Naval Tactics in Total War

[mercurydawn]

I've read books on navy tactics, modern and ancient, even translated Vegetius section on the Navy. I am completely worthless in any TW game, whatever the title, in sea battles. Only eon a few in Rome, or was it Attila, using siege artillery to attack from afar while ramming.

That isn't a stratagem easily transferable to ToB. All I know is, if I am a non-viking faction, stay away from casually cruising by a off map Viking raider's captured settlement, cause they will go after you, paddle out to sea, and in my case, rape all your men and sink your fleet to the bottom of the sea. I liked the formations offered, but nothing I do seems to work. I can capture a handful of ships, but the rest of my fleet in turn is captured, leading to a very bad situation.

So if I can't auto resolve it with a likely win, I'm avoiding them.

How on earth do you do it? Win at sea?

[Rocketronica]

In attila, I usually field a whole stack of ramming units so I can win against transport ships. They are also very cheap to buy and maintain (Very, very tedious micro though).
I think it is better that we don't have seperate navies now, since transports play better

[Tango]

I too stay away from naval battles for this title. Naval battles are cludgie at best. The best naval engagements by far would have to be the Empire title and to some extent Shogun 2. I don't think Thrones of Britannia does naval battles very well, so personally I dont have high expectations for this game mechanic.

[PrivateXTC]

It's all about who does best at kiting. Just circle around ships firing arrows. Boarding is the same as land battles, use the rock-paper-scissor mechanic to work out who will win on what boat.

[Tango]

Good advice XTC, I will try that.

[hiGh]

Originally posted by mercurydawn:

I've read books on navy tactics, modern and ancient, even translated Vegetius section on the Navy. I am completely worthless in any TW game, whatever the title, in sea battles. Only eon a few in Rome, or was it Attila, using siege artillery to attack from afar while ramming.

That isn't a stratagem easily transferable to ToB. All I know is, if I am a non-viking faction, stay away from casually cruising by a off map Viking raider's captured settlement, cause they will go after you, paddle out to sea, and in my case, ♥♥♥♥ all your men and sink your fleet to the bottom of the sea. I liked the formations offered, but nothing I do seems to work. I can capture a handful of ships, but the rest of my fleet in turn is captured, leading to a very bad situation.

So if I can't auto resolve it with a likely win, I'm avoiding them.

How on earth do you do it? Win at sea?

Inlanders don't win sea battles against the Vikings. By avoiding them at sea, you are doing what every nation in Britain did when the Vikings invaded.

I have no played naval battles yet and I don't know if you can ram in this game, but there is a certain ancient tactic that involves hitting the enemy navy in a diagonal so that your 2nd rank of ships can ram into the ships responding to your first 1st rank but I have a felling it won't work like that in ToB.

[mercurydawn]

Yeah, that's used by many militaries hIGh, is actually exactly how the Nazis invaded France.


And I doubt it will work on this game. Units seem to go stupid when near a opponent, and they are just magnetic. I never seem to pull off a naval maneuver on total war games.

I'm suspecting there is a hidden AI command that when two units are close and one is closing in proximity, in order to connect and fight, much less board, the prey ship fully cooperates with the predator ship so as to allow the two ships to pull together and duke it out. I honestly don't know if ships of this era had loads of ropes and grappling hooks so as to pull such a connection off, and wouldn't the ropes be cut fast in real life even if they did by the ship trying to tug loose?

Seems a very hard thing to program for what is essentially a land army in a land game out at sea.

And no, Ive seen no ram ships. The concept may very well of existed then in literature and legend amongst ship builders. Just never heard of one in this time period in this part of the world.

However, I know it was either the Anglo Saxon or more likely the Normans who had a Earl on the east coast of England who maintained a fleet of longships to fend off viking landings. He didn't bother building a big castle (hence why I think Norman, the castle builders), he maintained his high status through naval operations. But that was a documentary I saw 10-15 years ago, quite fuzzy.

[wm.j.olson]

There are two types of naval formations--land units loaded on transports, the technical term for which is 'sitting ducks' if they encounter the second type of fleet--purpose built naval units constructed at ports similarly to land units. Rule One: Don't go into a battle with transports against seafaring units. Rule Two: If you have seafaring units within striking distance of an enemy's transports, unprotected, you can auto resolve to win even against long odds if calculated as simply the raw number of ships/men engaged. In most cases, the AI 'knows' this and will avoid you, or on the reverse, will hunt you down.

