The final & only discussion thread for naval battle mechanics

[Knight of the Temple]

I'm fairly new to MTW, and I was wondering why caravels seem to get sunk consistently by barques, by ships that seem inferior stat wise. As soon as I was able to build caravals for the first time, they seemed like a definite improvement over the barque seeing as their attack and defence was higher, their support costs lower, and their range much greater, so I built hosts of caravels and retired all my barques. I've recently been experiencing my first naval war and I've been surprised by how poorly my caravels seem to be doing against barques. I've pretty much won the naval war now, and I'm just clearing up what's left of my enemy's ships, which all happen to be barques, but they certainly aren't easy to get rid of with caravels. If I attack 1 barque with 2 caravels it'll sail away and avoid the fight, and I accept that it's fast enough to do that, but just recently I decided to try and entice certain barques into a fight by splitting up my caravels and attacking one by one. Well, it did work in that the barques stayed to fight, but my caravels were defeated every time - I lost 4 caravels and sunk no barques at all. And most of my caravels had 1 or 2 stars. So, I don't get why caravels fair so poorly against barques. Not surprisingly, I've started to reintroduce some barques into my navy, and hopefully I'll be able to defeat the enemy barques with them, as I can't afford to just throw away all my caravels every turn! Have I just been unlucky or are barques generally better than caravels in a one on one situation?

[The Unknown Guy]

There are always surprises in naval battles. It´s not only a matter of attack and defense, but of speed and command, and (I think) whether you have a dock there or not.

My theory is that attack is the attack rating, "defense" is the hitpoints (how many attack points it can sustain), and speed regulates how many rounds of attack per turn has each ship (IE: a dromond fights four times in the time a wargalley fights one)

[Don Esteban]

There are always surprises in naval battles. It´s not only a matter of attack and defense, but of speed and command, and (I think) whether you have a dock there or not.

My theory is that attack is the attack rating, "defense" is the hitpoints (how many attack points it can sustain), and speed regulates how many rounds of attack per turn has each ship (IE: a dromond fights four times in the time a wargalley fights one)

Intersting theory but I think speed just has to do with evading battle rather than winning it. Not sure about docks but i'll look out for that - it would make ssense to have an advantage in "home waters".

[caravel]

Defence and attack stats are only part of it. A higher valour (referred to as command on the info pic) barque will usually be more effective than a 0 or 1 valour caravel. Speed is a stat that is used for ships that are fleeing. If you attack a ship one year and in that same year it moves to another sea zone, it's speed vs your ship's speed helps to determines if it escapes or has to fight (there is still a good chance it will escape though even if your ship is the same speed or faster). When you attack a ship, it's that ships defence stat vs your ships attack stat. This is how it works. Attack is usually higher than defence which is why in most cases the attacker has the advantage. When your new caravels at 0 valour are attacked by a stack of 3 barques with a 4 valour lead ship, that stack will probably win.

[Martok]

What Caravel said.

To be honest, though, the mechanics of MTW naval battles has always been a bit of a mystery to players. You'd be doing yourself a favor by heeding Caravel's words, but even then you're not guaranteed a favorable outcome, as there seems to be a high degree of randomness involved. I have a hunch that the random number generator for naval battles is particularly, well....random -- at least more so than "normal".

Oh, and welcome to the Org, btw!

[Sensei Warrior]

Not much more to add onto this one, so I'll reference a thread we had here a while back that has a bunch of good stuff about navies.

Click Here

Another ship thread only centered on trade, another sometimes confusing part
of MTW.

Click Here

I hope I did the clicky thing right, anyways have fun, oh and welcome to the Org.

[Knight of the Temple]

Thanks for the pointers (and thread links) . . . although I'm not sure that I'm any clearer than I was before! The only thing that seems pretty clear is that, well, there isn't much clarity to be had in the naval aspects of MTW; from all the discussion and theories it seems it's in agreement that there is no agreement on what the best tactics are! I guess we all have to go on our own experiences and observations.

Anyway, I decided to risk some more of my caravels to try to clear the seas of my enemy's remaining ships, and thankfully I was far more successful and I did sink the last 2 barques in one on one battles with caravels, so I guess I must have been very unlucky the last time. It may just be my imagination, but I seem to fair better when I have additional ships coming into the region on the same turn where a naval battle is taking place.

[Deus ret.]

I seem to fair better when I have additional ships coming into the region on the same turn where a naval battle is taking place.

