance off the costs of suddenly turning your trade fleet into a war fleet.

"Merchant Marine" would mean the transport ships as they are trade ships (Cogs, East Indiamen, etc.) But for some reason they do not help trade at all.

 

[Smoked_peasant]

Yes, those pools did exist, but you can say the same thing of pretty much anything that required a skilled job. There was a set pool of sailors. There was a set pool of military officers too. Cavalry had set pools that depended on the number of horses and (at least early on in the period) how many guys could afford to pay for their own horses. Hell, there was a pool of artillery operators. Should we simulate those too? Pretty much every job had a finite pool, but we had to examine why those pools existed.

Unlike a manpower pool (or a horse pool), which simulates that you have a finite number of people who can serve with your given population, the specialized jobs your population can do does not depend on some arbitrary pool. It depends on how much you are willing to invest into their recruitment and education.

In other words: if England can only recruit 50k men, then England's army can never exceed 50k men. However, England can, if it chooses to spend the money and time, make these men whatever it wants. They could all be sailors, they could all be officers, hell, they could all be military signal flaggers. One limit is a hard limit forced upon you by the fact that you only have so many people, the other is a soft limit enforced only by what you can and want to afford in terms of time and money. The game represents both of these limits well enough in terms of manpower and building cost/time.

So yes, yes, those pools existed. But they were generally only relevant in times of *emergency*, when you couldn't spare a couple of months or years to train new crew to man your ships and you needed men who already knew how to sail and needed them fast. Which is why impressment was only really a thing during wartime, and generally even then only when wars were going rather badly for you. During peace time there as no such issue, as Britain, for example, had ample time to take random guys off the street and train them to be sailors - which is what the majority of sailors were to begin with.

The argument could be made that ships should draw manpower from the general pool, and that's a fine argument. Even the argument that they should draw maintenance costs from the manpower pool can be made. However, the need for a separate pool would just needlessly obfuscate the game and introduce a mechanic that is useless the vast majority of the time.

However, having them draw from their own manpower pool is unnecessary. The player's choice to build and maintain their fleet is enough simulation for that aspect. Abstract the training of sailors as a cost to train them that is part of the maintenance cost.

You have some misconceptions about impressment and naval training; the navy was a consumer of seamen, (haha) it didn't produce many of them. Impressment was not a war-time only measure, it was the primary means of drawing seamen into the Royal Navy to meet its enormous manpower needs. During war the press would be expanded, but it was the main means of recruitment peace or war, even after the introduction of quota acts. The navy did not have continuous serious training programs for seamen and expected seamen to be trained in the merchant marine.

"Could the government make perfect seamen as easily as they could soldiers, there would be no such things as the pressing of seamen, and I as happy to be of more value than all of them put together, for the would not impress any of them, they were of so little value compared with me". ( The Life and and Adventures of John Nicol, Mariner).

"Boys soon become good seamen; landsmen rarely do, for they are confirmed by other habits." (Captain Nathaniel Boteler's Dialogues, NRS).

So what I am saying is, during this era states could not effectively convert landsmen into seamen as needed, they relied on their civilian merchant marine for a supply of seamen. I think the game doesn't do a good job simulating this, as it stands now England at the start of the game is a formidable naval power with the current mechanics, and it absolutely wasn't and shouldn't be at the start.

Navies are absolutely limited by manpower, trained sailor manpower, the Spanish, despite having plenty of ducats to build high quality ships, was absolutely hamstrung by the mid 18th century by its inability to properly staff the fleet. La leva turned to recruiting landsmen to bolster the pool, but the results can be seen in the continuous disasters after the 1730s. The French, aware of the disparity focused on a small (and in theory) high quality, specialized fleet.

Over time the merchant marines in these countries expanded or contracted, the English merchant marine ballooned over the centuries, and could outmatch quantitatively the French & Spanish, and absorb losses without being crippled.seamen are a major limit on naval capacity. Paradox could tie naval manpower to production in coastal provinces, especially in fish & naval supplies provinces, and provinces with coastal trade bonus modifiers since that is where seamen come from.

And...that is actually rather realistic. You learn lessons from losing, more so than winning usually, so one would expect that in a similar scenario in the future you would do better. That makes perfect sense, in fact, that's how much of military scholarship works.

Analysis is really what determines if you learn, victory or loss isn't important in regards to that. And I'm not arguing against losers getting more naval tradition. But I am saying that generally, when anyone not Britain lost a big naval battle, they didn't come back stronger, no matter how much resources they put into rebuilding. But with the mechanics as simple as they are, nothing simulates the disaster that losing a bunch of skilled seamen would have on naval ability.

Ships should not, and need not, play like water-regiments, I think anyone who can play this game could figure out something as obvious as a seamen pool: seamen are spent filling out boats, boats require seamen upkeep, your boat capacity is limited by seamen. If you want to expand your capacity, you'd invest in maritime provinces, adopt idea groups that add modifiers to your seamen pool, recovery rate, etc..

The specifics here aren't important, but I definitely feel the current schemes of of naval tradition/ cross-empire boat limit / ducat-only limitation does a functional job, but this thread is about naval overhaul and this is the direction I'd like to see it go in. I would also like to see them abolish the 4-type standardized boat model they have, the only country I know of that ever did that was Denmark, shortly before the Napoleonic wars. And that was something unique and innovative they tried.

