Confirm Thalassocracy: A discussion about the naval system in EUIV

[CrabHelmet]

Here's a few changes that I think would be relatively easy to implement:

1. Allow coastal provinces which are not covered by a fort's Zone of Control and that have no troops present to be sieged by fleets if those fleets are enough to cause a full blockade. Lots of the Caribbean islands among others changed hands purely as a result of naval sieges, and you can't do this in EU4. Similarly, allow controlled provinces which meet these conditions to be looted by navies.
2. A blockaded coastal province does not get the trade power bonus from being coastal, and all trade power modifiers (Centre of Trade/Natural Harbour/Estuary) have no effect while a blockade is in place. If they have no access to the coast, why should they get bonuses that are dependent on the coast?
3. Embarking and disembarking from ships becomes much faster - two or three days as opposed to a month. It takes far too long to make any kind of naval invasion. At the moment, players can normally move troops from 4-5 provinces away to the site of the landing in the time it takes troops from arriving in the adjacent sea province to making the landing. You will almost never win given the penalties from naval disembark, so naval landings are entirely pointless. This is not historical. Being able to block someone's naval invasion should mean actually have troops there *now*, not in a month.
4. Abolish colonial maintenance. Instead, have settler growth determined by how large a nation's fleet is and how high navy maintenance is. This also means that settler growth can follow a rough proxy for population, insofar as base tax adds to your naval force limit and base tax roughly (very roughly) maps population.
5. Increase ship durability and increase ship moral damage so that naval battles are settled by morale defeat rather than an entire fleet being wiped out (EU4 actually used to do this; the status quo is a regression). In the typical naval battle in the EU4 era, it would be considered an absolutely crushing loss if even a quarter of ships were sunk. As it is, a single naval battle in EU4 the game wipes out the loser's entire fleet and thus ends all naval engagement in a single battle.
6. Massively decrease the time necessary to build ships. It is true that a ship took a long time to build, but as mentioned above each 'province' in EU4 was capable of working on a huge number of ships at any given time.
7. To provide some balance to the above, require some minimal amount of manpower to construct ships. Ships had crews!
9. Add trade power to heavy ships. The Manila Galleon was carried 2,000 tons of weight, double that of even the larger Portuguese carracks, and was perhaps the ultimate definition of a heavy ship in the EU4 era. Yet heavy ships have no trade power! This is silly. Insofar as trade power represents either a) protecting merchant shipments or b) actually carrying the shipments themselves, heavy ships could do this better than light ships and should have higher trade power. The trade-off should obviously be their higher cost, such that the trade power/maintenance for a heavy should be lower than the trade power/maintenance for a light.
10. Abolish transports! There was no specific 'transport' ship in the EU4 era. Soldiers typically fit upon commandeered ships. Heavies, light ships and galleons should all be able to transport a certain number of soldiers.
11. Increase naval force-limits. The Spanish Armada consisted of ~130 ships. Spain in 1580 does not have naval force limits anyway near 130 ships.
12. Drastically reduce transport capabilities. The Spanish Armada was capable of carrying 18,000 soldiers - and that's for 130 ships. If heavies could carry 500 and light ships 100, you'd have a more accurate picture of what it took to transport troops in the EU4 timeframe. This has knock-on effects in terms of buffing the RotW by reducing the European propensity to ship massive great death-stacks around.
13. Let natives build galleys. Partially because they could, and partially so TheMeInTeam shuts up. ( )

I think these would really help improve the substance of navies and naval engagement.

 

[GC13]

I also disagree with navies giving passive bonuses; instead, they should be given a function.

The reason colonial powers wanted to have big navies was so they could protect their colonies from being picked off by a rival power; if their fleet was defeated, there would be nothing to stop the enemy from isolating their colonies and taking any of them they wanted.