Definitely! I almost always attack that way and the funny thing is, you don't have to issue a separate attack order to involve the arriving ship in the fight. although when defending the advantage is not that obvious to me outcome-wise...

btw I disagree with the strongest-ship-on-top-of-the-matchup-theory. more often than not I don't lose my precious admiral (=the strongest ship) when taking casualties in a naval battle. it happens, but it doesn't have to be.

in addition, I also have no insight in CA's concept behind naval battle but I find the 1-on-1-matchup theory overall somewhat unconvincing since it massively favours the weaker, but more experienced competitor. ok whole stacks ARE sunk by single ships (not too often in my experience, though) but I never found single 4-star wargalleys to be as invincible as they should be after that theory. after all, how often is a lone super-admiral be capable of fending off 4+ attacking ships? and, in relation to that number, how often does a single defender sink 3 attackers headed by a 4-star admiral? considering general naval randomness not much more seldomly, I daresay.

.....I wonder, how long will the dephts and mysteries of this game continue to occupy us? if only the successor TWs were as elaborately crafted....

[Adrian II]

The only thing that seems pretty clear is that, well, there isn't much clarity to be had in the naval aspects of MTW; from all the discussion and theories it seems it's in agreement that there is no agreement on what the best tactics are!

It is even worse. There is a lingering suspicion that the outcome of your naval battles is somehow tied to the outcome of your (preceding) land battles. This certainly seems to be the case when the odds in a given naval battle are even, e.g. it's your one-star barque commander against a one-star enemy barque commander. If you win on land, you lose at sea, and vice versa.

[Martok]

Geez, Adrian, you just had to go and mention that to him, didn't you? No need to confuse the poor guy even further -- he probably would've been better off in blissful ignorance.

[Agent Miles]

I ran some tests Friday and finally got some partial stack kills. I did ten battles for each test. I attacked with three longboats (a 2* and two 1*’s) versus a 3* barque, a 1* barque and a 1* Dromon. First was a stack of three attackers vs. a stack of three defenders. I lost a total of 21 ships and sank a total of 21 ships. 40% of the time I won control of the sea zone. Then I did three singles vs. a stack of three ships. I lost 19 ships and sank 18, but I gained control of the sea zone half the time. Finally, I attacked with only one ship against the stack of three. I lost 8 ships and sank 11, but only won control of the sea twice. The defenders never tried to flea. This is hardly conclusive, but seems to indicate that neither large stacks nor singles have a clear advantage.
Still, IMHO.

[gunslinger]

It is even worse. There is a lingering suspicion that the outcome of your naval battles is somehow tied to the outcome of your (preceding) land battles. This certainly seems to be the case when the odds in a given naval battle are even, e.g. it's your one-star barque commander against a one-star enemy barque commander. If you win on land, you lose at sea, and vice versa.

I have seen evidence of this in my own games. I definitely think the naval battles are programmed to "even out" the results of land battles. For example, I entered a battle where the odds were overwhelmingly against me, and had one of those amazing victories where I won with about a 10 to 1 kill ratio. Then I had a naval matchup where I had a huge advantage, but lost a big stack of ships anyway. Due to a bad savegame file, I had to reload my game and redo the big land battle. Not wanting to go through it again, I auto-calced and lost. That time I won the big naval battle. I didn't want to give up my victory in the land battle, so I reloaded again, played the land battle manually, and won. Guess what. After winning the land battle, I lost horribly in the naval battle. I've only noticed this in conjunction with land battles I've won against overwhelming odds.

[Deus ret.]

I've re-discovered the thread where the precious bit of discussion was going on before being renewed in the "my spies watch movies" thread. It's here.

Moderators, can anyone merge the indicated thread with the relevant (i.e. the latter) part of the "my spies watch movies" thread and this one? One day it might even form a mini-guide to naval warfare....Thanks a lot!

The most important point here is that the Almohad Dhow attacked and in my experience that makes all the difference. The attacker always seems to have the advantage over the defender. I think this must be because the valour stars are interpreted differently in attack and defence situations.

Funny, we seem to have rather different perceptions of the game. Not that this would be uncommon with MTW...anyway, as long as I only have barques I almost never attack with them due to them being so bad at it, and I usually lose much more when attacking with them than when my stack of barques is attacked. I can assert that my 3-star admirals are doing admirably well in defending against the annoying byzantine fleets, almost all of whom do have 3 stars as well.

