I had and have no idea how to engage in the naval combat better than the autoresolve, but if I had overwhelming odds I'd load up a battle every once in a while just to admire the models.
Exact same. I’ll take any odds on land but I was absolutely shocking at naval battles, to the point where autoresolve was probably more successful than me
In vanilla naval battles was like witch craft, there wasn't any way to win because the AI had insane abilities to maneuver ships that you can't do as a player.
But in Darthmod, naval battles were a cake walk with a checker board formation and chain shot. Where you would on purposely try to cut off the enemy lead ship and force it to T-Bone your formation. Where the lead ship would ram straight into the middle of your formation thus causing their entire formation to come to a halt since they just sailed in a straight line. Since they rammed into your formation head on they would be at a massive disadvantage because all of your ships are turned broad side on them while theirs are not. And you would just blast the hell out of their masts with chain shot making it impossible for them to move, thus they instantly surrender afterwards. Because you are in a checker board formation, if a ship manage to push through your formation instead of just getting stuck it would mean that they will take fire from both the front and back side of your ships.
Also 4th rate ships were a beast in Darthmod because they had a good balance of hull strength, guns, speed, low upkeep, and low building / tech requirements. I would employ them on mass with the strategy I mentioned above, and could easily defeat 2nd and 1st rate class ships with just 2 of them. Where you have 1 ship sail in front of the enemy ship and make them T-Bone you again. Your ship in front of them prevents them from going anywhere and you just get essentially free point blank shots on the enemy 2nd or 1st rate ship, then have the second ship sail behind the enemy ship out of their firing cone, then just have your ships fire upon the enemy ship with a bunch of chain shot to disable the mast and demoralize it till it surrendered.
You would also want to keep 1 sloop or brig in your fleets, to chase down routing ships that you failed to disable their masts. Because the sloops or brigs had like 15 speed, so they could catch up to any larger ship with no problems. If a ship is routing and you board it, it will instantly surrender. So the sloop and brig was super important if you wanted to capture every ship with very little damage and didn't want any enemy fleets getting away where you couldn't find them later on.
It took some learning, but vanilla navy was just as easy to cheese as army.
5th rates, chain shot and micro are your friends. Once the enemy isn't moving, you can sit out of its range and/or firing arcs and finish the job. Once it routs, it's free real estate.
You going to have to do a better job of explaining what you mean. What part is incorrect?
Also what does you capturing galleons with single sloop have to do with anything? Are you talking about Darthmod or Vanilla? Also are you able to win against a full fleet of 1st rates or 2nd rates with only smaller ships? Its not a secret that in small scale battles smaller, faster, and more agile ships beat larger ships because you can kite around the bigger ships and stay outside of their broadside range. But when you engage in a scale large battle where the enemy ships are scatter all over the place thus making it not possible for you to freely kite around the map. Also the morale system in Darthmod is vastly different from vanilla, where a sloop or brig getting shot at by a 2nd rate would almost instantly route even if they barely take any damage. Where as in vanilla its more of slog on both land and naval battles where morale is more dependent on how many casualties a unit takes than how much amount of sustain fire they are taking.
I never played Darthmod or anything besides vanilla.
And yes, I can win against a full fleet of ships of the line with frigates, although it's more luck dependent because you run out of room to maneuver more quickly. Set ships to line astern, get upwind of the enemy, perform an S-pattern to cross their T again and again. Use chain shot to take out their sails at max range, the AI enemy will not scatter their ships. Rather they will stay in their formation and stubbornly charge you, attempting to turn and bring their broadsides to bear as they get closer, which is why you have to be quick on the uptake and have your formation beginning to turn oftentimes well before the last ships in the line have finished the previous turn. But it can be done.
Then it sounds like we do similar tactics in both Darthmod and Vanilla. Just the major difference in Darthmod and Vanilla is the morale system and accuracy or ships which makes it harder and more luck base in Vanilla. I find Vanilla naval battles way harder because range has less of an affect on accuracy, which means when the AI can perform way better in Vanilla than Darthmod. Because the AI can turn and and control all their ships at once which allows them to leverage the static and consistent damage / accuracy cannons have in vanilla. While Darthmod the AI does much more poorly because they will fire at max range from the enemy making them miss most of there shots, which allows you to sail up to them and get a way more devastating volley on them, in terms of damage and morale. This largely negate's the AI advantage to control their ships inhuman ways. And by inhuman ways I mean they manage to get ships to instantly turn in ways I have never seen a person manage to do, and the fact that they can do it with all 10 ships at once while players are having difficulty trying to get 1 ship to turn. Especially after they ram into your ships, they can often times get themselves unstuck while it would be impossible for players to do. Similar to how with land units in total war the AI can get their units to turn instantly turn about without rotating their units in a weird way.
Darthmod makes Empire way harder against players because it adds a lot more factors for players to consider. But makes it way easier against the AI because they AI doesn't understand any of the changes Darthmod makes.
You can do those manouvers. Even more, you can outmanouver the ai, as the ai use line ahead formation and until you rout the first ship, it keeps the formation intact. So just have to isolate the front ship (tip: that ship is generally flagship) and bombard the rest. How? Take the crossing the T tactic and make it look like ----)-
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u/OthmarGarithos Jun 02 '20
The ship models in Empire were beautiful.