Will we see all full first-rate fleets?

I wonder about the composition of fleets, both by the AI and human players.

Consider the following:


- upkeep costs for ships arent all that high from what we have seen
- the differences between the upkeep costs for different sizes of ship are even smaller
- experience level makes a big difference in effectiveness
- you get experience by A) killing stuff and B) not dying yourself. Both of these factors favor bigger ships over smaller shps as they have more firepower and are more survivable

Taken together, will these factors mean we will gravitate towards everyone just building first-rate ships?

I hope not.

It might for the AI, if the AI isn't focused on accuracy, which they have never been in a single other TW game. For humans, i think a fleet of first rate ships will be easily doable, just as an army of the best soldiers in Rome was doable. Personally i won't do it, because i'd rather play properly and accurately, even if it means losing a campaign i will rigidly stick to historical accuracy.

The entire idea of total war IS to change history.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

The entire idea of total war IS to change history.

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Some like to do so realistically.:yes:

You might be able to afford one or two of them, but I reckon naval dominance will require more than just one or two fleets, so in the end you are giving up the ability to have ships everywhere in favour of dominating a certain section. Also what is there to stop five- and six-rates just withdrawing when facing a fleet of first-rates? It would be quite similar to trying to kill a swarm of bees with a hammer. You might get one or two, but the hammer can not be everywhere at once and in the end you'll get stung somewhere.

Frankly, I am rather surprised that smaller ships (ie. frigates and sloops) are represented at all. Since its impossible in the game to simulate a large navy ship for ship (the royal navy in 1800 consisted of over 600 ships in active sea service), I figured ETW would just focus on ships of the line.

As a player, I would rather just have the heavies around in a battle (fewer ships to keep track of), then use the smaller. faster ships for other functions (protecting or interdicting trade routes, etc).

Just out of interest, how many people who joined over 2 years ago have come out of hiding for this game?

I personally will be using 2nd rate or 3rd rate ships more often, the 2nd rate has more range than a 1st rate and reloads a little bit faster. So with stats and a cheaper price in mind, I think my fleets will consist of the cheaper ships of 2nd to maybe 4th rate.

This Guy :D

I'm confident we will see mods to address this issue.

Historically I'm sure Britain and other nations would have loved to field fleets of nothing but First raters, but they couldn't afford to. The player should have to be pretty darn rich to do so.

I'm glad Sloops and other small ships are in the game though. I favour variety, so the more ships we have the better I like it. And sloops and frigates may come in hands for getting rid of pirates and the like.

:stare: wow... 1 post and all a rant on phalanxes... you sir have my respect!

Didn't smaller vessels have a higher intercept rating? A fleet with only 1st raters or SOL might have trouble intercepting enemy fleets passing by.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

Just out of interest, how many people who joined over 2 years ago have come out of hiding for this game?

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Me. Probably even longer than 2 years in fact! Got high hopes for this one though, after the partial disappointment of RTW and the more complete disappointment with M2TW.

He who defends everything defends nothing.

I dont realy understand that, shouldnt it be: he who can defend everything is doing it right?

I used it in reply to the wrong thread.

I will explain it this way. While you are defending everything, your armies are all spread out, along the border, obviously, you will only have a certain size due to upkeep, and as such.

This makes it very easy for some one to do precision strikes, for example, I could charge at your supply line and take that, out, leaving your army without the supplies and reasources dealing a critical blow, because your forces are all spread out defending every city/piece of land.

In opposite, the tactic of leaving a small garrison which weighs up the opposing army and providing information on numbers, composition and tactics, relaying it back provides resistance in order for a very large counter opposing army to assault with the element of surprise and due to obtaining vaulable information, knows all about the other army.

The downside of this tactic, is obviously, there are some temporary causalities and losses, which some people might complain about, but it is far more effective and efficient and doesn't open yourself up due to being spread out so thinly.

My biggest concern, is not of the all first-raters, but if the AI will blitz. Some factions have only one territory in Europa, and it would be a cinch to take them, if measures aren't enacted.

I believe some reviews have indicated that holding on to conquered territory in Europe is likely to be hard, since taking a country's homelands like France is likely to result in large loyalist revolts to return the province to its rightful owners. Hopefully this should make blitzing Europe very hard, since each province will need to have a large enough garrison to deal with the loyalist revolt (not to mention the AI will hopefully do a better job of defending its capital in the first place this time).