Has anyone oberserved whether ships gain stars after each victorious battle or only once in a while? It seems to me that not every battle increases their rating, yet I had the impression that they get stars faster than agents (assassins, for once) do, and for sure MUCH faster than a comparable general.

Maybe we should initiate a petition to CA to finally reveal the secret of naval battles

edit:

Those big multiple ship fleets, if attacked, can give the enemy a field day. Once they sink a few and the lead ship gains valour, the rest of the 0 valour ships in the stack will sink very easily.

Very well, this would mean that my stack of 4 v0 and 1 v3 ship which is attacked by a stack of 3 v0 and 1 v4 ship (of the same type) should perish quickly once their leading ship manages to sink mine. More often than not, I remember winning these kinds of battles even though I lost my leading ship - and it even was the only ship I lost. According to the stack leader vs. stack leader approach, this should be highly improbable, for once the admiral is sunk the remaining ships should be facing a more or less invincible valoured-up leading ship, making further casualties on the side of the latter very unlikely. At least in my experience, this isn't as uncommon as it should be. Admittedly I have no model to present on the way in which naval clashes work, but I can't help feeling sceptical about the rather simple way it's currently presented.

....does some of this make sense?

[Agent Miles]

I believe that there is only one promotion system and I have found this to be true for generals, inquisitors, and assassins. The promotion system goes like this: from no stars to one star takes one victory as does the progress from one star to two; the number of victories needed to progress then grows exponentially, i.e., two victories for three stars, four victories for four stars, eight for five stars, etc. I actually trained a general from zero stars to six stars, and an assassin and an inquisitor from zero to four stars to test this. I have never trained an admiral to four stars (as they die off more easily), but his progress to three followed the above pattern.

I cannot speak for Caravel, but in the test that I ran in the earlier thread you linked to, stacks had virtually no advantage over single ships in an attack. However, an entire stack of ships can be sunk by an AI stack, or even a single AI ship. For this reason, I don’t see an advantage in stacking.

Run some tests yourself.

[Martok]

Threads merged.

[Deus ret.]

Scenario 1: - The 'stack' player

Each stack leader certainly gains stars from a series of victories but (as you pointed out earlier) his subordinates never gain any stars of their own. Sooner or later, despite slim odds (c.f. assassin success percentages), an AI fleet gets lucky and takes out the admiral. In the next combat round, it is just a string of 'greenhorns' versus a fleet with a leader who has just gained some stars.

I moved the reply to this thread

In any case, I still don't get to terms with this. Mainly on the basis that there are quite a few battles (I'm a 'stack' player), command stars and number of ships roughly equal, in which I actually win while only losing my leading (admiral) ship. The same happens the other way round: More than once my fleet was sunk by an enemy stack which had a two-star leader after the battle instead of a three-star, and the AI hadn't simply moved the ship to an adjacent sea square. With the top ship vs. top ship approach, this would be highly unlikely, far too unlikely for the relative frequency of such events.

On the other hand it is also quite possible to beat 8 green enemy ships with three of your own lead by a 4-star ship, which would suggest something along the lines of the above approach.

I believe that there is only one promotion system and I have found this to be true for generals, inquisitors, and assassins. The promotion system goes like this: from no stars to one star takes one victory as does the progress from one star to two; the number of victories needed to progress then grows exponentially, i.e., two victories for three stars, four victories for four stars, eight for five stars, etc.

AFAIK this doesn't count for naval victories, I had the impression that the rate was faster on the seas, although I never saw an admiral gain more than one star in battle.

....maybe each enemy ship sunk counts as once victory, meaning that it's enough to sink 4 enemy ships to be instantly promoted from 3 to 4 stars?

*blink*

wait, that's a good hint! Caravel / EatYerGreens, you may well be right in that only the stack leader actually fights, given the rate at which he, and no ship besides him, gains valour! now that's something which convinces me...

so,
1. Ships are some kind of agents. Seems quite probable given the system of promotion, among other factors.
2. Only the leading ship of a stack fights versus the leading ship of another stack. Additional ships are treated as 'hit points' and only come into combar themselves once (and if) the leading ship should be randomly sunk.

Still, there is the issue I mentioned above. Can't really incorporate that....

[Voivode of Romania]

My naval battles seem to turn out for the best. I don't know if it's luck or not. I played the Russians once and had the largest navy. Even when i had 2 barques vs. a caravel I won. Once I defeated three dormons with a caravel and a barque.