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Grand_Strategy_Gamer

Second Lieutenant
22 Badges
Nov 11, 2018
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Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is the name of a well-received naval war movie set in the Napoleonic Wars: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/master_and_commander_the_far_side_of_the_world. It seems appropriate to name a complete naval overhaul after this great movie. Obviously any actual naval DLC would be named differently. The movie is based on a classic Patrick O’Brian book series about intrepid frigate Captain Jack Aubrey and Ship Surgeon Stephen Maturin. In the opening battle scene, we can see has all sorts of things that we lack in EU4 naval combat. We can see weather making a difference in the fight, the effect of maneuvering on the battle (tactical speed), critical hits (like on the rudder), naval marines, the distinct difference superior cannon shot weight makes in damage, and the huge difference in size between a 28-gun light frigate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Surprise_(1796)) and a 44-gun great frigate Acheron (actually based on this famous ship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution). While I can’t promise you that EU4 naval combat will look anything like the movie, I can say that the changes highlighted in this overhaul should make you feel more like Captain Aubrey as your navy fights and sails its way to glory.

Chances are that most of you are less than fully satisfied with EU4’s naval mechanics. This could be due to the naval morale system: Or you find naval combat is too unpredictable: Perhaps you think navies don’t matter enough: Finally, you could realize that EU4’s naval supremacy isn’t as vital as in Imperator: Rome:
I find Naval Supremacy to be absolutely vital in I:R, more so than EU4. The threat of being able to drop 100k legionnaires in the enemies capital, pillage his heartlands and enslave his people while they take the long march around towards Rome is no small thing. Also a free win if you select a conquest wargoal on an island, as you can then force the peace whenever you want :)

To help solve all these issues, I’ve put together a comprehensive overhaul drawing upon my own ideas and on some occasions adapting ideas first mentioned by other members (with attribution). This overhaul will cover everything from an improved naval morale system, military access improvements, weather & seaworthiness, new naval combat mechanics, raiding and privateering improvements, using fleets to conquer unprotected coastal land, designing custom classes of ships (via a Ship Designer), naval marines, idea group improvements, adding historical ships (ex. Turtle Ships for Korean players, Treasure Ships for Ming, etc.), a trade company overhaul and even naval Quasi War, where you can (finally) attack the privateer and raiding fleets bothering your powerhouse Castile without breaking a truce. A quick Table of Contents on what this overhaul covers is found below. I hope you enjoy this thread!


Contents

A) Case for the Developers
B) Leader Overhaul
C) Military Access Improvements
D) Improved Naval Morale System
E) Wider Naval Engagement Width over Time
F) Transports’ Update
G) Conquering unprotected land with large fleets
H) Amphibious Landing Fire Support
I) Flagship Overhaul
J) Addition of Medium Ships
K) Weather & Seaworthiness
L) Ship Crew Changes
M) Changes to Ship Costs, Maintenance & Build Times
N) Naval Combat Overhaul – the Master & Commander Combat System
O) New Ships
P) Ship Designer
Q) Naval Marines
R) Naval Siege
S) Faster Ships
T) Doom Stack Penalties
U) Liberty Desire & Naval Strength
V) Overseas Empire No Forces Penalty
W) Quasi War
X) Raiding
Y) Privateering
Z) Merchant Kings: A Trade Company Overhaul
AA) Idea Group Improvements
BB) Idea Group Policy Improvements
CC) New Naval Doctrine
DD) Naval Power Projection
EE) Fleet Resupply
FF) Trade Forts
GG) Historical Ships for Non-European & Mediterranean countries
HH) Ship Experience
II) Switching Admirals/Generals no longer teleport
JJ) Naval Tactics
KK) Naval Terrain Update
LL) National Idea Changes
MM) Blockades
NN) Colonization Supply Fleet
OO) Ming Treasure Fleet
PP) Naval Professionalism & Naval Exercise
QQ) Colonial Stand-off
RR) Navy Tradition Update
SS) Navigable Rivers
TT) Evading Enemy Fleets
UU) Overseas Troops
VV) More Sailors
WW) Coastal Defence/Naval Battery Improvements
XX) Naval Attrition

A. Case for the Developers
Obviously, as developers, you want to best cater to your community. While map-related threads tend to get huge amounts of views, navy-related threads often get fewer views and posts. But the recent experience of HOI IV’s “Man the Guns” DLC shows there is plenty of appetite for naval DLCs in the Paradox community. As just one example, look at the rapturous reception that “Man the Guns”’ Ship Designer got when announced: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-ship-designer.1127181/. But of course, as developers, you don’t just care about how people receive a single dev diary, but also whether they buy your game.

Now the honest truth here from my perspective is that reviews weigh ounces while sales weigh pounds. One cannot put food on the table with a good review, but they can with good sales. If I was asked if I want a release to sell well or I want it to review well, I'll ask for both, but if I may only have one, I'll take the sales numbers. I'm telling you that not (only) because I am a terribly greedy individual, but because that is how we weigh up success and I'd rather be clear with you on that than give some fuzzy, corporate response.

Thankfully for Paradox and the prospects of a complete EU4 naval overhaul DLC, here’s what happened after “Man the Guns” was released:
Hi everyone! Last Thursday we released Man the Guns and the 1.6 Ironclad Update and I am super happy to see how many people are playing it. We broke our records for concurrent players and monthly active players again :) It's also heartwarming with all the PMs and messages we have been getting from people loving the expansion, so thanks for that, it is always great to hear what people like (sub warfare seems to be a big favourite).

I believe that @podcat’s experience is not a one-off, and that something similar could be true for Europa Universalis. It might prove especially lucrative if a naval DLC were paired with a major map update of a region like Southeast Asia. The two would mesh well given the geography.

Daniel Burnham once said:
”Daniel Burnham” said:
Make no little plans; they have no magic to stir men's blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency.

I, like Daniel Burnham, believe that a big, bold plan will be better received than a small one. There are few plans as bold as a complete naval overhaul of the game, but I think it’s one that will pay off. As you survey your critics and ponder how best to respond, remember the advice of Captain Jack: “Go straight at them”. Tackling problems head on like Captain Jack would be greatly appreciated in the community, and who knows, perhaps a Europa Universalis Ship Designer will prove more popular than the one from @podcat!
B. Leader Overhaul
Why do we need a leader overhaul? We need an overhaul because players currently are forced to choose between having more generals or more admirals. This is because both sets of leaders take up space in the same leader pool. As generals are almost always more valuable than admirals, naval leaders usually become rarities for all but the most maritime-focused. But what’s the best way to make naval leaders more valuable?

The simplest change is to no longer make it a choice between generals or admirals. You do this by splitting the admiral/explorer leader pool from the general/conquistador leader pool. This is a concept I saw kgmi (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ated-slots-for-admirals-and-generals.1122096/) and Technoincubus (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...l-be-separated-from-land-leader-pool.1127269/) bring up. Since you will no longer be forced to choose between the two, naval leaders should become far more common, which reflects the era. This will improve fleets’ combat performances as well and also make naval leader bonuses of more interest.

Two additional changes I believe would further incentivize their use:
1. Changing the over-leader limit cost to Diplomatic Points instead of Military Points for Admirals/Explorers.

2. Leader cost would scale as you appointed more leaders of each type. This would allow small powers to more easily keep up with great powers in technology.
i. The first Admiral/Explorer or General/Conquistador would cost 20 Diplomatic Points or 20 Military Monarch Points.
ii. Each additional leader in a pool would add 20 Monarch Points to their cost, so if you appoint 3 generals, that will cost you 120 Military Monarch Points. The same is true for appointing 3 Admirals or Explorers.

These changes would also trim issues with keeping your armies and navies properly led while keeping up in tech, and address an issue players have had for some time. One change that would be a nice late-game difference-maker would be to introduce naval and army officers’ academies. Only one of each would be buildable. The first military academy, the Royal Danish Naval Academy, dates to 1701 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Danish_Naval_Academy), which means a Diplomatic Tech 23 or Military Tech 23 would be good techs to unlock this building option.


Naval Academy (Diplomatic Tech 23)
Cost: 500 Ducats
Requires coastline and minimum of 1 ship navy to build

Effects
Province State Maintenance +25%
Navy Tradition +0.5
If 0 admirals in naval leader pool, automatically generates free admiral


Army Academy (Military Tech 23)
Cost: 500 Ducats
Requires minimum of 1 regiment to build

Effects
Province State Maintenance +25%
Army Tradition +0.5
If 0 generals in army leader pool, automatically generates free general
C. Military Access Improvements
One reason why naval combat is not considered very valuable is that military access is too easily acquired and granted by the AI. Member Canute VII gives us a good example of why this is important.

Portugal has the world's best navy and lots of boats. France declares a trade war on Portugal. Spain is best friends with Portugal and rival to France.

Scenario 1: France calls its ally Provence into the war. Provence asks Spain for military access. Granted. In a matter of in-game weeks, all of Portugal is sieged down and its armies destroyed, since Portugal doesn't have "strategic depth". No matter Portugals navy.

Scenario 2: Portugal is an AI country. It asks Spain for military access.... :rolleyes:

Whatever, even if Portugal's navy had a whopping +50% combat ability, it would not save it.

I propose the following reforms to help address this issue:
1) It will require relations of +75 or Trust>=60 for an AI country to grant another military access. This will make it far harder for gain access, which will make navies more valuable in general. It will also strengthen the utility of diplomats.
2) If you are requesting military access in order to attack a country’s rival, relations will only need to be +25 or Trust>=20 to get military access.
3) Allied countries will not grant military access to rivals of their allies or their war enemies.
4) In the event that a country is allied to two rivals, it will not grant military access to either of them.
5) AI countries will only request Military Access if their side’s land forces are stronger than the enemy’s.
6) Players will have the option to auto-approve or auto-decline military access requests.
7) Vassals will never grant access unless their overlord has granted someone access.
8) If you are at war with someone and request access from a third country, that country will only grant you military access IF it likes your country more than your enemy and meet the above conditions.

I realize these changes will likely not totally fix the issue, but they will at least improve the situation.
D. Improved Naval Morale System
The current issue with naval morale is that it creates extreme snowballing in battle, where once one side gathers a small advantage the other side stands little chance. Combined with limited engagement width, this leads to some unfortunate battle outcomes for players: . In this situation, a player lost to an AI fleet despite outnumbering it 10.87:1. How do we fix naval morale so that these sorts of things are much rarer or never happen?

My basic idea is to make naval morale more but not entirely like army morale. To make this overhaul work though, we're going to need to also add a ship type and also incorporate increased naval engagement width over time.

Here's the basic new formula:

1. MORALE_Damage = round(((Hull_Damage_Percent * (Max_Ship_Morale/Max_Enemy_Ship_Morale)) * Max_Enemy_Morale) +.01 Morale_Loss_per_phase, 2)

Let's say your ship has 5 morale and the enemy's ship has 4.5. You inflict 5% damage on them during a phase. How much morale damage would you do?

0.29 Morale lost = round(((0.05 * (5/4.5)) * 4.5) +0.01,2)

What the above means is you would inflict morale losses equivalent to the percent of hull damaged, multiplied by the ratio of your ship's morale (the one attacking) to the enemy ship's morale. You would then multiply this against their max morale and add .01 morale lost per phase to get the total Morale hit. If you suffered a similar 5% damage to your ship's hull, here's what your ship would suffer:

0.24 Morale lost = round(((0.05 * (4.5/5)) * 5) +0.01,2)


To sum it more basically, naval morale would make your ships less likely to rout, fight longer and be more likely to rout the enemy's fleet. There would be no multiplier to damage suffered from a unit having zero morale, and naval units at zero morale would attempt to retreat at the end of a phase (instead of after both fire + shock phases). This in turn would make it less likely for you to lose ships, which would modestly curtail the snowballing loss of morale we see in naval battles today.

Naval Morale would still differ from Army Morale in that losing ships and having ships captured would affect morale. This is reflected by history, perhaps most famously at the Battle of Trafalgar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar).

I have two basic changes to how this would work that would likely prevent a recurrence of morale "snowballing".

1) Ships losses won't affect your reserves
Ships in the reserve would take 0.01 Morale loss per phase, to curb incentives for doom stacks, but would not take morale losses from lost front-line ships. This makes winning 11:1 fights much more likely. It also means that it will be far harder to ping-pong fleets, especially once naval engagement width starts increasing.

2) Morale lost tied to Engagement Width
Here's how losing ships would affect front-line ships' morale:
i. Heavy Ship: 0.09 Morale Loss (3 engagement width)
ii. Medium Ship: 0.06 Morale Loss (2 engagement width)
iii. Light Ship: 0.03 Morale Loss (1 engagement width)
iv. Galley: 0.03 Morale Loss (1 engagement width)
v. Transport: 0.03 Morale Loss (1 engagement width)


Having ships captured would also lead to a morale loss, but far less:
i. Heavy Ship: 0.03 Morale Loss (3 engagement width)
ii. Medium Ship: 0.02 Morale Loss (2 engagement width)
iii. Light Ship: 0.01 Morale Loss (1 engagement width)
iv. Galley: 0.01 Morale Loss (1 engagement width)
v. Transport: 0.01 Morale Loss (1 engagement width)


If you lose a flagship of a certain ship type, the morale penalty to your entire fleet would be double the normal hit. This helps to simulate the disproportionate effect of a fleet losing its commander. It's also the one exception to ship losses only affecting your in-combat ships.

So the morale loss for flagships by ship type would be:
Heavy Ship
i. 0.18 (loss)
ii. 0.06 (capture)

Medium Ship
i. 0.12 (loss)
ii. 0.04 (capture)

Light Ship/Galley
i. 0.06 (loss)
ii. 0.02 (capture)

This would make a quantity over quality approach for navies viable, albeit quite costly at times; much like Quantity can be for armies. To really fix naval battles in the current system though, we'll next need to address naval engagement width.
E. Wider Naval Engagement Width over Time
Some of you may have noticed that I've already created a thread related to this, which you can read here: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ent-width-improvements.1143380/#post-25050836. The idea is simple. How do we prevent players losing battles where they have massive numeric advantage ( )? Why does land combat have expanding combat width but engagement width never expands with technology? Why is naval engagement width so narrow that it doesn’t allow a reenactment of the Battle of Trafalgar? To fix these issues, I propose that naval engagement width should increase like armies' combat width increases over time.

i. Diplomatic Tech 2: 25 (+0%)
ii. Diplomatic Tech 7: 37 (+50%)
iii. Diplomatic Tech 12: 50 (+100%)
iv. Diplomatic Tech 18: 62 (+150%)
v. Diplomatic Tech 24: 75 (+200%)

This means that if your Tech 11 Japanese fleet encounters a Tech 12 Korean fleet that fills the combat width, you'll really notice it. This increases realism, decreases chances of weird outcomes, and makes a late game "Battle of Trafalgar" a real possibility. To further up the realism, I suggest limiting engagement width in straits and along coasts.

Examples
Straits
i. Bosporus: Max 15 Engagement Width
ii. Dardanelles: Max 30 Engagement Width

Coastal Seas:
i. Engagement Width -10%
F. Transports’ Update
One issue currently is that the AI is not very good at naval invasions, although it seems to have improved at stopping them. But how do we fix this issue long-term, assuming that the AI is really hard to get right? The simplest way is to transform transport ships into Trade Company-only trade ships, which would better fit with their actual historical roles.

A detailed case for axing transports for both AI and historical reasons was made by member Grand Historian:
”Grand Historian” said:
Transport Capacity

Transports, frankly, need to be axed – as long as they persist, the issues Naval Warfare, the AI’s handling of it, and the number of troops that can be shipped across the world via boat will not be able to be fixed or improved. As I’m aware this is a rather bombastic declaration, I’ll obviously explain myself.

First and foremost: having a dedicated transport category is not only completely ahistorical, but it leads to utterly gamey strategies: piling tens of thousands of troops onto a transport-only fleet and having it sail safely across to anywhere while your actual fighting ships are busy keeping your opponent’s navies and ports tied down. This not only makes naval invasions and transporting tens of thousands of troops across the world stultifying easy and generally risk free, but it also means that the AI will not be able to manage it nearly as effectively; they can’t game the system as well as a player, and they’re prone to grouping all of their ships into one or a few large doom stacks. Naval doom stacks themselves aren’t an inherent problem, per se, but when the metagame surrounding them promotes a strategy of there not really being a risk in having a lot of transports and most of the battles just dissolve into a slug-throwing match between heavies and the occasional galley, there is an issue that needs to be addressed.

Secondly, it’s been a well-established axiom that not only AI has been ineffective at managing AI naval invasions, but the sheer number of troops you can transport halfway across the world is a little… unrealistic and out of the timeframe, and it fails to represent one of the main limits on European colonization during this period. Nevermind having to transport all those troops on specifically designated transports.

So, say Transports are axed; what then? Well, the next and most obvious step would be to not have a dedicated transport class, and rather have the three remaining ship classes all carry certain amount of troops. Keeping in mind the different unit sizes now, I’d like to propose the numbers below:

625 Transport Capacity for a Heavy, 375 for a Light, and 500 for a Galley.


This would offer numerous benefits:

1): It would be an effective bar on overseas empire-building without being hardcoded or inherent: shipping 20000 troops around the Cape of Good Hope won’t be an easy endeavor anymore, but also wouldn’t be impossible.

2): Maneuvering large armies across inland seas would still be viable. Between the cheapness of Galleys and their moderate transport capacity, large scale naval-invasions across the Mediterranean, Baltic and East Asia seas would still be possible as it happened historically, especially considering that Transports would no longer be taking up Forcelimit (and already they have the least utility of all ship classes, as they can’t even Hunt Pirates).

3): It would encourage more historical overseas expedition armies: likely smaller armies of professional units, mostly infantry, that would need to bolster their numbers by recruiting local mercenaries/tribes.

4): Naval battles would no longer be without risk beyond the loss of ships: if a ship is lost in battle, so are the amount troops it was ferrying. However, same principle applies to the opposite: no longer will a transport fleet be doomed if they run into a squadron of heavies.

I propose adding troop capacity to the existing ships to make AI issues easier to resolve and also to up historical accuracy:
Heavy Ship: 600
Medium Ship: 400
Light Ship: 250
Galley: 200

This set-up would imitate the set-up of naval combat in Imperator: Rome, which has been notable for being much more impactful than naval combat in EU4:
I find Naval Supremacy to be absolutely vital in I:R, more so than EU4. The threat of being able to drop 100k legionnaires in the enemies capital, pillage his heartlands and enslave his people while they take the long march around towards Rome is no small thing. Also a free win if you select a conquest wargoal on an island, as you can then force the peace whenever you want :)
G. Conquering unprotected land with large fleets
If you’ve ever been to Malta, Brest or much of the coast of Europe, you may notice old historical fortresses with their guns pointed out to sea (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fortifications_of_Malta). They existed because fleets could and did attack ports and coastal cities (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Camaret), allowing the disembarkation of enemy armies. A classic example of a fleet conquering a territory is the English fleet sailing into the harbor of New Amsterdam and forcing it to surrender. People better know the city today as New York City (https://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/new-amsterdam-surrendered-english). I propose that large fleets should be able to attack unguarded coastal provinces and seize them. This idea was inspired by member Maxirage: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ering-land-using-ships.1140596/#post-24991859. Here’s how the mechanic would work:

A) Fleets with at least 1500 crew may sail into an unfortified enemy port and siege down the province.
B) They can be stopped by posting any army unit in a coastal province.
C) Fleets can be stopped by fort zones of control or by coastal battery/naval battery.
D) Ships sieging a province will be forced to sea by any army unit.
a. In this event every ship in the fleet has 10% damage inflicted upon it by the army.​
b. This makes sieging down provinces more of a cat-and-mouse game for fleets.​
c. Not having a fleet, batteries or forts on the coast means you’ll need to devote army strength to keeping the enemy’s fleet at bay, giving it more of an impact on the war by lessening your ability to concentrate land forces.​
E) If a fort is recaptured and a fleet is sieging down a neighboring province, it will be forced to sea.
a. If the fleet has already captured the neighboring province, it will not be forced to sea.​
F) Enemy fleets in ports not protected by a battery or a fort’s zone of control can be attacked, although the maximum engagement width will only be 15.
G) Inland forts do not project a coastal zone of control against fleets, so placing your forts on the coast is critical!
H) In order to assault forts with fleets and attack enemy fleets in ports protected by a fort’s zone of control, you will need to take take Naval Ideas (see Idea Group Improvements).

The above abilities improve the utility of your fleets, especially overseas, and will force players to fortify their coastal provinces to prevent naval attack. This mirrors history as well, and should make wars like Ottomans vs Venice much more interesting. You will then have to make choices between strengthening your economy and better protecting yourself against naval attack in future wars. This ability will also dramatically change colonial wars fought in the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and mainly coastal provinces. Fleets however will still be far less efficient than armies in taking coastal land, as was the case historically.
H. Amphibious Landing Fire Support
One thing that fleets can’t do currently is play a role in land combat beyond blockading forts and transporting troops. Historically though ships could and often did provide fire support to troops doing amphibious landings. In fact, the earliest naval gunfire support recorded dates to the Siege of Calais in 1347! See this source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_gunfire_support. This might be better thought of as an artillery barrage, but later ships in this era would have far greater firepower and ranges than those of 1347. This should have an effect on your ability to land troops in enemy territory.

I propose that starting in the Age of Absolutism, fleets will be able to provide friendly armies making amphibious landings with fire support. This acts as a penalty eliminator for amphibious assaults, and would be based on a combination of the friendly army’s general maneuver skill and the allied admiral’s siege pips (or fire pips if the former isn’t populated). This ability is only unlocked in this era due to prior eras’ cannons not having the range to have a noticeable effect on land maneuvers.

Amphibious Landing Fire Support Details
1. Fleet must have 100% blockade strength.
2. Fire Support applies to friendly armies in coastal provinces.
3. When Fire Support conditions are met, the enemy army gets -1 to maneuver to reflect the effect the fleet is having on their ability to maneuver near the coast.
4. Amphibious Landing Fire Support Equation
a. Allied Attacking Army: [attacking general maneuver + attacking admiral siege] > [defending general maneuver]​
5. In the event that Admiral Siege pips are not re-populated by developers, the equation would switch in the admiral’s fire pips.


Likely Effects
1. The equation uses admiral stats because these scale with naval tradition, which tends to grow with time and will be highest in the mid to late game. This should make any boost to navy tradition more valuable.
2. There will be more naval battles for local naval supremacy to provide fire support, as this will help landing armies win battles when they are most vulnerable.
3. Likelihood of having fire support scales with army and navy tradition, meaning it will be important to emphasize a combined arms approach to coastal warfare.
4. As navy tradition is increased by the Maritime & Naval idea groups, fire support should make them more viable picks in the mid to late game.
I. Flagship Overhaul
A number of members have felt that flagships were a good addition but could use some better customization to add historical depth and strategy to their use. 4 changes would be made to Flagships. Some of these changes were inspired by member Van Kasten: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...ons-to-the-devs-and-some-suggestions.1130716/.

A) Flagship limit - Flagship count would be limited to 1 per 100 force limit and by the naval leader pool. This means each country would be able to build one flagship at game’s start. They would only be able to build a second once they reached 100 naval force limit. To build a third would require a 3 naval leader pool limit (Kingdoms and up) plus another 100 force limit. This would continue on as far as your force limit and naval leader pool could expand.

B) Flagship cost - To make Flagships more worthwhile, I would tie their cost to their ship type. They would cost twice as much in build cost & maintenance cost as the base ship.

So here’s how this would look at the game’s start in 1444:
Galley Flagship: 20 Gold, Maintenance Cost: 0.06
Light Ship Flagship: 40 Gold, Maintenance Cost: 0.04
Medium Ship Flagship: 60 Gold, Maintenance Cost: 0.14
Heavy Ship Flagship: 100 Gold, Maintenance Cost: 0.20

C) Flagship Bonuses - Flagship bonuses would be limited by ship type. You wouldn’t be able to add an aftercastle to a Galley for instance, nor trade power to anything other than a Light Ship-type Flagship.

I) Universal Upgrades
a. Improved Crows Nest: +5 Engagement Width (Tech 5)​
b. Standardized Signal Book: +1 Movement Speed for every ship in Fleet (Tech 20)​
II) Heavy/Medium Ship Upgrades
a. Command Aftercastle: +5% Morale to ships in Fleet (Tech 2)​
i. Tactical/Strategic Speed of Flagship -2.5%
b. Mortars: +1 Blockade Impact on Siege (Tech 7)​
III) Light Ship/Great Frigate Upgrades
a. Trade Route Map: +1 Trade Power for all ships in fleet (Tech 2)​
IV) Galley Upgrades
a. Commander of Marines: +1 Shock attack (Tech 11)​

V) Reworked Upgrades
a. Hull Sheathing upgrade changed to double Hull Durability upgrades from Ship Designer (thus +5% Durability upgrade improves to +10% Durability). Durability upgrades can improve flagship durability up to 40% by Tech 29, at a slight cost to tactical/strategic speed. For flagships, a +10% durability bonus is balanced by a 2.5% decrease in movement speed, while +40% durability is balanced by a 10% decrease in movement speed. For all other ships, the durability bonus is half that of a flagship.​
b. Mass Load Cannons – these upgrades are nixed in favor of increased size design changes made in Ship Designer (up to +20%). Firepower & crew increase in proportion to the hull size, so a 20% increase in hull size means a 20% increase in cannon firepower and crew size.​

VI) Country-specific Flagship upgrades
a. No changes at this time except for Mass Load Cannon upgrades.​

D) Admirals’ flagships - Although players would still be limited in # of Flagships, one minor reform would be to let players manually or automatically assign admirals to a particular ship (an Admiral’s flagship) in a fleet without a Fleet Flagship. If automatically assigned, the admiral would be stationed at the strongest ship in the fleet (determined by type, tech, experience and size). If multiple ships are tied, the admiral picks a ship among them at random. This ship would gain the following bonuses:

Morale: +10%
Combat Ability: +10%

These bonuses would also apply to any Fleet Flagship with an admiral aboard. If the Admiral’s Flagship is lost in battle, there would then be a limited percentage chance of losing the Admiral. In the event the Admiral survived, they would simply transfer to another ship, which would then get the bonuses. They would keep transferring ships (as happened in battles historically) until either (a) the battle was won or lost or (b) the admiral was lost.

Admiral’s Flagships would be limited only by the number of admirals you have at a time, and only one can be in a fleet at a time. They would have no effect on trade range and could not be upgraded with Flagship upgrades.