Regarding fleets, I'm rather hoping that large fleets of any kind will be a rarity, simply because I fear a 20 vs 20 ship battle will be a nightmare to control and will probably just descend into a big free-for-all (which I suppose is probably realistic, but not much fun). I'm hoping that more manageable engagements of around 6-odd ships will be the norm, I struggle to see how bunching all your ships together in a huge 20 ship fleet is such a good idea for defending thousands of miles of trade route.

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Originally Posted by Boohugh

Me. Probably even longer than 2 years in fact! Got high hopes for this one though, after the partial disappointment of RTW and the more complete disappointment with M2TW.

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Ah, fellow 2003-er!

I think one the guys who went to a CA open day said naval engagements were usually around 5 a side.

I would rather not use an all 1sts fleet. It's a waste of resources, for one. You're going to have this one heavily-armed fleet, but it can only be in one place, at one time.

Secondly, I'm convinced that a 1sts fleet would lose to a well managed, well balanced fleet.

Historically 74-gun Third-rate ships represented the best combination between sailing ability, firepower and cost. Nelson's fleet at the Battle of the Nile (1798) for example consisted almost entirely of 74-gun ships. But this is not entirely reflected in-game. According to my calculations, Third Rates have lower overall effectiveness/cost than First Rates. And if you end up having loads of disposable income and therefore do not really care about cost, then First-rate ships are indeed the best (on paper at least) especially if the experience factor is considered. That means you would see full fleets of First Rates.

But, you cannot have your entire navy consist of only First Rates. You will need faster ships to catch pirates and merchant vessels on the campaign map. Furthermore, getting to the point where you have multiple full First Rate fleets takes a considerable amount of time. In the mean time, you are much better off building Second and Third Rates.

Of course, the situation changes dramatically for MP. According to my calculations, Second Rates appear on paper to be the best in terms of overall effectiveness/cost.

I think the key will be time. Remeber this game only lasts 200 turns, so if it takes 10 turns to build a single first rate ship, it would take you the whole game to have a full fleet of fire rates.

We know what price is but no one knows how long it takes to build a ship, and last I heard the devs stated many ships could not be built in a single turn or two. So I think there is hope.

You guys have played Total War games enough that you should know that price and upkeep are far from the most important unit stats.

It's like asking me why I don't conquer the world with full armies of Gothic Knights every time I play HRE. This never happens, not because of cost or upkeep but because:

A: By the time I can build Gothic Knights at all, the game is mostly over.

B: Even after I do unlock the unit, I probably have 1-2 whole castles who can produce a single knight every couple turns or so. Building an entire army of Gothic Knights would take decades.

c: Once I have spent umpteen billion years putting together my full stack of G Knights, I have to spend another couple of years sailing them to the other side of the world where they will still probably arrive too late to accomplish anything useful.

Unit availability is (nearly) everything. The Danes are monsters in MTW2 not because Dismounted Huscarls and viking Raiders are literally the most cost effective units in the game, but because they can both be produced en masse from any decent sized castle and easily bury half in Europe in heavy infantry early game.

Right, so we assume that naval facilities in this time are all for frigates and corvettes? While you sail around with full fleets?

Actually it's been stated else where that when you build a port you must decide to make it a fishing port (food) trading port (money) or military port (Ships)

Much like MTW2 and making every place a castle, I doubt people will make every port into a military port. Not to mention most nations are starting off with only one or two ports (unless your england).

Then factor in that to get first rate you would have to forsake other technology to get it quickly. As there is a new technology tree.

So if you figure you may have 2 or 3 military ports, I don't see you building full stacks of anything soon.

If I remember correctly most ships were third rates as they were a good balance between price, firepower and maneuverability.

I hope first rates are significantly more expensive/take longer to build. A fleet of first rates seems a bit silly.

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Originally Posted by Discoman

I personally will be using 2nd rate or 3rd rate ships more often, the 2nd rate has more range than a 1st rate and reloads a little bit faster. So with stats and a cheaper price in mind, I think my fleets will consist of the cheaper ships of 2nd to maybe 4th rate.

