Darthey's Advanced Naval Stratagy Guide

I’m putting together this guide to help all those struggling with Naval combat on VH or in multiplayer matches. It summarises a lot of tips recorded across this board along with my own knowledge but I don’t claim to be an expert player, so if you find any error let me know and I will make the correction. If your new to Naval Battles you might find Guerra's excellent guide a little more useful.

I’ve tried to write this with the bare minimum of Nautical terms so you don’t need to be a Naval-history buff to understand it. There’s a huge amount of knowledge behind sailing a ship but I’m aiming to simplify it to the point of relevance to the game.



Darthey's Advanced Naval Stratagy Guide


Contents:

1. Sailing and Manoeuvring ships
   
2. Manoeuvring ships in formation
   
3. Attacking the enemy line
   
4. How to get best effect from your cannons
   
5. Understanding the effects of damage to ship and crew
   
6. Using support vessels effectively
   
7. Moral and winning battles
   
8. Knowing when to withdraw

1. Sailing and Manoeuvring ships “I cannot command winds and weather.”

Almost every ship in the game has square sails, and so sails in roughly the same manner. This short of ship doesn’t sail fastest in the direction of the wind (‘down-wind’, the reverse being ‘up-wind’), but at an angle of roughly 45 degrees to it.

For this to make sense, consider you’re looking down the length of a three-mast ship at full sail. If the wind were coming from directly behind the ship the back sail would block the other two, but if the ship was angled to the wind each sail is unobstructed by the others (this is a big simplification of the physics involved, but you get the point).



Empire cheats by letting you sail directly into the wind (although slowly), and turning through the wind isn’t that much slower then turning in the other direction as long as you have a bit of momentum.

The Weather Gauge: This is a Nautical way of saying you have the wind in your favour; it’s blowing from behind you towards your opponent. Historically it was a decisive advantage as the side that was upwind could either choose to close and engage their enemy or maintain distance (while the other side could only withdraw or hold distance). In Empire its not quite so crucial, but still useful if you can get it.

The advantage it provides you with is speed and the choice of how you want to engage your opponent; he has to react to you.

The other advantage of having the Weather Gauge is it makes it easier to sink enemy ships.

If you watch a ship at anchor it will rock back and forth on the waves. A ship at sail will still rock but in a slightly different manner. If a ship is sailing perpendicular to the wind, the force of the wind will cause the ship to rock further to one side, away from the wind, lifting one side out of the water by a handful of degrees.

A ship down-wind of an opponent will find part of its hull that is usually underwater rocked upwards to where it can be penetrated by fire. When the ship changes course it will plunge back below the waves and start taking on water (note that this is a very generalised way of looking at ship movement, on average it will roll to one side but factors like the strength of the sea, wind and recoil from the guns can change this).

2. Manoeuvring ships in formation “Captains are to look to their particular line, as their rallying point; but, in case signals cannot be seen or clearly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy.”

Controlling each ship manually is completely impractical in larger engagements, and so you must come to trust and understand the way the AI deals with ships in line (no other formation is recommended for battle).

The patched UI will show you the course of your ships and their momentum; the dotted line shows their predicted path and the bar represents the point at which the lead ship will halt if you order it at that moment.



Avoid the temptation to group your entire fleet into one long line; this is unwieldy to manoeuvre and fight with. Instead group ships into detachments of 6 (or fewer) ships in line, with each group headed by a ship of identical size. You loose the ability to micro-manage the speed of ships in a group because the game has to do it for you to keep each ship in formation. This also means that groups can only travel at one set speed.

Remember that ship formations are very slow to turn, and if you order it to turn too sharply it will cause the ships to bunch-up and become vulnerable to enemy fire. Always try to avoid turning formations directly into the wind.

3. Attacking the enemy line “… It was just as the HMS Royal-Sovereign was passing between these two enemy's ships that Vice-admiral Collingwood called out to his captain: "Rotheram, what would Nelson give to be here! " And, by a singular coincidence, Lord Nelson, the moment he saw his friend in his enviable position, exclaimed: "See how that noble fellow Collingwood carries his ship into action."

No matter what formation or plan of attack you chose the objective should always be to focus the firepower of your entire fleet against a smaller part of his, causing his ships to rout, surrender or sink. There are several ways to achieve this.

