WTF is up with naval combat??

[Del Arroyo]

Why can I never retreat from a battle I don't want?? Why can I never catch AI ships?? Will they ever stop shuffling back and forth and ruining my trade network?? Will an accepted offer of cease-fire ever not be invalided by naval battles that occur in the same turn?? Apart from producing approximately 50,000 ships and putting several dozen in every single sea region on the map, WILL I EVER HAVE PEACE??????

Discuss.

DA

[antisocialmunky]

Kill whoever is jacking up your trade network, no land provences = no navy.

[ichi]

Why can I never retreat from a battle I don't want?? Why can I never catch AI ships?? Will they ever stop shuffling back and forth and ruining my trade network?? Will an accepted offer of cease-fire ever not be invalided by naval battles that occur in the same turn?? Apart from producing approximately 50,000 ships and putting several dozen in every single sea region on the map, WILL I EVER HAVE PEACE??????

Discuss.

DA

Keep the fastest ships in your fleet separate from slower ones, as fleets move at the speed of the slowest ship. This will help you catch those speedy AI ships.

ichi :bow:

[Del Arroyo]

Which ships are faster? I personally am confused about this. Barques have a "speed" of 3, but can only move one space per turn. Caravels have a "speed" of 1, but can move 2 spaces per turn. I usually build all caravels once I have the tech, because they can move faster, hang out in ocean squares, and *seem* to fare better in combat.

At any rate I never seem to be able to outrun enemy ships, and they always seem to get away whenever they feel like it. And there's been this one lone Novgorod super-barque which has been running around the Mediterranean for about 50 years and taking out ships twice its size. What's up with that?

DA

[ichi]

Build some Barques and group three or four together, then fight battles with enemy ships that have low command rating admirals. Once you get a Barque Admiral up to 2-3 stars, go after the 'super' ships. Make sure the high command Admiral is in command, and that no slower ships are in the fleet. If you have some heavier, slower ships in the same sea region they should help out in the battle but won't slow you down.

ichi :bow:

[EatYerGreens]

If you don't have a single land province which shares a border with the faction owning the hostile ship, you can bring the 'war' to an end without using emissaries etc. quite easily but it may cost you a fair chunk of lost trade for several consecutive turns.

This is because it involves breaking contact - moving all of your ships to locations such that none of them end up in the same region as the hostile ship (or where you expect it's going to go to) at the end of the turn.

Come to think of it, I think you have to ensure none of yours are in any adjacent sea regions either. For example, he moves to one of the north Med coastals and all your ships are on the Africa coast, 2 regions away from him. I'd be grateful if anyone else could confirm or correct me on that.

Also ensure none of yours are in sea regions which contact territories, with or without ports, owned by the hostile faction.

The AI rarely bothers to enter that small region, off west coast of Morocco. Not surprising since there's no port in it and you'd be forgiven for wondering why they put it in the game. However I find that it's a handy parking spot for when you wish to break contact like this. Caravels can be back in the western Med deep-water area from there, one turn later.

There's always the chance that Novgorod will again launch an attack but, instead of going for ceasefire, you could make use of the period of trade disruption to use your barques to corner, then mob-attack this nuisance ship. Clearly, they cannot afford to build another one or else they'd be disrupting the Baltic/North Sea end of your trade routes too, by now.

[dgfred]

Kill whoever is jacking up your trade network, no land provences = no navy.

I hate the naval battles :furious3: . I think I will use your method :smash: .

[yesdachi]

I have also encountered this issue and I think I read about this method somewhere before and started using it to take care of the evasive buggers.

Remove at least one fast ship from your stack of several ships; Drop it on the enemy ship you wish to battle. Same turn, drop your stack of ships on the enemy ship you wish to battle. End turn. Your fast ship will probably be sunk but it stops the enemy ship in that sea region allowing your stack to battle it without it running away. It is kind of a costly way to resolve the situation, as you will almost always loose your lone fast ship but this always works for me.

Of course it is always a good plan just to crush them with your army.

[ToranagaSama]

yesdachi, pretty much has it right.

If you have a problem with enemy ships slippling away, try dropping two different stacks onto one single enemy stack. Three can sometimes be even better.

The theory is that each stack of ship(s) is coming from a different direction (or tack), so it makes it harder for the enemy ship/stack to get away.


Which ships are faster? I personally am confused about this. Barques have a "speed" of 3, but can only move one space per turn. Caravels have a "speed" of 1, but can move 2 spaces per turn. I usually build all caravels once I have the tech, because they can move faster, hang out in ocean squares, and *seem* to fare better in combat.

