Questions about naval attrition

[dande]

Okay folks, I grasp army attrition: you build 4000 infantry, march them to a neighboring province and you lose 214 (or whatever) leaving you with 3786. When they get to a safe place, the attrition stops and they remain at their current level 3786. The attrition is incremental, less than one unit (1000 infantry) at a time and is never recouped. I get it.

How does naval attrition work? You have one ship. If you sail it too far attrition takes effect and you lose the entire ship. gone. (pretty logical) However, If you sailed it that same distance, occationally stopping at ports along the way, it would be okay, right? So is naval attrition incremental (the ship slowly deteriorates) or total (a partly random number causes the ship to be lost at sea)? If it is incremental, is the ship repaired in port, and is there a way to see how much the ship is currently weakened, or is this info hidden behind the scenes?

I guess what I'm really wondering is how do you know when a ship needs to return to port? Is it just guesswork, or can we see it coming?

[Kyle]

When the attrition skull turns red and any numbers other than 0 show up, get the thing to a port.

[Dauphin]

If you start with 4 ships and suffer attrition that takes it to 3.5 then going to port restores it to 4. Of course, it won't say 3.5 only 4.

I do not say this is definitely the case, but my experiences suggest it to be true.

[Victor Galis]

Ship attrition is random. What is simulated is, you have a ship, right? This ship has a crew, which begins to get sick/die/whatever. The longer you stay at sea, the fewer supplies you have and the more your crew begins to die off. At some point there's a chance that there won't be enough people to crew the ship.

Another thing. If your naval tech is through the roof, your attrition number is 0, but you still slowly lose ships you leave at sea... I found this out the hard way I can build 200+ ships every year to replace them though

[Steve Clark]

Look at the load numbers. Let's say you have a fleet that can hold 18 and you load an infantry unit of size 14 on it. As the fleet moves from sea zone to sea zone, it will drop it's load size. You will see go from 14 of 18 to 14 of 16 to 14 of 14. The next drop will cause Disaster and you lose both infantry and fleet. I think that's what I'm seeing.

[Allemand]

The ships have to go to port every so often, to get rid of the skulls. With a good admiral or explorer, you can stay at sea longer (acquire more skulls) but still should hit a port when the skulls get up to about 10-12. Without the leader you will lose ships when the skull count is even lower. The red colored skull lets you know you are in a bad area (maybe a storm is raging). Attrition occurs at the end of the month.

I still don't know how many skulls are safe.

[Par4]

What do the numbers by the skull mean?

I know the skull color means if the attrition is bad or none, but I don't get the numbers.

[Victor Galis]

No amount of skulls is "safe." The number by the skull is the attrition rate as a percent. With a fleet, you often times don't have enough ships to lose so you don't lose any. (You can't lose fractions, but there is a chance of losing a ship that matches the fraction. Like if your attrition is 10, and you have 5 ships, you will have somehing like a 50% chance of losing a ship each month.)

Hey, one time I had an army of 2 men. ...2! But the attrition was 499 after that They had been part of a larger army exploring Siberia that slowly died... A two man army

[Grumbold]

Ship attrition is a cumulative process. Like land attrition, it takes effect at the end of each month. Unlike land it is based partly on the terrain (coast or ocean, calm, ice, rough or storm) and partly on how long the ships have been at sea. The attrition (skull) percentage in effect when the month ticks over is immediately deducted from the force strength. So try not to move from a safe coastal zone with 1% attrition into a storm ridden ocean zone with 12% on the 29th of the month!

With just one ship it can take ages to die because the thing will still be floating if it has been reduced from strength 1.0 to strength 0.02 from relentless attrition. Get it into a port and the ship is immediately rebuilt to full strength and is reprovisioned so the attrition counter for length of journey is reset. A fleet of 10 vessels will lose a ship as soon as it reaches 10% attrition though. Typically warships will be lost before merchant ships. A good explorer leader will partially protect the ships under their command so it will take longer to begin suffering attrition and the numbers will be lower. A voyage lasting two or more years is possible but very risky.

In most cases it is advisable to try and build small port colonies in strategic coastal locations so that ships have somewhere to stop over in long voyages. You won't be able to explore the world from bases in Europe without suffering appalling naval losses and spending far to much time sailing back and forth to reach port.

[dande]

Wow, great feedback! thanks for the help. Now if I could just get a few minutes away from work and ESPN's championship week I'd be be able to play some EU!

[Victor Galis]

"Unlike land it is based partly on the terrain (coast or ocean, calm, ice, rough or storm) and partly on how long the ships have been at sea."

-On the contrary, land attrition depends on the type of terrain too. It's just that generally this is the max attrition. At my tech level I could have a 1,000,000 man army in any province, as long as it doesn't have a mountain(+5), swamp(+2), desert(+5), and it isn't winter(+10), or it isn't being looted(+5), and its within my supply lines(+10).

"A voyage lasting two or more years is possible but very risky."

-Hey in my game china landed enough troops in Estonia to take it