Tip of the day: the automatic firing and the manual firing are 2 separate things: the trick is letting the auto firing shoot and after that go to manual mode to shoot again. Congrats! you have shoot 2 times in a row!
I was about to comment this. This way I won so many naval battle while outnumbered. I also want to add: if you have the armor piercing ammo, you can manually shoot before the enemy is even in range, and the flames of the shots WILL reach the enemy ships regardless, since they go further and possibly setting them on fire. Very handy trick!
I love how I have to manually fight each naval battle in this game. Because in auto resolve, a SINGLE enemy ship with 20% health will always take on of my ships down with him, usually the biggest most expensive one.
And it's sometimes absolutely random. My 10 stack against 5 good ones? not a single scratch in auto-resolve. Against 1 single half dead canon boat? Oops your nice american import steel battle cruiser DESTROYED.
Playing a Nanban trade ship as Otomo Vs an entire fleet of Bunes and Kobayas always amuses me. No matter how many boats the enemy has, they always sink without killing one single guy on my ship. But balance of power was 5-95 because numbers matter
The one thing the small gunboats are great for, and which you could have used here, is keeping them at the outer edges of the battle and finishing off routing enemy ships with their superior speed and boarding actions, which succeed by default and near-instantly when the enemy's already fleeing.
End battle as soon as possible in my campaign atleast I literally disbanded my entire fleet I built to many and kept capturing more from fleet battles and now I've wiped out the enemies ships but I'm regretting it now would've loved the bombardment from ships for the current siege
When playing FOTS always, always rush towards high explosive shells on the tech tree. If you want to use a Navy that is, because early on everyone will have only wood hulled ships and explosive shells will immediately destroy them.
Honestly, every ship burns, steel, bronze or wooden hull, it doesn't matter. Ironclad might make a difference, but I rarely run into those. I typically rush explosive ammo tech, too, and never past that. No need.
@@dangbar200 In late game you can get access to steam ships too, but it's quite a path to get there and honestly I find the first rate or heavy first rate ships much superior. They just have a lot more durability and fire power. Haven't played FoTS but it looks really cool to me, I find the canons and guns in this game to be the improved Empire mechanics. In fact, when I see these I really want CA to make a Victoria Total War... If it was made with the love they used in Shogun 2 it would be epic.
@@SilverSoulxd steam frigates in ETW are niche but incredibly powerful if use right; also one of th efew ships that can effectively overcome the "chain shot abuse" of smaller ships (the ones who inexplicably have better range and accuracty, which lets them demast enemy ships of the line with impunity) as steam frigates are largly immune to chain shot, are very fast and have devastating firepower at close range. (iirc they use the same guns as carronade frigates)
another trick in the campaign is the fact that ship repairing is hella expensive, so you gotta need to hit and run. Thats why kotetsu are so op: their range with just 1 cannon can destroy entire fleets without getting at range. idk what that cannon ball is made of, but man, it hits hard.
kotetsu are basically monitors, you can easily defeat one yourself with a wooden frigate as long as the kotetsu doesnt get lucky on the first two shots. a L'Ocean or a Roanoke are beasts, however.
@@Pilvenuga yeah, they are the snipers of the sea, with their cons too. thats why i always bring 2 or 3 per fleet. The thing is ive played 1 campaign and didnt remember the kotetsu being that op. 1 volley and boom, one ship down.
Also you can bait enemy ships with the Kotetsu by reversing while still shooting with its front cannon while your other ships are in position to fire once enemy ships are in range
@kolpere1625 It's steel, but it's 300 pounds of steel. The RL Kotetsu's main gun was named a "300 pounder". Every other ship in the game carries maybe "32 pounders", so it's almost 10 times as much steel.
Legend's deployment is a real naval tactic called "Crossing the T". In real-life is obviously harder to pull-off as commanders won't charge in a line if they see the enemy deploying it, but it was sucessfull a couple of times. The most famous rather fittingly is in the Battle of Tsushima were admiral Togo annihilated the Russian 2nd and 3rd fleet.
The Russian 2 Pacific Squadron was more a danger to itself than others (unless you were a civilian fishing vessel) destroying them as Tsushima wasn't much of a feat.
this strategy alrdy exist since ancient times i think.. battle of Salamis by the Greek against persian Navy the example. In First Punic war the carthaginian somehow failed to win with this formation. Admiral Nelson once overcome this strategy by manipulating the prevailing wind.. (dunno what that mean) at battle of trafalgar
@@Gitsmasher you mean the wind gauge i think. Essentially crossing the T doesn't look like what is happening in this video. Trafalgar is a good example of someone actually crossing the T, in the sense that nelson did it. The french and spanish deployed in a defensive line formation, which nelson crossed at two locations. Allowing him to destroy 1 enemy ship with two of his own ships throughout the battle. He was able to cross it by using the wind gauge, aka having the wind in your sails while the enemy is facing the wind. Legend's tactic here is not that of nelson, nor is he really crossing the T like the first comment. He deployed defensively and the AI is no admiral nelson
true,the battle of surigao strait was devastating,the US navy battleship already lining up for fire but the IJN just banzai charge their ships through the mouth of hell.
@@Gitsmasher Nelson made use of the wind to smash into a column of French and Spanish ships effectively severing the line of communication, crossing the T is effective at bringing a broadside to bare but it's not the final argument in naval tactics especially in the age before large naval broadsides were around. If you're not sure what prevailing wind means you probably aren't qualified enough to comment about how the Carthaginian formation lost the battle.
Small bit of cheese tips with Shogun 2 naval battles: You can let it fire with AI control, then immediately fire a second volley with manual control, they both have their own reload timers
Naval battles are usually boring for me, but after playing Shogun 2 I really think naval battles aren't that difficult for CA to implement in modern titles such as warhammer. They are vastly more fun and nuanced than those in Rome 2 onwards.
One of the big problems in Warhammer is that naval battles don't work for all factions, really. While Norsca and the Elves could have a fun battle of axe throwers vs archers and boarding actions... the Dwarfs will roll up with cannons, and the Empires galleons are just so tactically superior that they'd steamroll (literally for the dwarfs) everything.
@@iainballas dwarves have literal ironclads, elves have giant ships made out of silver(or rather they're grown out of wood that has qualities of silver) that shoot magic in all directions, dark elves ride around island fortresses and chaos has literal demonic ships that act like sea monsters. How are galleons superior to all of that?😅
@@iainballas That's where the intelligence of the developer comes forth. Balancing things out, such as making the dwarven ships much more sturdy, but slower, and fewer in quantity because they are much more expensive, whereas, for example, skaven ones are cheap makeshifts but skaven can fill loads and loads of ships. I'm sure there are ways to make naval combat engaging and not entirely broken. Another way of looking at it: maybe certain fleets aren't suitable to traverse the seas and are limited to sea close to land, or maybe all fleets function this way but each faction has an advantage, a quality that makes every fleet viable, with nuance and tactical skill. Example: would a Norscan fleet sink an entire Empire fleet? Probably not, but would a Norscan fleet outsmart an empire fleet into a disadvantageous scenario where the battlefield is a sea in turmoil amidst a storm, or while raining, so that the line of sight is reduced? Probably. That's my point. Many things can be done to make naval battles as nuanced as land ones. Even some factions could have sea constructs rather than vessels: animated ships so to speak. That would be another layer of interesting possibilities. All in all, I get you. It takes a lot of work, but it is true things can be done.
