help: ship chaining

[SlowThinker]

I remember I saw a thread where somebody described situations where ship chaining is better that normal use of boats and vice versa. Do you know the name of that thread?

(I want to read it so that I would find out what ship chaining exactly is...)

[Smash]

ship chaining is just setting boats 3 or more squares apart(depending on how many moves they have).
Lets say you have 10 such vessels lined up 3 squares apart.Load ship A and sail to ship B.Then activate units and resleep them,move boat to ship C.repeat.If the units have no moves left then simply clicking on them individually will do it.You can cover 30 squares and have units to move at the end of it.
Basically,there no limit to the amount of squares you can move units.The limits are the # of boats and the landmasses themselves.Round the world in 1 turn is possible.

[SlowThinker]

I thought it is something more powerful...
(In long view, the amount of transported units is unchanged. 10 vessels will transport [ship capacity]*10 units every 20 moves)
Edit: typo

[East Street Trader]

SlowThinker

Some cargoes can be transported at the pace of a single ship and nothing is lost. Some, however, demand priority attention. Gold, for example, must be delivered promptly or the market will be lost. You will want to give higher priority to getting routes to your SCC into place, or improving those routes, than you do to other cities. And a ship chain can often be got into place or manoevred to deliver to another trading partner at times when there are no, or few, caravans ready to be delivered.

And a ship chain can extend the useful life of triremes because while some of the route of the chain will lie offshore some will not. Subject to happiness considerations, your ancient triremes can continue happily shuttling back and forth in the chain right into modern times.

While you, and the earlier poster, are right, I think, to point out that simply loading up ships and sending them off is probably just as efficient in terms of unit sea miles covered, a ship chain offers opportunities to prioritise and to maximise efficiency in other ways.

[Ribannah]

Also, the faster you deliver your caravans, the sooner your city will be able to produce new goods. In some cases you can simply continue to produce & deliver every single turn.
Such a chain is costly and time-consuming to set up though.
Instead, you can also make a chain with less than half the number of ships. Place your triremes 7 spaces apart. On turn 1, put cargo in trireme 1 and move it 3 squares. On turn 2, move it another 3 squares next to the second trireme and have the cargo brought over, then move trireme 2, etc. This is usually fast enough.

[Scouse Gits]

Ship chains on a large map are powerful assets. With some distance to cover to a remote continent - the rewards can be easily enough to ensure a new tech per turn. As EST points out - grab that Gold whilst it's available - next turn it will change to Euros!

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SG(2)

[Blaupanzer]

Ship chains are the "railroads" of the ancient world. In modern times they serve as railroads over water. Like railroads, they can be interdicted. However, chained transports can deliver lots of units to a newly taken city without any risk of being sunk at sea, since they leave and land within your turn. Only the ships are at risk between turns.