However, in EU4, your colonies are protected by the peace deal system. Nobody's ever going to get to 100% war score off of your overseas provinces, and if they're taking your capital province then your navy isn't the only thing that lost you the war. The point is that no one can take your colonies unless you agree to it, which is kind of ridiculous. In the past an enemy could say "you know what, I'm taking this", and accepting the fact of the loss of your colony was the concession you had to make to keep any colonies they chose not to take and for them to stop blockading you.

If it was much easier to unilaterally seize overseas provinces from the enemy while the war was going on (at a cost, so you'd only do it if you were sure you wouldn't lose it—perhaps you can core it immediately, but you lose the core if you don't take it in the peace deal), not only would it make naval wars far less annoying, but it would feel like there were some real stakes to the naval combat. Unfortunately, since the naval war is basically one-and-done for battles, it would need to be re-worked to make campaigning on the high seas far more satisfying.

Really, we're long overdue for a naval DLC anyway.

 

[Iferius]

For me the problem is that blockading isn't painful enough. I just had TO 100% blockaded in a trade war as Gotland, and all that happened to them was spending a bunch of points on keeping war exhaustion low, and having a little less trade income. And I specifically mention TO, because they are basically nation that's supported by trade, so especially nations like those (Netherlands, Italian minors, Portugal, Hands, etc) should be hurting from complete blockade lasting a decade.

-75% Trade Power seemed like a lot, but when you take into account different bonuses you get in provinces like mercantilism, buildings, ideas - it's very weak. Maybe it should act like Local Autonomy, hurting not only trade through goods produced and Trade Power, but also tax and force limit, maybe adding unrest. Maybe there should be extra malus for being 100% blockaded.

That -75% should not be additive, it should be multiplicative. A simple but crucial change.

 

[YuriiH]

7. To provide some balance to the above,…
9. Add trade power to heavy ships…

I would add “#8”: Naval Force limit should be counted only from provinces with dockyards, not any coastal province. Dockyards 2lvl, 3lvl and 4lvl (yes 4 levels) cost in geometric progression (similar to advisors), but also increase an ammount of available navy progressively.
To support my suggestion, I would give an example of Russia that had fleet in the Baltics, but their fleet managed to destroy Ottomans' fleet in the Black and Mediterranean Seas in 1770, and hit the fleet hard later in 1774 and 1790.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chesma
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tendra
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kerch_Strait_(1774)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kerch_Strait_(1790)
To compare, Ottomans had a huge amount of coastal lands, while Russians had 2 (or maybe 3) dockyards for the whole Baltics.

 

[jdavis86]

It was such a rich and colorful period on the seas. A damn shame the developers haven't drawn on it.

Highly recommend "The Armada" by Garrett Mattingly.

Anyway, a lot of good ideas in this thread!

 

[Ameron]

Here's a few changes that I think would be relatively easy to implement:

