Dhows and Dromons

[Servius]

I almost always play Catholic factions, and one of the most annoying things still in this game, to me at least, is that those two ship types are near impossible to sink.

Every time I attack them I never get to fight them, they just run away. They sit in my sea lanes and disrupt my trade routes and troop transport ability.

Is it the high Speed stat those ship have which allow them to always just run from a fight? If so, I'm gonna gut it, so does anyone know where in the unit_prof file the collumn is that has the speed stat?

[Basileus]

you should try attacking em with 3 or 4 ships simultaneously that should do it..they might get away the first and the second but they´ll propably have to fight with the third or the forth..works for me

[Servius]

I've had fleets of 8+ ships not be able to kill 1 dromon. I am NOT kidding. Every time I'd attack and hit End Turn, the very next year the ship has just moved to an ajacent sea zone.

The only times I've been sucessful at killing them is with a rediculously large fleet AND a 3+ star admiral OR they are in an enemy fleet that has slower ships and I just destroy the whole enemy fleet.

Also, I've noticed in the unit_prod file that barques, dromons and dhows all have the same speed, but in the game, which I look at the units, the dhows and dromons have 3 speed and my barques have 1. I'm not sure what that's about or where the error is.

[Basileus]

what i meant was to attack with diffrent stacks of ships not with one stack with 4+ shipsin it...yoú´ll have a higher chanse of success that way.:)

i agree with you though especialy dromons are a pain in the beind http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[motorhead]

If u are chasing a stack of 2 dromons, break your fleet of 8 into 4 fleets of 2-ships. The four attacks have a better chance of making contact than the single stack of 8. If you have 4 barques and 4 caravels in that 8-stack, make two 2-ship barque and four 1-stack caravels stacks. The barqes stacks give them decent attack and speed. The single caravels should be strong enough to take on 2 dromons or dhows and now you've got 4 chances of making contact. You may lose a ship or two, but much, much higher chance that the enemy ships will be engaged and sunk.

Also, if you are playing 1.0, patch up to 1.1 as there was an uncatchable fleet bug with 1.0.

[Servius]

I just got VI the other day, so I'm all up to date I think on the patches. I haven't yet tried splitting my fleet up and having several smaller fleets attack the same ship in the same turn. That's an interesting idea. I'll give it a go.

[motorhead]

It's in the strategy guide. "Given fleets of equal speed, a chaser fleet has a 50% chance each turn of catching a target fleet...consider splitting up your ships into several fleets to have a better chance of catching the enemy...you reduce your odds of winning the battle later on because you have fewer ships" and "The speed of your fleet is equal to its slowest boat"