I'm NOT on a boat!! Navy/Naval/Transport [MEGA-THREAD]

[Knotz]

#justiceforboats

 

[gamerk2]

The way I see it, removing navies for the purpose of transporting troops across bodies of water is a *good* thing; it's a complexity that goes a bit beyond what is necessary for even a grand strategy game. That being said, the decision to remove navies outright is more questionable; they still had purpose beyond simply transporting troops between locations.

My stance is basically "if a system exists where having a standing naval force makes sense, then you should add navies back in". But I'm perfectly fine with armies being able to acquire their own transportation without requiring a standing navy.

 

[Cephei80]

Your ships, and presumably your battles, are sampling from times beyond the scope of the game

Many of the other ships presented in this image were very culture-specific. The liburna, khelandion, and dromon were all unique to Byzantium

The only ships regularly used across the greatest extent of the game map and play time were the cog ("clinker" in this illustration) and hulk.

As well, consider what you've said: 83 major battles. Assuming we spread these across only the game's play time, that would amount to around seven major naval battles each year across the entirety of the known world, from Europe to West Asia. This assumes your numbers weren't including sea battles in and around East Asia, where naval activity was far more frequent. Spread across all the coastal realms in the game (estimating around 50), we can suppose this amounts to something in the realm of 0.14 major battles per realm per year, or about one major battle every ten years.

you have used few elements and the worng ideas to forge something while totally ignoring the point .

1: "Many of the other ships presented in this image were very culture-specific. The liburna, khelandion, and dromon were all unique to Byzantium"
no sir , the arabs were the first to copy these kind of ships and later italians and they kept using them until they replaced them with more modern fregates armed with broadside canons . morrocans and other north african states were using for example an ancestor type of the chebec and brig mainly copied from the byzantine dromon and liburne .

2: "The only ships regularly used across the greatest extent of the game map and play time were the cog ("clinker" in this illustration) and hulk."
wrong , not even close , the biggest traders were the arabs and itlalians and still such round ships were not part of their navy at all , more , the round ships were built mainly to sail in the atlantic and they were used in the mediteranean only in french and spanish mediteranean ports .
the hulks and cogs were main ships for england and Hanseatic League , that is not " regularly used across the greatest extent of the game map"

3 : the 83 i mentioned were mainly the main documented ones occuring in the mediteranean and northern sea and black sea . in fact out of those 83 like only 5 to 8 major ones in that list i mentioned were in asia . the arabs had full control over the indian and persian gulf and their naval battles there were not as important or decisive . they were only few indian states or indonesians states from 700s to 1700s to oppose their naval supremacy .
more , your 0.14 ratio is still higher than antiquity , that era is famous by its decisive naval battles yet they didnt really occure on a yearly basis aswell .

when i say you took only the things you wanted to sound relevent is how for example you ignored the crusades era ships or viking era ships and you focused on the carrack .
the game start on the 800s , you said long ships are nor relevent for the game time period but are you even aware that 200 years of the life of the game should have longships in them ?

one last thing . if not for vanilla we sir want naval battles for our fantasy mods still , how are you going to argue with that ? i have a giant map that need ships and this is why i want it to be included , are you going to say they were not relevant in my lore aswell or that fantasy mods are not important ?

 

[jumbi]

The way I see it, removing navies for the purpose of transporting troops across bodies of water is a *good* thing; it's a complexity that goes a bit beyond what is necessary for even a grand strategy game. That being said, the decision to remove navies outright is more questionable; they still had purpose beyond simply transporting troops between locations.

The only other purposes navies played in CK2 were transporting loot back from raids and hiding from land-based diseases. The former tended to be done in tandem with transporting troops back from the raids that generated the loot and the latter should still be possible with embarked armies (though whether this is a good thing is more debatable )

 

[ShadyGuy_SuspiciousGoal]

Agreed, without a proper need for them navies becomes useless.

 

[GingerContingent]

I'm here to add my voice to those who think this is a good change. I think it eliminates annoying micro, is intuitive to understand and use for both first-time players and the AI, and is more historically accurate to the time period. I would not mind more naval mechanics being added in, particularly if trade gets more focus, but the CK2 boat system is pretty ahistorical and frequently annoying to use in my experience.

 

[Bubba42]

I worry that this insta-transport mechanic might result in poor AI decision making and unrealistically seamless movement of armies across water. Something like the entire Byzantine army hopping back and forth across the Mediterranean as if it were a pond, the HRE sending huge naval expedition into Scandinavia, the Mamluks in Italy, etc.

This worry might be unfounded. I just really hated how insta-transports worked in Rome 2 and subsequent games from the total war series.

For years I've pondered an interesting alternative to insta-transports. Namely, naval travel can be restricted to a few (quite a few) routes, somewhat (but only somewhat) similar to trade routes. For example, there could be a route from Venice to Acre. The AI treats this route the same way it treats land routes (weighing it appropriately to take into account distance and time, and a penalty for sea faring). Traveling a sea route requires you to build a temporary building in Venice, called embarkment camp. It cannot be canceled once started unless some kind of messenger pigeon tech is researched, and is prone to events such as storms.

Edit: obviously Vikings would be an exception, duh. Give these guys all the insta-transports they want. Or maybe just lock lots of routes behind a tech that only the viking have at game start.

The game as I understand requires an upfront gold cost to pay for transportation. Personally I think this sounds better as you want to pick when and where to send your army carefully. Hopefully it includes attrition during travel as well. Ck2 transports generally are inconsequential in costs. I like better the idea that you must pay upfront for costs of travel and then wait while supplies are gathered, ships are built or hired and your whole army amasses. It looks like a system they could expand on in the future easily because right now its stripped down to the essentials. I think it may end up playing rather well as it is though and actually require more thought but less tedious repetitive micro.

 

[Alenarae118]

The game as I understand requires an upfront gold cost to pay for transportation. Personally I think this sounds better as you want to pick when and where to send your army carefully. Hopefully it includes attrition during travel as well. Ck2 transports generally are inconsequential in costs. I like better the idea that you must pay upfront for costs of travel and then wait while supplies are gathered, ships are built or hired and your whole army amasses. It looks like a system they could expand on in the future easily because right now its stripped down to the essentials. I think it may end up playing rather well as it is though and actually require more thought but less tedious repetitive micro.

Yeah it costs gold to embark, it takes time to embark and if you remain out at sea for to long you start taking attrition.

 

[Froggie]

In CK3 - If your army travels from England to North Africa on some conquest or religious war and spends a Decade there. Literally at any point and at any coastal Barony, you could Embark your troops and send them home.

- All that time you aren't paying fleet maintenance.
- Magical ships from that region begin spawning (yes "magical" because they aren't not going to appear).
- Does it cost the same amount of gold to move troops everywhere? (I assume there is one generic cost based on Time x Distance x Capacity, regardless of being Emperor of HRE or African Tribesman).

These things take away immersion for me.

 

[Blackwhitecavias]

In CK3 - If your army travels from England to North Africa on some conquest or religious war and spends a Decade there. Literally at any point and at any coastal Barony, you could Embark your troops and send them home.

- All that time you aren't paying fleet maintenance.
- Magical ships from that region begin spawning (yes "magical" because they aren't not going to appear).
- Does it cost the same amount of gold to move troops everywhere? (I assume there is one generic cost based on Time x Distance x Capacity, regardless of being Emperor of HRE or African Tribesman).

These things take away immersion for me.

In CK2 most English rulers would have enough vassal ships that transporting an army to North Africa would cost them absolutely nothing as they could just use vassal ships (which are free) and then keep those ships around so the army could hop back on at any time to go back.
Those ships also take some time to gather and even in North Africa it would generally be possible to come across some merchants that could be hired or pressed into service to transport the army.

 

[Woifee]

In CK2 most English rulers would have enough vassal ships that transporting an army to North Africa would cost them absolutely nothing as they could just use vassal ships (which are free) and then keep those ships around so the army could hop back on at any time to go back.
Those ships also take some time to gather and even in North Africa it would generally be possible to come across some merchants that could be hired or pressed into service to transport the army.

Even more so that it is not far stretched to believe some entrepreneurs stay close to armies hoping to get a transport contract for armies and nobles during time of war.

 

[Rubidium]

Even more so that it is not far stretched to believe some entrepreneurs stay close to armies hoping to get a transport contract for armies and nobles during time of war.

Or just make arrangements with the merchants of e.g. Marseilles or Genoa to have their ships show up at certain times when needed (for a fee). Or build your own in North Africa (which was a region with a thriving maritime tradition in the CK period) during the "years" you spend campaigning there.

It's certainly more realistic than the CK2 version, where you'd just raising your vassals' fleets (who are thus free) and leaving them camped off the coast of North Africa until you are ready to go home.

