Quote Originally Posted by A Very Super Market View Post
Are you playing on a high difficulty level?

Galleys are murderous little devils. The AI doesn't particularily know how to use them, I suppose. One galley versus anything will have a hard time, but in numbers, they can swarm ships far more valuable than they, and let your main fleet mop up. They are dirt cheap as well.
This is actually a very good point. If you were a Soviet Red Army colonel (or above) in a past life or otherwise have wanton disregard for the life and well being of your virtual men, using cheap ships as cannon fodder to close while your main ships blast away a bit further away is a useful tactic. I recall one situation where I had 4 damaged 3rd rate SOLs vs an almost full stack enemy navy which included many smaller ships but had 7-8 2nd to 4th rates. The battle strength meter was heavily in the enemy's favour. Fortunately I did have about 5 galleons recently seized from a large pirate armada I just destroyed. I did not repair them so they had barebones crew and what not.. but I used them as broadside bait and after a tough battle, managed to eek out a victory... granted I was down to my last ship by the time it was all said and done. The difference was the galleons, which otherwise did not add much defensive power but did soak up plenty of the early enemy broadsides, which tend to be the strongest given no guns have been damaged yet.