ships

[tuopaolo]

Does anyone know how the attack and defence rating of ships works? If a ship has an attack of 3 and a defense of 1, does that mean that if you attack with your ship its combat effectiveness is 3 but if you defend with your ship (when another faction initiates a battle) that your ships combat effectiveness is only a 1?

Or does it work the same way it works for land forces, with both attack and defense coming into play in every battle?

[Hurin_Rules]

I had always assumed that it works the first way you described, but I'd have to say that sea battles seem very random and too unpredictable. I have attacked a single enemy ship with defence 2 with three of my own ships (attack value of 2 each, for a total in my favor of 6 to 2) and lost all my ships without the enemy losing any. Now, granted, this was just one instance, but nearly every time I play the game something crazy like this happens with the sea battles. It just seems to be a total crapshoot, unlike land battles, and it is very frustrating.

[DojoRat]

In Viking era, attack and defense must be combined. The boats that you first get have 0 for defense, unless that's a 'misprint&#39http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif and they often win against the lowest level Viking craft.

[tuopaolo]

Quote[/b] (Hurin_Rules @ Oct. 02 2003,11:33)]
From what I understand Speed also plays a role in ship combat so maybe the enemy ship you attacked had a higher speed than your ships? I wonder if you have a stack of different ships only the lowest speed is considered for both combat and the chance to escape.

Some of the land units have a defence of zero or even less than zero, so zero doesn't mean that it can't defend at all.

[LadyAnn]

attack and defense of ship is randomized similar to kill chance of a land unit.

Each turn would have your attack vs their defense and that would give a probability your ship kills the other one; And same for them, give them the prob. your shipped get killed.

Speed enters the equation in two ways:
1. you order your ship to move away from the sea zone, and the enemy attacks. If your ship is slower, it can't escape. If your ship is faster, well, it ran away http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

2. The ship with higher speed strikes first.

The above were from my observations while playing the game. Could be totally a figment of my imagination.

Annie

ps.: to clarify the probability thing.
1. If your ship has attack of 2 and defense of 2, and enemy ship has also attack of 2, defense of 2, you will have same probability to win (assuming same speed). If you have 3 ships and the opponent has 1, it doesn't mean your probability to win improves 3 times in this case.

2. Let's say in another scenario, your ships have attack of 2, def. of 0 and enemy has attack of 3, def of 2. Now, the odds favor greatly the enemy. In one single turn, the enemy could kill all three of your ships (enemy is favor +3 each time it engage one of your ship, while your probability to kill is at +0 level). Since the probability to kill increase exponentially (if they use similar model as the land-based units), one could see how 3 ships could lose against 1.

[Sir Chauncy]

I have to say that I have never understood ship dynamics. I always find that strength in numbers is the key (the more the better) However, somethings do need to be explained to me:

Ships captains, they have stars as well but do they have even numbered ranks of benefits like their land based kin (every 2 ranks gained is an extra point of valour) or is it the more stars the better?

All ships have a rating of 'strength' in their description boxes, what does that do? I have never ever seen this above zero. Does it increase if you have more than one ship stack? Like in Crusades if you have more than 1000 troops?

I was sure there were more but my mind has gone blank, does any one know the answers to these questions?

[Snowhobbit]

Citera[/b] (LadyAnn @ Okt. 03 2003,04:12)]attack and defense of ship is randomized similar to kill chance of a land unit.

Each turn would have your attack vs their defense and that would give a probability your ship kills the other one; And same for them, give them the prob. your shipped get killed.

Speed enters the equation in two ways:
1. you order your ship to move away from the sea zone, and the enemy attacks. If your ship is slower, it can't escape. If your ship is faster, well, it ran away http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

2. The ship with higher speed strikes first.

The above were from my observations while playing the game. Could be totally a figment of my imagination.

Annie

ps.: to clarify the probability thing.
1. If your ship has attack of 2 and defense of 2, and enemy ship has also attack of 2, defense of 2, you will have same probability to win (assuming same speed). If you have 3 ships and the opponent has 1, it doesn't mean your probability to win improves 3 times in this case.

2. Let's say in another scenario, your ships have attack of 2, def. of 0 and enemy has attack of 3, def of 2. Now, the odds favor greatly the enemy. In one single turn, the enemy could kill all three of your ships (enemy is favor +3 each time it engage one of your ship, while your probability to kill is at +0 level). Since the probability to kill increase exponentially (if they use similar model as the land-based units), one could see how 3 ships could lose against 1.
Intresting... I've always wonderd how that works.,,

[tuopaolo]

My wild guess would be that Strength is like Hit Points for land units. Maybe the developers wanted to give different ships different Strength but then decided against it for some reason. I wish one of the devs would pop in and tell us what Strength is. I guess it's not that important but I'd like to be able to mod my game and give different ships different Strength but I can't do that without knowing what Strength actually does.

