How to navy in ROTS?

[Micharlus]

Recently I've came back to Shogun 2 and started a ROTS campaign. It's been quite a ride, after ally betrayal and defending my homeland for 20 or so turns afterwards I got a foothold and managed to start pushing forward. With it came the interest in navy and controlling the trade nodes. And here's the problem. With all ships except firebombs looking the same, just of varying size if anything, I have no idea how to even go about forming a strategy. With land armies I can come up with some ideas of army compositions but here it feels like nothing matters, all is the same. Just depends on how many bows there are in total.

So my there's my question. What are the strengths and weaknesses of of various ship sizes? What are the differences between attendant, samurai and pirate variants? The accuracy and melee statistics seem to be the same across the board. Just that large ships have twice the amount of boarding crew. Even trade ship seems to be similar to others. I guess hull strength is one weakness but I never managed to lose any of my ships due to hull damage. Just that the crew was mostly wiped out and it routed. So what are the differences really? I thought going medium would be the most cost-effective for number of archers to upkeep cost but I started to question it after in one battle my 3-4 mediums were unable to kill 1 large ship while enemy 2 larges, 1 medium and 2 smalls killed off all of my ships. Sure I was on the losing side in numbers but I should have taken at least 1 ship down, no?

On one post I found a user named Iceira briefly called ROTS naval battles a melee ships fight. Is that true? I always struggle to even get my ships to board with the wonky pathfinding existing there so I usually just try to shoot enemy ships down altogether. Should I try to go for it more? And how to do it effectively? And are there specific ships that are better/more cost-efficient at it?

I know there are few people enjoying ROTS and just as few naval battle enjoyers and their cross-section being extremely small but I hope if that 1 guy who likes both is around you could give me some advice and information on ship differences and strategies, cheers. :)

[markeason]

My advice regarding naval in RotS is, regrettably, that it is probably best avoided. I like the naval in the base sengoku Jidai game, and I like the RotS campaign game but, for the reasons you describe, it is best ignored in the gempei game.

Trade nodes are not necessary for a decent economy in RotS. Focus on buildings that give you food and by the late game your provinces will be growing their town wealth by about 100 koku per turn.

If you do want to do navy, you are probably best researching fire arrows then recruiting 3 - 5 of the cheapest boats (small attendant IIRC) in each fleet. Be sure you are attacking and attack one end of the enemy line. Once the enemy fleet has scattered to the 4 corners of the map, take them down like eating the elephant - one bite boat at a time.

[easytarget]

I think you're looking for an answer from a very very small group of players.

ROTS was already the least played, when you couple that with most who have extensively played it like me don't play out naval and just auto-resolve and you've got yourself a vanishingly small group. ;)

Will be interesting to see if one of these rare players shows up to answer.

[Kyuzo]

doing a coop ROTS campaign currently my prefered option are around 3 large samurai ships and the rest medium samurai ships and going in to board the enemy with some ships while the rest use whistling shot and pepper the enemy while the boarding ship uses warcry. one full stack of this has managed to defeat any enemy formation up to now.

In general boarding is the way to go and samurai are the best due to higher moral and their ability whistling shot medium ships are good since i rarely encounter large ships but getting up to 3 large ones helps out if you encounter them.
the ai loves attendant ships but they have serious morale issues though they only have like 1 or 2 morale less they rout much faster in practice.
Pirates are the worst ships due to higher costs no abbilities and even worse moral than attendant ships.
I havent bothered researching fire arrows til now but naval battles are over fast anyway and having the boarded ships extra for new fleets or sinking them can help.

ROTS naval battles get repetetive quick due to lack of variety compared to base game and FOTS but i still enjoy them kinda though they are the worst from all shogun campaigns.Auto resolve is far less efficent and be ready to lose ships often and enemy fleets surviving with few loses to come back the next few turns.
Also a note i havent gotten fire bomb ships yet so i cant coment on them but propably best as support against already engaged enemy ships.

One more thing sligthly unrelated but the ai loves to send atleast one ship somewhere on the edge of the map after the fighting begins so keep your eyes open should the battle not end

Also i have no proof for this but i get the feeling that samurai also fight better than the other ship types but that might just be my imagination since i cant back it up

[markeason]

So, I just took a nose around inside the files.

