How to win Yarmouth/ No American Cannon for Purchase?

[BrandonMo]

Does anyone have any tips on this one? I have been able to either sink or take over most of the other British ships in short order. But the 500-man frigate destroys most of my ships in even shorter order, and when my cannons do cause damage, it barely makes a dent. Most hit but do no damage. Also, is it a bug that the American campaign never has any naval guns you can buy? I've never seen any for purchase on any campaign I've played or started over, so I never buy ships since I can't outfit them with cannon, only ships I take from the enemy as they're already outfitted.

[doublebuck]

Well it all depends on what you have available for the battle.  My simple solution is to first capture the 2 British war ships then get the transport ship once that is done you may have to fight a little with Lenox (500) ship but what I do is send a sloop or cutter that has explosive barrels which you get that tech at the start of the campaign and the moment I maneuver the sloop to intercept Lenox so I set it on fire and the mission ends in success so for me there is no reason to fight the other ships that are left.

Edited January 22, 2020 by doublebuck

[BrandonMo]

Interesting, I have yet to use the fire barrels, I will give that a shot!

[Anthropoid]

What is the exact sequence to use the fire barrels? Get close and set it on fire; or, get close, grapple, set it on fire, and abandon ship? What happens to the crew? Does the barrel ship need to have guns?

I did try this at one point in one of the early Yank missions and it didn't work out like I wanted, though I cannot recall why. I think maybe I took the guns off of it and then selected "board" and before I could tell them to set it on fire they fled or something . . .

[Anthropoid]

I just now won Yarmouth. This on Easy/Easy, though I don't know if it would necessarily affect that battle.

I had one 5th Rate, two 6th Rate and two large unarmed merchants (originally Old True Love and Margaret). Crew was maxed out on all the gun ships, and about 295 crew on both merchants. Also, the merchants both had 3 companies of 225+ marines. I set the 5th Rate and one 6th Rate as the main force, and the second 6th Rate as the last Reinforcement. The two merchants were in the second wave of reinforcements.

First thing I did it capture the small lead Brit ship with my main force. I have not been using Manual Aim and by focusing my fire on the foremast that seemed to concentrate it sufficiently. Didn't actually do that much mast damage but caused them to surrender faster maybe. By this time HMS Lenox (the big 500 crew monster) was getting close so I fled back toward the reinforcement. What ensued next was controlled chaos, and some combination of good tactics and luck. I managed to capture a second small ship, but sent both the captures toward map edge. Meanwhile the marine ships were pursuing HMS Lenox intent on boarding and already had her crew down to like 350 just from rifle fire. Not sure this is good balance when a ship without cannon but with like 700 marine and ~300 crew on board can do that much personnel damage just with rifles. Might be, I'm not sure. The rest of my ships arrived at the scene of the pell-mell between my small captured ship, the marine ships and HMS Lenox. Lenox got a lucky hit on one of the captures and blew it up. Then I baited it with the other sacrifice in order to get it close enough to the two marine ships for them to board it, by now down below 300 crew on the Lenox. Two marine ships boarded around the same time and ~1200 plus marines did the trick. After that it was mostly just mop up. Most of my warship were down into the 110 crew range so I didn't want to board Minerva with them and I was waiting for the one marin ship that still had 600 ish crew to arrive to board Minerva but it was taking forever and the Minerva was doing a good bit of damage to my warship so I just unleashed on them with grape shot then boarded her with two warships depleted to 90-ish crew. Done.