Fleet Compositions

[Nelson]

I’ve had great fun with the naval battles. The ships look terrific and the ramming/boarding works the way I expect it should. It does take practice to manage a large action well. The fight can be dicey since ships are far closer in combat capacity in the hands of the AI than land units are. Winning when outnumbered is a lot harder to do at sea than ashore. And twenty ships are a lot to micro. Practice won’t make you perfect but it will make you competent. Expect to lose ships. Use warships for sea battles, not transports. They are too slow and ponderous. I seldom use transported armies to fight at sea. It’s just too easy to lose a lot of good men when transports get rammed and a whole cohort goes down with each one. I believe this is the number one frustration with the naval warfare in Rome2. It’s easy to lose a lot of men quickly when you expect the same cakewalk you get ashore.

As Rome, the first civil war I had began in Athens with 6 senate stacks. They immediately sailed for Italy (I suppose) but did not make it because they were all destroyed by a single large fleet of my own in two separate battles, no AR. Two thirds of my fleet was lost but the civil war was over in three turns at small cost.
My fleet composition was the one I use for all purposes; 3 - 5 artillery ships, 5 - 6 missile ships and the rest assault, usually fire pot biremes. This will suffice for naval combat and port attacks both especially after the Marian reforms.

An amphibious assault exploits the artillery you have. It will gut the garrison before you rush the town IF you maneuver the ships enough to avoid line of sight issues. It’s well worth it. Obviously, you must have enough assault ships to get an adequate force across the beach to succeed. If the bombardment went well you won’t need a lot.

In a sea battle vs a combat fleet I bombard any enemies that can burn me first then bombard/ram/burn the remaining foes. Easier said than done when you don’t outnumber the opponent. Concentrate the artillery fire and get all the ships involved once you get to a big pile-up.

The artillery ships offer awesome firepower. Put three of them on an enemy and the target will go down fast. When fighting transports I target the most valuable enemy troops first. I use the missile support ships to keep the transports away from the artillery. When ramming, hit the target with 2 or 3 ships when possible. Generally you don’t want to melee a transport one on one with a warship as you will be outnumbered but this is no reason not to use warships at all! Small quick ships can ram and sink transports with surprising speed. And they will back out and ram again if you micro them.

At some point, when a big scrum occurs, look for any ships you have that are in trouble and try to move them out of harms way or get them some fresh relief somehow. It’s tough staying on top of the fight but having managed nearly all of the sea battles myself I have become much better than I was at first.