 

[WSnova]

The shipbuilding time for Heavies is fine, its 2 yearsi-sh per Heavy thats fine enough as it is, since if you destroy an Heavy Navy you can expect 2 years of Naval advantage (that is assuming the loser can afford to rebuild it, being at war and all).

Naval battles can be decisive, I do think they should cost manpower but thats not really a big deal since the soft cap on Navy should be cost anyways.

The thing I feel makes Navies feel underwhelming is that there is almost no use for them. Say you completely destroy a navy, then what do you gain as an advantage? Lets see:

-A Bonus to siege coastal provinces: Kinda boring, kinda underwhelming.
-The freedom to transport your armies: Considering how easy is to make a landing without much problem this is also underwhelming.
-You get to destroy/scare away their light ships: Sure, they lose money but its not really something that can hurt your enemy enough to bring them to the table.
-A full blockade: Again, kinda underwhelming compared to what you can do with armies.

There is simply not enough you can do with your Navy that actually requires a combat Navy. Its the same reason why you can invade Great Britain in HOI3 with the starting Navy. The AI doesn`t contest at all and when it does it suicides its Navy slowly but surely.

There are no trade routes to protect, you can`t raid naval provinces with your Navy, landing an army is relatively easy and painless and you can`t cut off an army so that it can`t be supplied with reinforcements (meaning that for island nations, the enemy only has to land once with overwhelming force for it to be over). And of course since all sea areas are mostly the same there are no sea zones worth fighting for.

I think that what would help the naval aspect of the game would be improving the AI to actually defends it coasts with some kind of competency. But asking for better AI is always easy. Its like how in HOI3(and Victoria II for that matter) you can invade the UK with little resistance because the AI is busy keeping its whole Navy patrolling some pacific island.

Although one thing I don`t get is why people want combined arms Navies, during battle (talking more about age of sail here) only ships of the line did actual fighting, frigates and smaller warships didn`t play much role besides scouting and patrolling/raiding (which I think its nicely represented by the game already)

 

[takedown47]

If I might add my two cents (feel free to disagree if you want) but I think military combat (land and naval) should be overhauled. The land units in this game are just weird. I mean England selecting longbowmen as their land unit? So every soldier in the medieval english army is an archer?? WTF

It would be nice you could recruit a variety of land unit types for the army similar to the way March of the Eagles worked and have them linked to provinces. Building London Longbowmen makes no sense. Building 3 longbowmen from Wales however does. You could even make it so units recruited in certain regions have bonuses. For example if you have less than land tech 11 and are England you get +60% attack power and +35% defensiveness for any Longbowmen you recruit in Wales or Glamorgan. This way you would have to been strategic in which provinces to surrender to an enemy in a peace deal if they are the source of some of your finest units. Maybe also cap production depending on province development size. So wales starts with low development so you might only be able to have 3 longbowmen units from Wales and 6 from Glamorgan. Seeing as you can only recruit longbowmen in these cultural regions you would need to supplement your army with men-at-arms from london (which might get +12% defensive bonus if you have a workshop built there) and urban milita also from london. Men-at-arms might be capped at maximum 7 units given the development level of London whereas Urban Militia might be capped at a much higher 22 due to the fact they are cheaper to field and urban poor are literally everywhere. Now this would make a potential battle in France much more interesting because like CK2 you have to make some strategic choices about the composition of your army relative to types of enemy you are facing. French have alot of heavy elite cavalry? No problem, build Halberd infantry and set your army stance to defensive, place a top general in command with good stats and skills and traits and keep some longbowmen in reserve for fire support similar to the way artillery works and you have yourself the Battle of Agincourt.

Same logic should apply to ships, only you have maybe a basic ship designer which you can save a template where you select hull size and then add things to it like cannons, sails, food stores etc. You might have say 60 points you can allocate to loading out a ship if you select a galleon hull type and decide to invest that into 20 cannons (at a cost of 2 pts per cannon) and +2 food stores for longer range (at a cost of 5 pts each) and then +1 carpenter for repair speed while at sea or in coastal areas (at a cost of 10 pts) for a total of 60 allowed by the hull type. You could then turn around and build another ship class and save it as another template using exactly the same hull type but invest less than 60 pts into it (perhaps by allocating less cannons or sail speed or manoeuvrability) so that you can build quicker and cheaper. Yes I have been inspired by Hearts of Iron 4's unit design philosophy on this one but no I am not advocating heart of iron universalis.

Thoughts?

 

[Darkath]

There are no significant naval reworks planned for The Cossacks/1.14, but it's something we plan to look at in the future.

given the awesomeness and the size of Cossack it's to be expected, but please make it a central part of the next expansion

Naval losses are ridiculous it's not normal that every battle is a stack wipe when it was almost never the case in history. At worse the enemy captured a significant chunk of your fleet like in trafalgar, and in most case only a handful of ships were lost on each side. Decisive battles were rare and most engagements were not the disastrous wreck-fest as is the case in EU4.

I'm not arguing for realism for realism's sakes (i know you hate that ) but from a gameplay point of view it's always the bigger stack/best ships who wins, and any defeat means the total loss of your entire fleet (which can set you back several hundred if not thousands ducats + the time to build them). Having more refined and subtle mechanics (for instance positionning, not all ships engaging battle at once, even something like Victoria 2 HoD battles would be more interesting) would allow better experience, better strategies, and better balance for countries with smaller fleets that still should be able to evade huge armadas (what are the change that an invasion fleet of 140 vessels loaded with tens of thousands of troops catch up with a lone fregate in the bay of biscay ?)