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have you got a link to the stats for that? :)

While a few First Rates may be desirable defending home waters they are slow and do lack range.

Second Rates are a bit better and can load quicker and take a good amount of damage, however they are as slow or nearly so as the 1st Rates.

But I am thinking that 3rd Rates and 5th Rates are the ships to do the largest part of the work.

4th Rates are the same speed as 3rd Rates and don’t handle that well. 6th Rates are too light for most work but will make a fair escort ship.

The 5th Rates are too light for the line but they are quicker and good for crossing Ts ahead of your line, picking off stragglers, and harassing the enemy’s rear.

As to the lighter ships and vessels we will just have to see what they give us.

edit:

@ Furunculus


There was a post at Shogan that showed all the demo units but it has been edited out for some reason.

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Originally Posted by IlDuce

I hope first rates are significantly more expensive/take longer to build. A fleet of first rates seems a bit silly.

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A Sixth Rate takes 2 turns to be built. Thats as far as I've got up the tech tree!

Maybe for Russia it does, but what of the Breets?

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Originally Posted by Furunculus

have you got a link to the stats for that? :)

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Here you go:

https://forums.totalwar.org/vb/showp...0&postcount=20

Although this would become obsolete within a few days.

For me the only reason to play with full stacks of 1st or 2nd rate SoLs would be if it would be absolutely necessary because of AI behavior. I don't hope so. I like it a bit more historically.

By the way, some stats of the ships are a bit strange. Perhaps it was discussed elsewhere already. SoLs were often slightly faster than frigates, the bigger the faster, but they needed a very long time to achieve end speed. So because we lack an acceleration stat the lower speed of SoLs is acceptable. But why do have 1st rate Sols less range than other SoLs?? Just for some game play balance reasons I assume? But it should be the reverse, 1st and 2nd rates should be just slow to build and very expensive, nothing else.

*waiting for modders*

1st/2nd Rates were, in fact, invariably slower than frigates and such. There is nothing ahistorical about that.

Range is of course, wrong, and I wonder if that is a typo/bug in the stats, especially as even the 6th Rate has more range.

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Originally Posted by NimitsTexan

1st/2nd Rates were, in fact, invariably slower than frigates and such. There is nothing ahistorical about that.

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Actually, speeds were roughly the same. SOL might have been bigger then frigates, they packed a lot more sail too.
I think the perception that SOL are inherently slower might stem from the Royal Navy where SOL had a long service life. This resulted in aged ships of older designs and thus often slower then their contemporaries. The French navy, having heavy losses inflicted upon them fairly frequently, had to commission new ships more often, resulting in brand spanking new SOL of the latest modern designs. Their reputation for speed was consequently very good.

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Range is of course, wrong, and I wonder if that is a typo/bug in the stats, especially as even the 6th Rate has more range.

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I think CA may have had in mind the slightly lesser range of three decked ships. The heavy guns were on a lower deck then on two deckers and this caused a noticeable drop in range. IMHO they've not only exaggerated the difference, they got it wrong in that the three decked 2nd rate isn't similairly disadvantaged.

SOL's were not greatly slower than Frigates (although they were slightly). They were much, much less manoeverable however. Pirate sloops and brigs could usually run rings around them in the reef-filled waters of the caribbean. Thats why you need smaller ships, for intercept and pirate-hunting duties.

i got the impression from reading o'brien that frigates were quite often faster, however this advantage reversed in heavy seas where the greater weight of SoL allowed them greater headway.

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Originally Posted by Furunculus

i got the impression from reading o'brien that frigates were quite often faster, however this advantage reversed in heavy seas where the greater weight of SoL allowed them greater headway.

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It's certainly true that in heavy seas bigger ships are more stable and therefore sail better.

I've been playing the demo naval battle a lot, trying to understand tactics better. I've been playing on Very Hard difficulty, leaving some of the ships out of the action completely, to simulate a really difficult battle.

Using the first 4 ships (ignoring the pair of 4th rate), I can win the battle with a lose of under 10% of sailors and no ships.

The basic tactics are:

1. Line astern formation, highest rates at the front (the battle's default), full sails, fire at will. You will be aiming to pilot the first ship such that there is always something for your ships to fire at. While it may seem attractive to micromanage the cannon, that isn't practical in a large battle.

