Sea strategies
We're under attack!
There are some common newbie mistakes against naval attacks. The worst one is to build another ship at the dock when your ships are hopelessly outnumbered. By the time it is finished, it will be the sole survivor of your fleet and be killed instantly.Another mistake is to use bowmen against ships. They have far less hitpoints than ships, with a comparable range. Use them only if a ship is busy attacking something and already severly damaged or if you have a a longer range (either due to better upgrades or because you are standing on top of a hill).
The best way to strike back is to build a dock at a different part of the island, protected by a tower. If you do not have siege weapons yet, you will not be able to hold it if your enemy finds it, though. If he does not have many ships left either, you can rebuild your fleet from there. Do not forget to build a transport - if you have an ally, he might keep the enemy busy if you are forced to leave the island and start over with building up your civilization in an exile. If you can hold your island, defend it heavily with towers and a few priests. They will hold back land invasions and give you time to recover (hopefully).
Your situation is fatal if Hittite ships are attacking you. Their +4 range upgrade gives them the chance to attack everything, including towers, from a save distance, and if your island is small, there will be almost no spot to which you can retreat. You will have to rely on your ally then. If he cannot wipe out the enemy fleet, you will probably be toast :) Build up a strong fleet early on if you have hittite opponents, but beware their archers! You will have to get triremes to win, and this requires advancing to the Iron Age.
Iron Age
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| Trireme: 200 HP Attack: 12, range: 7 |
- their range is too short to attack fully upgraded towers
- they are weaker than triremes in direct combat
- your gold reserves may be too low
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| Catapult Trireme: 120 HP Juggernaught: 200 HP Attack: 35, range: 9/10 |
High seas combat
First, an advice that should be obvious: Keep your fleet together! Of course separating a ship or two for scouting or surveillance does not weaken your armada very much, but never divide it into two or more parts! This would allow your opponent to take out all your ships with few losses.Move ships away from catapult trireme shots. Unless a lot of ships are firing in all directions, it is always possible to evade one or two catapult shots, and since their damage is quite high (35), this can decide the battle for you. Your task gets more difficult if your opponent has researched ballistics, but if their are not many ships left (less than 6), you have a better control and can even use that upgrade to your advantage (keep changing your direction, and all enemy ships will miss). Do not move around your ships otherwise, because they will stop firing, but still be hit. Do not flee with a few heavily damaged ships - they will be destroyed anyway, and you will tell your enemy where your dock is. Of course you should back off when your first ship sees a huge armada and your navy is smaller :)
Protect your catapult triremes with normal triremes. They are cheaper and have more hit points, which makes them stronger in direct combat. Only juggernaughts are stronger than triremes, but this upgrade is very expensive. It is also quite powerful, though, and if you are playing with the Phoenician tribe, getting this one is crucial for winning the game. To be able to upgrade sooner, let your ally pay tribute to you so you have to pay only half of the cost.
Repairing your ships
After some testing and calculations, I have found out how the costs for repairing a ship are calculated:
| Ship type | total HP |
repair cost /100 HP (in wood/gold) |
costs for repairing 50% of the full amount of HP |
| Fishing Boat | 45 | 57 | 12 (1/4 of the production cost) |
| Fishing Ship | 75 | 32 | 12 |
| Trade Boat | 200 | 25 | 25 |
| Merchant Ship | 250 | 20 | 25 |
| Light Transport | 150 | 50 | 38 |
| Heavy Transport | 200 | 38 | 38 |
| Scout Ship | 120 | 57 | 68 (1/2 of the production cost) |
| War Galley | 160 | 42 | 68 |
| Trireme | 200 | 34 | 68 |
| Catapult Trireme | 120 | 57/32 | 68/38 |
| Juggernaught | 200 | 34/19 | 68/38 |
When looking at that table, you will probably find it surprising or unfair that repairing 100 HP damage on a Trade boat costs 25 wood, but only 20 wood after upgrading it to a Merchant ship. Why? Well, 100 HP means 50% damage for a trade boat, which costs 25 wood to be repaired. A merchant ship has 250 HP, though, and thus repairing 50% (125 HP) costs also 25 wood. While you can spare resources by repairing fishing boats, merchant ships and transports, repairing a war ships costs as much as producing a new one. You still get an important tactical advantage by repairing it, though.
So the relative repair cost among a "family" of ship types is constant and not affected by the upgrades. Something else that is interesting is that a scout ship with 50% damage (60 HP) does not get +40 HP for the upgrade to the war galley, but only 20 HP, so it will have 50% damage (80 HP) afterwards as well, which means you do not have to care whether you repair a ship prior to upgrading it or not.
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