One major change to note is that not just flagships would be customizable. Thanks to a new EU Ship Designer, you would be able to create custom classes of any type of ship to better suit them to your playstyle and naval strategy. More on that in the Ship Designer section!
J. Addition of Medium Ships
Part of the way the game's naval combat is less engaging than it should be is its very simplistic list of 4 ship types. The game would have us believe that battle fleets consisted entirely of massive 3-decker, 120-gun ships of the line from the 1730s onwards. In fact, at the Battle of Trafalgar, no fewer than 20 of 27 British ships (74%) were 2-deckers, most fielding 74 guns. The Spanish & French fleet consisted of 33 ships, of which 29 (88%) were 2-deckers, with most being 74 guns as well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Trafalgar#The_fleets.

Why were fleets overwhelmingly composed of two-deckers of 74 guns? This was mainly had to do with the fact that they represented the best compromise between speed, seaworthiness, durability, firepower and cost (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventy-four_(ship)). Big 120-gun 1st rates were rare in comparison because they were extremely expensive, slower, less maneuverable and less seaworthy.

To rectify the issue, the game needs to have Medium Ships representing these 2-deckers. They would be better ships on a per ducat basis than Heavy Ships. They would however be less robust and more easily lost. Here's how this might look:


Early Carrack (Heavy ship would be renamed Early Heavy Carrack)
24 cannon
14 hull
6 tactical speed
8 strategic speed
2 Engagement Width
Cost: 30 Ducats

Carrack (Heavy ship would be renamed Heavy Carrack)
30 cannon
18 hull
6 tactical speed
8 strategic speed
2 Engagement Width
Cost: 30 Ducats

Galleon (Heavy ship would be renamed Heavy Galleon)
36 cannon
21 hull
6 tactical speed
8 strategic speed
2 Engagement Width
Cost: 30 Ducats


War Galleon (Heavy ship would be renamed Heavy War Galleon)
48 cannon
28 hull
6 tactical speed
8 strategic speed
2 Engagement Width
Cost: 30 Ducats


Fourth Rate (Heavy ship would be renamed Early 1st Rate)
60 cannon
35 hull
6 tactical speed
8 strategic speed
2 Engagement Width
Cost: 30 Ducats


Third Rate (Heavy ship equivalent would be renamed 1st Rate)
74 cannon
42 hull
6 tactical speed
8 strategic speed
2 Engagement Width
Cost: 30 Ducats


Realistically these ships ought to be less robust and pack more firepower, but I'm limited by the game's treatment of all cannons being created equal. To truly make Medium Ships realistic would require a much more in-depth naval combat overhaul. More on that shortly!
K. Weather & Seaworthiness
It’s no shock that the seas were heavily affected by weather. This at times had major effects on world history, from the “divine winds” (Kamikaze) that saved Japan from Mongol invasion twice (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamikaze_(typhoon) ), to the weather that was a major factor in the Spanish Armada’s losses (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Armada#Aftermath), the first recorded hurricane in European history that sank 25 of 26 ships in the first Spanish treasure fleet (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Columbus#Fourth_voyage), to the light winds at Trafalgar. To model this in-game, I propose that the high seas have the seven following weather states:

Calm
Light Winds
Normal
Strong winds
Storm
Gale
Cyclone


Each state has a different effect on your ships. In calm weather, galleys are deadly while sailing ships struggle. In strong winds, sailing ships perform well while galleys struggle. All of this plays into something I call “seaworthiness”. Later ships are more advanced and more seaworthy, meaning your late-game heavy ships are far less likely to sink in a Gale than your early game heavy ships. Seaworthiness also means not only that they’re less likely to sink, but also that they perform better in various weather conditions other than complete calm. This too mirrors history.


Calm
i. Sailings Ships: -50% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed
ii. Galleys: +20% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

Light Winds
i. Heavy Ships (Early Heavy Carrack/Heavy Galleon/Early First Rate/Large First Rate): -40%/-30%/-20%/-10% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

ii. Medium Ships (Early Carrack/Galleon/Fourth Rate/Large Third Rate): -20%/-15%/-10%/-5% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

iii. Light Ships (Barque/Early Frigate/Sixth Rate/Fifth Rate): -10%/-7.5%/-5.0%/-2.5% effect on Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

iv. Great Frigate: -2.5% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

v. Transports (Cog/Brig/Trabakul/Large East Indiaman): -40%/-30%/-20%/-10% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

vi. Galleys: +10% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

Normal
Effects
No effect on any ship types’ performance

Strong Winds
i. Sailings Ships: +10% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed

ii. Galleys: -40%/-30%/-20%/-10% Attack, Tactical/Strategic Speed (Galley/Galleass/Chebeck/Hemmema)

Storm
i. Heavy Ships (Early Heavy Carrack/Heavy Galleon/Early First Rate/Large First Rate): 2%/1%/0.5%/0% sinking chance, 2%/1%/0.5%/0% attrition, Heavy Cannons cannot fire (lessened fire phase attack)

ii. Medium Ships (Early Carrack/Galleon/Fourth Rate/Large Third Rate): 1%/0.5%/0.25%/0% sinking chance, 1%/0.5%/0.25%/0% attrition, Heavy Cannons cannot fire (lessened fire phase attack)

iii. Light Ships Frigate/Sixth Rate/Fifth Rate): 0.5%/0.25%/0.1%/0% sinking chance, 0.5%/0.25%/0.1%/0% attrition (Barque/Early

iv. Great Frigate: no effect

v. Transports (Cog/Brig/Trabakul/Large East Indiaman): 2%/1%/0.5%/0% sinking chance, 2%/1%/0.5%/0% attrition

vi. Galleys (Galley/ Galleass /Chebeck/Hemmema): 4%/3%/2%/1% sinking chance, 4%/3%/2%/1% attrition, -40%/-30%/-20%/-10% Tactical/Strategic Speed, Cannons cannot fire (no fire phase attack)


Gale
i. Heavy Ships (Early Heavy Carrack/Heavy Galleon/Early First Rate/Large First Rate): 8%/6%/4%/2% sinking chance, 8%/6%/4%/2% attrition, Combat not possible

ii. Medium Ships (Early Carrack/Galleon/Fourth Rate/Large Third Rate): 4%/3%/2%/1% sinking chance, 4%/3%/2%/1% attrition, Combat not possible

iii. Light Ships (Barque/Early Frigate/Sixth Rate/Fifth Rate): 2%/1.5%/1%/0.5% sinking chance, 2%/1.5%/1%/0.5% attrition, Combat not possible

iv. Great Frigate: 1% sinking chance, 1% attrition, Combat not possible

v. Transports (Cog/Brig/Trabakul/Large East Indiaman): 8%/6%/4%/2% sinking chance, 8%/6%/4%/2% attrition, Combat not possible

vi. Galleys (Galley/ Galleass /Chebeck/Hemmema): 16%/12%/8%/4% sinking chance, 16%/12%/8%/4% attrition, Combat not possible

Cyclone
i. Heavy Ships (Early Heavy Carrack/Heavy Galleon/Early First Rate/Large First Rate): 64%/48%/32%/16% sinking chance, 16%/12%/8%/4% attrition, Combat not possible

ii. Medium Ships (Early Carrack/Galleon/Fourth Rate/Large Third Rate): 48%/36%/24%/12% sinking chance, 12%/9%/6%/3% attrition, Combat not possible

iii. Light Ships (Barque/Early Frigate/8-Pounder Frigate/Fifth Rate): 32%/24%/16%/8% sinking chance, 8%/6%/4%/2% attrition, Combat not possible

iv. Great Frigate: 1% sinking chance, 1% attrition, Combat not possible

v. Transports (Cog/Brig/Trabakul/Large East Indiaman): 64%/48%/32%/16% sinking chance, 16%/12%/8%/4% Combat not possible

i. Galleys (Galley/Galleass/Chebeck/Hemmema): 96%/72%/48%/24% sinking chance, 24%/18%/12%/8% attrition, Combat not possible

Weather will act as the ultimate deterrence against doom stacks. Sending a 100-ship fleet to crush your rival’s colonial country in the Caribbean? Better not chance doing it between July and December, when your fleet might get sunk by a hurricane! Weather will also provide observant players a way to get an edge on their less observant opponents. Say you have an all-galley navy, and are fighting an opponent with an Atlantic coast. You would ordinarily be at a great disadvantage, as your galleys’ inferior seaworthiness means you will struggle. But lucky you, there’s a period of calm weather in the Atlantic where your opponent has his all-sailing ship fleet, and you strike while they are vulnerable.

With his fleet dealing half the damage and half as fast as it usually is, your smaller fleet of galleys is able to cripple his navy in one fell swoop. In contrast, perhaps you are later blockading his ports in December in the North Sea with galleys. You knew there was a risk, and unfortunately a gale strikes your fleet, sinking several ships and damaging others. This allows your opponent to sail forth and rout your fleet in the aftermath.

Imagine instead you have an all-Light Ship fleet and see your opponent’s fleet features more powerful Medium Ships. You purposely sail the fleet into a storm, where your opponent’s big guns are unable to fire. Your Light Ships are unencumbered and manage to eke out a victory thanks to being able to fire all of their guns in the storm. In this way, you are no different than when two British frigates took a French 3rd rate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Action_of_13_January_1797. By introducing dynamic weather to the high seas, tactics and strategy will be given needed depth, doomstacks will be curbed, and the game will be even more historically immersive than before.
L. Ship Crew Changes
One aspect about ships in EU4 is ahistorical: their never-changing crew sizes. By the time of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, the largest heavy ships there were manned by over 1,000 men, while even the British First Rates HMS Victory, HMS Britannia and HMS Royal Sovereign were manned by 821-854 men: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_at_the_Battle_of_Trafalgar. To resolve this issue, I propose that crew sizes will be tied to hull size and ship type. To properly size heavy ships’ crews relative to medium ships’, their crew count will be boosted to 300. Medium ships in contrast will get the old crew size of heavy ships (200) as their starting point. This increase in ship crew sizes over time will make Docks more valuable. Here’s what the starting ships’ crew requirements would look like:

Heavy (Early Heavy Carrack): 300
Medium (Early Carrack): 200
Light (Barque): 75
Galley: 100
Transport (Cog): 50


Please see the section on ship names to understand why I’ve changed some of them.

Heavy Ships (Sailors)
i. Early Heavy Carrack (300)
ii. Heavy Carrack (375)
iii. Heavy Galleon (450)
iv. Heavy War Galleon (600)
v. Early First Rate (750)
vi. First Rate (900)
vii. Large First Rate (990)

An example of a late-game Large First Rate ship is the Principe de Asturias, which was crewed by 1113 crewmembers at the Battle of Trafalgar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_at_the_Battle_of_Trafalgar). The British First Rates, which were smaller, had fewer than 830 crewmembers in contrast. As HMS Victory was built in the 1760s and is smaller, it would make sense for it to have fewer crewmembers.


Medium Ships (Sailors)
i. Early Carrack (200)
ii. Carrack (250)
iii. Galleon (300)
iv. War Galleon (400)
v. Fourth Rate (500)
vi. Third Rate (600)
vii. Large Third Rate (660)

An example of a late-game Large Third Rate ship would be the French battleship Héros, which was crewed by 690 crewmembers at the Battle of Trafalgar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_at_the_Battle_of_Trafalgar). The British Third Rates, including the large variants like HMS Colossus, had 625 or fewer crewmembers in contrast.


Light Ships (Sailors)
i. Barque (75)
ii. Caravel (94)
iii. Early Frigate (113)
iv. Frigate (150)
v. Sixth Rate (188)
vi. Large Sixth Rate (225)
vii. Fifth Rate (248)
viii. Great Frigate (450)

Great Frigates are a unique, Tech 29 Light Ship variant that is meant to represent the Great Frigates fielded by the US, Royal and French Navies from the 1790s onwards. They were powerfully armed and more durable than normal frigates, and occupied a space between ships of the line and regular frigates. The normal late-game Light Ship is the Fifth Rate.

An example of a late-game Fifth Rate ship would be the British frigate HMS Euryalus, which was crewed by 262 crewmembers at the Battle of Trafalgar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_battle_at_the_Battle_of_Trafalgar). Great Frigates like the HMS Leander (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Leander_(1813)) and USS Constitution (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution) both were crewed by 450 crewmembers.


Galleys (Sailors)
i. Galley (100)
ii. War Galley (125)
iii. Galleass (150)
iv. Galiot (200)
v. Chebeck (250)
vi. Archipelago Frigate (300)
vii. Hemmema (330)

Galleys actually might be under-manned relative to what they were historically. At the Battle of Lepanto, the Holy League’s 212 ships were manned by 68,500 men, meaning an average of 323 men sailed the typical galley warship on their side. The Ottomans’ 278 ships were manned by ~81,490 men, averaging 293 men per galley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Lepanto). I am constrained however by late-game galleys, which were closer to small, heavily-gunned frigates than the main warships of the day seen at Lepanto.


Transports (Sailors)
i. Cog (50)
ii. Flute (63)
iii. Brig (75)
iv. Merchantman (100)
v. Trabakul (125)
vi. East Indiaman (150)
vii. Large East Indiaman (165)

Transports unlike Galleys might be a bit over-manned, but are well within reason. The massive 1265 burthen ton Exeter (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exeter_(1792_EIC_ship)) is a Large East Indiaman that was crewed by as many as 135 crewmembers on her 5 voyages.
M. Changes to Ship Costs, Maintenance & Build Times
The reason why I’m proposing we change these costs is that historically, ships of all types got more expensive to build, maintain and took longer to build due to being ever larger and more powerful. This never happens in the game. An easy solution is to simply scale up build costs, maintenance and time as ships are upgraded. This will make ships more valuable over time on a per-ship basis, which will make losing them harder. It will also make shipyards more valuable.


Details
  • Ship Maintenance Changes
One major change I propose making is to change the equation for ship maintenance cost, as this will be tying in with other adjustments. It will be similar to army maintenance cost:

Ship maintenance cost per month = trunc(round((0.02/12) * (% hull) * (base ship cost) * (100%+ship maintenance cost modifiers)),3),2)

Build costs at game’s beginning would change only for Heavy Ships to reflect their role more as fleet flagships than main battleships, which was the role of 2-decker Medium Ships instead. Here’s what early game build and maintenance costs would look like:

(Build Cost/Maintenance Cost per month)
i. (Heavy) Early Heavy Carrack: (60/0.1)
ii. (Medium) Early Carrack: (40/0.06)
iii. (Light) Barque: (20/0.03)
iv. (Galley) Galley: (10/0.01)
v. (Transport) Cog: (12/0.02)

Light Ships will gain 50% more trade power (3 vs 2) to compensate for their maintenance costs increasing by 50%.


Here’s what the respective Ship upgrade paths would look like in Build Cost, Maintenance & Build Time:
Heavy Ships (Build/Maintenance/Build Times)
i. Early Heavy Carrack (60/0.1/730)
ii. Heavy Carrack (66/0.11/766.5)
iii. Heavy Galleon (72/0.12/803)
iv. Heavy War Galleon (78/0.13/839.5)
v. Early First Rate (84/0.14/876)
vi. First Rate (90/0.15/912.5)
vii. Large First Rate (96/0.16/949)


Medium Ships (Build/Maintenance/ Build Times)
i. Early Carrack (40/0.06/511)
ii. Carrack (44/0.07/536)
iii. Galleon (48/0.08/562)
iv. War Galleon (52/0.08/587)
v. Fourth Rate (56/0.09/613)
vi. Third Rate (60/0.1/638)
vii. Large Third Rate (64/0.1/664)


Light Ships (Build/Maintenance/ Build Times)
i. Barque (20/0.03/365)
ii. Caravel (22/0.03/383)
iii. Early Frigate (24/0.04/401)
iv. Frigate (26/0.04/419)
v. Sixth Rate (28/0.04/438)
vi. Large Sixth Rate (30/0.05/456)
vii. Fifth Rate (32/0.05/474)
----- Below ship is not a standard Light Ship and cannot be upgraded to from a Fifth Rate
viii. Great Frigate (48/0.08/569)


Galleys (Build/Maintenance/ Build Times)
i. Galley (10/0.01/365)
ii. War Galley (11/0.01/383)
iii. Galleass (12/0.02/401)
iv. Galiot (13/0.02/419)
v. Chebeck (14/0.02/438)
vi. Archipelago Frigate (15/0.02/456)
vii. Hemmema (16/0.02/474)


Transports (Build/Maintenance/ Build Times)
i. Cog (12/0.01/365)
ii. Flute (13.2/0.01/383)
iii. Brig (14.4/0.01/401)
iv. Merchantman (15.6/0.01/419)
v. Trabakul (16.8/0.01/438)
vi. East Indiaman (18/0.01/456)
vii. Large East Indiaman (19.2/0.01/474)
N. Naval Combat Overhaul – the Master & Commander System
My goal for overhauling is simple. It’s to make you feel a bit more like you’re simulating this:

The current naval combat system, about which only a modest number of details are known, appears to be simplistic, with little to differentiate the Fire and Shock phases other than different modifiers:

”EU4 Wiki: Current Naval Combat System” said:
Phases

Combat is divided into a series of 3-day phases. Phases alternate between Fire and Shock, with the Fire phase happening first.

Target selection
In combat each ship will try to find a target and make an attack. Targets are selected at random.

Die roll
At the beginning of each phase, each side rolls a die. The result is used to determine the morale damage and hull damage inflicted by that side during each of the three days of that phase.

Hull damage
The amount of cannons of the attacking vessel affects the hull damage dealt and the hullsize of the defender decides how long it can stand the cannon fire. The Artillery Fire Modifier gives a bonus or penalty to damage dealt depending on if attacker or defender has a technological advantage.

Attacking unit modifier: The attack modifier from the attacking unit's technology, i.e. "Artillery Fire".
Attacking unit Combat Ability: Any Combat Ability bonuses the attacking unit has.

Morale damage
Morale is damaged both over time during a battle and also when a friendly ship is sunk. Several ideas decrease the amount of morale lost when a ship is sunk.

One goal that I have is to strongly differentiate the Fire and Shock phases, with the latter being more powerful in the early and mid-game and the latter dominating the late game. Damage during the shock phase should be based on crew, not cannons, and would no longer be affected by Hull Durability, which I’ve split from Hull Size. I’ve already overhauled naval morale to prevent extreme snowballing, where the loss of a single ship puts even the ships not in combat to flight. One other change I propose is that ships line up in a line of battle, as they did at Lepanto and Trafalgar, and attack ships not at random but those closest to them. Another change to the naval combat system is that it should make galleys obsolete and see them replaced by Light and Medium Ships over time. We’ll go more into the history behind that in a moment.


A) The Galley Problem
One of the biggest problems with EU4’s naval combat is one people don’t talk about much: galleys. The game does a great job of representing how prominent galleys were in naval warfare up until the late 1500s. The problem is that by the time the Napoleonic Wars come around, galleys are just as potent, relatively-speaking, as they were in-game back in 1550. In fact, the last recorded major Mediterranean battle featuring galleys was at Matapan in 1717 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Matapan).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galley
”Wikipedia Article on Galleys” said:
Older ranged weapons, like bows or even crossbows, required considerable skill to handle, sometimes a lifetime of practice, while gunpowder weapons required considerably less training to use successfully. According to a highly influential study by military historian John F. Guilmartin, this transition in warfare, along with the introduction of much cheaper cast iron guns in the 1580s, proved the "death knell" for the war galley as a significant military vessel. …Manpower could thus be exchanged for capital investments, something which benefited sailing vessels that were already far more economical in their use of manpower. It also served to increase their strategic range and to out-compete galleys as fighting ships.
….
In 1616, a small Spanish squadron of five galleons and a patache was used to cruise the eastern Mediterranean and defeated a fleet of 55 galleys at the Battle of Cape Celidonia. ….Even the Venetians, Ottomans and other Mediterranean powers began to build Atlantic style warships for use in the Mediterranean in the latter part of the century. Christian and Muslim corsairs had been using galleys in sea roving and in support of the major powers in times of war, but largely replaced them with xebecs, various sail/oar hybrids, and a few remaining light galleys in the early 17th century.

One of my goals for a naval combat overhaul is to model this slow relative loss of warfighting potency in-game for all types of galleys, including their sail/oar hybrid successors. To do this, an easy way is to model the difficulty galleys had in armoring themselves against cannon fire. As they had rowing ports and are quite low, it is difficult for them to improve their hull durability. Thus galleys gain hull durability at half the rate of other ships, making them vastly easier to blow out of the water by game’s end. To replace galleys, Light Ships will slowly gain inland sea combat bonuses as they’re upgraded to reflect the fact that sailing frigates and corvettes eventually replaced galleys.


Light Ships
Barque: +0%
Caravel: +10%
Early Frigate: +10%
Frigate: +20%
Sixth Rate: +20%
Large Sixth Rate: +30%
Fifth Rate: +30%

If you shrink a Light Ship design by 20%, they gain 40% more combat bonus in these areas, for a whopping +70% bonus by game end. This combination of Galleys not being as durable and losing their inland sea edge to Light Ships should help convince most players to switch over by the late game.
i. The Cannon Problem
The other big problem with naval combat in EU4 is that the game would have us believe that all naval cannons are created equal. However this leads to some strange, ahistorical scenarios. Supposing you never upgraded a Carrack built in 1492, its cannons would still be as effective, on a per-cannon basis, as those of a 3-decker built in 1800. Ship cannons historically got much heavier and more potent over this time. Look at the the Golden Hind of 1577 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Hind), which likely had 5-pounders as its largest armament (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Hinde_(1973)). In contrast, HMS Euryalus of 1803 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Euryalus_(1803) ) sported more 18-pounder cannons than the Golden Hind had guns in total. The two ships performed similar roles, but naval firepower had dramatically increased since 1577. We need the game’s combat system to reflect this very real change in cannon shot weight over time.
ii. New Naval Combat: The Master & Commander System
The best way to model the decline of galleys and also make cannons more historical is something that I call the Master & Commander Naval Combat System. This system will overhaul both the fire and shock phases, with fire damage being based on broadside shot weight and artillery fire while shock damage being based on combat crew size. Hull percent will be used as a multiplier for fire damage and crew size for shock damage, with ships below 100% health doing less damage. Durability will be used as a denominator for damage done during the fire phase, with higher durability ships suffering less damage. During the shock phase however ship durability is not a factor, as it’s meant to imitate boarding actions.

Durability has been split away from Hull, as the Ship Designer needs a way for you to both model building larger ship variants as well as better-armored variants. This also reflects the fact that some historically huge ships (Ming Treasure ships were reported to be the size of WWII aircraft carriers(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_treasure_ship)) were likely not very well-armored for combat. Tactical speed factors in by giving a slight advantage in damage done and suffered to faster and more maneuverable ships, as they can position themselves for better shots. For every +1 advantage in tactical speed versus an opposing ship, a warship gains +1% attack and suffers -1% damage suffered regardless of phase. A naval leader’s maneuver skill has unchanged effects. To make naval powerhouses like Great Britain less over-powered, maximum dice roll values have dropped from 12 to 10, with each dice roll advantage giving a +10% combat damage advantage.
i. Fire Phase
The new fire phase is an attempt to make naval combat more understandable, historical and fun. It relies upon modeling broadside-based combat. The term broadside is a measurement of a vessel's maximum simultaneous firepower which can be delivered upon a single target, because this concentration is usually obtained by firing a broadside. This is calculated by multiplying the shot weight of the ship's guns times the number of guns of the varying types that can be brought to bear. You can read the historical background below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_artillery
” Wikipedia” said:
The 16th century was an era of transition in naval warfare. Since ancient times, war at sea had been fought much like that on land: with melee weapons and bows and arrows, but on floating wooden platforms rather than battlefields. Though the introduction of guns was a significant change, it only slowly changed the dynamics of ship-to-ship combat.[4] As guns became heavier and able to take more powerful gunpowder charges, they needed to be placed lower in the ship, closer to the water line.
...
Although some 16th-century galleys mounted broadside cannon, they did so at the expense of rowing positions which sacrificed speed and mobility. Most early cannon were still placed in the forecastle and aftercastle of a ship where they might be conveniently pointed in any direction.[5] Early naval artillery was an antipersonnel weapon to deter boarders, because cannon powerful enough to damage ships were heavy enough to destabilize any ship mounting them in an elevated castle.[6]
...
Throughout the century, naval artillery was the single greatest advantage the Portuguese held over their rivals in the Indian Ocean, and the Portuguese crown spared no expense in procuring and producing the best naval guns European technology permitted.[7][8] Being a crown industry, cost considerations did not curb the pursuit of the best quality, best innovations and best training.[9] The crown paid wage premiums and bonuses to lure the best European artisans and gunners to advance the industry in Portugal. Every cutting-edge innovation introduced elsewhere was immediately appropriated into Portuguese naval artillery – that includes bronze cannon (Flemish/German), breech-loading swivel-guns, truck carriages (possibly English), and the idea (originally French, c. 1501[10]) of cutting square gunports (portinhola in Portuguese – also already created and tested in the Portuguese ships since 1490) in the hull to allow heavy cannon to be mounted below deck.[11]
...
In this respect, the Portuguese spearheaded the evolution of modern naval warfare, moving away from the medieval warship, a carrier of armed men, aiming for the grapple, towards the modern idea of a floating artillery piece dedicated to resolving battles by gunnery alone.
...
The anti-ship broadside
...
Gun ports cut in the hull of ships were introduced as early as 1501 in France, and eventually as early as before 1496 in some Mediterranean navies, and in 1490 in Portugal,[12][13] about a decade before the famous Tudor era ship, the Mary Rose, was built.[4] This made broadsides,[14] coordinated volleys from all the guns on one side of a ship, possible for the first time in history, at least in theory.

By the 1650s, the line of battle had developed as a tactic that could take advantage of the broadside armament. This method became the heart of naval warfare during the Age of Sail, with navies adapting their strategies and tactics in order to get the most broadside-on fire.[16] Cannon were mounted on multiple decks to maximise broadside effectiveness. Numbers and calibre differed somewhat with preferred tactics. France and Spain attempted to immobilize ships by destroying rigging with long-range, accurate fire from their swifter and more maneuverable ships, while England and the Dutch Republic favoured rapid fire at close range to shatter a ship's hull and disable its crew.

The first change to fire phase combat is your ships will no longer engage enemy ships at random but instead form up into two lines of battle. They will then try to engage any ship in front of them. If there’s more than one, they’ll choose at random. In the event that there is no enemy ship in front of them, they will attempt to engage the closest enemy ship. Every ship will have a combat width set by their artillery fire modifier. Before Tech 7 this modifier is set to 0.5, which means that during fire phase any ship can attack 1 engagement width away from them. Late game this jumps to 8.4, meaning that your ships will be able to attack enemy ships up to 9 engagement width away. If two ships are equally far away, the ship engages one at random. Combined with steadily increasing engagement width over time, this means that superior numbers are very important for the fire phase in the late game.