Hi there, naval battle fan here ( i sill rank play Empire naval battles sometimes) Only thing i owuld chawnge in your strat is turning the Bow of the ship you are repairing towards the enemy presenting a better armored and smaller target. Going zickzack also fucks with their aim a lot and you can do it without moving because you have paddlewheels. Other then that is bunhing up enemeis and making them shoot each other the way to go. Some tips apart from that: Maximum firepower is btw archived by planting a ship between 2 enemies so boths sides keep firing and caushing routing waves because of damage in short time. Same goes for full broadside with multiple ships, once you got the big liners it becomes an instant flight button which can be combined with smaller ships for boarding and forcing surrenders. Biggest problem with that is that it takes forever in FOTS to actually get the ship in to board it while the ever present instant explosion is always a main threat for fast ships You cant stunlock a ship by boarding of a smaller ship, it will keep firing but you can keep in in place so you can place yours on the Prow. Maximum Bullshit unlocks with everything sporting Torpedos, Mortars, Rockets and generally everything that flies in an arc but seeing where i am commenting this my guess is you already figured that one out.
The tactic used here is simply known as Crossing the T. All your ships have full broadsides while the enemy pushes to close the range. If you're curious to know more on it, look up Admiral Togo and the Battle of Tsushima of the Russo Japanese War. Hell, Togo was probably a Midshipman at this time! At Tsushima, he implemented a wheeling formation while crossing the Russian T, so that not only could all his ships fire full broadsides, but that when his fleet wheeled about he could use the other, undamaged sides.
@@mandowarrior123 Static or at speed, it's the positioning that matters. For older ships, such as ships of line, sure, you would fire as you bear (Which is simply how you stagger your fire), but crossing the T isn't limited to that era. HMS Hood's little playdate with Bismarck is an example. In both that case and in this video, one force is advancing towards the other, and the positioning is relatively the same.
its the brutal nature of it all, if you let fires grow out of control - you lose your ship if you let the hull go too low, you can sink if you let the hull go down a bit, the chance of a magazine detonation skyrockets never a dull moment in a FoTS naval battle
I really love the absolute cinematic beauty of Shogun and FOTS naval battles. Makes me really want to see an improved version of this for Warhammer 3 so we can have fleets of warships going at each other. It'd also make room for naval focused Legendary Lords and give Lohkir even more uniqueness being the naval lord for the Dark Elves.
Just a tip for FOTS naval battles, you can get your ships to fire twice if u use manual mode, just wait until they fire their guns and go into manual mode to shoot them again without reloading. Its really usefull for dishing out more damage with fewer ships
I know I'm coming to this late, but UA-cam recs and all. Full disclaimer, I would by no means consider myself a Navy enjoyer, I'm just talking about what I've absorbed. In my experience, part of the problem with naval battles is that the tactics are almost completely inverted from army tactics, so trying things that work on land ends up backfiring in the water. In TW naval battles, I've found decent success using (somewhat era appropriate) ship-of-the-line tactics. That is, position your ships into lines (five or six per line), with your tankiest boys in the front and then in descending order of survivability. The overall plan is to sail past the enemy for a broadside and then hope to wheel around to do what sailors call "crossing the T" (the navy equivalent of a flanking maneuver). Especially when the AI is dumb enough to position ships side-to-side instead of front-to-back, this causes the enemy to expend their first cannonade on your toughest guys, and then you're able to expend round after round on the same few ships as your lines sail past (and your front ships reload as they get turned around). This concentration of fire is usually enough to severally hamper the enemy's DPS potential, if not sink or rout an important ship or two. At this point, I'll sometimes turn on slow-mo for larger battles because it can get micro intense. From here the goal is to circle around so that your sides face enemy ships' aft or sterns (so that they make the body and you make the cross of a 'T'). This allows all of your strongest guns to fire on the weakest and least dangerous parts of the enemy. Concentrating fire and teaming up against isolated ships is the name of the game until you've picked them off one by one. That said, the enemy naval battle AI is usually too dumb to require this much strategizing, but I've pulled off some crushing victories this way.
Great battle. I love naval battles in FotS, Napoleon, and Empire. The only two minor things I'd change wound be: deploy with the heading out towards the sea instead of towards the land - gives you more options to maneuver, and the other thing is presenting the bow rather than the stern while turning around - less chance to have the rudder shot off, not that it really matters in these games anyway.
Naval battles in FOTS can be easily cheesed by following these steps: 1. You need to be the attacker. 2. You put your ships just outside YOUR max range, so you don't exactly reach the enemy ships. 3. You give broadside fire manually. Yes, your ships are technically out of range, but some of the cannon balls will still hit the enemy ships, and these cannon balls will destroy them while they remain still. It's like fighting a kid who can't fight back. By doing these, you only need 1 to 2 basic ships in each fleet to keep your naval expanse at a minimal, and they will defend the coast for you perfectly. Every naval battle I fought in this game, I get heroic victory. It's also a very good method to level up your generals. A similar method can be used in Rome 2 with the catapult ships fire at enemy ships at max range. You just snipe them one by one while they remian absolutely still. Naval battles from Shogun 2 base game can also be cheesed to reach the same result, but I am already written too much.
The naval battles in FOTS are significantly more fun than vanilla. Something about watching ships sink and explode after being overwhelmed with cannon fire is extremely satisfying
Vanilla S2 naval combat has some good ideas in it but it's mostly invalidated by the Bow Kobaya (who'se fire arrows make almost all larger ships pointless) and Siege Tower Bunes; the way morale works in naval battles means most ships will rout/surrender the moment they start tanking heavy matchlock fire from siege tower bunes or get lit on fire by flaming arrows; which in urn makes a lot of the larger ships feel useless (heavy bunes and up all have massive boarding crews, but are too slow to catch those small fast ships with powrful ranged weaponry; myself I always just end up spamming siege tower bunes with maybe one or two sengoku bunes to catch fleeing ships and make them surrender.
The tip with naval battles is ALWAYS BE THE ATTACKER. The enemy will hold a defensive position. You then place your ships slightly out of range and engage manual firing or manual broadsides. Manual firing, angled correctly, will fire just a bit outside your max range, allowing you to kill the enemy ships without them ever firing a shot. It'll take forever so play at 3x speeds.
Have a naval battle next to a military port or dry dock and the battle will be aided by land artillery, makes it fun to take out both land and sea targets
There’s just something about naval battles in the gun era total wars that’s almost beautiful Also expensive is an understatement for some ships (warrior)
I saw LegendofTotalWar comments about ship sinking. Actually you can look at the unit card at the bottom of the screen to see if any of the ship is flooding by the water on said unit card. It will slowly rise up as the ship flooded more and more. In this battle, none of LegendofTotalWar ships is in danger of sinking yet, even the small gunboats as there's no water level rising up on the unit card. Fire is also observe the same way, if the ship has been set on fire there will be flame burning on the unit card.
What great timing. I'm doing my first FOTS campaign now, and the naval war is really heating up. Was thinking I need to take things to the battle map to gain an edge, but I just know so little about the mode. I'm sure this video and the comments will be a great help.
yeah this vid is pretty good for learning how they go - just note some things, hope this helps 😮: -ai will rush on attack, but when defending they’ll camp the edge of the battlemap with broadsides facing you, so you’ll have to flank the sides to force them into the map. -always choose ‘continue’ after winning the battle since theres a very good chance that ships escape when you let the game do it. -don’t use overheat engine unless you’re using it to kamikaze your ship cause its a very high chance to explode. -related: kamikazeing ships is a thing like in empire, as ships exploding or even just on fire nearby other ships will spread fire to them. -explosive shells are super good since the ai often doesn’t move up to iron plating, and explosive shells start fires on wooden(+copper) hulls. -if you use mines, be warned the ai can see them and their ships will actually weave through them, to make them useful you’ll need to engage their ships while they’re in the minefield to make them turn to fight you.. also, mines will trigger for your ships too.
oh - also, for controlling ships use group formations, as there’s a setting that lets you have ships move in a column instead of side-by side, very useful for avoiding friendly fire
Something to note is that in naval battles, using the formation presets during deployment is actually viable. For Empire, Napoleon & FotS it's mainly the line. Because unlike with land battles and formations set up and locked by the player, the naval line actually behaves smartly. The first ship will go where you click while the rest will follow in it's tracks rather than trying to maintain a stiff line. You are basically playing Snake, excepts it's RTS controls, your snake has something of a turn radius and shoots broadsides. Also, research HE shells. Slightly less range, but they vaporize anything that doesn't have a metal hull, while also greatly boosting the splash radius of hits in shore bombardments.
