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

[Maltz]

Motonari: Let's fight the Black Ship!

Take 1


Atsuyori: "My lord! Success! We captured the Black Ship!"
Motonari: "Good job! Once the boarding starts, the Black Ship is doomed."
Atsuyori: "Yes. Now I just have one question remaining... how come I only have 1 star, too? Give me my stars back!"
Takamoto: "Hm... how come the Fire Bomb Kobaya did nothing?"
Atsuyori: "er...."
Motonari: "This is because all we fought before this day was Wako, and all we needed was Medium Bune. Admiral Kobayakawa, if you could fight the Black Ship again, you should be able to use the Fire Bomb Kobaya better, right?"
Atsuyori: "Yes! Please let me try again!"

[Maltz]

Atsuyori: "Sailors! Let's go!"

Take 2 (about 10 minutes)



Atsuyori: "My lord! I am so sorry - we accidentally sunk the Black Ship, but also lost the Nihon Maru!"
Takamoto: "Ouch! Two best ships lost in one victory..."
Motonari: "It is OK. Luck was really not on our side. I can see a lot of improved execution, but there was still room for improvment."
Atsuyori: "Thank you for your understanding, my lord! I have learned to block the Black Ship's advance with my ships. Please let me try again to wash away my shame!"
Motonari: "Sure. How about a night battle next time? We are at a range disadvantage. So night battles should work better for us."
Atsuyori: "Certainly!"

***

Takamoto: "Hm father, what is good about Fire Bomb Kobaya? They could set the Black Ship ablaze, but then the fire spread to our own ship when we try to board. So it actually works against us."
Motonari: "Hm... my best guess is that the fire does not always spread to our boarding ship? Otherwise there is simply no point to bring any Fire Bomb Kobaya to fight the Black Ship."

[Maltz]

Take 3

Atsuyori: "Boys! Let's surprise the Nanban with the night attack!"




Atsuyori: "My lord, we... destroyed the Black Ship with our Fire Bomb Kobaya, before we got a chance to board! I am sorry!"
Takamoto: "Wow. Didn't know the Kobaya could sink the Black Ship!"
Motonari: "There is no need to say sorry. Now we have a good way to use Fire Bomb Kobaya against large ships - block their front and bomb them to death!"
Atsuyori: "Thank you, my lord. If you allow me to fight the Black Ship again, I should be able to capture it!"
Takamoto: "But we did just that in Take 1. Ironically, we had the least amount of experience and skill then."
Motonari: "There are many things out of our control. This just show that we should only focus on the improvement of skills but not care about the results too much."
Atsuyori: "Thank you, my lord!"

***

Takamoto: "Father, we are able to either capture or sink the Black Ship with ease. There is no remaining challenge for our navy anymore..."
Motonari: "Yes. I think this is a good time to wrap up with our military campaign and enjoy the peaceful days!"
Takamoto: "Let's research the Geisha house!"

***

maltz: Thanks for reading the Mori story! At the end I will organize some thoughts about STW2's navy.

[Maltz]

Conclusion: Naval Battle Wrap-up

Naval Battles in STW2 is quite enjoyable and tactically challenging, but there still exist problems. Let's discuss the problems first to take it out of our minds.

Current Problems of Naval Battles

(1) Generals losing stars: new problem introduced by patch 5346

Every general is a 1-star naval commander. This makes spending points down the naval path completely pointless. Hopefully this is because I did not start a new campaign upon applying the new patch. Need to verify this later.

(2) Defending ship does not even move to engage our fleet: new problem introduced by patch 5346

Before the patch, the enemy ships always sail straight to us, which is stupid but guarantees some action. The patch corrected this - but not much - now they do not move at all in a defence battle. And unfortunately all of our previous discussions on naval tactics, such as trapping, wall of arrows, etc., instantly become obsolete for naval attack battles. It should remain useful in defence, though.

For naval attacks, now there is a mindlessly easy way to win. When we have a ranged advantage, we only need to circle to the side of an enemy formation and eat it up one by one from there.

