You can't currently send armies to coastline ocean squares, lakes and lochs, and therefore you can't claim sovereignty on these squares.  (yes, we know that people used to be able to on ocean sov, but that was shut down a while back, though there are still a few out there who have them).

I'm really interested in player feedback about opening up Ocean Coastline, Lakes and Lochs to claiming sovereignty.

PRO: More sov (esp food sov) for people bordering these squares

CON: People who have settled these squares in the expectation of them being "safe" (ie "unsiegable" from) might object

Do the Pros outweigh the cons?

Answers on a postcard (by which I mean, in this forum thread) please.

Best,

SC

The whole system is undergoing an overhaul atm and I hope we can finally lay the generic bugs (eg phantom sov) to rest.

SC

I would certainly love to have these tiles opened up for sov, but as 'water' tiles, would they be given a food-only value, or be treated as a standard bonus tile and have a weighted set of values generated for them?

The Ocean Coastal squares are a different story for me though. The squares are labeled jut like all other coastal squares with no indication they cannot be claimed except unless you try and send an army there. The fix I see for those squares to me seems:

1. Make the Ocean Coastal squares with food claimable.

or

2. Remove the food from unclaimable Ocean Coastal squares. 

Those are my thoughts. Thanks Stormcrow.

More importantly, from a gameplay perspective, although defending on a plain is not ideal, it can and has been done on many occasions with great efficacy. The difference between a tile being impassable and it being treated like a plain is therefore quite a big one.

Here's another suggestion: cap the unit mass that can occupy a lake tile. This even has a touch of realism to it: you can send a small task force to secure a lake region, but you can't camp out 100,000 soldiers there.

Weirdly, I think more people will be supportive than not.  But I'm willing to be corrected.

Now, if we start playing with the defensibility (plains vs a new "beach" terrain-type) then I think you're spot on with your analysis...

Again, totally willing to be surprised on that too.

SC

EDIT:  Bearing in mind that any moves towards a "beach"-type terrain would not just be limited to these squares in question - they'd be applicable to all coastline sov, including existing.

I don't want to derail the discussion though; it seems to me like there's two questions here:

1. Should Ocean Coastline, Lakes and Lochs be open to armies in occupation

2. Should all coastline behave differently from Plains in terms of terraintype

In case it's not clear, right now in this thread I'd like to focus on question 1 above! Please start a new thread for Question 2!

SC

2. Maybe - needs some serious thought.

3. Would be great to do something more than Fishery with water squares...

KP

Whether you choose plains or some special beach terrain they will still be easily massacred.  So for the city itself while it doesn't have perfect defense it still has awesome defense.  And the ability to add say 40% food outweighs.  

This wouldn't impact the defensibility of inland areas much: 'zero-squares' tend to be scattered, so enabling them for occupation would result in a small relative increase in the number of squares that may be occupied by blockade/siege, but (as already mentioned above) the city would gain the squares' potential for sov building.

Are island cities currently useful? One might think they (with 4 or less sov-claimable squares) are currently 'last bastion' strongholds, or even that having many such cities makes a player indestructible, BUT such a policy cannot work long-term for a player, because it would severely limit their population count for settling new cities. I therefore don't think it's much of a loss to disturb the security of these cities.

Also, take Pathfinding™ into consideration. Opening zero-squares to occupation means that they can also be traversed, assumedly at a high weighting cost (therefore slowly). If a city may use catapults as outward-facing weapons to take pot-shots at hostile armies, AND armies risk bombardment if they stray into sovereign territory within range (distance<=1), THEN we create a new game dynamic by opening up zero-squares to occupation.

Sov buildings: Perhaps there should be a cost for building on these tricky squares, say a hefty research item ("Deep pile foundations"), or double the building time and cost and maintenance? If you like, this tech could slightly reduce the probability of a siege damage for inland cities.

As for impassables, I'm less convinced. Perhaps, if there were new researches to make it convincing, I'd be happier with the idea.. but are we later going to do the same for volcanoes and fiery mountains? Seems like one rule for one, another for others. Some people will benefit, others will feel they have been discriminated against because their impassable tiles are still impassable. 

