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

[JustGamer]

Having read through a bit of the post-release discussion, I think I see a solution that might appease both sides. Why not have the option of building a standing navy, with added benefits, alongside the current system?

So for example, if you're France and you only need the navy once every 50 years to deal with crusades and the like you can rely on merchant fleets (the current system). Maybe make them have a fairly high maintenance cost, maybe they cost more in neutral provinces than they do from friendly provinces, and maybe you can't shattered retreat to them. So useful for getting your armies a short distance from point A to point B every now and then, but kinda trash otherwise.

But if you're, say, Sardinia or Ireland and a lot of the fighting you do will involve a fleet, you can invest (maybe tie it to the dockyard building, so it's organic?) in naval levies. They have a lot less downsides than merchant fleets (lower maintenance and free to raise, can shattered retreat to them if they're available in a sea tile, etc) but might not be worth it if you're, say, germany and don't have a lot of overseas ambitions.

And finally, a naval screen like the army screen, but instead of levies and men-at-arms, it's just a place where you can either rent merchant ships or raise your own levy fleets if you have them. the merchant fleets cost $ from friendly naval provinces, or $$ from neutral provinces. Your levy fleets are free to raise and are cheaper to keep raised, but have the cost of having to dedicate money and building slots to dedicated naval infrastructure. Maybe the AI would weigh it by percentage of coastal provinces or overseas holdings, and invest in it more the higher the percentage is?

 

[Vlad123]

Hmm...

"A one masted trading vessel originating from northern Europe."

What am I missing?

THIS! GENIUS!PS: i have a mod activate, you need to move a bit the mouse on the cog for see the description!

 

[Tisreece]

Personally I don't see anything majorly wrong with the naval system as it is for the moment, and makes a decent amount of sense while being good for gameplay.

The current system has it that embarking takes a long time and costs money. This is to I guess simulate gathering a temporary fleet and paying the cost to hire this fleet on a temporary basis. Although naval combat existed in medieval times, many countries did not have a standing navy. Look at the Norman invasion as an example, they just sailed right across the channel mostly unimpeded.

I have never found naval combat to be a fun part of paradox games and I like the fact that it is mostly an afterthought but does come with penalties, such as naval fees, long embarkment time and disembark penalties. It makes me have to think about the navy, but no so much that I can't do what I want to do, and that is get stuck in with a fight.

That being said, I do think there should be a few changes to the current system:

1) More penalties for disembarking.

• Buildings such as forts can have an additional bonus giving invading armies attrition if they choose to disembark on that province.
• Only select provinces can be disembarked on. Many areas have cliffs and very rocky terrain, these areas should not be allowed to be disembarked on. Alternatively, you can disembark, but you take attrition. This may take a whole rework to make it geographically correct, so it may be easier to have it based on terrain type. Plans, Floodplains, Forest etc. may have no penalty. But anything hilly or mountainous may cause invading armies to take attrition upon disembarking.
• Coastal provinces can have a special building slot, this special building is coastal defence, giving invading armies attrition.

2) Rudimentary naval combat
There are many people like me that have naval combat as an afterthought, and don't really want naval combat like we see in EU4, or even HOI4. A compromise could be to have buildings that do in fact create a small standing navy. These navies can act as "bombs". You send them in on embarked enemy navies and depending on the navies size and power, destroy a percentage of their invading army. If combined with my first idea of costal defences then that invading army may have lost too many men to even siege your island capital fort.

3)
Bonuses to island forts. This one is very simple, something such as a +1 or +2 fort level for being an island might give a big and well needed defensive boost to playing an island nation.


These are all small ideas, but if combined can really make playing a island nation a legitimate strategy. If anyone has been watching DDRJake play, you'll find that him playing Naxos has actually been a hindrance defensively, rather than an advantage as you would expect. I've also done a campaign myself as The Isles, and felt having my capital being the Inner Hebrides, although not a true island given its strait crossing, was a bit of a pain. The enemy would just embark and b-line for my capital. In this sense an inland nation actually has better defences as walking through forts gives you attrition for b-lining straight to their capital. A good penalty in my opinion, and something equally harsh should be applied to Island nations.

I'm sure there are flaws with these ideas, but the aim with these 3 ideas is that is appeals to both the naval combaters while compromising with many people that simply do not like naval combat being a focal point, particularly in this era of game. I think the naval aspect of this game has fixed many of the irks I had with CK2, it makes sense and has in general a good base to work from. But I do think there needs to be much harsher penalties for it, especially when I can often shrug off disembarkment penalties.

 

[Sobric]

I haven't had a chance to read the whole thread, but I don't think that the issue needs to be so polarised between full naval system or the current system.

My feelings are that the current system is flawed, but fixable. It's too easy to embark and disembark and in certain parts of the map the wars are more amphibious than terrestrial.

