Combat

[tropical_chill242]

Hello, i'm been looking into the game but I'm a bit confused with the combat aspect of it and I was hoping someone could help shed some light on it. Is it strictly naval combat and coastal defence? Are there no armies or militia of some sort? If just naval how does taking over another city or island work?

Thanks for any help.

[Dregora]

Correct. Past games had land combat but it was extremely janky and weird, so they eventually took it out.

I feel that they're still looking for a good combat system, but with 1800 they kind of went back to an older system, minus the land battles.

I believe you have to take out the harbors & costal defenses in order to take over an island. I am not 100% sure about this part though.

But yes, that is all there is to it. Don't buy this for combat, it's extremely minimal.

[Harris]

Yes, the game only has naval combat this time. To take over a colony you need to take out its cannon emplacements and the main warehouse (technically it has a cannon too). Once they're gone you can either claim ownership of the island which destroys everything on that island OR claim the shares of the island which gives you (some) profits from it. Kind of weird in that unlike said Anno 1404 you don't take over existing buildings, infrastracture etc anymore, you either take money or build everything from scratch. To an extent, this removes the point of capturing the island at all.

Why? Because as of open beta, ship of the line costs 250 gold to maintain, and a cannon tower costs 20. The towers are so ridiculously strong that they kill ships like those are made of paper. This makes conquest a very costly endeavour. The combat itself is also tricky a bit, you have to consider the ship speed and the wind direction, firing range and firing angle - not only you have to reach the cannons with your ships, you also have to position them properly (but that time they are dead already, oh well).

So for now my experience with combat of this game is quite frustrating. While I hope it will get better in the final game with later tiers and steam ships like cruisers, better towers will also come into play. I tried amassing an armada of ships to destroy pirates' harbor, like I would do in Anno 1701. This time they have a large Big Betty artillery, which just annihilates anything that dares come close.

Conclusion I can make from that - early and mid game ships are only useful to disrupt trade routes, harrass weak colonies with no established defences and fight other ships. Tools to wage war on ports are not really present in the beta, so will just have to wait until release.

[tropical_chill242]

Interesting. Thank you for the information.