How to deal with transport fleets cost effectively?

[Grimreapo]

So I am playing as the Franks on Legendary and I come across my greatest foe yet in Attila: Total War with a single region to their name West Roman Separatists have a 7 army stacks and rather than trying to finish off the WRE they declared war on me which made them summon up 3 of the stacks from Northern Spain to sail up near the South of France where they been camped for 3 turns:


And I have no idea what to do, as you can see my main army is Mediolanum keeping an eyes on the 4 stacks in Verona (I manged wipe a stack when the war started), so I have a choice:
1) I try to build the best fleet that I can but I dont know what would be good vs 3 transport fleet stacks.
2) Build a single stack Navy and then use 2 armies I have spare to attack them.
3) Build another army and have a 3v3 transport fleet battle.

I had to ask on the forum as I cant "save scum" past this and should I fail at removing these transports sleet then I will be screwed...

Just to grumble though, its funny really, if you walk through hot desert you will take attrition, walk through snow you will take attrition and if you walk through swampland you could take attrition but if you stay on a small boat for well over a year (again sailed from Northern Spain) with hardly any food you dont take any attrition at all, game logic is so odd sometimes...

[Unactuality]

Warships annihilate transports, as they should. I've used small navies of 5-6 ships to wipe out full stacks of transports. If they just sit there for a few more turns, you should be able to build up a decent fleet that can crush them easily even in autoresolve.

[Grimreapo]

Warships annihilate transports, as they should. I've used small navies of 5-6 ships to wipe out full stacks of transports. If they just sit there for a few more turns, you should be able to build up a decent fleet that can crush them easily even in autoresolve.

And which ships get the most bang for their buck? Its just that after when Rome 2 came out I did a full Rome campaign, played a bit with other factions until bored and then not touched it until Attila came out so I have PTSD toward these fleets. Also the reason why I HATE using navies in Total War is because whenever I attack an opposing fleet it always gets a chance to retreat and get far enough as for me not to be able to attack it again letting it get away which is frustrating...

[Caligula's_Horse]

Unlike Rome II at launch, transports are handily defeated by even low tier warships in Atilla. So long as you aren't outnumbered 3 to 1 or something along those lines, a proper navy will win every time, with higher tier ships going even stronger. Danish transports, and I think a few other select units are a bit of an exception, as they don't suffer sea sickness penalties, but those are the exception, not the rule.

Worse case scenario, say, you started building your fleet late and you find yourself outnumbered, you can still inflict Pyrrhic victories on your opponents, making the life of your land based armies a lot easier.

[Sacerdos]

You can defeat any number of transports with 1 Archer warship (though you probably need more if they have a lot of archers). The archer warship is faster than the transports and can kite them forever. Just need to build up enough distance to reload.

I figured this out by accident when my starting fleet as the Jutes went up against a full Danish transport fleet. The Dane's faction trait killed my boarding boats quickly, but I was able to sink the entire fleet by kiting them with my remaining 4 archer ships.