As others have mentioned, restricting where you can embark from based on terrain is a good start (no more armies leaping off the Cliffs of Moher from Connacht into the Atlantic Ocean) but I'd go further and restrict all non Norse cultures from embarking in enemy territory at all, unless you've seiged down an enemy holding with a port building. Further, when you're planning an invasion you should only be able to embark through holdings with Port/Harbour buildings (perhaps with the exception of some areas having natural harbours to facilitate embarkation).

The whole thrust of these changes is to make it riskier to launch a naval invasion as if you get "caught" your army has no where to retreat to until you've established a beach head.

 

[Rubidium]

I haven't had a chance to read the whole thread, but I don't think that the issue needs to be so polarised between full naval system or the current system.

My feelings are that the current system is flawed, but fixable. It's too easy to embark and disembark and in certain parts of the map the wars are more amphibious than terrestrial.

As others have mentioned, restricting where you can embark from based on terrain is a good start (no more armies leaping off the Cliffs of Moher from Connacht into the Atlantic Ocean) but I'd go further and restrict all non Norse cultures from embarking in enemy territory at all, unless you've seiged down an enemy holding with a port building. Further, when you're planning an invasion you should only be able to embark through holdings with Port/Harbour buildings (perhaps with the exception of some areas having natural harbours to facilitate embarkation).

The whole thrust of these changes is to make it riskier to launch a naval invasion as if you get "caught" your army has no where to retreat to until you've established a beach head.

A big problem with this idea is that it makes island nations completely invulnerable. For instance, a Muslim emirate controls the island of Crete in 867; historically the Byzantines recaptured it in 961 (after several defeats and false starts, including one where the proposed expedition commander was assassinated after allegations he was planning on using those soldiers for a coup instead), but that would be impossible in your suggestion, because it would be entirely enemy territory should the Byzantines try and attack it, rendering it invulnerable to landing. Not to mention the Norman conquest, which would then require William and Harald to land in Wales/Scotland.

The other, more widespread issue with limiting where folks can disembark, is that it makes raiding overseas very difficult if not impossible. Limiting it to the Norse doesn't help, because the Norse were far from the only folks to go on overseas raids, even if they get the best press in modern times. The Arabs and Berbers made the Vikings look like pikers in that category, for instance (that Arab emirate on Crete? not only did it get established by conquering the place from the Byzantines, it then served as a base for looting all over the Aegean, including reportedly sacking Thessalonica).

I don't want to come off as negative; I've considered suggesting requiring folks to embark/disembark at ports myself, and the raider problem is one thing that discouraged me.

 

[Vlad123]

Quoto, the only system that works for now is that of CK2. Who says he finds no strategy in that. Sorry but wrong: Making more or less ships? Remove them now and save money or keep them for a quick retreat? I remember that "at the time of the invasions" the three plagues were: Saracens, Vikings and Hungarians. The first two by sea, the third by land. So I like ck3's deep looting system. it is the only thing that I liked along with the perk system and the supply system. But if put together with the naval system of Ck2 it would be a fantastic game for those who want to play as a raider and the cost of the ships now if you want to raid (ck3) does not allow you to earn because:
1) the raiders are troops different from the normal levy and they are also far fewer.
2) carry very little (in MMOs there are troops such as loot wagons / trucks / other depending on the setting carrying resources) instead 1 ship on ck2 carries 100 gold if you already have 6 ships (one shipyard level) you can carry 600 gold . a trick I used was to put the troops on a very weak enemy county to land them (preferably independent) and once they all landed I sent the troops to the real target and calculated (indicatively) when the troops and ship would arrive (the troops by land). This is only in the case: insufficient ships to transport troops (which happens rarely).
3) in case the raiders die you lose all the loot, in addition there are areas where as soon as you pass it automatically removes troops up to halving them at times. Ie PDX for 2-3 improvements has ruined much more.

 

[Sobric]

A big problem with this idea is that it makes island nations completely invulnerable. For instance, a Muslim emirate controls the island of Crete in 867; historically the Byzantines recaptured it in 961 (after several defeats and false starts, including one where the proposed expedition commander was assassinated after allegations he was planning on using those soldiers for a coup instead), but that would be impossible in your suggestion, because it would be entirely enemy territory should the Byzantines try and attack it, rendering it invulnerable to landing. Not to mention the Norman conquest, which would then require William and Harald to land in Wales/Scotland.

The other, more widespread issue with limiting where folks can disembark, is that it makes raiding overseas very difficult if not impossible. Limiting it to the Norse doesn't help, because the Norse were far from the only folks to go on overseas raids, even if they get the best press in modern times. The Arabs and Berbers made the Vikings look like pikers in that category, for instance (that Arab emirate on Crete? not only did it get established by conquering the place from the Byzantines, it then served as a base for looting all over the Aegean, including reportedly sacking Thessalonica).