I think your friend is in error, the naval combat in RotS is principally ranged fire. Boarding is inadvisable (unless the boat is already routing) as the majority of men on the boats are armed with missile weapons.

Ignoring the fire bomb boats (because they have a short range and can be shot down before they cause any harm), there are essentially 3 vessels - Light, Medium and Heavy and 2 classes of each, attendant and samurai.

Manoeuvrability
In general, the lighter the vessel, the faster it accelerates, the higher its top speed and the more quickly it comes to a halt.

Crew
Light: 40 archers, 10 melee
Medium: 60 archers, 10 melee
Heavy: 80 archers, 20 melee

Staring combat stats
Archers
Attendant: Accuracy 10%
Samurai: 50%
Fire bomb: 30%

Range
Archers: 180
Fire bomb: 60

[Actually I notice that the genpei firebomb is a samurai class medium vessel - unlike its light counterpart in the sengoku jidai, so it may be worth using)

Melee
Attendant: Katana seaman: Attack 10 Defence 5
Attendant: Archer: Attack 8 Defence 5
Samurai: Katana seaman: Attack 12 Defence 7
Samurai: Archer: Attack 10 Defence 7
Samurai: Fire bomb: Attack 10 Defence 7

Morale
The larger the boat, the higher the morale. The better the quality (samurai > attendant) the higher the morale. A light samurai boat has higher morale than a heavy attendant boat.

[Note: There appear to be some errors in the file with the values for:
Risk of catching fire: Heavy > Light > Medium
Prow Panels above water hits: Heavy and Medium 100, Light 170
Stern Panels above water hits: Heavy 100, Medium 70, Light 170

I don't know what, if any, impact these values have on the combat mechanics and they may be nothing more than legacy values from other Total War games.]

Abilities
Heavy Ship: Warcry, Flaming arrows. (Samurai also has Whistling arrows and Rally)
Medium Ship: Warcry, Flaming arrows, Battle speed. (Samurai also has Whistling arrows)
Light Ship: Flaming arrows, Battle speed. (Samurai also has Whistling arrows)

It looks like you could do something with whistling arrows and the warcry abilities to scare off the lowest morale boats but, since even a raw recruit light attendant has a starting morale of something like 12, it will still require a lot of kills inflicted before they go.

Pirates
It seems the pirates can only have light or medium ships. They are in all respects equivalent to the corresponding Attendant vessel, except . . .

In what appears to be another error in the file, the pirates aboard the light pirate ship have the same morale as the attendant light ship. The pirates aboard the medium pirate ship have a lower morale than the attendant medium ship (also lower than the morale of pirates on the light pirate ship).

Trade Ships
I assume that the crew are equivalent to the attendant crew with slightly lower morale. There are 30 archers and 10 katana seamen. The boats are a little more flammable as would be expected of a sailing vessel.


Make of that lot what you will. It was a quick skim read of the files so there may be minor errors.

My advice remains to steer clear of the naval side of the campaign for RotS.

[Sn3z]

The samurai ships have more utility, than attendants, they all have whistling arrows , the large ship also has rally ability for countering enemy whistling arrows, so what your actually paying slightly extra for on samurai ships is ability's + bit more improved stats. You can use the classes to navigate the rosters, like you can skip light ships and go straight for mediums adding a few large ship later to those stacks, or you can use lights(samurai moreso) then jump to adding more large ships in those stacks to compensate. etc...

The purpose of class of ships as well is to protect the one above it so you ideally draw fire onto light keeping mediums safe and so on... Thats how to naval on a budget and keep stacks relatively low upkeep aswell. Not that income is a actual problem with rots.. the naval strat is also applicable to fots.

[markeason]

Apologies, I remembered I was working on a mod for this a couple of years back but parked it when I lost interest.

CA created categories for the RotS naval vessels that included:

Genpei_Attendant
Genpei_Samurai
Genpei_Firebomb
Genpei_Pirate

For each category, crew were assigned (archers/Firebombs ranged with katana or Spear melee). These crewmen were present in the numbers and with the stats given in my prior post.

This gave a significant differentiation between the samurai and attendant vessels in terms of unit stats (although the 10% vs 50% accuracy seems horribly over-powered in favour of the samurai).