In some games--Rome II, Attila, and their variants--some ppowers have the ability to build various types of ships: bow/missile ships, spear/axe units of increasing power; fire ships; catapults; and ships with rams. A combat fleet should have a mix for attacking land targets--cities--and other fleets--especially of the sitting duck variety--and to engage enemy naval forces.

Catapults are very effective at ranged fire but are toast if the enemy rams or boards. You need to put these behind your other ship types to engage the enemy while the catapults do what they're best at. Out of a fleet of 20 units, I usually have 6-8 catapults, two missile units, 2-3 rams(if available), and the rest as much heavy infantry as research and your country permits.

In Britannia, unless you have overwhelming force at sea as a non-Viking power, you will lose. Watch what happens to AI players that try this. Rule Three: don't go to sea against the Viikings.

Rule Four, of course, is don't fight a land war in Asia, at least until Three Kingdoms comes out or you have Shogun.

[wm.j.olson]

P.S. Building various ship types generally is a function of the country selected plus the appropriate research.

[gwennblei]

It seems kind of silly to me to just have a rule "viking wins at sea", it would have been better to allow non viking factions to build navies and train sailors. If I'm not mistaking that's precisely what Alfred the great did. Also wind usage would have helped a lot making the battles more interesting.

[mercurydawn]

Did they know how to use the wind in battle in this era? I thought the windward and leeward concerns of naval warfare mostly came in the gunpowder era. Holding the weather gauge would be difficult to program I presume. If the do a Empires era Saga, great idea. (No inherent reason they won't do Sagas based off Empires/Napoleon or 3K coding, just have to advance it a bit).

[欣怡 (Nathalie)]

Originally posted by gwennblei:

It seems kind of silly to me to just have a rule "viking wins at sea", it would have been better to allow non viking factions to build navies and train sailors. If I'm not mistaking that's precisely what Alfred the great did. Also wind usage would have helped a lot making the battles more interesting.

He did but quickly realised it was a worthless very exspensive endeavour becasue the vikings were far superior on the oceans.

I would say that you'd struggle to use any real world tactics in a TW game. Love these games but they bare little resembelance to actual warfare.

[Centur1on01]

The difficulty of Total War is set high for a video game

[acur1231]

Would love it if Alfred got his own navy, maybe one naval dockyard that can only be found in West Seaxe. It builds light, fast ships covered with arrows. The sailors will carry swords and clubs. The idea is that they sail around the viking longboats, dominating them with arrow fire, before boarding the weakened ship and finishing off any remaining vikings.

No quarter given.

[gwennblei]

Originally posted by OBESE MONKEYY:

Originally posted by gwennblei:

It seems kind of silly to me to just have a rule "viking wins at sea", it would have been better to allow non viking factions to build navies and train sailors. If I'm not mistaking that's precisely what Alfred the great did. Also wind usage would have helped a lot making the battles more interesting.

He did but quickly realised it was a worthless very exspensive endeavour becasue the vikings were far superior on the oceans.

Actually that's not true ^^ The one time where his ships got in trouble was because they got stuck in shallow waters in a river, but saxons seem to have actually won most naval battles, (actually even before alfred the great, the vikings were defeated in 857 in a naval battle against the saxons) possibly because they built higher ships more fitted for combat. I actually made a bit of research since yesterday and what I could gather seems to be that longboats were excellents for their mobility and versatility, making them excellent to launch raids and move troops arround, but were not actually great for naval combat. Basically awesome transport ships but too low for naval battle as they were exposed to ranged weapons and made bording from them more difficult.

Originally posted by mercurydawn:

Did they know how to use the wind in battle in this era?

I have no evidence for this era, but they definitely did in earlier period. Cesar talked about the dificulty to face ships in Gauls from the tribe of the Veneti, which were powered by sails only, the Veneti had Breton allies, which were most likely using the same kind of ships. But the technology could have been lost over time, i'll try to look more into it :)

[mercurydawn]

Oh, technology isn't a issue, they had it. It is the knowledge base.

Example, most everyone had the technology for Swiss pikes, just very few had the knowledge base for it, and even fewer sought that path. Big pointy stick isn't hard to achieve. But actual tactics and strategies, effective against well trained and quite expensive and numerous enemy, that's different.