The key for naval battles is getting the better shot types. Explosive annihilates wooden ships, and ap shells are just better round shot. You can use broadside to extend your range slightly. This is very useful since the AI when attacked will just form a line and wait. If get JUST out of range you can broadside them to death and take no damage. Dont get within their range or it will activate their AI though.
Ive never seen such bonkers AI ship behavior in FOTS. Normally they come in a perfect ship of the line formation and dont bunch up like this when theyre not flanked. You parking in that bay must have confused the AI hell of a lot :D
Ironically I stumbled over this video after I'd just finished a naval battle as the Satsuma in a campaign I'd recently reloaded to avoid going to war with the Saga. Perhaps it's an omen of things that could've been XD.
Legend: "I am not good in naval battles". Also Legend: proceeds to annihilate the enemy fleet with most of his fleet barely scratched. When you are Sun Tsu of Total War no battle is a problem.
I really struggled with Naval Battles in FOTS, I think they were very impressive and quite fun but just sucked a bit at them, not quite as easy and setting up one Nanban Trade Ship at max range.
For naval battles, focus on local superiority and spreading damage out evenly. So form a tango line and sail toward a flank. Then sail around the back of them so that your ships are constantly blasting a small number of them while they're all in the way of each other. By the time you snake around back of them, you'll outnumber them and win easily. That said, you obviously did a great job here.
One mistake in what you said: the color changing on the firing cone for the cannons doesn't mean that there are enemies range, it means that those cannons are reloading. It can appear that enemies are in range, because when enemies get in range they'll fire and then be reloading, and they'll fire immediately when finished reloading if enemies are still in range.
Excited to see a naval battle, especially on my favorite TW. I'm surprised he couldn't win or try a few auto-resolves, especially with 2 of the frigates.
You actually want all the damage from a battle to be on one side, so the other side of all your ships are fresh for the next battle. If a ship is getting heavily damaged, you can disengage it by slowing it down and allowing the next ship in the line to move up and provide it cover. It will take its guns out of the fight, but you would have lost those guns anyway if it would have been destroyed, and at least this way you don't lose the ship. You can flank by moving faster ships up to the fore or aft of the enemy line, so that they may shoot down the bow or stern of ships, but don't flank by going to the opposite side of their line of battle (like you would with a land army); any guns not pointed at your ships are guns that are out of the fight.
Personally, i did a co-op Shogun 2 campaign awhile back and my buddy controlled the lands but I was controlling the seas protecting our ports. Point being, I love naval over land battles
In my experience naval battles are the easiest to fight battle in Fall of the samurai, and the thign is, you only need 1 ship to win that onw ahip and only limited damage. My tipp also: try to fight any naval battles as attacker, as the naval ai is kinda borked there,. The Ai willl sit at it's spawn, even if it much more ships then you (like i said, you can basically win ANY battle wiht just one ship(though probably not if that ship is a Kotetsu), especially on attack. Due to the Ai wqaiting, you can sail you ship up to the ai (the most roight side ship, just do an attack move, thqat works with most maps), until you are are bit out of auto attack range(if you have access to armorpiecing shots you can even stop earlier). Do not get too close though, because the Ai will react if you are just slightly out of sid AA range. Once you get there (and not got too close, you'll get a feeling to it with time, trust me) you simply turn broadside to the closest ship, switch on manual broadside and start blasting away. You shots MAY hit the water close to the enemy, but do not frett: If it is with one ships width when using basic shot, you will produce underwater hits, so continue blasting (though if you are unsure, creep a little bit closer if are comfortable with it, but be aware, with mutleple ships in the enemy fleet the reaction point may be closer as with single ones). With armor piercing shots, you will notice that the real range of the guns is quite a bit longer on manual fire, then auto, and even if you hit the water, the AP shells tend to bounce a bit. If you got APHE shells, they even ignite into fire shrapnels when ricocheting and those shrapnels travel quite abit and setting fires on the enemy. Due to this slightly borked naval AI i found putting generals on ships is the best way to train them real quick
I have to admit I was skeptical on the switch from WH3 to historical at first, but I’m really enjoying the FOTS content. I didn’t think I would like historical battles since I thought it would be melee/cav/archers only but the gun fights are pretty awesome. Naval battles are pretty interesting too, although I don’t think I’d want to do this 50 times a campaign. Not sure you could get a whole lot of variety with flat ocean maps… maybe they can add a maelstrom or lochness monster or something in a game like warhammer. That would spice things up.
Historical total war battles are actually way more interesting than WH battles. I have 1000+ hours in WH, but I now realise that the game is basically only about monsters (zero strategy in that), spells (zero strategy, pure Dota) and ranged troops. Infantry tactics doesn’t work there, Cavrly nearly doesn’t work there… it’s just so boring at this point. So basically there’s even less variety than, for example Shogun 2, where every unit is viable and you can base your whole strategy around it. Where you can pull off great victories just because you have a good plan. In WH you just abuse the AI with stuff the don’t know how to deal with. I still love WH, but I can see clearly that CA fucked up with it. If they actually built on what was good in historical games, warhammer would’ve been the best game ever.
there are some upgrades you can get for ports in FOTS where there are gun battery's setup on islands around the map when navel battles take place near the ports and they kind of act like towers but for navel combat but yea in the early game its pretty much just ocean maps or maybe a island or 2 that can block sightlines/movement (or if its a bad storm the waves can also effect the ships making it harder to hit targets)
By the time the video was up I myself fought a naval battle as Saga pretty much in the same spot. But not against Satsuma. Had a tough time too. Coincidences...
Tactics were spot on for this engagement. Could have given yourself a longer engagement by delaying from Map Center into your defensive position, but then you wouldn’t have gotten that beautiful 2-wave attack from the AI. Control groups are pretty slick in these naval battles, but it does become a task to form, break, and reform them. That said, you can quite elegantly manage a hit-and-run engagement at maximum range for the double-shot cheese, and only micro switchbacks.
Oh yes! Naval battles in FOTS are so much fun, with batteries and steam power! If only we could get a Crimean War TW or Italian Wars of Independence TW
this is a huge deal! in some battles you can save 1k+ koku on repairs by doing field repairs in battle as the enemy is routing (and sinking at the same time)
I would love naval battles in WH3, even if they were just straight outta the historical titles. Norsca could only build wooden ships, obviously. These battles make me want to rewatch Master and Commander.
The ships for both sides independently--i.e. there are separate cooldowns for each broadside. There are a couple of consequences from this: First, if you try to attack from both sides you effectively double their fire rate. Second, in the base game when you use cannon trade ships, you can fire faster by constantly spinning the ship in place. The default hotkeys for that are 'L' and ';' and you can queue some in groups of units at a time
The cannon-era Nautical Battles in Total War are so easily winnable by the player if you have even a ship more. The AI basically borks out, like it did here and you win.
Tip of the day: win every battle with just one ship go to manual mode and slowly move toward enemy ship stop in out range, shoot, little move forward , shoot , little more, shoot do this until you find a range that enemy ships get hit but don't realize that until exploding
Well I tried it. My ships wotn even shoot in manual mode. Also, they explode so fast. This game must have some pretty severe bugs. Everytime I download FoTS I want to kill myself from the naval combat experience. Its awful. Unbearable. Its no surprise CA abandoned naval combat. It makes 0 sense.
Naval battle needs to be mastered as well... second highest income after tax is sea trade and dont forget about enemy harassing / bombarding your coastial settlement lol. A must learn skill! just imagine yourself as the marine in one piece
I used to argue that Empire/Napoleon had the best naval battles in the series because Galleon era combat is so classic, but I dunno, FOTS makes a good argument for the combat centered around ironsides and early dreadnoughts.