1. Allow coastal provinces which are not covered by a fort's Zone of Control and that have no troops present to be sieged by fleets if those fleets are enough to cause a full blockade. Lots of the Caribbean islands among others changed hands purely as a result of naval sieges, and you can't do this in EU4. Similarly, allow controlled provinces which meet these conditions to be looted by navies.
2. A blockaded coastal province does not get the trade power bonus from being coastal, and all trade power modifiers (Centre of Trade/Natural Harbour/Estuary) have no effect while a blockade is in place. If they have no access to the coast, why should they get bonuses that are dependent on the coast?
3. Embarking and disembarking from ships becomes much faster - two or three days as opposed to a month. It takes far too long to make any kind of naval invasion. At the moment, players can normally move troops from 4-5 provinces away to the site of the landing in the time it takes troops from arriving in the adjacent sea province to making the landing. You will almost never win given the penalties from naval disembark, so naval landings are entirely pointless. This is not historical. Being able to block someone's naval invasion should mean actually have troops there *now*, not in a month.
4. Abolish colonial maintenance. Instead, have settler growth determined by how large a nation's fleet is and how high navy maintenance is. This also means that settler growth can follow a rough proxy for population, insofar as base tax adds to your naval force limit and base tax roughly (very roughly) maps population.
5. Increase ship durability and increase ship moral damage so that naval battles are settled by morale defeat rather than an entire fleet being wiped out (EU4 actually used to do this; the status quo is a regression). In the typical naval battle in the EU4 era, it would be considered an absolutely crushing loss if even a quarter of ships were sunk. As it is, a single naval battle in EU4 the game wipes out the loser's entire fleet and thus ends all naval engagement in a single battle.
6. Massively decrease the time necessary to build ships. It is true that a ship took a long time to build, but as mentioned above each 'province' in EU4 was capable of working on a huge number of ships at any given time.
7. To provide some balance to the above, require some minimal amount of manpower to construct ships. Ships had crews!
9. Add trade power to heavy ships. The Manila Galleon was carried 2,000 tons of weight, double that of even the larger Portuguese carracks, and was perhaps the ultimate definition of a heavy ship in the EU4 era. Yet heavy ships have no trade power! This is silly. Insofar as trade power represents either a) protecting merchant shipments or b) actually carrying the shipments themselves, heavy ships could do this better than light ships and should have higher trade power. The trade-off should obviously be their higher cost, such that the trade power/maintenance for a heavy should be lower than the trade power/maintenance for a light.
10. Abolish transports! There was no specific 'transport' ship in the EU4 era. Soldiers typically fit upon commandeered ships. Heavies, light ships and galleons should all be able to transport a certain number of soldiers.
11. Increase naval force-limits. The Spanish Armada consisted of ~130 ships. Spain in 1580 does not have naval force limits anyway near 130 ships.
12. Drastically reduce transport capabilities. The Spanish Armada was capable of carrying 18,000 soldiers - and that's for 130 ships. If heavies could carry 500 and light ships 100, you'd have a more accurate picture of what it took to transport troops in the EU4 timeframe. This has knock-on effects in terms of buffing the RotW by reducing the European propensity to ship massive great death-stacks around.
13. Let natives build galleys. Partially because they could, and partially so TheMeInTeam shuts up. ( )

I think these would really help improve the substance of navies and naval engagement.

1) Agreed. It mitigates the micro nightmare of sending siege armies to each tiny island, just for the sake of gaining warscore, too. Instead just send there enough ships to blockade. Maybe add the need for the "sieging" fleet to really have embarked a land force large enough to siege, without the need to disembark for each damned piece of land.
3) Partially disagreed. I'm okay with quicker embark, not so much with quicker disembark: amphibious landings are supposed to be, and rightfully are, movements needing a careful approach (simulating the logistical issues).
4) Ok, if the cost increase for being over colonial limit is somehow replicated.
5) Actually, I'm nott seeing that many stackwipes I used to see in earlier patches. Usually the losing fleet retreats into a port as soon as it can; if you can destroy it in the first combat rounds, then you're dramatically outnumbering it, so it doesn't make any difference.
6) The build time has been recently increased, so I don't think the devs are going to "dramatically decrease" it; anyway, wouldn't it be better if cities with the shipyard building could work on more than one ship at once? Maybe with a "soft cap" related to the building (advanced shipyard = higher softcap), exponentially increasing build cost and time over the soft cap.
7) Agreed.
9) Agreed; actually, every ship should have trade power, depending on its strategical movement, so light ships are still the best ones on a cost-efficiency perspective.
10) Agreed; "transport" ships should IMHO be used to increase collect trade efficiency, with specific task, in a trade node different from the main one. Example, I have main trade port in Genoa, but I'm collecting trade in Zanzibar, then I send the "transport" fleet to Zanzibar with the "collect trade income" task.
11) No. I like the current setup, the naval FL is low but one can easily go well over it with cheap ships if in need to. If you increase the FL you also have to increase manteinance, else every coastal OPM will deploy outsized (and ahistorical) navies. Spain can easily have 130 ships in 1580, even if its FL is lower.
12) That would piss me off, but you're probably right. Maybe each fleet could be given a "supply size", so armies numbering up to its supply size don't take attrition, and a maximum capacity, so the player can choose, if he wishes, to load the fleet and let the troops take attrition.

