Ships

[satchef1]

How does the game figure out who wins a Naval Battle? I just had all of my ships destroyed (50 Carracks across 4 sea provinces) by a lower number of BARQUES!
They were led by level 3 Admirals (mine were level 1) but this shouldnt cause this much of a difference!

Anyone modded their game so buying better ships is actually worth the bother?

[Kavhan Isbul]

I am not sure, but it seems whoever attacks gets an advantage. Numbers are of extreme importance - even if the enemy has barques, but he ahs one ship more, you are likely to lose. The final factor is the number of stars the fleet commander has, and yes, it is important and makes a huge difference. Also, if a fleet commander destroys a large fleet, he usually gets another star, and thus the more battles you win with a fleet, the more battles you are likely to win in the future with the same fleet and commander.
I cannot be 100% certain, but it seems to me that the outcome of naval battles depends on the outcome of land battles - if you win decisively on land, the AI will compensate by sinking your ships even if they are better and more than its own. The opposite is also true. Every time I win on land I tend to lose at sea, if the navies are somewhat close, and every time I lose a land battle I usually win at sea, often a single ship of mine with 0 star commander may sink 2 or 3 enemy ships.

[satchef1]

if you win decisively on land, the AI will compensate by sinking your ships even if they are better and more than its own. The opposite is also true. Every time I win on land I tend to lose at sea, if the navies are somewhat close, and every time I lose a land battle I usually win at sea, often a single ship of mine with 0 star commander may sink 2 or 3 enemy ships.

That would make sense, really sucks though. Just lost my Armenia campaign because of ships. Spain had about 70% of the map when i attacked them. I moved really fast, taking provence after provence (took me 10 years to push them back to HRE territory). They could, and should, have crushed me like a fly but i was advancing too fast and on too many fronts for them to mount an effective defence. Then they destroyed my navies, sent 15 stacks into Asia and took all of my provences there, crippling my economy and removing all of my troop production. From then on it was only a matter of how long i could make my forces survive.

Might go back to the game tbh, still got 8 stacks of very high valor (every unit is 6/7+ valour) units spread out around the map (Flanders, Denmark, Wallachia, Kiev, Georgia, Britany and 2 in Constantinople).

[caravel]

I am not sure, but it seems whoever attacks gets an advantage. Numbers are of extreme importance - even if the enemy has barques, but he ahs one ship more, you are likely to lose. The final factor is the number of stars the fleet commander has, and yes, it is important and makes a huge difference. Also, if a fleet commander destroys a large fleet, he usually gets another star, and thus the more battles you win with a fleet, the more battles you are likely to win in the future with the same fleet and commander.
I cannot be 100% certain, but it seems to me that the outcome of naval battles depends on the outcome of land battles - if you win decisively on land, the AI will compensate by sinking your ships even if they are better and more than its own. The opposite is also true. Every time I win on land I tend to lose at sea, if the navies are somewhat close, and every time I lose a land battle I usually win at sea, often a single ship of mine with 0 star commander may sink 2 or 3 enemy ships.

It helps to think of ships in the same way as agents such as spies, assassins, emissaries, bishops etc, but specifically assassins. Ships are agents that can be stacked together (like an army stack), like agents they have a valour rating, in the case of ships it's called "command" but it's still really valour the same as agents have. If you've ever seen inquisitors trained in castile, they have a valour bonus, and appear with 3 stars. Assassins in Syria also appear with 3 stars. Dhows from Tunisia also appear with 3 stars as do Cogs from Wessex or Longboats from Denmark. This is how the valour bonus for agents works. Ships are the same.

When you send 15 assassins on an assassination mission, they attack 1 after the other, not as a group, each one is 'tried' against the target and you are shown the percentage of failure/success. The same occurs with ships, except you don't need to drag them to their targets individually because they are stacked. So when you attack an enemy fleet all of your ships attack each ship one after another... or do they?

I'm not convinced of this. Here's how I think it works from observation and years of playing. I may be wrong but I'm not satisfied with many of the other explanation I've seen.

When attacking the first ship attacks, if it is destroyed, the next ship takes over, and so on. When one of your ships finally scores a successful hit, it doesn't destroy only one ship, it sinks the entire enemy fleet. You've lost some ships but ultimately one of your ships simply succeeded and blew the enemy fleet out of the water in one go.

This is why your fleet of Carracks can be blown away by a lucky Dromon. That Dromon only has to beat the first ship, which could even be a Barque due to it's having higher valour ("command") than the others putting it at the head of the fleet, and the rest of the fleet are gonners. This is also why the attacker has such a massive advantage over the defender.

Also when you attack enemy ships it is possible that the AI, who can see what you're going to do, will also attack your ships at exactly the same time, so your entire fleet may be wiped out in this way. This is why I always break my fleets up into single ships when attacking to give them a better chance of survival against counter attacks. The AI can also move it's ships to another sea zone, instead of facing the attack, which you can't do. You never know if the AI is going to attack you or not. This is what the 'speed' attribute refers to. Basically faster ships can get away to another sea zone and not get sunk, slower ships cannot and have to fight. This is not much use to the player because: "You never know if the AI is going to attack you or not".

In reality the naval engagements should have been more interactive as they are in RTW. The player should be given the offer to "Attack" or "Try and Flee" to another sea zone (a bit of a lottery partially based on the speed of the ship). This would even it up a bit with the AI.

[Kavhan Isbul]

Manco, I think you are right. However, I have rarely been successfull in winning naval battles when outnumbered, even if I attack. This applies also to the cases in which my attack constitutes a war declaration, i.e. when the AI is unprepared. I should probably experiment a little to see exactly how it works, but what you wrote makes a lot of sense.

[caravel]

As I said numbers are not so important, check the valour of the lead ship. If that's considerably higher than your lead ship's valour and your ship is inferior, equal or not much higher quality, then you'll probably lose. Also if you attack the AI may choose to switch that targetted ship/stack to another sea and then it may attack with another ship/stack or part of that stack. So the AI will in fact be attacking you, not you attacking the AI. Imagine if you were the AI and when the human player ends his turn you can see what he's doing and react to it. This is exactly how the AI works. This is why when you invade a province with an army, the AI pulls in extra army stacks to counter this, the shipping is the same. The AI will often attack back directly. I've lost count of the number of times I've attacked an allied/neutral AI fleet only to have the AI attack and devastate all of my other fleets in other seas the same turn. This is why if I do attack I attack every one of their fleets in every sea simultaneously.

Also it's possible that the player's ships are always treated as a fleet when they're grouped, thus when attacked or attacking they go down as one. Wheras the AI ships may not have this problem. Basically the AI may cheat... or it could be a bug.