newbie questions, naval warfare, siege, etc

[SadOldGoth]

Hi,
I read through most of the help files but still need some more info.
- How can you sink ships ? I attacked 1 Brireme with 7 of my own but still no luck. Do you need to do this repeatedly until all sailors are killed? Or do I have to wait for the Trireme?
- I attacked a town surrounded with a stone wall first time yesterday. I had only one ram (got burned by fire arrows, won't make that mistake again), one watchtower and 4 ladders. The Hastiti unit wouldn't take the ladders straight to the wall, I don't know why not. And after the tower was brought to the wall, no unit climbed it, so it just stood there, wtf?

Am I doing something wrong or am I overlooking something?

Cheers,

SadOldGoth

[Ar7]

The chances that the ships will sink during naval warfare are quite random to my understanding, and is currently considered buggy as ship rarely sink.

When using siege equipment such as ladders and towers, you need to command the unit to take the wall by clicking on the part of the wall you wish to attack. Taking a unit near to the wall will not make the unit use it's siege equipment.

Hope it helps

[Herakleitos]

Hi SOG,

- yes, you have to attack enemy fleets several times to destroy it; naval battles just aren't that decisive. If you can manage to completely surround the enemy (that is occupying all the red squares around that fleet) and then win the battle the entire fleet will sink...

- as far as the ladders and towers are concerned, I believe that if you select the unit that controls it and then click on the face of the wall, the cursor changes to the wall-icon and the unit will start climbing the wall. In my experience this doesn't function as well as it should (and when it does these guys are veeeeeeeery slow...). I normally use sap-points or onagers if they are available to me...

Good luck in storming those walls!

[Sinner]

There's apparently 2 ways to destroy a ship, one is to sink it & the other is to kill its crew. The former appears to be a very small chance, even with modding, although it does occasionally happen. I also believe that it can only happen if the ship attempting to do the sinking has a ram.

Killing the crew appears to be more difficult than killing off a similar sized unit in an auto-resolved land battle. My guess is that the game engine assumes it's easier for a ship to disengage and avoid combat than it is for cavalry or infantry, so the survival rate for sailors is higher.

As noted, if you can trap the enemy ship so that if can't sail away - something that's very irritating when it manages this multiple times in a single turn, moving it's maximum rate each time! - then the ships are sunk even if they & the crew would have otherwise survived, just like a land battle where the enemy has no line of retreat.

For this reason it's best to hunt enemy vessels in fleets of 8 or more, staying in the same stack for safety while travelling, then splitting for the attack by sending one ship to each of the red zones then attacking with the remainder, including your admiral. As long as they haven't exhausted their movement points getting into position, all the surrounding ships will be counted as reinforcements, so you won't lose combat strength.

For the siege equipment, the original unit only deploys the ladders/towers if you click on the target wall, the same as you have to click on a gate with a ram. Once the siege equipment is in place, that unit will then automatically start to climb. For follow-up units get them to the bottom of the siege equipment and then click on top of the wall immediately above; instead of running for the nearest gate, they'll start climbing. As a note ladders don't work on the Large and Epic Stone Walls, which possibly is the problem you had with your Hastati.

[HarunTaiwan]

I think if you attack a fleet that is out of movement points it can sink the whole fleet.

Or if you attack it several time it can go down.

[Sinner]

Unfortunately being out of movement points doesn't seem to effect the outcome of a naval battle at all. I've had my fleets retreat their entire movement value even though I'd already moved my maximum distance that turn. I've also attacked the same enemy fleet multiple times in a single turn and they retreat their full move every time.

Attacking a fleet multiple times will eventually whittle it down. The odds of sinking might be small, but eventually you might get lucky, plus every battle does cause casualties so eventually the enemy fleet will run out of men and thus be destroyed.

[HarunTaiwan]

Yes, but I've seen fleets sink (in animation) and disappear even though the battle results did not say I sank any ships.

[Sinner]

Those are ships where the number of sailors left is low enough that the unit is counted as destroyed. It's the same as defeated land troops that will disappear, presumably as a way to avoid the AI having lots of little 1-man, 2-man, 3-man, etc units wandering around. As I recall the threshold for infantry is 6 survivors, below that they're counted as dead as well and the unit goes. I think the cavalry threshold is different, but I can't recall if it's higher or lower.

This tidying up occurs post battle, so you won't see it in the battle stats even though it does occur on the campaign map.

[The Stranger]

The chances that the ships will sink during naval warfare are quite random to my understanding, and is currently considered buggy as ship rarely sink.

When using siege equipment such as ladders and towers, you need to command the unit to take the wall by clicking on the part of the wall you wish to attack. Taking a unit near to the wall will not make the unit use it's siege equipment.

Hope it helps

ive sunk 6 ships in one battle
and sink one every 2-3 battles on my current campaign
maybe the fact that they are all gold chevroned has something to do with it

[HarunTaiwan]

Sinner, thanks for the tips.

Though I just took a city garrisoned by a 2 man velite unit. (It was one man the turn before, too.)

What a pain!