River boats/ships

What would you like to see in Freeciv? Do you have a good idea what should be improved or how?
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vodot
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by vodot »

nef wrote: I am not sufficiently familiar with Civilization II, so I don't know where the limitation of non-marines comes into freeciv; the same wikipedia entry on triremes refers to the boarding troops as "marines". This issue seems to put freeciv ruleset devs at sixes and sevens. Personally I would like to see freeciv special rulesets (classic, civ2civ3, experimental) offer a musket marine with a suitable graphic (upright soldier in high vis uniform), and to provide the marine attribute to at least one unit in the pre gunpowder era such that it could be used at any time a player can build a galley. This would fix the one tile island problem once and for all.
Hi Nef! My upcoming ruleset (Resplendent) adds four new marine units (bringing the total to 5)! Images below are not for distribution; licenses not yet procured in all cases.

Raiders (mideval):
Raiders.png
Raiders.png (2.94 KiB) Viewed 7237 times
Grenadiers (early gunpowder):
Grenadier.png
Grenadier.png (2.13 KiB) Viewed 7237 times
Marines (WWI):
Marine.png
Marine.png (1.58 KiB) Viewed 7237 times
"Modern" Marines (WWII):
Modern_Marine.png
Modern_Marine.png (2.03 KiB) Viewed 7237 times
Specops (which can also paradrop):
Specops.png
Specops.png (1.87 KiB) Viewed 7237 times
Last edited by vodot on Fri Jul 13, 2018 7:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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vodot
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by vodot »

Corbeau wrote:
nef wrote:I think this clearly indicates that (some) 'bigland' units could be (and were) carried on triremes. I do not understand the point of denial.
The key word in the above quote is "some". Catapults used in Civ are wall-breaking heavy units that create a big advantage in the field. Not the ones that were being carried by triremes/galleons. I don't know if there ever was a battle in pre-1000AD history where naval bombardment contributed in taking a city. I'd say there was quite the opposite: all ships stayed well outside the range of missile weapons positioned on the coasts because their weapons - adjusted for light weight so that they can be installed on a ship - were no mach for the machine firmly dug into the ground.

So we could have a different kind of catapults that can be carried on triremes, but such catapults shouldn't have Attack strength more than 2.
I agree with this. I've always thought that the ship's attack strength in general is standing in for it's ranged/ballistae attack against land forces- which is why naval units are almost worthless for this role until Frigates (which could indeed pound weaker shore defenses). If you wanted a cost 20/25, A2(maybe 3 for cost=30)/D1/M1/F1/H10 "Ballistae" unit with the "Marine" flag... I don't see why you couldn't have that. Construction or engineering should suffice as a prereq.
Corbeau wrote:So, I'm afraid, no "marine" flag would be even remotely realistic until way after Musketeers. We can discuss playability, but then that would depend on what kind of game you want.
This I disagree with from a gameplay perspective- units could still have the marine flag, they would simply need to be balanced for a given role. Expensive, bad defenders could, I think, fairly be given the marine flag, given the cost of getting that unit to it's target (consider the ship as well). I'm not saying they should hit a city like a catapult, but they should have a role- probably harassment and penetration. For historical justification, I cite the Norse (after whom my ancient 'Raider' marine unit is drawn).
Corbeau wrote:A second best solution would be that a river takes a lot of MPs cross (increasnig the cost instead of reducing it), but you can still have boats that are able to carry units along.
I definitely agree with this.
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by XYZ »

Trident Raider :D
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Corbeau
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Corbeau »

XYZ wrote:Trident Raider :D
And that's a trident in his hand, right? :D
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Corbeau
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Corbeau »

vodot wrote:
Corbeau wrote:So, I'm afraid, no "marine" flag would be even remotely realistic until way after Musketeers. We can discuss playability, but then that would depend on what kind of game you want.
This I disagree with from a gameplay perspective- units could still have the marine flag, they would simply need to be balanced for a given role. Expensive, bad defenders could, I think, fairly be given the marine flag, given the cost of getting that unit to it's target (consider the ship as well). I'm not saying they should hit a city like a catapult, but they should have a role- probably harassment and penetration. For historical justification, I cite the Norse (after whom my ancient 'Raider' marine unit is drawn).
Hm, very good point.

A weak attacker and also a not-too-good defender, but ignoring terrain effects (but still, not too fast)? That would be a blast.
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* Freeciv LongTurn, a community of one-turn-per-day players and developers
* LongTurn Blog - information nexus with stuff and stuff and stuff
* Longturn Discord server; real-time chatting, discussing, quarrelling, trolling, gaslighting...
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by XYZ »

XYZ wrote:
Trident Raider :D

Corbeau wrote:
And that's a trident in his hand, right? :D
You are a snake Corbeau! :D Its a raider for trident graphic that will sail down the Danube...
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by XYZ »

And that's a trident in his hand, right? :D
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nef
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by nef »

Corbeau wrote:I don't know if there ever was a battle in pre-1000AD history where naval bombardment contributed in taking a city.
I may have been misunderstood. I was not suggesting that catapults should have the marine attribute. I understood that the wikipedia entry was talking about trireme attacks onto other ships (which were not so effective either). The point I was making was that galleys could carry equipment as well as personnel.
One strategy was crucial, and nothing ever came close to it: holding a line. After you hold a line, you can consider what to do with taht line, move forward, back, left or right, but unless you hold a line very firmly, you are about to be slaughtered.