 

[CrabHelmet]

3) Partially disagreed. I'm okay with quicker embark, not so much with quicker disembark: amphibious landings are supposed to be, and rightfully are, movements needing a careful approach (simulating the logistical issues).

They would continue to need careful approach; you wouldn't be able to land troops where your opponent currently has troops stationed. But amphibious landings in the sense of e.g. the Battle of Abraham Plains are not really comparable to literally just disembarking your troops on foreign soil. The first is an attack directly from the boats, the second is simply moving troops, unopposed, onto enemy soil from boots. The difficulty of an amphibious assault is already modelled by the -3 landing modifier when you disembark directly onto troops, it doesn't need to take a very long time for disembarking as well or every single landing also becomes an assault, which is unrealistic.

5) Actually, I'm nott seeing that many stackwipes I used to see in earlier patches. Usually the losing fleet retreats into a port as soon as it can; if you can destroy it in the first combat rounds, then you're dramatically outnumbering it, so it doesn't make any difference.

This is more for MP, where the micro for making your ships retreat is not always possible in large wars.

6) The build time has been recently increased, so I don't think the devs are going to "dramatically decrease" it; anyway, wouldn't it be better if cities with the shipyard building could work on more than one ship at once? Maybe with a "soft cap" related to the building (advanced shipyard = higher softcap), exponentially increasing build cost and time over the soft cap.

This would also work but I think it would be a more difficult change so I didn't mention it. Mind you, if provinces could allow multiple things to be built at a time depending on province size, I'd like to see that extended to troops as well as fleets - it has always seemed strange to me that you can get a 5,000 strong army faster if you have 5 1/1/1 provinces than if you have 1 25/25/25 province.

11) No. I like the current setup, the naval FL is low but one can easily go well over it with cheap ships if in need to. If you increase the FL you also have to increase manteinance, else every coastal OPM will deploy outsized (and ahistorical) navies. Spain can easily have 130 ships in 1580, even if its FL is lower.

You misunderstand - the Spanish Armada wasn't even the entire Spanish fleet (although a very large portion of it, admittedly). Spain had more than just the Armada, numbering around ~200 ships at the time. For another comparison, England in 1754 had over 300 ships including 88 ships of the line (heavy ships in EU4). There is no way you can support 88 heavies and ~250 light ships as 1754 England in EU4. The heavies alone are about 10 over your force limit.

If it helps, I would like to dramatically increase the cost of going over your naval force limit, though - making it much more punitive. If we take the concept of a naval force limit as roughly indicating the capacity of a port to dock ships, then going over that capacity means e.g. scuttling your ships, which was hugely expensive to then undo.

 

[Ameron]

They would continue to need careful approach; you wouldn't be able to land troops where your opponent currently has troops stationed. But amphibious landings in the sense of e.g. the Battle of Abraham Plains are not really comparable to literally just disembarking your troops on foreign soil. The first is an attack directly from the boats, the second is simply moving troops, unopposed, onto enemy soil from boots. The difficulty of an amphibious assault is already modelled by the -3 landing modifier when you disembark directly onto troops, it doesn't need to take a very long time for disembarking as well or every single landing also becomes an assault, which is unrealistic.

Ah, ok, I get your point. Yes, faster disembark would arguably put the defender in need of a strong navy as a counter-measure, rather than simply moving an army in the target province. Agreed.
It cannot be too quick, however: the defender must have a "solid" chance to use his countermeasure.

This is more for MP, where the micro for making your ships retreat is not always possible in large wars.

Maybe an easy "fix" could be a tickable box, like the "go home at war", to have the navies auto-disengage if losing.

This would also work but I think it would be a more difficult change so I didn't mention it. Mind you, if provinces could allow multiple things to be built at a time depending on province size, I'd like to see that extended to troops as well as fleets - it has always seemed strange to me that you can get a 5,000 strong army faster if you have 5 1/1/1 provinces than if you have 1 25/25/25 province.

