Naval force: completely useless?

[Khwarezm]

During the sengoku jidai (H/H), AI factions like the chosokabe and she shoni constantly spam full stacked fleets with full stacked armies to your regions away from the front.

You want to destroy them one way or another or they will occupy your undefended regions. There are 2 options. Create a large army or create a large fleet to either destroy the invading army or the invading fleet.
The army idea is not an option, because you'll need a lot of armies to defend your coastal regions and armies move slowely so they won't be in time to destroy the invaders. The army idea will never work.

The naval idea is more logical, but it doesn't turn out very well in practice. The movement range is much longer than the line of sight. So you will see the enemy fleets only at the last moment. You also need multiple turn to destroy a fleet. You need to repair you ships, and fend of a fleet every three turn on average.

I have no idea if I use the right ships, or have large enough fleets. How do you cope with ths problem?

[Man o' War]

You'll only ever need two types of ship, with those you can capture every other ship on the map.

You only really need a few bow kobaya's but you must, must, must get the flaming arrow skill as soon as you can. With fire arrow bow kobayas you can catch everything else. You need sengoku bunes to capture the black ship. You can chuck in the odd fire bomb kobaya for the mines but don't bother buying or building the big Japanese ships.

I always make a point of capturing a port city if I don't have one, just to build two or three ships to keep my shores safe.

Hope that helps.

P.S. Mori bow kobayas have more arrows than others, i forget the numbers but I think a normal bow kobaya has 30 archers and a Mori BK has 35.

[Knight of Heaven]

2 or 3 ships to get the shores safe? in what dificulty you are playing? because i always have a shortage, between defending nodes, and keeping the shores safe with several fleets, with full complements. depends on the faction but still, i have to think strategicaly, since i end up using the ports to repair fleets quite often.
And sengoku bunes arent realy enough to capture the black ship they only have 90 men, and even if they reach the target safe enough they cant take it.
Bow koyabas are useless against even to soak up gun fire as distraction. You will need heavy bunes for that. I mean if the goal is to capture the Black ship, otherwise it doesnt matter.

[Nov8]

I always found the naval aspect of shogun 2 to be frustrating especially on the harder difficulties. The AI spams so much and I can never keep up. In the end I just won without a navy :S

[Man o' War]

I play legendary or VH VH.

2 or 3 ships will keep your shores safe because, as previously mentioned, with those 2 or 3 you can capture 2 or 3 more, it becomes self perpetuating and this is how I build my fleets.

What I neglected to mention is that you must capture a port or begin building bow kobayas from the very start of the game, time is of the essence.

I'll tell you again that you'll only ever need two types of ship but until you've proven it to yourself it's immaterial.

I built a total of 21 ships during my Uesugi domination campaign, all others were captured.

Below is the replay of the Black ship being captured by bow kobayas and sengoku bunes during a legendary Uesugi campaign (not using flaming arrows this time, also the ships used have themselves been captured) , not a heavy bune in sight.

EDIT - Original post.

I have the replay of the Black ship being captured by bow kobayas and sengoku bunes (not using flaming arrows this time, also the ships used have themselves been captured) during a legendary Uesugi campaign, not a heavy bune in sight. For some reason I'm having trouble uploading it, I'm told it's an invalid file. It seems .replay files are invalid?

Valid file extensions: 7z bz2 gif gz jpeg jpeg2 jpg pdf png psd psp pspimage rar tar tgz txt xcf zip

[crunchyfrog]

I find navies pretty much useless in Shogun 2, They have their use in FOTS.

I play legendary or VH VH.

I have the replay of the Black ship being captured by bow kobayas and sengoku bunes (not using flaming arrows this time, also the ships used have themselves been captured) during a legendary Uesugi campaign, not a heavy bune in sight. For some reason I'm having trouble uploading it, I'm told it's an invalid file. It seems .replay files are invalid?

Valid file extensions: 7z bz2 gif gz jpeg jpeg2 jpg pdf png psd psp pspimage rar tar tgz txt xcf zip

Then put the the replay file in a .zip, .rar etc. file

[Man o' War]

Then put the the replay file in a .zip, .rar etc. file

I've never done that before, hopefully this will work.

Uesugi Legendary Black Ship Capture Replay.

[Darth Red]

Honestly, I've only found a Navy useful when I play one of the factions west of Kyoto. So basically that's Mori, Shimazu and Chosokabe, I go right for the 4 trade nodes in the west from turn 1 and continue building up the Navy from there.

Any of them east of Kyoto, I rarely develop a navy at all. Occasionally a port will get blocked but it's usually easier and faster to just wipe out the offending faction (or try to offer peace if they are that far away) rather than trying to deal with a half stack of ships with no navy of my own at that point.

[M2TWRocks]

I tried the "use fire arrows" trick to capture the black ship as everyone on here was raving about how awesome it worked. End of battle results: Me: 0, Black ship: 20 destroyed bow ships

[Man o' War]

It's an easy trap to fall into M2 and I've done the same myself. Fire is pretty fatal to the Black Ship usually so if you want to capture it you're best to avoid using fire arrows altogether. A fire bomb kobaya can come in handy for a large morale hit to the Black Ship but you run the risk of setting it alight.

