Do you auto-resolve naval battles?

[Luminous Smurf]

I do, i don't understand them because transport ships destroy my specialised navies, they bore and frustrate me to the point where i don't know if it's me that sucks or if they are entirely broken, do you play them or auto-resolve?

[Sir Winston Churchill]

Generally I win more naval battles autoresolving than I would actually playing them out. It's like you said, somehow transport ships beat naval vessels in action when autoresolve gives them their true worth.

Of course I've had my share of moments with autoresolve.

[Onion Head]

I autoresolve pretty much all of them. I played maybe 2 or 3 battles because I felt the autoresolve balance was screwing me. But generally I hopelessly ignore my navy so at some point it will be crushed in a battle where it has virtually no odds to win.

[AlyssaFaden]

I can't answer this poll, because I neither "mostly play" or "mostly autoresolve." I evaluate each time based upon if I am assured the win or not in autoresolve while taking minimum casualties. ANY battle (land or naval) in which I have less than 75% win chance I will manually play through.

[Luminous Smurf]

I was kind of hoping i'd be in the minority, so that learning how to use a navy might be worthwhile, guess it isn't lol, damn, what the heck happened to this game.

[Dago Red]

Say what you will of Empire (pile of junk on release, etc) but naval battles were a true joy eventually with major mods like APE:TI. I still play that mod, not just because it's a work of art with AUM and Ornementum, its fantastic manpower and supply feature, but because the high seas adventure is so much fun.

This was lost in Shogun FoTs where the naval engagements were boring, seemingly endless potshots with no maneuvering finesse and little-to-no boarding actions (ships always rout or catch fire by the time you can close with them). Part of this is the period, I understand but the end result was naval battles that weren't much fun.

Rome II should have the navigational and maneuvering finesse of the earlier Empire model, given that the ships are not powered by engines, but instead the ships all behave like they are iron clads. There is no art in holding the weather gauge or anything that makes it inetersting and all battles result in an ugly lump of ships smashing into each other with the AI gaining an advantage because it can board your ships the moment you ram them -- several in one instant -- no human can compete with that kind of Skynet micromanagement.

Boarding is atrocious too -- just a ball of men running into another ball of men. There's no swashbuckling grandeur as there was in Empire with little duels raging all over the ship. it's totally unrealistic and childish looking, not to mention buggy.

Where is the ability to capture enemy ships?

And looting / scuttling?

Where are realistically modeled physics and handling characteristics for various ship types that create different tactical opportunities other than "hulk smash"?

Where is the sense of fun and adventure in this aspect of the game, beyond spamming a numbers game?

[Puerkl8r]

I did mostly auto-resolve them until radius balanced them in his battle mod, and i managed to get higher tier naval ships, now I can use my large assault ships and insta-kill transports in a single ram.

The biggest problem that I have with naval battles, is that ships no longer surrender like they used to, so if you lose a ship, you lose the whole unit, where as if you auto resolve you almost never lose a whole unit.

I'm assuming they made units not surrender because its hard enough to maneuver your ships around without a bunch of surrendered ships sitting in your way. They should make ships that surrender row off the map, similar to retreating units.

[SamueleD]

Not since I got artillery ships, the battles may be dull, but there is something fun in watching your 20 artillery pieces annihilate an enemy fleet in a few seconds (I destroyed an entire transport fleet without losing a single crewman) or bombarding the helpless garrison of a coastal settlement, for target practice. ^^"

[Langer Kerl]

Once I found my way how to be somewhat succesful in those battles I started playing them personally most of the time. However they are still incredibly frustrating against equal sized navies (equal number of ships, regardless of types), mostly due two things:

1. the unresposiveness of your ships, especially after the first close contact with the enemy. It becomes extremely hard to get your ships to do anything useful once they met the enemy, especially melee ships. While you can micromanage like hell and will most likely still fail, enemy ships can just ram, row back, ram, repeat forever, something that seems impossible for a player to do.

2. Ships are fragile and cannot surrender. Unless you totally destroy the enemy you are very likely to loose some ships which means a whole unit is simply gone and needs to be re-recruited - unlike in Empire, where ships would surrender long before that and be left alone for the rest of the battle to be recovered if you came out victorious. Winning by autoresolve usually only causes damage to the crew but does not cost you whole ships which means a few turns of replenishment will be enough, which is my major consideration when I autoresolve.


