Ships of various strength and defence

[SunsetScorpio]

I suspect that one old idea of Warlords-I may be revealed. Namely, the producing of ships. For instance, of ones that are stronger and faster than usual. That can carry more units and so on. Some ships may have additional bonuses.

[Pillager]

Building ships in OG Warlords took waaaaay too long. But, I think the mechanic was pretty sound (ships are built at coastal cities). I'm not quite sure why W2 went with the whole 'units transform into ships at ports' system....never did feel quite right.

[KGB]

Pillager,

I'm not quite sure why W2 went with the whole 'units transform into ships at ports' system....never did feel quite right.

It's a simple reason actually. The AI. In the War I the AI never built or used ships. Steve mentioned to me this is why it was abandoned in War 2/3/4 etc because it was way to hard to program the AI to use ships that had to be built then embarked/disembarked. They tried again in BattleCry I and it again failed miserably as the AI was never able to properly use ships so any maps with water were hopeless for the AI.

So there is no reason you could not go back to the War I model since Warbarons has no AI. Except I believe that SnotlinG/Piranha have stated they hope to one day have one. If that's true then it really isn't feasible to go back to the War I model.

As you know, DLR had 4 ship types, each with a different amount of moves/combat values for units they carried. That kind of model could be done in Warbarons quite easily.

Incidentally, Warlords 5 was going to use a brand new model that was a hybrid of DLR plus some new ideas. It looks very promising if Warlords 5 ever gets made. It would be a model that could again be easily integrated into Warbarons and would add some new strategy into the game.

KGB

[Pillager]

Well...that makes sense. Thanks for the clarification KGB.

Yeah DLR had ship options.....varying from barges to elementals. I always did feel like a bit of a cheeseball when I transformed one of my light inf into an elemental at a port though.

[Jahukott]

I thought the simple ship/army conversion was a nice simplification in WL2 for human gameplay as well; it removes a perhaps interesting layer of management complexity, but the turns will be shorter by that. I haven't played WL1. How exactly were the ships produced there? Simply as special units produced at coastal cities?

[KGB]

Jahukott,

How exactly were the ships produced there? Simply as special units produced at coastal cities?

Yes. With as mentioned long (10+ turns) build times.

The differences with the current system being:

1) Each ship could carry 7 units.
2) Units on boats didn't fight. Instead the ships fought (or flying units fought ships) and the losing ship sunk with all it's armies aboard. So smart players would group say 2-3 ships and carry only 3-4 men so that losing 1 ship didn't lose the entire group of armies aboard. Or they unloaded armies at the end of each turn in case the ship was sunk
3) You could embark/disembark anywhere so there were no ports needed. This meant defending against ships was quite difficult (esp for the AI) and provided a lot of flexibility in moving armies on the water.

KGB

[Pillager]

I really enjoyed that original ship mechanic. Sure, they took too long to build, and they moved too quickly (which made seaborne raids even harder to defend against). But, I think a more moderate version (with less build time and movement) would work quite well....barring the AI issue.

You want to have some meaty choices in a strategy game. There are many factors that come into play when choosing between building more armies, or building a ship for flexibility of movement...perhaps this is why its hard to build an AI that is up to the task.

[KGB]

Pillager,

It's not the decision to build a ship that's the problem for the AI. I easily had the AI in Warlords IV deciding what units to build and when. The problem is that a movement path calculator can't 'see' moving via ships that you can embark/disembark on any where you want. So the AI has no clue that a city just across a river is *close* in terms of attacking (or needing to defend against) if it had a ship present. Plus there is the problem of needing to co-ordinate ships moving to pickup/drop off armies etc. Most of that requires multiple turn look ahead/planning of movement and co-coordinating of units and the AI typically only plans very short term things (this turn, maybe next turn at best). The time required to code that isn't worth the effort when there are so many other places the AI could be improved.

For some reason the Warlord I model has always been very popular with players. Players seem to long for an naval conquest/ruling of the seas with complex boats/naval battles. Which is strange given that everything important happens only on land and not on water (ie water is basically an obstacle to be traversed). To make water more interesting it would be cool to have ruins that could be on the shore squares (a shipwreck icon - containing only gold/item/sage never allies), possibly a water temple granting some bonus or maybe even a special city type on the shore squares that also functioned as a port too.

Personally though I'm fine with the current model. I would like to see more water uses as I mentioned in the above paragraph and I do think the Warlords 5 model for boats is much more interesting that what is here or was in DLR. Basically Warlords 5 was going to have 3 types of water: shoreline, shallow water (rivers, lakes, near shore) and deep (open ocean/sea) with varying movement for the water types based on type of boat (barges for example would be 1 on shore, 1 in shallow and 4 in deep, a warship would be 3 on shore, 2 in shallow and 1 in deep kind of thing). At a dock you could convert for free (gold cost) to a barge (ie there is always a barge available) with a minimal movement cost (say 2 points instead of all your movement) but other ship types required a fee (more gold = better ship to hire) and more movement cost (time to hire ship and it to arrive). Thus you could pick what you needed based on type of water to cross, if you expected to face enemy boats and how fast you needed to move (since ships move a varying speeds based on type).

There was also going to be weather/seasons in Warlords 5 allowing shore/shallow water to freeze solid in winter thus allowing land armies to cross rivers without boats but that's something entirely else.

KGB

[SunsetScorpio]

Perhaps, it would be interesting to conserve the current system of ships but implementing it by a possibility to produce stronger ones. Stronger ships will be used for the sea battles whereas currently used ones to transport units. To simplify problems for AI (but it is not a rather good idea) one may forbid the stronger battle ships to carry units.

[piranha]

There will be 2 new ships. Current plan is that when you are on the dock you can open a screen and upgrade ships.