Naval Warfare

[HeroSK]

Hi all,

I am currently trying to build up Venetian trade empire thus naval battles are very important. Is there any tips and tricks, or special tactics to use rather than massing ships ?

Thanks in advance.

[Maklodes]

Hi all,

I am currently trying to build up Venetian trade empire thus naval battles are very important. Is there any tips and tricks, or special tactics to use rather than massing ships ?

Thanks in advance.

I'm not aware of any.

The only tip I can think of that isn't really obvious (and even this one isn't exactly that hard to figure out) is that if you have a good admiral on a poor fleet (which actually happens somewhat often, considering that admirals develop best when the odds are against them (or not too far in their favor, at least)), you can transfer him to a good fleet through a bit of rigmarole. Basically, imagine you have a fleet of 5 galleys with a good admiral. Say you want to transfer him to a fleet of 10 war galleys with a no-traits admiral. You can't actually transfer him directly, so you have the war galleys join the good admiral's fleet, then send out or disband the galleys. Having an admiral join a full-stack navy is a bit more complicated, but still possible: you send out all but one ship of the good admiral's fleet, then send out one ship from the full stack navy, then have the 19 ship stack join the admiral's stack, then send out the last ship of the admiral's old navy, then then have the last ship from the full stack navy join the 19 ship stack, now commanded by a good admiral.

If you have buildings that give a chance for admiral ancillaries (merchant's wharf (shipwright), naval academy (naval gunner, although sadly Venice doesn't get naval academies), or explorer's guild (naval navigator)), you could also try to make sure you recruit an admiral every time you recruit ships, by making sure you don't have a naval stack "docked" at the port, thus forcing the creation of a new stack and new admiral. You can't simultaneously retrain ships and recruit new ones if you take this approach, though.

[Silverheart]

Since you can´t fight naval battles yourself in M2TW, the best strategy for ensuring maritime victories is to simply build better docks and amass big fleets of as good ships as possible.
If you happen to have any exceptional admirals, make sure to place their fleets where the action is, so that they see some good usage.
If your aim is to establish an empire build upon naval trade, then your best bet is to take control over as many ports as possible in entire regions and then placing capable fleets strategically to defend the region from incursions (for example, if you take all the coastal settlements in the eastern Mediterranean and place a fleet at the port of Cyprus, where it can swifftly make its´ way to any part of the region).

Other than that, the best strategy in naval warfare is to simply amass big fleets of powerful warships and overwhelm enemy fleets.
All in all, it´s actually a good strategy to utilize as big fleets as you can afford, since then they don´t need to head back to port for retraining as quickly - they can just keep fighting until they´re too worn out, at which point they will already have claimed many enemy ships.
You can also use several ports simultaneously to recruit large amounts of ships in short time, and then merge the ships to create huge fleets over the course of one or two rounds.

[HeroSK]

Thanks for answers. It seems having larger and better fleet is the only key factor apart from having an exceptional admiral. However, it is not that easy since holding coastal settlements is a real problem. Also, being neighbor to many faction places player on target. So maintaining the garrison costs as well as a large fleet needs a good income.

[Vissewalde rex de Gerzika]

You can try to make good admirals by using a single or a couple of good ships and seek weaker but larger navies. This works best with Byzantine fire ships which are available early on.

[Aeratus]

In terms of game mechanics in getting an exceptional admiral, admiral command is relatively simple compared to other traits

First, for the Admiral's command stars

If you win a naval battle with odds less than 2.25 (i.e., 4:5 in the enemy's favor), then you get +1 points in "sailor." You get +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5 naval command after 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 points of sailor
If you lose a naval battle with odds greater than 1.5 (i.e., 2:1 in your favor), then you get +1 points in "landlubber." You get -1, -2, and -3 command after 1, 2, and 4 points in this attribute.

