Naval Battles are "meh"

[cerulean edge]

Since a lot of effort is present in this game development, the flavour and mechanics of the battles on the sea is not at the same level of everything else. It seems that this part has been left a little behind. I think that can be improved to reach at least the same standard present in every other aspect of this game, expecially due the fact that is present a race trait and also some spells linked to the adventures on the seas.

[burnt island]

A complex solution for this would be to create Dockable and embarkable ship units.

Have your Godir and hero led armies be able to "link" to a naval ship.

Then when facing combat with another naval ship a larger version of the sea battle field will emerge where the units on ships would engage combat with the enemy.

The ships themselves can be moved per turn and could attack and have their own health pool.

Ships could then collide and allow units to board the other ship, typical combat encounter would ensue.

This in my humble opinion is THE solution for naval combat.

Naval units should be tied to their culture and are upgradeable.

So no navy tomes, just enhancements per city and naval dock tier.

[wet talon]

Naval units are a bit of a pain imo. It's an entirely separate army that's only capable of battling on a terrain that may or may not be present and even then may not be relevant to the game at hand.

The concept of having a strong navy sounds fun but I have my reservations

[sly hill]

The water needs to matter more. Ship roles need to be more defined. Fantasy, in general, tends to kind of skim over the topic of naval warfare. Even in human history, military historians tend to have a myopic obsession with land battles. The way naval battles are conducted, especially in anything earlier than the modern era, is sort of this esoteric nebula to Joe Average.

Using history as a baseline, pre-gunpowder naval ships tended to utilize a small handful of mechanisms to damage one another. The first and most obvious was the ram, an armored section of the prow that protrudes forward below the waterline. Ships were made progressively larger and larger in this era, mostly to facilitate more energy in a ram.

The second is trained naval missile troops, such as archers. There's not much to tell, here; their goal was to harry the crews of enemy ships from a distance.

The third was boarding actions using specially trained and equipped marines.

To this end, I believe fighter, shield, and shock units that get on the water should be transformed into a "Heavy Gally" which functions as a charger on land. It strikes with a big first hit, and thereafter pins the enemy in place as their crews duke it out. Skirmishers, archers, and battlemage units transform into "Light Galley" that behaves as a missile ship with the constituent unit's attack. Support units turn into true transport ships that have a limited role, making them vulnerable and having to be protected on the high seas.

I would argue making heroes also turn into lightly armored transports with only limited cpability on the waves would increase the value of navies considerably.

With this baseline, we can start getting into specialist culture and tome ships that can really spice things up.

[edgy hearth]

I kind of hated the current system the first time I saw it, but I've come to accept that it's probably the best of a set of bad options.

It works, it's fun, and it's basically balanced, because naval battles are just reskinned land battles and the land battle system is great.

It's not realistic that a group of net throwers can immobilize a ship, or that knights on horseback have the same devastating charge on the water that they do on land but are thwarted by a boat full of pikemen, or that ships are as maneuverable as land units...

But if we're going to accept that a grizzly bear can summon a boat out of nowhere and steer it across the ocean, then frankly we can accept anything.

[vital river]

😂

didnt u hear? Bears make great ship captains

[valid flower]

Unbearably so

[vital river]

I see what u did there n_n

[edgy hearth]

There's an enormous number of effects that shouldn't work at sea, and it's not even as clear-cut as making a list of status effects that always work and a list that never work. Just for a really simple example, the barbarian warrior's shield bash shouldn't work, right? You can't shield bash a boat, that's absurd. But the Mystic Spellshield's stunning flash feels like it should work, because it's magic. They're both just melee-range stuns.

[valid flower]

You can shield bash a boat just fine. Just don't expect it to accomplish anything in any shape, way or form 😆

[warm peak]

I think units should not be able to embark on water without some ships built. And then army only can travel on those ships. And make those ships fun

[burnt island]

That's what I've been saying, ship combat has so much potential to be amazing

[indigo slate]

My favourite solution since AoW3 but it seems incredible complicated.
Reduced version would be just using interlocked ships as a map but that excludes pure naval units.