I love the shogun 2 naval battles, I hated the ones in empire & napoleon because they feel so slow, but they really improved the speed & pacing so it feels fun & engaging in Shogun 2.
always, always, always research explosive shot in Fall of Samurai. Its the only way to beat AI fleets, its an airburst shell that sets ships on fire and breaks morale.
Im terrible with naval battles, I just know there is a trick/exploit to shoot twice. Other than that, I also know that you can research or upgrade the gun boats in some ways, so that they drop torpedos, and they can destroy ironclads. If you need your ship to turn to the other side, where there might be more cannons/ less damaged cannons, using the left/right button in the bottom left is the easiest way to do this. Thats all I know
FoTS ship tactics: get explosive ammo, cross the T, win. Going at it with classic column and then turning to broadside is pretty good, since any ship that got set ablaze can be easily retreated to repair behind the others. And since AI is clueless about naval combat and tends to bunch up, explosions tend to cause chain reaction. The only important part is having explosive shells, since if the enemy has them and you don't, it will get bloody. Correct me here if I'm wrong, but overheat engine only causes fire to the ship? At least that's my experience.
The only hard thing about Naval battles is if you get unlucky and a ship just explodes. It does get harder once the AI has explosive rounds because they are very good against Wooden hulls.
Right it takes practice with your ship types for a grasp or feel of timing a turn. the advantage here is the winds not an issue for steamers. line a breast to a point then turning for salvos down the line. prior to turrets. stern rakes are still valuable as you dont set to chain shot for sails. Crew Quality leadership not same as AOS Napoleonic era.. People take less tiem on naval because it can be time consuming..
Dude where does legend of total war live. Because it seems like for the past week or two i literally wake up and he posted a video like an hour ago im not complaining its just so convenient I’ve literally been having my morning cup of coffee while watching this keep up the good work brother you’ve made my morning’s a lot more interesting.
One video i would really like to see is capturing the Black Ship in Shogun 2. I've only done it once with extreme difficulty, and it basically cost me 2 full stacks of ships. I think it would be an interesting scenario of someone has it
I really like the early modern naval battles from Empire/Napoleon and shogun 2 it just sucks that there just isn't much of it, I was really hoping we'd get something like it from the later warhammers but I guess they don't feel there is enough demand for it.
It's not so much the lack of demand but that they don't think it's worth the resources it would take, at this point there's almost 30 factions, that's 30 new rosters to make, and a new one for every new faction added, to make things worse, of those 30 factions, only like 10 of them had a naval faction in man o war, or a single ship in dreadfleet, naval battles would be a very resource intensive thing to work on, even and to make things even worse those fleets often had less then 5 ship types, so to reach 7 units for an entire battle type for everything they'd need to make like 170 new units, though if you count flyers they have in there main armies you'd probably be closer to 120
The auto resolve for naval battles is absolutely broken. This was not a disaster battle. With the setup Legend used, he could have almost just set the ships up and let it play out on fast forward
The naval battles in Shougun 2 are great. 4:00 boom Now when I think about it - I wish a TW naval or TW marine My idea is that you have to focus and conquer many Islands and trading post Problem would be how the map should look like in order to have some variety.
Dang, something I'm actually better at that Legend in Total War hahaha. Naval battles have always been my favorite. In Rome 2 DEI I just sunk 5 full armies of Carthaginians (100 units) with a fleet of 11 ships. Didn't lose a single one. Ramming for the win.
11:10 Personally, I only build ships (well, I guess unless I'm playing Tosa and have to get out of Shikoku, and who get more bang for their buck from naval support anyway) in time for the Realms divide (or war declaration cascade that amounts to as much): when you get raided by literally everyone and get sent naval invasions from the other side of the Japan, the investment in my mind is worth it compared to the cost of putting out fires. But at this stage of the campaign, the fleet costs as much as an extra land army, or building a new build each turn, an opportunity cost that I simply don't find worth it.
having a kanko maru to guard every one of your ports is only a 100 koku per turn upkeep, the ability to keep trade up makes up for the cost and with the cheese of port battles you get to farm heroic victories easily
@@Pilvenuga That makes sense, but if I'm successful avoiding the alliance cascade before it becomes unavoidable with RD (that is to say, not making allies to the rescue of which I'd have to come, etc), there's one enemy at a time, they might not try to blockade any port, the cost of protecting ports is per port and present even if no one tries to blockade (plus requires the upfront investment of getting the ship), and if they do then this blockade is short-lived simply through virtue of that faction not lasting long as they are the sole target. But I guess that is something to do if the risk might be realized (war with naval powers), I will keep that in mind for subsequent playthroughs. In any event it's not a real "fleet" in the sense that this disaster battle has, with upkeep no less than the trade it's purportedly protecting.
you only need to make a dirt cheap ship , make your army get in and immediately land on evemy land in 1 turn , thats how i always play when playing as chosokabe or tosa, because naval battle is really boring and hard, enemy got a boost and the naval map in fots is quite small, you often cant do much better than autoresolve unless you got really strong ship, but they are expensive as hell
Tip of the day: the automatic firing and the manual firing are 2 separate things: the trick is letting the auto firing shoot and after that go to manual mode to shoot again. Congrats! you have shoot 2 times in a row!
WUT really? ahahaha that's a really cheesy
Plus you can shoot manually while repairing.
@@pisuoxide didn't the ships in the video shoot while repairing?
this guy shoots
I was about to comment this. This way I won so many naval battle while outnumbered.
I also want to add: if you have the armor piercing ammo, you can manually shoot before the enemy is even in range, and the flames of the shots WILL reach the enemy ships regardless, since they go further and possibly setting them on fire. Very handy trick!
I love how I have to manually fight each naval battle in this game. Because in auto resolve, a SINGLE enemy ship with 20% health will always take on of my ships down with him, usually the biggest most expensive one.
And it's sometimes absolutely random. My 10 stack against 5 good ones? not a single scratch in auto-resolve. Against 1 single half dead canon boat? Oops your nice american import steel battle cruiser DESTROYED.
Playing a Nanban trade ship as Otomo Vs an entire fleet of Bunes and Kobayas always amuses me. No matter how many boats the enemy has, they always sink without killing one single guy on my ship. But balance of power was 5-95 because numbers matter
Yeah, naval auto resolve is brutal. Yet naval manual battles are reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeally slow and boring. Drains a lot of fun from the game.
autoresolving makes it easy to capture kotetsus with frigates though, who needs a unit cap on kotetsus if you can have 50+ captured ones?
Also the enemy loves to use a single boat to attack your trade routes and you have to chase down dozens of em scattered around the map
The one thing the small gunboats are great for, and which you could have used here, is keeping them at the outer edges of the battle and finishing off routing enemy ships with their superior speed and boarding actions, which succeed by default and near-instantly when the enemy's already fleeing.
This is a great tip, I used it a lot when I actively played the game.
End battle as soon as possible in my campaign atleast I literally disbanded my entire fleet I built to many and kept capturing more from fleet battles and now I've wiped out the enemies ships but I'm regretting it now would've loved the bombardment from ships for the current siege
I remember I was confused last time I played, how do you board with ships in Fall of the Samurai, is it only certain ships that can?
@@galdorofnihelm6798 Should be the one in the middle, under where the withdraw button is on the bottom left
@@tylermitchell185 I know the button is there but it's disabled xd
When playing FOTS always, always rush towards high explosive shells on the tech tree. If you want to use a Navy that is, because early on everyone will have only wood hulled ships and explosive shells will immediately destroy them.
not just early on, you can easily be 60-80 turns in and still dealing with wooden frigate spam
Honestly, every ship burns, steel, bronze or wooden hull, it doesn't matter.
Ironclad might make a difference, but I rarely run into those.
I typically rush explosive ammo tech, too, and never past that. No need.
