How to use boats to move armies across water - please post here!

[caravel]

You raise some interesting points, particularly the 'queue' notion. The trouble is that for naval battles, the game never provides a after-battle account of who killed whom.

That's the problem. You can only get a rough idea by taking notes of what ships you had before and after, and this isn't that reliable.

In my experience, splitting up your fleet stack has two effects: (1) it makes your individual ships more vulnerable to attack, not less, and (2) the enemy always attacks only one of your units during a turn, which means you lose a maximum of one ship per turn. It is up to you to judge what outweighs what.

I agree. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. A one ship fleet alone in a sea zone will often be picked off by the AI and probably get you into a war that you don't want. I always use 2 - 3 ship fleets or 2 - 3 ships in a sea zone and no more. It doesn't appear to matter if you stack them or not. I've noticed that the AI can only recognise "no of ships in sea zone" and not stacked ships. Stacking ships just means that they can all attack at one (in a queue) or be attacked all at once (defending in a queue). I may be wrong of course and it may be that a stack of ships gives the impression to the AI of a stronger force, much like an army stack does on land.

And when it comes to battles, in my experience the difference in number of ships in opposing fleets is decisive, unless there is a major difference in command levels. I have never observed the queue effect.

The difference can be very decisive because your ships have to beat all of those ships. e.g. in a stack of three vs a stack of 10, If your first ship beats three and then goes down, your next ship has to take over, that will be against the enemy ship that sunk your lead ship. This enemy ship will have gained valour and will probably sink your other two ships, thus you lose. It's the same as throwing 20 assassins against a target, you have a bigger chance of pulling it off. They all work in a queue, not together. Ships appear to work the same.

I have also found that attacks stand a better chance of succeeding if you split up the slow movers and the fast movers in your fleet. The fast ones will usually catch the enemy first. This truism is demonstrated after the battle when I look at the remaining ships and the added command stars (for a win) of a particular stack or ship.

True enough, though the fast movers can be split individually and each ordered to attack the same ship. This way all of those ships have a chance of catching the enemy, not just their lead ship. If they were part of a large fleet and your fastest ship was not the admiral that fleet would have had much less of a chance of catching the enemy fleet. If they had been a large stack of fast ships, then the lead ship would have tried to catch the enemy fleet, if they had failed the ship would have escaped.

However, just like you I have no solid data to prove all of this.

I've no hard evidence to back up my claims but since playing this game from it's release, I have come to this conclusion. My theory also fits the logic of how this would work from a basic AI perspective. I do believe that ships are to all intents and purposes a type of agent. I cannot see how else ships would engage other ships, except for in a queue. If a fleet of 17 takes on a fleet of 5, how does the AI decide which ship fights which opponent ship? When a battle ends you often get a victory where the winner still lost a few ships. How does the AI assess which ships are lost? Or are these the ships that lost along the way as part of the queue process? Some of those ships may have been destroyed on their first attack, others may have taken down some of the AI ships first.