Mega-Polyremes

[Empty_Inside]

So, how do you beat a sizeable amount of these things?

I was playing Rome, fighting Phrygia around the year 580. I had a fleet of around 200 ships, about 140 of those were hexeres, the biggest ships which I could build. Phrygia had about 120 ships, 60 were Mega-Polyremes.

I was at tech 12, using the ship morale idea und having the ship morale tradition, while phrygia was at tech 5.

While i predicted i would lose on strenght, I thought I could at least win on morale. To my surprise my fleet got totally destroyed, losing about 60 ships while killing like 4 before they broke.

So how do you fight big ships without having them yourself?

Do I just need 10 times more ships? Should I use light ships instead of medium ones?

Is boarding tactic oder ramming tactic better?

/edit: I had hemp surplus and export bonus, both admirals were 10 martial and tactics didn`t counter each other.

 

[Herennius]

Sadly, currently any strategy for large (= 30+ ships on each side) naval battles is heavily dictated bug a bug:

Only ships fleeing because of the morale hitting 0 will get replaced by your reserve, anything getting sunk because of running out of strength is not replaced.

(see here https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/i-r-i-always-almost-all-naval-battles.1377839/ for a detailed example and the offical bug confirmation)

Others will be better in telling you what ships are best keeping that in mind, but for sure it can be said that doing strength damage to the enemy is more useful then causing morale damage (while the opposite is true for your own ships). So whatever you field, make sure that your "first line" flees before it sinks.

 

[Mike6979]

Gah! That is a terrible bug.

 

[Empty_Inside]

Interesting, now that you mention it, there was no way all of my 200 ships were even fighting, the battle was over pretty quick, that could explain it.

 

[Wethospu]

Gert rid of all naval morale modifiers. Even reassigning commander before fight can help so your ships start with -25% morale.

I don't think ship types matter that much. Lighter ships are more cost efficient at winning battles but heavier ships are more cost efficient for the war (because they capture more ships and more resistant to captures).

I would recommend using Tetreres (medium ship, cheaper than Hexere, no reduced morale damage taken, no increased morale damage done).

 

[Herennius]

Gert rid of all naval morale modifiers. Even reassigning commander before fight can help so your ships start with -25% morale.

Do you think that running low fleet maintenance in war times could work (given that you invest the saved maintenance in numerical superiority) as startegy? Or is that morale cut just to deep to be compensated by sheer numbers?

 

[Wethospu]

Do you think that running low fleet maintenance in war times could work (given that you invest the saved maintenance in numerical superiority) as startegy? Or is that morale cut just to deep to be compensated by sheer numbers?

If you keep the ship morale idea then it should work (since you got morale advantage from tech). Having -55% morale is probably even better than having -20% (with commander reassignment) and that -50% ship maintenance is quite significant.

You can use https://ir.pdxsimulator.com to test it out.

1. Import save: Import both Rome and Carthage to the simulator from your save file.
2. Countries: Set Decreased Pay for Rome if not already set.
3. Toggle Naval mode from top-right corner.
4. Battle: Select correct navies and edit ship amounts if needed.
5. Analyze: Hit Analyze button. The simulator doesn't include the naval reinforcement bug but if enemy has lots of Destroyed costs then the bug triggers in-game.
6. If the Analyze is slow then just halve amount of ships. There isn't really any point to simulate hundreds of ships.

 

[Hendreforgan]

I haven't yet found this bug but I think that is just luck but I do have one example from my games where the morale of your navies is vital?

My Carthage was going through a period of poor economy so everything was set to minimum cost and it was early in the game so I should have been a bit smarter and known that marauding pirates are an issue during that part of the game. My attention taken up elsewhere I suddenly find one of my navies is attacked by a small pirate fleet . . I lost every one of my ships! I even had a better Admiral! When I looked at it even the fairly average morale rating for the pirates was way over my pitiful minimum. These days if I'm saving money on Navy costs I keep my fleets in the harbours . . and even then that isn't a sure fix as Pirates seem to only attack ports.

 

[Riekopo]

Can someone make a tiny mod to fix this? It's ruining my first playthrough. >:{

 

[hcek]

Can someone make a tiny mod to fix this? It's ruining my first playthrough. >:{

unfortunately the issue is hardcoded. it can't be fixed by a mod.

 

[Dan the cynical barbarian]

So, how do you beat a sizeable amount of these things?

I was playing Rome, fighting Phrygia around the year 580. I had a fleet of around 200 ships, about 140 of those were hexeres, the biggest ships which I could build. Phrygia had about 120 ships, 60 were Mega-Polyremes.

I was at tech 12, using the ship morale idea und having the ship morale tradition, while phrygia was at tech 5.

While i predicted i would lose on strenght, I thought I could at least win on morale. To my surprise my fleet got totally destroyed, losing about 60 ships while killing like 4 before they broke.

So how do you fight big ships without having them yourself?

Do I just need 10 times more ships? Should I use light ships instead of medium ones?

Is boarding tactic oder ramming tactic better?

/edit: I had hemp surplus and export bonus, both admirals were 10 martial and tactics didn`t counter each other.

Imperator combat is sadly very unpolished for now and so it is difficult to even understand how composition affects the outcome of battles