2. Round shot. My aim is to sink the attacker, and this is the most efficient way of doing it. Chain shot seems to be a waste, because either the wind is irrelevant, or the enemy are "sailing" without sails. I suspect grape shot will be situational - for use in pirate-style operations when one wants to capture a vessel.

3. Your aim as commander is to steer your line such that it curves around the enemy, with the enemy forced turn a tighter circle than you. The curve tends to bring all your fleet's guns to bare on the same enemy ship (or small set of enemy ships), concentrating fire without forcing you to micromanage individual targets.

4. Don't get too close, or the enemy will attempt to cross your line. At best this will make circling harder, since the enemy will be on more flanks. At worst it will cause a collision, which takes a vast amount of time to recover from and may cost you the battle (manual steering of a collided vessel is highly recommended, since the path-finding tends to go horribly wrong when ships are too close).

5. However, the key to winning against the odds is to use both sides of your ships to soak damage (while damaging the enemy on just one side). This, of course means changing the direction of the circle during the battle, normally by crossing their line. Sailing with the wind seems to help when attempting this, possibly because your ships are easier to manouver.

6. Keep an eye on your lower-rate ships at the back: Firstly, ensure they do not catch and sail parallel to slower ships (thus blocking the firepower of one ship). Second, while lower-rate ships can do reasonable damage to ships already weakened by the front of your line, they cannot take damage: The end of your line may becopme vulnerable if your line itself becomes encircled.

7. If one ship is looking particularly fragile, don't be afraid to pull it out of the line, and shield it with other ships. Remember ships behave differently from ground troops: Generally ships can soak a lot of damage before you see a reduction in the amount of damage they can do. In contrast troop combat effectiveness tends to decline in proportion to damage sustained.

Now, if I take the lead 1st rate ship out of play, and use all the other ships, this strategy fails horribly. Even though I'm using more "points" in the fleet (total build cost or upkeep is higher), I struggle to even win:

In this second scenario, the French play much more aggressively, repeatedly trying to break through my line. As if they are no longer afraid. Even if the line holds, I'm not able to bring as many guns to bare as I was before (while there should be more firepower in total, it is spread over 5 ships, not 4, so it takes longer to form a circle at the start). Keeping my ships afloat is harder: The 2nd rate vessel now leading cannot take as much damage, so the original tactics aren't as strong. The wildcard is that my admiral is not active in the second battle, so presumably all combat vessels take a morale penalty of some kind.

The obvious conclusion is still that higher-rate ships are worth disproportionately more than their relative build or upkeep cost. So a fleet full of 1st-rate ships is logical for large battles.

But this all overlooks a flaw in the French tactics: The French fleet consists of 3rd rate (and the odd 4th rate) ships, which should be able to decline combat with my 1st and 2nd rate ships: Force me to send my 2 or 4 lower-rate ships against their 7 lower-rate ships, while keeping my 2 higher-rate ships at a safe distance.

There may also be a cavalry-like function to the lower-rate ships: You may want a few faster ships in your fleet, simply to stop the enemy continually fleeing.

So the campaign may not be as simple as "build the biggest boats".

Update!

After having played the game for a while I can safely say you won't see all First rate fleets because they are actually pretty hard to get and very expensive to run. The biggest ship I have seen so far was a 4th Rater, and it was on my side.

Do you start out with any?

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Originally Posted by A Very Super Market

Do you start out with any?

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Nope, my most powerful starting ship was a Fifth rate, and I am Britian. I doubt anyone else has anyhting better.

Nope, this just isn't gonna happen. They're really hard to get, they sail against the wind poorly, the upkeep is immense, and they have an Achilles heel in rockets. You'd be better off with the monetary equivalent in 3rd rates.

I'm not so sure they will be useless.

I'm certainly keen on getting a few 1st rates stationed at some of the natural bottlenecks and making nations run a gauntlet.

The Channel, Gibraltar and the Bosporus spring to mind. I certainly like the idea of controlling who and what gets through these points.

A few 100 Gun monsters will make that a task and a half in a confined space, I just hope the bottle necks have smaller battle maps...it would be great to be on top of them as soon as you hit the start button. :beam: