Missing the point about naval ideas

[3ishop]

Thanks, I'm glad you identified the whole point - connecting naval ideas to other parts of the game, making combined arms stronger without any direct land bonuses. As of now the best naval idea is buying more heavy ships than anyone else. I don't think I'd call this a naval revamp, though, it's just auxiliary buffs in coastal provinces.

This doesn't change that. Now insted having the larger fleet gives you a slight bonus in small number of locations.

A thought I've just had. Bearing in mind that naval bombardment wasn't as big of a deal until ironclads and the 19th century came about, were there not siege ships as early as in ancient Greece? If sustained fire from ballista triremes was good enough for them, then surely it can be justified within the moving goalposts of game physics. Especially since trebuchets and tech 7 bronze mortars exist side by side, but only the latter can instantly break walls in EU4.

There was a number of limited siege ships during the games time period, bomb ketches and rocket ships. Questionable effects and tended not to fight modern defences, often insted hitting the cities to do the damage.

 

[Honon]

I don't see that. So you never built a Heavy or Galley in any of your games? You can't move troops to another landmass or an island if you don't have a navy to protect them. Navies are rather important for any global empire.

You can't achieve almost anything by simple naval superiority except defense, even as Great Britain. If you face someone who has a superior army, while you have a superior navy, , they can't invade the isles, but you wont be able to conquer anything of theirs either. Meanwhile anything of yours on the mainland can be taken with ease. So unless you want to remain on the isles and build really tall the whole game, you need an army. However, the reverse isn't true, You don't really need naval superiority, or even an navy for most countries to expand. France could reach Thousands of development without ever building a ship.

In my many years of playing this game, I have yet to ever take naval ideas outside of a bad ideas guy run. With the exception of tall, isolationist island nations like Britain or Japan, all disputes are settled on land.
Even if that were the case, it is much safer to take quality ideas in order to mitigate an otherwise potentially insurmountable disadvantage to any armies that do land ashore. Quality also provides naval bonuses, in addition to far superior social policies.

Plutocratic, Aristocratic, Quality and Defensive all contribute to something beyond land warfare. Offensive and quantity contribute exclusively to land warfare, and are considered the best idea groups in the game. Naval contributes nothing to land warfare, and is considered the worst in the game. Do you see where I am going with this?

In one of darkfireslide's latest videos, he suggests adding something as insignificant as a +2.5% discipline bonus, under the pretense of superb sailor training increasing the efficiency of land armies by osmosis. But then you could make an argument for Switzerland take naval ideas, and magically increase their discipline with 0 sailors in the bank.

How do you increase the effectiveness of land armies, but strictly through cooperation with the navy? The central point, and the proposed solutions, are as follows:

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Sieging coastal forts
Currently, coastal forts are strictly superior. At best they are -2, at worst they are equal at +0. Historically, we know that naval bombardment could make coastal forts more vulnerable, rather than equal to the always inferior inland ones.
Once the specific naval idea is unlocked I would suggest allowing coastal fort provinces to be blockaded up to 150%. At 150% you'd get +1 siege progress. Add a naval+XYZ social policy, that would give further +1 siege from 200% blockade.

Naval bombardment of forts
-33% cost of artillery barrage for 100% blockaded coastal forts. -50% cost for 150% blockaded coastal forts.

Heavy ships count as artillery
Another option could be to have heavy ships count towards the artillery counter when sieging coastal forts (yes I know it's unrealistic for the time period). Perhaps cap it, so that 50% of the bonus must come from land artillery. Big ships are much more expensive than artillery, but with this change they wouldn't be mothballed as much.

Amphibious landings
How about -1 instead of a -2 penalty for crossing straits or disembarking from transports with naval ideas. Additionally, how about +33% movement speed to, and from, transport ships. How about faster strait crossing?