Anyhow, whether by accident or design, CA instead assigned default categories from the shogun 2 base game to the RotS vessels:

Light_Ship_Bow
Medium_Ship_Bow
Heavy_Ship_Bow
Light_Ship_Firebomb

The crew for each category is:
Light_Ship_Bow: Archer: Accuracy 30% Melee Attack 4 Melee Defence 1
Light_Ship_Bow: Spear Seaman: Melee Attack 12 Melee Defence 2

Medium_Ship_Bow: Archer: Accuracy 30% Melee Attack 4 Melee Defence 1
Medium_Ship_Bow: Katana Seaman: Melee Attack 12 Melee Defence 2

Heavy_Ship_Bow: Archer: Accuracy 30% Melee Attack 4 Melee Defence 1
Heavy_Ship_Bow: Katana Seaman: Melee Attack 12 Melee Defence 2

Light_Ship_Firebomb: Melee Attack 4 Melee Defence 1
Light_Ship_Firebomb: Spear Seaman: Melee Attack 12 Melee Defence 2

So, all the bow ships (whether Attendant or Samurai; Light, Medium or Heavy) have the same stats (except morale and different abilities) - which is a bit rubbish.

Spear seamen and katana seamen have identical combat stats - which is very rubbish.

The overwhelming difference between melee attack and melee defence stats mean that boarding and melee is probably the way to go, which is also a bit rubbish since most of the men are bow armed and have rubbish melee stats, but that is apparently superceded by the combat stats of the few melee troops on board.

[Tenshi]

Why are people writing out all these irrelevant details just to say nothing lol. Anyway yeah, navies suck. You might as well go for the most expensive ships if you can afford them and not make any ships if you can't afford them. All the ships have fire arrows and they are all really easy to burn down, so as soon as the combat starts, everyone fires all the fire arrows and a whichever ships are hit the most instantly die. After that, just board with your big ships. The lack of deck protection means exchanging fire leads to lots of casualties, too, and the maneuverability of even the big ships means boarding is easy. I also like using 1 firebomb ship in each of my fleet, but the battles are so quick they usually can't have much impact.

[Micharlus]

Wow, that's a bunch of useful answers. I didn't expect that. Thanks guys!

Originally posted by markeason:

So, all the bow ships (whether Attendant or Samurai; Light, Medium or Heavy) have the same stats (except morale and different abilities) - which is a bit rubbish.

Spear seamen and katana seamen have identical combat stats - which is very rubbish.

Oh, so they weren't supposed to be the same? Good to know. Thanks a lot for that answer, that cleared a lot of confusion for me. Since I always keep a general on board I don't have trouble with morale, unless the battle is really going awry at which point I have too much of a skill issue to rout anything. Guess I'll stick to the attendants. :D

Originally posted by Sn3z:

The purpose of class of ships as well is to protect the one above it so you ideally draw fire onto light keeping mediums safe and so on... Thats how to naval on a budget and keep stacks relatively low upkeep aswell. Not that income is a actual problem with rots.. the naval strat is also applicable to fots.

Oh, so it's that way around? That's one of the things I never understood. I guess that's a thing IRL but does it actually work like that in this simplified game? Since for most purposes the amount of your ship's "health" is related to number of archers, isn't routing the only thing that differs larger from smaller vessels in same resource battle?

Originally posted by Kyuzo:

doing a coop ROTS campaign currently my prefered option are around 3 large samurai ships and the rest medium samurai ships and going in to board the enemy with some ships while the rest use whistling shot and pepper the enemy while the boarding ship uses warcry. one full stack of this has managed to defeat any enemy formation up to now.

Previously I was trying to save even more by just spamming light ships but after encountering some full medium and large stacks I see quantity doesn't work... Especially since you can field only 10 ships at any give time. Yeah, guess I'll go up to higher tier too.

Originally posted by Tenshi:

I also like using 1 firebomb ship in each of my fleet, but the battles are so quick they usually can't have much impact.

Honestly, having that one firebomb in my fleet is the only thing that makes these battle interesting. Trying to get it to throw shots with its stupidly low, practically melee range. Though imo that's still more fun melee than boarding. xD

[Tenshi]

Oh yeah, firebomb ships are super fun to use.

