What principles should I consider to make sure that I am victorious at sea? And how do the ship's statistics (attack, defence, speed, the other one) factor into the likelihood that a ship will win?
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What principles should I consider to make sure that I am victorious at sea? And how do the ship's statistics (attack, defence, speed, the other one) factor into the likelihood that a ship will win?
IIRC, speed is the most important, and attacking is preferable to defending.
Quantity matters much more than quality there, usually one manages to win as long as it has numerical superiority (unless you send dromons against karraks of course)
Sea battles are buggy as hell. I have personally seen a stack of 4 cogs of varying valour get sunk by a single defending galley of 2 valour, but from experience, more is better. Your best bet is to make full stacks of your fastest available ships, that way you can chase down any ships blockading you (except dromons, which you'll need dromons to chase down), and you'll have enough ships to sustain damage (I doubt a single ship can sink a full stack, no matter how buggy the navies are).
I usually only make deep sea ships to stick in the deep sea areas. They're a great detour for when one of your routes gets blockaded. Otherwise, most of them are too slow for attacking, though excelent for defending.
As others have noted, it's more a matter of spamming bigger fleets than your opponents. On a microscopic level, it's more or less random who will win a naval battle, but on a macroscopic level, the one who spams the most (and highest quality) fleets will win, sooner or later.
Are all their figures strictly dealing with combat? I found that, strangely, while the barque has a 3-1 speed advantage over the caravel, the caravel can move two spaces per turn, whereas the barque can only move one (and only on the coast).
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What I've noticed is that there is something more then valour that makes the difference. Different ships made in different places have different numbers within them. For example you can have two caravels made with the same valour but with different amounts of ships within them. Weird.
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Yes all their figures (supposedly) deal with combat (though I don't think the "strength" attribute does anything. Someone correct me if I'm wrong). The speed attribute is actually used to determine whether a ship can avoid getting attacked by running away. Say, you try to attack an enemy's ship. If his speed is higher than yours, and he moves his ship to another sea region on his turn, then your ship will not attack his. This only works for ships that are faster than the attacker. If a ship has the same speed as the attacker, then battle will occur. This is why Dromons are so annoying (or a boon, if you can build them), because there's always one lone Dromon running around your trade route, blocking it up, but you can't kill the damn thing because you've got nothing faster than it (unless you yourself can build Dromons).Quote:
Originally Posted by littlebktruck
The reason the caravel can move more spaces is because it is a deep sea ship. Deep sea ships can move multiple spaces in one go, and can traverse the deep sea areas (Central Mediterranean, Eastern Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean). You can see what type a ship is on its unit info sheet (Either Deep Sea or Coastal).
My understanding of Speed is that it involves a percentage chance to catch an enemy ship. Hence dromons, being faster than most others, will have a greater percentage chance to avoid a slower ship and escape, but will not always avoid a slower ship.
Each ship stack trying to attack the dromon(s) will each get a chance to catch it/them and thus force the battle. So, if you have multiple slower ships/stacks attacking a dromon, you will have multiple chances to catch it and force a battle. Thus, if you had 3 galleys stacked in a sea region and one dromon, breaking the stack into three individual galleys before attacking would yield a greater chance to catch the faster ship (but less of a chance for each galley to win the battle, as they are attacking individually ...).
If a dromon is grouped in a stack with a slower ship, the slower ship's speed applies to that fleet. That's why the manual recommends not combining slow and fast ships in the same stack.