Completely Destroyed In Naval Battle

[Meadow]

I haven't completely grasped every aspect of this game, so maybe somebody can help explain what happened to me. I had a navy of 40 ships that was attacked by an enemy navy of just 6 ships. This resulted in me losing every one of my ships while they didn't lose a single one. I'm pretty fustrated on how this happened. Both navies had an asortment of different types of ships too.

[CTHOMP]

Did it have something to do with your ships hulls being damaged from time at sea? Is your navy funding not 100%. Do you have an admiral/captain on your ships? Does the nation you were fighting have naval advantages?

[Meadow]

My ships were at sea for a while. Plus I don't think I had an admiral. But even with those disadvantages, it still amazes me how 6 ships defeated 40.

[Hooter]

Without having screenshots or more info, my geuss is that either your ships were severally damaged at the start of the battle, or you had your funding set too low. Or both. But unless you can give us some more information you're not going to get a definitive answer.

It's also possible your enemy got reindorced by another navy while you weren't paying attention. One of my pet peeves about naval combat is the way fleets get hidden within a "stack". If you don't pay close attention you might find out the hard way that the enemies main fleet was hiding behind a neutrals fleet.

[Bandit17]

Galley types don't do well in the open sea. Late game heavies can really be powerful with the amount of guns they bring to the fight and if you add an awesome admiral with good national and naval ideas then outdated ships, even a large stack, can get chewed up pretty easily.

[happy]

one good thing to know

you can disengage from naval battles, unlike land combats, you have the opportunity to sail away to the nearest port once battle has started

[Narf]

Originally posted by happy:

one good thing to know

you can disengage from naval battles, unlike land combats, you have the opportunity to sail away to the nearest port once battle has started

You cannot do it immediatly, though. And armies can also disengage battle.

[happy]

armies can? really? mine never ever ever ever were able to , god knows i ve tried though
is that dice-roll or another-factor determined? sometimes you can sometimes you cant?

i ve read a few months ago that they couldn t and that paradox implemented that on purpose, has it been changed on a update?

[Kagemin]

You can retreat from battles since the release version.
In the battle screen there's a white flag that tells you "can't retreat until...". If you wait till the date shown there (or the flag is already gone) you can just select the army and right click to where you want to retreat to (has to be a friendly province I think).
Other than that they just break and flee automatically once the morale hits zero-

[happy]

Originally posted by Kageryuu:

You can retreat from battles since the release version.
In the battle screen there's a white flag that tells you "can't retreat until...". If you wait till the date shown there (or the flag is already gone) you can just select the army and right click to where you want to retreat to (has to be a friendly province I think).
Other than that they just break and flee automatically once the morale hits zero-

thanks, that helps, i guess i never paid attention to that

[Paulogbfs]

how was your/their naval moral? Were your ships damaged before the battle? Did you use outdated war ships? ( While you can get powerful land units investing in military technology, you can get powerful naval units investing in diplomatic technology lv 9) Did your rival invest in naval ideas and you didn't? Did you have and admiral?
There is a lot of variables to take into account