Dice Roll Mechanics
i. Fire_Dice_Roll_Difference = if ((Player_Dice_Roll + Admiral_Fire) - (Enemy_Dice_Roll + Enemy_Admiral_Fire)) < 0 then 0 else ((Player_Dice_Roll + Admiral_Fire) - (Enemy_Dice_Roll + Enemy_Admiral_Fire)) end as Dice_Roll_Difference

Dice Roll Difference maxes out at 10, and is coded such that damage is never decreased, which is done to prevent navies with high naval tradition easily winning any battle.

Tactical Speed Mechanics
ii. Tactical_Speed_Diff = Tactical_Speed_Ship-Tactical_Speed_Enemy_Ship

When ships engage each other, their tactical speed difference is calculated, which will later affect the amount of damage they do to each other. All else equal, ships with greater tactical speed will inflict slightly more damage and suffer slightly less damage.


Broadside Mechanics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broadside

In-game, each of your ships will use half their guns when they fire their broadside. Firing a broadside of 100 pounds of shot will equal to 1 hull size damage to an enemy ship with a hull durability of 1. As ships get upgraded, their broadsides will grow exponentially as they gain more and heavier guns. To compensate, ships will also get more durable. To model shot weight, I will be using mostly historical cannons from the Age of Sail and before. These include 36-pounders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36-pounder_long_gun), 24-pounders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-pounder_long_gun ), 18-pounders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/18-pounder_long_gun), 16-pounders (included for balancing reasons), 12-pounders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/12-pounder_long_gun), 9-pounders, 8-pounders (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8-pounder_long_gun), 6-pounders, and even 4-pounders.


Broadsides of Different Ship Types
iii. Heavy Ship Broadside = ((((Heavy Cannons x Heavy Cannon Shot Weight) + (Medium Cannons x Medium Cannon Shot Weight) + (Light Cannons x Light Cannon Shot Weight) + (Deck Cannons x Deck Cannon Shot Weight))/100) * 0.5

iv. Medium Ship Broadside = ((((Heavy Cannons x Heavy Cannon Shot Weight) + (Medium Cannons x Medium Cannon Shot Weight) + (Deck Cannons x Deck Cannon Shot Weight))/100) * 0.5

v. Light Ship/Great Frigate Broadside = (((Cannons x Cannon Shot Weight) + (Deck Cannons x Deck Cannon Shot Weight))/100) * 0.5

vi. Galley/Transport Broadside= ((Cannons x Shot Weight)/100) * 0.5

To calculate the broadside of a ship, you multiply the number of cannons by their shot weight, divide by 100 and then multiply by 0.5 (representing one side of warship) to get the raw damage to a ship with a Hull Durability of 1. The larger a ship’s broadside, the more damage it will do. Your Heavy Ships have 3 gun decks plus cannons on their weather deck, which is why they have 4 sets of cannons of differing weights. Medium Ships are two-decker ships and only have 2 gun decks and deck cannons, hence their 3 sets of cannons. Light Ships and Great Frigates carry their 2 sets of guns on one gun deck and their weather deck. Galleys and Transports only carry their guns in a single deck, thus they only have 1 set of cannons.

Heavy Ships have the largest broadsides, followed by Medium Ships, Galleys, Light Ships and finally Transports. A typical Early Heavy Carrack (Heavy Ship) in 1444 will have 12 x 12-Pounder guns, 12 x 6-Pounder guns, 10 x 4-Pounder guns, and 6 x 3-Pounder guns, giving it a broadside of 1.37 (or 137 pounds of shot). By late game this jumps dramatically, with a Large First Rate built in 1790 having 34 x 36-Pounder guns, 34 x 24-Pounder guns, 32 x 18-Pounder guns, and 20 x 12-Pounder guns, giving it a broadside of 14.28 (or 1428 pounds). This nearly matches the firepower of the largest first rates of the Napoleonic Wars, the Ocean-class: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Océan-class_ship_of_the_line.
Fire Phase Equation
i. Fire_Damage = (Hull_Percent*(1-(Enemy_Maneuver*0.01)))*((0.9*Broadside*Artillery_Fire)*(1+(Ship_Firepower_Modifier*0.1))*(1(+Combat_Ability*0.1))*(1+((Dice_Roll_Difference)*0.1)*(1+((Tactical_Speed_Diff)*0.01))))/Ship_Durability)

What does the above equation mean? First it means that as a ship’s hull percent drops, your fire phase damage output will drop in line with it. For each point of an enemy admiral’s maneuver skill, a ship will take 1% less damage, as they do now. The raw damage is done by the broadside, which is multiplied by your Artillery Fire modifier and 0.9. This last number represents the percent of hits from shots fired, as not all did. Thus if a Heavy Ship has a Broadside of 1.37 in 1444, it is multiplied by 0.9 and by Artillery Fire (I’ve upped it to 0.5 pre Military Tech 7). Artillery Fire models the increasing effectiveness of cannons in terms of velocity, range, reload speed, cannonballs themselves (switching from stone to metal to explosive shells) and accuracy.

This means a Heavy Ship in 1444 does a raw damage of 0.6165 Hull Damage to another ship. Next it is multiplied by a ship firepower modifier (which represents ship design modifications). Following that any combat ability bonus is applied. If you have a positive dice roll difference, you will gain 10% more damage done per dice roll advantage (ex. 2=+20%), but cannot lose damage output. This helps to prevent certain countries (Great Britain or Spain) from being overpowered at sea. Next, the difference in tactical speed means you can do more or less damage depending on if the enemy ship is faster or slower. You do +1% damage per 1 unit of tactical speed advantage, and -1% damage per unit of disadvantage. Finally, all of the raw damage is divided by the enemy ship’s Durability (armor).

During the fire phase, you want your ships to have as heavy a broadside as possible, an artillery fire advantage, to have thick wooden sides (high durability), and to be fast. As it is very hard to do all of this at once, designing ships will be an art of compromise. And of course you want the admiral leading your fleet to have many maneuver pips and fire pips. The first increases engagement width the same as today, ups movement speed, and trims damage like today. The second increases damage inflicted by 10% for each 1 dice roll advantage. At game’s start the Fire Phase will be pitiful compared to the Shock Phase, but by game’s end the vast majority of damage you will inflict will be in the Fire Phase.

Critical Hits
Why should there be critical hits? Well for one, de-masting an enemy warship or blasting his rudder to shreds would often force enemy ships to surrender. A good example of this is the battle between the USS Constitution and HMS Guerriere: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution_vs_HMS_Guerriere.

”USS Constitution vs HMS Guerriere” said:
As Constitution prepared to renew the action, Guerriere fired a shot in the opposite direction to Constitution.[14] Sensing that this was an attempt to signal surrender, Hull ordered a boat to take a Lieutenant over to the British ship. When the Lieutenant boarded Guerriere and asked if Guerriere was prepared to surrender, Captain Dacres responded "Well, Sir, I don't know. Our mizzen mast is gone, our fore and main masts are gone - I think on the whole you might say we have struck our flag."[2]

The most critical hit of all to an enemy warship was to their gunpowder magazine, which could blow ships apart. A good example of this was during the Battle of the Nile, when the 118-gun Orient, flagship of the French fleet, exploded after fire reached her gunpowder magazine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Orient_(1791).

  • During the fire phase, your ships will have a chance to do critical hits to the enemy ship they are attacking. There are three types of critical hits:
  • Mast
i. -50% Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed
ii. Attack -25%
iii. Morale -25%

  • Rudder
i. -50% Tactical Speed
ii. -25% Strategic Speed
iii. Attack -25%
iv. Morale -25%

  • Magazine
i. Ship is destroyed

If the enemy ship is below 50% in health, your ship has a chance to make a critical hit against their masts or rudder.


Critical Hit Equation

  • Critical hit chance = (Hull_Percent_Ship*Ship_Broadside*Artillery_Fire)/(Enemy_Hull_Percent*Enemy_Hull_Size*Enemy_Durability)

Say you’ve got a Third Rate that is taking on a First Rate, and the First Rate has fallen below 50% Hull strength. What’s the chance your ship will be able to get in a critical hit against the enemy?

Third Rate vs First Rate

Attack/Defense
((1.0*8.73*6.4) / (0.49*60*7.5))/10

(55.872/220.5) / 10

0.025

The equation means that during the fire phase, your full-strength Third Rate stands a 2.5% chance to do a critical hit to the enemy First Rate. In all likelihood, it will not land a critical hit in that phase, but will both dish out and receive damage. For the firing ship, I’ve added in hull percent, broadside and the artillery fire modifier to simulate the greater chance that superior firepower gives you to get a critical hit. In contrast, the hull percent, hull size and durability of the enemy ship curb this chance if they are high. This helps to prevent scenarios where frigates easily land critical hits on much larger ships. Critical hits are not possible during the shock phase. If the enemy ship falls below 20% Hull Percent, it is possible to get a critical hit on the enemy’s magazine. If that happened, the enemy ship would be instantly destroyed.
ii. Shock Phase
The first change to naval combat is all of your ships will have will no longer engage enemy ships at random but instead form up into two lines of battle. During the shock phase, your ships will try to engage the closest enemy ship in their line. In the event that there is no enemy ship in front of them, they will attempt to engage the closest enemy ship. Every ship will have a combat width of 1 during the Shock Phase. This means that no matter how much you outnumber someone else, only a limited number of your ships will be able to engage during the Shock Phase. This is because the phase represents hand-to-hand boarding combat.

Dice Roll Mechanics
i. Shock_Dice_Roll_Difference = if ((Player_Dice_Roll+Admiral_Shock)-(Enemy_Dice_Roll+Enemy_Admiral_Fire)) < 0 then 0 else ((Player_Dice_Roll+Admiral_Fire)-(Enemy_Dice_Roll+Enemy_Admiral_Fire)) end as Dice_Roll_Difference

Dice Roll maxes out at 10, and is coded such that damage is never decreased, which is done to prevent navies with high naval tradition easily winning any battle.


Tactical Speed Mechanics
ii. Tactical_Speed_Diff = Tactical_Speed_Ship-Tactical_Speed_Enemy_Ship

When ships engage each other, their tactical speed difference is calculated, which will later affect the amount of damage they do to each other. All else equal, ships with greater tactical speed will inflict slightly more and suffer slightly less damage when they fight.


Shock Phase Equation
iii. Shock_Damage = (1-(Enemy_Maneuver*0.01))* (((Crew*Crew_Combat_Perc*0.003*Infantry_Shock) + (Marines*0.0036*Infantry_Shock))*(1+(Dice_Roll_Diff*0.1))*(1+(Ship_Shock_Modifier*0.1))* (1+(Combat_Ability*0.1)*(1+(Tactical_Speed_Diff*0.01))))

iv. Final_Shock_Damage = Hull_Size*(Shock_Damage/(Current_Crew_Size/10))

What does the above equation mean? For each point of your admiral’s maneuver skill, a ship will take 1% less damage, as they do now. The raw damage is done by the combat crew and marines, which is multiplied by your Infantry Shock modifier. The percent of crew who fight is determined by ship type, with galleys having lower percentages than all sailing ships (save Transports) due to galley rowers. Late game ships have higher percentages than early game ships, reflecting improvements in ship technology. As you lose crew, your ship will inflict less damage. Marines are elite shipboard infantry who can be added to your ships via the Ship Designer after Tech 11, as the Spanish introduced the first permanent naval marine corps in 1537 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Marine_Infantry). Marines cost manpower, unlike sailors, and each Marine contingent added is the equivalent to 10% of all sailors on board.

100% of Marines will fight in combat, and they deal out 20% more damage per person than the regular crew. This means that if 80% of your ship’s crew fights, adding marines will up the ship’s shock damage by 15%! They have a further benefit to morale, as each marine contingent on board a ship increases its maximum morale 5%. The damage your crews and Marines inflict is then modified by the dice roll difference. If you have a 1 dice roll difference, your ship will do 10% more damage. After this any Ship Shock modifier is added. If you have a Heavy Ship, it will gain +10% Shock damage (due to its superior height) from this modifier while fighting against Light Ships, Galleys and Transports. It gains +5% against Medium Ships. Medium Ships in turn gain +5% against Light Ships, Galleys and Transports. Next, if you have any combat ability modifier for your ship, it will be multiplied against the shock damage. Finally, the difference in tactical speed means you can do more or less damage depending on if the enemy ship is faster or slower. You do +1% damage per 1 unit of tactical speed advantage and suffer 1% less damage as well. The reverse is also true, with your ship doing -1% damage for each unit of tactical speed disadvantage and suffering +1% damage as well.

Finally, shock damage dealt is divided by the 1/10th of the enemy ship’s crew. This denominator means that larger crews will be able to deal more damage and take less, percentage-wise. If a new ship enters combat against a ship with a depleted crew, they will inflict disproportionate casualties upon them in the shock phase, unlike the fire phase. It also means that transports will no longer last longer in shock phase combat than dedicated warships. Even Light Ships, thanks to their 50% larger crew size, will have a big combat edge on Transports in this phase. Finally the percentage damage suffered by the crew is multiplied against the hull size to translate the damage in terms of hull damage, as all damage is measured now.
i. New Combat System Effects
The new combat system is meant to mimic the change in naval combat seen between 1444 and 1821. In 1444, most naval combat was more like a land battle at sea, with artillery only there to deter boarding. But over time, artillery (read fire phase) became more important, and by the last all-sailing ship battle in 1827, the Battle of Navarino, cannons were very effective at sinking wooden ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Navarino). By the time of the Crimean War in the 1850s, exploding shells would doom all future wooden warship construction. This is reflected in naval battles becoming shorter, bloodier and more decisive as the game goes on.

In 1444, the combined hull damage a full-strength heavy ship does in both phases is equal to 3.2%, 4.9%, 11.6%, 14.1% and 17.8% of another contemporary Heavy, Medium, Light, Galley or Transport’s hull. By 1790, these values jump to 24.8%, 37.9%, 94.4%, 160.9% and 126.2% of contemporary Heavy, Medium, Light, Galley or Transport’s hull. This means you’d be mad to bring galleys into any fight with Heavy or Medium Ships by late game, which reflects historical reality. Over time, you will notice that the ratio a Heavy Ship will inflict about 1.52-1.53x as much damage on a Medium Ship vs another Heavy Ship, so you still have a modest incentive to build Heavy Ships vs Medium Ships. Light Ships however suffer 82.27% as much damage as galleys do when fighting a Heavy Ship in 1444, but by 1790 suffer only 58.67% as much damage. Thus you should almost always replace your Galleys with Light Ships by game’s end, just as happened historically. So how does that break down?

In 1444, a Heavy Ship will deal 0.25, 0.26, 0.47 and 0.62 hull damage to another contemporary Heavy Ship, a Medium Ship, a Light Ship and Galley/Transport during the fire phase. This is due to higher levels of Hull Durability for the first three types, with Heavy Ships having the most durable hulls. These damage levels represents 1.2%, 1.9%, 5.9%, 7.7%, and 5.1% of a Heavy, Medium, Light, Galley and Transport’s hull (or HP). By 1790 however, a modern Heavy Ship (Large First Rate) will deal 9.97, 10.49, 19.17, 37.39 and 24.93 hull damage to another Heavy Ship, a Medium Ship, a Light Ship and Galleys/Transports respectively. These damage levels represents 15.1%, 22.7%, 66.1%, 128.9%, and 62.3% of a Heavy, Medium, Light, Galley and Transport’s hull. The combination of exponentially heavier cannons multiplied by increasing Artillery Fire values makes late game naval battles bloody and decisive in the fire phase. On a per engagement width basis, Medium Ships are the most potent ships in the fire phase.

In 1444, a Heavy Ship will deal 0.39, 0.42, 0.45, 0.51 or 1.52 hull damage to another contemporary Heavy Ship, Medium Ship, Galley, Light Ship or Transport during the shock phase. This is due to crew sizes and Heavy Ships’ +10% Shock damage bonus versus shorter ships. They only have a +5% bonus against Medium Ships due to having a lessened height advantage. These damage levels represent 1.9%, 3.0%, 5.6%, 6.4%, and 12.7% of a Heavy, Medium, Galley, Light, and Transport’s hull (or HP). By 1790 however, a Heavy Ship (Large First Rate) will deal 6.39, 7.04, 8.21, 9.26, and 25.54 hull damage to a contemporary Heavy Ship, Medium Ship, Galley, Light Ship or Transport respectively. These damage levels represent 9.7%, 15.2%, 28.3%, 31.9% and 63.9% of a Heavy, Medium, Galley, Light or Transport’s hull (or HP) for that tech level (29).

In 1444, your Heavy Ship will inflict 1.41x as much damage in the shock phase as the fire phase. This hits a peak of 1.9x at Tech 9 (Diplomatic & Military) due to Infantry Shock outpacing Artillery Fire. Shock damage inflicted will be greater than fire damage inflicted up until Tech 21 (Diplomatic & Military), after which fire damage will rapidly dominate. By Tech 29 (1790), a Large First Rate will only do 0.64x as much shock damage as it does fire damage. Keep in mind though this does not factor in adding marines, who could substantially improve the ship’s shock phase damage dealt.
iii. Relative Strength of Ships
There are two ways we evaluate relative strength. The first is comparing standard ships of a ship type against one another. This can be seen in the below charts:

Relative Strength Charts
Tech_2-8_Ships_Relative_Strength.JPG

Tech_9-12_Ships_Relative_Strength.JPG

Tech_13-16_Ships_Relative_Strength.JPG

Tech_17-20_Ships_Relative_Strength.JPG

Tech_21-23_Ships_Relative_Strength.JPG

Tech_24-27_Ships_Relative_Strength.JPG

Tech_28-32_Ships_Relative_Strength.JPG



As you can see, Treasure Ships are the kings of the sea (if built) in the early game, but over time, the European ships will steadily get more potent. One country notable for its strong historical ships versus European powers is Korea, which very much reflects history.

The other way we can do a relative strength comparison is to show why having a ship tech advantage in the fire phase is absolutely deadly. Supposing your heavy ships went up against enemy ships of the exact same speed but which had a hull durability of 1, how much damage would be inflicted? The numbers you’re about to see show just how much of a difference there is in firepower between early and late game ships.


Raw Fire Damage
Early Heavy Carrack: 0.62
Heavy Carrack: 1.53
Heavy Galleon: 3.33
Heavy War Galleon: 8.04
Early First Rate: 26.29
First Rate: 68.54
Large First Rate: 82.25


Firepower (Vs earlier version/vs Early Heavy Carrack)
Early Heavy Carrack: (NA/NA)
Heavy Carrack: (2.46x/2.46x)
Heavy Galleon: (2.17x/5.37x)
Heavy War Galleon: (2.41x/12.97x)
Early First Rate: (3.27x/42.40x)
First Rate: (2.61x/110.55x)
Large First Rate: (1.20x/132.66x)

As you can see, due to a combination of advancing artillery fire, more cannons and heavier weight cannons, there is a massive increase in firepower each time you upgrade a ship. By game’s end, a Large First Rate will deal 132.66x as much raw damage out as its Early Heavy Carrack ancestor in the fire phase. Fifth Rates (Light Ships) see an even larger increase, making them much more able to replace galleys in inland seas. Against contemporary ships however, these firepower increases are somewhat counteracted by increasing hull durability. The larger moral of the story is to keep updating your ships, or you’ll really notice it during the fire phase.
O. New Ships
Part of the problem with the ships in-game is that their names are not always historically accurate. A good example of this is the Two-Decker. Despite what EU4 would have you believe, I can find no examples of 1600s-era two-decker warships with 100 cannon. I can find plenty of examples of three-decker warships that meet this description (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ships_of_the_line_of_France#Three-decker_type). Another inaccuracy is that the Two-Decker did not evolve into the Three-Decker. The two types of ships evolved alongside one another. Frigates are another example of where the game does not match reality. The most heavily gunned frigate in-game has 30 cannons, which is far from a “Great Frigate”. A true Great Frigate is the USS Constitution or HMS Leander, both of which had 50+ guns while in service (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Constitution).

What I aim to do is make EU4 more historically accurate while also improving gameplay and giving players more ships to acquire late game. To rectify the issues with Two-Deckers and fix the Battle of Trafalgar, I’ve introduced Medium Ships and renamed Heavy Ships to reflect differentiate them. Great Frigate have been split away as a special Light Ship sub-type and made into a Diplomatic Tech 29 design. Mid-late game Light Ships are now re-named, although they feature the same number of guns as before. Finally, to make the late game more interesting, I’ve added one more level of ships that boast more firepower, bigger, more durable hulls, greater speed and even more crew to truly reflect the state-of-the-art during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.

i. British Ship Rating System
a) You will see a number of late-game ships referred named things like “Fifth Rate”, “Third Rate” or “First Rate”.​
b) This reflects the rating system of the Royal Navy and its predecessors, which was used by the British Royal Navy between the beginning of the 17th century and the middle of the 19th century to categorize sailing warships, initially classing them according to their assigned complement of men, and later according to the number of their carriage-mounted guns.​
d) I have re-named all late game Heavy, Medium and Light Ships to reflect this rating system, making the ship names more historically accurate, as the British dominated the waves in the late game.​


ii. All Ships by Type, Tech and Description
a) Heavy Ships​

a) Early Heavy Carrack (formerly Early Carrack-Tech 3)​
1. The early carrack was the first European vessel which could sail on the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean. The design of this late medieval ship combined the features of Germanic longships and Arabic merchantmen. It was less maneuverable than the caravel, but because of its larger size, it could carry provisions for long voyages, cargo for trade, and guns for self-defense. The largest carracks were often built by kings as symbols of their might.​



b) Heavy Carrack (formerly Carrack-Tech 9)​
1. The design of the carrack, a late medieval ship, combined the features of Germanic longships and Arabic merchantmen. It was less maneuverable than the caravel, but because of its larger size, it could carry provisions for long voyages, cargo for trade, and guns for self-defense. Some heavy carracks such as the English vessel Henri Grâce à Dieu weighed more than 1,000 tons, had large fore and aft castles, and could be considered as the greatest warships of their time.​

c) Heavy Galleon (formerly Galleon-Tech 15)​
1. A very large, usually three-masted sailing ship originally designed as a warship but later on used primarily for trade and commerce. The largest were often built by kings as symbols of state might.​



d) Heavy War Galleon (formerly War Galleon-Tech 19)​
1. The heavy war galleon was a very large galleon outfitted for war. It was larger and more heavily armed than the regular galleons, and served as protecting escorts to galleon fleets. The largest of these vessels served as fleet flagships.​

e) Early First Rate (formerly Two-Decker-Tech 22)​
1. The largest battleships of the line, these ships are 3-deckers that sported at least 100 guns. Early First Rates were durable and unmatched in firepower, but were poor sailing ships and extremely expensive. They are usually reserved as flagships for fleets in home waters.​



f) First Rate (formerly Three-Decker-Tech 25)​
1. The largest battleships of the line, First Rates are 3-deckers that had 100-140 guns. First Rates sported more and heavier guns than their predecessors, along with better sailing characteristics. Their great expense means they are usually reserved for admirals and rarely stationed overseas.​



g) Large First Rate (new-Tech 29)​
1. Enlarged First Rate battleships of the line, these ships sport larger cannons in their upper decks thanks to their improved seaworthiness. They are usually reserved for admirals.​



b) Medium Ships

a)Early Carrack (new-Tech 3)​
1. The early carrack was the first European vessel which could sail on the high seas of the Atlantic Ocean. The design of this late medieval ship combined the features of Germanic longships and Arabic merchantmen. It was less maneuverable than the caravel, but because of its larger size, it could carry provisions for long voyages, cargo for trade, and guns for self-defense.​



b) Carrack (new-Tech 9)​


1. The design of the carrack, a late medieval ship, combined the features of Germanic longships and Arabic merchantmen. It was less maneuverable than the caravel, but because of its larger size, it could carry provisions for long voyages, cargo for trade, and guns for self-defense.​

c) Galleon (new-Tech 15)​
1. A large, usually three-masted sailing ship originally designed as a warship but later on used primarily for trade and commerce.​



d) Heavy Galleon (new-Tech 19)​

1. The war galleon was a large galleon outfitted for war. It was larger and more heavily armed than the regular galleons, and served as protecting escorts to galleon fleets. The Spanish treasure fleets were made out of galleons and war galleons.

e) Fourth Rate (new-Tech 22)​
1. A fourth-rate was, in the British Royal Navy during the first half of the 18th century, a ship of the line mounting from 46 up to 60 guns. While the number of guns stayed in the same range until 1817, after 1756 the ships of 50 guns and below were considered too weak to stand in the line of battle, although the remaining 60-gun ships were still classed as fit to be ships of the line. 50-gun ships were also suitable as convoy escorts and for service on foreign stations, where larger enemy vessels were unlikely to be encountered. Some saw service as flagships since, as two-deckers, they were able to accommodate a flag officer and his retinue, and they also had the physical presence of a flagship.​



f) Third Rate (new-Tech 25)​
1. The main battleships of the line, Third Rates are two-deckers with 61 to 80 guns, making up the most common class of large ships in most navies. The most common of these was the “Seventy-Four”, a 74-gun two-decker that formed the bulk of war fleets during the 18th century. It was an easier ship to handle than a first- or second-rate ship, but still possessed enough firepower to potentially destroy any single opponent other than a three-decker. It was also cheaper to operate.​



g) Large Third Rate (new-Tech 29)​
1. Enlarged Third Rate battleships of the line, these ships sport larger cannons in their upper decks to counter the increasing firepower of newer 3-deckers. Examples of these ships include the British HMS Mars and French Cassard.​



c) Light Ships

a) Barque (Tech 2)​
1. The Barque was a small sailing ship, originally used for trade. Adapting these for warfare provided a smaller and faster alternative to the larger carracks.​



b) Caravel (Tech 9)​
1. The caravel was a small, very maneuverable ship which could sail with a high precision on long discovery journeys. Although designs varied, a caravel had a foresail, a square mainsail and lateen mizzen. Its smaller size limited the number of guns on board, but it also meant that this light ship could explore shallow coastal waters and estuaries. Vasco Da Gama, Cabot, Columbus and Magellan used caravels during their late 15th century and early 16th century voyages.​



c) Early Frigate (Tech 15)​
1. With the increasing overseas trade, there was a need for a fast escort vessel to provide safe journey. The early frigates were developed for this. They were smaller, leaner ships of war with one gun deck, and provided protection from piracy in dangerous waters.​



d) Frigate (Tech 19)​

1. As time passed, the frigate evolved. It became larger and heavily armed, sometimes with two gun decks. The frigate's combination of speed and firepower meant that it could outrun any ship with more guns and outgun any faster ships. The fleet built by the Commonwealth of England in the 1650s consisted almost exclusively of frigates.

