I think everyone likes the Rise of Nations model for boats alot more.

At this point I'm not willing to sacrifice strategic depth just to make Brad's AI job easier.  Build a good transportation system and then make the AI use it.  Asking for anything less than that today, weeks before we've even seen the initial beta, is dumb.  Your solution is the "Oh shit, we can't make this work" solution.  Don't accept that from SD until it's the only viable option. 

The time a turn represents absolutely does not make it work.  Building serious oceangoing vessels and training appropriate crews takes more than "a season".  Significantly more. 

I like that idea, and to expand on that, perhaps you could have so many army units per harbor on that body of water. For example, you have 3 cities along that coast with harbors, which gives you 3 x (number of units per harbor) of total available units on that body of water. And that number of units per harbor can either be fixed or a variable that new tech or buildings could increase.

I'm all for making it "difficult", but it shouldn't be "annoying" to do. Difficult implies it's hard to accomplish, for example limits on how many you can transport and so on. Annoying implies it's a fucking pain in the ass to have to click through 20 boats and 20 units 10 times each.

It's like the combat orders in Dom3 for units. It's difficult to find a good balance between combinations, but it's just plain annoying to have to click through the menus when setting up orders for units.

I really like DsRaider's idea. I would limit it a bit more though; First, troops can only enter a sea tile from a settlement with a harbor. This makes ports a lot more important, because they can't just be anywhere and still give you access to sea transport. Second, with basic sailing technology ships can not leave sight of the coast, and their speed should not be much greater regular movement over land. Ocean travel and increased speed can be unlocked through more research. This makes seafaring valuable, but it doesn't make it an instant I-Win tech (by being able to out maneuver everyone else and being able to colonise the entire world). And thirdly, perhaps the number of troops that can move to a sea tile from a port could be linked to the production in that town. This prevents some backwater fishing village from being able to provide transport for an entire legion, and makes developed ports more valuable.

But as far as we know, seafaring won't be in FE, so all of this speculation won't go far. Let's hope it will be in the next expansion.

I'd like at least fishing boats. That way you could harvest the bounty of the sea. Arrr!

It was hard to send an army by sea in ancient and even medieval times. Of course they would send thousands of soldiers and we are sending 10 to 20. Most viking boats that can be built in a season can hold 20 soldiers and their gear. Trust me when I say it is perfectly realistic. Don't know why so few people can accept this fact. 

I would prefer the harbors allowing transport. It should probably be a little more varied and flexible for Sovs that specialize in magic. As far as the form of travel, units turning into a boat is a very attractive mechanic. But let's be honest, we are talking about the next expansion here so there is plenty of time to nail this down. 

The speed advantage wouldn't have to be that great. I'm assuming that your proposed embarking/disembarking movement penalty would be that moving from a land tile to a sea tile (and vice versa) removes all movement points for that turn? Judging from some of the screenshots we've seen, default movement speed would seem to be 2 tiles per turn. The smallest possible increase in speed for sea travel would be 3 tiles per turn. That's a 50% bonus and feels about right to me for basic seafaring tech (although base movement speed should be higher imo). With embarking penalty 'costing' you one movement point, it only takes one turn make up for that loss, and after two turns of sea travel you are ahead. I've tried to show this graphically below. The upper row is a unit starting on land, embarking, and traveling by sea. Below is a unit traveling by land. The numbers are their positions at the end of the corresponding turn.

[S][1][_][_][2][_][_][3]
[S][_][1][_][2][_][3]

As you can see after turn three the upper unit is ahead, and it didn't even need to have full movement at the start. Even if you make that a requirement for embarking/disembarking, it only adds one more turn before moving by sea is faster. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that's a bad thing, sea travel should be faster. But allowing it to be done from everywhere makes it a bit of a no-brainer, all other things being equal. Although I have to admit I don't know how you would get off island that doesn't have a friendly port

Another thing crossed my mind; wouldn't this make it rather easy to escape from monsters and other neutrals? See something coming that your stack can't handle? Just pop over to a sea tile where it can't catch you.

Those boats might be build in a season, but it requires a lot of things, mainly good wood, lots of rope, and sails. You don't find those lying around everywhere. Also some tools and a few people who know what they are doing would be nice to have as well.

Another thing; since FE will have rivers that are inside a tile (rather than between two tiles as in civ), this opens up the possibility for navigating rivers. Any thoughts? I think it would be awesome if it was allowed. Just look at how the vikings were able to raid not only coastal areas, but inland Russia as well using rivers. One expedition even reached the Caspian sea apparently...

It's true that the AI has trouble with the boats. The only way I could beat some of the really high civ levels (Think I beat Diety, Demigod for sure) was to use island hopping and maps with alot of water. I've seen people beat these cheating AI bastards without this to but I simply wasn't good enough and I could see the difference from land to sea.

Still if the AI could handle them it would be very good. Or at least the option to have them in multiplayer-games.