[burnt island]

Just have culture specific ships that exist per tier of city center and have units embark on em and battle on them

Ship combat paired with units simultaneously would be so sick

[indigo slate]

Another option I like ist that we get one transport ship like in aow1&2 yet it gets all the abilities of the embarked units as well as athe number of action points they all get. So they become like superunits but if they die all is kost

[burnt island]

I feel that that's not as cool as having both your standard units on a ship that has its own combat mechanics

But a valid option

[edgy hearth]

Hang on, are you imagining a naval battlefield where the ship is terrain that you can move, and the units embarked go with it?

[sinful canopy]

To be honest I would rather take this than the current one 😂. Kings Bounty style.

Either that or just make naval battles closer to campaign side of things. That is to say closer to CIV6 type of combat. You get ships and ships can interact with each other on the campaign, they can no longer initiate a battle. Hell, go even wilder with it and spice it up to compensate lack of battle... Make so that it is entirely RNG but modified via amount of your sea commitment via tomes/cities/events/artifacts.

None of this matters as it stands as there is simply not much to do on water. Not like there is so much to do on land either... apart from battles but i digress lel.

[edgy hearth]

I think that would be a complete pig to code, but it's an interesting idea.

[sinful canopy]

It probably is at this point of games life cycle. Water gameplay should have been in the oven longer BEFORE the game launched so they had good foundations to build on top of. As it stands I dont think we will ever see any sea content added to the game apart from say 1 or 2 wonders, thats considering the additions we got from golem update.

Right now everything about water feels rushed. You units become ships, cool, but ships dont realy have good animations/effects themselves BUT BECAUSE your units became ships they lost their own cool effects/animations... It is so weird lol. Ships also look identical for every culture. I refuse to believe a feudal culture ship and a reaver one would look identical... There is so much to improve if given resources and time but "complete pig to code" is where we at with constant "new content" expectancy and dead lines because of incoming DLC's.

[edgy hearth]

It'd be a complete pig to code even if the game was complete and no more DLCs were expected.

[sinful canopy]

But then again thats what they are being paid for as game developers aint it. More complex systems being done for the games of different scopes and been done for (old games). Its not really a justification.

[edgy hearth]

Every part of the battle system, from the AI to the user interface to the animations, will be coded with certain assumptions in mind, and I bet you one of those assumptions is "terrain doesn't move, and if it somehow does, the units standing on it don't go with it".

[sinful canopy]

Should a modder be coding a water gameplay for them? There is no point to water right now. It can safely be removed but its the only "blue color" thing we have in the game so it would probably hurt the aesthetics xD.

[edgy hearth]

I think we're talking past each other.

[sinful canopy]

You are a bit ahead of me I read your comments after I post mine yeah lol

[sinful canopy]

But last thing you post I already answered via this anyway. Why even have a water if thats the assumption?

[edgy hearth]

Because people will complain if you can't have a map with an ocean on it.

And people will complain if you CAN have a map with an ocean on it, but you can't cross the water in any way.

And people will complain if embarked armies can't interact with each other.

[sinful canopy]

And they complain now that they have ocean they dont get to have some decent working system on a water man LOL

[edgy hearth]

You can't make a 4X game that's ostensibly set on an earthlike planet with no ocean, that's just throwing in the towel and admitting you suck as a game company.

Would you really be happier if water was just an impassable barrier?

[sinful canopy]

Asking me specifically? I would actually yeah

I would have whined a bit maybe but I would played the game nonetheless. None gonna drop the game because they cant click on water

[edgy hearth]

Are you going to drop the game because you don't like the naval battle implementation? You can play on no-water maps.

Also, impassable oceans have knock-on effects: What about coastal cities? Can they still claim provinces in the water? If so, those would be unpillageable farms. Not the end of the world, but it does need to be considered.

(And why can't my flying wyvern cross the ocean?)

