piotreh1

I also had rather disappointing experiences with land battles. As long as I brought all possible slots to the land battle, I managed to annihilate enemy on both easy and normal difficulties with 20:1 kill ratio. Most of the times without even one reload. I have something like 600 hours in UGCW, so I assume it helps. Still without challenge land battles are just time sink with little reward in terms of fun. EDIT: As previous poster stated - I'm not trying to bash the game here. I hope it will be taken as constructive criticism and can be fixed with some balancing of the battles.

I think you should aim to deploy as many ships as battle allows. It will help with training crew/officers and even ships with useless guns can board effectively or be used as bait. I am playing US campaign for second time and bought only one ship from admiralty on the first run. Capturing ships is only reliable way to get better ships as admiralty offers ships that are far behind what is deployed by enemy - e.g. I captured Leda class 5th rate as one of my first 5th rates - you can mount on it guns that can bring down SOL which not many 5th rates can do. Best class offered in admiralty for me was 5th rate Diana and it appeared when I had 4 SOL, 2 Endymion, 1 Leda, 1 Diana and 6 other 5th rates. Buying ships will bleed you of cash you need for crews/guns/research. Captured ship are probably 30-40% of total rep/cash you can get and seems necessary to expand and upgrade your navy throughout campaign. It might be sub-optimal from cash perspective but I build up roster to 10+ ships and 6 transporters as soon as possible. This allow to fill slots for mission and guarantee success in Point of Interest.

Agree that Cerberus is slow. After first run on easy I put less focus on speed and relied more on having good guns and experienced crew in current run on normal. Need to try woolrich in next playthrough. I always go for 25% speed for second perk. No idea how to get 3rd perk to be honest. I still cannot get it despite taking minimal losses on the crew most of the time (maybe 5% of all crew lost during battle). I have 25% recovery of lost crew and 25% faster training - still don't have even one 3 star crew. My approach throughout whole campaign was to move most experience crew to best ship if got such and restore losses with veterans. In general, interface for crew stats lost a lot of visibility in comparison to UG:CW due to bonus/malus from officers. Also same button for adding reserves and veterans is just confusing - I have a feeling it is not straightforward mechanism.

SKG2 Quite surprised to read you prefer Porcupines over Cerberus. Porcupine has 2 more guns I guess but at the prize of ~50 men on board which I found on example of valcour very bad to defend from boarding. Also out of 30 guns some are on upper deck which can only mount very weak guns. Cerberus can take 28 Desaugliers which I think is best gun for this rate of ship. Haven't used Woolich gun at all. How does it perform in comparison to Desaugliers, Long Borgards and Congreves?

I used grapeshot pretty much only when I was sure I want to capture and use the ship later on - it saves money on repair (especially for SOL). In terms of guns I found 9 PDR Desaguliers are very good early to mid game and getting rid of Armstrong guns should be prioritized. Then I used Congreve (all caliber), Long Borgards (all caliber), French rebored. All other guns seem to be unattractive in general either because of penetration or range. Cannot say I tested all guns, but it seems penetration is absolutely key and above mentioned guns not only have highest penetration it also falls slowly across range. Looking forward to tests of others to find all the intricacies as without it all the choice is just pain to scroll the list

I always found last 5-10 battles in UG:CW least interesting and frequently haven't finished campaign at all. Sadly, I can see it is the same for me in UA:AOS. I am somewhere around end of chapter 4 of US campaign for the second time and feel more excited to start again then to keep going and actually finish it. At this point I have 6 ships of the lines with best guns on 4 of them. I have 400k in cash and only area I lag is ship improvement which I could easily buy but would prefer to invest into level 3 that I haven't had enough rep to research yet. Next battle is sth like 10 SOL vs 9 SOL and I just can't force myself to do it as it is either painfully slow to avoid lots of damage or incredibly bloody. I expect more of the same throughout the rest of campaign. Is it only me who feels late game is no longer as much fun? Have you had similar experiences with UG:CW?

