need help with naval battles

[A Very Super Market]

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.

[Hooahguy]

im at hard for campaign and hard for battles.

[A Very Super Market]

Well, that's why the naval battles are harder, because the stats are skewed for the AI. I'm not sure how your indiaman managed to beat back those galleys, but I suspect they were damaged beforehand.

[Hooahguy]

so any suggestions? Prussian Iron said that right before a battle you can edit the battle difficulty, but ill have to test that out.

[Fisherking]

When facing galleys the trick is to close with them outside their firing arc. They rout easily.

There are also changes to the naval game with this last update. Look over the stats in battle.

Brigs are useless. Their guns are too weak to do much and they have a tendency to explode. Sloops have better guns and more speed. They will always take out a brig one on one in the players hands. And if they can’t beat it they can out run it.

5th rates are good in the early game but once 3rd rates are available they are the best all-round ships.

[Didz]

With the small Barbary pirate galleys I found it quite easy to take them out with a sloop.

I had a couple of sloops in Marseilles that specialised in this every time the pirates sent a couple of galleys to blockade Marseilles.

I simply formed the sloops up in a line abreast.

As soon as the battle started each sloop would charge straight at an enemy galley.

They would take a couple of shots from the galleys as they closed by not enough to sink them or do major damage.

Once they reached the galleys they would fire grapeshot straight across their low decks which killed a lot of the 16 man crews. They would then board and finish the job. I usually managed to capture both galleys as prizes, but always one. So, the prize money was between 720 and 1440 gold which was more than enough to repair the sloops (usually about 30). So, a nice profit and two very rich sloop commanders.

The same tactic works with the larger galleys, but you need a slightly bigger ship to do it, mainly because of the relative crew sizes.

[resonantblue]

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.