Units landing from ships are not doing so in a line. They are doing it in disarray which lasts quite enough for any defences present to kill them off.


The issue I was talking about was that of occupying the city. In this situation there are NO defenses left in the city. It is true that marines can also attack defenders but that could be made expensive, as you please. Vodot may have been thinking along these lines.

I can think of three reasons why marines were introduced:

a) (cynically) capricious creep of complexity,
b) Corbeau's issue,
c) an attempt to make city capture a little more difficult in the earlier parts of the game by forcing players to use the barb strategy of landing on your doorstep one turn, and then attacking the next.

I believe I have answered Corbeau.

As for the third, I have an alternative suggestion:

From the very beginning Civ I had the concept of 'not moved this turn'. This was (and still is) implicit in creating the fortified state. Civ II introduced the EXPLICIT use in HP recovery. My suggestion is to make this a reqs vector predicate. This would have a variety of uses but I will only talk about two here.

First, one could specify that a sea borne land unit could only occupy a city if the transporter was 'not moved'. This means that the transporter would have to finish its turn next to the city, in order for the attack to occur the next turn giving the defender one turn to arrange a defense. Not exactly Civ II compliant but I would say small beer - there are bigger fish to fry.

Second, this predicate could be used as an additional option to stop the exploit of running a unit along a river with a sequence of triremes. This also applies to the open sea with any transporter - an exploit much abused in Civ II (and could therefore justify the non compliance of my little feature.)

Wahazar wrote:River battle ships, such monitor, should be slightly worse than their naval counterparts,
wikipedia:"After the first clashes of ironclads (both with wooden ships and with one another) took place in 1862 during the American Civil War, it became clear that the ironclad had replaced the unarmored ship of the line as the most powerful warship afloat. This type of ship would come to be very successful in the American Civil War.[3]

Ironclads were designed for several roles, including as high seas battleships, coastal defense ships, and long-range cruisers."

It is my understanding that battle between CSS Virginia and USS Monitor was entirely within the rivers' estuaries at Hampton Roads. While the USS Monitor itself was not seaworthy (it sank in a storm - anyone remember triremes?), the naval arms race lead to (armored) dreadnoughts and then to (unarmored) battleships. I might point out that the name 'battleship' came from the precursor to the ironclad - SHIP of the line (of BATTLE) - there is thus an unbroken sequence of obsolescence of flagships [There is in fact a fifth and current - the carrier]. Note that destroyers were NEVER flagships!!!
Wahazar wrote:Corbeau wrote:
A second best solution would be that a river takes a lot of MPs cross (increasnig the cost instead of reducing it), but you can still have boats that are able to carry units along.

It is exactly a reason, why I started this thread and proposed some river boat/ships tiers.
I should apologize to Wahazar for drifting off topic but I do think there was a natural progression. As for that initial topic I am not really sure what the issue is. The fact is that before bridge building rivers ARE an obstacle. And this continues - many a battle was fought over the control/destruction of bridges.

As for travelling ALONG rivers there is ambiguity/conflation: do we consider the unit's movement, or do we consider the unit's ability to co-opt some unspecified transport. I am not sure I know the general answer to this. This issues extends to roads and RAILROADS also. I note that tilesets have had, and still have, an unused unit - the train!
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Wahazar »

nef wrote: As for travelling ALONG rivers there is ambiguity/conflation: do we consider the unit's movement, or do we consider the unit's ability to co-opt some unspecified transport. I am not sure I know the general answer to this. This issues extends to roads and RAILROADS also. I note that tilesets have had, and still have, an unused unit - the train!
We always need to have playability in our mind - does trains/river ships bring fun into the game, or opposite?
I have plans to introduce trains and riverboats into my ruleset, but on limited scale: civil units such caravans, workers, settlers can still use rivers and railroad like it was in case of classic rules, but military units need to board river boat/train, to gain high movement speed along river/railroad.

It would be nightmare, if player is forced to use boat/train each time he need to send caravan or engineers - there is lot of such small actions.
On the other hand, military units usually moves are rare, massive one-direction campaigns, thus using land carrier make sense.
It would also resolve all these restrictinfra issues, instead of such stilted settings, you can just pillage railroad on the river and enemy cannot move his train full of infantry further.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
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Re: River boats/ships

Post by Wahazar »

If talking about marines - I have idea of unit, graphic: soldier with sabre, rather weak - A2, D2, which would have AttackNonNative and Marines flag, thus he could attack other ships while begin on board.
Augmented2 ruleset/modpack for freeciv2.6: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=91047
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