Ok, I do concede the point, you could have an AoW4 where water is totally impassable. It restricts the available map types, and some things would feel odd, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people would be asking for water gameplay. But you could do it.

If you did, I think everyone would be waiting for "the naval DLC"

[sinful canopy]

I think you are trying too hard to justify the lazy work of the devs on this water part of the gameplay man. Thats all good but notice everything you say can be talked against via its negative. Like, none would have dropped the game because of non-water. And just because they have a water system but half-baked it doesnt mean that they are so good at developing games.

I am not dropping the game because of its current state. I wont do that ever. This game is good. What I am saying is that it is completely improvable if 1 or 2 guys are given to this so they can approach it as a "project" but I doubt they had the resource.

[edgy hearth]

(Endless Legend actually had a naval DLC that massively expanded the role of oceans in the game and added a set of dedicated naval combat units. I don't know if they planned that from the start.)

[sinful canopy]

I have that game, yeah that race was cool

But much like Total War and its never coming "naval-dlc" Im not putting any money that we will get one either

Its sad reality for me

[edgy hearth]

Oh, I'd love to see an overhaul of naval combat, along with making the oceans matter more!

I just don't think "ships are terrain that can move" is going to happen, because of technical limitations.

[sinful canopy]

And one thing to know as a customer that you wont always get what you want. For example everyone wants something right now. Wishlists been piling up on Primal Fury.

Insect, wolf, fox, cat people
Negative race traits
Better animations
Lots of mount ideas...
More customizations regarding moles (or base game races in general)

How many of these we will get? Probably 1 out of 100 suggestions. Is this bad? Is it a deal breaker for customer? No. They inherently know that if the game had a wolf race it would be 100x times more enjoyable for them but they also know (I hope) that they might never get one

[edgy hearth]

I'd really love a good naval combat system too; one that feels fundamentally different from land battles.

[sinful canopy]

You and me both kek

[sinful canopy]

There is no technical limitation there. You warp the player into a map thats basically visually a ship (land battle version). And much like moving parts of land maps you can animate the water ever so insignificantly that it suggest that you are in actual water and not some theather scene

[burnt island]

exactly! and the ship would have your chosen people as npcs manning the ships guns and other amenities aside from you troops.

depending on the upgrades you place on the ship you could have cannons, ballistae, spearguns, catapults. You could try to aim for a ram if you chose a ramhead for the ship. the core objective is to either destroy the ship or capture it.

Captured ships could be converted to their equivalent of their new owners culture, destroyed ships provide material(s).

if the dev's decide to add trade routes to the game we could also see piracy at play, where a merchant ship has to defend itself against a hostile enemy.

Trade ships can also have units stored onto them, which will act as deterrence + additive ship strength and difficulty.

Trade ships being attacked on non empire tiles wont incur a war declaration but rather grievance(s)[Piracy]

A new treaty type could be added where trade ships between godir are protected by the signees.

The way this game is designed, if these ideas are implemented, would be the ONE strategy game to make naval combat and interactions actually have a degree of depth and multidimensional play as well as a new gold sink for mid to late game.

Could even add a new victory condition: Trade monopoly.

Where you attain economical control over the majority of the realm.

This is definitely AMBITIOUS.

But I know in my heart of hearts, the Dev's, if they will it and paradox is cool with it would definitely be able to make this happen.

[edgy hearth]

Oh, if you want a map that just looks like "two ships next to each other", that's absolutely possible! The ships would be too large compared to the size of the units, but it would be functional.

What I thought you meant was that the players would be able to control the ships and have them move around in the water, taking the embarked units with them. The ships would, presumably, be able to be targeted and damaged while still acting as terrain on which the units can move and fight. I hope you can understand why that would be difficult to implement.

(If you're not sure why that would be difficult to implement, I will be happy to explain, although I'm making some significant assumptions about that underlying structure of the game's battle engine.)

