MTW Ships

Intro to MTW Ships

Ships in Medieval Total War are used to conduct trade or move troops across the seas. They do not have to be tasked to do these things, they will do these jobs just by being present in the desired sea regions.

Trade

Ship trade is conducted by connecting provinces with trade goods, a port, and a merchant building to provinces owned by a allied or neutral faction that also has a port. This connection is made by placing ships in each sea region in between the provinces. An enemy ship in one of these regions will break this connection, and must be moved or eliminated before trade can occur.

Pressing "V" will highlight the sea zone status for the whole map.

Troop Movement

To move troops via ships, there must be an unbroken line of ships from the "source" province to the destination province, and the "source" province must have a port (the only exception here is the Viking faction in the Viking Invasion campaign, no port is necessary). The presence of an enemy ship in any of the sea regions linking the source to the destination, or a ship owned by the owner of the target province, will break the chain.

Picking up a troop stack from a coastal province with a port will highlight all the provinces where that stack can be placed. To move the stack across the water, it just needs to be placed into the target province, the same way a stack would be moved on land.

Ship Range

The range value of a ship describes how far away from coastal provinces a ship can go on the campaign map. Ships with a range of 1 can only hug the coast, the sea regions allowed are directly connected to a land region. A range of 2 allows a ship to travel 1 step further away from the coast, allowable sea regions either touch land directly or border a region that touches land directly.

In the main campaign, galleys have a range of 1, limiting them to coastal regions and keeping them out of the Atlantic Ocean and the central and western Mediterrainean sea regions. In Viking Invasion, all Viking ships have at least a range of 2 giving them access to the entire map, while non-Viking ships all have a range of 1, preventing them from entering the Nordsaer and threatening the Viking homelands.

A ship's range value might be used to compute the chances of the ship being sunk in storms, but this not verified.

Ship Upkeep

Every ship type has an base upkeep value. The upkeep cost of each ship depends on how far away it is from the nearest faction port. The base upkeep value is for the ship type is multiplied by the number of sea region "steps" away from the closest port owned by the faction. So a ship next to the coastal region with a port owned by the faction costs 1X the upkeep value. The upkeep cost is capped at 4(?) regions. The upkeep costs for ships can be seen in the economy scroll.

Ship Combat

If anyone has a clue about this....

Attack/Defense/Speed/Strength stats. Effect of command stars and valour. Lots of stacks vs. one big one.