e) Sixth Rate (formerly Heavy Frigate-Tech 23)​
1. In the rating system of the British Royal Navy used to categorize sailing warships, a Sixth Rate was the designation for small warships mounting between 20 and 28 carriage-mounted guns on a single deck, sometimes with smaller guns on the upper works and sometimes without. It thus encompassed ships with up to 30 guns in all. They were commonly used for supporting war fleets, transporting VIPs, protecting trade and hunting pirates.​



f) Large Sixth Rate (formerly Great Frigate-Tech 26)​
1. The larger sixth rates were those of 28-30 guns (including four smaller guns mounted on the quarterdeck) and were classed as frigates. Regardless of armament, Sixth Rates were known as "post ships" because, being rated, they were still large enough to have a post-captain in command instead of a lieutenant or commander. They were commonly used for supporting war fleets, transporting VIPs, protecting trade and hunting pirates. During the Napoleonic Wars, the now elderly Sixth Rate frigates were found to be too small for their expected duties, which were more easily performed by Fifth Rate frigates. Most were phased out without replacement, although a few lasted in auxiliary roles until after 1815.​



g) Fifth Rate (new-Tech 29)​
1. Fifth Rate ships served as fast scouts or independent cruisers and included a variety of gun arrangements. Larger fifth rates introduced during the late 1770s carried a main battery of twenty-six or twenty-eight 18-pounders, also with smaller guns (6-pounders or 9-pounders) on the quarterdeck and forecastle. Tonnage ranged from 700 to 1450 tons, with crews of 215 to 294 men. Fifth Rate frigates were considered useful for their combination of maneuverability and firepower, which, in theory, would allow them to outmaneuver an enemy of greater force and run down one of lesser force.​



h) Great Frigate (new-Tech 29)​
1. The largest type of frigate, they are big, unusually durable for a frigate, and carry 24-pounder guns of varying length across their gun and weather decks. They can outfight any normal frigate in a one on one fight, while being faster than any ship of the line, and typically carry 450 men aboard. Examples of these ships include the American USS Constitution and the British HMS Newcastle.​
a. These ships differ from all other Light Ships in that they take up 2 Engagement Width instead of 1.​




d) Galleys

a) Galley (Tech 2)​
1. With roots back to the ancient ships of the antiquity, the galley remained the prime choice for Mediterranean naval warfare until the 16th century. The galley was primarily propelled by oars, usually about 25 pairs manned by up to three men each. This meant that they were less dependent on wind gauge compared to sailing ships, and their maneuverability made them a feared adversary. Eventually, the galley went out of regular use with the introduction of more advanced oceangoing men-of-war, but remained useful in shallow waters until the 18th century.​



b) War Galley (Tech 10)​
1. The war galley carries the same number of guns as a normal galley but has a larger hull.​



c) Galleass (Tech 14)​
1. The galleass was an adaptation of the large merchant galley to counter the increasing use of man-of-war. Larger than the galley, the galleass had about 32 oar pairs, each oar manned by up to five man. As an answer to the men-of-war's armament and higher sides, the galleass had forecastles and aftcastles and gundecks above the rowers. This extra weight meant that they also had to rely more on sails, and were slower and less maneuverable compared to galleys. Like the galley, the galleass went out of regular use with the introduction of more advanced oceangoing men-of-war, but remained useful in shallow waters until the 18th century.​



d) Galiot (Tech 19)​
1. The galiot used both sails and oars to navigate, and carried up to fifteen guns.​



e) Chebeck (Tech 22)​
1. A small, two or three masted vessel widely used in the Mediterranean from the 16th century onwards.​



f) Archipelago Frigate (Tech 24)​
1. A two masted, cannon bearing vessel for shallow waters, which was brought into use during the mid 18th century.​



g)Hemmema (new-Tech 28)​
1. An especially large archipelago frigate with 3 masts, it features a heavier broadside than many larger ocean-going frigates. It was used by the Russian and Swedish navies in the Baltic.​


e) Transports
a) Cog (Tech 2)​
1. A one masted trading vessel originating from northern Europe.​



b) Flute (Tech 10)​
1. A cargo ship developed in the Netherlands in the 16th century, it was built to maximize cargo-space and crew-efficiency. And it became one of the most commonly used ships in the 16th and 17th century. The standard design wasn't armed but when needed it could be armed with cannons and serve as auxiliary vessels.​



c) Brig (Tech 13)​
1. A fast and highly maneuverable ship, favored by both merchants and for military use.​



d) Merchantman (Tech 18)​
1. A large cargo vessel used for transportation of merchandise.​



e) Trabakul (Tech 22)​
1. A slow, but reliable cargo ship, built wide, compact and with good storage.​



f) East Indiaman (Tech 26)​
1. Merchant ship belonging to the East India Company.​



g) Large East Indiaman (new-Tech 29)​
1. An especially large East Indiaman that appeared towards the end of the 18th century.​
P. Ship Designer
What’s one thing that Hearts of Iron’s “Man the Guns” DLC did really well? According to many, it is its Ship Designer, which allows players to customize ships to suit their naval strategies. It has gotten a rapturous reception: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-ship-designer.1127181/. But wouldn’t it be just as much fun designing your own custom ships in Europa Universalis? They could be customized to fit your grand strategy or to beat a particular opponent. So how does this work?

a) Ship Modifications
Ships in 1444 start out with being able to have one modification made to them. Each newer ship type can handle 1 more modification to its design than that of its predecessor design. This means that you could make 2 design changes to a Caravel, whereas you can only make one to a Barque. This reflects the improving naval engineering and specialization of ships seen during the 1444-1821 time period. Certain modifications, like adding a Marine Contingent, take up space aboard a ship that could be used for something else, like Mortars. Late game ships like the First Rate gain an additional ship space slot, allowing you to add 2 Marine Contingents or add both a Marine contingent and Mortars to a ship.
b) Ship Designer
There are several types of modification types available, but not all of them will be available immediately. Some are unlocked as you research new technology.

Ship Designer rough concept
Adapted_Ship_Designer.jpg


iii. Size Change Modifications - This modifier simply allows you to build larger or smaller variants of the standard design. The idea is to allow you to optimize your ships for your play style. Want to make more profitable Light Ships that you won’t use in war? Decrease their size 20% to reap lowered maintenance and build costs. Want to fight a naval war against Great Britain as France without Maritime, Quality or Naval Ideas but have tons of income? You’ll probably want to increase your warships’ size to the max possible to give yourself a fighting chance.

a) Ship size can be decreased 10% or 20%.​
b) Ship size can alternatively be increased 10% or 20%.​
c) A ship’s hull size, cannons and sailors requirement (war fighting ability) increases or decreases in exact proportion to the change made to the design’s size.​
a)Thus if you want to beat the British at sea, building a fleet of extra-large and expensive warships is one way to even the odds.​

d) Tactical Speed increases 5% for each 10% decrease in size.​
e) Strategic Speed is by size changes, as historically longer (and larger) First Rates were often faster than shorter Second Rates.​
a)For Light Ships, each 10% increase in strategic speed improves their privateering efficiency and ship trade power by 20%.​

f) For each 10% reduction in a Light Ship’s size, it gains 20% combat ability in Shallow Inland Seas, and +10% Combat Ability in Inland Seas.​
a)This reflects the benefits of shallower draft in these areas.​

g) For each 10% reduction in a Medium Ship’s size, it gains 10% combat ability in Shallow Inland Seas, and +5% Combat Ability in Inland Seas.​
a) This reflects the benefits of shallower draft in these areas.​
b) The French during the Napoleonic Wars actually built medium-sized warships with shallower drafts for the Dutch, whose harbors were often shallower.​

h) For each 10% reduction in a ship’s size, the build time drops by 5%.​
a) The reverse is also true, with 20% larger variants taking up to 10% longer to build than their standard-sized peers.​



iv. Speed Modifications – Ever wished you could choose the time and place of your naval battles or evade them altogether when fighting Great Britain? Speed modifications can be used to solve both problems. Speed Modifications also have the added advantage of making your Light Ships into both better protectors and raiders of commerce, making them worthwhile investments. If you have heavily up-armored your ship’s hull, speed modifications can also help to alleviate any drop in movement speed.

a) Studding Sails​
a)Diplomatic Tech 12 required​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed +5%​
1. Light Ships gain +10% Privateering Efficiency & +10% Ship Trade Power due to strategic speed increase​

c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +5%​
d) Sailors+1%​

b) Gaff Rig​
a) Diplomatic Tech 12 required​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed +2.5%​
1. Light Ships gain +5% Privateering Efficiency & +5% Ship Trade Power due to strategic speed increase​

c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +5%​
d) Combat Crew Percent +2%​

c) Raze Forecastle​
a) Diplomatic Tech 15​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed +5%​
1. Light Ships gain +10% Privateering Efficiency & +10% Ship Trade Power due to strategic speed increase​

c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +2%​
d) Takes 1 ship space slot (that could be used for Marines for example)​
e) 10% lessened sinking chance/attrition at sea​

d) Bermuda Rig​
a) Diplomatic Tech 20 required​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed +5%​
1. Light Ships gain +10% Privateering Efficiency & +10% Ship Trade Power due to strategic speed increase​

c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +7.5%​
d) Combat Crew Percent +4%​

e) Maritime Signal Flags​
a)Diplomatic Tech 20 required​
b) Tactical Speed +2.5%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +1%​
d) Halves over-size fleet tactical speed penalties for each equipped ship​


f) Top Gallant & Royal Sails​
a) Diplomatic Tech 23 required​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed +5%​
1. Light Ships gain +10% Privateering Efficiency & +10% Ship Trade Power due to strategic speed increase​

c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +5%​
d) Sailors+2%​

g) Flying Jib Sails​
a) Diplomatic Tech 23 required​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed +2.5%​
1. Light Ships gain +5% Privateering Efficiency & +5% Ship Trade Power due to strategic speed increase​

c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +2.5%​


h) Coppering​
a) Diplomatic Tech 28 required​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed +5%​
1. Light Ships gain +10% Privateering Efficiency & +10% Ship Trade Power due to strategic speed increase​

c) Build Cost +10%​
d) Maintenance Cost -15%​

v. Hull Durability Modifications – Sometimes you simply need a tougher ship than the other guy. These modifications improve your ship’s ability to absorb damage. As durability is a fire phase-only denominator for damage, a 10% increase will result in a 9.1% decrease in damage suffered, all else equal. The penalty for having a tougher, heavier ship is weight, which curbs its strategic and tactical speeds.

a) Level 1: Hardwood Hull​

a) Diplomatic Tech 9​
b) Durability +5%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +3%​
d) Tactical/Strategic Speed -2.5%​


b) Level 2: Thick Hardwood Hull​
a) Diplomatic Tech 18​
b) Durability +10%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +6%​
d) Tactical/Strategic Speed -5%​


c) Level 3: Thick Oak Hull​
a) Diplomatic Tech 24​
b) Durability +15%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +9%​
d) Tactical/Strategic Speed -7.5%​


d) Level 4: Live Oak Hull Paneling​
a) Diplomatic Tech 29​
b) Durability +20%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +12%​
d) Tactical/Strategic Speed -10%​


vi. Siege Ability Modifications – These modifications increase the relative effectiveness of your ship’s impact on sieges from blockades. They come with the disadvantage of taking up internal ship space that might be used on other modifications like a Marine contingent or increased gunpowder supplies.

a) Level 1: Mortars​
a) Effectiveness vs Forts +20%​
b) Barrage Effectiveness +20%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +2.5%​


b) Level 2: Improved Mortars​
a) Effectiveness vs Forts +40%​
b) Barrage Effectiveness +40%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +5%​


c) Level 3: Rockets​
a) Effectiveness vs Forts +60%​
b) Barrage Effectiveness +60%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +7.5%​


vii. Crew Option Modifications – These modifications can help you tailor your ships to your needs. Need to win a war at sea? You’ll want either a Large Crew or Marine Contingent. Need to save money? Use a smaller crew at the cost of war-fighting ability. Need ships that can repair damage at sea without taking Maritime Ideas? Adding a Carpentry Crew is the solution.

a) Small Crew​
a) Sailors -10%​
1. Shock Damage -10% due to 10% smaller crew​

b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost -7.5%​
c) Ship Firepower -5%​
d) Attrition at sea -10%​
e) Takes 1 less ship space slot​

b) Large Crew​
a) Sailors +10%​
1. Shock Damage +10% due to 10% larger crew​

b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +7.5%​
c) Ship Firepower +5%​
d) Attrition at sea +10%​
e) Takes 1 more ship space slot​

c) Marine Contingent​
a)Diplomatic Tech 11​
b) Marines added (equivalent to +10% of regular crew)​
c) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +10%​
d) Marines do +20% per capita shock damage of ordinary crew​
e) Ship Morale +5%​
1. Morale stacks additively if you have space for more Marines​

f) Take 1 more ship space slot​


d) Carpentry Crew​
a) Ship can repair 3% of hull per month in all sea zones​
b) Does not affect losses from attrition​
c) Cannot repair in any weather but Calm, Light Winds or Normal​
d) Takes 1 more ship space slot​
e) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +2.5%​


viii. Other Modifications – All other kinds of general modifications are found here. They can range from increased gunpowder supplies improving your crew’s gun-working effectiveness to granting a ship a Letter of Marque to allow privateering by non-Light Ships.

a) Carronades​
a) Ship Firepower -10%​
b) Critical Hits chance +20%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost -15%​
d) Sailors -10%​
1. Shock Damage -10% due to 10% smaller crew​

e) Attrition at sea -10%​
f) Takes 1 less ship space slot​

b) Increased Food Supplies​
a) -25% Attrition at sea​
b) +2.5% Ship Morale​
c) +2.5% Building Cost/Maintenance Cost​
d) Takes 1 more ship space slot​


c) Increased Gunpowder Supplies​
a) Ship Firepower +10%​
b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +5%​
c) Takes 1 more ship space slot​


d) Shallow Draft Design​
a) Shallow Inland Sea Combat Ability +10%​
b) Inland Sea Combat Ability +5%​
c) Inland Sea Tactical/Strategic Speed +5%​
d) 10% less seaworthy​
e) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +5%​
f) Only applicable to Light, Medium and Transport Ships​


e) Letter of Marque​
a) Allows non-Light ships to privateer​
b) Ship gains 0.5 Trade Power​
c) Cannot be granted to Heavy Ships​
d) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +1%​


f) Commander Aftercastle​
a) Ship Morale +5%​
b) Tactical/Strategic Speed -2.5%​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +2.5%​
d) Only applicable to Heavy/Medium Ships​


ix. Modifications of Existing Ships – Sometimes you find a need to modify your ships after they’re built. These limited modifications allow you to do everything from transform your Heavy Ships into Medium Ships, to up-gunning your Transports and even belatedly issuing Letters of Marque.

a) Razee Heavy Ship​
a) Converts Heavy Ship in Medium Ship​
b) Conversion Cost = 10% of Build Cost​


b) Razee Medium Ship​
a) Converts Medium Ship into Great Frigate​
b) Conversion Cost = 10% of Build Cost​

c) Up-gun Transport​
a) Cannons +50%​
b) Forces ship to use Large Crew​
c) Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +30%​
d) Tactical/Strategic Speed -5%​


d) Letter of Marque​
a) Allows non-Light ships to privateer​
b) Ship gains 0.5 Trade Power​
c) Cannot be granted to Heavy Ships​
d) Conversion Cost = 5% of Build Cost​
e) Maintenance Cost +1%​


e) Down-size Crew​
a) Down-sizes crew to next smallest size (normal or small)​
b) Conversion Cost = 5% of Build Cost​


f) Up-size Crew​
a) Up-sizes crew to next largest size (normal or large)​
b) Conversion Cost = 10% of Build Cost​


g) Add Marine Contingent​
a) Adds Marine Contingent​
b) Conversion Cost = 10% of Build Cost​


h) Remove Marine Contingent​
a) Removes Marine Contingent​
b) Conversion Cost = 5% of Build Cost​


i) Add Carpentry Crew​
a) Adds Carpentry Crew​
b) Conversion Cost = 2.5% of Build Cost​



x. Country-specific Modifications – Many countries were known for building their ships in a certain way, and these country-specific reflect that. They don’t take up any internal space like some regular modifications would, but do cost 1 modification slot. These modifications will let you build more historical ships, from tougher, smaller-crewed British First Rates to fast, heavily crewed French frigates.

a) British Design​
a) +5% Durability​
b) -5% Ship Crew​
c) -2.5% Tactical/Strategic Speed​
d) +1% Build Cost/Maintenance Cost​
e) Does not take ship space slot​


b) Dutch Training​
a) +5% Ship Firepower​
b) +5% Ship Morale​
c) +5% Build Cost/Maintenance Cost​
d) Does not take ship space slot​


c) French Design​
a) +5% Tactical/Strategic Speed​
b) +5% Ship Crew​
c) +2.5% Build Cost/Maintenance Cost​
d) Does not take ship space slot​


d) Japanese Iron Armor​
a) +50% Durability​
b) -25% Tactical/Strategic Speed​
c) +20% Build Cost/Maintenance Cost​
d) Does not take ship space slot​


e) Portuguese Design​
a) -25% Attrition at sea​
b) +2.5% Ship Morale​
c) +25 Exploration Range​
d) +2.5% Building Cost/Maintenance Cost​
e) Does not take ship space slot​


f) Spanish Design​
a) +5% Ship Durability​
b) +5% Ship Crew​
c) -2.5% Tactical/Strategic Speed​
d) +5% Build Cost/Maintenance Cost​
e) Does not take ship space slot​



xi. Fleet Flagship-only upgrades

a) All Flagships​
a) Improved Crow’s Nest​
1. Engagement Width +5​
2. Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​



b) Standardized Signal Book​
1. Fleet Tactical/Strategic Speed +1​
2. Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​



b) Light Ship Flagships​

a) Trade Route Map​
1. Trade Power +1 for all ships in fleet​
2. Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​



c) Heavy/Medium Ship Flagships​
a) Mortars​
1. Blockade Impact +1 on Siege​
2. Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​



b) Command Aftercastle​
1. Fleet Morale Bonus +5%​
2. Tactical/Strategic Speed -2.5%​
3. Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​



d) Galley Flagships​
a) Commander of Marines​
1. Fleet shock attack +1​
2. Build Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​



xii. Country-specific Fleet Flagship upgrades

a) Portuguese Navigators​
a) Exploration Mission Range +100​
b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​


b) Portuguese Bombardiers​
a) Naval Barrage Cost -50%​
b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +10%​


c) Portuguese Trade Route Map​
a) Trade Power +2 for every ship in the fleet​
b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​


d) Spanish Armada​
a) Attrition -30% for fleet​
b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +10%​

e) Spanish Treasure Fleet​
a) Cannons count twice for hunting pirates​
b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +10%​


f) Dutch Courage​
a) Fleet morale bonus +10%​
b) Building Cost/Maintenance Cost +20%​
c) Optimizing your ships
Imagine we are optimizing 4 different ship types for 4 different countries in 4 different eras. How could we best put the new system to work to help us?

Age of Discovery
Portugal 1450

You want to provide your Explorer with the most capable Light Ships possible for exploration but at a minimal cost, as you’re struggling to pay off loans from a war with Morocco. Unfortunately you can only make a single modification to a Barque’s design when making a new class of ship, as engineering in this era is very rudimentary. For Portugal, you could select the “Portuguese Design” modification. This ups exploration range +25, trims attrition by 25%, boosts morale 2.5%, and only adds 2.5% to the build & maintenance costs. You name this class of Barque the “Sao Gabriel class”. Your Sao Gabriel-class Barques help you to reach the Indian Ocean years ahead of time.


Age of Reformation
Spain 1580

The Ottomans have been terrorizing the eastern Mediterranean and have made a claim on several provinces in southern Italy. You need a Galleass that is as powerful and tough as possible, as the Ottomans have a higher naval force limit than you do. Luckily your New World colonies have you rolling in ducats. You can make up to 3 modifications in the ship’s design thanks to the improved engineering available to you. Which 3 should you make? One possible solution is to create a class of Galleass that is 20% larger (making it more deadly and harder to kill), adding a contingent of naval marines (for +15% shock phase attack & +5% morale), and then adding the “Spanish Design” modification. This last modification adds 5% durability and crew size, lessening fire phase damage while upping shock damage another 5%. You name the new Galleass class the “Emperador” class.

Your Emperador-class Galleass is potent, but also costly. Its base price is 20% higher than a regular Galleass, or 15.6 ducats. To this are added the +10% cost of marines and +5% cost of Spanish design. This means you will be paying 17.94 ducats for an Emperador, or 38% more than a normal Galleass. It boasts 38% more shock phase attack than a normal Galleass, 20% more fire phase attack, has 20% more hull, 5% more morale, and is crewed by 165 crew, made up of 150 sailors and 15 marines. To this is added Spain’s +0.75 artillery fire modifier, making them deadlier still. Your Emperadors go on to form the backbone of the fleet that crushes a larger Ottoman fleet near Greece.


Age of Absolutism
Netherlands 1690

You have broken free of the Catholic Spanish and their Austrian allies, and are busily setting up a global colonial empire from the Moluccas to Newfoundland. You have a large naval force limit, but are constrained by the need to react to crises quickly. You need to be able to bring your war fleets to bear as rapidly and effectively as possible. As your rivals Great Britain and Spain have trade companies in Africa and India, you also want to be able to conduct privateering against them. This rules out relying on heavy ships, which are slow and cannot privateer. Instead you decide to build fleets of medium ships, which are 33% faster and just as potent on a per engagement width basis. Given your pressing need for speed, privateering and firepower, how should you go about optimizing a class of Fourth Rate medium ships?

Your Fourth Rates can have up to 5 design modifications. To optimize them for speed, you add Studding Sails (+5% strategic/tactical speed) and a Bermuda Rig (+5% strategic/tactical speed & +4% combat crew percentage). To this you add Dutch Training, which ups their morale and firepower 5%. To give your ships added punch and flexibility, you add marines, for +15% shock phase attack and another +5% morale. Finally, to allow your Fourth Rates to privateer, you issue them a Letter of Marque. This adds 0.5 trade power to each Fourth Rate and lets them privateer. You name the Fourth Rate class the “Michel de Ruyter” class.

Your Michel de Ruyter-class Fourth Rates will cost 28.5% more than normal Fourth Rates. This is due to the 10% cost increase due to Marines, the 7.5% cost of adding a Bermuda Rig, the 5% cost of adding Dutch Training, the 5% cost of adding Studding Sails, and the 1% cost of adding a Letter of Marque. You get a Fourth Rate that has 15% more shock phase attack, is 10% faster, has 10% more morale, 5% more firepower, and 4% more of its sailors fighting (boosting shock phase attack even further). Although they won’t dominate the seas, these Fourth Rates are able to pick and choose their battles. This ends up being critical when facing the combined might of the Spanish and Portuguese, where you pick off their smaller fleets while avoiding battles with larger fleets. You emerge having conquered Spanish South Africa despite being out-numbered two to the one on the high seas.


Age of Revolutions
France 1792

Your French empire has conquered much of Europe, but you spy a new place to conquer: Japan. Unfortunately though, the Japanese player knows you will come after him and has fortified his coastlines with high-level forts. You need ships that will be able to easily clear the seas of his inferior ships and also help your armies siege down his forts as fast as possible. You decide to design a class of Large First Rates to accomplish this. These ships can have up to 7 modifications, including space for two internal modifications.

You decide to maximize the Large First Rate’s siege capabilities above all. You first down-size the ship’s crew size to a Small Crew. This opens up space for you to put 3 sets for rockets, upping the ship’s siege ability 60% for each set of rockets. To cut costs, you decrease the design size 20%. Finally, to save money, you hold off on adding a sixth or seventh design modification. You name this class of Large First Rate ships the “Vauban” class.

Your Vauban-class Large First Rates will wind up costing 88.32 ducats, some 8% less than the cost of a regular 96-ducat Large First Rate. You first cut costs by shrinking the design 20%. Shrinking the crew trims costs off this base price by 7.5%. This is counteracted by the 22.5% increase caused by adding 3 sets of rockets. What you wind up with is a Large First Rate that has 220% more siege ability than a Regular First Rate at 8% less cost. Your Vauban-class Large First Rates wind up proving critical during the sieges, speeding their conclusions by months sometimes. This is handy in speeding the war’s end, saving you time and ducats for other conquests.
i. Pre-built Designs
What if you don’t want to spend time designing ships? What if you want to just have a bunch of designs ready for your use? The Ship Builder should still come pre-populated with standard ships as well as a few specialty or historical ships designed by the developers. Alternatively, if this is a bridge too far, the developers could allow players to create their own custom ship packs, which other players could download and rate. You can just imagine the possibilities with this, with historical ship packs featuring everything from Columbus’ Nina to the British HMS Victory and the American USS Constitution!
Q. Rockets’ Red Glare Naval Siege System
”The Star-Spangled Banner” said:
And the rockets' red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Star-Spangled_Banner

On September 13, 1814, a British fleet under Vice Admiral Cochrane attempted to bombard Fort McHenry into submission during the War of 1812. It was the last line of defense between the British and the important port city of Baltimore. Having already burned the national capital of Washington, D.C., they felt confident they could force the Americans to make peace if they took Baltimore. On board to witness the naval bombardment was a 35-year old amateur poet named Francis Scott Key. Inspired by the image of the American flag flying over the fort as rockets glared by and bombs burst in the air, he penned America’s future national anthem.

This is a great example of naval siege warfare in the EU4 time period, and sadly one no player in the game can reenact. I wanted to come up with a way to make it possible, and to do it, I created the Rockets’ Red Glare Naval Siege System. In this system, ships will be able to make an impact on sieges of coastal forts based on their broadside weight. This means that early game ships have incredibly low impacts on sieges of coastal forts, while late game ships will be far more potent. Navies’ blockade impact on siege will be capped at +3, to avoid this being over-powered. Artillery units will always be the more cost-effective way to siege a fort. Here how this would work:

Ships cannot independently siege forts. Instead you will need to have an army of sufficient size to siege a fort. What your ships can do however is substantially augment the artillery bonus of your besieging forces, so long as the fleet is of blockade strength. Artillery units are considered to have the equivalent of 50 12-pounder cannon when sieging forts. That means that an artillery unit puts out the equivalent of 600 pounds of shot. Ships are less effective at firing their weapons for sieges than artillery, so it will take them twice as much shot weight to have the same effect as one artillery unit. Siege bonuses will be based on the number of artillery (in current game) required to get the siege bonus.


Fort (Siege+1/Siege+2/Siege+3)
Capital without Fort (1/2/3)
Castle (1/4/6)
Bastion (1/6/9)
Star fort (1/8/12)
Fortress (1/10/15)


Here’s what this means in terms of weight of shot required per siege bonus:
Fort (Siege+1/Siege+2/Siege+3)
Capital without Fort (1200/2400/3600)
Castle (1200/4800/7200)
Bastion (1200/7200/10800)
Star fort (1200/10800/14400)
Fortress (1200/12000/18000)


As ships get larger, not only do their cannon grow in number, but their cannons grow in shot weight as well. This leads to an exponential factor that makes late-game ships far better at sieging forts than their early game ancestors. In other words, your navy’s utility will only increase over the course of the game.