The first is to ‘Cross the T’. This means moving your line across the head of the enemy line perpendicularly, allowing you to focus the firepower of several of your ships against one of his without him being able to return fire. The key to this manoeuvre is speed and moving with the wind, as it prevents him from being able to turn his fleet behind your line for stern shots (as to do so would mean turning into the wind). If he looks like he might try and break your line you can try hitting his lead ship with chainshot. This will either slow his formation down (allowing you to get more fire into the lead ships) or cause him to break formation and manoeuvre around the lead vessel, reducing the cruising speed of the formation.

The second method is to charge the line in the middle, as Nelson did at Trafalgar. The difference between this and ‘Crossing the T’ is it is useful when attacking very long lines of weak ships; if you cut them in the middle you can fire both broadsides of your ships, doubling your firepower. After breaking through the next step is to encircle the rear of his force and destroy it before the front can come back to its aid. This sort of attack is good for several smaller squadrons attacking one long line, but not for one big line to attack another big line (Nelson divided his forces into two heavy squadrons and a lighter one).

The third method involves attacking the enemy line in parallel, but with a double-thickness of ships to focus your firepower but leaving ships enough room so not to crash into each other. An exceptional guide on how to accomplish this can be found here.

4. How to get best effect from your cannons “First gain the victory and then make the best use of it you can.”

Fire at Will and ‘Alt-Fire’ modes: Micromanaging fire is impractical when using fleets, but its possible to have a little control by using the fire-at-will toggle to control exactly when a ship will start shooting (to wait for an enemy to turn his stern into your guns, for example). Just don’t forget to turn it back on again.

Alt-clicking on a target will assign it as a priority to all ships selected; they will always fire on it if it’s within their gun sights. It also turns ‘fire at will’ on regardless of the toggle, so don’t try to use it to get ships to withhold fire until a certain ship is within their gun-sights. You can deactivate alt-fire selection by turning fire-at-will off and on a few times.

Chain Shot: This does damage to both enemy sails and masts, but the former only when they are unfurled (and the latter only when the games collision detection is feeling generous). So shooting at enemies sails is sometimes a target of opportunity, but if you keep firing away eventually you will take a mast down. Masts are much harder to destroy on the larger warships.



Grape Shot: The path of each ball in grapeshot is modelled, and it’s down to the games collision detection to how many of the enemy crew you might kill. The problem with firing grapeshot in broadside is it lacks the power to penetrate the thick oak hull of a ship, and only the fraction that flies along the surface of the deck will cause injury to the crew. To get a better effect you first need to knock a few holes in enemy ships hull (the more the better). Firing grape shot along the length of a ship also won’t penetrate the hull, but as it’s all directed at a smaller target (rather then spread across the length of a ships side) you get a more potent effect.

Broadsides: I believe you receive a damage bonus from firing in broadside, but unless you are fighting with few enough ships to allow micromanagement its rarely practical to use broadsides at anything but very close range. Manually firing the cannons like this also lets you engage at a slightly longer range then the AI would under ‘Fire at Will’.

Front and rear shots (known as raking fire): Attacking an enemy’s front or rear (rather then his sides) will do heavier damage, as ships have much lighter armour. Attacking the back of an enemy ship will also generate a heavy moral penalty to his crew, and can cause a wavering opponent to break and run.

5. Understanding the effects of damage to ship and crew “In honour I gained them, and in honour I will die with them.”

The crew: The ships crew is divided into three groups; Gun-crews, Marines and Sailors. For any fully-manned ship each gun in the broadside requires two crew (a loader and a rammer), while bow and stern chasers (cannons found at the front and back of larger ships) require one.

Thus for a Heavy First Rate with 303 crew and 120 guns, some 240 of those crew will be working the guns. The other 60-odd are roughly half-and-half Sailors and Marines: The Sailors often look similar to Gun-crews (depending on the nation) but will never try to man the guns. Instead they will run about the ship and up and down the rigging (this is an ascetic effect and doesn’t influence the game). The Marines are much easier to distinguish due to the muskets they carry, and will use them to fire on any enemy close enough (but rarely seem to hit). There will also be a Captain at the back of the ship, and sometimes a second Officer and Piper on larger ships. On the flagship the Admiral will be represented by a Captain wearing slightly different colours.




Crew loss: If you try to board an enemy ship (or get boarded) your entire crew will fight in the action, but otherwise it’s only the gun-crew you need worry about. When the ship has more working cannons then gun-crews they will run about the ship to fire the cannons currently facing the enemy. This can be an advantage when facing fleets containing recently captured ships with only a handful of crew (such as pirate fleets); they won’t be able to man all of their guns. It can be much easier to disable them by killing the crew then destroying the sails or hull (see the use of grapeshot).

