Fleets won't merge

**EBnewb** · 05-07-2009, 21:51

In short, when I try to merge fleets, the screen where you shuffle unit cards to the left and right pops up, but the two ships (one on each side) are greyed out. So I can't merge fleets. And I know it's possible to have more than one ship in a fleet, because the enemy has 3 ships in a fleet, and I have one fleet (in port) with two ships, but that's because I built them "on top of eachother".

Anyone else experienced this? Am I missing something?

**/Bean\** · 05-07-2009, 21:56

Fleets often won't merge because the RTW engine won't allow one admiral to serve under another.

If you want fleets to have more than one ship, put your ships in port the turn before you make the new ones. The new ones will then join the older ones.

**Aemilius Paulus** · 05-07-2009, 22:42

Originally Posted by Beanerz

Fleets often won't merge because the RTW engine won't allow one admiral to serve under another.

True, but I believe the OP is talking about merging ships with admirals lacking stars, which was possible in vanilla. Not being able to merge any ships is an EB feature, since EB counts every ship unit as a whole fleet, instead of a single unit as vanilla did.

Otherwise, Beanerz is correct. To make large fleets, just stick one of your existing fleets in the port a turn before a new naval unit will be trained.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 05-07-2009, 23:29

Short version: in EB you cannot [should not be able to] (usually) fully merge Roman fleets.

Long version: I am going to hazard a guess and say you were playing with the SPQR. In that case *all* admirals get a nice Roman name, AFAIK. And that means that *all* admirals have (hidden) traits. And in RTW you can't merge the admiral's fleet/naval-unit with another admiral's fleet/naval-unit if both of the admirals have traits, ancillaries or command stars.

**Tellos Athenaios** · 05-07-2009, 23:33

Originally Posted by Aemilius Paulus

True, but I believe the OP is talking about merging ships with admirals lacking stars, which was possible in vanilla. Not being able to merge any ships is an EB feature, since EB counts every ship unit as a whole fleet, instead of a single unit as vanilla did.

Which isn't correct. In EB and in Vanilla the basic block of anything in the way of armed forces is a unit. Whether or not you wish to interpret the "number of things in a unit" as "the number of soldiers/crew in a unit" or "the number of ships" is irrelevant here: it's a matter of interpretation and not based on how the game works at all.

**Nachtmeister** · 05-08-2009, 01:44

Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios

Short version: in EB you cannot [should not be able to] (usually) fully merge Roman fleets.

Long version: I am going to hazard a guess and say you were playing with the SPQR. In that case *all* admirals get a nice Roman name, AFAIK. And that means that *all* admirals have (hidden) traits. And in RTW you can't merge the admiral's fleet/naval-unit with another admiral's fleet/naval-unit if both of the admirals have traits, ancillaries or command stars.

Same with KH; have not tried with other factions but I assume it is the same no matter which faction you are playing - once a fleet has an admiral, the ship on which the admiral is (the one with the golden star) can not be transferred to another fleet.

With KH, Admirals seem to "spawn" some time after completion of ships; they are not immediately present after a naval unit has been built in a port, so it is sufficient to have the fleet for which the naval unit was built within 1-turn-range of the created ships to have them join that fleet.

**EBnewb** · 05-08-2009, 09:11

You are right, I was playing Romani. Guess I'll just bunch them next to enemy ships when attacking. Thanks for the clarification!

**Celtic_Punk** · 05-09-2009, 04:51

its because those admirals have fought a battle already. if they are totally green they wont.

**/Bean\** · 05-09-2009, 09:28

Thats certainly not true

**Macilrille** · 05-09-2009, 09:52

Nope not even if you try to merge a totally new fleet with a five-star admiral. It does not work and it annoys me, of course Nelson would subordinate himself to Parker as those were the Admiralty's orders...

Edited to add that the Admiralty later ordered that the roles be reversed and they were. When the high command gives an order they expect it be obeyed, as do I when playing EB, insurbordination makes me want to court martial the disobedient.

**Nachtmeister** · 05-09-2009, 10:19

I believe I have encountered captains instead of admirals in some of my EB campaigns... Only in the first couple of turns after creation of the fleets though and even if they remained in their home naval bay - but whether an admiral is spawned with the fleet seems to be random. Anyway, there should be some way to either script-auto-kill "inferior" admirals on merging of fleets or to manually remove them via console... But I can't think of one.
Is there such a thing as a kill_character command and if so would it kill the admiral but leave his fleet intact?