Knut's Guide to Naval Supremacy!

[Knut the Great]

Knut's Guide to Naval Supremacy
(How to defeat transport fleets)

A lot of people are complaining that transport fleets are overpowered and because of that sustaining a dedicated navy is obsolete. Nonsense, I say! I was inclined to agree at first but during one of my campaigns (playing as Macedon) I learned quite a few about naval engagements. Transport fleets are easy prey for navies. In fact it's quite possible for your five-stack navy to eliminate a twelve-stack transport fleet. Naval battles are not perfect but they are great fun. And they are so much more challenging than field battles. In this guide, you'll learn how.

First, let's take a look at the strengths and weaknesses of a transport ship:

- They are often manned by melee units (boarding is a strength)
- They are often manned by ranged units (they have some ranged power)

Now let's sum up their weaknesses. There's quite a few:

- Ramming. Their ramming power is equal to that of the lowest tier navy ships (such as raiding hemiolas). This means they can only sink those naval ships by ramming them twice. If they ram the enemy ship head-on, they'll receive the same damage and both ships will sink. They don't stand a chance against larger ships. By researching naval tech, the ramming power of smaller ships (such as raiding hemiolas) can be increased to outmatch the transport ships and to thus make this weakness even bigger.

- Boarding. While they can easily defeat ranged or support ships with a boarding action, they'll most likely use to assault ships. Assault ships benefit from naval traditions as well as naval tech. Assault ships are also larger and always win when it comes to ramming (once or twice, depending on size).

- Speed. The most important weakness is their speed. All naval units have an ability to temporarily move faster. This allows smaller ships and ranged ships to avoid being boarded or rammed.

How to fight the transport ships:

Now that we now the strenghts and weaknesses of the naval transports we know how to counter them. First of all, you want to avoid boarding actions. You can do this by using your superior speed. With a lot of micromanagement and some skill it is possible to avoid enemy ships. Make sure your own ships don't collide or cut each other off (thus stopping themselves) and make sure the AI's ships do. You can also avoid boarding actions by ramming. Ramming the enemy on the side will make your ship take a lot less damage (if any) from the ramming action and the enemy will not be able to board. Only ram frontally if you can sink the enemy in one action.

Your ranged units shoud always use fire ammunition if possible. Using flaming arrows lets you trade accuracy for damage. However, during naval battles the disadvantage of lower accuracy is almost non-existent. Your arrows might hit fewer soldiers but they will still hit the ship and do fire damage to the hull. This makes the enemy panick and also damages their hull!

Artillery ships are very powerful. They can only fire in an arc straight ahead. They are also bigger than transport ships so you can ram the enemy. Avoid boarding actions (by ramming or by using your speed buff) and use these ships from a distance to sink enemy vessels. You can take control of the onager/ballista yourself by pressing insert (or the cinematic camera button). This allows you to snipe vessels yourself (although the unit is perfectly capable of firing shots themselves and have good accuracy).

Ranged ships are very dangerous too. My favorite (from the Macedonian navy) is the scorpion penteres. They are manned by archers (with flaming arrows) and have two scorpion ballista on board. They are small so ramming is not an option unless you ram from the sides. Remember - if you ram frontally the AI will lock your ship in a boarding action (unless it has superior ramming skill in which case it will ram again).

Assault ships should be used to take out the enemy's ranged ships and to protect your vulnerable ships from ramming or boarding actions. Ranged units are very powerful in Rome II (in field battles and in naval engagements). Assault ships are best in a supporting role. If the enemy outnumbers your navy and has lots of ranged units, they can damage your marines and make your ships rout before you can engage them. The speed buff allows you to overtake any ranged transport ship.

Here are some more tricks for naval engagements:

- Avoid head on ramming unless you can take the enemy down in one action or you can win with a second ramming action, without sinking yourself or by boarding.

- Use assaults ships in support. Ranged ships are best.

- Ram from the sides.

- Use your speed and quick reload buffs. The quick reload buff is not that realistic (but it can be defended). The speed boost is very reasonable and gives a distinct advantage to your dedicated navy.

- Target the enemy general first. He will be in a small transport ship so your general unit can easily ram him and sink him in one go. This means the enemy looses a valuable general and their units rout more easily.