Heavy Ships
Ship Broadside Weight

a) Early Heavy Carrack: 137
b) Heavy Carrack: 170
c) Heavy Galleon: 264
d) Heavy War Galleon: 372
e) Early First Rate: 664
f) First Rate: 1190
g) Large First Rate: 1428


You will need a whopping 132 Early Heavy Carracks to get +3 siege from blockade impact on a Fortress, whereas you only need 13 Large First Rates. You still need 9 Early Heavy Carracks to get a +1 bonus sieging a capital without a fort, but only a single Large First Rate. Charts are below:
Rockets Red Glare System-Heavy Ships.JPG


Medium Ships
Ship Broadside Weight

a) Early Carrack: 96
b) Carrack: 117
c) Galleon: 184
d) War Galleon: 252
e) Fourth Rate: 468
f) Third Rate: 873
g) Large Third Rate: 984

Medium ships as you can see are not as good at sieging forts as Heavy Ships. You will need 188 Early Carracks to get +3 siege from blockade impact on a Fortress, whereas you only need 21 Large Third Rates. You still need 11 Early Carracks to get a +1 bonus sieging a capital without a fort, but just 2 Large Third Rates. Charts are below:
Rockets Red Glare System-Medium Ships.JPG


Light Ships
Ship Broadside Weight

a) Barque: 18
b) Caravel: 23
c) Early Frigate: 40.5
d) Frigate: 54
e) Sixth Rate: 90
f) Large Sixth Rate: 162
g) Fifth Rate: 288
h) Great Frigate: 624

Light Ships are much worse at sieging forts than either Medium or Heavy Ships. You will need an astounding 1,000 Barques to get +3 siege from blockade impact on a Fortress, whereas you only need 63 Fifth Rates or 29 Great Frigates. You still need 67 Barques to get a +1 bonus sieging a capital without a fort, but just 5 Fifth Rates or 2 Great Frigates. Charts are below:

Rockets Red Glare System-Light Ships.JPG


Galleys
Ship Broadside Weight

a) Galley: 36
b) War Galley: 48
c) Galleass: 80
d) Galiot: 96
e) Chebeck: 192
f) Archipelago Frigate: 324
g) Hemmema: 396


Galleys are better at sieging forts than Light Ships due to having heavier broadsides, but are inferior compared to Heavy or Medium Ships. You will need 500 Galleys to get +3 siege from blockade impact on a Fortress, whereas you only need 46 Hemmemas. You still need 15 Galleys to get a +1 bonus sieging a capital without a fort, but just 4 Hemmemas. Charts are below:

Rockets Red Glare System-Galleys.JPG


Transports
Ship Broadside Weight

a) Cog: 12
b) Brig: 15
c) Flute: 24
d) Merchantman: 32
e) Trabakul: 60
f) East Indiaman: 108
g) Large East Indiaman: 126

Transports are by far the worst ships for augmenting the siege capabilities of your armies. You will need an incredible 1500 Cogs to get +3 siege from blockade impact on a Fortress, whereas you need 143 Large East Indiaman. You still need 100 Cogs to get a +1 bonus sieging a capital without a fort, but just 10 Large East Indiaman. Charts are below:

Rockets Red Glare System-Transports.JPG


One final addition to the Rockets’ Red Glare Naval Siege System is the effect of Admiral Siege pips. For each siege pip an admiral has, their fleet’s effective shot weight is increased 10%. Each siege pip also provides a 10% bonus to barrage effectiveness.
R. Naval Marines
With the addition of marines to EU4 1.30, I'm updating this section to make them more useful.

Currently Marines have the following attributes:
  • Require Golden Century OR the Rule Britannia Immersion Packs.
  • Marines are infantry only.
  • Marines use sailors instead of manpower when built and reinforce.
  • The amount of Marines you can build is a fraction of your force limit, and the default is 0%.
  • Naval Ideas gives you 5% of your force limit as Marines.
  • The Recruiting Act Policy gives 5% of your force limit as Marines.
  • The Portuguese Naval Doctrine gives 10% of your force limit as Marines.
  • English Red Coats National Idea gives 5% of your force limit as Marines.
  • British Britannia Rules the Waves gives 10% of your force limit as Marines.
  • Marines land at +200% disembarking speed.
  • They ignore crossing penalties, so if your army is 50% marines, and you cross a straight, its -1 penalty instead of -2, and if you land with 100% marines, you have no penalty.
  • Marines however take 25% extra damage in the shock phase, as their drawback.

A number of people have complained that they are too niche and have too many drawbacks. To address those problems I propose the following attributes aside from DLC access:

New
Improved
New Drawback
  • Marines are infantry only.
  • Marines use sailors instead of manpower when built and reinforce.
  • Marines maintenance costs are funded by naval maintenance slider.
  • Marines cost 11 Ducats instead of 10 Ducats like normal infantry.
  • Marines land at +200% disembarking speed and also have +200% embarking speed.
  • They ignore crossing penalties, so if your army is 50% marines, and you cross a straight, its -1 penalty instead of -2, and if you land with 100% marines, you have no penalty.
  • Marines however take 10% extra damage in the shock phase, due to being light infantry.
  • Marines have +10% Morale versus your normal infantry, which reflects their higher training standards.
  • Marines do not take attrition in sea zones, whereas normal army units take 1% in coastal areas and 10% in deep ocean.
  • Transports carrying Marines see their shock damage given double.
  • Sailors per coastal province development doubled to compensate (+60 per development versus +30 currently).
  • Addition of a standalone Marine Force Limit in addition to regular Force limit, but which is only a fraction of it the latter's size.
  • Default Marine FL is 0% until Diplomatic Tech 11, when they are enabled for all coastal nations and given a minimum 5% of FL limit.
  • Nations/Ideas/Policies/Doctrines/Buildings/etc with +10% Marine Limit modifiers (as % of Army FL)
    • Castile: Castilian Traditions
    • Spain - Spanish Idea 3: Treasure Fleet
    • Great Britain - British Idea 7: Britannia rules the waves
    • United States: American Traditions
    • Australia - Australian Idea 4: The Diggers
    • Netherlands - Dutch Idea 4: Instructie voor de Admiraliteiten
    • Portuguese Marines Naval Doctrine
    • Naval Ideas: Ambition
  • Nations/Ideas/Policies/Doctrines/Buildings/etc with +5% Marine Limit modifiers (as % of Army FL)
    • Venice (post-mission)
    • Maritime Ideas - Idea 7: Marine Corps
    • England - English Idea 5: Redcoats
    • Exploration Ideas: Ambition
    • Maritime-Economic Policy: The Recruitment Act
  • Nations/Ideas/Policies/Doctrines/Buildings/etc with +2% Marine Limit modifiers (as % of Army FL)
    • Trade Company - Governor General's Mansion

If this was implemented, here's how this would make a difference:
  • You would be able to use marines to fight colonial wars without having to use maintain your regular armies at full strength.
  • The bigger your overseas empire, the more marines you will have to help protect it and expand it.
    • Imagine a Spanish campaign where you took Exploration Ideas and have 5 colonial nations
      • Exploration Ideas (5%) + Diplomatic Tech 11 (+5%) + Spanish Idea 3 (+10%) + 5 CNs (+5%) = 25% Marine FL (or regular FL)
      • If you have an Army FL of 100, you would be able to also have up to 25 Marines in addition to your regular Army units. Not bad!
  • Marines will provide big naval powers with a new way to increase their army's size.
  • The doubling in the Sailors pool would trim allow more to be employed.
  • Docks and Dry docks would allow bigger armies, increasing their value.


Adding Marines to Ships

What about adding marines to regular warships? With the addition of Naval Marines to ships (via Ship Designer), this problem is solved. The oldest marine corps still in existence, the current Spanish Navy Marines (Infantería de Marina) corps, dates back to 1537, when King Carlos I assigned their predecessor organization, the Compañías Viejas del Mar de Nápoles (Naples Sea Old Companies) to the Escuadras de Galeras del Mediterráneo (Mediterranean Galley Squadrons) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marines). Thus the earliest you will be able to add Naval Marines to your ships will be Diplomatic Tech 11. The only exception to this is if you are Venice, who will be able to add Naval Marines to their warships in 1444. This is due to them having created the first regiment of organized marine infantry back during the Dogeship of Enrico Dandolo, who, you may recall, used them and some wayward Crusaders to conquer Constantinople in 1204 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Dandolo).

The functions of Naval Marines on board your ships mirror that of their historical purposes.
”Wikipedia” said:
Historically, tasks undertaken by marines have included: helping maintain discipline and order aboard the ship (reflecting the pressed nature of the ships' company and the risk of mutiny), the boarding of vessels during combat or capture of prize ships, and providing manpower for raiding ashore in support of the naval objectives.

How does adding Naval Marines work? Let’s say you’re designing a Heavy Galleon (Heavy Ship) with 450 crew members. If you select to add a Naval Marines contingent to the ship, 45 Marines will be added once built. Each Marine does 20% more shock damage than a regular crew member. On a Heavy Galleon however, 80% of the crew fights in combat, due to the need to trim sails, tend to the wounded, steer the ship, and fetch powder for the guns. This means that adding Marines ups the ship’s Shock Phase attack by 15%! The effect on galleys is even more dramatic, due to them requiring more of their crew to man their oars. Marines also increase their ship’s maximum morale by 5%. This improves their ability to stay in battles while making it more likely they will rout an opposing ship.

If you have 1k Marines aboard a fleet, you will have the ability to “Detach Marines” when in port or next to coasts. This strips the Marines from your ships and forms a Marine Regiment or Regiments (depending on numbers). They can then either disembark via amphibious landing or simply walk off your ships in port onto land. This should improve the utility of your warships in warfare while also trimming your need for transporting as many troops.
S. Faster Ships
Have you ever been annoyed at just how long it takes to get your ships from one side of the globe to another? Wish there was another way to speed up the transporting of your armies other than spending diplomatic points on admirals? As it turns out, there is a historical solution to this issue. Sailing ships between 1444 and 1821 saw substantial improvements. One effect of those improvements was that ships got faster over time (https://qz.com/1193455/the-speed-of...historians-view-of-the-industrial-revolution/).

”Michael J. Coren said:
Between 1750 and 1830, the speed of British ships rose by about 50%. Interestingly, the sailing performance of ships from countries where industrialization was less advanced such as the Netherlands and Spain lagged significantly behind. Dutch vessels were sailing to the East Indies almost as slowly in 1790 as in 1600, the authors state.

Given that Galleons in 1600 were almost certainly faster sailors than their predecessors due to a lower forecastle and being longer, there were likely improvements in sailing speed well before 1750. What I propose is that all ships in-game will get steadily faster as they are upgraded, especially late game. This is done to both reflect history and to also up the utility of navies. With faster fleets in the late game, naval powers will be able to bring their armies to bear more quickly than before. They will also be able to catch and wipe out more primitive enemy fleets easier. The figures below will show that all sailing ships will enjoy a 50% increase in tactical & strategic speed by Diplomatic Tech 31. The lone exception is Galleys, which historically were barely used by the time of the Napoleonic Wars and enjoy a more modest 40% bump to their speed.

Heavy Ships (Diplomatic Tech Level/Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed)
Early Heavy Carrack: (3/5/6)
Heavy Carrack: (9/5/6)
Heavy Galleon: (15/5.5/6.6)
Heavy War Galleon: (19/5.5/6.6)
Early First Rate: (22/6/7.2)
First Rate: (25/6.5/7.8)
Large First Rate: (29/7/8.4)
Large First Rate: (31/7.5/9)


Medium Ships (Diplomatic Tech Level/Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed)
Early Carrack: (3/6.5/8)
Carrack: (9/6.5/8)
Galleon: (15/7.15/8.8)
War Galleon: (19/7.15/8.8)
Fourth Rate: (22/7.8/9.6)
Third Rate: (25/8.45/10.4)
Large Third Rate: (29/9.1/11.2)
Large Third Rate: (31/9.75/12)


Light Ships (Diplomatic Tech Level/Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed)
Barque: (2/10/10)
Caravel: (9/10/10)
Early Frigate: (15/11/11)
Frigate: (19/11/11)
Sixth Rate: (23/12/12)
Large Sixth Rate: (26/13/13)
Fifth Rate: (28/14/14)
Fifth Rate: (31/15/15)
---
Great Frigate (29/12.6/12.6)


Galleys (Diplomatic Tech Level/Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed)
Galley: (2/8/4)
War Galley: (10/8/4)
Galleass: (14/8.8/4.4)
Galiot: (19/8.8/4.4)
Chebeck: (22/9.6/4.8)
Archipelago Frigate: (24/9.6/4.8)
Hemmema: (28/10.4/5.2)
Hemmema: (31/11.2/5.6)


Transports (Diplomatic Tech Level/Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed)
Cog: (2/5/6)
Flute: (10/5/6)
Brig: (13/5.5/6.6)
Merchantman: (18/5.5/6.6)
Trabakul: (22/6/7.2)
East Indiaman: (26/6.5/7.8)
Large East Indiaman: (29/7/8.4)
Large East Indiaman: (31/7.5/9)
T. Doomstack Penalties
a) Fleet Performance

How often have you seen players put ALL of their warships into a single fleet? Unfortunately this is driven by naval mechanics, which don’t deter this and leads to ahistorical fleet organization. I propose doom stack penalties to counteract this tendency. The idea is simple. Bigger fleets are harder to coordinate, reinforce and supply. By adding some penalties to fleets beyond maximum engagement width, players will be encouraged to divide up their fleets as countries did historically. France after all had an Atlantic and a Mediterranean fleet, and did not simply group all of its ships together except under extreme circumstances.

Stacking Penalties at 1% over Engagement Width
a) -0.2% Tactical Speed (applied to each ship)​
b) -0.2% Reinforce Speed (if at sea)​
c) 0.1% additional attrition (if outside resupply range)​


Stacking Penalties at 50% over Engagement Width
a) -10.0% Tactical Speed (applied to each ship)​
b) -10.0% Reinforce Speed (if at sea)​
c) 0.5% additional attrition (if outside resupply range)​


Stacking Penalties at >=100% over Engagement Width -20.0%
a) -20.0% Tactical Speed (applied to each ship)​
b) -20.0% Reinforce Speed (if at sea)​
c) 1.0% additional attrition (if outside resupply range)​

b) Limited Capacity Ports

Harbors should have maximum engagement width capacity, much like they do in real life, which would prevent you basing your largest fleets out of just any province. There's a reason why Portsmouth, Cadiz, Constantinople, Toulon and Venice were the primary ports of their home nations’ navies.

Colonial province (being settled): 20 (Base-50%)
Regular Province: 40
Province with Natural Harbor/Estuary: 60 (Base+50%)
Regular Province+Dock: 60 (40+50%)
Province w/Natural Habor/Estuary+Dock: 90 (60+50%)
Regular Province+Drydock: 80 (+100%)
Province w/Natural Habor/Estuary+Drydock: 120 (60+100%)


Effects on Harbor Capacity from Center of Trade
Level 1: +20%
Level 2: +40%
Level 3: +60%


Development +1=+1% increase in Harbor Capacity
A 10/10/10 province with no special features has a 52 capacity port.
A 10/10/10 province with a natural harbor has a 78 capacity port and so on...

This ups realism while giving players an incentive to invest if ports if they truly want a large fleet while curbing immersion-breaking moments like 500 heavy ships docking in Greenland.
U. Liberty Desire & Naval Strength
Fleets right now are not as valuable as they could be, so how do we change that? Currently Liberty Desire only factors in Army strength of the home country vs that of Vassals, Marches and Client States, Personal Union Partners, Daimyos and Colonial Nations (and their allies). Adding naval strength to the equation for overseas states makes a great deal of sense, because it reflects your ability to project power.

EU4 Wiki said:
Liberty desire depends on the sum of the following factors:
...
a) The relative army size of the subject compared to its liege. There is +75 liberty desire for having 100% of the liege's forces, scaling proportionately (e.g. +37.5 at 50%).
b) The combined strength of all vassals, marches, and client states is used for their liberty desire.
c) Personal union partners, daimyos, and colonial nations only consider their individual strengths.
d) Additionally, nations allied with or supporting the liberty of a subject nation will have their army strength added to that specific subject.
e) Other subjects will not have their army strength increased, unless their independence is also supported.

I propose that Liberty Desire for such subjects who do not border their overlord would be 50% based on Army Strength and 50% based on Navy Strength.

Liberty Desire=Other Factors + ((Overseas Subject's Army Strength/Liege's Army Strength * .75)/2) + ((Overseas Subject's Navy Strength/Liege's Navy Strength * .75)/2)

The idea is simple, if you lack a large fleet, it's unlikely you'll be able to bring your massive army to bear. If you want to have a large overseas colonial empire, you’ll need to maintain a big navy to prevent it rebelling.
V. Overseas Empire No Forces Penalty
How often have you been able to station no forces whatsoever in your overseas empire with nearly no consequences? In my case, this has happened far too often playing as France. Overseas empires should also mean overseas obligations and penalties if you fail to adequately meet those obligations. Here’s how this works: if you own an overseas province or non-contiguous province outside your Home Super Region (determined by your capital), you will suffer a penalty to unrest and autonomy unless you station forces there or build forts.

If no troops or ships are in the super region (or in bordering seas) for 2 years for non-contiguous/overseas territories outside your Home Super Region, you gain +0.2% liberty desire/month in colonial nations/vassals/marches, and +0.2% autonomy per month and +2 unrest in owned provinces.

Here's what you would need to curb this 100%:
1 regiment per 20 development
1 Heavy ship per 60 development
1 galley/light ship/transport per 20 development
Ships would be able to curb unrest & increased autonomy via passing through seas bordering a Super Region
Alternatively, you can curb up to 50% of this with the following:


1 Trade Fort per 100 development (mirrors forts built by Portuguese on African coast)
1 Castle per 200 development
1 Bastion per 400 development
1 Star Fort per 600 development
1 Fortress per 800 development

The idea with forts is that although they'll only be able to curb half the problem, +1 unrest and +.1 autonomy per month is a lot easier to handle than +2 unrest and +.2 autonomy per month. This gives you some incentives to make sure you at least fortify your overseas empire. In cases where you own provinces in a region not bordering the ocean, ships will not lower the penalties. This means you are best off first conquering along coasts, as Europeans did historically.
W. Quasi War
Ever been annoyed by raids and privateers you couldn't attack in peacetime? No more! With Quasi War, you can attack any fleet raiding your coasts, about to raid your coasts or privateering your trade. This is a limited ability that is related to several historical naval actions that never quite sparked an all-out war.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama#Exploration_before_da_Gama
Wikipedia said:
In 1492, John II dispatched da Gama on a mission to the port of Setúbal and to the Algarve to seize French ships in retaliation for peacetime depredations against Portuguese shipping – a task that da Gama rapidly and effectively performed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasi-War
Wikipedia said:
The Quasi-War (French: Quasi-guerre) was an undeclared war fought almost entirely at sea between the United States and France from 1798 to 1800 which broke-out during the beginning of John Adams' presidency. After the French crown was overturned during the French Revolutionary Wars, the United States refused to continue repaying its large debt to France, which had supported it during its own revolution. It claimed that the debt had been owed to a previous regime. France was also outraged over the Jay Treaty and that the United States was actively trading with Britain, with whom they were at war. In response France authorized privateers to conduct attacks on American shipping, seizing numerous merchant ships, and ultimately leading the U.S. to retaliate.

Here’s how Quasi War works:
Your fleets may attack privateering fleets if any ship in fleet has engaged in privateering against you in the last two months.

a) Your fleets may attack raiding fleets if any ship in fleet has engaged in raiding against you in the last two months or the raiding fleet is in a sea square bordering your coastal provinces.
b) If attack is successful, gain 5% Power Projection in addition to Navy Tradition and Prestige.
c) If attack is successful and against a rival, gain 10% Power Projection.
d) Rival gains a 1-year Revenge Casus Belli if successfully attacked at sea.
X. Privateering
Please see Quasi War for more detail on how Quasi War affects privateering. The basic idea is that if you or another country engages in privateering, enemy fleets have the right to attack your privateers without declaring war. I’ve also incorporated several other improvements to privateering, which mesh with other parts of this overhaul.

a. Fleets now on Hunt Pirates mission will actively hunt and attack privateering fleets in designated areas (ex. West African Sea, North Atlantic) where you have sufficient trade power.
b. Ships on Protect Trade mission will attack weaker privateering fleets. They will revert to traditional mission if the other fleet is of greater strength (determined by ship type, count and tech level). If too weak, you will be notified.
c. Patrolling Ships will attack weaker privateering fleets encountered on their patrol route. If too weak, you will be notified.
d. Ships conducting Naval Power Projection mission will attack weaker privateering fleets encountered on their route. If too weak, you will be notified.
e. Privateering efficiency is increased by a fleet’s strategic speed, with 1% gain in this speed resulting in a 2% gain in privateering efficiency. A 1% decrease in this speed results in a 2% drop in privateering efficiency. More on this in the Ship Designer section!
f. Protect trade efficiency will also be increased by a fleet’s strategic speed, with 1% gain in this speed resulting in a 2% gain in trade protection efficiency. A 1% decrease in this speed results in a 2% drop in protect trade efficiency. More on this in the Ship Designer section!


Ability: Private Privateers
Cost: 50 Diplomatic Power per 2 years

This will generate light ships under your flag which you can’t control and don't count against your force limit. Gain up to 5% of Force Limit in Light Ship privateers per year during a war. They will attack your enemy's trade across the world. These units generate at random in your home ports, and will not go to sea if blockaded. There is a 10% chance per year (after 1 year) that these ships will become stateless pirates and attack anyone's trade. If enough ships have gone pirate, they may attempt to seize an island province. This is done via a new ship ability to conquer land outside a fort's zone of control if fleet has at least 2k sailors. They will then found a Pirate Republic if the province hasn't been retaken after 2 years. This mirrors European history with pirates in the Caribbean, where former privateers turned pirate. To keep this from snowballing, if a faction-less pirate ship has been sailing for 25 years, it will sink.
Y. Raiding
A lot of people have complained that raiding is too time-consuming, while others have complained about the hit to income and inability to stop it. I've attempted to address both issues.

a. If you can raid, you should be able to assign a fleet to automatically raid every possible province in a given area, with notifications sent to you when an area has raid-able provinces.
b. Alternatively, you can choose to selectively raid only certain countries, like Castile or Portugal, rather than a possible ally like Aragon if you're Tlemcem.
c. Provinces with forts would not be able to be raided, while those in their zone of control would suffer half the losses they would ordinarily.
d. This provides an incentive for those being raided to fortify their coastlines, as countries did historically.
e. Any fleet on a raiding mission would put up the Jolly Roger flag, allowing opposing countries to attack it to prevent being raided or to stop raid.
f. They can only attack raiding fleets if those fleets have raided them in the last 2 months or are in sea squares bordering their coastal provinces.
g. Each raid a country does will increase their Aggressive Expansion by 0.5.
h. Raided countries get a 1-year revenge Casus Belli against the raiding country.
Z. Merchant Kings: A Trade Company Overhaul
Trade Companies in EU4 are unfortunately very ahistorical. Although they are listed in the subject nation panel in the UI, Trade Company lands remain entirely under the mother country’s control, and there is no such thing as trade company armies or navies.

”EU4 Wiki” said:
A Subject trade company is a collection of provinces in a trade company region that give the owner less tax, manpower, and sailors, but more trade power, trade goods (including production income) and naval force limit, than if the owner included them in states. Trade companies may be formed by any nation in any of the 16 trade company regions throughout Africa and Asia, provided they are not on the same continent as the nation's capital; this restriction puts African and especially Asian nations at a great disadvantage, unless they move their capital to Europe or Oceania. They are listed in the subject nation panel in the UI, but, unlike the English HEIC or Dutch VOC in real history, they do not actually have their own armies or administration – the land remains entirely under the nation's direct control.
...

Each trade company region is associated with a trade node, and contains exactly those provinces that are part of that trade node. To start a trade company, you can add all your eligible provinces in the node at once in the trade node UI, or one by one in the province UI.

But what should Trade Companies actually be like? The best models we have for them are the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and the English East India Company (EIC). They were perhaps the ultimate “corporate raiders”, and are more like company-states than companies. Consider for a moment the VOC. Wikipedia’s editors do an excellent job summarizing the VOC’s incredible powers:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_India_Company
”Wikipedia Article on VOC” said:
The company was historically an exemplary company-state rather than a pure for-profit corporation. Originally a government-backed military-commercial enterprise, the VOC was the wartime brainchild of leading Dutch republican statesman Johan van Oldenbarnevelt and the States-General. From its inception in 1602, the Company was not only a commercial enterprise but also effectively an instrument of war in the young Dutch Republic's revolutionary global war against the powerful Spanish Empire and Iberian Union (1579–1648). In 1619, the Company forcibly established a central position in the Indonesian city of Jayakarta, changing the name to Batavia (modern-day Jakarta).
...
Over the next two centuries the Company acquired additional ports as trading bases and safeguarded their interests by taking over surrounding territory. To guarantee its supply, the Company established positions in many countries and became an early pioneer of outward foreign direct investment. In its foreign colonies, the VOC possessed quasi-governmental powers, including the ability to wage war, imprison and execute convicts, negotiate treaties, strike its own coins, and establish colonies. With increasing importance of foreign posts, the Company is often considered the world's first true transnational corporation.
...
Along with the Dutch West India Company (WIC/GWIC), the VOC was seen as the international arm of the Dutch Republic and the symbolic power of the Dutch Empire. To further its trade routes, the VOC-funded exploratory voyages such as those led by Willem Janszoon (Duyfken), Henry Hudson (Halve Maen), and Abel Tasman, who revealed largely unknown landmasses to the western world. In the Golden Age of Netherlandish cartography (c. 1570s–1670s), VOC navigators and cartographers helped shape geographical knowledge of the world as we know it today.
….
By 1669, the VOC was the richest private company the world had ever seen, with over 150 merchant ships, 40 warships, 50,000 employees, a private army of 10,000 soldiers, and a dividend payment of 40% on the original investment.


