The Black Ship

[Dead Guy]

Anyone captured one of those European ships yet? I decided to try last night, but they withdrew from battle, and since fleets work so damned strange in this game (i.e. they can move the turn after they withdraw and can just sail away from you perpetually) I don't think I'll be able to catch it unless I deploy two fleets or trap it some other way.

If anyone's captured one, how many ships did you need, what kinds, and did you employ any particular tactic in the battle?

[Satsuma]

I ran into one of these off the Shimazu coast in the far south west. The UI stated 'European Traders-at war', so I thought I'd try and nab it.
It was fairly early in the game so my fleet consisted of a mix of medium Bune and Bow ships. I tried a standard horns formation with the bune up the middle and the bow ships on the flank.
The thing is a beast! Very powerful cannons which can routed my medium Bune with a couple of shots. I managed to get 2 Bune close enough to try a boarding action but even though they seemed to throw the ropes across they couldn't pull it in to board. Not sure if this is a specific game mechanic and you need a ship with greater mass to achieve this?
The encyclopedia recommends swarming it with many small fast ships, which I'll try next time I see one cruising along.
The fact that it can kite most units with it's cannons makes it tricky to get close enough though. It's probably easier to sink it or burn it down than it is to capture it.

[crpcarrot]

was it the Black Pearl? :p

[AggonyDuck]

Only thing that might work is boarding it with a mass of Sengoku Bunes.

[therother]

I captured it via auto resolve: surrounded it with 3 fleets, in between the two trade posts over by the Shimazu lands. However, for fun, I've fought a few battles with just it against various opponents, and it is vulnerable to fast ships: its slow at moving and especially turning. That last bit is especially important as it can't fire unless it's side on and takes a while to reload. A light Japanese ship can probably close to firing distance in the time it takes to fire 2 salvos.

Not sure how best to capture it in real time battle: perhaps attacking with small groups (for manageability) from a bigger fleet, sacrifice one of the ships to its guns (two broadsides are usually enough to severely damage any ship I've come across), then position your other ships to the bow and stern and pepper the ship with fire. Repeat until it routs, then board to capture? Bow ships are probably best for the first part, nimble enough to stay out the of way of the cannon whilst having enough archers to weaken the ship, Sengoku Bunes to chase it down and capture? Probably becomes easier latter in the game when you get access to cannons yourself.

[The Black Ship]

I can state unequivicolly that I have not been captured...yet.

[Centurion1]

have you guys read Shogun by james clavell? that is probably all you need to know about the black ship haha

[Ed TW]

The thing kicked my ass in no time flat.

[The Black Ship]

This thread spurred me to action, and I immediately tried to capture my namesake. After 3 tries doing it myself with 2 med Bune, 2 arrow ships and 3 of the fast ships (forgot moniker) I never did grab it. Then, I just tried an auto-resove on a whim and captured her. Only had 1 arrow ship left of the original fleet, besides my prize.

[PseRamesses]

I captured the Black ship last night using 10 sengku bune (fast sail bune). I divided them into 4, 4, 2. The 2 i started with drawing fire (one in reserve). The 2 grp of 4 i tried to keep circling the ship positioned on the bow and aft side and it worked after a looooooong while :) I was left with only 4 badly damaged sb´s but i had exepected to loose them all.

[Monk]

Welcome back PseRamesses.

Been a while since I saw you around these parts. Enjoying S2 thus far?

[Daevyll]

Captured it with auto-resolve, but the thing has almost 1000/turn upkeep so I scuttled it ...

[PseRamesses]

Welcome back PseRamesses.
Been a while since I saw you around these parts. Enjoying S2 thus far?

Thx Monk,
Im here every week ;) just dont post as much, so many other smart peeps do tht, lol.
I love being back in Japan and i think the game is better in this kind of setting. I mean
more civil war then empire building. Diplo still sucks but the battles is better. The AI
struggles to keep or take a strategic position, keeps his army together better and i
have actually been soundly beaten on more than one occasions. No other game gets
me so pleased to loose to as TW.