I love the ship explosions. Shogun 2 is probably the only total war, where I like the naval battles
From what i seen it looks exactly like tw Empire naval battles.
only very early game naval battles. Later on it gets more interesting and also more fast paced than Empire battles.@@archangel8172
@@archangel8172FoTS are all steamships, no need to worry about wind. Makes a big difference to Empire
@@dangbar200 In late game you can get access to steam ships too, but it's quite a path to get there and honestly I find the first rate or heavy first rate ships much superior. They just have a lot more durability and fire power. Haven't played FoTS but it looks really cool to me, I find the canons and guns in this game to be the improved Empire mechanics. In fact, when I see these I really want CA to make a Victoria Total War... If it was made with the love they used in Shogun 2 it would be epic.
@@SilverSoulxd steam frigates in ETW are niche but incredibly powerful if use right; also one of th efew ships that can effectively overcome the "chain shot abuse" of smaller ships (the ones who inexplicably have better range and accuracty, which lets them demast enemy ships of the line with impunity) as steam frigates are largly immune to chain shot, are very fast and have devastating firepower at close range. (iirc they use the same guns as carronade frigates)
Trust Legend to figure out the naval equivalent of letting the enemy rush his position on a hill
another trick in the campaign is the fact that ship repairing is hella expensive, so you gotta need to hit and run. Thats why kotetsu are so op: their range with just 1 cannon can destroy entire fleets without getting at range. idk what that cannon ball is made of, but man, it hits hard.
kotetsu are basically monitors, you can easily defeat one yourself with a wooden frigate as long as the kotetsu doesnt get lucky on the first two shots. a L'Ocean or a Roanoke are beasts, however.
@@Pilvenuga yeah, they are the snipers of the sea, with their cons too. thats why i always bring 2 or 3 per fleet. The thing is ive played 1 campaign and didnt remember the kotetsu being that op. 1 volley and boom, one ship down.
Also you can bait enemy ships with the Kotetsu by reversing while still shooting with its front cannon while your other ships are in position to fire once enemy ships are in range
@kolpere1625 It's steel, but it's 300 pounds of steel. The RL Kotetsu's main gun was named a "300 pounder". Every other ship in the game carries maybe "32 pounders", so it's almost 10 times as much steel.
Legend's deployment is a real naval tactic called "Crossing the T". In real-life is obviously harder to pull-off as commanders won't charge in a line if they see the enemy deploying it, but it was sucessfull a couple of times. The most famous rather fittingly is in the Battle of Tsushima were admiral Togo annihilated the Russian 2nd and 3rd fleet.
The Russian 2 Pacific Squadron was more a danger to itself than others (unless you were a civilian fishing vessel) destroying them as Tsushima wasn't much of a feat.
this strategy alrdy exist since ancient times i think.. battle of Salamis by the Greek against persian Navy the example. In First Punic war the carthaginian somehow failed to win with this formation.
Admiral Nelson once overcome this strategy by manipulating the prevailing wind.. (dunno what that mean) at battle of trafalgar
@@Gitsmasher you mean the wind gauge i think. Essentially crossing the T doesn't look like what is happening in this video. Trafalgar is a good example of someone actually crossing the T, in the sense that nelson did it. The french and spanish deployed in a defensive line formation, which nelson crossed at two locations. Allowing him to destroy 1 enemy ship with two of his own ships throughout the battle. He was able to cross it by using the wind gauge, aka having the wind in your sails while the enemy is facing the wind.
Legend's tactic here is not that of nelson, nor is he really crossing the T like the first comment. He deployed defensively and the AI is no admiral nelson
true,the battle of surigao strait was devastating,the US navy battleship already lining up for fire but the IJN just banzai charge their ships through the mouth of hell.
@@Gitsmasher Nelson made use of the wind to smash into a column of French and Spanish ships effectively severing the line of communication, crossing the T is effective at bringing a broadside to bare but it's not the final argument in naval tactics especially in the age before large naval broadsides were around. If you're not sure what prevailing wind means you probably aren't qualified enough to comment about how the Carthaginian formation lost the battle.
Small bit of cheese tips with Shogun 2 naval battles: You can let it fire with AI control, then immediately fire a second volley with manual control, they both have their own reload timers
THIS! I do this with the HMS-Warrior all the time and it's magnificent xD
@@mrboeing1 Satisfaction guaranteed
Naval battles are usually boring for me, but after playing Shogun 2 I really think naval battles aren't that difficult for CA to implement in modern titles such as warhammer. They are vastly more fun and nuanced than those in Rome 2 onwards.
One of the big problems in Warhammer is that naval battles don't work for all factions, really. While Norsca and the Elves could have a fun battle of axe throwers vs archers and boarding actions... the Dwarfs will roll up with cannons, and the Empires galleons are just so tactically superior that they'd steamroll (literally for the dwarfs) everything.
@@iainballas So basically the entire Game's roster is such an incoherent mess, a naval system would never work?
@@iainballas dwarves have literal ironclads, elves have giant ships made out of silver(or rather they're grown out of wood that has qualities of silver) that shoot magic in all directions, dark elves ride around island fortresses and chaos has literal demonic ships that act like sea monsters. How are galleons superior to all of that?😅
@@iainballas doesn't Bretonnia has the most advanced navy?
@@iainballas That's where the intelligence of the developer comes forth. Balancing things out, such as making the dwarven ships much more sturdy, but slower, and fewer in quantity because they are much more expensive, whereas, for example, skaven ones are cheap makeshifts but skaven can fill loads and loads of ships. I'm sure there are ways to make naval combat engaging and not entirely broken.
Another way of looking at it: maybe certain fleets aren't suitable to traverse the seas and are limited to sea close to land, or maybe all fleets function this way but each faction has an advantage, a quality that makes every fleet viable, with nuance and tactical skill. Example: would a Norscan fleet sink an entire Empire fleet? Probably not, but would a Norscan fleet outsmart an empire fleet into a disadvantageous scenario where the battlefield is a sea in turmoil amidst a storm, or while raining, so that the line of sight is reduced? Probably.
That's my point. Many things can be done to make naval battles as nuanced as land ones. Even some factions could have sea constructs rather than vessels: animated ships so to speak. That would be another layer of interesting possibilities.
All in all, I get you. It takes a lot of work, but it is true things can be done.
Make sure to repair your ships while the enemy is running away. It'll make the port repairs cheaper
Hi there, naval battle fan here ( i sill rank play Empire naval battles sometimes)
Only thing i owuld chawnge in your strat is turning the Bow of the ship you are repairing towards the enemy presenting a better armored and smaller target.
Going zickzack also fucks with their aim a lot and you can do it without moving because you have paddlewheels.
Other then that is bunhing up enemeis and making them shoot each other the way to go.
Some tips apart from that:
Maximum firepower is btw archived by planting a ship between 2 enemies so boths sides keep firing and caushing routing waves because of damage in short time.
Same goes for full broadside with multiple ships, once you got the big liners it becomes an instant flight button which can be combined with smaller ships for boarding and forcing surrenders.
Biggest problem with that is that it takes forever in FOTS to actually get the ship in to board it while the ever present instant explosion is always a main threat for fast ships
You cant stunlock a ship by boarding of a smaller ship, it will keep firing but you can keep in in place so you can place yours on the Prow.
Maximum Bullshit unlocks with everything sporting Torpedos, Mortars, Rockets and generally everything that flies in an arc but seeing where i am commenting this my guess is you already figured that one out.
I absolutely love naval battles in Total War, and i regret, that they are so often not included in these games.
I wish CA could make another game with that level of immersion in battles.
The game designer already left bro, he's too old but gave us incredible total wars
Fots naval battles kinda slap, and I also think they have a far bigger importance compared to NTW and ETW due to the naval bombardment feature.
The tactic used here is simply known as Crossing the T. All your ships have full broadsides while the enemy pushes to close the range.
