Quote Originally Posted by ratbarf View Post
Edit: Anyone know how to use the ships? I don't know if its just because I suck but I keep getting whooped everytime I play this battle.

My Tactics: I try to rake all of first wave of French ships by getting infront of them or between their formation. I generally ge the first two enemy ships, but then they blow my sails off and get really badly beaten as my units are all clumped together and cannot move...
I haven't even touched the land battle yet, but I've played the navel scenario about 4 or 5 times now and I think I have it figured out.

You need to learn the Tao of formation fighting and remember that in a standup fight in this senario you outgun the french by almost 2:1... In other words, force a sandup fight.

One thing to remember, Nelson may have made the whole idea of breaking into a line and performing raking shots famous, but there was a reason he became famous for it. It was not exactly an easy maneuver. More conventional tactics are easier to pull off, and a conventional line of battle works fairly well in this scenario. The goal should be to disrupt your opponents line with minimal risk to your own formation.

What I found worked quite well was to separate my ships into two groups. Group one was the main line, group 2 consisted of the 2 5th rates.

Group 1 went into line astern formation, switched the group to chain shot and angled them so they would be passing the french fleet head on. The chainshot from the entire line shredded the sails of the lead ship (as each ship fired it's broadside I swapped it back to round shot) causing a major traffic jam behind it. The main line marched the rest of the way down the french line as they crashed into each other and screwed up their firing angles to try and avoid each other and pumped cannon shot into them.

Then they turned around to face the second french force while my 5th rates did a pass with round shot sinking all but two of the french ships and they did a pass with grape and boarded.

In the mean time my main line did the exact same thing with the french re-enforcements. Once the formation was disrupted they just circled around and finished them off.

End result, 4 French ships sunk 3 surrendered at the cost of 1 5th rate surrendered.