And with North Africa in particular, an English lord wouldn't have relied solely on their own ships, because the way the winds and currents work in the Straits of Gibraltar, any medieval Atlantic sailing vessel that entered the Mediterranean (unless specifically designed for it, generally by including oars, which an English merchant ship generally wouldn't) would never be able to sail back out to the Atlantic. Something CK2 can't model. Whereas once you reached the Mediterranean, there were any number of merchants perfectly happy to provide maritime transport for a reasonable fee. Which is why later Crusader armies preferred to embark in Mediterranean ports like Marseilles, Venice or Genoa and use transport ships hired there, rather than use their own ships (which would generally be a one-way trip; even a Scandinavian monarch like Sigurd the Crusader with his longships had to march back from Constantinople, abandoning his original ships in the Mediterranean).

 

[DreadLindwyrm]

In CK3 - If your army travels from England to North Africa on some conquest or religious war and spends a Decade there. Literally at any point and at any coastal Barony, you could Embark your troops and send them home.

- All that time you aren't paying fleet maintenance.
- Magical ships from that region begin spawning (yes "magical" because they aren't not going to appear).
- Does it cost the same amount of gold to move troops everywhere? (I assume there is one generic cost based on Time x Distance x Capacity, regardless of being Emperor of HRE or African Tribesman).

These things take away immersion for me.

I don't pay maintenance for my fleets in CKII either, because I just use vassal fleets.
Historically in this sort of situation keeping the entire fleet there would have been death to the economy back home, because of how many of those ships were merchants and fishermen.

They're not magical. You're hiring or pressing local ships.

We don't know yet, but why would the cost necessarily be different for the Emperor of the HRE and an African Tribesman if the amount of troops being moved, and the distance are the same - excluding any cultural bonuses that may apply to them (for example, Norse get faster/cheaper embarks if they've taken their cultural innovation)?

If anything, thinking that the King of England can raise sufficient boats from his vassals' shipyards to transport 3 or 4 times the number of troops he can raise, and yet is unable to transport his ally France's troops, *and* can keep them in the field for decade with no real impact is immersion blowing.

Plus, keeping your troops at war abroad for a decade will result in revolts (at least with CKII, probably with CK3) due to penalties for having troops too long.

 

[ShadyGuy_SuspiciousGoal]

Okay I think I get the gist of all the arguments here:

• Currently navies are not fun and the inclusion of them are not needed. Removing the bad system for some people is actually good for the game. This I agree.
• However navies are historical and also important, so they WILL need to be done correctly whenever the devs figure out how to do it. This I also agree.
• Criticism and suspicion that Paradox is making a bad decision and we should be worried because I:R was received very badly, so they made bad decisions before. This I also agree, and playing the devil's advocate here may help keeping everyone sane and rational.

It seems like our consensus is that old naval warfare is bad, but no naval warfare is also bad. So the concern is: will naval ever be added back and how will they be implemented?

 

[GingerContingent]

Okay I think I get the gist of all the arguments here:

• Currently navies are not fun and the inclusion of them are not needed. Removing the bad system for some people is actually good for the game. This I agree.
• However navies are historical and also important, so they WILL need to be done correctly whenever the devs figure out how to do it. This I also agree.
• Criticism and suspicion that Paradox is making a bad decision and we should be worried because I:R was received very badly, so they made bad decisions before. This I also agree, and playing the devil's advocate here may help keeping everyone sane and rational.

It seems like our consensus is that old naval warfare is bad, but no naval warfare is also bad. So the concern is: will naval ever be added back and how will they be implemented?

Not exactly. There is no "old naval warfare" as there has never been naval warfare in CK.

There are some people arguing about including naval battles or not, but the main argument revolves around having constant naval levies like CK2, aka a standing navy, versus the new mechanic of simply embarking whenever you direct your troops into water at the cost of gold and time (there is also naval attrition in CK3 that wasn't present in CK2, but I don't think anyone's upset about that).

Standing navies were incredibly rare in the CK time period due to the cost and the lack of offensive naval technology capable of consistently sinking the boats of the day. The Byzantines and Fatimids had them due to being long lasting major powers in the Mediterranean, and of course there were merchant fleets and raiders all over the place. But the vast majority of fleets were hired/built/requisitioned when they were needed, which is pretty close to the CK3 model.

There is also at least one unique cultural innovation that we know of giving Scandinavian rulers cheaper and faster embarking. To me, that seems like a good solution to the concept of a standing navy, e.g. Greeks have some unique cultural innovation that gives them faster embarking and naval movement to simulate the institutional experience of the Byzantine navy or something along those lines.