If you're curious to know more on it, look up Admiral Togo and the Battle of Tsushima of the Russo Japanese War. Hell, Togo was probably a Midshipman at this time! At Tsushima, he implemented a wheeling formation while crossing the Russian T, so that not only could all his ships fire full broadsides, but that when his fleet wheeled about he could use the other, undamaged sides.
Crossing the t is not a static maneuvre and uses raking fire, not broadside.
@@mandowarrior123 Static or at speed, it's the positioning that matters. For older ships, such as ships of line, sure, you would fire as you bear (Which is simply how you stagger your fire), but crossing the T isn't limited to that era. HMS Hood's little playdate with Bismarck is an example. In both that case and in this video, one force is advancing towards the other, and the positioning is relatively the same.
I love it when ships turn into fireworks in FOTS.
Absolutely love naval battles in FoTS
its the brutal nature of it all, if you let fires grow out of control - you lose your ship
if you let the hull go too low, you can sink
if you let the hull go down a bit, the chance of a magazine detonation skyrockets
never a dull moment in a FoTS naval battle
@@Pilvenugaone of my ironclads sank once with the gatling gun still firing and causing enough damage to make an enemy ship rout
I really love the absolute cinematic beauty of Shogun and FOTS naval battles. Makes me really want to see an improved version of this for Warhammer 3 so we can have fleets of warships going at each other. It'd also make room for naval focused Legendary Lords and give Lohkir even more uniqueness being the naval lord for the Dark Elves.
Just a tip for FOTS naval battles, you can get your ships to fire twice if u use manual mode, just wait until they fire their guns and go into manual mode to shoot them again without reloading. Its really usefull for dishing out more damage with fewer ships
I know I'm coming to this late, but UA-cam recs and all. Full disclaimer, I would by no means consider myself a Navy enjoyer, I'm just talking about what I've absorbed. In my experience, part of the problem with naval battles is that the tactics are almost completely inverted from army tactics, so trying things that work on land ends up backfiring in the water.
In TW naval battles, I've found decent success using (somewhat era appropriate) ship-of-the-line tactics. That is, position your ships into lines (five or six per line), with your tankiest boys in the front and then in descending order of survivability. The overall plan is to sail past the enemy for a broadside and then hope to wheel around to do what sailors call "crossing the T" (the navy equivalent of a flanking maneuver). Especially when the AI is dumb enough to position ships side-to-side instead of front-to-back, this causes the enemy to expend their first cannonade on your toughest guys, and then you're able to expend round after round on the same few ships as your lines sail past (and your front ships reload as they get turned around). This concentration of fire is usually enough to severally hamper the enemy's DPS potential, if not sink or rout an important ship or two.
At this point, I'll sometimes turn on slow-mo for larger battles because it can get micro intense. From here the goal is to circle around so that your sides face enemy ships' aft or sterns (so that they make the body and you make the cross of a 'T'). This allows all of your strongest guns to fire on the weakest and least dangerous parts of the enemy. Concentrating fire and teaming up against isolated ships is the name of the game until you've picked them off one by one.
That said, the enemy naval battle AI is usually too dumb to require this much strategizing, but I've pulled off some crushing victories this way.
Wow this is rare Legend doing a gimmick battle I want to see more of these disaster battles
Great battle. I love naval battles in FotS, Napoleon, and Empire. The only two minor things I'd change wound be: deploy with the heading out towards the sea instead of towards the land - gives you more options to maneuver, and the other thing is presenting the bow rather than the stern while turning around - less chance to have the rudder shot off, not that it really matters in these games anyway.
Naval battles in FOTS can be easily cheesed by following these steps:
1. You need to be the attacker.
2. You put your ships just outside YOUR max range, so you don't exactly reach the enemy ships.
3. You give broadside fire manually. Yes, your ships are technically out of range, but some of the cannon balls will still hit the enemy ships, and these cannon balls will destroy them while they remain still. It's like fighting a kid who can't fight back.
By doing these, you only need 1 to 2 basic ships in each fleet to keep your naval expanse at a minimal, and they will defend the coast for you perfectly. Every naval battle I fought in this game, I get heroic victory. It's also a very good method to level up your generals.
A similar method can be used in Rome 2 with the catapult ships fire at enemy ships at max range. You just snipe them one by one while they remian absolutely still.
Naval battles from Shogun 2 base game can also be cheesed to reach the same result, but I am already written too much.
The naval battles in FOTS are significantly more fun than vanilla. Something about watching ships sink and explode after being overwhelmed with cannon fire is extremely satisfying
Well in the vanilla it's all about arrows, especially Mori clan with those big ships and the strongest ship focus clan
Vanilla S2 naval combat has some good ideas in it but it's mostly invalidated by the Bow Kobaya (who'se fire arrows make almost all larger ships pointless) and Siege Tower Bunes; the way morale works in naval battles means most ships will rout/surrender the moment they start tanking heavy matchlock fire from siege tower bunes or get lit on fire by flaming arrows; which in urn makes a lot of the larger ships feel useless (heavy bunes and up all have massive boarding crews, but are too slow to catch those small fast ships with powrful ranged weaponry; myself I always just end up spamming siege tower bunes with maybe one or two sengoku bunes to catch fleeing ships and make them surrender.
Well there's a 200ish year difference in naval tech between vanilla and FOTS.
The tip with naval battles is ALWAYS BE THE ATTACKER. The enemy will hold a defensive position. You then place your ships slightly out of range and engage manual firing or manual broadsides. Manual firing, angled correctly, will fire just a bit outside your max range, allowing you to kill the enemy ships without them ever firing a shot. It'll take forever so play at 3x speeds.
Fall of the Samurai was such an awesome expansion. Glad to see other people have just as much love for it as i do for it. Hence all the submissions.
Have a naval battle next to a military port or dry dock and the battle will be aided by land artillery, makes it fun to take out both land and sea targets
There’s just something about naval battles in the gun era total wars that’s almost beautiful
Also expensive is an understatement for some ships (warrior)
I've never image seeing Legend video on Naval Battle. Warhammer 3 fallout really did create a wierd timeline
I saw LegendofTotalWar comments about ship sinking. Actually you can look at the unit card at the bottom of the screen to see if any of the ship is flooding by the water on said unit card. It will slowly rise up as the ship flooded more and more.
In this battle, none of LegendofTotalWar ships is in danger of sinking yet, even the small gunboats as there's no water level rising up on the unit card.
Fire is also observe the same way, if the ship has been set on fire there will be flame burning on the unit card.
What great timing. I'm doing my first FOTS campaign now, and the naval war is really heating up. Was thinking I need to take things to the battle map to gain an edge, but I just know so little about the mode. I'm sure this video and the comments will be a great help.
yeah this vid is pretty good for learning how they go - just note some things, hope this helps 😮:
-ai will rush on attack, but when defending they’ll camp the edge of the battlemap with broadsides facing you, so you’ll have to flank the sides to force them into the map.
-always choose ‘continue’ after winning the battle since theres a very good chance that ships escape when you let the game do it.
-don’t use overheat engine unless you’re using it to kamikaze your ship cause its a very high chance to explode.
-related: kamikazeing ships is a thing like in empire, as ships exploding or even just on fire nearby other ships will spread fire to them.
-explosive shells are super good since the ai often doesn’t move up to iron plating, and explosive shells start fires on wooden(+copper) hulls.
-if you use mines, be warned the ai can see them and their ships will actually weave through them, to make them useful you’ll need to engage their ships while they’re in the minefield to make them turn to fight you.. also, mines will trigger for your ships too.
oh - also, for controlling ships use group formations, as there’s a setting that lets you have ships move in a column instead of side-by side, very useful for avoiding friendly fire
Something to note is that in naval battles, using the formation presets during deployment is actually viable. For Empire, Napoleon & FotS it's mainly the line. Because unlike with land battles and formations set up and locked by the player, the naval line actually behaves smartly. The first ship will go where you click while the rest will follow in it's tracks rather than trying to maintain a stiff line. You are basically playing Snake, excepts it's RTS controls, your snake has something of a turn radius and shoots broadsides. Also, research HE shells. Slightly less range, but they vaporize anything that doesn't have a metal hull, while also greatly boosting the splash radius of hits in shore bombardments.
