What about Navy? (Doomfleet, Battle system, etc...)

[Te. Kenzo]

Ships, for many player is a drama becouse they think to build land troops and an amount of ships reasonable in the real world, the problem is that your enemies bring against you an epic amount of doomstack fleet. We can expect something new about naval system or our destiny is fight again with unreasonable doomstacks of ships? I know that in history there was battles with a great amount of naval forces, but in EUIII this tend to become a standard, and the problem is that the nations not have only a doomstack as union of the great part of their ships, but instead they have many doomfleet around the world.

If we need to defend our traderoute in the new system, for the player could be noisy mantain dozen of doomfleet around the seas (other than the other doomfleet needed to the war. )

Maybe we forget the importance of the navy, but also this area of the game need a great shape in my opinion
Other than that, we can expect a new, more complex system? (or at least some new feature, something like naval manouver similar to land counterpart in the battles of CK2 could be interesting..)

 

[Samilou]

Manpower and the supply of necessary goods like prime timber and materials for sailcloth and ropes as well as tar and the necessary skills and personnell, infrastructure and organization to build large warships in complicated and costly to maintain shipyards should put a strict limit on how many ships can be built at a time, and who can build them, and the supportable amount. The more ships you build the easier it should become to build new ones (should be an exponential decrease in cost and time though, along with a boost in quality). It would be an excellent feature if it would be possible to purchase ships from foreign powers. Smaller or primitive ships should however be available for all nations with the basic resources, to enable a basic transportation capability and the possibility of advanced naval warfare for primitive or poor nations. Decisions to convert merchant ships for military service should be available and often a necessity to maintain numbers for basic raiding and screening roles across large swathes of ocean and large sea battles. This would also give a further benefit from being a maritime trading power.

Perhaps the construction of new, untried ship classes can be simulated by giving a failure rate to the production of all units (as the recruitment of land tropps can fail as well). While trial and error will (hopefully) continually improve your chance to succeed in your next attempt.

Inland naval warfare I think should for once be simulated due to it's immense importance in North American, Russian and Nordic warfare during the entire period depicted. Naval superiority of inland water systems were an absolute necessity for military control of those regions, especially before the construction of major fortifications to block them. Forts could gain a new role by their ability to block pathways, both at land and sea, becoming the keys of control for regions that cannot be overlooked, as they historically were. The Swedes and especially the Russians had a long history of fairly sophisticated inland naval warfare during the middle ages (originating from the early dark ages), which prevailed and served them well even in the early modern era.

 

[Frax]

We know so little of what's going to be in the game. so to assume problems that are in eu3 will be here is a bit to early. Maybe building fleets will requre goods like timber? So if you want to build a "doomsfleet" you need a good trade lane and therefor you are limited to building many of those fleets. this is just an example of how that problem can be solved. but before we know more i don't think we should worrying about those mechanics.

 

[Te. Kenzo]

We know so little of what's going to be in the game. so to assume problems that are in eu3 will be here is a bit to early. Maybe building fleets will requre goods like timber? So if you want to build a "doomsfleet" you need a good trade lane and therefor you are limited to building many of those fleets. this is just an example of how that problem can be solved. but before we know more i don't think we should worrying about those mechanics.

Yes i know, but when a great sequel is on arrival the speculation is a must

 

[George LeS]

Manpower and the supply of necessary goods like prime timber and materials for sailcloth and ropes as well as tar and the necessary skills and personnell, infrastructure and organization to build large warships in complicated and costly to maintain shipyards should put a strict limit on how many ships can be built at a time, and who can build them, and the supportable amount. The more ships you build the easier it should become to build new ones (should be an exponential decrease in cost and time though, along with a boost in quality). It would be an excellent feature if it would be possible to purchase ships from foreign powers. Smaller or primitive ships should however be available for all nations with the basic resources, to enable a basic transportation capability and the possibility of advanced naval warfare for primitive or poor nations. Decisions to convert merchant ships for military service should be available and often a necessity to maintain numbers for basic raiding and screening roles across large swathes of ocean and large sea battles. This would also give a further benefit from being a maritime trading power.

....

You make a good point, but it's even more complicated than that.

There should be definite limits on what you can support. That was the key for the larger navies, and they chose different answers. The French put far too little emphasis on support; they simply didn't have the docks to keep their fleets in good shape. This was compounded by the wartime problem, when fighting Britain, of getting naval supplies to their main bases in Brest and Toulon. It took immense effort to move that stuff by land.

Spain was better off there, in fact they had the best overseas support in the world for most of the period (arguably, all of it, given the loss of America to Britain).

Another factor was the extreme difficulty of supplying fleets. Contrary to what EUIII represents, it wasn't until the 7-Years War that Britain could maintain a blockade off Brest. And even that never was truly constant. (One fact the game has never represented is that, for half of each day, fleets are very unlikely to sight one another. Had there been 24-hour sunlight, Napoleon would never have reached Egypt. And that doesn't count fogs and storms, either.)

One other point: a smaller navy could afford to build a few very strong, but expensive, ships, while a really big one couldn't. That is why the RN ALWAYS hated large ships, from the Stuarts through WWII (except under Fisher). They cost too much to keep in numbers.

Anyway, monster fleets, as the OP states, are a game flaw. And the one thing tried to abate this, positioning, was both misconceived and wrongly implemented. (At a minimum, it should be ships, not guns, which count against you. And it shouldn't MAKE you weak to have too many ships; just be inefficient, and perhaps subject to special attrition.)