Naval battles

[Cazbol]

I'm playing as Denmark and was doing very well fighting the Spanish in the south. I had trade routes reaching from the Baltic Sea to the Black Sea and money was flowing into my treasury. All of a sudden I get reports that I lost sea battles in the Baltic Sea, Skagerak and the North Sea; the sneaky people of Novgorod are attacking me. I quickly send new fleets to reclaim the seas, but find to my great surprise that Novgorod had defeated my caravels with longboats; not once but three times in one year.

Caravels have 3 in attack and 3 in defence, while longboats have 1 in attack and 1 in defence. The only thing which is better for the longboats is speed, which is 3 versus 1 for the caravels. On the the other hand, longboats consistently lose against barques, which have 1 in attack and 2 in defence while I don't remember the speed. In the above examples, it's always been a one on one sea battle, i.e. no larger fleets.

Can anyone explain why I'm getting these results from my sea battles and how the battles are resolved in general.

Cazbol

[Cardinal]

Ah, those naval battles , they seam to live a life of there own.
I still would like to point out a few things though. Good ststs does not mean the same as victory, particulary in hard and expert mode. Secondly, I find that numbers ofen count, i.e. two barques (speed 2 I think) will often beat one caravel etc. (However two caravels never seem to catch up with one barque ) . Thirdly, naval commanders also have "stars" and maybe their commanders where better thanm yours. Bottom line is, I think you are just very unlucky.

Then again if we always new the outcome, where would the fun be in the game?

[Cazbol]

1) I had made a point of keeping my best captains in these waters (close to home) and know for a fact that they all had 2 stars, but I don't know about the opponents.

2) I'm playing on easy.

3) There have been 6 battles against the Novgorod ships now. 4 of them resulted in 1 Novgorod longboat sinking 1 caravel. 1 battle resulted in 1 Novgorod longboat sinking 1 caravel and 1 other ship which was either a barque or a caravel The remaining 1 battle ended in my favour, with my barque defeating one longboat. That's 1 ship sunk at the cost of six far more expensive ships.

I think I'll switch back to building longboats and barques.

Cazbol

[Exile]

Interesting. I also seem to have my ships defeated by weaker AI ships (including stars) more often then is statistically feasible. I agree that the solution is to attack the enenmy ship with a stack of you own. Numbers make all the difference in naval warfare. Throw a longboat or barque in your stack so you can catch the enemy longboat. btw - I didn't realize Novgorod could make longboats. wierd.