Coastal batteries
Ships blockading coastal forts of a player with naval ideas could take attrition from coastal batteries. Say, 5% attrition at 1% blockade, and 0% attrition at 100% blockade. If 150% blockade were to be available to everyone without naval ideas, tweak the values accordingly.​

This way, players who neglect their navy will find their coastal forts being bullied by players who don't. I've also considered increased devastation in 150%+ blockaded provinces, but the attacker might find that counterproductive.

With this flavour of bonuses, I could actually see myself taking naval ideas in WC runs, where praise of the +20% offensive siege ability is currently sung. Better coastal sieges and/or amphibious landings may be enough to sway people into, God forbid, actually taking naval ideas over quantity. Even if players were to take naval ideas strictly in order to conquer the micromanagement hellholes that are Indonesia, the Carribean, etc, I'd still call it a victory.

Adding all of the above bonuses into the game would probably be overpowered, so bear in mind that I pulled the numbers out of my posterior. Tweaks and playtesting are necessary, maybe nerf the values and sprinkle beefier ones around in the form of social policies. This could require maritime ideas to offer blockade resistance. Maybe everyone should get the ability to blockade 150%, and change the default siege penalty to -3?

On a side note, how about some flexibility to make sailors more desirable? Such as a "draft sailors" button, that could change, say, 2 years worth of sailors into manpower, but cost -2.5% discipline for 2 years each time the button is pressed? And vice versa for manpower into sailors.

What do you guys think?

OK, Naval forts are not strictly superior in most situations. First, most coastal squares don't have the same defensive bonuses of inland squares (water adjacent territories are sometimes mountains, it is pretty rare in most areas) Second, in most coastal provinces (again not all) forts have limited projection of zone of control. Much of the forts (zone) is eaten up by already impassible coastal terrain. In fact, in some cases like the agean, coastal fort zone of control can be outright ignored if the troops are landed from a sea tile. So, in reality, in most cases, by building a coastal fort, you are trading flexibility and zone of control projection for defensiveness.

Naval bombardment is very controversial. Some people think it is immersion breaking, and Sieging is absurd from a game balance perspective due to letting navies replace armies for land warfare (though an exception might be in place for unfortified one province islands.

Heavy ships counting as artillery is weird cause you generally don't want one thing being a replacement for another. it weakens the third, this isn't as bad as most though.

Amphibious landings. I like this idea. In fact I suggested the same thing last weak in my own proposal for naval ideas.

Coastal batteries, with the way most fleets are managed by relying on automation, this would be an endless headache for players who would be forced to either micromanage or lose ships.

2.5 % discipline, I also saw darkfire's video and I don't agree with these types of bonuses. For one, I already think that the idea groups are too similar. It creates a problem where, if they all do the same thing, one group will always be better and thus always taken. We already have that problem with the groups as it is. Also, it's naval ideas, not land ideas. It should focus on the navy. Now, there are a lot of ways you can make the navy influence the land combat, but the navy HAS to be involved. Your amphibious landing idea was a great example of that. It would heavily effect land battles in the vicinity of the coast, but it requires use of the navy to do it. For that reason, I find all your ideas better than just giving a flat land bonus.

Now if you had like a 10% moral bonus to any owned army on a coastal province adjacent to heavy ships could be an example of a land bonus dependent on the navy. (I don't like it for other reasons but it's an easy example)

 

[Honon]

This doesn't change that. Now insted having the larger fleet gives you a slight bonus in small number of locations.


There was a number of limited siege ships during the games time period, bomb ketches and rocket ships. Questionable effects and tended not to fight modern defences, often insted hitting the cities to do the damage.

Funny story we had a very spirited discussion about the nature of naval bombardments, history of it, and nature of targets. It was really interesting.

 

[Big Bad France]

I think it makes more sense to make navies that don't have naval or maritime ideas weaker than it does to buff navies with the ideas.

 

[Honon]

I think it makes more sense to make navies that don't have naval or maritime ideas weaker than it does to buff navies with the ideas.