So basically, you want to fight naval battles that are at least 4:5 in the enemy's favor. If you're playing on H or VH, this means you'll most probably lose, since naval battle must be autoresolved and autoresolve on H/VH difficulty levels grants the enemy an advantage beyond the initial odds.

Next, you can try creating buildings that gives you ancillaries that affect admiralty command. Here are the naval ancillaries

1. Gunner (+2 command): 33% chance when admiral is recruited at a city with naval academy
2. Reliable navigator (+1 command, + movement and line of sight): 33% chance with admiral is recruited at a city with explorer's guild
3. Shipwright (+1 command): 8% chance when admiral is recruited at a city with merchant's wharf

So in order to build the perfect admiral:

You need a city with all three buildings, which would give you an 8.7% chance of getting all three. This means that on average, you need to train about 12 admirals to get the max combination. Also, all naval ancillaries are untransferable, so you'll have to disband those "imperfect" admirals unless you want to have 8 separate navies floating around.

Then, you need to win 16 battles with odds of 2.25 or worse. This could be difficult if your difficulty level is high.

So all of this would give you an admiral with 9 command stars.

[Maklodes]

In terms of game mechanics in getting an exceptional admiral, admiral command is relatively simple compared to other traits

First, for the Admiral's command stars

If you win a naval battle with odds less than 2.25 (i.e., 4:5 in the enemy's favor), then you get +1 points in "sailor." You get +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5 naval command after 1, 2, 4, 8, and 16 points of sailor
If you lose a naval battle with odds greater than 1.5 (i.e., 2:1 in your favor), then you get +1 points in "landlubber." You get -1, -2, and -3 command after 1, 2, and 4 points in this attribute.

I think that 2.25 means that the odds are significantly, if not overwhelmingly, in your favor. I'm pretty certain that 2.25 is better odds than 1.5 (so there is a "window" between 1.5 and 2.25 odds where victory improves command and defeat reduces it). For example, the "picking on the weak" trigger for battle dread requires odds greater than 1.5, while the "risky attacker/defender" triggers all relate to battles with odds less than 0.5, and many deal with odds less than 0.16.

You need a city with all three buildings, which would give you an 8.7% chance of getting all three. This means that on average, you need to train about 12 admirals to get the max combination. Also, all naval ancillaries are untransferable, so you'll have to disband those "imperfect" admirals unless you want to have 8 separate navies floating around.

I think it's an 0.87% chance (0.33 * 0.33 * 0.08). You'd need to train an average of 115 navies. I say not worth it. If you have a city with an explorer's guild, that's a good place to train your ships for the chance of a navigator (throw in a merchant's wharf too), but I'd say getting a perfect admiral is probably a pointless quest. As Venice, getting a naval academy might be too much of a hassle anyway, considering that you'd need to take one from the Danes, English, or Portuguese.

[Aeratus]

Oh right, that's only .87%, not 8.7%. lmao. So yeah you'd need to train 115 navies on average.

Regarding the odds, 2.25 (= 44.44%) is slightly in the enemy's favor. An odds of 1.50 (= 66.67%) means that the battle is in your favor. An odds of 2.00 (= 50%) means that both sides are equal. In other words, anything below 2.00 means your side has the advantage. Anything above that means the enemy has the advantage. Also, in the decimal representation of odds, you can't get below 1.

So if you prefer the analysis in terms of the percentage of the total blue/red bar, you want to fight battles where you have less than 44.44% of the total strength bar. If playing on VH, you want to avoid any battles where your strength is over 66.67% because you can lose on VH autoresolve even in a 2:1 advantage.

[Vipman]

What??? Mate, you got the wrong kind of odds here, or I'm really stupid at maths (and I considered myself good at maths...) ...

At least the odds used by trait triggers, from what I know, is the result of the odds... The player always has it's number on the left side, so in a battle where you have 3:1, the odds is 3. If you are 1:2, odds is 0.5 .....

[Aeratus]

That wouldn't be the proper mathematical definition of odds.

