Introduction
I play naval maps. I play naval maps a lot. I remember back when this game came out I would hog the telephone and play comp stomps with my friend on Caribbean, feeling like vice admirals because we could beat the expert AI on water (even if we couldn’t on land).
Well fast forward to today and although I’m no pro, I’m no slouch either. I briefly broke into the top 500, I’ve been modding the AI, taking time to test it; and I’ve noticed there’s a few issues associated with naval gameplay that I would like to discuss.
Lastly, before I dive into my thoughts here, I want to say that I had hoped I would be able to solve most of them through modding, but alas I’m not that good yet so hopefully we can settle for only a partial solution.
Over the following sections I’ll briefly go over some things I don’t think are actually issues, and then get into what I think is holding back this gameplay.
1. The counter system is fine, and the ship limits are fine
1.a The current counter system is fine, but under-utilized
Ships currently come in a few different varieties: There’s the caravel; a ship that is decent in combat and can fish. There’s the galleon, a tanky ship that can take damage and has armor vs land targets. Then there’s the frigate that excels in combat but can’t fish, and the monitor that excels at attacking land targets but can’t do anything else.
All of this builds a counter system that looks like:
- Ship vs ship
- Ship vs building/land artillery
- General purpose/specialized versions of each
As far as I can tell, this is perfectly fine. There have been threads about changing the roles or creating a fully unique counter system on water, but I don’t see why the current system can’t work.
The issue instead, is that there’s very little opportunity or reason to exploit the counter system. I didn’t even know until recently that galleons had armor against land units. As far as I knew the only reason to make one was because it trained units. We rarely see combat between ships and towers, or ships and land artillery.
1.b Ship limits are good
I get why there are separate limits to ships in this game. Having 1 frigate is a big deal. That’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned, and I like that you can’t just make endless frigates.
That being said, I’m not necessarily opposed to a different method of limiting the amount of ships on the map, I just don’t think it’s one of the issues.
2. The AI on Water Maps is non-functional
You probably could’ve guessed this was coming if you’ve heard of Assertive Seawall. The AI, simply put, does not function adequately on water maps. I’ll try not to dig too far into it, but on semi-water maps the AI does very little on the water and on maps like Caribbean or Amazonia, it’s practically non-functional.
From what I can tell, this is a huge deal for naval gameplay. PvP gameplay limits itself to standard maps despite not having this issue, and since the majority of players don’t play competitively anyway, I suspect this is a huge limitation holding back casual players.
If you want to give it a shot, my mod Assertive Seawall does give you a good time on water, though there are still plenty of improvements to be made and at best it’ll force a stalemate on water.
3. Naval Maps do not align with the designed gameplay
There’s two big issues here, and both relate to how naval combat tends to shake down on naval maps.
3.a The current selection of naval maps diverges from the naval counter system
When looking at the naval counter system it’s clear that we should be engaging in battles between ships and land artillery, but we don’t really have any maps that encourage that sort of combat.
Let’s look at our current selection of maps:
- Caribbean
- Amazonia
- Ceylon
- Archipelago
- Corsica & Sardina
- Mediterranean
On every map except Amazonia naval combat is fought on the open ocean. That’s OK to have, but why is that almost every naval map choice? We have a counter system built around land v ships but when it comes to our selection of naval maps it’s all open ocean where you only encounter other ships.
What I want to see are significant choke points on water. Cliff faces where artillery and towers can be staged to block ships from landing or passing. Maybe even an island that provides significant map control. Anything that forces land and naval units to interact.
3.b. “Run Around” Gameplay is encouraged on Water
There’s two ways to win on water. You can take the sea, train lots of fishing boats, and use your control of water to boom. Or you can make 1 Caravel, load up 50 units, and run past the enemy’s fleet to drop them off.
In what I’ve experienced, winning on the water gives you some ancillary benefits but is not a prerequisite for winning a water map. I think most of us would prefer that it be a prerequisite, but in practice even when you take control of the water it’s far too easy for an opponent to sneak one ship past you.
I would like to see a couple changes here:
- Ships loaded with units move slower
- Ships get heavily snared (even more so when transporting units)
- Ships with too many transports take additional damage
These changes would make it much more difficult to sneak past an opponent that controls the water, and make control of the water far more consequential.
4. Naval Bombardment. Where is the Naval Bombardment?
You’ve finally done it. You’ve taken the water, you’ve landed some units to engage the enemy forces, and now what? The enemy just retreated inland slightly and now your ships are useless.
I would love to see another type of attack that allows ships to engage inland enemy forces, even if it be with a weaker, less accurate bombardment. It could even be varied across ships, where galleons have a strong bombardment and caravels a weak bombardment. I just want to see naval forces able to project their power inland.
5. Minor Issues
There are some little things that bother me about the water:
- Native civs get no water benefit from allying with natives, they still can only make the normal amount of canoes.
- No dedicated anti-water base defenses. I get why this is the case, but I would love to be able to build something amounting to a stationary culverin or coastal gun that could specialize in combating ships.
- Shallows should allow small ships through (maybe even just canoes?), instead they block everything.
- There’s only one type of infinite fishing resource, and nothing for fishing boats to do if there’s not enough whales.
Conclusion
So what are your thoughts? Can we breathe some life into naval gameplay, and do you agree with any of these issues and suggestions?