Damage to guns: Individual cannons can be knocked out by enemy cannon balls in the same way as field artillery. It’s mostly down to luck and the games collision detection, but if the crew is unharmed they’ll move to work a separate gun.

Damage to sails: Sail damage is reasonably straight forward; the more holes knocked in your sails the slower you will move. Once a mast takes enough damage it will collapse, and you loose a significant part of your speed. You can try to protect your sails from enemy chain by slowing down or stopping entirely, as the sails will take no damage while furled.

Damage to the hull: Damage to the hull is directly related to a ships ability to stay afloat, but isn’t the cause of it sinking. Instead the hull should be looked on as armour; the more damage it takes the less protection it gives to crew, cannon, ammunition store and bobbies from enemy fire (more on this below).



Fire (and putting it out): When a ship catches fire it will cause an immediate moral penalty to its crew. If ignored the blaze will increase to the point where it sets the sails fully alight and burns the ship to charcoal, or reaches the gunpowder in the hold and blows it to pieces (or both). Each ship has a quenching ability, and receives an extra bonus from being stationary and withholding fire.

How ship sinking works: As mentioned above the hull, made of thick oak planks, acts as armour to protect the ships interior. Mounted inside the hull along the water-line are a series of compartment-like ballast tanks (called ‘bobbies’ by the developers’). When the damage to the hull plates protecting the Bobbies has reached a certain threshold they can be pierced by enemy fire.

For a ship to actually take on water it needs to be holed below the water line. For this the motion of the ship, the motion of the sea and the location of the hole are all a factor and you might see the ‘taking on water’ warning indicator blink off and on as a hole plunges below a wave.



6. Using support vessels effectively "This is too warm work, Hardy, to last long!"

Bomb-Ketches: As these ships fire shells with mortar trajectories they can be placed behind your ships with little risk of friendly fire. Although the results they produce are not as spectacular as Rocket Ships (killing crew and occasionally knocking down a mast or starting a fire), its important not to under-estimate the effect they have on the enemy. It is much easier to rout a large ship then to sink it, and the moral penalties Bomb-Ketches produce make them a valuable addition to any mid-game fleet.

Rather then ordering a Bomb-Ketch to attack a vessel it’s better to sail into position, anchor, and then use alt-fire to select targets of preference. As the ship drifts slightly at anchor you will need to use the rotate movement command to occasionally bring it back to bear on the enemy. As Bomb-Ketches carry a cargo of explosive shells they are extremely vulnerable to enemy fire. You should always aim to keep a ship between them and the enemy, and sometimes it can help to have an escort frigate nearby for this purpose.



Rocket Ships: While more deadly these ships are a degree more difficult to use. As the rockets fly in a much lower trajectory it’s rarely a good idea to shield them with another ship in case of friendly-fire (no pun intended). Its best to use rocket ships like you would chain shot; try to go for targets that present you with lots of sail to hit. As the rockets are very inaccurate the bigger target you have to shoot at the better, so aiming for the big line ships first is a good strategy. Once you’ve started a good blaze switch to a new target.



Frigates and smaller vessels: 6th Rates and 5th Rates will start off as your main fighting vessels, but as you move into the mid-game you should gradually aim to faze them out of combat fleets. While useful for screening your other support ships or chasing down and capturing routing enemy its pointless to use a frigate to engage anything larger then a 4th rate. Their guns simply aren’t big enough to do serious damage to the hull of larger vessels, and their own sides too thin to resist the impact of big guns. As the game models such detail quite carefully you’ll often see a frigate or sloop explode when it comes under the fire of a heavier ship, as high-calibre shot smash straight through the hull into the ships magazine.

Despite their small size don’t consider frigates worthless in the late game. Being cheap to build and maintain they are essential strategic tools, for blockading enemy ports or raiding his trade lanes (a raider gets 5% of the lanes income regardless of how many guns it carries). 6th Rates are also the fastest ships in the game, and can be useful for chasing down routing opponents.

When going to war with an enemy your first naval objective should be to cut off his commerce to reduce his ability to construct fresh land units. Trading ports are the obvious choice here, but blockading shipyards prevent him from building new ships and blockading fishing ports reduces his taxable income. It is much better to use frigates for this task, leaving your combat fleets free to hunt down the enemy.