There are plenty of other things wrong with naval battles (lack of information, bugged boarding), but these two are the big ones for me which drive me to not fight some sea battles personally.



By the way, I use fleets of half heavy melee and half ballista ships. The ballista ships do all the killing while the melee ships are supposed to form a wall and protect them/block enemies long enough to be sunk by artillery. I chose this composition because I also use my navies on a regular basis to assault coastal cities and need the heavy infantry there; for sea battles only pure artillery or artillery/skirmishers could probably be more effective - though I still am succesfull at sea, especially against transport fleets.

[2gutter67]

When I'm actually playing Rome 2, then I autoresolve every single battle unless the calculation says I'll lose. Quite frankly, the battles are not worth fighting.

[kronpas]

^ you should play Paradox games, not Rome 2. While there are still Ai issue prevalent in siege and naval battles, field battles (esp. the larger ones) are quite fun to have.

[2gutter67]

^ you should play Paradox games, not Rome 2. While there are still Ai issue prevalent in siege and naval battles, field battles (esp. the larger ones) are quite fun to have.

Don't worry. I've been sating my appetite for strategy by playing EU IV a fair amount whenever I can. I haven't finished my game in CK II yet either, but eventually I'll port that over so the Roman Empire can colonize the world.

Anyways, on topic. Naval battles in Rome 2 are about as interesting as they were in Empire and Napoleon. Every naval battle becomes a gigantic scrum of ships stuck right next to each other and unable to maneuver properly. I'm guessing this has something to do with the AI more than anything else, but I certainly can't say for sure. In Shogun 2 this actually didn't happen so I'm not sure what the change was there, but maybe they should go back to it.

[wulfgar610]

I enjoy the naval battles in slow motion.

[Kraut and Tea]

I try not too. It is like in Shogun 2 and in rots, one has to gradualy get use to naval battles that are fought almoust completly with close combat engagements.

[Destraex]

I do whenever a transport fleet is involved.

I am also completely annoyed at how simplistic they made naval battles.
I have written while threads on the matter.

But in the end I will be happy if transports become sailing sows.

[AngryTitusPullo]

I never auto-resolve so where's my option ?

[AnthoniusII]

I use autoresolve in naval battles because there is no real gain in playing them.
For example: In ETW you could capture an enemy ship when its crew was killed or captured.
I did that (asaulting enemy ships) but game NEVER allowed me to capture them.
So..what is the point of playing naval battles anymore?

[nilloc93]

I auto resolved 8 of the 10 navy battles that happened in my game before i set rome 2 aside to go play S2.
I played the first 2 because i really enjoyed navy battles in S2 and to a lesser extent in NTW and ETW. But the rome 2 NB's are pathetic and strange, I'm not going to go on about transports because CA said that they messed that up and it will be changed, my main issue is just how it plays out, you ram a ship with your assault ships and shoot at them with your raiders (and mix it up when the situation demands) but when you ram you're ship often gets stuck, not that you can board ships if you just rammed them, that requires moving around to a different position because "logic". Also on several occasions in these 2 battles when i tried to board the enemy i watched an entire cohort jump into the ocean, so i then determined that it would be far more effective to simply auto resolve.
This is also what i regulated myself to in NTW and ETW on my larger campaigns when i had massive navys sailing around because I can't micro 20 ships of the line.

[krisslanza]

Depends on the odds. But I usually fight them as they're generally easy. Transport ships are slow, easy pickings for any navy with artillery ships (which you should have), and even if you don't, some of the better assault ships can crack a transport ship in half.

Of course, EARLY naval ships are just terrible.

[Steedward]

Did one to check it out, failed miserable (and some of my ships skidded off the map...) so always auto resolve. I actively remove my ships before attacking on land, to avoid any combined battles, unless I know I can land them instantly - really haven't clicked with the naval warfare. Empire/Napoleon I could get into, partly because the battles looked so damn good, and there's huge satisfaction in landing a nice broadside but also because they made sense. Skimming along throwing javelins between ships or *attempting* to board don't really do it for me.