[sinful canopy]

Yes exactly. It wouldnt be the most immersive but I wouldnt care. Total war does that as well with how Dark elves fight a battle with their Black ark. There is a land map in game that suggests battle take place in the Black Ark (ship). But no ship can be THAT big. Still better than what we have.

[edgy hearth]

OH

Right, I understand now!

[sinful canopy]

No. Thats actually a pig to code. It werent designed for that and that was your argument and I agree with you in this case. But I would still argue that it is still codeable. Other games done it. It is doable but not necessarily returnable in investments. I bet it requires hefty work so I wouldnt put the devs up to such gigantic task.

When its clearly not what was in mind

[edgy hearth]

That would be pretty neat, actually. Have a couple of naval maps that are "two enormous ships locked in combat" for navy vs navy battles, and a couple that are "one enormous ship being boarded by krakens" for when you're fighting a marauder/infestation army at sea.

[sinful canopy]

Ye ye ye

thats the good stuff

[edgy hearth]

It'd solve the believability problem when net throwers can somehow entangle a ship, and fix things like necromancy not working at sea because "boat corpses" sink.

It does add a whole other believability problem, which is the sheer size of the ships compared to the units on them.

You could also have an "enormous ship disgorging marines into waist-deep water for a land invasion" map!

[sinful canopy]

All about what you can get away with and what you can ignore. It would be improvement to this system but still not perfect as it wouldnt be believable to have such huge ships but at that point its ignorable. You cannot polish things forever.

[sinful canopy]

Yeah for beach battles, why not

That was what I meant when I said things are improvable. They still are. I just accepted the fact that we are not going to get one. But a faint hope still lies within me hence why I am here talking about it kek

[edgy hearth]

Naval battles would still basically be "land battle but on a different map", though.

[sinful canopy]

But naval battles were never meant to be fully fledged as it is apparent from its current quality

I will make a general comment and put it on the table and then peace out of this conversation

I think... Right now... Developers bit at loss on where to steer the game towards

[edgy hearth]

I think the developers have a plan, we're just not privy to it.

[sinful canopy]

Hope so

[odd rock]

I like this best. Naval armies only interact on strategic layer

[odd rock]

But land maps that give the feel of being at sea such as interlocking ships is also a good solution. The only thing I like about current system is it makes water movement and flying units feel special. I'm not sure what that would look like if the naval battles played out on land maps

I don't play on the map often, but the tactical map with bridge over water I think the water is blocked off for water units?

[sinful canopy]

Flying units wouldnt feel special anymore and... I actually havent thought about naval units. They cant play on "ships but as land maps". They would have to be abolished. To be honest, if we are being real for a second, in my 130 hour of AoW4 I only fought kraken twice and ghost ship once. So personally abolishment of naval units really wouldnt hurt my experience.

But best of both world would probably be my first suggestion. Making naval battles occur only on strategic layer with ghost ships/krakens getting special treatment of having hidden modifiers and/or clickable abilities (like shovel icon for digging) that interacted with... idk something. ||(Its really hard to brainstorm on stuff when everything related to water is so barebones that I cant get inspired lol)||

Maybe krakens get once every 10 turn "instantly kill" ability or maybe it has %30 chance of instantly killing, %10 chance of instantly KILLED, %60 chance of just dealing decent damage.

Ghost ships could "posses" enemy ships. (Basically a window opens and you can recruit the enemy ship for a mana cost)

As long as there are no incentives to go water all of these suggestions would just encourage avoidant gameplay which is bad. Kind of like how it is right now, Im pretty sure there are not one person out there that are itching for a water engagement in game (as its current state)

[junior tapir]

Yeah right now I'm finding that naval combat is pointlessly frustrating and I would rather just be totally disengaged from naval infestation spawners rather than actually deal with them, which is frustrating because I actually didnt mind building a navy to deal with them previously and it feels as though moving into water is so much more dangerous with how embarkation works. I don't play competitive multiplayer and I certainly don't always know what is "optimal" in any given situation but land infestation spawners feel reasonable whereas sea spawners feel unbelievably abysmal to handle at the moment while the mere concept of naval anything outside of handling infestations seems almost like a joke to me.