As it has been pointed out before, You prevent navies from even building galleys or heavies unless they have naval ideas, and still naval ideas wouldn't be worth it because navies are not worth the investment of an idea group that could be better spent getting land force bonuses.

 

[GoffBall]

I took that idea and maritime and quality when playing England and I totally sank the French, Spanish and Portuguese navy. Despite being massively outnumber while losing only a few ships.

I then took my time annexing their colonies in the new world while they were begging for peace.

 

[Honon]

I took that idea and maritime and quality when playing England and I totally sank the French, Spanish and Portuguese navy. Despite being massively outnumber while losing only a few ships.

I then took my time annexing their colonies in the new world while they were begging for peace.

If your England, generally, you can always kill French, Castillian and Portuguese navies while outnumbered. But the point, like usual, is that winning the naval battle in this game doesn't actually get you much of anything without having land troops to occupy something. So, largely, there is no point to boosting your navy when you can boost your army instead.

 

[Ulfing]

So, largely, there is no point to boosting your navy when you can boost your army instead

Sadly true. Take Norway for example - Its 1470 and Hungary marches a 20k stack of troops up to Finmark in the middle of winter like its nobodies business. So why bother investing in a navy to protect your long coastline when thousand of troops can travel a thousand miles with no trouble.

Perhaps one day the AI will figure out attrition and the rates can go back up to 'realistic' levels to stop stuff like this from happening.

 

[Honon]

Sadly true. Take Norway for example - Its 1470 and Hungary marches a 20k stack of troops up to Finmark in the middle of winter like its nobodies business. So why bother investing in a navy to protect your long coastline when thousand of troops can travel a thousand miles with no trouble.

Perhaps one day the AI will figure out attrition and the rates can go back up to 'realistic' levels to stop stuff like this from happening.

Agreed

 

[BaronNoir]

The AI have so little issues securing right of passage that, indeed, it's not rare to see Ottomans soldiers pop up on the French border while playing as Spain...(a fan favorite of me is the good old ''DOWing as a colonial nation the Ottoman and see 70k stacks arrive by foot in Kolyma or South Africa...

 

[Akela]

A thought I've just had. Bearing in mind that naval bombardment wasn't as big of a deal until ironclads and the 19th century came about, were there not siege ships as early as in ancient Greece? If sustained fire from ballista triremes was good enough for them, then surely it can be justified within the moving goalposts of game physics. Especially since trebuchets and tech 7 bronze mortars exist side by side, but only the latter can instantly break walls in EU4.

The big argument against naval bombardment of forts isn't "the ships can't damage the forts", it's "the forts will tear the ships to pieces".

If the ship is close enough to shoot the fort, it's also close enough to be shot by the fort - and the fort will have:
A) Bigger guns.
B) More guns.
C) More accurate guns (since they're shooting from stable stone floors, not a rocking ship's deck).
D) Much, much tougher defences.

It's worth noting that this dynamic is most heavily stacked against the navy during (approximately) the first half of the period EU covers.

Earlier, in the catapult-and-ballista era, the fort's weapons are weak and inaccurate enough that they're not too dangerous to a ship that sails into range. This also means that the fleet has effectively zero chance of damaging the fort's walls, but that's less important than the fact that they can sail in and bombard the defenders without being wiped out; there's always the chance of getting a lucky hit on an enemy siege engine, killing defenders, starting fires, and just generally wearing down the enemy morale in the way only incoming fire can.

Later, with the introduction of effective mortars and explosive shells, the ship's weapons become powerful enough to be a legitimate threat to the fort as well as the other way around. Once both sides can do real damage with one good hit, 'start shooting and hope we get lucky more often than they do' becomes a viable tactic. A realistic implementation would be a lot more like the 'Assault the walls' button than the 'Artillery Barrage' one - risky, and probably painful even if you win - but it's at least possible.

There's a period in the middle, however - in EU terms from maybe Mil tech 7 through 20 - where the forts can sink a ship with just a few good/lucky hits but the ships need a few hundred hits to do any real damage in return. During that period, naval attacks on any serious land-based defenses are in 'Hahaha... no' territory.

