How do you defend trade ships?

[Pirate Beard]

Playing as Prussia and never bothered with trade ships before, doing it now and the AI instantly knows where my ships are and has an entire fleet near by anytime it declares war. Am I supposed to full stack each trade port? Doesn't seem financially feasible. 1709, Venice declared war and destroyed each of my ships in one turn. Just don't understand how this is supposed to work

[Wayz]

Why, with ships silly. Seriously though a few indi's in the fleet helps and if really investing in a trade theatre a dedicated fleet to defend it is not a bad idea. Try and get a pair of trade hubs close to each other if you can and then park a small fleet between them so its zone of control will protect both trade fleets etc.

[Anvos]

As long as you don't go top quality you can usually swing 3-4ish defense ships in a trade fleet and still bee profitable. Then you basically focus on monopolizing a trade theatre's nodes so when their threatened the defense ships can group together that will normally run off most pirates and navies or atleast buy time to evacuate the trade ships and call an actual naval fleet.

[pgeerkens]

Originally posted by Pirate Beard:

Playing as Prussia and never bothered with trade ships before, doing it now and the AI instantly knows where my ships are and has an entire fleet near by anytime it declares war. Am I supposed to full stack each trade port? Doesn't seem financially feasible. 1709, Venice declared war and destroyed each of my ships in one turn. Just don't understand how this is supposed to work

Prussia? Trade fleets?

Your mistake is thinking you, as Prussia, are entitled to trade fleets prior to owning everything from Turin to Istanbul to Stockholm.

Factions not gifted at least one Admiral's Fifth Rate at game start should recognize that as an omen to not waste gold early on a navy. Spend the gold on rapidly advancing your schools instead.

[Empire_TW]

1 5th rate, maybe have a 2nd as a backup. 1 5th rate can take out entire fleets by itself.

[pgeerkens]

Originally posted by Empire_TW:

1 5th rate, maybe have a 2nd as a backup. 1 5th rate can take out entire fleets by itself.

While true - Where is OP going to get a Fifth Rate playing as Prussia without having even taken Venice yet?

[jrregan]

Look at the composition of the other fleets to see what is normally expected. Also, when I get big enough I usually include a 4th Rate in each trade region. I also go for the block-out and will place a single trade ship in the open trading regions. You block out the trade income from everybody. Another "trick" I do is to put a blocking ship or mini-fleet at Gibraltar. This prevents neutral fleet movement for the AI's and thus reduces their income. Dirty but war is war!

[Anvos]

Originally posted by pgeerkens:

Originally posted by Empire_TW:

1 5th rate, maybe have a 2nd as a backup. 1 5th rate can take out entire fleets by itself.

While true - Where is OP going to get a Fifth Rate playing as Prussia without having even taken Venice yet?

If you focus on growth, Prussia/Poland do get ports eventually.

Plus in the hands of the player you can even leverage the weak ships the basic/trade ports can build to capture, useful ships. You basically just find a small fleet and have them swarm the war ship, where you use boarding you know will fail at first to lock down the war ship while a bunch of other ships pound the other side of the war ship with grapeshot.

[Empire_TW]

Originally posted by pgeerkens:

Originally posted by Empire_TW:

1 5th rate, maybe have a 2nd as a backup. 1 5th rate can take out entire fleets by itself.

While true - Where is OP going to get a Fifth Rate playing as Prussia without having even taken Venice yet?

At the start of the game declaring war on denmark is a good way, Denmark has a port that will develop really quickly like 5 turns I think. You might be able to steal their starting one too.