need help with naval battles

[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.