As to terrain type - It would be good to have it behave differently then plains.  Would be great to have a specific resource - mineral/herb spawn on such spots as well.  

I thought the intention was for all ocean water types to be sov enabled and yes, many of us settled our cities near ocean squares anticipating it's release.   Enabling lakes/lochs to be sov squares would also be a great bonus.   

I do like KP's idea of adding other types of sov on the water squares as long as those water sov squares already claimed are not changed (from food to something else).

I don't think people should be able to Have the luxury of an unsiegable city AND good food sov. 

I would prefer to see spots opened up for sov though as if a few people can now be sieged who couldn't previously then it's not exactly a hardship for them it's what everyone else lives with and they'd be compensated with food sov for that.

It was originally supposed to be forbidden for Ocean sov squares.  Pre-naval, the thinking was that the small fishing boats / oyster divers / whatever couldn't actually do their thang in very deep water.

Unfortunately, there was a bug (that many people discovered) that allowed players to "ramrod" through army occupations of the ocean square by manually pushing the co-ordinates in.  We then closed that bug, which has had the unintended consequence that there's an inequality of ocean squares where some have sov and others don't.  That's what we're now trying to regularise/fix.

Auraya wrote: As for impassables, I'm less convinced. Perhaps, if there were new researches to make it convincing, I'd be happier with the idea.. but are we later going to do the same for volcanoes and fiery mountains? Seems like one rule for one, another for others. Some people will benefit, others will feel they have been discriminated against because their impassable tiles are still impassable.

Interesting idea; the issue though would be that once a square was "opened up" via the researchand the sov creation (and hence the abilty to place armies) it'd have to remain open to army occupation.  If multiple players bordered a lake then one of them would be able to permanently change the status quo for the others - which is much the same issue as before.

SC

Well it makes sense for a lake to have some food available . . . . a volcano . . . not as much. That doesn't mean that volcanos couldn't have something else, but probably not food.

This works as a good compromise mechanically as well, because it makes the formerly unsiegable towns at least siege resistant.  

Having a process to 'activate' an impassable square - lake, loch, volcano, whatever - would be a great idea. Players would then have the option to keep their impassable, impassable.. or they could open it up for food sov (or *other* things) which would allow military occupation too. 

In fact, it might be interesting if the act of opening up impassables required scouting/spying and then military dispatched to secure the area, with a random troop loss to the dangers involved.. or something. Even a long term danger to troops which sit on the square? A bridge over the lake might randomly collapse, killing 200 troops on the square. 

The main reason I'm making this point is that asking the devs to design a new terrain type and combat type in addition to populating lakes and lochs with food values and turning sov "on" there and in the ocean ...  means it probably won't get done.  And possibly shouldn't, given all the other priorities.

I think it would be better to have something straightforward and simple that might actually happen.

Nothing wrong with these ideas, I just don't want people to get their hearts set on them, then rant when they don't get everything they want, which could make the devs wonder why they bother.

I like this idea for those squares. It gives more customization to your cities, opens up the option of sov for those that want it and leave the defensive nature for those that prefer that.

What else would you do with cake when you have it?  That's what cake is for.  

This genuinely made me laugh out loud.

Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with proposing other ways that we would rather have it work.  I'm just hoping that people will ALSO answer the question that Stormcrow asked, which is whether people would like to see the change that he described implemented (even if they might rather have it work a slightly different way, as they describe).

Please allow the ability to claim this type of Sov.

A CON you did not mention: These squares can ONLY be used to build Fisheries. I enjoy this dynamic while searching for squares to settle a new town. Food Sov is very important but I would prefer no to have the majority of my immediate surrounding sov squares to be limited in this way. It also makes sense to me physically as property near water is desirable for various reasons throughout history and in present day.

A suggestion: Create new military research that is required for armies to occupy and/or attack an ocean square for any reason. I can make an entire new thread on this suggestion alone so I'll stop right now and say that I hope illy introduces ocean warfare some day 

get some ideas, those squares could add to the game, or the can detract, its up to how you incorporate them, so please look to the future and the overall growth of the game and what makes sense