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Ramming would be good regardless of style I mean. What I mean is, do player want lots of (smallish) ships for large macro sea battles or fewer (large) ships for micro battles? How big do players want typical sea battle? This determine level of detail (both artistically and gameplay features) for individual ship.

Hm, that's a good question. In my opinion, in any case we have to consider the case where players want to play an island map. In this case it is possible that almost all engagements happen at sea. If we still want the game for the players to be fun, we would have to make the naval battles at least as fun and engaging as land battles. So the level of player management and involvement for both should be at the sweetspot (not sure we are at it with the land battles yet ). It should never feel like a hassle, and never make you bored. Generally, we also will always end up with less ships than we would with land units. By that standard we could consider that while land battles might have something like hundreds of units involved, naval battles might only have dozens (as did the largest amount of historical encounters). And additionally, we could introduce more options for micromanagement for naval units. But these options should always remain fun for both players: that is, the player using them and the player having these options used upon himself. I could imagine naval combat as such: Ships can ram, board or perform ranged combat. For boarding you could garrison melee and ranged units on a ship and internally, the ranged and melee soldiers would attack other melee units randomly, and if none are left, ranged units (or something like that). Once the garrison of the ship is gone, it is slowly damaged, set on fire and sinks (could possibly be made to look cool ... yes yes, I know, I' would have to do the animations ...). To initiate boarding, you would simply have to be in range, activate boarding mode, and if you are lucky and roll higher than the defense of the ship being attacked, I could animate hooks being thrown and boarding ramps being employed ... whatever looks cool and historical If you build a ship, it would come without a garrison, and a symbol next to the healthbar would indicate this. The advantage is what a player with an experienced land force could use these experienced soldiers at sea (like the romans ). And landing forces would always have the historical dilemma of possibly leaving the fleet behind unprotected ... The counter for the boarded party could be to "pin" enemy ships by sacrificing ships for boarding and sinking the enemy ships, while their ships are in melee (real, historical tactic ). We would also have the advantage that changes and updates to the land combat would automatically be in naval combat aswell and balanced land forces would automatically go a great length towards balancing naval boarding aswell. Ramming could be made straightforward. And for ranged attacks you would simply have the combined ranged attack of the ship's garrison as one attack, and the attack of the ship's artillery as another one. If it were up to me, I would also allow ships to be specialized. That is: when they are built, they come out plain. If you are in range of a port you could have several slots on your ships, that could be filled with specializations. For instance for a roman 5: 1 slot for the oars: either semi-cataphract (extra speed) or cataphract (extra protection) 1 slot for the belly: either nothing, copper-coating (after it is researched for extra health, but slightly lower speed) of lead-coating (after it is researched for a different amount of extra health, but slightly lower speed) 1 slot for the front of the ship: either nothing, an archery tower (ranged attacks, slightly slower speed), a corvus (after research for extra boarding chance but reduced maneuverability and speed), siege artillery (you guessed it ... research + siege attacks + reduced maneuverability and speed), light artillery (yeah: research + range attacks + slightly reduced maneuverability and speed) or fire pots (extra ram damage after research) or whatever we think of I would also allow ships to only unload troops once they are beached (I could provide animations). There they would have greatly reduced defenses. This would also give an attacked party a longer time to react to a landing and even more awesomely: allow a faction without any navy to destroy the navy of a landing force with melee units if they overwhelm the defending forces (and create some cool looking, burned ships on your beaches ). An interesting possibility that I thought about: ships would actually come in two parts (left and right) both with their own health. They could be damaged individually. The player would only see the one health bar per ship (geometric mean of the two semi-parts ... that is: sqrt(health1*health2) ). The advantage: you could concentrate your damage (ramming) on one, damaged, ship side that you can identify by the damage model. If one side has 0 health, the health bar will also be at 0. Also: if both sides are at 100%, the health bar will be at 100% (isn't math nice ) This would be a nice option that would never bother new players, but experienced players could try to really micromanage their attacks ... could be a lot of fun And in that case again: me -> anmations and damages ships textures I was also thinking about the dilemma of ships with all of their rigging. In combat ships typically did not have their rigging out (there are historical accounts of sea battles where unprepared fleets with sails out were caught and at a great disadvantage in combat). As I see it, there could be three possibilites: A: ships always have their sails out B: ships are always combat ready C: players can switch between the two states with a button press and both have their advantages and disadvantages (in that case I would even go so far as to provide some animations for this ) Ok, that was a massive post. Sorry for that What do you think about all that? And perhaps let us poll the last option. Who would like to see A, B or C?

I would like to make it so that a new Triumphal Arch must be build to unlock each Phase tech. I want the EntityLimit for the Arch to be 1, and then increase by 1 for each Phase (so that another arch can be built to unlock next phase; subsequent phase require 1 additional Arch to unlock - 1, 2, 3). In Player.xml, I can set EntityLimit like this under <Limits> list: <Arch>1</Arch>Can I use <RequiredTechs> as a LimitChanger? I see it done under LimitRemovers, but can it be done under LimitChanger? I could hack around this my just making 3 different Arch buildings, but it would be more elegant to have it done with 1 Arch building entity so that there are not 3 Arch building buttons in the UI.

Has there been definitive answer on style of naval combat for gameplay?