I just finished valcour on normal mode with 3 cerberus class 5th rates equipped with gun with D in the name (don't recall it at this point). I must say it was pretty fun for me. Good guns allow to do damage to every enemy ship, but avoiding boarding and keeping wind advantage is fairly challenging. I sunk 9 ships in total and escaped after something like 12 hours of battle. Would like to see someone wipe out enemy as it would take me approx. 5 more hours to clear the sea. I never skipped on the battle in UGCW nor now in UA:AS. I agree some missions in both games seem to me as annoyance rather than pleasure, but clearly every person will have different taste. As you can see above valcour was fun for me. In terms of swapping - I will play every battle anyway as most fun for me is strategic aspect and skipping battles robs you from resources necessary to optimize from strategic point of view.

Restarted the campaing on normal mode now. I can definitely state that AI is smarter and I found myself outmaneuvered couple of times and chasing enemy outside of my range while being shot at the turns. Haven't been thinking that with wind blowing at one side of your ship also exposes bottom of it but at the same time you are still beyond enemy range anyway so I guess it is still valid approach. I have captured SOL quite early and agree now that grapeshot is wrong approach. Surrounding as much possible and firing with 2-4 ships at once is the way to go - with that in mind I struggle a bit to find use for grapeshot aside of weakening transports before boarding. I have been also targeting rudder more and more. New observation I noticed is that crew will fix it fairly quick anyway which poses a question again if masts/sails are better to demobilize as damage is permanent there. Regarding Land Battles: after playing UGCW maybe my skill makes it boring. I pretty much deploy 3 per ship units of infantry/marines with all ship slots filled. Only challenge is to get as close to 20:1 casualties ratio to save money instead of 6:1. I wipe out enemy all the time and sometimes even have to wait until timer ends. Maybe on hard mode its different or something, but it's just a filler for me in US campaign at this point with no challenge nor depth. EDIT: Maybe unit limit for land battles is too large now as I am yet to have a battle where I cannot surround enemy after initial skirmish. Regarding upgrades: in my first play through I went for lighter guns, faster sails. Now I am wondering if there is diminishing return for it and consider investing in some ships into faster turn/acceleration instead - would be happy to hear some suggestions on value of each upgrade (probably per ship class as it seems to be key factor)

Hi guys, I'm wondering what reliable ways of conducting naval battles have been uncovered so far. I've watched some youtube videos but couldn''t find content that would make sense - most of the people spin in circles (against the wind as well), bump into their own ships, fire at sails all the time taking more losses in one battle than should be taken in 3. After sinking 70 hours in US campaign I noticed couple of things: 1. Always stay on the side of wind that increases your range and decreases enemy range - if your and enemy ships are of similar rate you can fire more shots on the enemy and eliminate them one by one 2. Sailing in the same direction and shooting side by side does not make sense as losses are too big 3. Sailing two ships on the sides of the enemy does not make sense as one enemy ship does twice damage 4. If ship rate is to big only option seems to be grapeshot until you can board them 5. Firing at sails make sense when you need to escape 6. If you want to outmaneuver enemy you need to fire couple of shots at the rudder and not the sails. After that you can pretty easily sail around and keep firing at the back or front of the ship (I guess this is most damage effective) 7. I'm experimenting with chasing last ship in enemy line. As enemy is very likely to chase one of your ships with its whole line it is possible to put fast ship at the end of his line and zig-zag while putting shot in his back 8. I guess it might be effective to put bunch of carronades on your ship and fight in very close distance. I had one mission where we spent most of the time within 100m and ship I equipped with carronades decimated every ship that was in the cone - haven't repeated it later as drop in penetration for carronades discourages me to stay on it. 9. One thing that bothers me is that AI keeps chasing you with whole line. Most of AI ships don't fire a shot during the battle while you pick them one by one. Is it the same on all difficulties? How do you guys fight naval battles? Any comments to my observations?