Exactly how good is the Nanban Trade Ship?

[devious goon]

Obviously it's the strongest ship in the game but how many enemy ships can it take on on its own? Should I add some other ships to its stack just to be sure it always wins autoresolve?

[easytarget]

I'm not particularly a fan of naval so I'll admit I don't pay very close attention to this.

But when I play the Otomo I typically build 3 fleets of 3 of these. One for each side of the island and one down the middle.

That's usually sufficient to auto against most if not all of the stacks the AI fields against you.

So while I suppose you could also throw in some bunes and accomplish the same result, I'm just lazy and go with the above because it's so OP the auto's usually don't even result in any damage to the Nanbans so they get to stay in place guarding against incursions for extended periods w/o needing to go back to port for refits.

[BastardSword]

Assuming you're talking about the European Trade Ships and not the Black Ship...

If I use them I always keep two of them together. The AI likes to use lots of bow kobayas with fire arrows, and they can easily set even the Euro ship on fire quite early on in a battle. If you have only one ship then it will have to repair itself and be unable to fire at the enemy. If you have a second ship, the first ship can repair itself while the second ship fires at the enemy to finish them off.

Auto-resolving with ships can be risky because the game will seek to punish you no matter what. Even if you have a vastly more powerful navy than the enemy, if you auto-resolve a naval battle, your ships will always take quite a bit of damage and might even get sunk. Unlike armies that naturally replenish on home turf, ships have to go into port to get expensive repairs. And obviously it sucks losing an expensive ship like the Euro trade ship. But with all that said, naval battles are insanely tedious and nobody has time to play them all out.

I would say that medium bunes are usually the best solution for auto-resolving, they aren't really good for manual battles but they always seem to do the best in auto-resolving.

One last thing to note is that the European trade ships have a nasty bug where if you give them a direct fire order against an enemy ships, they will stop firing their guns completely for the entire battle. Instead of clicking on the enemy ship, just move the Euro ship around so its sides are facing the enemy, and its cannons will fire automatically.

[markeason]

Be aware that there is a bug that strikes from time to time with the Nanban Trade ship in that, if you stack other vessel types with it, the stack can lock up on the campaign map and you will be unable to move it until you delete either the nanban trade ship or all the other vessels stacked with it. Additional nanban trade ships probably would not present a problem, but anything else may do so.

If you want other ships with it, I tend to have a few bow kobayas, then I just keep them within reinforcing distance and don't merge the fleets.

[YaFilthy]

depends on what difficulty your playing on if your on normal 3 in a stack would probably win you the waters but on legendary like bastard said the game punishes you for using auto resolve... so the ai will have like 5 fleets and if your ships get dmg they will start sinking those nauban fast. i usually run 2-3 in a fleet and stack some cheap arrow ships... on otomo i only keep the 2 trade nodes on the westen and southen waters since the distance is the shortest if i get ganked on water. Anyway i recommend sending a stack of ashigarus onto the opposite side before pushing kyoto so you can blow up all the cities and docks... helps from getting ganked by 5 different navys just run the cost line probably southern since the northern isnt as bad about attacking you and usally get taking by 2 takeda... they can be a problem sometimes tho they seeem to notice power and will offer trade, ally, or they also have marriage available sometime..

[MFD Suraj]

Those cannons work well only in manual.
The namban is not that strong as ones is especting.
If you look for fleet for autoresolve , use cheper ships... mix cobayas / medium bune mostly.

[easytarget]

They're more than strong enough, I'm literally playing an Otomo campaign right now doing exactly what I stated above.

[devious goon]

Originally posted by MFD Suraj:

Those cannons work well only in manual.
The namban is not that strong as ones is especting.
If you look for fleet for autoresolve , use cheper ships... mix cobayas / medium bune mostly.

Thx for the advice on manual lol, utterly crushed an enemy fleet of 9 ships with ease

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3311852861

[devious goon]

Btw since we're already on the subject of ships how many do I need to transport a full stack of units from one place to the other? Is just 1 of any kind of ship enough?

[Tenshi]

yes

[markeason]

Originally posted by devious goon:

Btw since we're already on the subject of ships how many do I need to transport a full stack of units from one place to the other? Is just 1 of any kind of ship enough?

Yes. The idea is that the troops are on their own transport vessels with no offensive/defensive capability, but they must have at least one vessel to escort them.

So you are not really putting the whole army on one bow kobaya, but one bow kobaya* is enough to escort them :)

*Btw, I would only do this if they can reach their destination in a single move. Losing an army at sea because you put it with a single bow kobaya is only something the AI should be doing.

[easytarget]

Probably the single most satisfying thing I do with navies is sinking AI armies.

[MFD Suraj]

Basicall you could even troop everything and change your location definetively , i meen , the game let you do it.

[easytarget]

My guess is anyone who has played the game extensively has at some point decamped entirely from their starting position and taken up residence somewhere else.

[devious goon]

Originally posted by easytarget:

My guess is anyone who has played the game extensively has at some point decamped entirely from their starting position and taken up residence somewhere else.

This sounds really interesting I had no idea you can do that, tell me more

[easytarget]

Well, I mean it's not really all that complicated. Take as an example one I did a couple campaigns ago. No matter what I tried I found myself as the Hattori getting hit from 2 sides creating a 2 front war.

One of the usual suspects was the Ikko Ikki. They simply never stopped kamikazing at me from one side. And the Takeda in this campaign decided to expand west because the usual trouble they have with either Hojo or Uesugi got resolved quickly. And they were sending ranked up stacks with 3 generals (and we're not talking ash here either).

Net: I got tired of all the stalemate attrition and put my best units into one stack and sailed off to invade the Shimazu. I could have just as easily gone east and worked over the Date. It really mostly depends on what looks vulnerable.

Approximately 30 years later I returned and recaptured my home province having marched back up the island. ;)