how to use boats???

[Kanjejou]

i mean when i want to board another ship my ship just circle arounc the target when computer ship ram mine then board in...

and i dotn have fire arrow on bow ship is that normal?

[TALIBAN ISIS PWO CSGO PRAYER]

research the fire arrows in ur tech tree

[Han Solo]

There is a boarding button around the unit portrait. It can be gimmicky and annoying.

[Kanjejou]

i used the boarding button but my boat just do nothign at all

[Han Solo]

click on the boat and board. Keep in mind that sometimes the boat just bugs out, or is going too slow, or the wind is against him, or the rowers are incompetent. if you see the dude nodding he has your command and is just struggling to move.

Big ships like medium bunes suck at this. But the segonai bunes are okay.\

Keep in mind that sailing in shogun 2 is god awful and I just cant be bothered to even get a boat. cept to get sado

[Kanjejou]

ok thx i was using experimented boat and only the auto battle allowed me to capture boats

[Starbuck]

actually, naval warfare is pretty easy in Shogun 2

you have to remember 2 points
1) melee fights are won by breaking your opponent's morale, troop numbers/experience comes only second
2) wooden ships are easily inflammable, except when it's raining

most of my fleets are assembled around 3-5 sengoku bune (assault) + 2 archer bune (fire skirmisher)

depending on your enemy's fleet structure, you must decide to go full melee (raining weather) or mix-up (sunny weather) ... essentially, the more archer bune your opponent has, the more likely they are to burn your arse (and rain will protect you)
that's especially important if there are incendiary bomb bune in the opposing fleet (under rain, they become easy picking, but don't board them, fire from afar)

your fleet will be assembled in a line, with your sengoku bune at the front, and your fire archers, one at each side, slightly back

from the beginning, you will immediately rush towards your opponent, while its navy is grouped in a tight formation
priority targets are all ships that can burn you (like archer bune), who incidentally are also weak at melee (few swordsmen)

your own archery bune will either focus fire to burn sengoku bune that are not targeted and free to move (sunny weather), or provide support fire to enemies being boarded (to increase their morale drop).
best way is to fire from an opposite side than the one from which you are boarding

critical detail : the reason to rush out for boarding is not only to pick your targets while they are in a tight formation, but also to carefully activate the "WarCry" skill
"WarCry" provides both a Morale Boost to your troops and a Morale Penalty to your enemies WITHIN A RANGE
by boarding early, your sengoku bune are likely to actiate the skill before your opponent does, thus giving you an edge
in addition, the AI uses it for all ships engaged in melee ... but you should try to keep 1 or 2 unactivated, to replace the one you already did, when its time elapse

the objective is for you to get the edge by striking first, then winning the melee by holding out the longer thanks to WarCry (and additional support from archer bune)


most early fleet (especially pirates) can easily be defeated by this 3-5 sengoku bune + 2 archer bune strike force combo
when fleets gets bigger, just mesh 2 strike force and blockade a choking point or protect a trading port/node

usually, you need 2 strike forces (south and north) of Kyushu to protect the trade nodes in that area
add 1 more for each of the other trade nodes (hokkaido and the oki-shoto islands)
put one in front of your main trading ports (where trade routes gather) to avoid it being burned/blockaded by pirates/enemy fleets
.... and that's it

as long as you don't waste your time and let your rivals build canon bune, you shouldn't have any problems
at some point, the pirates will even propose to be paid in exchange for stopping their attacks
and depending on your expansion, you can also use fleets at the very edges of your domain to filter out enemy fleets (or capture the black ship)

1 fleet to force the enemy to retreat, a second one to force a fight (auto or manual)

[Mile pro Libertate]

Very helpful post. Thanks for the tactical advice. I usually play land battles and avoid sea battles like the plague.

And that's a cool feature with the pirates proposing being paid...I don't ever remember encountering that in any of my campaigns. Over five years on and still there are campaign events to be had!

[Han Solo]

I copied your link into notes. Very helpful for sure. I will hold true that I don't like it, and prefer to auto resolve. Still, I should try to master it some time.

[The_Yogi]

S2TW boarding AI isn't very good, often tries to get perfect boarding position but ended up overshooting and send itself going around and round. Worse, the boarding AI do not know how to do reverse, can only be done in FoTS using manual control.

So, always put your assault boats in a fairly good position alongside the enemy boats when boarding.

[traveller]

I study that art to get fire arrows and build a fleet of bow ships with a medium Buna. I attack one end of the line and try to concentrat three or four bow ships to one of my enemies. Gets them burning and then I move to the next. Bow ships are fast and will row away from anything larger. So I back off until I can use fire arrows again. I typically never melee.