I love all the reworking of the naval system (except the appearance of the hulk) be there is one thing I hate :
In the upcoming rework the Portuguese and the Viking will loose access to the demolition ship.
It’s not for a balance reason but because the IU is too small (3x5 tiles). I’m not a fan to research naval technology in the university but why not we still have access to naval technology. But loosing access to an unit just for an IU design will be sad.
Imagine you play as the Portuguese, a civilization who use gunpowder, you can build bombard canon, canon galleon, organ gun, handcannoner but you cannot put barrels of gunpowder on a ship to use him as a demolition ship.
Also any future civilization who have a castle age naval unit (which will be upgrade to elite in imperial age) will not have access to demolition ship. This will be sad.
Please increase the size of the IU (3x6 tiles or even 3x7 tiles) or put the naval upgrade in the second page of the dock as below.
just delete heavy demo upgrade and make it part of medium/heavy upgrade. Possibly Delete Elite Cannon Galleon too. Give the Elite stats to Cannon Galleon and remove Elite Cannon Galleon as a whole.
Please don’t swap Demo Ship for Fire Ship for Vikings. They are just too iconic without Fire Ship.
And please remove Galley line from Portuguese instead of Demo Ship line.
With this suggestion, essentially each civ’s naval UU line will replace a different basic ship (via keeping Vikings and Koreans the same, and only changing Portuguese):
Vikings: Longboat replaces Fire Ship line (status quo).
Koreans: Turtle Ship replaces Demolition Ship line (status quo).
Portuguese: Caravel replaces Galley line.
Instead of making the 3 more uniform, it further differentiates them.
(This also opens the window for a new civ whose naval UU replaces the Hulk line).
They should have just split the dock like in chronicles though I see the issue in having to basically revisit all campaign scenarios with water… and custom scenarios too…
just delete heavy demo upgrade and make it part of medium/heavy upgrade
Yes merging the demolition ship upgrade with the medium/heavy upgrade can be a solution.
Portuguese: Caravel replaces Galley line.
You’re right about caravel, she can replace the galley line because she fit the same role. Maybe also for the Spanish (and any future iberic civilization if they split the Spanish as Castile, Aragon and Navarre) as a regional unit. Having the spanish with caravels in the Montezuma campaign and not in skirmish mode in bad.
Vikings: Longboat replaces Fire Ship line.
No I think the longboat must replace the galley line because he fit the same role.
Koreans: Turtle Ship replaces Demolition Ship line.
No I think it is a mistake because the turtle ship do not fit the same role. Also there is the problem of the Thirisadai who fit the same role of the galley line but more expansive. I think this two ships must not replace a normal naval unit line.
This also opens the window for a new civ whose naval UU replaces the Hulk line.
I agree, having unique naval unit who replace naval unit line can be good. I hope if they add a vandal civilization they replace the demolition ship line by a unique demolition incendiary war galley line (or an unit who upgrade with the age like the flemish militia without changing is appearance) as a trash demolition unique unit because the vandals use lot of them against the romans.
Today there is two regional replacement for the cannon galleon line. There is also many replacement of normal unit line with unique unit, regional unit of unique upgrade we can do this with naval units (longboat in place of galley line and caravel in place of galley line for the portuguese and the spanish)
Portuguese Cannon Galleons are about to receive too many stacked bonuses, some of them are stolen from other civs. That is the main problem that should be addressed first.
These two UUs don’t functionally overlap with the civs’ missing common units, but they have been the civs’ tech tree status quo for years.
The advantage of the Reddit proposal was it wouldn’t change the status quo for Vikings & Koreans, while making a fully reasonable change to Portuguese.
Though in overall, I prefer and support your proposal to rearrange the Dock into a build page and a tech page, instead of the plan to reduce it down to one page.
Among other things, it would have room for the Back to Work button, which the Dock in the 2026 plan can’t fit.
Under the 2026 plan, the Dravidian Dock would look like this:
Delete Cannon Galleon and Demo Upgrade. Cannon Galleon have Elite for free basically. Demo gets upgraded by warship line. Therefore you have now 2 more slot with much simpler option.
I think removing demo upgrade is reasonable because I wonder who invest a few hundred resource as upfront cost for suicide unit.
However, no more balance change for the sake of simple UI. Non elite -elite cannon galleon exist from AoK and cannon galleon serve as most function of elite cannon galleon just fine and no need to get sudden buffs. Also all civs getting cannon galleon will get elite cannon galleon? It also reduce depth. Although it is rare occasion to see elite upgrade of cannon galleon, I still want options to upgrade cannon galleon for the choice and investment from players not for just giving free.
Another reason I support “separate build & tech pages in the Dock”:
For the sake of backwards compatibility and giving players more flexible options, it seems better for the Dock and University to be both able to research naval techs.
No, they haven’t forgotten, this is by design. Ornlu’s preview shows they have moved the Dravidian hoax ship to the bottom-right corner.
The other UU ships need an extra button slot for the elite upgrade; the hoax ship is unlocked in Imperial Age and has no upgrade.
I must say I find the new dock a little bit too crowded, and it feels like there is no system behind the icon placement. Looking at the other buildings in the first line, we see tthe units. Below that are the corresponding unit improvements. The last line contains general upgrades. This system is missing here.
I think it’s good that there is no more second screen and that some tech is going to the university. However, the limited space makes it difficult to fit everything systematically into one building screen.
A second dock could help to organise things more effectively. But I understand when they don’t want to do it.
Make the UI bigger or, if this is not possible, use colour coding to give each icon a coloured frame, e.g. green for non-combat units, red for military units, violet for upgrades/techs, etc., to make it easier to find things.
Today we are in a rework for a reason. We simply want to use Cannon Galleon to snipe down Castles from water. Otherwise you wouldn’t use it for anything else. Not to mention its expensive enough to upgrade. I just see it more of a hurdle than anything. Remember classic M@A problem? When extra techs made it more useless to tech into instead removing techs solved some issues. Not perfect but teching into is somewhat easier today. Again Elite upgrade doesnt have much benefit to speak of.
