Ok, no naval battles, but why?

[Casu_Marzu_Supreme]

I also said that it is possible to give cultures/nations buffs/debuffs and advanced starting tech. This way, viking ships can be strong and sturdy while british ships are flimsy rowboats.

I also said that ships should be a standing navy like a retinue, to increase maintenance costs and reduce fleet size. Imposing a fleet max on port will reduce this even further, requiring port development to create a large enough standing navy to face off cultures/countries with historically strong navies.

 

[Zhetone]

England does not exist during the Viking invasions. Since there are so many petty kings, they don't have the resources individually to muster a strong enough naval force to combat the viking longships which are quite advanced for their time.

However, the possibility that a united England is formed before or during the Viking invasions is there so being able to create a navy that is able to rival the vikings in some capacity is not far fetched.

Read my previous post.

my point wasn't specifically about the Viking invasions in the 800s. Vikings were a threat past that point even when there was a kingdom of England, and would be entirely neutralized were there to be a poorly-implemented naval battle system which made it easy for England to destroy outsider fleets

the question of whether a united Britain could've fended off Viking invaders with a navy is a big hypothetical and I'm not sure really what the answer is. your post mentioning buffs to specific cultures' navies is interesting and I would be curious as to how it would look in implementation. As it is however, Britain has a huge tendency to unite in CK2, not sure how it will be in CK3. I would hope Vikings would not just end up neutralized by naval warfare

 

[viola]

A suggestion that I saw somewhere on this forum and that I liked about the potential addition of naval combat was to make it heavily reliant on tech and to create different sea zones: let's divide sea zones into Internal Sea (the Mediterranean, Black Sea and Red Sea), Oceanic Coast (any sea zone that confines with land provinces on the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian one) and High Sea (Oceanic sea zones far away from land, like the North Sea). In 867 naval combat will only be possible in Inner Sea areas, where naval combat is quite plausible, and only the Muslims and the Byzantines will start with advanced ports that can sustain large fleets (so, naval battles between Muslims and Byzantines will be a thing).

Naval battles on Oceanic Coasts will become possible only once the local technological level has increased enough, ideally sometimes after 1000/1100 (so, when the Viking Age waned and ended for good), it would become quite similar to how raiding rivers becomes impossible as the times goes on in CK2. Naval battles in High Sea areas will never be possible, so you will never see the English navy intercepting Vikings, even in the 1300s, in the middle of the North Sea.

Give Vikings special buildings to make sure that they will always be able to outproduce Christian nations in shipbuilding as long as they manage to remain pagan, give Merchant Republics (which won't exist at release, I know, but they're bound to return and they'll have to address the existence of free cities somehow) a massive bonus in shipbuilding so that they will always be able to command massive naval power (Venice ought to be able to field more ships alone than France, as an example) and you have a system that could work and would still manage to capture the importance of naval powers in the Middle Ages.

 

[Casu_Marzu_Supreme]

or maybe it's more likely that England, being much more powerful already than Scandinavian kingdoms in CK2, would also just demolish any Viking invasions on the sea instead of being vulnerable, as they were in real life until the decline of the Viking era, which is entirely undesirable from a gameplay perspective. England is already boring and secure enough as it is, no need to just throw out any foreign threats too

Historically, military ships are expensive endeavors that only very wealthy or very massive states can undertake in a large quantity. Generally, this means the Byzantine empire, the lombards and the arabs. Transport ships are a different matter entirely.

There are ways to prevent rapid naval growth for countries that are not historically strong at sea. With technological disadvantage, financial limitations and limited port size, even a united England would find it hard to fight against Viking ships. And with the recent HOI4 dlc, we know that its possible for naval engagements to not happen even if opposing fleets occupy the same tile/province.

France and the Iberian peninsula should not be able to just wantonly raise up 100+ ships and invade the Byzantines or the arabs so casually. If we really want to be historical, their ships would be no match for the military ships in the eastern mediterranean until much after the Viking age. The crusaders had to request permission to dock at certain ports, the distance between Denmark and England contributed to the end of the North Sea Empire, etc.

Naval power contributes a lot to a country's ability to project strength. Introducing a proper naval combat system would actually put a hamper on a country's growth.
For example, without such a feature, England/Ireland/Iceland can wage unrestricted warfare on any country it wants. They are isolated islands and their ships cannot be sunk, meaning they will always have the capacity to send however many troops their ships can handle that only increases over time. There is no real cooldown time for pillaging because the vikings can raid from England to Georgia. And the historically powerful like the Byzantines and the Arabs are unable to stop naval invasions, making it ridculously difficult to defend their unwieldy large amounts of land.

I'm also not sure if diplomacy is required to cross into other independent fiefdoms (because they should) but if not, then without naval combat, things only get worse.