Be aware that bigger ships can move much further then small ones in a turn, but a fleet’s movement is restricted to that of its smallest vessel. If you have no Rocket Ships or Bomb-Ketches in your heavy fleet it’s often better to also leave frigates behind. If you want to attack an enemy fleet but fall just short in movement it can sometimes be a good strategy to detach the larger ships with the movement to attack, allowing the smaller ones to come in as reinforcements if close enough.

7. Moral and winning battles “England expects that every man will do his duty.”

It is far easier to rout an enemy ship then to sink it, and as such is important to understand what influences moral, both on you and the enemy. The major modifiers are as follows: damage to hull, crew loss, admiral bonuses, admiral death, fire, taking on water, and being shot in the rear. There seem to be some additional modifiers from being cut-off from support (or surrounded by the enemy), which make breaking up the enemy formation crucial.

If playing against an AI fleet with an admiral its useful to note down the name of his ship at the beginning of the fight, or alternatively look for him on the deck of one of the enemy ships at the start of the fight (killing him will cause a heavy penalty to the rest of his fleet).

Once a ship is sufficiently damaged to rout you can chase them down to force surrender. Normally sinking a few extra broadsides into her hull will do the trick, but sometimes against a particularly stubborn foe you can board her to instantly force the surrender. Be aware that a ship that was broken due to moral penalties (stern shots) rather then damage may recover and come back into the fight.


8. Knowing when to withdraw “Now I can do no more. We must trust to the Great Disposer of all events and the justice of our cause. I thank God for this opportunity of doing my duty.”

Part of the strategic game is knowing when the fight is lost, and saving as much of your fleet as possible (even the best Admiral is ultimately a slave to chance). If you’ve managed to keep your fleet together it shouldn’t be too hard to fight your way clear and make best-point (see section 1) for the nearest battlefield edge. Switch to chainshot to help slow his pursuit, and don’t be afraid to sacrifice smaller ships in a delaying action if it means your big expensive flagship can escape. Once you reach a safe distance hit the ‘withdraw’ toggle and let the AI handle the rest.

One of the advantages of taking a long time to do this is it means lots of surrendered ships will sink, denying him cash and captured ships to recruit. Sometimes if there are a lot of surrendered ships left it can be worth trying to fight the desperate battle to claim them, but always keep a focus on your strategic goal in launching the fight. It can be equally useful to save experienced fighting vessels to rebuild your fleet around.


That’s all for now, but I’ll continue to update this as I have time. Good luck Admiral, and I’ll see you on the high seas.

Fantastic read, well done sir.!

Care to comment on using a circular anchored fleet for defense. I placed my ships in a circle with my admiral at the back, all ships anchored about 8 ships. The enemy about10 ships attacked by sailing past both sides of the circle to try to get at my admiral and suffered admirably(excuse the pun) , whereupon I sailed my admiral up the diameter of my circled fleet and the ai tried to follow and was hammered again. They had to leave their backsides exposed and I then individually targeted raking their sterns. Needless to say an Heroic victory, but perhaps a little shall we say lame.

Thanks guys.

Originally Posted by razor1952

Care to comment on using a circular anchored fleet for defense. I placed my ships in a circle with my admiral at the back, all ships anchored about 8 ships. The enemy about10 ships attacked by sailing past both sides of the circle to try to get at my admiral and suffered admirably(excuse the pun) , whereupon I sailed my admiral up the diameter of my circled fleet and the ai tried to follow and was hammered again. They had to leave their backsides exposed and I then individually targeted raking their sterns. Needless to say an Heroic victory, but perhaps a little shall we say lame.

Sounds rather creative, and not something I've come across before. I'll give it a go when I get back from this trip. I want to expand the formations section further, but I didn't have time to throw together any more diagrams before I left.

(And nothing is lame if it works )

great! +rep

Very nice. Good Read. I have not had a chance to do any Naval Battles yet, so I will keep your points in mind for it.

Brilliant guide. Very well written.

Heh, that circular formation sounds like a wagon corral on the high seas. Weird.

daniu likes.

+rep.

Excellent work & and a well needed guide.

I'm not an expert on this and I haven't experimented with stand alone naval battles to try specific things out as such, but I have played three campaigns in which my navies played an important role so I'll make a few points u might consider including (or not if u don't agree with them of course!)

