PROMBLEM in Road to Independence: Ships limited movement

[Grognardicus]

I am a longtime lurker, now a newbie to this fine Forum. I am playing the Road to Independence campaign tutorial, where a goal as Britian is to build a fleet to sail north and lay seige to the Frenchies. I've built 2 Fifth Rate ships, but they appear very limited in movement from their Virginia port - only able to cruise Chesapeake Bay and just off the Delaware coast (highlighted by a green area). This limitation does not seem to be the ship's range for that turn, since the ships cannot move outside the green area on the next turn. Am I missing some technology that would enable my ships to sail better than a blow-up pool float? I humbly await your counsel.

[kayapó]

I'm not sure if I'm understanding your problem correctly but it seems to me that you are just surprised with how ships in this game move slowly in comparison to reality.

On a map that is scaled up so much like the RTI it is even worse.

This is a gameplay choice, since turns in the game are very long it wouldn't be practical to give ships their "correct" possible movement on that amount of time (You could be half way around the globe in 1 turn) so it is a gameplay choice.

Think of it this way...does it make sense that in chess the queen can move so much faster then a horse or her husband? Pretty atletic for an old lady. Again, a gameplay choice.

You just have to abstract ship movement. For example I like to think that it takes 2 years for my trade ships to get to the coast of Brazil because it actually takes time for the traders to setup there and start sending things home.

If a fleet takes 2 years to get to the East Indies is because the voyage is full of dangers and they would end up stoping for repairs along the way, etc.

[Grognardicus]

Thank you for your reply. The problem is that turn after turn, the ships appear to be limited to a small greenish higlighted area near their Virginia port, fixed to Chesapeake Bay and near the Delaware cost. If I command them to move outside of this area, turn after turn, I get an X cursor and the reply, "Can't do that, sir!". At this rate, sailing north up to Newfoundland to harass the Frenchies is not possible, so I assume I'm missing something that would enable the ships to sail outside of the small plot of sea they appear to be stuck in.

[Fisherking]

Welcome aboard Grognardicus!

If I can remember rightly, the last time I played all the way through RTI, and not just the last chapter (that was v-1.1), there was one chapter where you had ships but you couldn’t do much with them.

My first advice is to play through the chapter and see what happens next. Then let us know if it works better at the end.

If it is still messed up I guess we know that 1.5 has another bug...

[Grognardicus]

I will play through the campaign tutorial as the Brits further and see if the ships get "released" in the future to sail further beyond port. I also noticed my land army isn't allowed to move into "allied" British territory to the north, either, so I can't march on the Frenchies by land at this point. You may be right that the campaign script may be limiting my movement for the time being.

"One of by land, and two if by sea;" and three if time sets my troops free.....

Thank you for your reply!