The key for naval battles is getting the better shot types. Explosive annihilates wooden ships, and ap shells are just better round shot.
You can use broadside to extend your range slightly. This is very useful since the AI when attacked will just form a line and wait. If get JUST out of range you can broadside them to death and take no damage. Dont get within their range or it will activate their AI though.
Ive never seen such bonkers AI ship behavior in FOTS. Normally they come in a perfect ship of the line formation and dont bunch up like this when theyre not flanked. You parking in that bay must have confused the AI hell of a lot :D
bought fots due to these videos and doing a pure traditional units playthrough great fun
I would normally rotate the ships to get both broadsides off, often while passing them in a line, not keep a stationary line
Ironically I stumbled over this video after I'd just finished a naval battle as the Satsuma in a campaign I'd recently reloaded to avoid going to war with the Saga. Perhaps it's an omen of things that could've been XD.
FotS Naval tip: always get explosive shells (they have slightly shorter range so be careful to switch mid battle) That and bigger is always better.
So glad your back to these Total Wars man. Keep up the amazing work ❤
Legend: "I am not good in naval battles".
Also Legend: proceeds to annihilate the enemy fleet with most of his fleet barely scratched.
When you are Sun Tsu of Total War no battle is a problem.
Tbf he didn't do much in this battle because he was the defender. And Fots naval ai is a bit retarded. Ntw or Etw did better in that regard.
Man this is awesome looking. Imagine like, dwarf battleships and empire galleons in tww it would be so sick.
I really struggled with Naval Battles in FOTS, I think they were very impressive and quite fun but just sucked a bit at them, not quite as easy and setting up one Nanban Trade Ship at max range.
For naval battles, focus on local superiority and spreading damage out evenly.
So form a tango line and sail toward a flank. Then sail around the back of them so that your ships are constantly blasting a small number of them while they're all in the way of each other. By the time you snake around back of them, you'll outnumber them and win easily.
That said, you obviously did a great job here.
For five minutes thought you were the AI Fleet and wondered what the Hell was going on.
great to see naval battles for this game again. they are so awesome to watch.
One mistake in what you said: the color changing on the firing cone for the cannons doesn't mean that there are enemies range, it means that those cannons are reloading. It can appear that enemies are in range, because when enemies get in range they'll fire and then be reloading, and they'll fire immediately when finished reloading if enemies are still in range.
Excited to see a naval battle, especially on my favorite TW. I'm surprised he couldn't win or try a few auto-resolves, especially with 2 of the frigates.
BEST TOTAL WAR GAME
You actually want all the damage from a battle to be on one side, so the other side of all your ships are fresh for the next battle. If a ship is getting heavily damaged, you can disengage it by slowing it down and allowing the next ship in the line to move up and provide it cover. It will take its guns out of the fight, but you would have lost those guns anyway if it would have been destroyed, and at least this way you don't lose the ship. You can flank by moving faster ships up to the fore or aft of the enemy line, so that they may shoot down the bow or stern of ships, but don't flank by going to the opposite side of their line of battle (like you would with a land army); any guns not pointed at your ships are guns that are out of the fight.
FoTS got one beautiful memorable music in the campaign map.
Personally, i did a co-op Shogun 2 campaign awhile back and my buddy controlled the lands but I was controlling the seas protecting our ports. Point being, I love naval over land battles
In my experience naval battles are the easiest to fight battle in Fall of the samurai, and the thign is, you only need 1 ship to win that onw ahip and only limited damage. My tipp also: try to fight any naval battles as attacker, as the naval ai is kinda borked there,. The Ai willl sit at it's spawn, even if it much more ships then you (like i said, you can basically win ANY battle wiht just one ship(though probably not if that ship is a Kotetsu), especially on attack. Due to the Ai wqaiting, you can sail you ship up to the ai (the most roight side ship, just do an attack move, thqat works with most maps), until you are are bit out of auto attack range(if you have access to armorpiecing shots you can even stop earlier). Do not get too close though, because the Ai will react if you are just slightly out of sid AA range. Once you get there (and not got too close, you'll get a feeling to it with time, trust me) you simply turn broadside to the closest ship, switch on manual broadside and start blasting away. You shots MAY hit the water close to the enemy, but do not frett: If it is with one ships width when using basic shot, you will produce underwater hits, so continue blasting (though if you are unsure, creep a little bit closer if are comfortable with it, but be aware, with mutleple ships in the enemy fleet the reaction point may be closer as with single ones). With armor piercing shots, you will notice that the real range of the guns is quite a bit longer on manual fire, then auto, and even if you hit the water, the AP shells tend to bounce a bit. If you got APHE shells, they even ignite into fire shrapnels when ricocheting and those shrapnels travel quite abit and setting fires on the enemy.
Due to this slightly borked naval AI i found putting generals on ships is the best way to train them real quick
I am loving these consistent Shougun 2 uploads
I love FOTS naval battles. They are so satisfying, especially when I have 1 or 2 ironclads with HE rounds destroying all the ai fleets.
I have to admit I was skeptical on the switch from WH3 to historical at first, but I’m really enjoying the FOTS content. I didn’t think I would like historical battles since I thought it would be melee/cav/archers only but the gun fights are pretty awesome. Naval battles are pretty interesting too, although I don’t think I’d want to do this 50 times a campaign. Not sure you could get a whole lot of variety with flat ocean maps… maybe they can add a maelstrom or lochness monster or something in a game like warhammer. That would spice things up.
Historical total war battles are actually way more interesting than WH battles. I have 1000+ hours in WH, but I now realise that the game is basically only about monsters (zero strategy in that), spells (zero strategy, pure Dota) and ranged troops. Infantry tactics doesn’t work there, Cavrly nearly doesn’t work there… it’s just so boring at this point.
So basically there’s even less variety than, for example Shogun 2, where every unit is viable and you can base your whole strategy around it. Where you can pull off great victories just because you have a good plan. In WH you just abuse the AI with stuff the don’t know how to deal with.
I still love WH, but I can see clearly that CA fucked up with it. If they actually built on what was good in historical games, warhammer would’ve been the best game ever.
there are some upgrades you can get for ports in FOTS where there are gun battery's setup on islands around the map when navel battles take place near the ports and they kind of act like towers but for navel combat but yea in the early game its pretty much just ocean maps or maybe a island or 2 that can block sightlines/movement (or if its a bad storm the waves can also effect the ships making it harder to hit targets)
naval battle for shogun 2 and napoleon are absolute banger ngl
By the time the video was up I myself fought a naval battle as Saga pretty much in the same spot. But not against Satsuma. Had a tough time too. Coincidences...
Tactics were spot on for this engagement. Could have given yourself a longer engagement by delaying from Map Center into your defensive position, but then you wouldn’t have gotten that beautiful 2-wave attack from the AI.
Control groups are pretty slick in these naval battles, but it does become a task to form, break, and reform them.
That said, you can quite elegantly manage a hit-and-run engagement at maximum range for the double-shot cheese, and only micro switchbacks.
AH YES!!! THE EXPLODING SHIP. THAT'S WHY I LOVE SHOGUN FALL OF THE SAMURAI NAVAL B ATTLE
Oh yes! Naval battles in FOTS are so much fun, with batteries and steam power!
If only we could get a Crimean War TW or Italian Wars of Independence TW
if you can, repair your ships in battle before you end and you can save some money on repairs.
this is a huge deal! in some battles you can save 1k+ koku on repairs by doing field repairs in battle as the enemy is routing (and sinking at the same time)
Thats a new lesson for me , thnks!