[Micharlus]

I'm starting to feel AI gets cheats for fire proc chance on hard difficulty. I'm burning much more often they the enemy. And I almost always outnumber enemy. And when it's full stacks battle, I'm burning all the time while the enemy burns almost only after I focus it with 5 or more ships. I'm tempted to start playing in rain...

[Smoothhoof]

Originally posted by Micharlus:

I'm starting to feel AI gets cheats for fire proc chance on hard difficulty. I'm burning much more often they the enemy. And I almost always outnumber enemy. And when it's full stacks battle, I'm burning all the time while the enemy burns almost only after I focus it with 5 or more ships. I'm tempted to start playing in rain...

Don't do that. There is a bug where AI navies can still use fire arrows in the rain but you can't. Never fight in the rain if you can help it.

[Smoothhoof]

ROTS naval battles are always a mad barbeque. I would go for a mix of light samurai and medium attendant ships, not sure why, it seemed it work and was sort of cost effective. I would have one large ship in a fleet as a flagship, just for vanity!

It's possible to bait the AI into using up its fire arrows with a couple of light ships, then close in with the rest while he is on cool-down and hopefully burn two or three of his. Then I would just go for boarding rather than wait out my fire arrow cool-down. I lost a lot of ships but I beat the game on legendary with both pairs of blue and red factions.

[Micharlus]

Originally posted by Smoothhoof:

Don't do that. There is a bug where AI navies can still use fire arrows in the rain but you can't. Never fight in the rain if you can help it.

Ugh, that sucks. I thought I was just seeing things but after losing a battle specifically because enemy attacked in rain and used fire arrows to screw me up, I'm pissed. Is there a mod that fixes it perhaps?

Originally posted by Smoothhoof:

It's possible to bait the AI into using up its fire arrows with a couple of light ships, then close in with the rest while he is on cool-down and hopefully burn two or three of his. Then I would just go for boarding rather than wait out my fire arrow cool-down. I lost a lot of ships but I beat the game on legendary with both pairs of blue and red factions.

I don't understand, why does everyone go for boarding? Whenever I try to board anything that's not a light enemy auto-uses their ability and it seems to be an even fight. Even my superior stats from rank 9 crews don't help much.

[markeason]

Originally posted by Micharlus:

Ugh, that sucks. I thought I was just seeing things but after losing a battle specifically because enemy attacked in rain and used fire arrows to screw me up, I'm pissed. Is there a mod that fixes it perhaps?

I don't understand, why does everyone go for boarding? Whenever I try to board anything that's not a light enemy auto-uses their ability and it seems to be an even fight. Even my superior stats from rank 9 crews don't help much.

I don't think that there is a fix for the fire arrows in the rain bug - but I may be wrong.

The most important thing with naval battles is to be the one attacking. That way you get to choose the weather.

If you are attacked, always accept the battle. If the weather is bad (rain or fog) then deploy your units at the edge of the map, start the battle and withdraw. The enemy will chase you down for a second battle, but the chances are you will have better weather second time around. (Sadly the game classifies such a battle as a decisive defeat even though you incur no damage in what is a tactical withdrawal).

You are quite right that ranged fire is the way to go. Boarding is not an effective way to minimise your losses. The only time to board is when the enemy vessel is routing, so you get to capture the boat without a fight.

No matter what you are up against, 3 - 4 Light attendant vessels, with fire arrows, should be enough to deal with it.

If you are attacking, come at the enemy flank with your vessels in line abreast. Withdraw from the enemy as they break formation and then hoover them up around the edges of the map. If you have a general on one of your boats, have him behind the 3 Light boats. Generals can easily pick up 25 experience points towards his next rank in a single turn by taking part in naval battles.

If you are defending then you need to consider the following.

