How do you find naval battles after Patch 15?

**Seyavash** · 09-06-2014, 15:49

I decided to try an HaG campaign with patch 15 and the naval tweaks definitely have made a difference. I can no longer simply apply the strategy of using javelin ships as screen while artillery sits back and takes out all of the the enemy ships. It still works to an extent but I end up losing some artillery or have to actually ram ships. It could still be improved, but the changes may actually mean that the assault ships may finally be useful. Are you guys noticing the need for a more balanced/strategic approach to naval combat?

**Sp4** · 09-06-2014, 16:22

I think I will still try to stay out of the water where possible.

**Hooahguy** · 09-06-2014, 19:15

Yup, I have yet to play a naval battle in a campaign.

**hoom** · 09-07-2014, 03:32

Well I've only really played naval battles a bit after live & more recently in my Odrysian campaign.
I think original balance is well known with transports being grossly OP.

The recent battles I found my Medium Raiders were easily able to defeat enemy transports by ramming, generally 2 rams to sink from Mediums, sometimes only 1.
Heavy Raiders easy do a 1 ram kill & have Thracian Nobles on the off chance of getting boarded.
Most of my battles were not much more than frontal ramfests with generally massive enemy losses & minimal friendly losses unless I was significantly outnumbered.

Combat has been horrifically fast -> I have played most of those battles on slo-mo with occasional pauses to check situation & deliver orders.

I believe new combat has much slower ship movement so I may be able to actually use normal speed.

**Hooahguy** · 09-07-2014, 04:33

They also apparently really reduced the amount of damage transport ships do it ramming so that should be interesting to see.

**Sp4** · 09-07-2014, 22:00

I am not sure, I just never liked naval battles since they came up with them. I felt in E and NTW, they were confusing, in S2 they felt really arcady and generally bad, in FotS they were less confusing and very straight forward.. pretty damn repetetive though. In R2, we're back to confusing and generally a pain to micromanage personally.

I really wish they would give us a tick box in the beginning of a campaign to let us set naval battles to happen or to be 100% AR all the time, like in R1 and M2.

Oh yeah, how do I cope with naval battles? I don't. I either avoid doing them entirely or when I have to use ships, I do it so late in the game that I can just build stacks that will win every AR.

**hoom** · 09-08-2014, 02:58

Slower ship speed should help a lot though.

I think the high speed & high ramming lethality has made them too quick.

Of course, the down side will be boring long approaches to combat...