Fighting Naval Stacks

[Lacker]

So I have a question regarding naval battles involving stacks of miscellaneous ships. I've read the bits in other forums talking about how speed is effected by stacked ships etc. And I was wondering how the cpu decides what ships sink etc.

What prompted me to ask was a battle involving maybe 9 Egyptian ships and 7 of my Denmark ships. I can't remember the Egyptian ships but there were 7 of the small; speed 3 attack 1 defense 1 ships, and 2 of the baroque counterparts with something like speed 2 attack 2 defense 2 all in one big stack off the coast of Egypt. I had built 7 Caravels for the express purpose of clearing the coast of Africa to land mole armies (armies sent to destroy provinces, not just to win battles) in Tripoli, Egypt, Palestine etc. I sent my 7 against their 9 and they sunk ALL of my ships...without losing one of theirs. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/gc-stunned.gif

This seemed odd to me. https://forums.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/flat.gif

Especially considering I had just spent 7,000 florins to habitat the bottom of the freaking ocean. Since then I've had several other naval battles with lots of different ships in different stacks and they seem to be going well...I'm wondering if there's a strategy to it.

Thanks
A

[MrWhipple]

I have found that attacking and defending with small stacks seem to work beter. Two or three seem to work well. I like to mix up my stacks with slow and fast units. This way when you get attacked you only loose a few ships. When you attack, go in with more than one small stack rather than one large stack. I think that the AI will compute each attack seprately. Hope this works for you too.

[Blodrast]

it is a rather well known fact that the naval battles are flawed. The AI gets "godly powers" is a common expression, and cases where a barque sinks several bigger ships in succession are common, if not the rule.

What version are you playing anyway ?
VI 2.01 seems somewhat improved, in that I personally had a significant number of naval battles and from that experience I can claim that they are quite balanced. I actually think that overall I won most of the time (which is normal, considering that I mostly had caravels against crappy dhows or barques...)
But in earlier versions it's a lot worse.

Also, it helps a lot if you don't use one big stack, but one-ship stacks. This is because the odds will be more even, i.e. the situation is evaluated each time (for each ship), and I'm not sure exactly why that would be different for multiple-ships stacks, but it apparently is.
Also, you have much better chances for catching fast ships that run away from square to square all the time, evading your attacks, if you use one-ship stacks.

[Lacker]

Quote[/b] (Blodrast @ July 14 2004,11:49)]Also, it helps a lot if you don't use one big stack, but one-ship stacks. This is because the odds will be more even........
Yeah, I read up on that, and I'm not sure how accurate that is. I know it is accurate when it comes to actually catching shps but what I DON'T know is how the CPU sees massive stacks. For example:

If you have 12 ships with speed of 3 and 1 with speed of 1 your stack has a speed of one. So it seems the CPU sees a stack of ships as one unit and just assigns the lowest denominator if they arn't all the same.

So does this mean the CPU takes the lowest denominator on ALL factors in a similar way?

If you have 12 ships with Attack of 3 and 1 with attack of 1 do you get an attack of 1? Or do you have 12 times higher chance of getting an attack of 3 then you do an attack of 1....OR does the CPU simulate 12 attacks of 3 and 1 attack of 1? Then what happens if you have what I just described and the CPU has a stack with 2 different kinds of ships? Lets say (try to follow me here) the CPU has 4 ships, 3 with defense of 3 and one with a defense of 1 and I have 4 ships 3 with attack of 3 and one with attack of 2. Does the CPU assign each ship randomly, or just do a lump equation. Because in that instance it would make more sense for my weak ship (attack 2) to attack their weak ship (defense 1). If it does it will probably not sink, if it doesn't, all the other enemy ships have defense 3 so it probably will.

See where the possibilities make it a little confusing? I think I have the bland old original edition, havn't upgraded or anything since installing it when it came out.

Since that "godly powers" incident, my tactics seem to be working well. I keep my big ships stacked for defending a sea and split them to attack. I'll use my stack (usually all Caravels) to attack their stack but if they only have one ship I'll break the stack down. I've found that my stacks are still catching at least one of their ships, even though my speed is 1 and theirs is 3 so maybe you DON'T have to break it down.....
sigh, why can't you just fight them real time

A

[solypsist]

i often break my navy down into one-boat fleets, since this also helps against surprise attacks; no more losing a stack of 10 ships to a galley because he attacked first.

i also attack this way, three or four individual ships (if i have them) on one ship.

oh, and is it just me or are mongolian ships harder to sink than usual?

[Blodrast]

I did follow you, Lacker, but I'm afraid I don't know.
Re speed most likely the AI sees the whole stack as just one big lump, but hopefully it doesn't do the same thing for combat. I have no idea which ship in your stack is simulated attacking which ship in the enemy stack.

It might even be that the attacks are 1vs1, i.e. if I had 3 ships in my stack and you had 3 in yours, then one of my ships would attack one of yours; if mine wins, it attacks the next ship in your stack; if it loses, my next ship will attack yours, and so on.
I believe that to be the case (although I may be wrong ofc) because of the way you get the messages about victories and defeats in naval warfare. For instance I had a few battles with multiple ships on both sides, and the outcome was presented in the manner specified above: I lose one ship, AI loses one ship, then another one, then I lose another one, etc.

If that is the case it is obviously silly and wrong, since in reality one ship wouldn't stand a chance against five ships of equal power and speed that are attacking it at the same time. But ingame, if that one ship belongs to the AI, it may well kill all your ships ;)
Oh well. Hopefully they fixed this in RTW.

[katank]

I suggest you use my sacrifice the peasants method.

if you lose a land battle badly even if it's only 1 during the turn and there were ten battles, the game engine feels sorry for you and gives you the blessings of Poseidon and makes your ships next to invincible for the turn.

blessed be my brave units of peasants who enabled my 0* lone curragh to sink 3 viking snekkjas led by a 3*.

sacrificing a unit of peasants-1 year, 50 florins.

sacrificing ships=thousands of years and decades of building.

you take the pick.

[Medieval Assassin]

Quote[/b] (MrWhipple @ July 14 2004,11:46)]I have found that attacking and defending with small stacks seem to work beter. Two or three seem to work well. I like to mix up my stacks with slow and fast units. This way when you get attacked you only loose a few ships. When you attack, go in with more than one small stack rather than one large stack. I think that the AI will compute each attack seprately. Hope this works for you too.
A fleet is only as fast as its slowest ship...