Elemental Forums
I hope so. If not, maybe in the expansion after Fallen Enchantress?
I think everyone likes the Rise of Nations model for boats alot more. 
"Oh hey, I have this idle army. Let's ship them overseas and conquer someone because that's so easy." -President Bush, 2001 
The time a turn represents and the number of people being transported would make it work for FE. I think there should be some cost, but enabling the AI to use the system effectively, whatever it may be, is my top interest.
At this point I'm not willing to sacrifice strategic depth just to make Brad's AI job easier. Build a good transportation system and then make the AI use it. Asking for anything less than that today, weeks before we've even seen the initial beta, is dumb. Your solution is the "Oh shit, we can't make this work" solution. Don't accept that from SD until it's the only viable option.
The time a turn represents absolutely does not make it work. Building serious oceangoing vessels and training appropriate crews takes more than "a season". Significantly more.
As has been said before their are ways to make the embarking system less cheesy so units aren't building boats to cross every lake instead of going around. If you require having a harbor on the water then you could say that the boats are just automatically sailing from the harbor to where your units are, and are not being built by the units themselves. That would also require infrastructure and you couldn't just invade other continents with your land army without planning or having a navy. Also don't forget you need to find a beach to disembark you can't do it anywhere.
You could also only allow armies of a certain size to portage, only so many guys can fit on one boat. This would make them vulnerable when crossing and landing. Then you could have champion traits that allow you to specialize towards naval combat. They could do things like more naval movement, skip landing wait time, fit more units on a boat, stat bonus in naval combat,or even not requiring a harbor to embark. Perhaps portaging itself could require a trait.
Elemental takes place in a sort of Dark Ages society anyway, they didn't have cannons. Most naval battles were probably fought classically with ramming and boarding. I'm not sure what dedicated combat ships would be like in this universe and tech level.
I like that idea, and to expand on that, perhaps you could have so many army units per harbor on that body of water. For example, you have 3 cities along that coast with harbors, which gives you 3 x (number of units per harbor) of total available units on that body of water. And that number of units per harbor can either be fixed or a variable that new tech or buildings could increase.
This idea is much better than the Civ5 magical transforming boat solution. My only concern would be the cost (both upfront and maintenance) and buildtime of harbors. Both would have to be high in order to show your nation's significant investment in naval transportation. Otherwise they're just another building you build and the end result is little different than the Civ5 solution. There should also be some sort of delay (1 or 2 seasons) as your armies are shifted from shore to ocean and back (as is pretty standard in the genre).
Still, I think they can come up with something better. For anything short of Industrial revolution era societies intercontinental logistics for an army is a major undertaking. Hell even as late as WWII transporting armies across oceans was arduous and time consuming. It wasn't until the advent of the modern cargo plane in flights of the scale of the US Air Force that it became mostly trivial. Even today for most non-US countries a full scale invasion of another continent would be impossible without years of ramp up.
Exploration and pioneer travel on the ocean doesn't need to be hugely difficult, but moving military power to another continent should be. It's a layer of strategic depth that really belongs in a TBS game of this technological level (Medieval tech). If there's some sort of high level magical solution to the problem, fine. But for the non-magic players invading another continent needs to be a BFD.
I'm all for making it "difficult", but it shouldn't be "annoying" to do. Difficult implies it's hard to accomplish, for example limits on how many you can transport and so on. Annoying implies it's a fucking pain in the ass to have to click through 20 boats and 20 units 10 times each.
It's like the combat orders in Dom3 for units. It's difficult to find a good balance between combinations, but it's just plain annoying to have to click through the menus when setting up orders for units.
I agree with this completely. I should have made that distinction.
There should absolutely be a good UI system in place for managing the whole thing that makes it simple to do. My argument is that it needs to difficult (or at least should need purposeful expenditure of resources) to accomplish in game. Sending an army to another continent should be viewed as an undertaking, or a big initiative if you like, and like all big decisions it should have an associated cost. That cost should measured in you having to decide NOT to pursue some other big initiative due to limited allocation of resources (materials, time, gold, people, whatever).
The system doesn't need to be overly complex. My argument is just that sending armies across the ocean shouldn't be a trivial decision (like it was in Civ5). My argument definitely is not that it should waste your time and be a pain in the ass.
I really like DsRaider's idea. I would limit it a bit more though; First, troops can only enter a sea tile from a settlement with a harbor. This makes ports a lot more important, because they can't just be anywhere and still give you access to sea transport. Second, with basic sailing technology ships can not leave sight of the coast, and their speed should not be much greater regular movement over land. Ocean travel and increased speed can be unlocked through more research. This makes seafaring valuable, but it doesn't make it an instant I-Win tech (by being able to out maneuver everyone else and being able to colonise the entire world). And thirdly, perhaps the number of troops that can move to a sea tile from a port could be linked to the production in that town. This prevents some backwater fishing village from being able to provide transport for an entire legion, and makes developed ports more valuable.
