Potential ideas to improve gameplay on water

[icicle83]

@NauseantWings09

I would disagree that this is a rare outcome and Islands are particularly susceptible to this happening. The distribution of land in Islands is the smallest and a player’s eco and production are most exposed to naval aggression if the opponent has sufficient scouting.

And that is exactly the reason why games don’t drag out on Islands for long if one player has clear naval supremacy. Ships including cannon Galleons just reach nearly everything.

Don’t get me wrong. Island games can get very lengthy as well. But then it’s usually a fairly even game, where both sides have still opportunities to win.

[Mahazona]

@Skadidesu

You need at last 3 ships for rock paper scissors but a pure rock paper scissors is boring so you need 1 or 2 more ships that can mix things up.

9 types of generic ships is just overkill to fix boring.

[Skadidesu]

yes.
Those are just 9 ideas I have. Not that all of them have to be implemented in exactly that way.

Some of those 9 would be more regional units though like the Fire Ship.
And the Trebuchet Ship is basically a reskinned Cannon Galleon to make it fit better to civilisations that have no gunpowder units on land.

[NauseantWings09]

@Skadidesu

Having a suicide unit as part of the rock paper scissors system does not feel good.
Also having a “melee” unit (Fire Galley line) counter an “archer” unit (Galley line) is strange and often doesn’t work as well in practice.

Agreed, the suicide unit seems more like a catch-up unit to help balance out a lopsided engagement. You can’t really use demo-ships to mop up their dock production or attack exposed land production. Also the melee fire ship ceases to become an effective counter the more galleys that are massed against it so it’s pretty niche as well.
I don’t know that adding multiple classes would force players to diversify that much unless the classes are extremely hard counters that can overcome weaker units even when massed.

[FossilConch2830]

maby they add this later?

[Louis0108]

As I mentioned before a little and simple to implement change could be Pirate Ships.

Pirate ships already appeared in costume scenarios, they “Board” (Convert) other ships just like monks converting siege units by getting close to them.

They can be part of some Civilisation or for new Campaigns as a “paid for” Mercenary.

Also (with NO historical basis) it would be nice a “Ship” with the same use as a granary. A ship that you can station any place in the water with very slow mobility where fishing ships can drop off food from fishing or fishing nets. Maybe also this ship can have some light defense like the Harbors but with lower range and accuracy.

One more suggestion based on some of the comments regarding the navy supporting the land battles; what if the Meta allows it, all ships touching the shore or standing on shallows get an increase in range and accuracy. This way they can support land battles better but only by risking being attacked by land units.

This can also be accomplished by a battle mode on ships, let’s called “Beached” with the same packing/unpacking times of a Trebuchet, where it would take a few seconds to activate and a few seconds to disengage. (Like a trebuchet).