What I propose is to turn Trade Companies into a special kind of vassal that would take up no relationship slot and have no liberty desire.

i. They would be able to raise their own armies and navies.
ii. They would be able to declare war upon countries in their Trade Region.

g) However other countries would not be able to declare war on a Trade Company.​
h) Instead they would need to declare a war on the mother country to attack the Trade Company, just like with ordinary vassals.​
i) Trade Companies will automatically go to war with whoever is at war with their mother country.​
j) If a Trade Company starts losing a war it declared, there is a high likelihood that they will call their mother country into the war.​
k) Trade Companies may fight each other, but only if their mother countries are at war OR if their allies get into a war and call them into it.​
l) Trade Companies getting into conflicts with one another via allies has the strong potential for dragging their mother countries into a literal trade war.​

iii. Trade Companies would be limited to having two diplomatic relations.
m) Could only have relations with countries in their Trade Region.​
n) They would be able to form alliances, but only with countries in their Trade Region.​
o) Other countries would not be able to support their independence, because their liberty desire would always be 0%.​

iv. 50% of their profits (income after expenses) would accrue to the mother country.
p) If they are losing money however, you will earn nothing from them.​


v. In the event that they go into debt, a bailout event might trigger, forcing the player to choose between bailing them out or accepting a hamstrung Trade Company.
vi. Trade Companies would be forced to take Exploration, Trade and Plutocratic Ideas for their first 3 ideas, and would choose additional ideas with an eye towards maximizing their profits.
vii. Trade Companies would be limited to building the existing Trade Company improvements.
q) They would demolish all regular buildings besides forts in any province they own.​

viii. Trade Companies can accept all cultures and religions, at a cost of being unable to convert any provinces under their control.
ix. Trade Companies do not have to consider religious unity.
x. Trade Companies would have the technology of their mother country and cannot independently research technology.
a) To balance this, they will be capped at gaining monarch points at half the rate of their mother country.​

xi. Trade Companies would have their own trading fleets.
xii. Capturing Merchant Ships (Transports) from a Trade Company earn the player prize money (the trade value they are carrying).
r) Players can either donate their captured transports or sell them for half price to their own Trade Companies, if they have them.​
s) Players can also donate their own Transports to enlarge a Trade Company’s merchant fleet, which will earn them (and indirectly the player) more money.​

xiii. If a Trade Company has more than 50% of the development of its mother country under its control, the mother country gains a chance to get a corruption-increasing event.
xiv. If a Trade Company has more than 100% of the development of its mother country, the chance for a corruption-increasing event doubles. This reflects the very real corruption brought about by trade companies in history.
xv. Trade Companies would be limited to being able to own land in Trade Company Regions, with each Company limited to a specific Trade Region to which they’ve been granted a charter.
xvi. In the event a Trade Company has 51% or more of the Trade Power in a Trade Node, the mother country gets +1 merchant.
xvii. Unlike with colonial nations, Trade Companies do not add to their home country’s Trade Power except via added merchants.
xviii. Trade Companies can be started by either granting land to a Trade Company in a Trade Region or by chartering a Trade Company for a specific Trade Region by investing at least 100 Ducats.
xix. Trade Companies will try to buy land in their Trade Region if they do not yet own any.
xx. Mother Countries would have only limited subject interactions for trade companies:
a) A trade company's trade power may be increased by 50% at the cost of +0.03 inflation to its owner per year. This interaction may be toggled on and off at will.​
b) Trade Companies could be subsidized by investing ducats in them, from as little as 20 Ducats to as many as 1000 Ducats per year. Trade Companies would gain inflation commensurate with the size in bump to their income.​
a. Subsidization would allow Trade Companies to build more improvements, armies, navies and generally expand faster.​

c) Rent army – rents one of your armies at half the price of ordinary mercenaries to the Trade Company. This can be used to strengthen a Trade Company’s warfighting abilities on the cheap.​
d) Donate Merchant Ships – You can donate Transports to your Trade Company to help speed its commercial success or help it recover from a war.​
e) Sell Merchant Ships – You can also sell Transports to your Trade Company at half price to help speed its commercial success or help it recover from a war.​
f) Implement convoy system – Tells Trade Company to only sail its ships in fleets of 2 or more ships, to better protect them against privateer attacks from enemy warships and private privateers.​

Provinces added to a Trade Company would gain the following modifiers, most of which would carry over unchanged from the existing game:
a) +100% Local trade power
b) +0.5 Naval force limit
c) −50% Local manpower modifier
d) -25% Local sailors modifier
e) −100% Local tax modifier
f) −200% Local missionary strength
g) +10% Institution spread
h) Have minimum autonomy set to 0%
i) Ignore all penalties from intolerance of the local religion or an unaccepted culture.
j) Negated penalties include local unrest, local tax, and goods produced.
k) Positive bonuses to local unrest from tolerated heretics are kept.
l) Do not contribute to religious unity, regardless of religion.
m) Do not have the embraced institutions of their owner spread to them. Institutions may still spread through adjacency, however.


To simulate the Trade Companies getting toeholds in their respective regions, I propose an event be added to help:
Event xx (# TBD)
Trade Company with at least 300 Ducats in treasury
Local power in their chartered Trade Region offers to sell a coastal province to TC
Mean-time-to-happen: 120 months


Merchant Fleet
The VOC and the EIC were famous for their large merchant fleets. To reflect this in-game, Trade Companies would earn money from production as usual but would only be able to earn money from Trade if they sell Trade Goods via ships. Thus their Transport ships function as both troop transports and merchant ships. If they don’t sell the goods, the goods will steadily stockpile before hitting a limit after 1 year. Transport Ships would have the same Trade Power as Light Ships of the same tech level, but would use it (and Ducats) to help fill their holds with valuable goods. Once they finished paying for Trade Goods, they would then travel from the Trade Region back to their mother country’s main Trade Node, where they would sell their wares at a profit. The equation for how they would fill their holds would be based on equation tested by member Konju.
”Konju” said:
money = (ships^(1/5) * 100 * maintenance + 0.5 * nodevalue * ships) * tradepower^(1/11)
As far as I've tested this it gives you a good amount of money depending on the nodes, technology (e.g. year) and value:

(Format is Light ships/Maintenance per ship/Node value/tradepower/resulting ducats)
1 / 0.04 / 6 / 18 / 9
5 / 0.04 / 6 / 18 / 26.7

They would sell their wares at a premium in the destination trade node. The selling price would be dependent on the distance of the Trade Region from the mother country. Here’s an example of how much profit might be gained from different nodes by a Trade Company controlled by Great Britain depending on region:

West Africa – Selling Value: +25%
South Africa – Selling Value: +37.5%
East Africa – Selling Value: +50%
West Indian– Selling Value: +100%
Konkan – Selling Value: +100%
East Indian – Selling Value: +100%
Coromandel – Selling Value: +100%
North Indian – Selling Value: +125%
Burma – Selling Value: +125%
Indonesia – Selling Value: +150%
Moluccas – Selling Value: +175%
Moluccas – Selling Value: +175%
Indochina – Selling Value: +175%
South China – Selling Value: +200%
East China – Selling Value: +200%
North China – Selling Value: +200%

I’m forced to rely upon the above differential due to the in-game trade system’s inability to handle differentiated prices by Trade Node.


Ship Profit = Sales Price of Goods – (Purchase price of Goods+Ship Maintenance)

As you can see from the above list, you have a strong incentive to set up Trade Companies in the historically more lucrative regions, like the Moluccas or China. The downside to all this massive money gain from trade is that if your enemies attack your Trade Companies’ fleets, they can hammer your income, enhance their own, while selling the captured ships to their own Trade Companies. One advantage of this change is that you will have a second purpose for your Transport Ships, which you can also sell or donate to your Trade Companies.

With your income so dependent on vulnerable ships, you may be forced to deploy some of your warships to escort merchant ship convoys. Thus although you may earn a fortune from your Trade Companies in peace, they may cost a small fortune to protect in war. However, once they get powerful enough, they may conquer an entire Trade Region. This was historically how the English and Dutch came to control Indonesia and China respectively. These changes I believe would make navies more valuable, make Trade Companies into the powerhouses that they were historically, and add a great deal of depth and immersion to an already great game.
AA. Idea Group improvements
How often have you heard people say that Naval Ideas and Maritime Ideas are not useful? Although my naval overhaul will greatly improve their utility, some changes are probably warranted to make them of more interest to players.

Maritime Ideas will add the sailor recovery speed from Naval Ideas, but give up one of its repair bonus ideas to compensate. It helps to make your larger fleets punchier by increasing naval leader maneuver by 2. It also adds a Marine Corps idea, which should make naval invasions substantially faster and easier.

I. Maritime Ideas
a) Excellent Shipwrights: +2 Naval Leader Maneuver​
b) Merchant Marine : +50% Sailors modifier​
c) Press Gangs: +25% Sailor recovery speed​
d) Grand Navy: +50% Naval force limit modifier​
e) Ship’s Penny: -10% Ship costs​
f) Seahawks: +1 overall leader without upkeep, -25% Admiral cost​
g) Marine Corps - -66% embarkation time, no reinforce penalty, reduced amphibious assault maneuver penalty (-2 -> -1)​
h) Bonus – Ships can repair when in coastal sea zones​


Although Naval Ideas will lose the sailor recovery speed to Maritime Ideas, it gains several ideas to compensate. To maximize the effectiveness of the group at minimum cost, I’ve put its morale and navy tradition bonuses up front. Naval Assault is added to allow your fleets to do what they did historically and make amphibious assaults on coastal forts or enemy fleets in protected harbors. This will make a player with Naval Ideas substantially more dangerous than they are now. To better balance the group, the Heavy (& Medium) Ship Combat Ability has been nerfed to +10% from +15%, and Galley Combat Ability nerfed from +25% to +20%.

I. Naval Ideas
a) Superior Seamanship: +15% Morale of navies, +10% Global naval engagement​
b) Naval Glory: +1 Yearly navy tradition​
c) Boarding Parties: +1 Naval leader shock​
d) Improved Rams: +20% Galley Combat ability​
e) Naval Cadets: +1 Naval leader fire, -33% Morale hit when losing a ship​
f) Naval Assault : +1 blockade impact on siege, able to assault enemy fleets in fortified ports, able to assault forts with fleets that have at least 5,000 sailors.​
i. This idea is based on actual naval history, including the Raid on Medway (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raid_on_the_Medway) and the Battle of Camaret (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Camaret).​
ii. Assaults of forts by fleets would have a 33% penalty to attack, to reflect the very real problems fleets have had taking land fortresses.​
iii. If a fleet is attacked in a port protected by a fort, each of its ships’ attack values are increased by 50% for each fort level of the protecting fort.​
a. Fleets protected by castles, bastions, star forts and fortresses would gain +100%, +200%, +300% or +400% attack when fending off such an attack.​


g) Combat Drills: +10% Heavy & Medium ship combat ability​
h) Bonus : +10% Ship Durability​
BB. Idea Group Policy Improvements
How can we make Naval Ideas & Maritime Ideas of more interest to players? One of the best ways is to make its policies more useful for governing and expanding your county. What if having both Naval & Administrative allowed you to trim technology cost 5% in addition to the regular 20% institution embracement cost reduction? Or if Naval & Diplomatic gave you a +33% improve relations bonus? One of my favorites is combining Naval & Humanist, which would give a +2 max promoted cultures boost. Or how about boosting an estate’s loyalty? There are Maritime policies that boost the Noble, Clergy or Burgher estates’ loyalty. Looking to boost your diplomatic tech? Taking Maritime & Innovative will reduce Diplomatic Tech costs 10% while granting naval leaders an additional maneuver pip. Below are my proposed Naval & Maritime policies, most of which are updated and new, but a few of which have carried over.

I. Naval Idea Policies
a. Naval & Administrative​
a) -20% Institution Embracement Cost​
b) -5% Technology Cost​


b. Naval & Economic​
a) +10% Goods Produced​
b) +10% Production Efficiency​


c. Naval & Expansion​
a) +1 Diplomatic Relations​
b) +10% Global Trade Power​


d. Naval & Humanist​
a) +2 Max Promoted Cultures​


e. Naval & Innovative​
a) -25% Leader Cost​
b) +1 Naval Leader Fire​


f. Naval & Religious​
a) +1 Missionary​
b) +1 Naval Leader Shock​


g. Naval & Diplomatic​
a) +33% Improve Relations​


h. Naval & Espionage​
a) +1 Blockade Impact on Siege​
b) -33% Spy Network required for claims​


i. Naval & Exploration​
a) +1 to Overall Leader Pool​
b) -50% Cost of hiring Explorers​


j. Naval & Influence​
a) +33% Caravan Power​
b) +1 Merchant​


k. Naval & Maritime​
a) +50% Blockade Efficiency​
b) +50% Privateering Efficiency​


l. Naval & Trade​
a) +40% Ship Trade Power​
b) +10% Goods Produced​


II. Maritime Idea Policies

a. Maritime & Administrative​
a) -25% Coring Cost Overseas​

b. Maritime & Economic​
a) -10% Ship Maintenance Cost​
b) +10% Loyalty of Burgher Estate​


c. Maritime & Expansion​
a) +15% Trade Efficiency​
b) +15% Naval force limit modifier​


d. Maritime & Humanist​
a) +2 Diplomatic reputation​
b) +1 Max promoted cultures​


e. Maritime & Innovative​
a) +1 Flagship limit​
b) -10% Diplomatic Technology Cost​


f. Maritime & Religious​
a) +1% Missionary Strength against Heathens​
b) +10% Loyalty of Clergy Estate​


g. Maritime & Aristocratic​
a) +0.5 Navy Tradition​
b) +10% Loyalty of Nobility Estate​


h. Maritime & Defensive​
a) -10% Ship Cost​
b) +1 Diplomatic Relations​


i. Maritime & Naval​
a) +50% Blockade Efficiency​
b) +50% Privateering Efficiency​


j. Maritime & Offensive​
a) +1 Naval leader maneuver​
b) -10% Aggressive Expansion​


k. Maritime & Plutocratic​
a) -15% Ship Cost​
b) +50% Trade Range​


l. Maritime & Quality​
a) +10% Morale of Navies​
b) +1 to Overall Leader Pool​


m. Maritime & Quantity​
a) -15% Ship Cost​
b) +10% Naval Force Limit Modifier​
c) +10% National Sailors Modifier​
CC. New Naval Doctrine
How do we make naval doctrines of more interest? One way is to make an additional naval doctrine that makes your Light Ships more cost-effective.

I) Prize Money: Light Ship Combat ability +15%, Privateering Efficiency +15%, Protect Trade Efficiency +15%
a) This idea comes from a long-standing naval tradition: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_money.​
b) The idea is simple: Light Ship posts often attracted intrepid young officers new to independent command, as it gave them a chance for victories and prize money.​
DD. Naval Power Projection
Navies historically are influential because they've been tied to a concept called Power Projection. Famous examples of this include the Ming Treasure Fleet voyages, which saw Ming China extend its influence over much of Southeast and South Asia via its gargantuan treasure fleets. More modern examples include the Crimean War, the Russo-Japanese War of 1905 and the Falklands War of 1982.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_projection
[Wikipedia" said:
Definition:

Power projection (or force projection) is a term used in military and political science to refer to the capacity of a state "to apply all or some of its elements of national power — political, economic, informational, or military — to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain forces in and from multiple dispersed locations to respond to crises, to contribute to deterrence, and to enhance regional stability."

This ability is a crucial element of a state's power in international relations. Any state able to direct its military forces outside the limited bounds of its territory might be said to have some level of power projection capability, but the term itself is used most frequently in reference to militaries with a worldwide reach (or at least significantly broader than a state's immediate area). Even states with sizable hard power assets (such as a large standing army) may only be able to exert limited regional influence so long as they lack the means of effectively projecting their power on a global scale.

I propose a new naval mission called "Naval Power Projection" that will provide incentives for you to have a large fleet and show it off. It will be limited by the need to do the mission at least 50 distance units from your closest province. Another limit is that it would need to be aimed against neutral or rival countries with which you have less than +100 relations.

Mission: Naval Power Projection

This mission will be available to fleets with heavy ships (if a Great Power) or to fleets with Heavy Ships, Transports and Galleys (if not a Great Power). It will allow the player to kill raiding & privateering fleets via Quasi War. Even if no such fleets are around, it will also gain them prestige, power projection, curb liberty desire in subjects, as well as reduce/eliminate autonomy and unrest penalties in owned overseas provinces. Projecting naval power against rivals doubles the effects. If more than 1000 distance from nearest owned province, gain an additional +50% power projection/prestige.

This means that if you project naval power off Japan's coast as the Netherlands, the prestige and power projection you gain could be very substantial. The effect will differ by Great Power status. Projecting naval power halfway around the world as Norway after all should be much more impressive than as France, which can afford to do this. Projecting naval power off a rival's coast will provoke them, moderately decreasing relations and making it more likely they will attack. Quasi War and Naval Power Projection may be useful in luring a rival into attacking you.


Non-Great Powers

Can eliminate the overseas territory unrest and autonomy penalty (dependent on size of fleet and overseas territory)
i. Can eliminate Liberty Desire penalty for overseas subjects (dependent on size of fleet and overseas territory)
ii. +0.05 Prestige per year per Heavy Ship (up to +10 Prestige per year)
iii. +0.01 Prestige per year per Galley (up to +10 Prestige per year)
iv. Prestige effects doubled when projecting naval power off rival's coast (-20 to relations)
v. +0.05 Power Projection per year per Heavy Ship (Up to +10 Power Projection per year)
vi. +0.01 Power Projection per year per Transport Ship (Up to +10 Power Projection per year)
vii. +0.01 Power Projection per year per Galley (Up to +10 Power Projection per year)
viii. Power Projection effects doubled when projecting naval power off rival's coast (-20 to relations)
ix. Prestige and Power Projection gain increases 50% if more than 1000 distance from closest owned province
x. Quasi-War ability
xi. Fleets projecting Naval Power will not however actively hunt raiding/privateering fleets.

Great Powers 5-8
i. Can eliminate the overseas territory unrest and autonomy penalty (dependent on size of fleet and overseas territory)
ii. Can eliminate Liberty Desire penalty for overseas subjects (dependent on size of fleet and overseas territory)
iii. +0.02 Prestige per year per Heavy Ship (up to +5 Prestige per year)
iv. Prestige effects doubled when projecting naval power off rival's coast (-20 to relations)
v. +0.02 Power Projection per year per Heavy Ship (up to +5 Power Projection per year)
vi. Power Projection effects doubled when projecting naval power off rival's coast (-20 to relations)
vii. Prestige and Power Projection gain +50% if more than 1000 distance from closest owned province
viii. Quasi-War ability

Great Powers 1-4
i. Can eliminate the overseas territory unrest and autonomy penalty (dependent on size of fleet and overseas territory)
ii. Can eliminate Liberty Desire penalty for overseas subjects (dependent on size of fleet and overseas territory)
iii. +0.01 Prestige per year per Heavy Ship (Up to +5 Prestige per year)
iv. Prestige effects doubled when projecting naval power off rival's coast (-20 to relations)
v. +0.01 Power Projection per year per Heavy Ship (up to +5 Power Projection per year)
vi. Power Projection effects doubled when projecting naval power off rival's coast (-20 to relations)
vii. Prestige and Power Projection gain +50% if more than 1000 distance from closest owned province
viii. Quasi-War ability

This mission gives countries an incentive to have big fleets and gives non-Great Powers another use for their Galleys and Transport Ships.
EE. Fleet resupply
Ever wanted to resupply a fleet blockading a province outside your trade range for an extended period? With this mission, you can assign Light Ships to do that mission. The Light Ships so assigned will then detach and travel to your nearest un-blockaded coastal province (measured by sailing time). There they will pick up supplies after the month has ended that can will supply up to 10 engagement width of ships for six months and sail back. Resupplied ships will not take attrition for six months outside your trade range and will repair 5% of damage to their ships so long as you have enough sailors.
FF. Trade Forts
Starting in 1482, Portugal began building forts along the African coast to help secure its burgeoning trade and the beginnings of its colonial empire: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Portuguese_colonial_forts. These are roughly analogous to Trade Forts, which were built as stepping stones to secure trade routes. My proposal is simple: let any country that has taken Exploration build Trade Forts. They can build them in the Trade Regions by buying the right to do so from a local power. Alternatively they can do so by forcing a local power to them to construct a Trade Fort in a target province for a limited war score.

The big advantage of this approach is that it would let a Portuguese player to emulate their actual history. You would be able to trade with India while still being able to colonize Brazil, just as happened in history. The port capacity of these buildings would be limited (see Doomstack Penalties for limited capacity ports), but they would provide extremely valuable trade range. This would enable rapid trade and colonization expansion by the Iberian powers.


I envision the following:

Level 1 Trade Fort
+1 Defensiveness
1k Garrison
20 Harbor Capacity
Extends Trade/Supply Range
Cost: 150 Ducats
Maintenance: 0.75 Ducats


Level 2 Trade Fort
+2 Defensiveness
2k Garrison
30 Harbor Capacity
Extends Trade/Supply Range
+25% Local Trade Power
Cost: 300 Ducats
Maintenance: 1.5 Ducats
GG.Historical Ships for Non-European Powers
To make this possible, I found it necessary to split up the Muslim and Nomadic Tech Groups. Why? The Nomadic Tech Group goes from the Black Sea to the Pacific. Does it make sense for Western Nomad Tech Group countries to be building Junks in the Black Sea? Probably not, as ships differed drastically between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. To reflect that split, I’ve grouped everyone from the Mamluks west to Granada into the North African Tech Group. The Western Nomadic and North African Tech Groups will have the regular ships seen now, as they were sailing in the same seas as the Europeans at game’s beginning.

So who won’t be sailing in the same ships?

The affected Tech Groups include the Muslim, Eastern Nomadic, East African, Indian, and Chinese. The unaffected groups are either European, primitive (Americas), or will soon have exposure to European ship faring (see West African, Central African). Countries in the affected Tech Groups will be limited to their historical (non-European) ships until they embrace 2 key institutions: the Printing Press and Global Trade. Typically their historic ships are less well-armed than European ships of the same size, though there are exceptions.

East African/Muslim/Indian Tech Groups

These tech groups will be limited to the ships historically found employed by the mariners of the Indian Ocean, Persian Gulf and Red Sea. These groups will be the most militarily limited of the affected countries, which reflects the state of navies and ships in these seas when the Portuguese first arrived. To partly compensate, their ships will be cheaper. They have the advantage of being more likely to gain institutions from the Europeans compared to the East Nomadic & Chinese Tech Group countries.


Galleys:
Eastern Galley (Has half the cannons of the Galley)
Eastern War Galley (Has half the cannons of the War Galley)


Light Ships:
Sambuk
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 5 Ducats
III. Sailors: 75
IV. Hull: 4
V. Durability: 1
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/7
VII. Cannon: 0
VIII. Broadside: 0
IX. Trade Power: 2

Armed Sambuk
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 5.5 Ducats
III. Sailors: 94
IV. Hull: 5
V. Durability: 1.4
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/7
VII. Cannon: 6
VIII. Broadside: 0.06
IX. Trade Power: 2.5


Transport Ships:
Baghlah
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 12 Ducats
III. Sailors: 50
IV. Hull: 12
V. Durability: 1
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/7
VII. Cannon: 0
VIII. Broadside: 0

Boom
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 13.2 Ducats
III. Sailors: 63
IV. Hull: 15
V. Durability: 1.4
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 5/6
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.04


No Heavy Ships
No Medium Ships


Chinese/Eastern Nomadic Tech Groups

These groups will have more varied and powerful warships than their Indian Ocean peers, which are both historical and may help compensate for institutions spreading slower to this region. There are several generic types of warships available to all countries, with unique ship types only buildable by certain culture groups within the Tech Groups.

Available to all countries in these Tech Groups:

Galleys:
Eastern Galley (Has half the cannons of the Galley)
Eastern War Galley (Has half the cannons of the War Galley)


--Available to all but Japanese Culture Group countries

Medium Ships:
Early War Junk
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 15 Ducats
III. Sailors: 200
IV. Hull: 14
V. Durability: 1.5
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 6/6
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.06

War Junk
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 16.2 Ducats
III. Sailors: 250
IV. Hull: 17.5
V. Durability: 1.9
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 6/6
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.16

Light Ships:
Single-masted Junk
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 13.2 Ducats
III. Sailors: 63
IV. Hull: 8
V. Durability: 1.1
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 8/8
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.02


Two-masted Junk
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 13.2 Ducats
III. Sailors: 63
IV. Hull: 10
V. Durability: 1.5
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 8/8
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.06


Transport Ships:
Trade Junk
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 12 Ducats
III. Sailors: 50
IV. Hull: 12
V. Durability: 1
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 5/6
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.04

Lorcha
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 13.2 Ducats
III. Sailors: 63
IV. Hull: 15
V. Durability: 1.4
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 5/6
VII. Cannon: 5
VIII. Broadside: 0.1


Heavy Ships
--Not available unless part of specific Culture Groups


Galleys:
Eastern Galley (3 12-pounder cannon) – same as regular galley but with half the guns
Eastern War Galley (4 12-pounder cannon) – same as regular war galley but with half the guns


Chinese Culture Group Ships

If your country is part of the Chinese Culture Group, you have the ability to build a unique and prestigious ship used on Zheng He’s expeditions (1405-1433). It’s called a Treasure Ship, and although they’re enormous and expensive, they’re more envoy and trade ships than warships. Nevertheless their sheer size will impress the neighbors and also enhance your prestige and power projection. Here are more details: http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/china_1000ce_mingvoyages.htm.


Chinese Culture Group only

Treasure Ship
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 200 Ducats
III. Sailors: 500
IV. Hull: 200
V. Durability: 1.5
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 4/4
VII. Cannon: 12
IX. Broadside: 0.24
X. Trade Power: 20
XI. Engagement Width: 6
XII. Prestige: +1 (Max: +10 per year)
XIII. Power Projection: +1 (Max: +10 per year)
XIV. +1 influence to Offices of Maritime Trade faction
XV. Can only be built if Office of Maritime Trade faction is the most powerful faction
XVI. Can transport 2 units at a time


Malayan Culture Group Ships

If your country is part of the Malayan Culture Group, you have the ability to build a unique warship called a Djong. Djongs were Heavy Ships that dwarfed contemporary European Carracks and Galleons and built of multiple layers of hardwood. They were thus near invulnerable to early European cannon, but lacked as much heavy armament as European ships. They were especially feared by the Chinese, who reckoned that one Jong was as potent as ten of their softwood-built War Junks. Details: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djong_(ship).

Heavy Ships:
Early Djong
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 60 Ducats
III. Sailors: 300
IV. Hull: 28
V. Durability: 3
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 6/6
VII. Cannon: 6
VIII. Broadside: 0.06


Djong
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 66 Ducats
III. Sailors: 375
IV. Hull: 35
V. Durability: 4.2
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 6/6
VII. Cannon: 8
VIII. Broadside: 0.24


Korean Culture Group Ships

If your country is part of the Korean Culture Group, you have the ability to build several sets of unique ships. The first are Panokseon, which are a kind of warship that was robustly built, well-armed, and well-suited to Korean coastal wars. The second are Geobukseon, or Turtle Ships. These ships are Panokseon variants that have a fully-covered, turtle-shaped deck protecting the crew, in addition to a dragon-shaped head at the bow through which cannonballs or flames could be launched. Later variants likely had iron-tipped spikes atop their protective deck to deter boarding, in addition to a line of cannon able to fire from the sides. These two uniquely Korean ships would play a pivotal war in the Imjin War against Japan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_Japanese_invasions_of_Korea_(1592–98)). You can find more on them here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panokseon & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship.