[hollow wadi]

IMO they should just have an offensive ranged ship(skirmishers & ranged), a defensive melee ship(shock, shield, pike), and some kind of support/magic ship (battle mage/support), then have your racial units transform into them when at sea. Give them each more than 1 type of attack so they are interesting to use, and that'd be fine.

[odd rock]

I like this. Feels close to what they have now, but yeah a lot of the land units abilities don't even make sense in the water. I'd prefer they just end up generic boat types when embarked.

[sage fog]

I would be satisfied with HoMM V boat system: you gotta build a boat for your army, either in city, or in a building on a map, and naval combat would be those ships planked to each other and the armies fighting on them like on battle map

but this then creates a problem with units like Kraken, but I dont like them anyway, so wouldnt care if they poofed, or they changed them into a portable "battle modifier" and Ghost ships could be changed to actuall ships full of undead

Ive seen flying deep sea nimus and tide spirits on land anyway, so the kraken would be the only one needing a change
and having a giant kraken around the battlemap affecting the battlefield like magic materials do could be way cooler than those annoying instakill loving soon-to-be sushies

[sinful canopy]

I would be satisfied with HoMM V boat system: you gotta build a boat for your army, either in city, or in a building on a map, and naval combat would be those ships planked to each other and the armies fighting on them like on battle map

but this then creates a problem with units like Kraken, but I dont like them anyway, so wouldnt care if they poofed, or they changed them into a portable "battle modifier" and Ghost ships could be changed to actuall ships full of undead

%100 agree

Especially turning Ghost Ship into a... well... a ship by making it carry loads of undeads instead. Makes so much sense if we somehow get actual ships that carry troops and plank each other in battle

[wet talon]

I wonder how unrealistic it would be to have land battles at sea as well. Something like when two land armies meet they have a chance of either fighting a boarding action (battle takes place on two or more ships with paths between them) or just doing a standard naval battle

Suppose there could be islands or shallows depending on where the fight happens as well, idk.

There is also the option of just copying Total War Warhammer and just having land armies spawn on land during fights, wham bam Bob's your uncle

[sly hill]

Just reducing it to a land battle on a tactical map of two ships chained together seems like throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

[sage fog]

I... dont understand that comparison, are you liking the idea or disliking it?
is throwing baby out easy and therefore it means that turning it into land battle is too easy workaround?

[wet talon]

According to Google it means throwing out something of value just to get rid of something unwanted

So I believe they are saying that the naval combat is potentially valuable and throwing it out just to get rid of the current system is a bad idea

[sage fog]

Oooh ok, never heard that

I half agree then, but only if it gets better than what we have now.
I feel like what we have now is either a rough patch, or halfwaypoint on the way there.
And if it can make the final push and become interesting then I agree it should be kept

But if it stays in the current state where half of the abilities I enjoy in combat are blocked, lose their sounds or effects because they have to fit the ship and the only unit that can’t be turned land working is that stupid squid with instakill chance

Yea no, at that point give me boat themed land fights

[wet talon]

Agreed

I'd rather have a different flavor of a system I already enjoy than the half baked version of something that I may or may not enjoy

I get that naval stuff is hard to implement. It can be a lot of effort to make little changes so yeah, I'm down with just using the current system lmao

[sly hill]

Also ship decks housing battlefields with dragons and steam tanks is kind of silly.