The Black Ship has crew or cannons, you have to beat one or the other, the cannons you can't really beat.

If you engage the crew then they can't use the cannons and you can manouver your ships at will.

It then becomes a war of attrition between the opposing crews, as soon as one of your ships has had enough then disengage and board with a fresh crew giving the Black Ship crew no time to re-man the cannon.

Trust me, I've lost to The Black Ship a good few times before I changed my strategy for capturing it.

[M2TWRocks]

So boarding is the way to go then? I've actually never tried that. I usually just try to get a huge double stack of ships and auto-calc and hope it goes in my favor.

[Knight of Heaven]

So boarding is the way to go then? I've actually never tried that. I usually just try to get a huge double stack of ships and auto-calc and hope it goes in my favor.

Of course it is. But isnt that easy as it sounds. specialy with only bow koyabas. You are lucky if you can get enough bow koyabas close enough to a boarding manuever. Besides they have like 37 men each? against 333 or so. Even with atraction is dificult to do it, unless you have a never ending supply of ships, wich you will need more then one fleet.

What i usualy do is split my fleet in 2 while aproaching the black ship, from 2 sides, one a decoy, and the other goes for boarding it. But even so it isnt that easy. I find it with heavy bunes or that kind of ships, much more easier, as they have better morale, more men, and can soak enough dmg without routing while reaching the black ship.
Besides whats the point of having those ships in the game if i can never use them?! They have their uses. Unless you dont want to.

An interesting oversight by CA and something that I don't think has been picked up on before is the fact that even though the Black Ship crew are Europeans and have potentially just visited Japan for the first time, each and every crew member is armed with a Japanese katana.

Are you sure? never noticed it. Allthough its not the first time they visit Japan, The black ship, wich historicaly was a Portuguese Carrack or Nau ( in Portuguese) would visit Japan every year, i know the sailors and soldiers would use swords, but not japanese katanas im sure, they would use a portuguese Inovation called black swords. with those semi rings near the pomel, for protection, and to break/trap the oponent sword.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

In real life would be allmost impossible to capture the black ship with japanese ships at sea, not only because of its modernity and firepower, but because simply the Japanese would never catch it. Never mention with bow koyabas, even if they could get near, they werent of size enough for a boarding action. Like the mameluk dhows and galleys in diu.
To give you an ideia, 19 portuguese ships with 5 Naus ( the equivalent of black ship) and other smaller ships completely destroyed an Ottoman fleet of 250 ships including Turkish carracks of their own in diu.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Diu_%281509%29

[Man o' War]

An interesting oversight by CA and something that I don't think has been picked up on before is the fact that even though the Black Ship crew are Europeans and have potentially just visited Japan for the first time, each and every crew member is armed with a Japanese katana.

Are you sure?

Yep.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

They can use em too.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

[Man o' War]

Yeah board it mate.

I think the Black ship merchant crew have a melee attack of 14 or so where as the samurai boarding crew of a sengoku bune have a melee attack of 22.

An interesting oversight by CA and something that I don't think has been picked up on before is the fact that even though the Black Ship crew are Europeans and have potentially just visited Japan for the first time, each and every crew member is armed with a Japanese katana.

[Knight of Heaven]

Yep.

lol I can understand why due to animations in the game, but that looks very weird. Not to mention the way they look. They shouldnt look that too.

[Man o' War]

lol I can understand why due to animations in the game, but that looks very weird. Not to mention the way they look. They shouldnt look that too.

Yeah they're very glossy. I never quite understood what people meant when they were complaining of glossy units but the shirts on the crew look waterproof, plastic and pretty unrealistic. And I think you're right re the animations, maybe it was too difficult or time consuming or whatever to make sailors with billhooks and cutlasses fight samurai with katanas.

That said, it's hardly a game breaker. I never thought to look at a Nanban crew, maybe it's the same for them.

[weirdoascensor]

Its Either CA's too lazy...
...Or most likely because of the fact that The Black Ship itself is capturable. When captured by Japanese faction, The Crew naval_uniform changes into Japanese Crew from Portuguese ones...In Warscape so far, a Single Unit could have differing uniform variantmodels depending on faction, but not equipment_theme or animations...

Ah, CA don't even bothered to change the Armament of FoTS Shipborne Marines from Matchlocks to Rifles...

In FoTS Naval Fleets are Extremely Important though...In S2TW only if I need to control nodes and Transporting Troops...

[C.Maximus]

Want naval superiority?

Step 1. Convert to Christianity
Step 2. Get the European trading ports going
Step 3. Build 3-4 fleets with 3-4 Namban trade ships, these things are Empire style lineships
Step 4. Dont capture the blackship, its too much upkeep, just use these, 3-4 navies should do, I usually create way more and use them to blockade my enemy's docks....