Heavy Ships useless?

[Jeggo]

I haven't played EU4 in awhile, but the newest Dev Diary for HOI4 got me into reading about the Rif War and I was hankering from some Reconquista+.

Anyways about 200 years in now and I've noticed that my heavy ships are absolutely useless. The Ottomans kept wrecking them (24 heavy ships + 34 galleys all latest designs vs about 10 heavy ships, a few light ships, 30 or 40 galleys) always lost. Now I'm fighting Genoa and had 25 heavies and 50 galleys just fight 6 heavies 15 lights, 20 galleys, and like 15 transports. All my heavies died as did 15 of my galleys. I made sure they were all repaired, latest design, and with an admiral (the Genoese admiral only had 1 more fire pip and 1 more manuever). They only lost 4 heavies, 6 lights, 10 galleys, and 1 or 2 transports.

What is causing this?! I thought maybe they had maritime + naval ideas but nope. Neither of them. I have level 3 naval and full quality so my ships should be better?

[tonypa]

The strength of your Navy mostly depends on your national ideas.
Genoa gets for example +20% Morale of navies.
The best Naval power Great Britain gets +20% Morale of navies, +15% Heavy ship combat ability, +1 Naval leader maneuver and +1 Yearly navy tradition.

If you are playing as one of the countries with bonus to naval warfare you will want to pick idea group to support it too (Maritime, Naval). When you have no national ideas to improve navies, it is in general pretty pointless to fight major naval power with your weak ships.

The Naval battles work differently from land battles. If one side has even slightest advantage, their ships will instantly demolish opponent.

One of the mistakes with naval battles is to send in too many ships. Naval battles have engagement width of base 25 and unlike land battles, this does not increase by tech levels. So, unless you invest heavily on Naval ideas and have good Admiral, you will always have engagement width 25. Each small ship uses 1 width so total 25 small ships take part of the battle. Heavy ships occupy 3 width each, so only 8 heavy ships will actually engage in combat. Heavies also take first spots if they are available from larger fleet.

What is worse, the ships you have over the width, will sit there during the battle in the back row, not attacking enemy, but still losing Morale whenever friendly ship is sunk. This means after losing couple ships, your whole huge fleet will be at low morale and can be sunk by poking them with stick.

In general, unless you know for sure your navy is better, there is absolutely no point ever fight enemy fleet. Just wait in the harbour nearby, attack enemy ships if few of them is spread into neighbouring area and run away once larger enemy fleet sails toward you. You can also split your large fleet into smaller fleets (you can split 25 heavies + 50 gallyes into 5 fleets of 8+8+8+25+25). With small fleet you slow down game speed, send in first fleet, as soon they start to take damage you send in second fleet and same time pull off first fleet into safe harbour to be repaired. The result is that enemy ships take constant damage while your ships get back soon. Personally I am really bad at managing this replacement flow so I usually just hide away.

[Amtep]

Naval tradition also affects it a lot. You mostly get that by having light ships on "protect trade" or "privateer" missions. I'm gonna guess Genoa did a lot of that.

[cråck]

as

Originally posted by Jeggo:

The Ottomans kept wrecking them (24 heavy ships + 34 galleys all latest designs vs about 10 heavy ships, a few light ships, 30 or 40 galleys) always lost. Now I'm fighting Genoa and had 25 heavies and 50 galleys just fight 6 heavies 15 lights, 20 galleys, and like 15 transports. All my heavies died as did 15 of my galleys.

as said above you have a space for 25 :
heavy = 3
galley = 1
you must send them in order of battle prepared for engage in a 25
once again as said above just 8 heavys ( 24 ) or 6 heavys and 7 galleys (25 witch is more ideal)
now we will cheese this game a bit :
prepare for engage your ennemy near your port and have your 3 stacks prepared there
-usually the ai will send their transports blocking your ports, they are easy to sink and deal almost no dmg on you so that's cool
-ai will reinforce their stacks witch is our goal here as the newcommers will now have decrased morale
-chack arrival date for the 2nd stack of your ships ( chilling in the port )
-once you sink few ships or are ready to retreat the first stack for repairs send on the 2nd stack
-retreat your first so they come to the port right before the end of the month ( for the morale + repair tick )
- send the second fleet to make them arrival a day after your retreat but never at the 1st of a month ( preventing morale recovery for the ennemy )
-you now have trapped the ennemy fleet with lower morale then the yours and your ships at full strengh vs the domaged ones
-keep on mind swaping your admiral between fleet A, B, C once you ordered the fighting fleet retreat
-rinse and repeat
-use your 3d fleet when / if 1st still needs reprairs, or if you can retreat the 2nd before the month tick and can have the both 1st and 2nd repraied fully in a month tick
( idk if that's clear let say we are engaging november fleet A, puting fleet B at end of november, retreating fleet A for repairs, in December the fleet A is still 92% and fleet B at 95 %, that's mean the both will be full repair next month so lets send fleet C and have both A and B full repair jauary )

with this method you may sink any fleet into deep even when playing albania vs ottomans
it's just a matter of how morale is working badly in the navy battles and also how stupid the ai is ...

ps. galleys sucks, nomather what, do not invest into galleys too much, i will not enter into some specific related nations like sweeden or others needing beat danemark early game, but in general keep in mind galley = 12 canons + 8 durability, heavy 40 canons + 20 durability, so unless they get a 3x boost in the inland seas ( witch is not and will never be the case ), galleys just suck

[Intrspace]

I guess you don't watch Florryworry (the EU4 streamer). He is convinced that galleys are worthless and heavy ships are the way to go if you want to do naval warfare. He has like 26k hours in EU4 :p

The reason why he thinks that is because your fleet takes a morale hit whenever a friendly ship is sunk. Small ships are easier to destroy, so you take more morale damage if you use those.
But if you use only heavy ships, then you can make them engage an enemy fleet and retreat them if necessary, and often that doesn't even result in any friendly casualties and all your ships safely retreat to a port.

[Stormfox]

In early game, smaller scale battles, galleys in their effective terrain are a bit better. Long-term, heavy ships are the only ship that matters. Nations with a galley bonus might use a few galleys for higher DPS in fleets that only operate in inland seas, but the majority of your fleet power will be heavies.

As the others said, your problem is not related to using heavies, but to sea combat being pretty stupid in general. Small imbalances in effective combat strength of the two sides can swing a sea battle extremely widely and lead to some completely ridiculous levels of lopsided results.

[Jeggo]

Thanks everyone! Over 1200 hours and I never knew this hahaha. You think Paradox could fix it, but instead they put in the stupid export minorities thing which only purpose seems to make me not actually send a colonist until I realize it a year later >:(

[Kapika96]

If you're fighting in the Med (or any inland sea), yeah they're pretty useless and you should probably just go all galleys.

Out on the open ocean however heavies absolutely wreck everything else.

[Stormfox]

Originally posted by Kapika96:

If you're fighting in the Med (or any inland sea), yeah they're pretty useless and you should probably just go all galleys.

Out on the open ocean however heavies absolutely wreck everything else.

Even there having only a few Galleys is preferable if you do not have combat bonuses for them. Their morale issue is real, and they need the Battleships to tank for them.

[AN]

Originally posted by Stormfox:

Originally posted by Kapika96:

If you're fighting in the Med (or any inland sea), yeah they're pretty useless and you should probably just go all galleys.

Out on the open ocean however heavies absolutely wreck everything else.

Even there having only a few Galleys is preferable if you do not have combat bonuses for them. Their morale issue is real, and they need the Battleships to tank for them.

You shouldn't mix galleys and heavies