[indigo vortex]

Yeah non-flying non-water/amphibian units fighting normally on water to be weird

[sage fog]

so putting that steam tank that on land is the size of some of the dragons on a small wooden boat and calling it succesfully embarked is not silly? XD

I get what you mean, but I feel like you are trying to bring too much logic here

[odd rock]

Yeah. Age of wonders is no place for logic

[sage fog]

just a slight correction, noone is saying they should make them jesus walking on water, just that it would be better to have them fight water themed "land battle" if the naval combat doesnt improve further

for example how HoMM V did it:

[odd rock]

I want that ironclad to be a "water unit" so huge that it rolls along the bottom of the seas

[sage fog]

or make it an amphibious vehicle that can become submarine when in water XD

[odd rock]

Yeah, basically whatever method lets it be like a submarine or battleship

[edgy hearth]

A fight like this would eliminate some of the problems (some abilities working on water while others don't, seemingly arbitrarily, general low readability of ocean battles) but would introduce others (MASSIVE scale disparity between units and ships, large area of the battlefield impassable even to flying units which should be able to soar over it)

And the kraken and ghost ship units would basically have to be scrapped - or turned from units into battlefields.

[sage fog]

Yes, if you scroll upwards in this you will see me talking about most of the stuff you just mentioned

And also me saying that I would want that only if the current boat system doesn’t improve further, because what we have now feels like a halfwaypoint, not terrible, but not quite there.

I already talked about it more up in this post, I’m not gonna repeat everything again

[edgy hearth]

That's fair. I wasn't aiming to contradict or disagree with you, it was more of a comment for the benefit of the general audience.

Personally, I would prefer if the naval battles kept units on individual, movable boats, but took many more steps in the direction of realism (or believability, if you prefer).

Yes, this would involve some changes that would limit the variability of gameplay. For example, all non-flying mount abilities should probably be disabled while a unit is embarked. Fire damage should be a lot more effective. Ships should maybe be immune to immobilize. But it would also add tactical depth from elsewhere - such as having bonuses for moving with the wind, or being able to perform a ram (charge) on a unit that normally can't.

Also, how would people feel about a step in the "more complicated, more realistic" direction for the strategic layer of the seas? Currently, units from a faction with Seafaring can just move into the water and spawn boats out of thin air. Yes, they're delayed when they embark (sometimes? This doesn't seem to be terribly consistent), but it doesn't seem to be enough to account for them needing to build ships.

A more realistic approach would be if you could build transport ships, and then combine the ships with a stack of land units to transport those units across water.

(problem: water is then impassable if you don't have a coastal city. Solution: Allow basic transport ships to be built in coastal outposts.)

(problem: This would be an enormous buff to flying and floating units since they could cross water without needing to wait for a boat, and therefore a large buff to Mystic and Reaver cultures which get a floating/flying scout. Solution: Who cares, mystic and reaver could use a buff. And Tome of the Winds can give anyone flying scouts; maybe rebalance that tome so it can be made T1? Alternatively, give scout units a special ability to construct makeshift boats for themselves.)

I suspect this would be just way too much of a faff.

As for a more realistic-ish model of naval combat, retaining the "every unit has its own boat" idea that we have now, what stands out as silly?

• A unit of battle mages, support casters, javelin throwers or archers on a boat will largely behave the same as they would on dry land, so that's fine.
• Shock units - the charge attack is more a feature of the ship's ram than the unit on board, but I'm good with shock units being the most effective at ramming since it stands to reason they're good at boarding the enemy ship once it's been rammed.
• Shield Wall shouldn't work. You can't extend the shield wall from one boat to another. Shield units are otherwise fine. They might even be able to perform a charge attack if they're on a ship with a ram!
• Cavalry don't get their mount bonuses unless those mounts are flying. Sorry guys.
• Spear units charge resistance probably shouldn't work, since the "charge" is a ramming attack and pikes don't prevent that. Nor does anti-cavalry, because cavalry are dismounted. Anti-large still works.
• I find it difficult to believe that animal units can be as effective on a boat as on dry land. Wrangling a group of hungry vampire spiders must be absolute hell for the crew.
• Would damage to the ship (and crew) have to be tracked separately from damage to the embarked troops? If so, the soldiers could be killed while leaving the ship still afloat but no longer combat-effective. The corpses could then be reanimated. If the ship sinks, though, they're gone.
• Fire damage is very effective against wooden ships.
• Most sources of immobilization probably shouldn't work. Stun is iffy (are both the combat troops and the ship's crew stunned?). All the other status effects I can think of are fine.
• Disengaging from combat might be more difficult after being rammed or boarded (grappling hooks were used to hold ships together).
• Really big units like the golden golem and the ironclad are a whole other problem.

