Arow Ships and Archers

[Thales]

0 A.D. was just upgraded to Release 28: “Boiorix”. With this new version, do arrow ships get extra firepower by adding (garrisoning) archers on them?

Also interested in knowing whether the firepower of other ships, like siege ships, is increased by adding archers (or other ranged units)?

[Arup]

no,none of that was added in R28

[Thales]

4 hours ago, Arup said:

no,none of that was added in R28

Thanks. But did this capability exist before  Release 28: “Boiorix”?

[Arup]

Yes, 

8 hours ago, Thales said:

Thanks. But did this capability exist before  Release 28: “Boiorix”?

existed in A26

[Outis]

19 hours ago, Thales said:

Thanks. But did this capability exist before  Release 28: “Boiorix”?

All infantry types used to increase ship firepower before Release 28, not just archers.

Edited March 20 by Outis

[LienRag]

Why has this been removed ?

[Deicide4u]

Probably to make you build more ships for naval battles. 

[Thales]

Unfortunate that adding (ranged) troops, such as archers, does not increase the firepower of ships. In "real" life, archers can easily fire from ships thereby adding firepower.

4 hours ago, Deicide4u said:

Probably to make you build more ships for naval battles. 

I get a kick of of that.  The ships, in a sense are too large for the game. I have ended up with the ships getting tangled up in a knot and have a difficult time untangling them. There have also been a few occurrences where the ships are so "long" that it is difficult to move troops (by ship) from one shore to the next when the shores are too close together.

[real_tabasco_sauce]

Needing to add units to ships for firepower meant that investing in water would require many of your land soldiers. This means players would get flotillas full of soldiers and they would hardly ever return to fighting on land. Moving soldiers between ships and land to optimally fight on both land and water was unnecessary tedium, and usually players just didn't do this.

Furthermore, with the guessing game about how many soldiers are in your ship versus the enemy ship, it was difficult to strategize (not to mention the random arrows).

Lastly, requiring soldiers for ship effectiveness meant you always had to deal with the clumsiness of garrisoning different ships with the right amount of soldiers in order to fight.

[Deicide4u]

1 hour ago, Thales said:

The ships, in a sense are too large for the game.

I think their size was modeled after AoE3 ships. I agree, they need to be smaller, but that will make them look unrealistic.

[CheckTester]

There is another idea for using infarty units on ships - Naval Boarding (capturing the ships). 

l 

[Grautvornix]

I do like it, but how would the animation look like? Your ship would be placing itself alongside the enemy ship that does not / cannot flee (anymore) - why? wow? Woudl there be some time indicator, like when capturing a building? Does the ship being attacked fight back? If so how? Arrows? I am afraid we might need to make some action visible.

All this would be more convincing if we had the soldiers (proportional to the actual number of pax) visible on board which is even more complex to achieve. Or should we define three boarding levels (10%, 50% 100%) and three animations with 3, 5, or 10 soldiers visibly acting? Then we could gave the a similar aniumation as when conquering a building.

I am afraid there is no really simple solution. So basically we need to discuss in greater detail what it would take to implement even partially.

My preferred solution would be to start with a single feature (like indicating payload level - how many soldiers are on board). This might alreadya be useful, independent of implementing more of the following.  Then we would need a manoever (or player action) that immobilizes the enemy ship, and then a takeover indicator including counter attack (!) an then finally change of ownership/command or deflection of the attack. What could that be? Sinking your ship? Self-sinking the enemy ship (like the pirates in Asterix comics  ), the enemy conquering your ship?

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

On 20/03/2026 at 1:41 PM, Deicide4u said:

I think their size was modeled after AoE3 ships. I agree, they need to be smaller, but that will make them look unrealistic.

I'd personally err on the side of having smaller ships so we can have larger naval battles. Something like -20% in size. 

[Thalatta]

Instead of making the ships unrealistically smaller, why not make the bodies of water realistically bigger? And then one would zoom out a bit for a proper naval battle.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

2 hours ago, Thalatta said:

Instead of making the ships unrealistically smaller

They are not a realistic size any way you slice it. Neither is anything else in the game, now that I mention it.  The only real reason to keep them "large" would be for turreting troops on-deck, but it's debatable whether that would be a bridge too far in the APM department. Maybe I'm nostalgic for the old Age of Empires: Rise of Rome deathmatch naval battles of my youth, when we'd all pick Greeks, Phoenicians, or Minoans and have 100 juggernauts per player duking it out on 'small islands' maps. 

[Thalatta]

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

They are not a realistic size any way you slice it. Neither is anything else in the game, now that I mention it.

Probably not, but I think better not to drift towards the unrealistic direction. The big ships are one of the things I liked about the game the first time (and many have commented the same). I think it would be the wrong call to make things look more and more like any other RTS.
 

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

The only real reason to keep them "large" would be for turreting troops on-deck, but it's debatable whether that would be a bridge too far in the APM department.

I hope this is done at some point, would also solve the issue of strategising against ships with modified stats because of the troops being carried.

 

4 hours ago, wowgetoffyourcellphone said:

Maybe I'm nostalgic for the old Age of Empires: Rise of Rome deathmatch naval battles of my youth

Maybe. Personally I prefer battles that look closer to the Shogun 2 Total War ones, not so much on the side of numbers, but tactics. Although numbers is also good.

On a side note, maybe different water depths could be considered, differentiated by color, which would be important the more relevant the bodies of water become:
-Shallow: for the transit of most land units (except siege for example) and small boats.
-Moderate: for small and normal boats, but not the largest ones.
-Deep: for all boats. Maybe eventual bridges should not be built over it (except for the Persians, who could have also bridges made of ships).