Ship combat

[caravel]

That is IMHO a myth. It can often occur that you declare war on a big faction and invade several of their provinces at once and win big victories then end the turn and his ships attack and sink all of your fleets. This is because the advantage is with the attacker in naval engagements. If you declare war on land the enemy will immediately react at sea and attack all of your fleets. This is what gives the impression of doing well on land and doing badly at sea. It has happened to me on numerous occasions. To safeguard against it, before you hit end turn after your victorious land battles have a look out to sea and set all of your fleets to attack the enemys'. The result will be quite different (unless he outnumbers you and his fleets are obviously superior).

Speed is big a factor for the AI. When attacked by the AI fleets you will not know about it. No pre battle parchment will appear informing you, it will just happen and then show the result - so escaping for the human player is not an option. Because in MTW the player moves first and the AI can react to this (cheat), the AI sees where and what your ships are attacking and can choose to fight or flee to another sea zone (move). When the AI moves it's fleet out to avoid the attacker a calculation is made on the speed of the two fleets, and usually, though not always the faster fleet escapes.

[predaturd]

so attack with a speed advantage and youre likely to win? keep moving high speed ships to keep them alive and get a powerful ship + a weak fast ship so you can stop the enemy ships escaping and blast them to peices with the other ones.
cool :)

[Ironside]

Can add that if a ship is hindered from fleeing it will fight all the attackers. So attacking a runner with all your ships as single fleets will increase the odds of catching it without giving heavy (any? don't remember and never done any thourogh testing on this) penalties.

You can also use a smaller fast fleet to catch and a bigger fleet to kill.

Attacking, stars, attack and defense gives combat bonuses (Carracks are really mean ships), but how much is uncertain, mostly thanks to that random factor (that makes 1 dramon sink 4 caravels, it doesn't happen often, but it's quite annoying when it does).

[Heidrek]

What about the strength stat?

I wish I knew exactly how much command counted for as well.

Is my 2* Barque with 1A, 2D, 3S stats likely to win against a 0* Caravel with 3,3,1 stats? What about my 0* Barque vs a 1* Galley with stats 1,1,3? Which is better a command * or a point of defense?