Yee-Yee-Oh!: Mori (Legendary, Domination)

[Maltz]

Naval Tactics #1 Trapping

Naval battle is a totally different game. Many principles in land battles do not apply, and we have to find new tactics to excel. But the general principle is the same: bring a larger navy that is designed to counter your enemies' ships! Or more practically, we will field a mixture of ships so we don't have to swap ships constantly.

For argument purpose we will categorize ships into three:
Damage output: These ships have a high bow crew count or cannons. They provide the most damage. Good examples are Medium Bune and Cannon Bune. Most of the fleet has to be damage dealers. Even if the worse happens, you win the combat but every routing ship runs away - you are still invincible!
Boarder: These have a high melee crew count. Their purpose is to board the enemy ships. Good examples are Sengoku Bune and late-game large ships (which can also serve as damage dealer). You only need about 2 of them, since they deal very little ranged damage.
Kobaya: They are great counters of giant ships as they set them on fire. They can also help intercept the routing ships. But if there is no such giant ship in the enemy, we do not need a lot of them. Setting ships on fire is not very easy - routing smaller ships with lots of arrows IS.

The three categories of ships also has a paper-rock-scissors relationship. Boarder eats Damage dealers (but can't board Cannon Bune!), Damage Dealer eats smaller ships (Cannon Bune eats everybody!), and smaller ships can set heavy ships on fire.



The first tactics that works well is Trapping, designed to board an enemy ship efficiently. Note that the tactics does not guarantee the victory in boarding - we still need a superior boarder. Ideally, we have some designated boarder like Sengoku Bune, against an inferior ship that has a lower seaman (melee crew) count like a Medium Bune. A Medium Bune can board a Kobaya or a hurt Medium Bune.

There is a good chance that when the AI ship approaches, they look for gaps in our formation and try to go through it. This happens very frequently for AI's first ship. So if you see a group of Wako Pirates and you use the wind correctly (let the wind blow to the face of your opponent to slow them down), the Wako Trade Ships will fall behind, and the Wako Medium Bune will come to you. This is our chance to capture one of the Wako's better ships (a crap ship for us to keep, though) without even having to move and break the formation. We leave the gaps for them to do just that, and wait for them to get close.

So we need one ship beside the gaps that can easily beat the approaching ship. For example, if the AI has a Wako Medium Bune, we can use a Sengoku Bune. Or if you are Mori, your Medium Bune has 10 more melee crew, and is therefore a good counter of Wako's Medium Bune. In late game, if the AI has a Sengoku Bune, we can use an O Atake Bune. Nothing can go wrong if we bring better ships! Close the gaps during deployment if you do not want the AI's ship to come in between. This may have a side effect of disabling the AI from ever coming to your remaining opened gap, as they tend to go strait ahead. And if you happen to close a gap "strait ahead", they simply circle to your flank. So try to create open gaps close to the center of your formation.

Prepare the trap so there is one ship, any ship, behind the line. One ship can watch over multiple gaps. So you can promptly cut the exit of the trap once the enemy ship enters a trap. They can also help firing and make the surrender come even more quickly. If you have Medium Bune, don't forget to do war cry.

Boarding is an art. The command of boarding has to be issued about 3 seconds (1X speed) before the two ships are completely parellel to each other, or it is too late! Your ship will attempt to turn around to chase the target, which takes forever. Everything is messed up if you fail the first chance! It is actually OK to issue the command a little too early, since all your ship will do is to row forward a bit, without turning left or right, when the target come straight to you (for the gap). Once you start the boarding, you have the superior melee crew, and your damage dealers are raining arrows on the target. The enemy ship is pretty much dead meat.

Once you finish this first ship, OR the enemy does not go for the trap for whatever reason (sometimes they can get blocked by a surrendered ship), we will enter a shoot-out phase. The AI does not move any ship forward anymore. So we will have to go to them, which requires another tactics.