Feedback on Treasure Fleets (Exploration Economic Path)

[Impressionist Pineapple]

First off I want to say I'm very much enjoying the game, although I have a few suggestions. For this post I'd like to focus on some potential improvements to the treasure fleet system in the exploration age

In my experience so far I've found that:
- Treasure Fleets start spawning too late in the age to be an interesting interaction most of the time
- It's too difficult/too high of an opportunity cost to steal them
- The amount of points generated/needed should be rebalanced a bit

Recommended changes:
- Have treasure fleets start spawning before shipbuilding is researched. Let the player figure out how to navigate them home safely as an interesting but rewarding challenge
- Allow players to steal treasure fleets outside of war. The cleanest approach I can think of is to add the Privateer unit from previous versions of civ (a navel unit whose owner is hidden). This would also encourage players to build enough navy to defend their treasure and gain exp on fleet commanders
- Restrict treasure fleet cash in to a homeland wharf or shipyard. This should help funnel fleets into one spot for defence and plundering
- Add an espionage action to reveal all treasure fleet generation timers on the target's known cities until the end of the age. While not required, it should make going the pirate route more dependable
- Slightly increase the gold from cashing in a fleet. It's much to easy to generate more gold with tile improvements, each fleet should be worth at least a few turns of gold generation early in the age for them to be worthwhile

I enjoy the idea of the treasure fleet system and it feels thematic to the time period, and I'd like to see it as a more impactful mechanic of the exploration age. Also I want to be a pirate

[Mauve]

I second all of this. Love the idea of the privateer and the espionage action!

I also wish that Treasure Fleets could spawn as a land unit (make them a covered caravan or something) and then convert to a ship when they reach a coast.

[Impressionist Pineapple]

That's not a bad idea either. It would be nice if distant inland settlements counted too (especially if they were conquered)

[Flash]

Had a city with wharf and port but nope.. would not spawn a treasure fleet. Just lost the resource on age progression. I completely second this thread request with bug fixes to remove issues like my own.

[evansall]

I have played through two complete games and completely agree that treasure fleets need to be reworked. Right now, they come too late - they score too little per fleet - and they dont travel quickly. In my last game (where I TRIED to finish the age this way) - I had every other legacy maxed out and ended the age while I had 6-7 treasure ships in transit.

[Impressionist Pineapple]

Same, in my first game I specifically tried for the economic path. I ended up with around 10 points (hitting the first milestone), and maxing out all 3 other paths by the end of the ate

[Batailleuse]

You can unlock provateer with befriending military city state in the exploration age.

Just saying.

The point of the treasure fleet is res) y. Yo. Rush the new territory and have 2-4 cities with at least 2 or more special ressources.

I think I got to halfway through the legacy mission pretty fast and I finished all 3 others by that time. But I want really Trying to do that legacy early on to be fair.

[iheartdaikaiju]

I love treasure fleets but yeah needing an insane number of them makes the mechanic not fun

[reliant_ncc1864]

I pretty much agree with everything you said. It seems to me that 80% of your treasure fleet points are earned in the last 30% of the age. Starting them early is basically impossible since you need to spend all that time getting to and colonizing the new world with settlements by the right resources.
After several tries, I never get near the completion of the economic path. Neither do the AI opponents. That suggests it's not well thought out.

[bbloxam]

I have yet to get a Treasure Fleet although I think I met all the conditions that I could only find on U Tube. You have no instructions in the Civlopedia. That needs to be corrected!

[iheartdaikaiju]

This took me a while but I have to revisit my opinion. I actually like something about the way treasure fleets work. Treasure fleets heavily incentivize war, forward settling, and science priority. These three things are the "magic formula" that worked in titles like civ 4.

I heartily support your suggestion allowing stealing treasure fleets. That NEEDS to be in the game. Every suggestion you had, espionage and everything else, chef's kiss.

But I withdraw my complaint about balance completely. Forcing aggressive play is something that should exist in every era, and if you are aggressive you'll start spawning fleets around 30% era.

[KG]

The mechanics of the treasure fleet work well. You only need to send 3-4 settlers to the islands and/or the other continent in the right places to meet the economic conditions.

You don't need to be ‘safe’ on the seas to explore, and the creation of treasure fleets begins even before 30% of the era. But you do need to build up the communes with treasure resources, buy a fishing dock, and that's it. Sometimes you can find places where you can have 4-5 resources, so each fleet earns +4/+5 points.

But I'd love to see a bit of piracy and fleet theft, that would be great. Bring back Privateer!

[Smacktar]

I wish Corsairs could secretly attack another civ's treasure fleet, without having to be at war. I know that sometimes pirate ships had letters of mark from their crown. But in other cases, they were just pirates and concealed their identity. Let us have proper piracy. It would be balanced easily by the AI needing to protect its treasure fleets with some naval vessels.

[NorthernDruid]

I'm not sure how necessary it is to increase the gold gained from cashing them in (though the higher the benefit the more costly it is to keep them stashed to delay progressing the age).

All the other suggestions seem pretty great though.

Added opportunities for stealing treasure ships and stricter requirements for cashing them in seem like great ways to make the gameplay around them more engaging when combined with less restriction on accessing them in the first place.

Having to rush shipbuilding first thing if you want to have a chance at the economic legacy path feels really restrictive.

[iheartdaikaiju]

I left this feedback in another thread but I will leave it here as well,

There need to be more treasure locations spawning when you increase the game speed. When you play on online, your units move much, much more slowly, and so the only way to play economic at online speed is with a military campaign. You will never be able to explore enough of the map before the era ends, as even if you extend the era future tech/civ will still force the era to catch up before you're done exploring. Treasure fleets also take much longer to cross the ocean.

Both these issues are mitigated if the map is generated differently on online speed so

* there are more treasures, and
* there are fewer ocean tiles separating the old world and the new world.

Maximum separating ocean tiles separating the old and new worlds at online speed (fastest game speed, slowest units) should be either 1 on any size map smaller than standard or 2 on standard speed, and should increase by 1 per game speed to a maximum of 6 for marathon.

Density should scale as well, so that there are 3 times as many treasure resources when playing on online speed as there are on marathon speed.