Korean Culture Group only
Turtle Ships:
Turtle Ship
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 40 Ducats
III. Sailors: 150
IV. Hull: 15
V. Durability: 4
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/4
VII. Cannon: 16
VIII. Broadside: 0.16

Armored Turtle Ship
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 44 Ducats
III. Sailors: 188
IV. Hull: 15
V. Durability: 4.8
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/4
VII. Cannon: 24
VIII. Broadside: 0.48


Light Ships:
Early Panokseon
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 20 Ducats
III. Sailors: 150
IV. Hull: 8
V. Durability: 2
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 8/5
VII. Cannon: 26
VIII. Broadside: 0.26

Panokseon
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 22 Ducats
III. Sailors: 188
IV. Hull: 10
V. Durability: 2.8
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 8/5
VII. Cannon: 40
VIII. Broadside: 0.8


Japanese Culture Group Ships

If your country is part of the Japanese Culture Group, you have the ability to build several sets of unique ships. The first are a set of inland seas-adapted Heavy Ships called Atakebune, later variants of which were called Tekkōsen. These are essentially large fortresses at sea, and are great at fighting other ships during the Shock phase. Instead of having a War Junk as their Medium Ship, Japanese countries have the Sekibune, an ocean-going ship with a v-shaped hull. It is best-suited to deep-water engagements. Both sets of uniquely Japanese ships however suffer from a relative dearth of cannons compared to their Korean rivals. You can find more details here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atakebune & https://wiki.samurai-archives.com/index.php?title=Sekibune.


Heavy Ships:
Atakebune
I. Tech 2
II. Cost: 40 Ducats
III. Sailors: 300
IV. Hull: 15
V. Durability 3
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/4
VII. Cannon: 2
VIII. Broadside: 0.02


Tekkōsen
I. Tech 10
II. Cost: 44 Ducats
III. Sailors: 375
IV. Hull: 15
V. Durability 4.2
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/4
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.04


Medium Ships:
Early Sekibune
I. Tech 3
II. Cost: 15 Ducats
III. Sailors: 150
IV. Hull: 14
V. Durability 2
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/7
VII. Cannon: 2
VIII. Broadside: 0.04


Sekibune
I. Tech 11
II. Cost: 16.5 Ducats
III. Sailors: 188
IV. Hull: 17.5
V. Durability 2.8
VI. Tactical Speed/Strategic Speed: 7/7
VII. Cannon: 4
VIII. Broadside: 0.08
HH. Ship Experience
This idea comes to us via member Konju, although I’ve changed the proposal. The idea is that naval supremacy shouldn’t just be decided by who has the bigger fleet, but also by the collective experience of ships’ crews. A great example of experience affecting a naval battle is HMS Mars’ victory against Hercule: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Raz_de_Sein. To model this in-game, each ship would have a chance to gain experience (0-100 XP) from sailing and battles.

Each year at sea would see a ship gain 1 XP, while surviving a battle would gain them 5 XP, and being in a victorious battle would see them gain 10 XP. If your ship captured or sank an enemy ship, they would gain 10 XP for a 1 engagement width opponent (Galley/Light Ship/Transport), 20 XP for a Medium Ship, and 30XP for a Heavy Ship. Conversely, if they were to lose 50% of their men during a battle, they would lose half their previously gained XP once they repaired back to full strength. Replacing a ship with a new one would wipe out 75% of the XP previously gained.

0 XP:
i. +0% Combat Ability
ii. +0% Tactical/Strategic Speed


50 XP:
i. +5% Combat Ability
ii. -5% Fire Damage
iii. -5% Shock Damage
iv. +2.5% Tactical/Strategic Speed


100 XP:
i. +10% Combat Ability
ii. -10% Fire Damage
iii. -10% Shock Damage
iv. +5% Tactical/Strategic Speed


This bonus would be enough to give an edge to a long-time naval power suddenly locked into a war for naval supremacy with an inexperienced challenger. It would also reflect the benefits of real-world combat experience. XP however would decline by 10 for each year a ship is mothballed in port however, so beware the side effects of economizing!
II. Switching Admirals/Generals no longer teleport
Thanks to the increased ease and lessened cost of appointing Admirals and Generals (see second subject), we can now implement a more immersive restriction: non-instantaneous switching of Generals and Admirals (with one exception). This will help to address an issue where players simply switch their best Admirals and Generals between fleets and armies thousands of miles apart in an instant. Instead these leaders will be transported to their new command at the same speed as your diplomats, with the transit time determined by the distance between the old and new commands. Thus if you appoint Arthur Wellesley to combat an uprising in India, it will take an extended period of time for him to take over your armies fighting in Portugal afterwards. This should add some additional immersion and strategic depth to the appointing of generals and admirals for extended empires. A number of different members have proposed something similar to this over the last few years.
JJ. Naval Tactics
This idea came from Imperator, and I’ve adapted it to better fit EU4’s time period.
i. Skirmishing Tactics: Damage inflicted -10%, Damage suffered -10%
a) -20% damage suffered vs Boarding Tactics (negates damage bonus)​

ii. Line of Battle Tactics: Damage inflicted +0%, Damage suffered -0%
a) +10% damage inflicted versus Skirmishing Tactics (negates damage suffered penalty)​

iii. Boarding Tactics: Damage inflicted +10%, Damage suffered +10%
a) +10% damage inflicted versus Line of Battle Tactics​


It’s a simple rock-paper-scissors set of tactics, but should make something other than admirals and ships have an impact on naval battles. I’m confident that this can be further expanded and lead to greater tactical thinking when it comes to naval battles.
KK. Naval Terrain Update
Ever been bothered that the entire Mediterranean is “Inland Sea”, with no differentiation between the like the Tyrrhenian Sea (between Italy and Sardinia) and shallower seas like the Aegean? This overhaul aims to fix that by differentiating inland seas between areas superbly suited to galleys and those that are less so. Here are the new overall naval terrain types post-overhaul:

Arctic sea
i. Attrition happens in half the time in Arctic seas
ii. Attrition is doubled once it starts

Coastal Sea
i. Galley Attack +50%
ii. Late Game Light Ship Attack +15%
iii. All inland sea bonuses are half that shallow inland seas
iv. Defender dice roll +2


Inland Sea
i. Galley Attack +100%
ii. Late Game Light Ship Attack +30%
iii. Defender dice roll +1

Sea
i. No change to attrition or ship attack
ii. No defender dice roll bonus
LL. National Idea Changes
To help better balance the naval game, I’ve made a few changes to give countries not named Venice, Great Britain, Spain or the Netherlands a fighting chance.

Great Britain
British Traditions: +15% morale of navies (down from +20%)
Explanation: As Great Britain already gets a +1 yearly navy tradition bonus upping naval morale +5% roughly (beyond +20%), trimming this bonus down modestly should give other countries a modestly better chance on the high seas.

Spain
Spanish Traditions: +0.75 Artillery fire (down from +1 Artillery fire)
Explanation: this modest nerf helps to better balance Spain’s firepower on land and at sea, as it roughly doubles Spanish artillery firepower around tech 12.

Portugal
Portuguese Traditions: +10% morale of navies (changed from +30% trade range)
Explanation: Portugal badly needs a military buff, and boosting their naval morale helps to recreate their ability to land a stronger punch in naval warfare terms than you would expect from their size.

Venice
Ambition: +20% Galley combat ability (down from +25%)
Explanation: this modest nerf helps to provide other sea powers in the Mediterranean with more of a chance when taking on a large Venetian galley fleet.
MM. Blockades
Blockades need to be made at least modestly more valuable to make navies more impactful. How do we do this? Canute VII came up with a simple solution:

1. If a province is blockaded, it also loses the +50% supply limit bonus from being a coastal province. This makes sense in that ships are necessary to bring that extra supply to the troops, so if they're blockaded, the supply limit ought to be no higher than any ordinary province.
NN. Colonization Supply Fleet
How do we make transport ships less dead-weight in-game? One way is to make their existence critical to colonization. How do we do that?

Currently you can colonize anywhere while only needing your transport ships to bring troops there to protect the colony. Historically though these cargo ships were critical to resupplying the colonies. Imagine if you had cut off the ships bringing in new colonists and supplies to Quebec, the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Mexico or Brazil. It would have been devastating and possibly have ended their existence or at least stalled it for years. To simulate this in-game, I propose the following:

1. For each 4 development level of a province, 1 cargo ship shipping supplies and colonists from the home country will be required. Ships on this mission will travel back and forth and take 1 month to resupply on each end (unless they need to repair further). Other ships will also be able to resupply colonies, with the exception of galleys:

Ship Type / Development supported
Transport Ship: 4
Heavy Ship: 3
Medium Ship: 2
Light Ship: 1

2. If you do not resupply your colony and it borders no other colonial provinces of your country, its growth rate will be 1/5th of normal (or -80%).
3. If you supply half of your colony's needs (8 development supplied by 1 ship), the growth penalty will be -40%.
4. If a province you are colonizing borders a land province that is already fully colonized, the growth penalty for no resupply is halved (-40%). If half resupplied, its growth rate will drop 20%.
5. If a province you are colonizing borders two land provinces that are already fully colonized, the growth penalty for no resupply is trimmed to -20%. If half resupplied, its growth rate will drop 10%.
6. Each transport ship on a colony resupply mission will add +.05 navy tradition per year that they are on the mission, for a max of +1 navy tradition per year.
7. For each additional ship resupplying beyond that required, growth is boosted +2%, with a max boost of +10%.
OO. Ming Treasure Fleet
Between 1405 and 1435, Ming China sent out 7 great treasure fleets under the command of Admiral Zheng He (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_He) to Southeast Asia, India, Eastern Africa and the Middle East (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ming_treasure_voyages). These fleets featured up to 28,000 men and hundreds of ships, dwarfing western armadas until the Spanish Armada of the late 1500s. These voyages were a mixture of trade, diplomacy, projecting military might, and perhaps most importantly to the Yongle Emperor, bringing the world's oceans into China tributary system. They ended in 1435, only 9 years before the game's start.

But what if you could bring back these magnificent fleets once more? If you put the Offices of Maritime Trades in charge of the Ming government, you will get the option to bring back the treasure voyages once more, at a cost of -10% loyalty to both other factions. Here's how it would work:

To make a fleet into a treasure fleet:
1. Treasure voyages decision must be taken
2. You must have built at least 2 treasure ships
3. A treasure fleet must have no fewer than 5,000 sailors in it
4. Fleet must be assigned an admiral or explorer
5. Offices of Maritime Trade must be in power

Once these criteria are met, you will be able to send out your treasure fleet. It will attempt to establish relations, explore and bring every country it finds into the Ming tributary system. Be warned, though, that this could lead to war against Ashikaga/Japan if you go that direction! The bigger you make your treasure fleet(s), the more easily you will be able to get "gifts" from foreign powers and bring them under the celestial wisdom of the Middle Kingdom (aka make them a tributary state of Ming). These ships and voyages will be possible up until the Age of Absolutism.

If your treasure fleet reaches Europe, you also have a chance for a fun event:

Event: Better than da Gama
Condition: must be Ming, must discover Europe before discovered by European power, must make a European state into your tributary
Result: +100 Prestige, +100 Power Projection
PP. Naval Professionalism & Naval Exercise
One way to model the increasing move to professional navies over time is with a new ability: naval exercise. This is modeled on army drill, but differs in several respects, given the vastly different area of focus. Ships doing an exercise must be at sea and will cost 10% more to maintain per month versus regular operations. If you do enough naval exercises, you can gain up to 100 Navy Professionalism. At this level, the following effects accrue to your ships:

+10% fire damage dealt
+10% shock damage dealt
+100% navy tradition gained from battles
+5% ship movement speed

Additionally, the value of navy professionalism unlocks a new interface look and new abilities for navies every 20 points:

20% – Salaried Sailors
Trade Range is expanded by 25% and trade efficiency is boosted by 2%.

40% – Naval Surveyor
Ship construction time decreases 10% and ship build/maintenance costs drop by 5%.

60% – Conscription Navy
Deconstructed ships' sailors and marines will 100% rejoin the sailor and manpower pools.

80% – Permanent Navy
Your ships will take 33% less morale damage from the loss and capture of allied ships in battle.

100% – Professional Navy
-50% admiral cost
+100% Ship Experience gained


There are certain actions that will increase/decrease the army professionalism value.
  • Recruiting Admirals/Explorers (+1% per, max +5% per year)
  • Naval Exercises (+1% per if whole naval force limit is on exercise)
  • Hitting the Slacken Fleet Standards button (adjacent to the buttons for activating and deactivating forts) will lower the navy professionalism by -5% but add 2 years worth of sailors.

Having a ship doing a naval exercise boosts its "Ship Experience", which can vary from 0 to 100. Experience from naval exercises can be gained at a maximum of +10 per ship per year outside of war. As a quick reminder from the Ship Experience section, here's what that does to an individual ship:

0 XP:
i. +0% Combat Ability
ii. +0% Tactical/Strategic Speed


50 XP:
i. +5% Combat Ability
ii. -5% Fire Damage
iii. -5% Shock Damage
iv. +2.5% Tactical/Strategic Speed


100 XP:
i. +10% Combat Ability
ii. -10% Fire Damage
iii. -10% Shock Damage
iv. +5% Tactical/Strategic Speed


The effect of these changes should be to make putting your fleets to work somewhat costly but potentially very worthwhile in a war. It could certainly be a way to even the odds if you are France and your nemesis, Great Britain, has been relying on their strong naval traditions to win wars at sea.
QQ. Colonial Stand-off
Colonial Stand-off
  • If your country or its colonial nations controls more than 2/3rds of a state and has built a fort and one other building in it, they will get a core on all provinces in the state.
  • This will trigger a diplomatic standoff, where each side will be 1% more likely for each year afterwards to attack the other side IF their fleet is larger.
  • If one of the opposing sides has fewer naval or army forces stationed in the Super Region, this will trigger a 1% gain in likelihood of attacking the other side each year.
  • You can trim the chance of being attacked or increase it by improving or worsening relations via your diplomats or by moving around your fleets and armies.
RR. Navy Tradition Update
Navy Tradition currently gives a plethora of benefits, but navy I believe that a few additional, modest benefit changes would help make fleets of more interest.

Currently:
100 navy tradition gives 100% of the following bonuses:

+10% Recover navy morale speed
+25% Morale of navies
+100% Trade steering
+25% Privateer efficiency
+100% Blockade efficiency
+0.10 Trade faction influence
+0.10 The traders influence
+20% Sailor recovery speed

Updated:
+10% Recover navy morale speed
+25% Morale of navies
+100% Trade steering
+25% Privateer efficiency
+100% Blockade efficiency
+0.10 Trade faction influence
+0.10 The traders influence
+20% Sailor recovery speed
+50% Exploration Range
+25% Time at sea before Attrition
-25% Attrition At Sea

+25% Colonial Range

Why add these four benefits? The first benefit is there because nations with great fleets (Example: Spain & Portugal around 1480-1550) were able to mount incredibly long journeys of exploration. The second and third bonuses work well with the first benefit and also help you to project naval force in the early-mid game. The final bonus reflects the benefits to colonization from a capable fleet, which we can see via the large number of far-flung English, French, and Spanish-speaking countries worldwide.
SS. Navigable Rivers
I'm taking this idea from Imperator: https://steamcommunity.com/games/859580/announcements/detail/1621769923096545138.

The idea is simple:

  • Light Ships and Galleys will be able to sail up navigable rivers
  • Light Ships will not be able to sail past fords, while Galleys could.
  • River Engagement width could vary from a max of 15 to a minimum of 5.
    • This helps make having huge river fleet engagements harder to do, and incentivizes better navies.
  • Heavy Ships, Medium Ships and Transports would not be able navigate rivers due to their greater drafts.
TT. Evading Enemy Fleets
To avoid having your privateers and trade company ships easily taken out, three major changes will be made.

  • The number of sea zones will be increased in order to lessen the chances of ships meeting on the high seas.
  • When hostile fleets do meet, any fleet can take an evasive maneuver to avoid interception.
    • Evasive maneuvers have a percent chance to be successful before a battle is ever joined.
    • The chance is calculated as (50%)*(Fleet Strategic Speed/Enemy Fleet Strategic Speed)+((player dice roll-enemy dice roll)*.1)
    • Dice roll is limited to 1, 2 or 3
    • So if your fleet of privateering Barques encounters some Heavy Ships, their chance of escaping = (50%)*(10/6)+((your dice roll-enemy dice roll)*.1)
    • In this instance, you roll a 3 and the opponent rolls a 2.
    • Therefore your ships have a 93.35% chance of evasion.
    • If you had rolled a 1 and they had rolled a 3 however, your ships would have a 63.35% chance of evasion.
  • When in battle, any fleet attempting to get away will run the same equation but with tactical speed substituted in for strategic speed.
    • This evasion calculation will be re-run each time after the two phases of battle end.

The general moral of this is when it comes to piracy or to evading stronger enemy fleets, speed (and admirals with high maneuver) pay handsomely. This evasion chance will also help to cut down on players decisively losing a naval battle they tried to avoid.
UU. Overseas Troops
Ever thought it is unrealistic to have troops from Europe march into Africa and suffer such low attrition? Ever wanted a way to differentiate maintenance costs for overseas troops and those back home? With a few tweaks, we may be able to help resolve both situations while making fleets (and overseas ports) more valuable.

  • Sending troops into a Super Region in which you have no territories or allied territories would double their maintenance costs.
    • If you send troops into a Super Region in which you have no territories or allied territories, your troops will suffer an extra 2% attrition.
  • Maintenance cost and attrition penalties can be mitigated if you take control of an enemy coastal province with an un-blockaded port or get naval access to a 3rd country's ports in the Super Region.
  • The attrition penalty would drop to 1%.
  • The maintenance cost penalty would drop to 50%.
What you should be left with is an incentive for more overseas naval bases.
VV. More Sailors
With the addition of marines to the game, there is a renewed need for more sailors to provide an adequate recruitment pool. To provide this I propose the following simple fix:
  • The number of sailors gained from 1 development in a coastal province will double from +30 to +60.
WW. Coastal Defence/Naval Battery Improvements
Currently there are two new buildings that can be used to help defend your coastlines: the Coastal Battery and its higher tier version, the Naval Battery. However most players seem not to enjoy building them or find them not particularly useful. There have also been remarks that the hostile fleet attrition for the Naval Battery is ahistoric. I would fix the issue by making them both more historical and better at defending your coasts from pirates and armies. How?

New

Coastal Defence
Required Dip Tech 5
  • Cost: 100 Ducats
  • +50% Blockade Force Required
  • +100% Hostile Disembark Time
  • Province cannot be raided by pirates
  • Allied fleets cannot be attacked in port.

Naval Battery
Required Dip Tech 12
  • Cost: 200 Ducats
  • +100% Blockade Force Required
  • +200% Hostile Disembark Time
  • +5% Hostile Fleet Attrition
  • Province and allied neighboring provinces cannot be raided by pirates.
  • Allied fleets cannot be attacked in port.
  • +1 Fort Level
These changes will put an end to there being no counter to pirate raiding and also make it harder to invading armies to take your land. Perhaps it will be worth building these in volume when dealing with Tunis as Aragon.
XX. Naval Attrition
Currently, any ship capable of navigating deep ocean zones takes 10% attrition each time. While I get the point that this is meant to simulate scurvy due to being away from fresh vegetables, I think it could be implemented more realistically. For instance, under the current system, the Manila Galleon trade (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manila_galleon) would never be possible. To make that a possibility, I propose the following:
  • Attrition from navigating first deep ocean zone starts at 2%.
    • The idea behind this is it is more realistic and gives players a mulligan if they accidentally cross a single deep ocean square.
  • Each successive deep ocean square ups the attrition by 1% (per deep ocean zone crossed) until reaching 5%.
    • This provides incentives for faster ships and also better reflects scurvy becoming more dangerous over time.
The net effect of these changes will be a moderate improvement in naval force projection across the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The overall effect however will still be punishing attrition for projecting force, as was found in history.

I’d like to thank fellow forum members for their feedback in developing parts of this overhaul and @podcat, whose Ship Designer and “Man the Guns” DLC helped inspire me to do this overhaul. Please comment, offer suggestions and let me know what you think!
 
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H. Fire Support
Already covered now with naval bombardment. As they say in the wiki it's shore fire. An army in the province has no problems with the ships firing on the beach. The guns even at the end of the games time period are short range, it's only by the early 1900s that you can look at really firing in to provinces in game.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/sail-armament.htm

Q. Rockets’ Red Glare Naval Siege System
Doesn't really fit, they weren't attacked with broadsides, these wouldn't be effective and would generally mean the fleet getting shot to hell it's self, coastal forts were often there to defend against ships. Would be open to addition of new ships such as Bomb ketchs and Rocket ships which are bad in naval combat but would be extra guns for sieges.

These are my only real problems I've seen in it.
 
Master and commander is not in the public domain so it's copyright protected. Or perhaps a trademark even. Also it's a decent movie but sucks as a naval movie it gets loads wrong. It severely underestimates the distances involved. Hornblower is a much better fit, with all their adventures The Indy never leaves Europe. Because even patrolling from Portsmouth to Gibraltar is a full time job for a frigate. Meanwhile the ship in master and commander do a hop skip and a jump and then suddenly they're in the pacific and then another and they're at the Galapagos. (Not to mention the ridiculous story about the officer who get bullied by the men, any men who tried that, especially post french revolution, would have been flogged to a pulp, the British were incredibly paranoid about elements seeking to overturn the current social order in those days).

In fact treating the sea like it's a lot smaller than it is is something master and commander has in common with EU4 as it currently is. What naval mechanics in eu4 most needs is to get rid of the whole "all ships in the same seazone instantly are in battle with each other" thing they've got going on. The mechanics they have in HoI4 is way better.
Especially since it does away with navies sitting static on the sea, on the sea nothing is static.
 
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Thanks for the interest in the overhaul! Just to be clear, I am not saying that Paradox should name a naval DLC “Master & Commander”. I named this overhaul so in honor of the books and movie. I would expect them to name something like “Sea Lords”, “War on the Seven Seas” or “Kingdoms of Spice” (if it focuses on Southeast Asia). I hope that clears up any confusion over the name.
 
Hornblower is a much better fit, with all their adventures The Indy never leaves Europe.
Glad I'm not the only one who thought it was a good show, they also do well with ships vs forts, repeatedly seeing ships of the line getting shot to hell due to less defence, smaller guns and forts often being able to be higher and thus not reachable by their guns.
 
Already covered now with naval bombardment. As they say in the wiki it's shore fire. An army in the province has no problems with the ships firing on the beach. The guns even at the end of the games time period are short range, it's only by the early 1900s that you can look at really firing in to provinces in game.
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/systems/ship/sail-armament.htm

I was mostly thinking of the fire support mentioned in this article when I came across the idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pojama
Wikipedia said:
Several new ships were designed by the naval architect Fredrik Henrik af Chapman to bolster the hitting-power of the new Swedish arm, to provide it with better naval defense and greater fire support capabilities during amphibious operations.

It mentions fire support during amphibious operations, so perhaps if you have a fleet of blockade strength, it would be able to provide fire support when you did an amphibious assault against an enemy army? That seems reasonable. It's a little more limited, but very historical. You could have the fire support halve or eliminate the amphibious landing penalty.

Doesn't really fit, they weren't attacked with broadsides, these wouldn't be effective and would generally mean the fleet getting shot to hell it's self, coastal forts were often there to defend against ships. Would be open to addition of new ships such as Bomb ketchs and Rocket ships which are bad in naval combat but would be extra guns for sieges.

These are my only real problems I've seen in it.

Thank you for taking the time to read through my work. With regards to broadsides being used in naval barrages/sieges, I forgot to show the historical support for cannons being used in these instances. A great example of this is the history of Algiers. Under the Ottomans, it was a haven for piracy and bombarded by European fleets in retaliation. I count no fewer than six bombardments! As it happens, on multiple of those occasions, the European fleets used regular cannons in addition to mortar bombs and rockets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1783)
Wikipedia said:
The cannonade and bombardment commenced at 14:30, and continued without intermission till sunset.[9] The attack was renewed on the following, and on every succeeding day until the 9th, when it was resolved at a council of war, for sufficient reasons, to return immediately to Spain.[9] In the course of these attacks 3732 mortar shells and 3833 rounds of shot were discharged by the Spaniards, and the Algerines returned 399 mortar shells and 11,284 rounds of shot. This vast expenditure of ammunition produced no corresponding effect on either side: the town was repeatedly set on fire, but the flames were soon subdued.[9]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1784)
Wikipedia said:
On 28 June, having entrusted itself to the Virgen del Carmen, the Allied fleet sailed from Cartagena, arriving off Algiers on 10 July.[3] Two days later at 8:30 AM, the bombardment began with the Spanish ships opening fire. It was kept up until 4:20 PM, during which time about 600 bombs, 1,440 cannon balls and 260 shells were fired over the city, compared to 202 bombs and 1,164 cannonballs fired by the Algerians.[3] Major damage to the city and its fortifications and a large fire were observed. An attack by light vessels of the Algerian fleet, composed of 67 ships, was repulsed, four of them being destroyed.[3] The Allied casualties were minimal: 6 killed and 9 wounded, most of them due to accidents with the fuses of the bombs.[3] Gunboat No. 27, commanded by the Neapolitan ensign José Rodríguez, exploded accidentally, killing 25 sailors.[4]

In the following eight days, seven additional attacks were ordered.[4] The Algerians had placed a line of barges armed with artillery that largely prevented the Allied gunboats getting close to their objectives.[3] A shot fired from the fortifications hit the felucca from which Barceló were directing the bombing, sinking it.[4] José Lorenzo de Goicoechea came to the aid of the admiral, who was rescued unscathed.[4] Passing immediately to another boat, Barceló continued leading the attack, downplaying the importance of the incident.[3] Finally, on 21 July, it was decided to end the attack.[3] Contrary winds forced Barceló to give the order to return to Cartagena.[3] More than 20,000 cannonballs and grenades had been fired on the enemy, causing severe damage to the fortifications and the city, and sinking or destroying most of the Algerian vessels.[3] The Allied casualties were 53 men killed and 64 wounded, most of them due to accidents.[4]
Wikipedia said:
Exmouth in Queen Charlotte anchored approximately 80 yd (73 m) off the mole, facing the Algerian guns. However, a number of the other ships anchored out of position, notably Admiral Milne aboard HMS Impregnable, who was 400 yards from where he should have been. This error reduced the effectiveness of these ships and exposed them to fiercer Algerian fire. Some of the other ships sailed past Impregnable and anchored in positions closer to the plan. The unfortunate gap created by the misplaced HMS Impregnable was closed by the frigate HMS Granicus and the sloop Heron.[11]

220px-Bombardment_Algiers_1816.jpg


In their earlier negotiations, both Exmouth and the Dey of Algiers had stated that they would not fire the first shot. The Dey's plan was to allow the fleet to anchor and then to sortie from the harbour and board the ships with large numbers of men in small boats. But Algerian discipline was less effective and one Algerian gun fired a shot at 15:15. Exmouth immediately began the bombardment.