Agreed.

You misunderstand - the Spanish Armada wasn't even the entire Spanish fleet (although a very large portion of it, admittedly). Spain had more than just the Armada, numbering around ~200 ships at the time. For another comparison, England in 1754 had over 300 ships including 88 ships of the line (heavy ships in EU4). There is no way you can support 88 heavies and ~250 light ships as 1754 England in EU4. The heavies alone are about 10 over your force limit.

If it helps, I would like to dramatically increase the cost of going over your naval force limit, though - making it much more punitive. If we take the concept of a naval force limit as roughly indicating the capacity of a port to dock ships, then going over that capacity means e.g. scuttling your ships, which was hugely expensive to then undo.

If the FL increase is paired with a dramatic increase of costs for going over FL, I kind of agree. It would also increase the need for Maritime Ideas (+50% FL). But it needs to be carefully weighted, to avoid OPM oversized navies.

 

[PsysmicSound]

At this point, it seems like the sort of feature where the developers know that there need to be a lot of changes to the system, and are just waiting for it to get as broken as possible before they fix it all, to get the most out of their effort. Like playing an RPG and waiting until the brink of death to use a total healing item or whatever.

 

[harezmi]

To support my suggestion, I would give an example of Russia that had fleet in the Baltics, but their fleet managed to destroy Ottomans' fleet in the Black and Mediterranean Seas in 1774 and 1790.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kerch_Strait_(1774)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Kerch_Strait_(1790)
To compare, Ottomans had a huge amount of coastal lands, while Russians had 2 (or maybe 3) dockyards for the whole Baltics.

Russians did not even sink one ship in those battles. The Ottomans had a bigger fleet but the range of their guns were no match to Russians, so they did not engage.

I agree with your ideas even though your example does not support them. If you do not have shipyards to build ships, the empty coastal provinces should not boost your naval force limit.

 

[Stadhouder]

Russians did not even sink one ship in those battles. The Ottomans had a bigger fleet but the range of their guns were no match to Russians, so they did not engage.

I agree with your ideas even though your example does not support them. If you do not have shipyards to build ships, the empty coastal provinces should not boost your naval force limit.

The term "auxiliary vessels" in the linked Wikipedia article makes me think, it would be cool if transports did actually have role as auxiliary vessels in the game, sort of like how cannons can support the front lines in land battles, that frigates also had a role as scouting vessels, in way that a fleet composed out of heavy's light and transports would be better than just only heavies in naval combat.

 

[Soulburger]

I had posted this once before with my goal to make naval supremacy actually matter but also with less micro management. Apologize in advance for wall of text (but hey parts of it are bolded!)



There have been a bunch of discussions and thread with great ideas about improving the naval aspect in EU4. Here is my recommendation to make it more realistic, less micro intensive, and improve overall value in naval power.

But before I dive in, my suggestions is tied with another improvement...changing the leader caps. Instead of just having one or two generals or admirals the number of leaders would start at 3-4 and then go up. MP for hiring a leader would now be 10 points and not 50. Instead of a single leader that teleports around for key battles, almost every key army or fleet would have a leader. This would open the possibility for more RPG elements with leaders as their traits are not set. You could see leaders evolve over time with 1 or 2 pip increases and/or a small leader perk. Add in some more dynamic events and you create a much more interesting and diverse internal portrait of your nation. Is your top general getting too powerful and might attempt a coup d'etat? Is your rear admiral being wooed by a rival to take a better position in their navy?

Creating more admirals also necessitates a new mechanic -- fleet sizes are capped and can only be controlled by an admiral. Similar to combat width there can only be a max number of ships in a single fleet. For example you start with max fleet size of 6 at tech level 3. At tech level 4 you gain +2 ships and so on and so forth. You can create new NIs, admiral traits, events, and even new Maritime or Naval bonuses that would increase that cap. The more admirals that you have the more fleets that you can form.