(3) Ships that are ordered to move in groups often have problem finding their targeted location and miss it, and then row in circles for eternity: new problem introduced by patch 5346

This happens extremely frequently when we ask the group of ships to turn. The workaround is to order individual ships to row to their targeted location. This could be a tedious process. And even so some of the ships will still miss their spot and start turning in circles.

(4) Boarding is unreliable: existing problem

It is difficult to control the timing of the boarding command - we have to issue the command a few seconds before the optimal distance and orientation is reached. And the ship's relative position and orientation matters a lot. If we issue the board command while the ship is far away, in 90% of the cases no boarding will ever occur, as the boarder will just row in circles endlessly trying to get to the target's past location. Multiple boarding commands might make the boarding fail, too.

(5) Fire Bomb Kobaya needs to be manually ordered to attack.

A tiny inconvience. We have to row them up close and right click to attack. If the target rows away, we have to manually row them up and manually attack again.

(6) A ship on fire spreads its fire to its boarder, but the boarder has no option to extinguish the fire and could only watch its ship sink probably before the fight is over.

This might be an intended feature, but it would be unreasonable if the boarded ship, which was already on-fire, might last longer than the boarding ship, which just caught the fire. It is a little unfair for the boarder especially considering successful boarding is so rare.

This leads to the question that do we really want to set ships on fire with Bow or Fire Bomb Kobaya? In many cases we want to capture the ships.

(to be continued)

[Maltz]

Discussions of Naval Tactics

(1) Creating favorable ship matchup

Here are some exmaples:

- In general, we want to have more and better ships. This is the most important thing! All of the rest only helps to win more beautifully. But might not always magically turn us from a loser to a winner.
- Use Medium Bune to shoot at any ship with a smaller bow crew. This is pretty much all we need to do while fighting Wakos. There is no need to manually target them. Leave fire at will on. We need to focus our attention on moving and boarding.
- Use a boarding ship to board any ship with a weaker melee crew. It is probably not a good idea to set the target on fire first, as this might result in the loss of both ships (as what happened in Black Ship Take 2).
- Use a Kobaya setting a large ship on fire.

(2) Ideal timing of boarding

The best boarding order is issued about 3 seconds before the ideal relative orientation and closeset distance of two ships is reached. For example, if we have two ships coming head to head, we want to issue the board order probably slightly before the two ships meet heads. However, if we have two ships coming on a 90 degree angle, it is probably not a good idea to even issue the boarding command. We should first turn our ships 90 degrees to create a good relative orientation - which usually means facing the same direction. It would be ideal to put a block in front of the target - see next point.

(3)Blocking

Blocking refers to using one or multiple of our ships to park right in front of a moving enemy ship to prevent it from sailing any further - and maybe not even be able to turn, if we block it from both sides. Blocking is very important if we want to board a moving target ship. This little skill definitely come in handy when battling Nanban Trade Ships and the Black Ship.

(4) Night attack

Limited visibility and the sense of uncertainty and thrill! And it only requires the first-level naval tech. However, night attack likely reduces the range/accuracy of cannons and bows (not sure about the details, but it seems that the difference is not very large - see Black Ship Battle Take 3), so we only want to use it when we have the ranged disadvantage (like battling the Nanban ships), or want to avoid enemy reinforcement. Otherwise, it is probably better to stick with a shiny bright day.

(5) Fire Bomb Kobaya

These guys are like suicide sticky bombs. They need to get very close to a target, but once they stick, they will keep throwing bombs until the target sinks! So it is probably a good idea to bring them only in a close fight where you are not sure whether you can win, and do not worry about capturing the enemy ships. If you want to capture a ship, use boarders and not the bombers.

Another possible way to conserve them is to quicky close in to set an enemy ship on fire, and quickly row away. But since turning is tricky, we have to worry whether we will therefore push them to deeper danger.

By the way, now the defending AI ships do not come to us, their mines are much less useful.