[sly hill]

Not really, no.

[burnt island]

I was advocating for this approach + dynamic naval battle fields.

Different tiers of ship would differ from the other with added upgrades or features

And have units battle on them

[indigo vortex]

Idk, especially since there are dedicated ship units. And one of the key elements in aow since the first game was the whole shtick with manipulating terrain with magic so eg you could walk on frozen water and all that. It would make sense to make units convert into "transport ships" and just make their stats abysmal - that makes flyers, amphibian and naval units a valid thing to invest in.

[sage fog]

I have no doubt it worked in previous titles, Ive seen clips from AoW 1 of people drowning armies by nuking the ice they used to cross the water, but AoW 4 doesnt have that

[sage fog]

I said it here and above it so you can read my opinion on that there
im just gonna add that keeping water combat as it is now, just because previous titles have it isnt worth it, only place I have it come to play properly is island map

so if it is improved further, awesome
if it stays the same, it can go embark itself and go meet Kraken

[indigo vortex]

Sure but it has universal transport boat boarding (as in models for that + animations for naval combat) , many games have something similar and the exclusively land units could just be packed into these and unable to perform as themselves but rather have abysmal transport ship stats. I don't think it would be difficult to implement whatsoever (based exclusively on my sparse modding experience where we did just that in tw)

[latent nebula]

I think units should only be able to be transported on boats rather than able to fight themselves on the water. Water should be risky terrain to cross for any non-sea units. Being able to summon and control water units should be a strategic choice to limit routes to your cities

[edgy hearth]

Didn't we try that and find it kind of sucked?

[indigo vortex]

No, we tried that and it was a great feature which actually caused greater diversity of gameplay options depending on map and validated water units/magic/ tomes

[edgy hearth]

Ah, ok. I wonder why it was ditched in favour of what we have now, then.

I only started playing after the release of the current naval battle system

[sinful canopy]

That cant happen. None would play water maps at all. People already minmaxing their experiences into oblivion. None will sacrifice any resource to build a boat thats seemingly implemented for just the realisms sake. They will just play on pure land maps.

Realism is not meant to be for games of this genre. Its a delicate DESIGN issue on management's end tbh. You can implement realisms into a game but you also have to have the cohoneys to force them onto people. And if not handled correctly creates an uninteresting game. "Building ships to cross" would have been totally doable if the game had one solid lore and a static map. Like EU4. Because then people had to plan before hand and wouldnt be able to "just create non-water maps". You cant opt out of "complexity" in EU4 but its an immensely interesting game because its designed intricately so it doesnt bite devs in the a**.

The bullet suggestions you provided doesnt work for the same reason. Its also good to keep in mind that we are playing a game where developers highly against the idea of giving flying units actual flying ability... Which I am totally cool with if not for their reasoning. Their reasoning is that it would "hurt the strategy of players and would just be complexity for complexities sake" without realizing that "strategy" part of the game starts from the faction creation screen. With these in mind do you really think they will make ships vulnerable to fire damage or strip core advantages of unit types? They would coin the same argument.

Dont get me wrong I am all for more complexities, however busted, but where this game is going is just "basic" bordering on "homogenous". This ties into my other grip with the game being cultures not being impactful enough and losing their identity half way through the game.

Every problem really boils down to core design philosophies of this game. Any more homogenity and damage to complexity would have probably made an unplayable game.

At this point they have more to gain to implement a "land battle in docked ships" than the rotting system we have today. As people said, it would be better like that ONLY IF they dont want to improve on the current water combat system but then again they have to adjust their design philosophies a bit which they are not very keen to do as is seen from other discussions. Accessibility is one helluva drug.