I would love naval battles in WH3, even if they were just straight outta the historical titles. Norsca could only build wooden ships, obviously.
These battles make me want to rewatch Master and Commander.
The ships for both sides independently--i.e. there are separate cooldowns for each broadside. There are a couple of consequences from this:
First, if you try to attack from both sides you effectively double their fire rate.
Second, in the base game when you use cannon trade ships, you can fire faster by constantly spinning the ship in place. The default hotkeys for that are 'L' and ';' and you can queue some in groups of units at a time
Naval battles are always a welcome sight, and sad reminder what could have been for Warhammer
The cannon-era Nautical Battles in Total War are so easily winnable by the player if you have even a ship more.
The AI basically borks out, like it did here and you win.
Naval battles in FOTS were fun but the maps needed to be way bigger for them to be any sort of tactically engaging challenge
yeah especially in the port , you litterally have only a castle size map to move around lol
Tip of the day:
win every battle with just one ship
go to manual mode and slowly move toward enemy ship stop in out range, shoot, little move forward , shoot , little more, shoot do this until you find a range that enemy ships get hit but don't realize that until exploding
Well I tried it. My ships wotn even shoot in manual mode. Also, they explode so fast. This game must have some pretty severe bugs. Everytime I download FoTS I want to kill myself from the naval combat experience. Its awful. Unbearable. Its no surprise CA abandoned naval combat. It makes 0 sense.
Naval battle needs to be mastered as well... second highest income after tax is sea trade and dont forget about enemy harassing / bombarding your coastial settlement lol. A must learn skill! just imagine yourself as the marine in one piece
I used to argue that Empire/Napoleon had the best naval battles in the series because Galleon era combat is so classic, but I dunno, FOTS makes a good argument for the combat centered around ironsides and early dreadnoughts.
I love the shogun 2 naval battles, I hated the ones in empire & napoleon because they feel so slow, but they really improved the speed & pacing so it feels fun & engaging in Shogun 2.
Every time I even think about clicking the overheat engine button my ship blows up
Naval combat in Rome 2 reminded me of bumper cars.
always, always, always research explosive shot in Fall of Samurai. Its the only way to beat AI fleets, its an airburst shell that sets ships on fire and breaks morale.
It also upgrades naval bombardment, which is my favorite thing in FOTS. It's logical, but no one tells you that
Fun boats are good for tanking shots. It sounds dumb but they are cheap to build and repair. They are also small, making them harder to hit.
Im terrible with naval battles, I just know there is a trick/exploit to shoot twice. Other than that, I also know that you can research or upgrade the gun boats in some ways, so that they drop torpedos, and they can destroy ironclads. If you need your ship to turn to the other side, where there might be more cannons/ less damaged cannons, using the left/right button in the bottom left is the easiest way to do this. Thats all I know
These are GREAT battles
I loved naval battles in Empire
Imagine if Warhammer has the physics of Shogun 2's guns... man.
Did not require Legend to use a hill 10/10
Great video!
Every time I fight a naval battle the AI just sits braindead in the corner and doesn't begin moving until I come into weapons range.
if you're attacking they'll wait for you to come, and vice versa
FoTS ship tactics: get explosive ammo, cross the T, win. Going at it with classic column and then turning to broadside is pretty good, since any ship that got set ablaze can be easily retreated to repair behind the others. And since AI is clueless about naval combat and tends to bunch up, explosions tend to cause chain reaction. The only important part is having explosive shells, since if the enemy has them and you don't, it will get bloody.
Correct me here if I'm wrong, but overheat engine only causes fire to the ship? At least that's my experience.
The only hard thing about Naval battles is if you get unlucky and a ship just explodes. It does get harder once the AI has explosive rounds because they are very good against Wooden hulls.
Right it takes practice with your ship types for a grasp or feel of timing a turn. the advantage here is the winds not an issue for steamers. line a breast to a point then turning for salvos down the line. prior to turrets. stern rakes are still valuable as you dont set to chain shot for sails. Crew Quality leadership not same as AOS Napoleonic era.. People take less tiem on naval because it can be time consuming..
Dude where does legend of total war live. Because it seems like for the past week or two i literally wake up and he posted a video like an hour ago im not complaining its just so convenient I’ve literally been having my morning cup of coffee while watching this keep up the good work brother you’ve made my morning’s a lot more interesting.
Loving the shogun 2 videos thanks legend
One video i would really like to see is capturing the Black Ship in Shogun 2. I've only done it once with extreme difficulty, and it basically cost me 2 full stacks of ships. I think it would be an interesting scenario of someone has it
I really like the early modern naval battles from Empire/Napoleon and shogun 2 it just sucks that there just isn't much of it, I was really hoping we'd get something like it from the later warhammers but I guess they don't feel there is enough demand for it.
It's not so much the lack of demand but that they don't think it's worth the resources it would take, at this point there's almost 30 factions, that's 30 new rosters to make, and a new one for every new faction added, to make things worse, of those 30 factions, only like 10 of them had a naval faction in man o war, or a single ship in dreadfleet, naval battles would be a very resource intensive thing to work on, even and to make things even worse those fleets often had less then 5 ship types, so to reach 7 units for an entire battle type for everything they'd need to make like 170 new units, though if you count flyers they have in there main armies you'd probably be closer to 120
The auto resolve for naval battles is absolutely broken. This was not a disaster battle.
With the setup Legend used, he could have almost just set the ships up and let it play out on fast forward
No captain can go far wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.
The naval battles in Shougun 2 are great.
4:00 boom
Now when I think about it - I wish a TW naval or TW marine
My idea is that you have to focus and conquer many Islands and trading post
Problem would be how the map should look like in order to have some variety.
This is one of those things that "No it's really good that they didn't try to make this work."
There's a useful bug. After your ship fires a salvo you can enter the first person mode and immedietaly fire again.
Im so happy to see Shogun 2 gameplay 🥲
Dang, something I'm actually better at that Legend in Total War hahaha. Naval battles have always been my favorite. In Rome 2 DEI I just sunk 5 full armies of Carthaginians (100 units) with a fleet of 11 ships. Didn't lose a single one. Ramming for the win.
11:10 Personally, I only build ships (well, I guess unless I'm playing Tosa and have to get out of Shikoku, and who get more bang for their buck from naval support anyway) in time for the Realms divide (or war declaration cascade that amounts to as much): when you get raided by literally everyone and get sent naval invasions from the other side of the Japan, the investment in my mind is worth it compared to the cost of putting out fires. But at this stage of the campaign, the fleet costs as much as an extra land army, or building a new build each turn, an opportunity cost that I simply don't find worth it.
having a kanko maru to guard every one of your ports is only a 100 koku per turn upkeep, the ability to keep trade up makes up for the cost and with the cheese of port battles you get to farm heroic victories easily
@@Pilvenuga That makes sense, but if I'm successful avoiding the alliance cascade before it becomes unavoidable with RD (that is to say, not making allies to the rescue of which I'd have to come, etc), there's one enemy at a time, they might not try to blockade any port, the cost of protecting ports is per port and present even if no one tries to blockade (plus requires the upfront investment of getting the ship), and if they do then this blockade is short-lived simply through virtue of that faction not lasting long as they are the sole target.
But I guess that is something to do if the risk might be realized (war with naval powers), I will keep that in mind for subsequent playthroughs. In any event it's not a real "fleet" in the sense that this disaster battle has, with upkeep no less than the trade it's purportedly protecting.
you only need to make a dirt cheap ship , make your army get in and immediately land on evemy land in 1 turn , thats how i always play when playing as chosokabe or tosa, because naval battle is really boring and hard, enemy got a boost and the naval map in fots is quite small, you often cant do much better than autoresolve unless you got really strong ship, but they are expensive as hell
That was a lot of detonations.
The AI crossed the T, but in the entirely wrong way.
The secret to FoTS naval battles is get one ironclad to tank all the hits.
Love the ships!!