I forget if the above is correct or not, haven't played *Vanilla* in a long time.

Another thing to note, is the number of men aboard each ship type, as well as the manner in which they fight.

One type fights *only* by grappling and boarding; while another type does the same, but can also shoot missles of tar and fire, if I recall correctly.

The key to securing your sea lane for trade is multiple ships in a each stack/sea lane. Very rarely, is a mutiple ship stack sunk in one attack. So, while one ship in the stack may sink, the other(s) will survive, and the trade link will survive (at least for another turn).

Two s/b enough (though experience may allow you to get by with one per); and, have a *War* fleet ready to move wherever the enemy *threatens*.

That is have a stack of ships (3-4 with a good general and experience level) whose express purpose is to *fight*. It is not a part of the trade string. Its purpose is to protect the string of ships!

See an emeny ship heading towards your string of ships, quickly start moving the *War* Stack to intercept.

HINT: Remember to keep a sharp eye on the Upkeep costs for your ships. Ships have the highest turn-by-turn upkeep of all the units. Too many ships can quickly bankrupt you. Just a small number of ships could equal the upkeep cost of a full Stack or two!! (too much at least).

[EatYerGreens]

HINT: Remember to keep a sharp eye on the Upkeep costs for your ships. Ships have the highest turn-by-turn upkeep of all the units. Too many ships can quickly bankrupt you. Just a small number of ships could equal the upkeep cost of a full Stack or two!! (too much at least).

Sound advice but the whole point of the ships you build is that the trade revenue they generate should be capable of more than paying for the upkeep costs.

You referred to the string of trade ships. In fact, as far as the game is concerned, the trade ships themselves are invisible, whilst the ones you build are purely the military ships required to keep them safe from piracy. So your entire fleet is about trade protection and occasionally you must mass them together to launch an attack and break a military blockade action by an enemy faction. Breaking the chain of ships means the trade route becomes unsafe, the invisible trade ships dare not make the journey and your revenue is thus interrupted.

With regard to the running costs, the thing I've now worked out is that the maintainance costs of a particular ship (or fleet) varies according to how remote it is from a friendly port.

For example, as Byz, with one Dromon per sea zone, each is costing 15 per year between the capital and Venice because I have ports in Greece and Naples but the one in Tyrhenian Sea (sp?) costs 30 since no ports (of any province) are in that zone and it is one move away from port.

I forget whether friendly ports in another faction's province also reduce the maint cost but assume for the moment that they don't. So the further you extend the more it costs. But let's analyse it a bit more.

As Byz, with Constantinople making 135 florins per province in sales, at basic TP level, I can afford to send a dromon up to INT(135/15)=9 sea zones away from my most westerly friendly port, currently Naples. As they are denied access to deep sea regions this limits them to (roughly) the sea region off the north coast of Spain (Leon, Castile, Navarre ports), if memory serves.

BUT... that's not taking into account the trade coming from my other provinces with port and TP and when those are factored in, then the Baltic becomes a decent proposition, only 5 more zones away.

I grant that sending a non-trading 'reconnaisance' ship that far from home would cost far more, especially over a succession of turns, than building maybe half a dozen priests or emissaries to do the same job. All the same, as the English, I once saw a lone Almo ship exploring up as far the North Sea. Dumb-ass AI... or was it blockading me at the time?

ANyway, upshifting to Merchant, Master Merchant and so on will amplify your trade income all the more (but factor in required castle upgrade costs unless you planned to build these for other reasons as well) and that means that a large, roving 'combat fleet' can not only justify itself on military grounds but is fully supported by the strengthened economy.

The one thing still missing from the economic summary is a subtotal showing you how much of your annual profits is coming from foreign trade. I was pleased to see the improvement in the VI expansion whereby the sea zones are now separately alpha-sorted to the bottom of the province list. This makes it easy to check each land province's economic stats without having to stop to scroll past the gaps made by sea zones, as in vanilla. It also makes it a doddle to total up the ship maintainance costs at the end of the list. A subtotal showing the trade contributions would help to quickly assess whether the fleet is paying for itself or not and thus avoid over-building.

Even more efficient would be for the ship parchment to show one line for maint costs and another line to summarize just how much trade income it is generating in that zone. Some zones may be found to be unexpectedly unproductive because the receiving zones produce the same commodities that your source zones export, so switch to another sea zone of equal distance but to a port with no exports of its own - eg North Africa coast rather than southen European coast.