In terms of naval combat, the only thing I personally would really be interested in would be a system for naval blockades. That would probably come along with a trade expansion if it were ever to happen at all, but I think it could be cool as a part of siege warfare as well.

 

[Arkangelus]

With navies being most strongly associated with merchant republics in this time period, it'd seem like a logical part of that eventual expansion to flesh out the naval and trade mechanics.

 

[Rubidium]

Now i'm even more convinced that if something THIS insignificant, literal third row mechanic, is the biggest problem with the game, big enough to have it's own megathread, i smell a success for the game.
Of course i'm sure more and more serious problems will be revealed after release, but still. Come on.

Eh, the community tends to fixate on weird things. If you go to the Stellaris forum, they have a sticky for people complaining about the FTL change. Which was made back in 2017; the most recent post in that thread was made yesterday, and the thread is 171 pages long. I expect this one will go the same way.

It used to be a running joke in the CK2 forums about China and playable Hellenism threads popping up regularly and going on for many, many pages. Once they introduced playable Hellenism, we got playable Celtic paganism, Ancient Egyptian paganism, etc. The whole "should the Byzantine Empire be renamed the Roman Empire" stick was already a thing in CK2 and has made it here.

 

[The Shacks]

This is a little more significent than playable Hellenes or putting China in a game about Europe ;D This is about mechanical changes, fairly significent ones, not cosmetic flavour. The game looks really great but they are 100% simplifying movement of armies and the actual business of fighting. This is after all a grand strategy, people that enjoy micromanaging and pulling off defeat in detail have a right to be a little perturbed by these simplifications. In terms of naval they simply could have put in a better mercenary fleet mechanic (as existed in later ck2) for landlocked nations needing ships, or techs through the eras starting with decisions to seize merchant ships to eventually having the beginings of a standing fleet in the High Feudal. Simply removing ships takes a lot away, from both europeans and raiders. This isent the place to question the wider combat simplifications but we all see them. Not saying it'll break the game, it still looks great, people dont have to get defensive, but these changes are here and the jury is still very much not out in regards to them being GOOD changes.

 

[Atalvyr]

I think land combat is an excellent example of where simplification was justified. The combat tactics system of CK2 is one of the least intuitive and most needlessly complex systems I have ever dealt with in games. People have made gigantic spreadsheets to figure out the exact right combinations of retinues to pull off something resembling coherent, planned tactics. Armies composed of levies, which make up the majority of armies, have no real way to influence their tactics. Even with a masterful commander, levies will happily pick a completely useless tactic because a tiny percentage of their troops benefit from it. An argument could be made for keeping the center/flanks split in combat, though I also appreciate that having a single commander per army makes it more clear who exactly is in command. In CK2 you could have your king lead 90% of an army concentrated on the right flank, but the center commander was still the "main".

Also "defeat in detail" in CK2 really means "blitzkrieg straight across France until no soldiers remain". That is generally not how medieval wars were fought, which they are also trying to enforce with the new attrition and "stand-and-fight" systems. Now we will actually have the large, decisive battles of the era instead of schwerpunkt doctrine encirclements that belong in the HOI4 timeframe.

 

[Woifee]

I think land combat is an excellent example of where simplification was justified. The combat tactics system of CK2 is one of the least intuitive and most needlessly complex systems I have ever dealt with in games. People have made gigantic spreadsheets to figure out the exact right combinations of retinues to pull off something resembling coherent, planned tactics. Armies composed of levies, which make up the majority of armies, have no real way to influence their tactics. Even with a masterful commander, levies will happily pick a completely useless tactic because a tiny percentage of their troops benefit from it. An argument could be made for keeping the center/flanks split in combat, though I also appreciate that having a single commander per army makes it more clear who exactly is in command. In CK2 you could have your king lead 90% of an army concentrated on the right flank, but the center commander was still the "main".

Also "defeat in detail" in CK2 really means "blitzkrieg straight across France until no soldiers remain". That is generally not how medieval wars were fought, which they are also trying to enforce with the new attrition and "stand-and-fight" systems. Now we will actually have the large, decisive battles of the era instead of schwerpunkt doctrine encirclements that belong in the HOI4 timeframe.

I actually did not care to even try to understand how battles work. I got as many troops as possible, preferred heavy Infantry and heavy cavalry, and my best stats and traits commanders to lead and sent them to battle. If there is more to battles I don’t know, and I don’t wanna know.