 

[rho]

One other possibility along the general theme of "make naval bonuses that impact land warfare" would be improved strait blocking. Basically, bring back the old style of strait blocking exclusively for nations with naval ideas.

 

[3ishop]

Still think blockades should be more harmful to trade and cause devastation to none fort coastal provinces. Naval ideas could boost the offense for it and maritime reduce it's damage.

Funny story we had a very spirited discussion about the nature of naval bombardments, history of it, and nature of targets. It was really interesting.

I know, I was part of it

 

[Yxklyx]

So, what was the change to Naval Ideas in 1.21?

 

[lolada]

Naval Cadets
+1 Naval leader fire
−33% Morale hit when losing a ship
Press Gangs

+25% Sailor recovery speed
Superior Seamanship

+10% Morale of navies
+10% Global naval engagement
They added recently that morale loss modifier, and not sure about that sailor recovery speed. Is that new or buffed? Btw what is "Global naval engamement"?

 

[Yxklyx]

...
They added recently that morale loss modifier, and not sure about that sailor recovery speed. Is that new or buffed? Btw what is "Global naval engamement"?

Naval Combat Width increase.

 

[Big Bad France]

Still think blockades should be more harmful to trade and cause devastation to none fort coastal provinces. Naval ideas could boost the offense for it and maritime reduce it's damage.

Ideally, the system would take into account what you are producing and importing from inland sources. Fish production should drop to zero in blockaded provinces, and if you don't have a lot of grain, a blockade should create a drain on manpower, tax and production, as well as rebels. If you are capable of feeding your people, it should just harm you economically.

 

[makaramus]

I am siding with naval ideas must be picked for special purposes and not to %100 conquer runs or land battles... they may include some ideas that buffing land units (maybe idea that land units fighting near friendly ships got extra morale when defending since they can help them ONLY when defend since enemy is walking on them?)

ships means utility... not conquest. if you are picking naval ideas you want to have special utilty aganist enemy... maybe blocking their passage? or make them have hard time with blockade? stop reinforcements coming? I dont know

But if you want to pick naval ideas as ottoman to make it easier to conquer world... then its wrong way to go

 

[Big Bad France]

I am siding with naval ideas must be picked for special purposes and not to %100 conquer runs or land battles... they may include some ideas that buffing land units (maybe idea that land units fighting near friendly ships got extra morale when defending since they can help them ONLY when defend since enemy is walking on them?)

ships means utility... not conquest. if you are picking naval ideas you want to have special utilty aganist enemy... maybe blocking their passage? or make them have hard time with blockade? stop reinforcements coming? I dont know

But if you want to pick naval ideas as ottoman to make it easier to conquer world... then its wrong way to go

Naval or maritime ideas really should be a no-brainer for nations that practice colonization and other nations that are focused around getting spawling trade empires established, like Venice and Genoa. The idea group shouldn't be changed so that anyone else benefits much from taking it. I really think the current ideas would be fine if blockades were as crippling as they should be. Blockading an island nation that produces fish should create a revolt and other major issues for that island. It would cause the nation to lose land, though probably not to you directly, without you having to drop a single soldier. Blockading trade companies on the African coast and in India should have a similar effect.

 

[makaramus]

Naval or maritime ideas really should be a no-brainer for nations that practice colonization and other nations that are focused around getting spawling trade empires established, like Venice and Genoa. The idea group shouldn't be changed so that anyone else benefits much from taking it. I really think the current ideas would be fine if blockades were as crippling as they should be. Blockading an island nation that produces fish should create a revolt and other major issues for that island. It would cause the nation to lose land, though probably not to you directly, without you having to drop a single soldier. Blockading trade companies on the African coast and in India should have a similar effect.

ok? I mean I dont disagree with you thing I disagree is "naval bombarding forts" comments