The Algerian flotilla of 40 gunboats made an attempt to board Queen Charlotte while the sailors were aloft setting sail, but twenty-eight of their boats were sunk by broadsides, and the remaining ran themselves on shore.[10]:395 After an hour, the cannon on the mole were effectively silenced, and Exmouth turned his attention to the shipping in the harbour, which was destroyed by 19:30. One unmanned Algerine frigate was destroyed after being boarded by the crew of Queen Charlotte's barge, who then set it on fire. Three other Algerine frigates and five corvettes were destroyed by the fire of mortars and rockets.[4] The burning shipping drifting in the harbour forced some bombarding ships to manoeuvre out of their way.[10]:392

Impregnable was isolated from the other ships and made a large and tempting target, attracting attention from the Algerian gunners who raked her fore and aft, severely damaging her. 268 shots hit the hull, and the main mast was damaged in 15 places, with 50 killed and 164 wounded.[10]:393

One sloop had been fitted out as an explosion vessel, with 143 barrels of gunpowder aboard, and Milne asked at 20:00 that it be used against the "Lighthouse battery", which was mauling his ship. The vessel was exploded, but to little effect and against the wrong battery.[12]

Despite this, the Algerian batteries could not maintain fire and, by 22:15, Exmouth gave the order for the fleet to weigh anchor and sail out of range, leaving HMS Minden to keep firing to suppress any further resistance. The wind had changed and was blowing from the shore, which helped the fleets depart.[10]:395 By 01:30 the next morning, the fleet was anchored out of range. The wounded were treated, and the crew cleared the damage caused by the Algerian guns. Casualties on the British side were 128 killed and 690 wounded,[10]:394 (16 percent killed or wounded). As a comparison, the British casualties at the Battle of Trafalgar had been only 9 percent.[13]

The allied squadron had fired over 50,000 round shot using 118 tons of gunpowder, and the bomb vessels had fired 960 explosive mortar shells.[14]

The Algerian forces had had 308 guns and 7 mortars.[10]


I believe the historical record says quite strongly that cannons were used against fortifications quite regularly. Another great example of this is the Great Siege of Gibraltar of 1779-1783: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Gibraltar.

Wikipedia said:
For the allies it was becoming clear that the recent blockades had been a complete failure and that an attack by land would be impossible. Ideas were put forward to break the siege once and for all. The plan was proposed that a squadron of battery ships should take on the British land-based batteries and pound them into submission by numbers and weight of shots fired, before a storming party attacked from the siege works on the Isthmus and further troops were put ashore from the waiting Spanish fleet.[71] The French engineer Jean Le Michaud d'Arçon invented and designed the floating batteries—‘unsinkable’ and ‘unburnable’—intended to attack from the sea in tandem with other batteries bombarding the British from land. The floating batteries would have strong thick wooden armour—1-metre-wide (3 ft) timbers packed with layers of wet sand and with water pumped over them to avoid fire breaking out.[72] In addition old cables would also deaden the fall of British shot and, as ballast, would counterbalance the guns' weight. Guns were to be fired from one side only; the starboard battery was removed completely and the port battery heavily augmented with timber and sand infill. The ten floating batteries would be supported by ships of the line and bomb ships, which would try to draw away and split up the British fire. Five batteries each with two rows of guns together with five smaller batteries each with a single row would provide a total of 150 guns.[71] The Spanish enthusiastically received the proposal. D'Arcon sailed close to shore under enemy fire in a skiff to get more accurate intelligence.[73]

Glad I'm not the only one who thought it was a good show, they also do well with ships vs forts, repeatedly seeing ships of the line getting shot to hell due to less defence, smaller guns and forts often being able to be higher and thus not reachable by their guns.

I'll have to check out the series. I was under the impression that naval artillery was generally larger than most land-based artillery, with only a few of the biggest coastal defense guns being larger than the largest naval guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36-pounder_long_gun. 24-pounder siege guns were the heaviest artillery possessed by the French Army in contrast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-pounder_long_gun).
 
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I was mostly thinking of the fire support mentioned in this article when I came across the idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pojama


It mentions fire support during amphibious operations, so perhaps if you have a fleet of blockade strength, it would be able to provide fire support when you did an amphibious assault against an enemy army? That seems reasonable. It's a little more limited, but very historical. You could have the fire support halve or eliminate the amphibious landing penalty.



Thank you for taking the time to read through my work. With regards to broadsides being used in naval barrages/sieges, I forgot to show the historical support for cannons being used in these instances. A great example of this is the history of Algiers. Under the Ottomans, it was a haven for piracy and bombarded by European fleets in retaliation. I count no fewer than six bombardments! As it happens, on multiple of those occasions, the European fleets used regular cannons in addition to mortar bombs and rockets.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1783)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardment_of_Algiers_(1784)




I believe the historical record says quite strongly that cannons were used against fortifications quite regularly. Another great example of this is the Great Siege of Gibraltar of 1779-1783: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Siege_of_Gibraltar.





I'll have to check out the series. I was under the impression that naval artillery was generally larger than most land-based artillery, with only a few of the biggest coastal defense guns being larger than the largest naval guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36-pounder_long_gun. 24-pounder siege guns were the heaviest artillery possessed by the French Army in contrast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-pounder_long_gun).
There's a huge diffrence between fieldguns and coastal defence artillery. The largest guns of the napoleonic era were for an example a 50 pound coastal defence gun used bu the US. The usual coastal defence guns were 42 pounders and were so large that in the cases when they were used by warships they had to go on deck because they wouldn't fit below deck. And only some of the largest ships had them at all.

It should also be noted that having the high ground gives a lot of extra power for forts. Every meter of freefall increase the speed of the projectile by almost 10 meters per second and significantly increases the force of impact.
 
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Master and commander is not in the public domain so it's copyright protected. Or perhaps a trademark even. Also it's a decent movie but sucks as a naval movie it gets loads wrong. It severely underestimates the distances involved. Hornblower is a much better fit, with all their adventures The Indy never leaves Europe. Because even patrolling from Portsmouth to Gibraltar is a full time job for a frigate. Meanwhile the ship in master and commander do a hop skip and a jump and then suddenly they're in the pacific and then another and they're at the Galapagos. (Not to mention the ridiculous story about the officer who get bullied by the men, any men who tried that, especially post french revolution, would have been flogged to a pulp, the British were incredibly paranoid about elements seeking to overturn the current social order in those days).

In fact treating the sea like it's a lot smaller than it is is something master and commander has in common with EU4 as it currently is.

As mentioned above, I named the overhaul in honor of the movie, but was not expecting Paradox to name the DLC after a trademarked movie. With regards to the distances, I would have to disagree with you. Extreme distance naval warfare and piracy long preceded the Napoleonic Wars. Sir Francis Drake was capturing Spanish ships off the coast of Peru in 1578 and even sacked Valparaiso. In fact, I'd wager that the events of the movie & books are probably based on the naval squadron the US Navy sent into the Pacific from its Atlantic Coast during the War of 1812: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valparaíso.

Nor was USS Essex' squadron the only example of extreme distance naval warfare in the period, with a French naval officer named Charles-Alexandre Léon Durand Linois having fought in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Alexandre_Léon_Durand_Linois).

Wikipedia said:
In 1803 Napoleon Bonaparte appointed him to command the French forces in the Indian Ocean and, flying his flag aboard the 74-gun-ship Marengo, he harried British merchant ships across the ocean and into the China Seas. At the Battle of Pulo Aura in 1804, a squadron of French naval ships commanded by Linois encountered the British China Fleet of lightly armed merchant ships. The British ships outnumbered Linois' forces, manoeuvred as though preparing to defend themselves, and some flew naval ensigns. The tactics of the convoy commodore Nathaniel Dance fooled Linois into believing that the British fleet was defended by naval escorts and he retired without attacking the virtually defenceless British.

During his squadron's return to France, Linois encountered a large British squadron under Admiral Warren off Cape Verde. In their engagement, known as the Action of 13 March 1806, Linois was wounded and captured again. Napoleon had ended the practice of exchanging officers and Linois remained a prisoner of war until Napoleon fell in 1814. In 1810, while held by the British, Linois was named comte de Linois by Napoleon.

What naval mechanics in eu4 most needs is to get rid of the whole "all ships in the same seazone instantly are in battle with each other" thing they've got going on. The mechanics they have in HoI4 is way better.
Especially since it does away with navies sitting static on the sea, on the sea nothing is static.

So you're proposing we get rid of sea zones?
 
Would be open to addition of new ships such as Bomb ketchs and Rocket ships which are bad in naval combat but would be extra guns for sieges.

A fairly simple solution to this is available via my proposed EU4 Ship Designer. Rather than add 2 entirely new ship types, you can just customize existing ships into bomb ketches and rocket ships. For instance, below, you could free up space for rockets by getting rid of the marines, down-sizing the crew, and stripping out most of the cannons for rockets:
Adapted_Ship_Designer.jpg


A crude version of the rocket ship might look like the following:
Rocket_Ship.jpg

Here you can see we've replaced the marines with rockets in this in-progress image. HOI4's Ship Designer works this way, and allows players to customize different ships for vastly different roles. For instance cruisers can be made into heavy & light cruisers via gun choice, and further divided into anti-submarine warfare, anti-aircraft, minelaying, and scout ships by how you decide to customize them. Something similar would no doubt be appreciated by EU4 players. Plus, if you found yourself no longer needing rocket ships or bomb ketches, you could always refit the ship above, remove the rockets, reinstall the cannons, and add marines for a cost.
 
As mentioned above, I named the overhaul in honor of the movie, but was not expecting Paradox to name the DLC after a trademarked movie. With regards to the distances, I would have to disagree with you. Extreme distance naval warfare and piracy long preceded the Napoleonic Wars. Sir Francis Drake was capturing Spanish ships off the coast of Peru in 1578 and even sacked Valparaiso. In fact, I'd wager that the events of the movie & books are probably based on the naval squadron the US Navy sent into the Pacific from its Atlantic Coast during the War of 1812: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valparaíso.

Nor was USS Essex' squadron the only example of extreme distance naval warfare in the period, with a French naval officer named Charles-Alexandre Léon Durand Linois having fought in the South China Sea, Indian Ocean and Atlantic Ocean (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles-Alexandre_Léon_Durand_Linois).





So you're proposing we get rid of sea zones?
But Sir Francis drake was a pivateer, that's the opposite of being on patrol, and also while he ranged far it took time to cover those distances. You didn't have single pairs of ships following each other halfway around the globe (which cape horn to galapagos almost is, ok almost quaterway).

And I feel they should get merged into sea regions which is in which ships should operate. Again like HoI4.

A fairly simple solution to this is available via my proposed EU4 Ship Designer. Rather than add 2 entirely new ship types, you can just customize existing ships into bomb ketches and rocket ships. For instance, below, you could free up space for rockets by getting rid of the marines, down-sizing the crew, and stripping out most of the cannons for rockets:
View attachment 466388

A crude version of the rocket ship might look like the following:
View attachment 466390
Here you can see we've replaced the marines with rockets in this in-progress image. HOI4's Ship Designer works this way, and allows players to customize different ships for vastly different roles. For instance cruisers can be made into heavy & light cruisers via gun choice, and further divided into anti-submarine warfare, anti-aircraft, minelaying, and scout ships by how you decide to customize them. Something similar would no doubt be appreciated by EU4 players. Plus, if you found yourself no longer needing rocket ships or bomb ketches, you could always refit the ship above, remove the rockets, reinstall the cannons, and add marines for a cost.
Individually designed ships was overkill in HoI and it's overkill in eu4. It's the systematic stuff that needs fixing. Also EU extend over a way longer timeframe a lot of ships will simply be lost to being outdated. And if you start really looking at it you'll quickly realize that upgrading ships actually doesn't make much sense.
 
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It mentions fire support during amphibious operations, so perhaps if you have a fleet of blockade strength, it would be able to provide fire support when you did an amphibious assault against an enemy army? That seems reasonable. It's a little more limited, but very historical. You could have the fire support halve or eliminate the amphibious landing penalty.
Yeah that would make sense but would also have problems with naval landings having penalties, so might end up just making it an even playing field.

Thank you for taking the time to read through my work. With regards to broadsides being used in naval barrages/sieges, I forgot to show the historical support for cannons being used in these instances. A great example of this is the history of Algiers. Under the Ottomans, it was a haven for piracy and bombarded by European fleets in retaliation. I count no fewer than six bombardments! As it happens, on multiple of those occasions, the European fleets used regular cannons in addition to mortar bombs and rockets.
Worth looking at the outcome as well. Out of the 7 examples you've given only 2 were a success, and then generally against outdated defences. That's even with ships designed for the role, which is why I don't think it really works in game and the fleets often did take damage back.

I'll have to check out the series. I was under the impression that naval artillery was generally larger than most land-based artillery, with only a few of the biggest coastal defense guns being larger than the largest naval guns: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/36-pounder_long_gun. 24-pounder siege guns were the heaviest artillery possessed by the French Army in contrast (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/24-pounder_long_gun).
They were larger than most field guns yes, they had easier transport however not bigger than coastal/fortress guns which didn't need to be moved, they also didn't have the issue of the moving base of a ship and the cramped conditions so could be longer and more accurate. Worth noting they mention the 36 pounders often being used on forts in that wiki entry.

A fairly simple solution to this is available via my proposed EU4 Ship Designer. Rather than add 2 entirely new ship types, you can just customize existing ships into bomb ketches and rocket ships. For instance, below, you could free up space for rockets by getting rid of the marines, down-sizing the crew, and stripping out most of the cannons for rockets:
Not seen great designs for ships in Stellaris so not sure how well the AI will manage in game.

Individually designed ships was overkill in HoI and it's overkill in eu4. It's the systematic stuff that needs fixing. Also EU extend over a way longer timeframe a lot of ships will simply be lost to being outdated. And if you start really looking at it you'll quickly realize that upgrading ships actually doesn't make much sense.
In some ways it doesn't in others it does. It was common for ships to get rebuilds but not entirely to a new ship but an intermediate. Like building up those older ships which still had "towers" / fore and aft decks to add more space but I don't think it was overly common. But also many ships didn't really become outdated for the most part, they could upgrade elements of them such as the guns. Only the galley types really went out but many nations kept with them.
 
In some ways it doesn't in others it does. It was common for ships to get rebuilds but not entirely to a new ship but an intermediate. Like building up those older ships which still had "towers" / fore and aft decks to add more space but I don't think it was overly common. But also many ships didn't really become outdated for the most part, they could upgrade elements of them such as the guns. Only the galley types really went out but many nations kept with them.
You could refit ships to make them somewhat useful, but only for so long and new ships using new shipbuilding techniques were pretty much always better.
Old ships were generally put to good use by being filled with rocks and out of date cannons and scuttled as to form the basis for piers, groynes, and artificial shallows/reefs (to funnel ships in through the openings you could control. Around the Swedish naval base at Karlskrona there are hundreds of ships scuttled all over the archipelago when they were to old to be of further use. Oh and these are not galleys because Galleys were part of the archipelago fleet which was never stationed at Karlskrona, it was the high sea fleet that was stationed there.
Of course it's not just that they were outdated some simply wore out and at a certain point it was cheaper to build new ones than maintaining the old ones.
 
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Yeah that would make sense but would also have problems with naval landings having penalties, so might end up just making it an even playing field.

I have changed the Fire Support section to reflect your feedback. It will now only affect landing armies dice roll penalties versus troops already in place. That should make naval invasions easier.

Worth looking at the outcome as well. Out of the 7 examples you've given only 2 were a success, and then generally against outdated defences. That's even with ships designed for the role, which is why I don't think it really works in game and the fleets often did take damage back.

It did work on occasion though, which is why I took the approach. You'll notice in Ship Designer there are options to add mortars and rockets to ships, and I suppose you could adjust the system to have it dramatically discount cannon fire and massively buff the effects of mortar and rocket fire. That would make ships designed for sieges more worthwhile.

Not seen great designs for ships in Stellaris so not sure how well the AI will manage in game.

Perhaps it's time Paradox put some reinforcement learning into their AI? Rather than just manually code its priorities, they could set a few ground rules and then have it get better via trial and error. Reinforcement learning AI has been making some impressive strides lately, beating even the world's best Go players: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-computer-beat-the-go-master/. I can imagine something similar for ship-building might work nicely.


In some ways it doesn't in others it does. It was common for ships to get rebuilds but not entirely to a new ship but an intermediate. Like building up those older ships which still had "towers" / fore and aft decks to add more space but I don't think it was overly common. But also many ships didn't really become outdated for the most part, they could upgrade elements of them such as the guns. Only the galley types really went out but many nations kept with them.

I believe one of the more common rebuilds was to actually raze the forecastle and aftercastle of ships to improve their seaworthiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razee
Wikipedia said:
During the transition from galleons to more frigate like warships (1600 – 1650) there was a general awareness that the reduction in topweight afforded by the removal of upperworks made ships better sailers; Rear Admiral Sir William Symonds noted after the launch of Sovereign of the Seas that she was "cut down" and made a safe and fast ship. In 1651 Sovereign of the Seas was again made more manoeuvrable by reducing the number of cannon. Ships were razeed not only by navies but also by pirates – Charles Johnson's A General History of the Robberies and Murders of the most notorious Pyrates[4] describes George Lowther refitting Gambia Castle in 1721:
They one and all came into measures, knocked down the cabins, made the ship flush fore and aft, prepared black colours, new named her the Delivery, having about 50 hands and 16 guns.

This did not reduce the number of gun decks, but had the effect of making the razee ship much handier, since the forecastle and aftcastle no longer created windage, top weight was reduced, and the ship was made lighter overall.

This would probably be a worthwhile thing to do with some of the older Galleons while a player saves up to build War Galleons.
 
But Sir Francis drake was a pivateer, that's the opposite of being on patrol, and also while he ranged far it took time to cover those distances. You didn't have single pairs of ships following each other halfway around the globe (which cape horn to galapagos almost is, ok almost quaterway).

Although in fairness the British sending a pair of ships from Brazil to Valparaiso, Chile to take down the USS Essex and the USS Essex Junior does bear a resemblance to the Master & Commander plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valparaíso


Individually designed ships was overkill in HoI and it's overkill in eu4. It's the systematic stuff that needs fixing. Also EU extend over a way longer timeframe a lot of ships will simply be lost to being outdated. And if you start really looking at it you'll quickly realize that upgrading ships actually doesn't make much sense.

86.8% of the people clicking on the Ship Designer's announcement thought it was a great idea (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-ship-designer.1127181/), and I've seen few complaints about it from most HOI4 players since "Man the Guns" release. Currently it's difficult to create truly historical ships, as the ships we have are amalgams of many others. For instance, HMS Victory had 104 guns, but every 3-decker has 120. Where's the harm in letting players be able to create their own HMS Victory, Bucentaure, or the USS Constitution? If need be we can always have the AI stick to templates.

As for the systemic stuff, I have major changes mentioned to fix naval leaders, naval morale, transports, engagement width, trade companies, both navy-related idea groups, their policies, raiding, privateering, adding in the ability to do a naval Quasi War, naval power projection, naval marines, the ability of large fleets to conquer unprotected coastal provinces, and the ability of non-European countries to build their historical ships like Treasure Ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_treasure_ship) and Turtle Ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship). Surely being able to pulverize the fleets of the Maghreb fleets raiding your Castile without declaring an official war would be a nice way to curb nuisance raiding, no? Are there any systemic changes in the overhaul that you like? What about not having to choose between hiring admirals and generals?
 
You could refit ships to make them somewhat useful, but only for so long and new ships using new shipbuilding techniques were pretty much always better.
Old ships were generally put to good use by being filled with rocks and out of date cannons and scuttled as to form the basis for piers, groynes, and artificial shallows/reefs (to funnel ships in through the openings you could control. Around the Swedish naval base at Karlskrona there are hundreds of ships scuttled all over the archipelago when they were to old to be of further use. Oh and these are not galleys because Galleys were part of the archipelago fleet which was never stationed at Karlskrona, it was the high sea fleet that was stationed there.
Of course it's not just that they were outdated some simply wore out and at a certain point it was cheaper to build new ones than maintaining the old ones.
Oh I know they did scuttle for those reasons, but just saying it's not like they came out with a new ship and then all ships of that class were out of date. It took time for many older ships to get dropped.

Yeah I think the issue is more that they were worn out, wood does rot and battle damage can cause issues.

I believe one of the more common rebuilds was to actually raze the forecastle and aftercastle of ships to improve their seaworthiness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Razee
Depends on the ship and time period. Galleons didn't have much to updeck with and did have issues with maneuverability. But there was a number of choices they had to convert older ships to fill a more useful role.
 
Although in fairness the British sending a pair of ships from Brazil to Valparaiso, Chile to take down the USS Essex and the USS Essex Junior does bear a resemblance to the Master & Commander plot: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Valparaíso




86.8% of the people clicking on the Ship Designer's announcement thought it was a great idea (https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/hoi4-dev-diary-ship-designer.1127181/), and I've seen few complaints about it from most HOI4 players since "Man the Guns" release. Currently it's difficult to create truly historical ships, as the ships we have are amalgams of many others. For instance, HMS Victory had 104 guns, but every 3-decker has 120. Where's the harm in letting players be able to create their own HMS Victory, Bucentaure, or the USS Constitution? If need be we can always have the AI stick to templates.

As for the systemic stuff, I have major changes mentioned to fix naval leaders, naval morale, transports, engagement width, trade companies, both navy-related idea groups, their policies, raiding, privateering, adding in the ability to do a naval Quasi War, naval power projection, naval marines, the ability of large fleets to conquer unprotected coastal provinces, and the ability of non-European countries to build their historical ships like Treasure Ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_treasure_ship) and Turtle Ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_ship). Surely being able to pulverize the fleets of the Maghreb fleets raiding your Castile without declaring an official war would be a nice way to curb nuisance raiding, no? Are there any systemic changes in the overhaul that you like? What about not having to choose between hiring admirals and generals?
Victory was one ship, and right at the end of the period.
And by sheer merit of time you'd be designing far more ships in a game of eu4, because you carefully handcrafted ship will on avarage be in service for less than a century.

Oh I know they did scuttle for those reasons, but just saying it's not like they came out with a new ship and then all ships of that class were out of date. It took time for many older ships to get dropped.

Yeah I think the issue is more that they were worn out, wood does rot and battle damage can cause issues.
Well maintained wood doesn't rot that quickly and yet most ships were in service for less than a century. We still have barks from ships almost as old as the ones scuttled all over Karlskrona, they're in the water every summer and the national maritime museum sail them with tourists. The ships they were built for lasted less than a century but the barks are still around 200 years later. Granted you don't get ship's worm in brackwater which helps a lot.
 
Well maintained wood doesn't rot that quickly and yet most ships were in service for less than a century. We still have barks from ships almost as old as the ones scuttled all over Karlskrona, they're in the water every summer and the national maritime museum sail them with tourists. The ships they were built for lasted less than a century but the barks are still around 200 years later. Granted you don't get ship's worm in brackwater which helps a lot.
True it doesn't rot that quickly, but even after 100 years it will have issues, copper bottoms did also help but we also have a range of new methods and mechanics which does help with maintaining ships.
 
True it doesn't rot that quickly, but even after 100 years it will have issues, copper bottoms did also help but we also have a range of new methods and mechanics which does help with maintaining ships.
It also helps being out maybe 25 days and either docked or being maintained on land the rest of the year. Any natural decay I would say is secondary to the wear and tear they get from being used. Not to mention ships simply lost due to harsh weather. Of course as the saying goes a badly run ship can drown you on a calm sea.

The point that there's a significant turnover of ships in this era. Which makes microing each individual one less than opportune.
 
Love these ideas. I'd also add that I'd like to see the flagship system overhauled. It makes little sense how only one major ship can be built. What we could instead have is a system based on naval force limit and naval ideas. It's a bit redundant choosing trade power for your flag ship instead of fighting bonuses. I'd like to be able to put a flagship in my main merchant navy, (on that note why has the merchant navy decision disappeared?) And a major fighting ship for my main force. Combine that with your idea to separate generals and admirals and a overhaul of the ship types and we could actually create seperate navies for trade and warfare.
 
Love these ideas. I'd also add that I'd like to see the flagship system overhauled. It makes little sense how only one major ship can be built. What we could instead have is a system based on naval force limit and naval ideas. It's a bit redundant choosing trade power for your flag ship instead of fighting bonuses. I'd like to be able to put a flagship in my main merchant navy, (on that note why has the merchant navy decision disappeared?) And a major fighting ship for my main force. Combine that with your idea to separate generals and admirals and a overhaul of the ship types and we could actually create seperate navies for trade and warfare.

Thank you for your support, Leonidas. I've adjusted the Flagship limit in the OP to allow for more flagships to be built earlier in the game.
----
A) Flagship limit - Flagship count would be limited to 1 per 100 force limit and by the naval leader pool. This means each country would be able to build one flagship at game’s start. They would only be able to build a second once they reached 100 naval force limit. To build a third would require a 3 naval leader pool limit (Kingdoms and up) plus another 100 force limit. This would continue on as far as your force limit and naval leader pool could expand.
----

You would be able to build a second flagship after reaching 100 naval force limit, which would mean good players of major powers should be able to get a second flagship sometime in the early 1500s. Admittedly this may be a bit less than you want, but should give players a lot more flagship options. As part of my flagship overhaul you will note that ONLY Light Ship-type flagships can have the Trade Map upgrade, so players will have an incentive to choose something other than Heavy ship flagships. I just added a modest change to a policy to allow for an additional flagship:

e. Maritime & Innovative

a) +1 Flagship limit
b) -10% Diplomatic Technology Cost​

With regards to overhauling ship types, I have done two major changes. I stripped out Transports EXCEPT for Trade Companies, which will use them as the trade ships that they were. Instead regular ships will be able to transport troops but in more limited quantities. This should keep the "dead weight" of transports down in fleets, allowing you to optimize more for trade and warfare. I have also added Medium Ships, which are meant to represent the main warships of most nations in this era. They can generally be considered 2-deckers, and a great example of one was the French flagship at the Battle of Trafalgar, Bucentaure: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_ship_Bucentaure. If you wanted to build Bucentaure-class ships (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bucentaure-class_ship_of_the_line) in-game, all you would need to do is increase a Large Third Rate +10% in size, add marines, and add a French Design modification. I get 838 crew, including 762 sailors and 76 Marines, which is barely 2 less than the actual ship's complement. Please let me know if you have any suggestions for ways to further improve this overhaul!
 
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