- Avoid collisions between your own ships. Try to map out your movements in advance and heed this advice: turning your ship takes a considerable amount of time. Only do it when necessary.

- Once you've sunk a vessel by ramming it, your ship will be locked in place by the wreckage (it blocks your path ahead) and you will have to turn (which takes even more time than a regular turn). This means your ship will be very vulnerable to missile attacks, ramming and boarding actions.

- Use the pause button or the slow-mo button if you have trouble with the micro-management. This can be very helpful during your first naval engagements.

- Use the tactical map to see the position of your fleet, the range of your missile and artillery units and the movements of your navy.

- Practice!

I might make a video (using a replay) of me defeating a twelve-stack navy with a five stack navy consisting of three scorpion penteres, an onager ship and a heavy tower hepteres. I had zero naval techs back then and it was a new navy without traditions or exp. I will make more videos (if people like them and ask for more) with some more in depth naval tactics and tactics for defeating other dedicated navies.

- Admiral Knut.

[bzhou]

Muchos gracias for this. Had my first rather large 20 vs 15 naval battle recently. With the transport move speed nerf, it seems like not autoresolving might even be fun sometimes.

[johannlo]

good article, it gave me the bravery to fight a transport fleet again. Post patch 2 I am happy to report I can wipe a transport fleet with pursuit levies (RAMMING SPEED lol)

[deathval]

I have been noticing that my ranged ships when called to ram will stop about 10 feet away from the target ship and not ram. Anyone else notice this?

[VladimirTW]

These strategies are very cute, but the fact is a transport fleet of archers is a major threat to any low level professional navy, even with mods.

[epimitheus]

An army of 19 archers or slingers can be a major annoyance or even deadly to any significantly smaller army, even if it's composed of elite units.

Same thing goes for transports vs actual fleets, you can't except to beat 20 transports with 5 ships (or 10 low level warships for that matter). But the artillery ships, even the ballista ships (the first you can get with a military wharf) are deadly against transports (and every other ship for that matter).

I believe that the reason people hate the transport ships is because naval battles are far more difficult (and buggy) than land battles, and with the computer playing aggressively you are bound to have losses, even on simple battles. It takes a lot of practice to master naval maneuvers, whereas land battles are intuitive.

[VladimirTW]

Your logic about the difficulty of navel battles is flawed. If I were to make a transport archer fleet I would not lose any sea battles, and I would need little skill to navigate them as well.

But that is boring, not hard, and this game has too much boring as is.

Transports point blank should not be able to fire projectiles, that in my opinion is the best solution to their issue. Otherwise there is no point in investing some 15,000 gold to build a fleet unless you enjoy their appearance.

In Empire, tradeships were sitting ducks, and the AI knew this damn well, yet naval battles were AWESOME. Imagine if tradeship fleets could defend themselves against fifth rates? That would suck.

Your guide is well written and informative, I apologize if I'm coming off as rude/unproductive. I had a bad experience with a Seleucid transport fleet nuking my pro navy and it pissed me off for how much I invested in it.

[daelin4]

Meh all I do is rush tech to the best drydock and make tons of onager warships. They get gigantic auto-calc odds.

[Praetorian349]

I'd say Assault ships are the primary, while ranged ships play the support role, if anything.

After all, ranged ships are given the moniker; support ships, ingame.

Then again, I play as the Romans so naturally I am more inclined to board than fight like an Athenian or Carthaginian.

Just have to remember that if you are going to board a ship you will be very vulnerable during, and so should have reserves ready to intercept any moves on your ships engaged in a boarding action.

Also, boarding from two points with a couple of smaller ships on a larger ship is devastating. Two Assault Biremes can bring down a mighty Assault Octeres if they both simultaneously board from two sides.

Hell, I've even see a single Roman Quadreme, with 90 Principes Marines, board an Egyptian Octeres with 160 Egyptian swordsmen. The Principes put the entire Egyptian complement of troops to the sword, and didn't lose a man in the process. Morale of the story, Romans are dangerous when boarding, but the immense size and seamanship of the Carthaginian/Egyptian/Athenian naval ships and their crew, respectively, give them the edge in ramming and kiting. I'd be interested to find out if barbarian navies are more suited to boarding, or are Romans...if it's the Romans, then what are the barbarian navies good at?