But as far as we know, seafaring won't be in FE, so all of this speculation won't go far. Let's hope it will be in the next expansion.
I considered that idea too, but then if you land on an island how do you get off? lol
I wouldn't worry to much about it being too powerful. A really significant speed advantage would be required to overcome the embarking and disembarking movement penalty on all but the longest voyages. I would prefer that players that invested in maritime infrastructure did recieve the ability to move troop around quickly along the shore, although different levels of it would make sense. As for bonuses for nearby harbors I was thinking that maritime trade routes would function exactly like normal roads, so land units could travel along them without penalty. I guess that would necessarily require land units to embark and disembark from harbors without penalty anyway, which would be a nice bonus.
True, but it might be. Nothing wrong with some good old fashioned conjecture. If it is good enough it may even inspire the devs, or just show them there is interest in the area. Crazier things have happened, even on this forum. 
I'd like at least fishing boats. That way you could harvest the bounty of the sea. Arrr!
It was hard to send an army by sea in ancient and even medieval times. Of course they would send thousands of soldiers and we are sending 10 to 20. Most viking boats that can be built in a season can hold 20 soldiers and their gear. Trust me when I say it is perfectly realistic. Don't know why so few people can accept this fact.
I would prefer the harbors allowing transport. It should probably be a little more varied and flexible for Sovs that specialize in magic. As far as the form of travel, units turning into a boat is a very attractive mechanic. But let's be honest, we are talking about the next expansion here so there is plenty of time to nail this down.
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I wouldn't worry to much about it being too powerful. A really significant speed advantage would be required to overcome the embarking and disembarking movement penalty on all but the longest voyages. I would prefer that players that invested in maritime infrastructure did recieve the ability to move troop around quickly along the shore, although different levels of it would make sense. As for bonuses for nearby harbors I was thinking that maritime trade routes would function exactly like normal roads, so land units could travel along them without penalty. I guess that would necessarily require land units to embark and disembark from harbors without penalty anyway, which would be a nice bonus.
The speed advantage wouldn't have to be that great. I'm assuming that your proposed embarking/disembarking movement penalty would be that moving from a land tile to a sea tile (and vice versa) removes all movement points for that turn? Judging from some of the screenshots we've seen, default movement speed would seem to be 2 tiles per turn. The smallest possible increase in speed for sea travel would be 3 tiles per turn. That's a 50% bonus and feels about right to me for basic seafaring tech (although base movement speed should be higher imo). With embarking penalty 'costing' you one movement point, it only takes one turn make up for that loss, and after two turns of sea travel you are ahead. I've tried to show this graphically below. The upper row is a unit starting on land, embarking, and traveling by sea. Below is a unit traveling by land. The numbers are their positions at the end of the corresponding turn.
[S][1][_][_][2][_][_][3]
[S][_][1][_][2][_][3]
As you can see after turn three the upper unit is ahead, and it didn't even need to have full movement at the start. Even if you make that a requirement for embarking/disembarking, it only adds one more turn before moving by sea is faster. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, sea travel should be faster. But allowing it to be done from everywhere makes it a bit of a no-brainer, all other things being equal. Although I have to admit I don't know how you would get off island that doesn't have a friendly port 
Another thing crossed my mind; wouldn't this make it rather easy to escape from monsters and other neutrals? See something coming that your stack can't handle? Just pop over to a sea tile where it can't catch you.
Those boats might be build in a season, but it requires a lot of things, mainly good wood, lots of rope, and sails. You don't find those lying around everywhere. Also some tools and a few people who know what they are doing would be nice to have as well.
Another thing; since FE will have rivers that are inside a tile (rather than between two tiles as in civ), this opens up the possibility for navigating rivers. Any thoughts? I think it would be awesome if it was allowed. Just look at how the vikings were able to raid not only coastal areas, but inland Russia as well using rivers. One expedition even reached the Caspian sea apparently...
I don't know if rivers are large enough to be navigable but it would be cool if you could. They could function like natural roads, and boost trade. I made a post awhile back on geopolitics and 4X games, and it touched on the topic of navigable rivers. You might want to check it out. It's an interesting read anyway.
It's true that the AI has trouble with the boats. The only way I could beat some of the really high civ levels (Think I beat Diety, Demigod for sure) was to use island hopping and maps with alot of water. I've seen people beat these cheating AI bastards without this to but I simply wasn't good enough and I could see the difference from land to sea.
Still if the AI could handle them it would be very good. Or at least the option to have them in multiplayer-games.
Liking this action.
Hopefully, the next iteration of the Elemental universe will have boats, navy, sea monsters, etc.
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