(6) Cannon Bune

I do not understand why CA only allows 2 cannon bunes. Going through those naval techs to finally have access to them is a huge investment - and we only get 2 ships? Are they sure they want to hurt players' feelings like this? Do 2 ships make any difference?

You may argue that the Cannon Bunes are too powerful because they cannot be boarded. But they still have weakness to fire and other cannon. Shouldn't we reward the faction who goes through all the trouble to get Cannon Bune something in return? Sure, you can go "tank" with a full fleet of O Atake Bune... I think a restriction of 8 Cannon Bune AND 8 O Atake Bune (and for that matter, 8 Fire Bomb Kobaya) is much better than 2 Cannon Bune and infinite O Atake Bune.

The damage from just 2 Cannon Bune is probably not enough to rout any approaching ship (even two Nanban Trade Ships cannot do it). So it would still be more efficient to board the ship to surrender it, to shoot it with arrows to rout/surrounder it, or to use fire bombs/arrows to sink it. Cannon Bune is just here to add some damage support.

Buf if we are the attacker and the opponent does not move, we might be able to simply shoot the enemy ship up from a safe distance! EVen if the opponent will come to us, we can probably easily intercept it with our ships and rout it. This would be the equivalent of the bait tactics on land battles. But the room of menuever is quite small, as the Cannon Bune only has a range of 300 (regular ships' arrows have a range of 180). Nanban Trade ships has a range of 500. The Black Ship's range is 700.

(7) The really big and slow ships

These big and slow ships, such as the Nihon Maru, the O Atake Bune, and the Heavy Bune, are available later in the game. And they are pretty much only required to battle late-game ships. They have thick armor, so against really tough ships like the Black Ship, they take a few rounds of cannons before having to go into repair mode. They also have a good chance to succumb the Black Ship when they successfully board it.

But against weaker opponents, they are like using chainsaws on bamboo chopsticks. We can win early-game battles with Medium Bune + Sengoku Bune + Bow Kobaya.

(8) AI's chicken personality

Building a powerful conventional navy is a lonely business - enemy fleets runs away from you before you even see them. This happened many times in my campaign. The AI's fleet were sailing backward when I was still at least 2-3 seasons away from them. I had nobody to fight! (Even if I could reach somebody, the AI fleet would immediately flee a long distance in the opposite direction.) It would be nice if the AI's fleets are a little braver.

The naval battle seekers should convert and use Nanban trade ships, or capture the Black Ship and use it. The AI underestimates Nanban ships' power (just like the outcome of auto-resolved naval battle) and would not escape from us. But then we do not need tactics for Nanban ships, either. Just camp them up in a corner and fire!

So why do we have tactical discussion anyway? It is not like we can use them on a yearly basis. Well, at least we do have our sea routes and back-yard provinces secured!

This concludes the Mori story! Thanks for reading!

[HopAlongBunny]

Entertaining and informative.

I'm scared by the number of ways you showed to trivialize the already challenged AI :P I guess that's why you play legendary and I don't :)

[Jacobin]

1564!

And I was impressed with myself for completing a Shimazu campaign by 1577.

[Narcisista]

The cannon Bune limit is very disappointing, in particular because the Namban Trade Ship limit is four. Reversing those limits would be good enough for me (No japanese clan had more than one carrack, IIRC, and in fact only three were built in the entire country).

I haven't tried any naval battle in the new patch but if things are as you say it is very disappointing. My own Black Ship assault was made with a far inferior navy using massive numbers.

I used 40 ships mostly Sengoku Bune, with a few Medium Bune and Bow Kobaya. I lost 26 ships, but capturing the Black Ship was totally worth it. One thing noticed in your video is that the Black Ship crew seem to not have used matchlocks. In my own attempt boarding atempts were met with a rain of bullets if I didn't approach directly from behind the rear castle. Something lost in the patches?

Incidentally the most useful ships in my own combat were a couple of bow kobaya that kept blocking the Black Ship.