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The idea of reusing building capture logic for ships is excellent, but I believe it needs one critical addition: both ships should take hull damage during the boarding process. Otherwise, boarding becomes a no-risk, high-reward action that undermines naval warfare.
Why it's important
Historically, boarding was a brutal melee that damaged the ships themselves (broken oars, rails, rigging). In gameplay terms: if you can capture an enemy trireme for free just by having 10 hoplites on a transport, why bother building warships?
Proposed mechanics (simple and implementable)
Ongoing damage: During boarding, both ships lose a small percentage of HP per second. Damage rate depends on:
Ratio of garrison military strength (fiercer fighting = more damage).
Ship type (warships are tougher, transports are fragile).
Technologies (e.g., "Grappling Hooks" could reduce damage for the attacker).
Final penalty for captured ship: After a successful boarding, the captured ship suffers an additional HP loss (e.g., 15–20% of its current HP), representing the final deck struggle.
Attacker also pays a price: The attacker's ship takes damage over time and loses some of its garrison (e.g., 2–4 units killed). Half of the surviving attacker's garrison (rounded up) transfers to the captured ship; the rest remain on the original ship. This is in addition to the unit transfer already discussed. Defender's garrison is entirely eliminated (killed or captured).
Risk of sinking: If a ship's HP reaches zero during boarding, it sinks and the boarding is interrupted (or the surviving ship wins if the fight was almost over).
Why this improves the game
Balance: Boarding becomes a costly operation, not a free alternative to destruction.
Tactical depth: You can soften a ship with ranged attacks, then board to capture it with fewer losses.
Realism: Reflects ancient naval tactics (ram, then board).
Interesting choices: Do you risk your transport full of elite infantry to capture an enemy flagship?
Prevents snowballing: The captured ship starts with very low HP and requires repairs, making it vulnerable to immediate counter-attack.
Example numbers for testing
Base damage: 2% of max HP per second to each ship.
Damage multiplier: (defender_strength + 1) / (attacker_strength + 1), clamped to [0.5, 2.0]. (If defender has twice as many soldiers, damage doubles.)
Captured ship extra damage: –15% of its current HP after capture.
Minimum boarding time: 5 seconds (prevents instant capture).
Attacker garrison losses on success: 2–4 random units + half of the survivors move to the captured ship.
Visual feedback
Initially, simple effects would suffice: sounds of fighting, smoke/blood particles. Later, ship entanglement visuals (ropes or a boarding ramp) would be great. It would be nice if the ship's texture became more damaged.
Regarding the "base garrison" idea from @Thalatta – I see its value for reducing micro, but my proposal works with the existing garrison system. Perhaps both could be combined in the future.
I encourage everyone interested to share their thoughts. If there is support, I can help with testing and refining the numbers.
Thanks for considering!
Yes, I was thinking, people build enough dropsites anyway to get fast access to resources, there's no point adding rules to solve a problem that doesn't really exist. But I think some simple addition to make new territory a bit more relevant is in order, after all, besides making other CCs more city-like, it has been mentioned in the past that there are not many reasons for expansion, that fields around CCs are unsightly and inaccurate, and even that CCs could be specialised. Maybe just adding a gap around the CC where no resources or structures can be located could tackle some things. I’m not sure how to easily make relevant building houses somewhere else though, and one has to be careful with snowballing.
The game is complicated enough as is.
Let's just keep it simple, people. Improve what we can, but let's not add feature bloat.
EDIT: For context, if we implement both of these, then that will break a lot of existing stuff, mainly involving the AI. And now you need to fix things that were working fine for decades.