1. Why fight naval battles at all (why not auto-resolve)?

The simple answer is that with an understanding of naval tactics as applied to ETW, you will do a lot better yourself than the AI will on your behalf. You will win battles the AI would sometimes lose for you. You will almost always come out with more of your ships still afloat so you will build a more experienced (and therefore gun for gun) more deadly navy. You will be able to claim many more enemy ships as prizes - often you can commandeer ships larger than you can build yourself, so this can make a big difference.

2. Ship size is paramount

It is very difficult for small ships to defeat big ships. As far as I can tell (and I think this is realistic) a 64 gun ships has a hull aprox twice as strong as a 32 gun ship. It obviously has twice the number of cannons, and these may be bigger caliber cannons as well. What this means is that a 64 gun ship is worth a lot more than two 32 gunners, maybe as many as four. Even more than that with H/VH AI bonuses.

So if your fleet has the biggest ships and is not massively outnumbered by the enemy's smaller ones, you should be able to sail straight at them and overpower them easily just by sailing around firing at will. On the other hand if the reverse is the case, or even if the fleets are roughly equal in terms of ship size and number on H/VH settings, you will have to employ astute tactics to prevail.

3. Chain shot and dismasting

The range of chain shot is about half that of regular cannon balls. Canister shot (anti personnel) is about half that again. One might think a good way to defeat a large ship with several smaller ones is to first dismast it with chain shot in order to reduce its maneuverability so that your smaller ships can sneak in for and aft of it thus avoiding its broadsides. Unfortunately the short range of chain shot makes this difficult to pull off since the target will be dealing out broadsides of cannon ball well before you get within chain shot range, and once you are in chain shot range, his broadsides will likely be crippling for your smaller ships.

For this reason the main use of chain and canister shot is when the battle itself is won, and you want to a) prevent a prize ship from escaping by dismasting it instead of sinking it, and b) kill or injure half its crew and demoralize the remainder in preparation for boarding and capture.

4. Line formations and grouping

In the event the lead ship of your line is sunk or routs, the game does not appear to automatically assign the second ship the role of leader and the line just stops dead in the water. If you ungroup and then regroup using line formation the game appears to decide which ship should lead the line (and what order the following ships should go in) for you. It does not appear to assume to keep things as you set them up at deployment. As a result your ships may mill around in completely inappropriate maneuvers as they try to form up into a new line making them sitting ducks at a critical phase of the battle.

If this happens you have options such as:

• you can abandon the use of formations and assign course and speed commands either to each ship individually or (perhaps more practically) in small groups of two to four ships. Note than if you select two or more ships you can command them all the sail towards a given point without grouping them or creating a group formation. This can be just as effective in close battle as using group line formation.
• You can select all the remaining ships in the line after ungrouping them and instruct them to sail away from the enemy as fast as possible (note sqare riggers sail fastest with the wind on the quarter) with the intention of reforming a group line formation when they have some space away from enemy fire.

5. Battle plans other than "crossing the T" or "cutting across the line"

In my experience (which is three campaigns, maybe 12-15 significant, i.e. important and losable, naval battles) these tactics are not so easily performed because the naval BAI is reasonably adept at not only avoiding this situation but since it can control each ship individually (including flipping them about to give you two broadsides in quick succession) and you cannot easily it can often turn such an attempt to its advantage.

My view is that your comments further up the guide re: gaining "The Weather Gauge" and "concentration of fire" are absolutely spot on but I don't think you really develop these ideas in the section on battle tactics itself. I made some comments on this in a previous post - you may not agree with them of course, but in case you missed them they are down this thread:

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...=180+deg+about

I appreciate turning ideas like this into succinct and understandable guide material is not so easy.

Awesome guide Darthy! +Rep!

Same for you too, Gregorovich, great tips!

I was playing darth mod where ships turns slower, so small ships can at least sometimes beat large ships 1v1 (in fleet action they get caught in another ship's firing cone, so it does not work).
Important things are: most ships have 4 firing cones two broadside cones and 2 foraward/backward. Fw/Bw cones contains only few guns, but small ship like brig does not need to much damage to sink/rout/surrender and it takes a long time for it to do it to big ship.
Therefore its good to keep clear from all cones (but of course, Fw/Bw are preferable from broadside). To do this, small ship approach from blind angle to chainshot range and then does everything it can to stay there. Once big ship is dismasted, small ship can float in circles so it uses both sides.

This is very important early game where player tries to beat pirate galleons and does not have 4th rates or better.