Hi everyone, I just started playing Royale 2 and really like. Trade and missions are pretty fun. My only complaint is the fighting and pirates. Every time I fight pirates, they just kick my a**! It's usually 2-4 against my one ship, and I really dont see how I can win, unless I have about 5 ships in reserve. (and you need GOOD ships to compete...too expensive!) The cost to keep the ships crewed is staggering, and very little reward. As for attacking pirate hideouts...forget it!

I can take out other nation's ships during war, but cant handle the pirates!

Anyone have better luck with this??

Dunno about PR2, but in the first game it's fairly important to pay attention to which type of loadout you're using in the cannons. I usually started with chain shot to tear up the sails and get the speed advantage and then switched to either grapeshot or cannonballs, depending on whether I wanted to capture any given enemy ship or sink it. The AI is fairly aggressive on chain shot so be careful you don't end up slower than your opponent.

Another thing I would do is split up the crew fleetwide depending on the role a given ship would play. The small and nimble ships I used for harassment from a distance, to do as much damage as possible to the sails and crew; these would usually have less than the full complement of crew. The larger vessels I would give a full crew complement, to give them the best chance for boarding actions. Later, once you get your financial machine running full tilt, you can afford a full crew load on every vessel.

Don't ignore ammunition, either. Those heavily-armed ships go through ammo in a hurry, so don't pass up opportunities to buy more loads when you enter the larger ports. I don't think ammo counts against your cargo capacity (at least in the first game) so feel free to go crazy when you have the money. Nothing worse than running out of ammo mid-fight.

Hopefully the second game is close enough that this info helps. You said you're having no problems with the regular navy ships, so are you trying to capture any vessels to build up your fleet or sell for cash?

thanks for the help. I'm doing all of these things already..and am just a bit frustrated I guess. I just had a sea battle against a pirate with 2 ships (I had 4). I had time to get 1 shot off before he had boarded me. :( Also, when boarded, I lose about 7 soldiers to his 1. :( I have it set on "easy" but I'm still getting massacred. :(

Are you buying hand-to-hand weaponry for your crew? Is the crew morale good? Other than those, I'm not sure what else to suggest.

Speed wins....I use mil. corvetts only. Use chain shot to damage sails then use grape shot to reduce the boarding party. If you get them to 0 you only have to touch the ship to capture it. I have 5 ship convoys in war situations. Early in the game, when your weak , shadow a mil. convoy of an ally. If england is vs france shadow an english war convoy, it will sooner or later run into a french one and do battle. After the battle go after the french convoy, it will be greatly reduced even if it won the battle vs the english. Its a great way to capture some ships and build your strength.

thx for the help. Yea, I have hand to hand weapons, and the key seems to be getting the "military" ships. With practice, I can now handle the pirates...taking out the hideouts cannons is still a PITA, but do-able.

thx for all the advice. Just still wondering why it's always my 1 ship against enemies 5? :/

They made the 1vs5 because ppl complained, that the fighting in PR1 was too hard. I get along with it quite well.

In some cases you might prefer to use wind from rear for an inevetiable boarding action of 1 or even more ships. Then you only have a 1vs4 or 1vs3 situation, which is much more easier to handle, even if your ship also gets boarded after this.

I agree completely. Military corvettes are the way to go. But I'd go easy on the chain shot, especially when attacking traders. If you pump one or two broadsides of chain shot into their sails, they tend to either become very cautious and keep their distance, or even run away altogether, which is annoying as hell if you don't have the manpower to board them in that fight, yet. If they slip away, their sails get instantly repaired - and all you've accomplished is wasting that precious chainshot. I prefer to reduce their crew with grapeshot first and only after that tear up their sails as I'm preparing to board. That way, even if they escape, the damage is done, as they can't "repair" the losses to their crew like they do with their sails. This is especially true when fighting multiple, strong ships all at once. The military corvette can't be overtaken speedwise by any other ship, so you can afford to use only grapeshot without fear of being outrun and boarded, no matter what opposition you're facing. When the crews on all enemy ships are so low that you know you can board all of them and still win - that's when you start firing chainshot, just before you prepare to turn on them.

What do you think?

Full military convoys will always pursue no matter how damaged, so I always use chain shot on them first, then I grape shot them down to 0 men each, position myself with the wind at my back, and all I have to do is just touch the ship to capture it.

Sometimes with traders or weak pirates they will try to flee, but I still try the chain shot method first, then adjust if necessary.

I never carry a full crew. I don't really need the men for boarding if I use that method. My normal military convoys consist of 1 Military Frigate, 1 Military Corvette, and one Pirate Barque or regular corvette, if I don't have enough Pirate Barques. I normally keep a crew of 140 total on those 3 ship convoys.

I use the pirate barque or regular corvette first in the fight. the first ship is pretty much a throw away ship. Its job is to pull the enemy ships into a tight group from their V formation and get in a few shots then head for the out of bounds. Then I bring in the military corvette, and it is usually all I need to win the battle.

That could work if you use multiple ships per convoy, although I don't understand why you'd want to use anything but military corvettes. I find it much cheaper to use the grapeshot-first method, 'though. This way, you can afford to keep your fighting convoys formed of just one ship and mass all the crew onto that one ship. It can save a lot of frustration in scenarios like fighting a convoy of liners. They can take lots of damage so it'll be a while before you slow them down enough to matter. Sure, you can stay ahead of them and take a shot once in a while, but that battlefield is pretty restricted, surface-wise - so it often happens that they corner you and you have to bail. This is why I like grapeshot first - you can flee and attack them again on the sea map and the damage is done. You can rinse and repeat as necessary, until their boarding crews are negligable in size.

Btw, did anyone here play Patrician III? In that game it was possible, by cleverly exploiting wind direction and timing, to avoid an enemy broadside while closing in for the boarding. Often, you would manage to maneuver behind the enemy, almost like in an aerial dogfight. If you have the numbers on your side, you can board directly, without damaging the other ship and without so much as a scratch to your own ship. I've never managed to pull that move off in any of the PR games. I always take at least one enemy broadside while closing in on them, except for the case when they are fleeing and I can overcome them from the rear, not exposing myself to their cannon. Is there anyone here who knows what I'm talking about and who can do it in one of the PR games too?

Most of the time when I go into boarding mode, I don't take a hit from the other convoy. As I said in the earlier post, I try to grape shot them down to 0 men, so I just have to touch the ship to capture it. Some times when turning back on 5 or more ships to board them, one might get off a shot at me in the confusion of boarding a large pack of ships at one time. This usually happens if I get stuck up against one of the ships I've captured for a couple of seconds. And many times I've chased down a ship and captured it right at the edge of the map.

You know, I keep rereading that sentence and it doesn't make sense to me. How come you can take out military convoys, but not pirates? The only thing I find hard about fighting pirates is actually finding them. The PR1 map was flooded with pirates, but in PR2, you have to look very hard to find one. They usually only have barques or pirate barques, which I find relatively easy to take down - at least compared to the really tough ships in military convoys. For example, England routinely brings on complements of liners and military frigates. You mean to say that you can take out a full house of those, but have trouble with a few lousy barques? Why is that? What's causing the problem? If we can get to the bottom of what's causing your trouble, maybe we can also find a solution.