I don't want to come off as negative; I've considered suggesting requiring folks to embark/disembark at ports myself, and the raider problem is one thing that discouraged me.

Appreciate the response! It's not negative at all. My suggestion though is that only embarking from enemy territory is impossible (until you capture a port) not landing troops. In your examples, as long as Byzantine armies are winning then they're fine. To put it another way, if the Normans lose the battle of Hastings then their army has no way off of English soil until they take a port holding.

All of these additional rules should also be mitigate/countered by lifestyle perks too, reducing the costs and time it takes to embark as well as possibly allowing embarkation on enemy soil.

 

[Annkatla]

Sorry if this has already been proposed in a previous message.

My opinion is that the current system is interesting. My proposal for improvement is to maintain the system but to limit the number of sea areas that can be crossed. This limitation would be influenced by various factors including a construction (port?). The distance that the troop, transformed into a fleet, can travel will depend on the province from which the troop embarks.
The cost would be, for example, 50% cheaper if it is one of our provinces, and 25% cheaper if it is one of our vassals.
From a neutral province, the owner would have to have a non-negative opinion against us. This owner will earn, for example, 30% of the cost of boarding (Italy would gain a new source of income, thanks to this building, by serving as a stopover point before a crusade ...).

Thus Vikings will be able to plunder England without worries... On the other hand to settle in Sicily, it will require to obtain some conditions.

It's an idea like that...sorry if it has been proposed before...

Good game to you

 

[voodoofan]

I would suggest the following:

1st remove all navy mechanics currently implemented in CK3
2nd add navy "Men at Arms", which are very expensive without specific technology
3rd give Byzantines, Vikings and other seafaring nations a technology advantage with navy "Men at Arms"
4th only rich cities (like Constantinople, Venice, Genoa etc.) should be able to provide some old fashioned navy levies
5th those rich cities should be able to rent out their levy navies as mercenaries, so other may hire them

PS my suggest is the most historical accurate version and it's also easy to implement
PPS maybe it would be cool to create some kind of auto route mode, so you are able to plan some navy routes before raising your levies

 

[Littlebob86]

God damn this cat and mouse with enemy armies!!! They can just load onto boats and sail anywhere!! So frustrating!!!!

 

[Gendric]

Understand that we reserve the right to ban folks from replying if we feel they are dominating the discussion. All users are still required to be respectful to those who disagree, and I highly recommend walking away rather than dragging the thread down, as if it becomes the sort of topic that the community cannot handle civily, we will just close the thread and all subsequent threads will be removed for disregarding moderator actions/decisions.

Yikes. That's not how you should be moderating a forum, Paradox.

 

[LaughingSam]

God damn this cat and mouse with enemy armies!!! They can just load onto boats and sail anywhere!! So frustrating!!!!

This!! So much this! I could not care less about building standing navies, but when an army that just shattered retreated all the way from Milan to Sicily can immediately hop back on their boats it turns all warfare into absurd whack-a-mole, and CK has more than enough of that already.

 

[Balesir]

I have a suggestion that fits the times of the game and is slightly different, I think, to those suggested so far:

The system whereby armies embark on 'civilian' ships gathered for the purpose fits the period well, but armies should only be able to embark:

a) Either from a port controlled by someone with whom they have at least at least a neutral relationship or from the province at which they came ashore and left their boats (indicated by an icon).

b) Into a sea area that does not contain an embarked enemy army of at least 30%(?) of their size.

This would allow many of the uses of naval power that were used in the period - and maybe naval advances such as catapults and 'Greek fire' might multiply the effective army strength for the purposes of sea action. Even better, of course, would be true medieval sea battles, but that would require a much more serious development effort; no game I have seen so far does it well.

 

[alvanio]

Maybe you could put some more restrictions into go into water atleast. I did a holy war for England and it was a fucking mess of armies continuesly entering/exiting water for years. Having it take more time, that "resently embarked" penalty, and gold, doesnt seem to be enough.

This is a rather gamey suggestion but perhaps you could have some sort of resource bar "Naval Transport Capability" that replenishes over time and if you exhaust it, you cant ferry your troops any more, or you can but with a penalty (similarly with the extra death you take from walking past forts). How to balance this NTC I leave up to the devs.

As for naval combat, unless you go down the route with having actual ships and a whole system for it (PDX doesnt want, I think) the best solution to safe guard your coasts could be with building improvements that negate disembarkment or atleast make it very punishing. Or perhaps even if you just sail past the coastline.

 

[Blackwhitecavias]

Maybe you could put some more restrictions into go into water atleast. I did a holy war for England and it was a fucking mess of armies continuesly entering/exiting water for years. Having it take more time, that "resently embarked" penalty, and gold, doesnt seem to be enough.