 

[Casu_Marzu_Supreme]

my point wasn't specifically about the Viking invasions in the 800s. Vikings were a threat past that point even when there was a kingdom of England, and would be entirely neutralized were there to be a poorly-implemented naval battle system which made it easy for England to destroy outsider fleets

the question of whether a united Britain could've fended off Viking invaders with a navy is a big hypothetical and I'm not sure really what the answer is. your post mentioning buffs to specific cultures' navies is interesting and I would be curious as to how it would look in implementation. As it is however, Britain has a huge tendency to unite in CK2, not sure how it will be in CK3. I would hope Vikings would not just end up neutralized by naval warfare

England was united for only a short period of time before they were conquered and turned into part of the North Sea empire. They didn't have the time or the resources to devote to any real naval strength.

The tendency for the petty british kings to create an England, very true. But the real problem is about delaying the unification so that if the AI plays, England won't be united until around 900 to 1000. Plus, with so much attention given to keeping the peace at land, its unlikely that a proper England would have enough leftover resources to devote to a navy.
So its less about how naval battles are simulated and more about how countries are able to create them.

To me, the problem with England being too powerful is because they are given too much attention to their provinces, making them more resourceful and richer than they historically are because all provinces in CK2 are pretty much equal in productivity (minus the trade posts). Provinces need to vary in their wealth, education and population in addition to the technology buffs/debuffs, etc because these were the major factors in ship production in the early medieval era. If these are properly simulated, then England would not be able to field a large or quality fleet because historically, England and its previous petty kingdoms were poor, backwards countries filled with internal squabbles.

 

[Dusty242]

Paradox doesn't like navies, often times their systems are bland and poorly implemented which leaves players hating navies because they are bad. Kind of a vicious cycle but even Imperator Rome had naval combat when this period had naval battles and naval sieges that decided the fates of Kingdoms & Empires yet CK2 didn't have naval battles and CK3 doesn't even have boats.

There are ways to prevent rapid naval growth for countries that are not historically strong at sea. With technological disadvantage, financial limitations and limited port size, even a united England would find it hard to fight against Viking ships. And with the recent HOI4 dlc, we know that its possible for naval engagements to not happen even if opposing fleets occupy the same tile/province.

One simple fix is to make professional navies more powerful than any vassal/Militia navy which would be correct as trained marines historically won out against more poorly trained navies and marines.

France and the Iberian peninsula should not be able to just wantonly raise up 100+ ships and invade the Byzantines or the arabs so casually. If we really want to be historical, their ships would be no match for the military ships in the eastern mediterranean until much after the Viking age. The crusaders had to request permission to dock at certain ports, the distance between Denmark and England contributed to the end of the North Sea Empire, etc.

The Crusaders to be fair had no navy of their own due to being a coalition more often than a nation and throughout the Crusades relied first on the Byzantines then the Venetians and other Italian fleets. And the North Sea Empire was held together surprisingly firmly by Knut the Great and had Harthacnut not died so early into his reign its quite possible that Denmark-Norway would have continued to exist for some time especially as said Kingdom actually had a professional fleet along with its ship levies.

 

[Cephei80]

i have posted this elsewhere but i think its intresting .
sailing round ships in this image with square sails were the western european ones . good for mele and transport , fat and slow , they have 2 towers for archers but nothing more , no rowers for good maneuvrability and no places for catapults or ramming . the carrack was the most common type .

the war galleys on the image with ramming weapons in front and latin sails and rowers are the mediteranean warships , made for war , the only real warships on the image , a legacy from the antiquity . they are able to carry siege weapons and other advanced stuffs like bombs and incendiary stuffs , they are flat enough to have more soldiers on board for a great boarding .
both arabs and byzantines used the dromon and liburne and khelandion , the ottomans will also use same type of ships and this until they finally replace them by ships of the line on 17th and 18th century .


there is also the viking longships who are good a sliding on top of the waves , sneak silently on rivers , light enough to be transported by its crew on land into an another river , but they are very vulnerable , weaker in hull than the other types , have neither the arsenal of weapons on mediteranean ships nor the defensive towers on western ones , but they are very good at boarding and especially raiding and departing fast , its crews usually fight on sea like on land even more than western ships .

 

[DPS]

However, the possibility that a united England is formed before or during the Viking invasions is there so being able to create a navy that is able to rival the vikings in some capacity is not far fetched.

Not with no start date earlier than 867.

 

[Krajzen]

IMPORTANT
"Navalcombat is a possibility in the future. Henrik thinks it would be cool, especially for the Mediterranean."

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-on-12-questions.1264686/page-2#post-25937703

 

[noknok]

I don’t like the idea of naval battles.

 

[Nykyus]

So we won’t see the Mongol Marine Landing in Japan? Divine wind, kamikaze?