Ship combat

I've never really understood how this works exactly.

What do the attack, defense and speed statistics actually mean in terms of a ships ability to fight other ships? Is attack or defense better, what does speed do? and then there's Command, I take it this affects other ships in the stack, boosting their stats? Does it also affect the ship it's on?

Are you better off having a 3 atk, 3 def, 1 speed Caravel with 1* or a 1 atk, 2 def, 3 sp Barque with 3* command?

I've seen some very weird results in naval battles. Caravels losing to Barques with equal starts and so on, it seems pretty random.

Also, how come when I try to attack ships in my teritory I only get to battle them sometimes, is it because they have an opportunity to escape? I've never been offered the option to run from a naval battle.

Or is it because the ship has moved to another water teritory? If thats the case, couldn't you cut off your enemy's shipping lines forever without the opportunity for them to fight you off with only two ships as long as you move them all the time from one teritory to another, while your other ship moves into the one you just left?

It's really frustrating having shipd everywhere, but being unable to fight off the 1 or 2 ships that are constantly messing up your supply lines. Is there a way around this? I'm dominating the seas, yet seem to be hamstung by a couple of galleys.

i dont know much about ship combat but i know that if your ship has more speed and youre attacking that the enemy ship cannot escape

What if you have a stack of different ships, some fast and weak (Barques), some slow and powerful (Caravel)? I have a stack of 2 caravels and 2 barques guarding the english channel lead by a 4* caravel to make sure it's secure.

Likewise I have a similar force guarding the straights of gibraltar as it's a choke point, but my enemies just sail on through without fighting and my fleets can't stop them. The only thing I can think of would be to make up a stack of Barques and leave them guaring choke points, but then I'm wary that a single strong but slow ship will wipe the lot of them out (as I have seen happen)

also, what determines how far they can move in one turn on the map? My caravels can move multiple teritories, but the "faster" barques can only move one?

I think this aspect of the game is one of the few areas of improvement that exists.

1. Speed determine if a fleet can pass through another one, or if corner, they can escape, or allow enemy to escape;

2. Speed of a fleet or an army is the speed of the slowest one;

3. Some ships, such as barques, are not ocean-going, some other are. Ocean going ships can go multiple sea-spaces, or going from shores to shores.

They are just navel battles :P

Annie

Someone said that naval combat is generally dictated by how well your army does, if your army does well your navy will be less successful. I'm not convinced personally and i'm also not sure if I've just made this up.

Navy duels just seem to be a after thought but if you dont stack your fleet instead leaving them in singles you'l have a better chance although it becomes irritating having to send each ship to attack seperatly. :wall:

That is IMHO a myth. It can often occur that you declare war on a big faction and invade several of their provinces at once and win big victories then end the turn and his ships attack and sink all of your fleets. This is because the advantage is with the attacker in naval engagements. If you declare war on land the enemy will immediately react at sea and attack all of your fleets. This is what gives the impression of doing well on land and doing badly at sea. It has happened to me on numerous occasions. To safeguard against it, before you hit end turn after your victorious land battles have a look out to sea and set all of your fleets to attack the enemys'. The result will be quite different (unless he outnumbers you and his fleets are obviously superior).

Speed is big a factor for the AI. When attacked by the AI fleets you will not know about it. No pre battle parchment will appear informing you, it will just happen and then show the result - so escaping for the human player is not an option. Because in MTW the player moves first and the AI can react to this (cheat), the AI sees where and what your ships are attacking and can choose to fight or flee to another sea zone (move). When the AI moves it's fleet out to avoid the attacker a calculation is made on the speed of the two fleets, and usually, though not always the faster fleet escapes.

so attack with a speed advantage and youre likely to win? keep moving high speed ships to keep them alive and get a powerful ship + a weak fast ship so you can stop the enemy ships escaping and blast them to peices with the other ones.
cool :)

Can add that if a ship is hindered from fleeing it will fight all the attackers. So attacking a runner with all your ships as single fleets will increase the odds of catching it without giving heavy (any? don't remember and never done any thourogh testing on this) penalties.

You can also use a smaller fast fleet to catch and a bigger fleet to kill.

Attacking, stars, attack and defense gives combat bonuses (Carracks are really mean ships), but how much is uncertain, mostly thanks to that random factor (that makes 1 dramon sink 4 caravels, it doesn't happen often, but it's quite annoying when it does).

What about the strength stat?

I wish I knew exactly how much command counted for as well.

Is my 2* Barque with 1A, 2D, 3S stats likely to win against a 0* Caravel with 3,3,1 stats? What about my 0* Barque vs a 1* Galley with stats 1,1,3? Which is better a command * or a point of defense?