This is a rather gamey suggestion but perhaps you could have some sort of resource bar "Naval Transport Capability" that replenishes over time and if you exhaust it, you cant ferry your troops any more, or you can but with a penalty (similarly with the extra death you take from walking past forts). How to balance this NTC I leave up to the devs.

As for naval combat, unless you go down the route with having actual ships and a whole system for it (PDX doesnt want, I think) the best solution to safe guard your coasts could be with building improvements that negate disembarkment or atleast make it very punishing. Or perhaps even if you just sail past the coastline.

One the issues is that currently the AI does not take into account the gold cost for naval transport, I'd first like to see that fixed and a few tweaks before an entire overhaul is done (as the current system might work after some number changes in which case another system would not be needed).

 

[Olden Weiss]

Post release edit:

So after release and having played this game, I decided to reword my contention to be more accurate.

My opinion is that the game still needs some form of naval mechanics. Currently the status quo is probably just as inefficient as it was in CK2. The main problem I see is that transporting troops require no planning or preparation. It seems like there will always be troops that instantly magically appear (in unlimited numbers) for you to transport your troops wherever you like. This also makes the AI willing to ship over their troops to wars far away from home.

I disagree. It takes remarkably longer to embark than it used to, meaning it absolutely requires planning and preparation when you're in hostile territory. You're locked into your move for a good 13-16 days, which is more than enough time for an army to get the drop on you. Do you think lords historically waited for a fleet to come pick them up? No. The ships were there when the army arrived, and were acquired at that time. The preparation came in the loading phase, which is exactly what the long embarkation times represent. It takes nearly a month to embark. In CK2, you could have your ships in the harbor you meant to leave from, immediately board, and be on the enemy's shores before they even had their army assembled.

 

[LaughingSam]

I disagree. It takes remarkably longer to embark than it used to, meaning it absolutely requires planning and preparation when you're in hostile territory. You're locked into your move for a good 13-16 days, which is more than enough time for an army to get the drop on you. Do you think lords historically waited for a fleet to come pick them up? No. The ships were there when the army arrived, and were acquired at that time. The preparation came in the loading phase, which is exactly what the long embarkation times represent. It takes nearly a month to embark. In CK2, you could have your ships in the harbor you meant to leave from, immediately board, and be on the enemy's shores before they even had their army assembled.

I too disagree. That makes plenty of sense if I am preparing an invasion from my own or friendly lands, but not at all in circumstances where I am halfway across the continent in hostile territory, in a spot I can't have foreseen because I only got there through panicked flight. In that case yeah, I do think the lords in question should have to wait for a fleet to come pick them up.

 

[Rince]

I too disagree. That makes plenty of sense if I am preparing an invasion from my own or friendly lands, but not at all in circumstances where I am halfway across the continent in hostile territory, in a spot I can't have foreseen because I only got there through panicked flight. In that case yeah, I do think the lords in question should have to wait for a fleet to come pick them up.

Well, depends of the place and situation I guess.
If you can manage to get the service of some locals or directly take some ships by force, then you wouldn't need to wait for the taxi.

 

[Rhion]

I would try taking the best from CK2 and CK1 and combining them for CK3. Trying to balance micro-management and player input.

An idea to accomplish this would be to have each coastal Duchy have a naval transport capacity (NTC) based on the number and level of "port building" in its counties. (Like supply, but on a Duchy level). An army can embark from any coastal holding containing a port, using a part of the Duchy's NTC to transport its units. The army owner pays gold like currently in CK3. The owners of a holding in the Duchy get 15% percentage of the gold based on their ports' contribution to the NTC.

You can always embark from your own and neutral counties.
You can only embark from an enemy county if you control it.

NTC stays tied to an army as long as they are embarking, are on the ships or have the "recently disembarked" modifier. Once this is no longer the case, the Duchy's NTC is refilled.

Pathfinding will by default lead an army to the nearest port where sufficient NTC to embark is present.

What I think the advantages of this idea are:

+ Naval transport remains simple. No micromanagement of fleet levies.
+ Ports exist. Armies, especially larger ones, can't just embark from anywhere to anywhere.
+ Investing in naval infrastructure is encouraged. Having a large port, especially at times of large wars, can be profitable and important.
+ Landlocked lords can still go fight overseas.

For tribes, I would add a tribe building that provides a port (maybe unlocked by certain tech), so that they can also raid overseas.

 

[jkchart]

I truly appreciate the current boat system but there does need to be some restrictions with the boat system. Greater naval attrition (especially for long journeys) and a restriction on where you can embark from based on cost would be nice.

Most of the time it doesn't bother me or only mildly annoys me, and I way prefer it to how ships in CK2 worked.

But when in a civil war landlocked Bohemia, which could have walked south towards me in Italy, instead went through the trouble to go NORTH to EMBARK and take the scenic route through the Channel, Atlantic, and Med to go to Florence and promptly fail miserably to assist their ally...yeah there's gotta be some sort of tweaks.