MTW naval tactics

[Martok]

A friend of mine gave it to me when he stopped using his computer along with a bunch of other games - now I'm addicted! It's taken a while to figure stuff out like shipping routes, government, and tactics. One question - I'm playing as the Byzantines and I now have the biggest navy and control the Mediterranean. The only problem is I can't sink ships in the Black Sea or the Sea of Marmara. Even with 5 ships attacking a single enemy ship nothing ever happens...so Constantinople is continually blockaded by sea. Am I missing something?

Naval battles can be a bit wonky in Medieval. What's probably happenning is that the enemy ship is escaping to the nearest sea region without being destroyed. (This is especially true for when the defending ship has a speed of 3 or higher.) What you should do is split up your naval stack into 2-3 smaller ship stacks, and then have them attack the enemy vessel simultaneously. This will usually enable you to actually sink the AI's ship, and not just chase it away.

[Arciel]

Hmm...is there any way then to know if you're going to win a naval engagement?? It looks to me that whenever you attack an enemy ship (or vice-versa), you don't have control over it....Essentially, is all random?? Does using a larger ship against a smaller one make any difference(ex. Caravel against a barque)?? Sorry for the noobish questions though...

[Geezer57]

While the stats for the bigger ships would seem to indicate better combat power, it doesn't seem to play out that way in the game. What matters most is command stars, followed by numbers.
So always try to have a high-command Admiral at the top of your ship stacks, and try to keep those stacks full, when waging a full-fledged naval war.
I build lots of cheap ships, with just enough deep-water ships to control the few deep-sea areas on the map.

[Martok]

Geezer's got the right of it. Naval combat is unfortunately rather unpredictable in MTW. The admiral in charge of the stack usually has more to do with your success/failure than with the actual attack/defense abilities of the ships under his command. This is where it can be useful to build ships in provinces that grant them bonuses (Galleys in Venice, Longships in Denmark, etc.). The problem with that is, I'm not sure the ship bonuses always work....

[CrossLOPER]

The problem with that is, I'm not sure the ship bonuses always work....

They do, but I always played it safe by attacking with multiple stacks, as Martok suggested.

[Geezer57]

To elaborate just a bit on the subject Martok broached in the first post: chasing faster A.I. ships - there will be times when your faction can't build anything with a speed higher than 2. You might have to try and eliminate an enemy ship with a speed of 3 or 4. If you keep all your ships in a sea area stacked, the stack moves at the speed of the slowest vessel. So break your stacks down by speed, so all your ships in a stack have the same rating.

When attacking one of those elusive speedboats that keeps "jumping" away, I find it often best to break my stacks down to single ships. The reason? The game mechanics allow slower ships a slight chance to catch faster ships - by maximizing the number of attacks you can make, you raise the odds of one of them occurring. Once brought to combat by a lucky attack (whether it wins or not), all your other attacks that turn will go through. Most likely result: one sunk enemy "commerce raider". But it requres lots of ships, which is why my frequent goal is to have a big navy.