> The AI is dumb
> I mean really dumb
> The AI will try to target your admiral, so keep your forces between them and your admiral. (I have had a line of 4 or 5 trade ships bow to stern, while my admiral was on my only bow kobaya, he led the enemy fleet of 10 medium bunes and bow kobayas round and round the line of trade ships which they didn't once think to attack, until they were all eliminated by the trade ship fire).
> Did I say that the AI was dumb?
> The AI is useless at maintaining its formation. Get them to turn, have them pass by an island, boats run aground the formation gets messed up and they come after you piecemeal. That is the time to start taking them out.
> Different vessels move at different speeds, light is faster than medium is faster than heavy. Use this to stretch out the enemy and deal with the different sized boats rather than trying to engage the whole fleet.
> Because the bigger boats are slower, it pays to only use light boats. If your admiral is on a heavier boat you lose your manoeuvrability because the light boats have to protect your admiral which cannot keep up with them and cannot get away from the enemy light boats.
> The AI will almost always try to get broadside to you to fire its arrows. While it is doing this, keep rowing away from them and firing out the back of your boats when your fire arrows are charged. They do not enjoy this. Be aware that towards the end of the battle the AI will change its tactics and try coming direct at you with battle speed so be ready to react and activate your battle speed to maintain the distance.

Once mastered, the naval battles are a very easy, fast way to get experience for generals. They are also a great form of economic warfare against the AI, since 3 of the cheapest boats can take down 10 of the more expensive ones without loss, just a few koku to patch them up. And your boats will be at about level 7 after 2 or 3 battles.

The trouble is the battles have to be fought manually to achieve this and they soon get repetitive.

Very repetitive.

[Micharlus]

Originally posted by markeason:

If you are attacked, always accept the battle. If the weather is bad (rain or fog) then deploy your units at the edge of the map, start the battle and withdraw. The enemy will chase you down for a second battle, but the chances are you will have better weather second time around. (Sadly the game classifies such a battle as a decisive defeat even though you incur no damage in what is a tactical withdrawal).

Ooh, that's smart. Never thought of that. Thanks.

Originally posted by markeason:

> The AI will try to target your admiral, so keep your forces between them and your admiral. (I have had a line of 4 or 5 trade ships bow to stern, while my admiral was on my only bow kobaya, he led the enemy fleet of 10 medium bunes and bow kobayas round and round the line of trade ships which they didn't once think to attack, until they were all eliminated by the trade ship fire).

I don't know if there was some patch or am I just doing it wrong but from time to time, I think if I get too close, the AI switches targets. Generally admiral, while has some initial priority, quite easily gets overridden by some other ships. Then it becomes difficult to reaggro on it.

Originally posted by markeason:

> The AI is useless at maintaining its formation. Get them to turn, have them pass by an island, boats run aground the formation gets messed up and they come after you piecemeal. That is the time to start taking them out.

Oh right, I noticed once it gets wacky on islands but as I usually fight on the open water it's hard to utilise this.

Originally posted by markeason:

> Different vessels move at different speeds, light is faster than medium is faster than heavy. Use this to stretch out the enemy and deal with the different sized boats rather than trying to engage the whole fleet.

My issue with this is that since I need to circle around the map, slower large boats can cut corners and so I couldn't really see distance between ship classes increasing significantly.

Originally posted by markeason:

> The AI will almost always try to get broadside to you to fire its arrows. While it is doing this, keep rowing away from them and firing out the back of your boats when your fire arrows are charged. They do not enjoy this. Be aware that towards the end of the battle the AI will change its tactics and try coming direct at you with battle speed so be ready to react and activate your battle speed to maintain the distance.

I don't know, I always experience enemy AI just having a slightly lower range than me forcing the attack but I need to right-click for this which changes direction of ship and makes enemy catch up with me. Just swimming away and shooting while enemy helplessly follows never seems to work.


By the way, I've just learned that while WE are limited to fielding only 10 ships at any given time, AI is allowed to have at least 11 on the field and I bet if it was an even bigger battle, they could run around with 20 or something stupid like that. Ugh. Since at this stage 1/4th of enemy navies are full stacks and they're often sailing in groups I guess I'm forced to auto-solve... Well, at least I don't have to deal with the monotony of battling anymore. Just gotta keep printing more ships than the enemy is able to. And since I don't fight myself anyway then I started making stacks of light ships for cheaper upkeep(not that it matters at this stage) and only keeping heavier ships in my main stacks that have generals on them. And yeah, the xp farm is great, my favourite way to level up commissioners. Just pop them on a boat anytime I need a new one levelled. :D