As we played yesterday, a few guys joked about improving the ships.
And as we have right now no "flipping option" on the backside of the
ships, I propose a two level ship. Usual Ships can be improved to
Warships. It is right now in the idea phase, but
maybe somebody is willing to discuss.

The Idea on scratch:

Normal Ship - Frontside of Coin
Ship Building: 2 token
Ship Maintenance : 1 token each round

Warship - Backside of Coin
Warship Building: 2 (or even more) additional token,
Normal Ship will be flipped over with a Warship Picture on the back of the Ship Coin
Warship Maintenance: 2 (or even more) token each round

Warships should have some additional capabilities like
- blocking coastal areas for other ships (but not open sea areas)
- transporting more people then 5
- moving slower, as they are stronger and heavier
- warship may hold troops on it, these token stay on board
and are not counted for city support, but for census, they are
not affected by Population Expansion
- Warships may attack each other, including the troops on board

Maybe this should be allowed only after buying "Naval Warfare"?

Any Ideas on this? I know it is way to complex for the base rules,
but I think about something as optional rule "Naval War" for the
optional rulebook. I just would like to have some more ideas before
playtesting this...

Sounds nice. I think of adding the following things:

Only players with Naval Warfare may build warships.

Shore Bombardment (Yes, I play Axis & Allies too)
When a conflict over land occurs and some troops are unloaded from a Warship, opponent first removes a unit unless opponent has Military.

Sea battle
Sea battles occur before ground conflicts are resolved.
War ships always are in conflict with ships from opponents. First all players without warships removes all ships and all tokens on them from the area. Then the side with the fewest number of warships first removes a ship (may be a normal ship) from the area, just like in ground conflicts. The battle continues until either all warships are removed from the area, or only one player still has warships left and no other players have ships left on the area. Players may choose to remove a token on a ship from the area instead of removing a ship.
After all sea battles, tokens from warships involved in a sea battle may not invade land areas.* All other tokens may invade land areas.

Blockade areas
All ships ending in an area with a warship ends their movement on that area. Players with Advanced Military may choose to move their warships either before or after all players without Advanced Military moves.

Slow movement
Warships may move two areas in a round, or three areas when holder has cloth making. But warships can carry eight units.

Population and census
Units on warships are not affected in population expansion, do not count for census and city support, and cannot be used as units in calamities. However, warships themselves counts for census and each warship counts as one unit in a Civil War, Tyranny, or during the Special Abilities Phase. When a warship is annexed in that way, all tokens on that warship are annexed too. If the beneficiary does not have Naval Warfare, that player still may keep the annexed warships and use them.

Though I like the ideas, I worry about the fact you'll never find enough people who want to playtest this. Consider the fact that a fun game of Civ begins with 5 players and 6 is the minimum in my opinion.

An 18 player game with this option is almost impossible I guess.

Nevertheless this can be finetuned to get a proper WARFARE variant.

Since Civilization is never a wargame, and some people like to play a variant that adds this, you could combine this with the addition of bronzeworking/ironworking.

I'd also suggest to create a possibility of building more than 4 ships.



Still this remains on the bottom of my list of development.