[LeftEyeNine]

What is in The Black Ship for its capturer ?

[Zarky]

What is in The Black Ship for its capturer ?

A ship so powerful that it's already excessive...
You could really make due with just Nanban trade ships.
But you could go through 2 stacks Japanese ships easily, though not in close quarters if they have fire arrows or bomb kobayas.

[LeftEyeNine]

So the prize is the game itself ? I thought you'd defeat/sink it and you'd get valuables etc.

[Centurion1]

can't you claim it as a prize like etw?

[Dead Guy]

Ok...

So I tried to board this ship today. It's completely impossible. I had a train of Bunes coming in on the same broadside, it had time to reload before the next bune could make it to even throw the first grappling hook over to it. It jus blew ship after ship to smithereens. I hear stories of people capturing this by drawing fire on bow kobayas, but I tried, and it doesn't matter. As soon as my ship gets up close it's annihiliated, even if another ship took a volley right before I started the boarding.

I don't know if I'm doing something wrong when I order my ships to board, but half of the time they just seem to drift around helplessly. It's so supremely frustrating and annoying I can't even describe it.

Gah, as they say.

[Nelson]

I attacked the BS at night with 7 ships including a bomb ship. I planted mines where I thought the BS would appear and it did just what I hoped it would do; it sailed into a mine. BOOM! One gun was knocked out. Period. The bombs set her afire but her crew extinguished the flames. It went on to destroy or drive off the rest of my medium bunes and kobayas. Staying off the bow or stern was possible but the musketry still riddled my ships. There was no chance.

I attacked again with 8 other ships that would have been in the first fight had I not attacked at night. Once again the Black Ship hit a mine but was hardly damaged. My fleet was routed and 5 ships captured.

I had saved before the first battle so that later I could compare an autocalc result to what I had accomplished myself (i.e. complete unmitigated disaster). With autocalc 8 ships defeated the Black Ship but did not capture it. It escaped and survived on the map.

On two occasions I reloaded and attacked again in daylight with all 17 ships. Once I burned and sank the BS at great expense and the other time I was unceremoniously wiped out.

Ultimately, I returned to my campaign with the bulk of the Shimazu navy at the bottom of the Inland Sea while a large ship full of gaijin sailed around thumbing their noses at me…

[therother]

I captured it again in my VH Shimazu campaign: I send 3 fleets of 5-6 medium bunes to weaken it via autocalc, then launched my capture fleet which I fought myself. I followed the tactics I outlined above, and eventually it surrendered (it helped that it was down to 5 cannons to begin with.)

Incidentally, I have since gone up against it with Nanban trade ships, but on each occasion the ships lost their cannons before the start of the fight. Not sure if this is intended or not...

[Forward Observer]

I had an odd experience with the Black ship last night. I had completed a short Shimazu campaign on normal, but decided to play on for Island domination. Just as I was about to take the last province, I get a message that the Waco pirates had blockaded one of my trade ports back at the far western end of the Island. I"m still trying to figure out how pirates from a small town in Texas got in this game, but anyway--by this time I had disbanded many of my fleets, so it took me a couple of turns to put together a attack fleet and shuttle them to the western end of Japan.

When I get there, lo and behold the Waco's have two medium bunes and the Black Ship. Of course I get trounced, so I build another fleet, but by this time the only Waco fleet I found in the vicinity was just comprised of normal vessels. Did the Waco's actually capture the Black ship and commandeer it or was this an odd glitch in the game---or was it just my late night imagination.


Cheers

[Dead Guy]

The tables have turned! Moahaha





Never managed to capture it manually :( Auto-calc, got it on the second try with a full fleet. Lost about half the ships, but who cares? This ship is it's own fleet. It'll make flotsam out of anything.