See here:

http://www.sbrforum.com/betting-tools/odds-converter/

So if you put in 2.25 in the "decimal odds" field, that converts to a fractional odds of 5/4 (meaning the AI has 5 and you have 4 = 4:5 ratio)

Similarly, in your situation of 2:1, that would be a fractional odd of 1/2, which corresponds to the decimal representation of 1.5

[Maklodes]

Regarding the odds, 2.25 (= 44.44%) is slightly in the enemy's favor. An odds of 1.50 (= 66.67%) means that the battle is in your favor. An odds of 2.00 (= 50%) means that both sides are equal. In other words, anything below 2.00 means your side has the advantage. Anything above that means the enemy has the advantage. Also, in the decimal representation of odds, you can't get below 1.

So if you prefer the analysis in terms of the percentage of the total blue/red bar, you want to fight battles where you have less than 44.44% of the total strength bar. If playing on VH, you want to avoid any battles where your strength is over 66.67% because you can lose on VH autoresolve even in a 2:1 advantage.

Okay. You say that odds are (total strength)/(your strength). I claim that odds are (your strength)/(enemy strength).

Here's my case for my claims:

1. Odds less than 1 are common in export_descr_character_traits.txt. Check it out Trigger V0150_Standard_Risky_Battle_Attacker_Crushing_Victory_VnV_Trigger, for instance, as a random example, or search "0." with a finding function.

2. Think about the direction of the > and < signs. The "Sailor" requirement is winning a battle at "BattleOdds < 2.25." The "Landlubber" requirement is losing a battle at "BattleOdds > 1.5." BattleOdds < 2.25 implies that BattleOdds of 2.24, 2.0, 1.5, etc, all meet the requirement, while 2.25, 2.5, 3, etc, do not.

If your definition of odds is correct, then an admiral commanding a lone dhow which somehow beats a full stack of grand carracks (which is probably BattleOdds of 100 or so in your system) does not get a command increase. By contrast, an admiral commanding a full stack of grand carracks against a dhow (probably BattleOdds of 1.01 or so) does get a command increase. Does it make sense that fighting with the odds more in your favor and winning improves your command abilities?

Correspondingly, losing a battle with BattleOdds > 1.5. That means that if your admiral loses while commanding a dhow against a grand carrack stack (once again, BattleOdds of 100 or something) gets counted as a landlubber, while if your admiral loses against the lone dhow while commanding the carrack stack it isn't counted against him. What?

3. The export_descr_character_traits triggers all seem to indicate that a higher number is better odds for the commander, and lower number is worse odds.

For example, GoodRiskyAttacker is clearly meant to be signify that your general attacks and wins when the odds are against him. Attacking and winning a clear victory with odds between 0.5 and 0.16 gives 1 point of GoodRiskyAttacker. Attacking and winning a heroic victory with odds less than or equal to 0.16 gives 2 points of GoodRiskyAttacker.

IndecisiveAttacker means that your general dithers and withdraws rather than attacking. You can get 1 point of IndecisiveAttacker for withdrawing before battle when the odds are between 0.8 and 1.5. You can get 3 points of IndecisiveAttacker for withdrawing before battle when the odds are greater than 3. Wait a minute -- if the odds are worse 2:1 against you (the meaning of BattleOdds > 3 in your system), then your general is very indecisive, but if the odds are 2:1 in your favor or better, then not as much?

Alright. That's my case for the (your strength)/(enemy strength) view. What's your case for the (total strength)/(your strength) view?

[Aeratus]

(total strength) / (your strength) would conform to the definition of "odds" in continental Europe.

But since you've mentioned that there are odds that are less than 1, then it is clear that the usage of "odds" in the game files is not the one I just described. So I'll take your word for it.

Thanks for clearing it up.

[Sitalkes]

One tactic that does seem to work is to attack from as many directions as possible - don't just put your fleet into one stack, find out where your enemy is, then split your stack and attack from many directions at once. As mentioned above, it helps if your fleet has experience and a good admiral.