[Slyspy]

the whole ship/trade/control of the seas thing is the most clumsy feature of the game anyway and it wouldn't surprise me if it were completely randomn

[MrWhipple]

I play a lot of GA games with VI (v2.0) and usually build up extensive trade and sea lanes.

This is some of what I hear works, I have used theese tactics with some success:

1) Keep ship stacks small but more than one.

2) Join fast and slow ships in the same stack. Even if they get one of the ships, the other might escape, keeping that sea lane open for you, giving you time to reinforce.

3) Attacking with three stacks of 2 is better than one stack of 6. I gives you three shots at thier stack (only the first ship in thier stack takes the hit).

4) Get deep water ships as soon as you can (Caravels and the like). From just a few deep sea areas, like Centrial Med or Atlantic, you can control the seas.

5) Train and manage your ship captians just like you would your generals or spies or asassins. Beat up on some weak units to get the the stars and stats up. Keep the best units in the vital sea areas.

Hope this helps. Happy hunting. Now quit hanging out on the forum. Go out and sink a few ships. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wacko.gif

[NewJeffCT]

One thing I have always found - no matter the difficulty level - is that attacking is much better than defending in sea battles. I have had instances where I lost all 3 ships in a sea province defending from a surprise attack from 1 ship (and many times, having lost 1 or 2 and almost never winning against a surprise attack)... however, as the attacker, I tend to win a lot more than I lose. I even had one sea battle where the enemy lost 8 ships and I lost 3... and, if I am engaged in hostilities against another major sea power, I am always very aggressive in attacking them - and I tend to win on the attack most of the time.

[hoom]

Yeah, attacking first helps lots.

I find a fleet of 4 of the cheapest boats is about the biggest you'll need for most situations.

When there are large fleets of advanced enemy, fleets of 8 or fleets of 4 more advanced ships are enough for the core/combat locations.

Gotta always (except when starting out & maybe at the extremities) use fleets of 2 for trade routes so you don't loose it when a ship sinks in a storm.
Also it helps with concentration when there is a war.

When you have a war, attack first & concentrate your ships into large fleets rather than spread out.

[BDC]

I once had to try and sink 2 full stacks of Byz ships led by a 4 star captain. Not fun. Took about 20 years and 40+ ships until they were finally caught out.

[o_loompah_the_delayer]

Quote[/b] (Slyspy @ Oct. 03 2003,07:23)]the whole ship/trade/control of the seas thing is the most clumsy feature of the game anyway and it wouldn't surprise me if it were completely randomn
I agree, whatever the rules may be you still get strange results, and what is worse I usually get a series of strange results. In a high period game as the Turks, I had with great labour built up a fleet of 3 booms (two 2*, one 0*) and 2 dhows (1*, 0*). A single Hungarian barque which started out as 0* sailed around from the Adriatic to the black sea destroying each of my ships individually in each zone First time it destroyed a 2* boom I though it was a fluke, and didnt concentrate my fleet as I needed the trade, but nope, two fewer booms later I moved my dhows (speed 3) out of the barques way, but they still got caught and sunk http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/mecry.gif

[Sir Chauncy]

Goodness gracious Mr Loompah, that does sound serious, obviously the old sayings weretrue about the barque being worse than the bite...

God i kill me.

I have actually noticed that there are some factions that get great ships captains too. Playing as the English I frequently got a 4 star captain frsh out of port from Northumbria. I can't remember his name though. I guess that mean that ships can get special characters like heros on land.

Has anyone else witnessed this?

[Nestor]

Sea battles are not totally random, they do have some rules:

1. They will give you a victory when you don't really need it.

2. You will lose if you absolutely need to win.

I don't know if I am just imagining things, but I suppose we could easily wright the Murphy's laws of sea battles. And they would work http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/tongue.gif

Something I found out: if you win your land battles you have less chances to win in the sea on the same turn. It's annoying but I do believe that the game is in favour of the losing party in a series of battles.

I experimented with this a little bit and found out that if you make some additional moves you may well get better results from your navy. Especially if you make some losing moves, i.e. send some low star assassins to the opposing King.

If you lose a ship by a surprise attack and you can reload, do so and attack yourself. You will probably win.

Anyway, I was never much of a gumpler and really don't see the point of having different ships with strange names, if it all comes down to the rules of blackjack or some other casino game http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/dizzy.gif

(And I hear that they are not going to make serious changes in RTW. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/angry.gif )