So admirals become critical for forming a powerful navy which leads to my second big change -- only fleets can engage multiple ships in a single battle. All non-fleets would only engage one ship at a time. This would mimic the haphazard and erratic behavior of the open seas.

Which ties into my third major component -- adding an evasion rating for ships. To protect these small non-fleets there is a chance that a ship may evade detection and/or combat. Obviously light ships would be the most evasive. This desire to evade or intercept could be set for a ship (or fleet if desired). The goal is to have more chance encounters but less frequency of battles. Two ships could share the same sea tile and never engage. Fleets led by an admiral, when set to intercept, would have greater chances for engagement. This encourages to have more separate fleets to help patrol waters and deal with enemies. Likewise you have some options to park a single sloop along a coastline or in a sea lane in order to monitor an area without risk of immediate destruction.

My fourth point is consistent with almost everyone -- battles should not be so decisive. Ships should engage, take damage, and then retreat if possible. Sinking or surrendering should be minimized. Fleets would have bonuses for capturing ships with additional perks dependent on fleet composition. Capturing ships would be dependent on having light ships in your fleet. They were the ones that frequently towed their damaged prizes to port or in a bad defeat pulled their ship of the line away from the enemies clutches.

My fifth point is that repaired ships should also cost money while they are being refitted. So there is a definite economic penalty for losing battles. Possibly include a manpower component as well but in my opinion that is not as significant as the economic cost.


So the goal is to create the feeling that controlling the seas is an ongoing struggle. While many minor skirmishes took place the significant and decisive battles were quite rare. One cannot simply lock down the sea, especially during the age of sail, but one can build a large enough force to constantly deter threats.

Some additional points:
--The non-fleets can still be grouped in a squadron, just for interception and battle purposes only one ship can be selected for engagement. For example 10 ships set to evade are on a sea tile. A single enemy ship set to intercept enters the tile. A random ship is selected, its evasion score + enemy intercept score compared to a base engagement score (say 20%) determines whether the ships take action. So don't think that there will be hundreds of small ships flying around the map. They can still group within a tile but simply for battle purposes will be selected at random.

--Transport ships do not count against the fleet's force limit. There is a still a max cap of how many transports can be included in a single fleet. Possibly normal force limit +2. For example force limit is 6 ships then you could have 8 transports in the same fleet. A fleet may be set to evade but once transport ships start landing troops then their status automatically changes to intercept. So the French may attempt to sneak a landing but as long as you have adequate forces in the vicinity you still have a good chance to intercept.

--Coastal waters (friendly waters) and forts with a ZOC along the coastline add additional perks to intercepting enemy fleets.


All in all a lot of possible changes but hopefully would greatly broaden this aspect of the gameplay.

PROS:
Control of the seas and general results are more historically accurate.
Less micro management.
More general "light" activity of engagements with the occasional large action.
Admirals and fleet composition becomes relevant.


CONS:
Ping pong actions may not be fun for the average fan.
Probability of random encounters may be frustrating at times. (I had my doomstack ready and their ships just passed thru!)
Requires significant changes to AI logic
Intercept and evade calculations may be too tasking on CPU.
Requires some extensive rebalancing.

 

[tman144]

One thing I would like to see is the removal of open ocean sea zones. They're basically wasted space, because, as far as I know, there were no major battles that took place in the middle of the Atlantic or Pacific. Plus, the AI is a dirty cheater and will sail circles around your fleets, making you chase them in attrition death zones to prevent them from sending 3 cogs to all of your various overseas territories, needlessly dragging wars out. You could just make a few connections between coastal zones on either side instead. You could even line up the connections to account for the fact that the EU4 map has North and South America way too far north than it really is (for example, Gibraltar should be parallel to Virginia, and not parallel to Cuba, like it is in EU4).

 

[Snake_Squeezins]

Some very thoughtful ideas in here.