[epimitheus]

Historically, the first time the Romans decided to build a sizable navy was during the First Punic War. In order to counter Carthage's superior tactics and experienced crews Roman tactics gave greater emphasis on boarding enemy ships, in order to bring their superior infantry in play. That is well reflected in TWR2, as most of their ships are crewed by marines.

I think that there are two problems with naval combat. The first is that the ships turn very slowly, making tactical maneuvers very difficult and giving the whole boring feeling. And ships with oars could turn around very quickly, even when they weren't moving.

The second problem is related to all the AI / pathfinding bugs. Apart from ships getting stuck everywhere and artillery not firing, a major annoyance is when you order a ship to ram another it will hit it once and than it will stand there doing nothing. You have to order them again to attack, making it very hard to manage a fleet during an attack.

However I prefer Rome's naval battles than Shogun's, the ramming mechanics keep you on your toes, whereas in Shogun it felt more like a land battle between archers, at least at first when you didn't have access to the higher level ships. Empire's naval battles are more interesting but the technology involved is so different that you can't do a direct comparison. And if I recall correctly until the first many patches Empire's naval battles (as well as everything else) were a mess.

[vonDuus]

VladimirTW, I don't see where Knut is flawed. Any balanced army (consisting of both melee troops and missile troops) can be taken out using the above approach. If I ever meet a transport fleet consisting only of archers, I believe I could take it out with my artillery ships. All my non-artillery ships will then be used to make sure the enemy ships never come too close to my artillery ships (by sacrificing themselves). It will cost a few assault ships, but this is war, so what do you expect?

Rather I think that it is your logic that is flawed. Where would I ever meet a transport with only missile units? Who would be crazy enough to build an all-missile army? When that army gets ashore it will be killed right away by any army that can field just a few horses.

[Khadroth]

Good post Knut, I'd very much like to see some vids on naval combat. For the most part I tend to auto resolve naval battles even back from Shogun 2 because I hate the control of ships in game (no reverse on oared ships?) and their slow turn times. But if I could get some maneuvering pointers it would make me more likely to fight these out.

[Slaists]

I personally, give the AI control over about 10 javelin boats and unleash them on the advancing enemy. I myself then control the heavy ships and ranged ships. Sure, I lose a bunch of javelins, but they are cheap to replace.

[AveCaesar]

Very good guide, and pretty close to what has taken me about 200 hours in Rome II to figure out! LOL.

[BSGfan]

Knut the great , or how to stop worrying and love the tireme

that helped alot , even it is a big learning curve i finally started to win naval battles even completely out numbered
thou losses in ships seems to be unavoidable but thats fine war is a nasty buisiness ahterall

[macdaddy]

Its a good article, however, the bigger problem I have is not tactical, but strategic. Most enemy transport fleets use double-time, so they can travel fast and far. My fleets cannot come to grips with them in the open sea, and if I double time to catch them, then I cannot attack.

Meanwhile, I make sure my transportation fleets end up in the same scenario. They traverse from land to ocean to land in a single turn, no worries about sinking. Or they are escorted by a small 5 ship navy so if I need to be at sea for 2 turns, they are protected enough.

This is the REAL reason naval power if inconsequential in RTW2. Strategic, not tactical.

[BSGfan]

just wanted to reply to some og the missile transport fleets
before you start your battle have a good look at the enemy and figure out where the missile units are , those are the main target for your ballista and onagers ships in general they tend to go down in a few shots

if you don't have artillery ships use fast raiders to lure them out you are faster and can stay out of range making them very vulnerable to your boarding or ramming attacks from other ships
wgat ive learned is that naval battles against transport fleets are a question of using speed and micro management

tho i do think ships should be able to turn fmuch faster and some of the path finding bugs should be removed

[Zantesuken]

Archer Hexeremes seem extremely strong. A hull strength of 800 or so, with flaming arrows means that you can ram and still rain death from afar.

Seige ships, if micro'd correctly, will win engagements singlehandedly. It only takes a few direct hits from a basic ballista ship to sink a boat. This is for the Greeks though - Romans and Barbarians just don't have the same firepower. I think boarding actions are the key with the Romans (just as they did in history in the Punic wars)