[al Roumi]

In my current campaign, the Hojo captured the black ship and began pirating my main trade route with it. I was quite disheartened as I'd teched my navy up beyond medium bunes and the Hojo had the Black ship in a full fleet (albeit also stuffed w trade ships). I sent a full stack navy of medium bunes and 4 bow kobayas to at least initialy deal with the Hojo pirates. In the pre battle match up, I was pleased to see that the AI force was badly down on men -presumably from when it had captured the black ship and what looked like a couple of skirmishes with Wako fleets. I autocalc'd and captured the black ship a'prize, losing a fair few of my fleet but these were bearable loses. So I now have a 3rd hand black ship as flagship for my fleet!

[Zarky]

In my current Uesugi campaign, I tried long and hard to capture the Black Ship myself but no luck. My basic navy composition (essentially for all factions aside from Mori and Christian clans) is 6 bow kobaya, 2 medium bune and 2 sengoku bune. I swarm the ship with bow kobayas using flaming arrows which causes great deal of morale damage, but yet the ship managed to turn and shoot my medium and sengoku bunes before any of them manage to board the wavering ship. This leads to 2nd round of flaming arrows which usually causes surrender, but with little casualties to the ship so I don't get to capture it.

I probably should research and try bomb kobayas, at least they could do some manpower/cannon damage before losing.

[Monk]

Auto-calc with a big fleet seems to be the way to go. The Yamana had the black ship in my recent game. I threw two fleets of medium bunes at them and captured it and 4 other ships as well. I lost around 7 ships in the process but no matter, i got what i was after.

The only downside is there's really no one to fight on the high seas right now. I'd spent so much time dominating the naval side of the game my power was already pretty secure - the black ship on my side is just icing on the cake.

[Centurion1]

but now you can disband the vast majority of your fleet. the only reason to have other fleets is because the black ship cant be in every sea at once.

[Monk]

but now you can disband the vast majority of your fleet. the only reason to have other fleets is because the black ship cant be in every sea at once.

Oh yeah, i didn't think about that. I can free up some serious cash and use it to bolster my army instead. Good call

[andrewt]

Autocalc seems to be the way to go. I captured mine by waiting until the AI attacked it twice to weaken it. Bow Kobayas with flaming arrows seem to be pretty good. Beat it a few times with flaming arrows until you can board it in a subsequent battle.

[EmperorAugustus]

It took me a pretty long time, but I managed to board it with the Nihon Maru just a few minutes ago =D. Of course, I attempted to obtain the Black Ship only after I eradicated the other clans in order to utilize all possible Drydocks. I'm currently at year 1606, and it took me about 2 years worth of searching to trap it between 3 fleets.

One fleet was led by the Nihon Maru, along with a medley of heavy and medium bunes, along with some sengoku bunes and whatever other naval craft fires guns or cannons. When it would inform me of the location of the Black Ship, I would construct 2 or 3 heavy bunes in front of it to seal it off. Sometimes the ship would simply disappear, so by the time i was able to capture it (right about mainland Japan) I had small navies all around Japan, ready to merge and form larger forces if need be. Fortunately for me, the Europeans made some pretty strange moves, so I was able to gather 2 full navies, and a smaller force (I had even brought in a trade ship. Couldn't have hurt to go overboard haha).

I didn't autoresolve simply because I wanted to personally oversee its capture. I didnt really have a method to take it (though it took 2 battles to do so). I literally just sent my entire fleet to attack at once. At the end of the first battle, it was half destroyed. At that point, I was able to lead a fleet with the Nihon Maru. I attacked again, but when it gave it the option to end the match, I decided to continue. The entire time it was trying to leave the area I was spraying it with arrows and bullets, until eventually I sent the Nihon to board it. Once it boarded it, it said "YOU ARE WINNER". So yeah, it was pretty lucky, but just build boats everywhere and be persistant

[Poulp']

Playing as Oda, autumn 1559, I control or deny all southern trade nodes since 1551.
No sail on sight yet, will the Black Ship appear or it is already too late ?