Ship Attrition

[Yrth]

Is there any way other than being notified of victory to get reminders about ships being out in the ocean?

I have lost so many ships simply because I forget they are somewhere. A particular problem is when I take a ship out of port to load troops. Loading troops takes time. Sometimes I go deal with another problem and forget that I've loaded troops to take somewhere. Before I know it the whole fleet has attritioned to zero and sunk, along with my troops. This happened to my conquistador Cabeza de Vaca. He got Jamaica, I sent a fleet to pick him up and deliver him to the continent. Well, I forgot about him as I'm doing other stuff and the guy only got to explore the bottom of the Carribean. What a pain.

Why can't the ships head to port after sitting in one sea zone for more than three months (other than blockading) or something?

 

[Dark Knight]

Unfortunately, no. This is one of the more complained about problems.

 

[BiB]

Now where did I leave Columbus again ? Oh yes, America sommink

 

[unmerged(1548)]

This is my pet peeve about the game. A compromise solution would be to shorten the time necessary to load troops on the ships, when a harbor is present. Presently it takes 20 days to load a ship outside a harbor. Yes, I counted the days, while watching them load. If this time were reduced, players could wait for the loading, and then move the ship to the desired location. Instead players are bored or distracted by the world events and then forget to come back to them because of more pressing concerns. Why does it take 20 days to load in a harbor? What, are they rowing them out in little boats a few at a time? We're not talking about D-Day here, sometimes I just want to move a few troops down the coast a short distance, but I got to wait 20 days to load them, everytime, whereas when they arrive in port they are instantly unloaded.