Problem with naval battles

[unmerged(528169)]

Hey guys,
Lately i have been playing Eu3 divine wind quite a lot and i feel i learned a lot on how to deal with different stuff, but i still have problems with navy battles.
I feel i am doing something wrong but i have no idea what I can upload saved game if it helps.
I tried fighting naval war vs england on normal difficulty, previously everything was fine but now it seems i have no way of beating them in naval fight.
I made a fleet of 60 heavy ships with 2/1 admiral(i can not recruit better one with my navy tradition..) and every time i am fighting english navy which is about 30 heavy ships and 20 transporters(kogs)
i am totally crushed losing about 40-50 ships to them losing for example 3... I checked my technology it is 17 vs them 18, their admiral is also better with 2/3 i think but still i do not think he is such a genius to destroy whole fleet of basicly same ships with 20 times less loses then me...
The strange thing i am seeing is that up to some point we are quite even, then my morale drops to 0(i checked my maintence is full) and in matter of seconds i lose around 20 ships 2 times and my navy runs after that.
I tried changing my national ideas to full naval before fighting them but it made no difference.
Any idea what i may be doing wrong?

 

[Sandmann]

They might have the national idea that gives +1 naval morale, I think it is called seahawks.

 

[unmerged(180647)]

I am afraid there is nothing you could do better. There was a discussion here on the same matter and the conclusion was that most probably the game setting "lucky nations" was the cause of it. If turned on at game start, there are a few nations (England is always among them) that get this flag, which causes that kind of uneven battles.

 

[unmerged(528169)]

They might have the national idea that gives +1 naval morale, I think it is called seahawks.

As i said I already tried to change the national ideas for naval bonuses and it made no difference ;/

I am afraid there is nothing you could do better. There was a discussion here on the same matter and the conclusion was that most probably the game setting "lucky nations" was the cause of it. If turned on at game start, there are a few nations (England is always among them) that get this flag, which causes that kind of uneven battles.

So what does it mean? That england will always crush me in navy battle(or do they get bonus to all battles maybe)? It makes my country almost unplayable (especially in terms on collonization) and i spent so much time playing already. Is there any way to disable that by editing the saved game file?

EDIT: I just checked this lucky nations on wiki and it seems to add just little to their firepower so i am not sure it is related to this, i think there is something wrong with my morale going down and then my army still fighting with 0 morale and suddenly losing like 20 ships each "turn" in battle.

 

[glen55]

Also, your fleet might be too big. Are you watching the positioning number on the left? If it stays very low, that is why you are losing. I get the impression that fleets of 30 or so are optimal, just like IRL. There is apparently a point past which, if your fleet keeps getting bigger, you just automatically lose badly. I've read tales of 400 big ships losing badly to a single barque.

But yes, if lucky nations is on then you won't have an even fight against a lucky nation.

 

[unmerged(528169)]

Also, your fleet might be too big. Are you watching the positioning number on the left? If it stays very low, that is why you are losing. I get the impression that fleets of 30 or so are optimal, just like IRL. There is apparently a point past which, if your fleet keeps getting bigger, you just automatically lose badly. I've read tales of 400 big ships losing badly to a single barque.

But yes, if lucky nations is on then you won't have an even fight against a lucky nation.

Yeah i checked, it seems i have lucky nations set to historical, but is it really making such a diffrence? Also you said to many ships getting bad bonuses, but i have 60 ships and he has 30 ships and 20 or 25 transporters which total make almost 60 as well. And while i could agree to lose battle even with such advantage(lets say his leader is so good etc) But how can i lose 50 ships and sink 3 in such a battle? To destoy just his one fleet this way i will need to waste like 1000 heavy ships, that seems broken to me. There must be something i can do to disable it instead of starting game as new country now...

 

[glen55]

You can't disable lucky nations except at game start.

But you shouldn't have to start over. Just rethink your strategy to one that doesn't involve taking the English fleet on head-to-head. What year is it? After colonialism gets going the English fleet tends to spend a lot of time far, far away from England. Spot that sucker somewhere else and invade England pronto if that's what you're trying to do.

It doesn't sound like the number of ships is really the problem, but I'm pretty sure you would do better with 2 fleets of 30 than with 1 fleet of 60. If you must take him on, try attacking with one fleet of 30, and then as soon as that battle is over, send in the 2nd fleet to hit him while his morale is down.

 

[unmerged(528169)]

You can't disable lucky nations except at game start.

But you shouldn't have to start over. Just rethink your strategy to one that doesn't involve taking the English fleet on head-to-head. What year is it? After colonialism gets going the English fleet tends to spend a lot of time far, far away from England. Spot that sucker somewhere else and invade England pronto if that's what you're trying to do.