I believe EU4 desperately needs expansions dedicated to Navies and Espionage - these were critical facets of this era's statecraft, yet in-game they really do feel like T-Rex Arms in a field of Hulk Hogan Pythons.

 

[Connacht]

What if we increase the number of sea provinces, while speeding up navies in order to cover them in the same time?

 

[YuriiH]

Russians did not even sink one ship in those battles.

Ooops! I linked wrong battles, there is a correct one (and also updated the post above):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chesma

 

[Shatterfury]

We need to have caps for the number of ships we can hold in one stack.

No more doom stacks. Naval ideas should make those naval stacks bigger, that would make naval ideas far more useful !

 

[Krajzen]

Brilliant post!

Personally I have been always thinking about few more things
1) Rework of naval morale to make it matter, or even kicking it out entirely and replacing with 'Organisation' or whatever - firstly, it should fall faster than ships' hit points, secondly it should regenerate very slowly so defeat matters, thirdly low morale should decrease ships' peacetime efficiency and it can't be regwnerated outside of port
2) More ships captured per battle, maybe influenced by some additional meter 'Boarding Efficiency'
3) Making ship repair slower and damn costly


4) Introducing some kind of manpower for navy. Currently the great issue with navy is the fact that it relies on no resources, unlike army - you can lose fleets and infinitely build more. Historically, losing experienced sailors and officers was very painful as training new ones was really hard.

I don't know how to solve that, maybe Officers count = manpower/100 + naval forcelimits + naval tradition?

5) Making fleets matter more:
*painful blockades
*painful for warscore and WE
*painful for trade and able to steal more cash from the enemy
*colonial income dependent on them
*very prestigious

Etc

 

[CasimirX]

A few ideas i have had on improving the significance of navies should focus on making the navies more useful in both peacetime and during war.

I believe that a good start would linking a colonial nations liberty desire to the proportional strength of their overlords navy, or focussing more on that in the calculations at least. As has been mentioned before naval power was incredibly important for the power projection of all colonial empires and without it many colonies would have been far more autonomous than they already were. Linking liberty desire more closely to maritime power would be a good way to represent this for the major colonial nations.

Another possible option linking to the colonial aspects of naval power could come from adding a few events related to trade power / liberty desire / over seas autonomy based upon the strength of your navy and how close it is to force limit. Events could fire if you have very few heavy ships (i.e. haven't completed a grand fleet mission) or have your heavy ships mothballed which cause your overseas provinces to become restless and gain ticking increase in autonomy. Regular patrols around overseas trade nodes or along your colonial nations coast could fire events that either grant a boost to trade efficiency (if trade company or no CN present) or a reduction in liberty desire / increase in tariffs. This would add a nice flavour and give some increased importance to having an active navy which is well maintained, however it is more reliant on RNG than adding it to calculations for liberty desire.

A possible buff to maritime or naval ideas would be allowing nations who have completed them to more effectively complete landings with their armies or allowing naval forces to have similar effects to armies when stationed in provinces, this could help to deal with overseas unrest without having to station colonial garrisons. Another option would be to add events such as those suggested above but linked to these idea groups, however i feel that would only promote the taking of the groups and not necessarily the promotion of naval strength.

Adding buffs to naval and maritime idea groups seems more of a sticking plaster and what is really needed is an increase in the usefulness of naval military strength. Add the ability to perform effective coastal raiding, make unblocked forts even harder to siege or even add bonuses to armies which have naval support when fighting in coastal provinces.

 

[Ameron]

An idea to quickly augment the need of a navy, even in land warfare: a fleet stationed in a seazone helps, providing supplies and carrying heavy loads, friendly armies on provinces adjacent to said seazone, giving it a small but noticeable bonus to movement speed and attrition. Maybe the bonus could be dependent on the Admiral maneuver pips (and of course that fleet needs an Admiral) and work similarly to the bonus provided by a General's maneuver pips.
That same fleet could also hinder any enemy army, raiding supply routes and harassing enemy shipments, causing the same small but noticeable modifier, as a penalty.