It doesn't sound like the number of ships is really the problem, but I'm pretty sure you would do better with 2 fleets of 30 than with 1 fleet of 60. If you must take him on, try attacking with one fleet of 30, and then as soon as that battle is over, send in the 2nd fleet to hit him while his morale is down.

It is 1550, i am the only one with colonies in america it seems...
What i am trying to do is actually invade some italian provinces that England got for some reason or just protect my ports, and i am unable to do anything on water if at war with England even if i can make twice their fleet. I just checked tho and his admiral is 1/4 so he got quite high shock. Oh and tried to spread my army, now i lost 60(2 times 30) heavy ships and he lost 0/(out of 30) heavy ships and 0 (out of 25) kogs. I don't know if i should laugh or what
And i actually took castilie to try to create sea power and how can i enjoy doing it if i have no way of even damaging enemy navy.
So yeah sure i can never fight england again and still play but i think you must see it is no fun if only country that should be my navy rival got something that makes them unbeatable. This seems like a bug to me not a lucky nation effect;/

 

[chgrogers]

One thing that really gets me is using Im still using an older class of heavy ships. Since they don't automatically upgrade when you get the next class. I will be fighting England or Spain expecting to win a navy battle and all of the sudden I get my fleet sank in 7 seconds.

 

[unmerged(180647)]

I have also thought about ships involved, but 60 carracks have 1200 hull and 2400 cannons, which is quite nice. In 1550 with tech 18, England may have caravels. Then 30 caravels plus 25 cogs give 750+500 hull and 1500+250 cannons, which is worse than the fleet of 60 carracks.

The morale influencing factors discussed so far are:
- Luck (amount unknown)
- Naval maintenance (2.0)
- NI superior seamanship (1.0)

There are some more factors that influence naval morale though:
- the military stat of the current ruler (up to 0.9)
- naval tech level (0.75@tech 17 and 18)
- prestige (up to 0.5)
- being an empire, which England probably is (0.25)
- having a Grand Admiral advisor (up to 0.3)
- land/naval slider with emphasis on naval (up to 0.1)

If all that still cannot explain the outcome of the battles, there is one more condition that comes to mind: have the battles been fought within the naval supply range of a friendly harbour? That is the range which is shown as tooltip when a fleet is selected and one hovers over a seazone.

 

[unmerged(204522)]

england may be DotF. try adding 10 light ships to your fleet for the manoeuvre bonus. try sending an explorer on a world tour to increase your tradition, allowing you to recruit a super-admiral.

 

[George LeS]

You don't give the version you're using. 5.2b improves this, in that you may still lose, but you are less likely to be wiped out. I've been modding it with some success, in that most naval battles are much more realistic in their results, and I'm getting fairly few annilations.

 

[Diavolo1988]

I am having the same problem as the OP explains. I am playing with Norway and have gotten pretty big. (almost annexed denmark, holding half of original sweden and most of the earlier teutonic order) England is holding all of the british isles except orkney, which I still have. I know that england has a badass navy, so I decided to get a bigger one. They have two fleets of 30 ships each, consisting of 20 carracks and 10 cogs. Since I went protestant, and they are still catholics they have quite bad reputation with me, so they went to war with me. I figured it was best to have one giant fleet to be able to beat each of the english fleets one by one, however my 68 ships fleet (30 carracks, 25 galleys and 13 cogs) gets annihilated by only one of the english 30 ship fleets. I even have a pretty badass admiral. Not sure how the english one stands, but he is atleast not better than mine (I think) (mine is 2,4,2 or something)

I have however on historical nations, but I only thought that would help them a bit, not that massively. Is it possible to win against the english in naval battles at all? Or should I load an earlier save and try to bribe their friendship/let them take orkney and hope they don't roflstomp the rest of my kingdom?

EDIT: ok, there was no way of stopping england from invading, even though I went back to a save where I was still catholic. So now I'm trying to actually beat them at sea, which means getting admiral advisor, pumping naval research, moving slider even more towards naval focus, building carracks like crazy and choosing "supreme seamanship" as national idea. (that's the idea that gives +1 to naval moral, which is a LOT compared to other modifiers) Let's just hope Norway also has some sort of historical bonus for seamanship, since Norway was historically pretty good at ships.

EDIT2: After getting all the navy moral bonuses, england still has some advantage (could be that they have more of their fleets consisting of caravels, while I still havent lost my old carracks yet) However, it is completely possible to beat england at sea battles. just make sure you split your fleets just enough to get a high cannon position percentage (or what one should call it) It's also ofcourse extremely important to have as much naval moral as possible, but I guess that is implicit.