The War Galley: A second look at Veruna/Aramon naval balance

I recently played a somewhat small water map as Aramon vs Veruna. Why you ask? Well, despite how broken this match up is, it is very interesting for me nonetheless. Veruna can easily spam, but the warships have alarming weaknessess to submerged foes. Aramon on the other hand has a simple formula of one strong/versatile ship, but suffers from incredibly slow build times.

The map I played on:
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The two starting locations are on the two symmetrical, medium sized islands on the left and right.

Anyway, I was playing agaisnt a rather experienced player. He initially skipped the enclave and went straight for a Sea Fort; it didn't take long for 2 Man of War and a monarch to show up looking to demolish my newly built barracks. At this point, I only was able to fully construct a single war galley, even though my first mage builder and Monarch started building them straight away.
My lone ship stood no chance of replusing these intruders, so I sent it off to hide. What I did have to counter, however, was a single Mer Warrior corpse that I ressurected, which ended up sinking BOTH ships. As most of us probably know, Veruna ships usaully can't hit submerged units for some really odd reason, but what about the War Galley?

Well, later that game my base was getting swarmed by enemy mer warriors as you would imagine, and not all surprising since my first War Galley destroyed the sea fort after that first battle I mentioned earlier. The few ships I had were able to draw a large chunk of them away but I expected the ships to die shortly. However, I discovered that my ships did not miss roughly 50% of the time. After some micro management I understood that War Galleys can certianly hold their own agaisnt mer warriors (and swamp beasts) under these conditions

1) You don't make any tight turns that slow down the vessel and leave it vulnerable
2) You use mulitple rally points to guide your War Galleys so you can concentrate on other tasks.
3) There is room in the map to run and keep your distance from the Mer Warriors
4) Mer Warriors follow in a tightly packed group - Any shot that hits will do extensive AOE damage

So then my opponent had at some point rebuilt his Sea Fort and was looking end my War Galley harassment with a Man of War/Mer Warrior hunting parties. It would have worked quickly, but at this point one of my ships had already reached a gold ranking from killing Mer. Together the Galleys would pick off one MoW at a time and the mer warriors, while quite numerous, couldn't get close enough to do anything about it. Slowly but surely both ships were sunk, but considering how much resources and time required by the enemy to do this, It seems to me that the War Galley is actaully a very solid sea unit with very few expections.

While all of that was going on I dropped mage builders to build a base on bottom mid, getting a solid foothold there. If I was able to hold my main base as well I might have prevented my defeat.

Here is some stats.

War Galley

Cost: 2619
Time to build: 33.8 seconds
Cannon: 1088 Damage + 252 (126) Damage from arrows
Cannon Range: 550
Reload Time: 3.7

Man of War

Cost: 2656
Time to build: 18.5 seconds
Cannon: 1322 Damage
Cannon Range: 550
Reload Time: 3.9

I don't know exactly how much hitpoints each ship has, but both barely survive monarch waves so I assume there isnt a huge difference. IMO the War Galley is essentially a Man of War that trades 244 points of damage away for superior transport capacity, the ability to hit submerged attackers, accurate AA that allows for spyhawk killing, and in a pinch, the ability to fight aerial attackers. The only thing holding the War Galley back from being truely competitive is the fact that it takes almost two times longer to construct. If it had to same build time as a MoW it could be one of the most powerful units in the whole game.

If it were up to you, what would you change to balance this kind of sea battle? I'm sure most TA:K players would agree that there notable imbalances across the game, but this imparticular sticks out like a sore thumb to me.

I've always hated sea combat - and this is true for ANY game, not just TA:K - but this is a really interesting analysis. I'll have to get over myself and try out some stuff on the waves to see for myself. Thanks, sir.

Lol, play on OTAK, not CB and Veruna's Man of War will certainly outclass Aramon's War Galley. However, looking up what a galley is suppose to be according to various websites is a long, slender, shallow draft ship propelled by rowing; that description might mean veruna's harpoon or scout ship.
In this game, the war galley acts like a frigate and the man of war a war galleon.
To answer your question: instead of boats, maybe use loads of swamp beasts and mer warriors.
Swamp beasts run fast across the water and as you pointed out, mer warriors being partially submerged, are hard to hit while in the water.

Yeah, Galleys and War Galleys (and the rare Galleass) is not unlike the Triremes of old. One used battering rams on the prow, the other typically just unleashed lots of archers (and smaller siege-type weapons from the deck). I've been a stickler for unit name choices from the beginning. When Grenseal was making the Brakada race, his basic infantryman was named a Phalanx. I nagged him that a phalanx was a unit formation, and the individual soldier was a hoplite. He finally changed it.

Although, back on to the previous comment, a Galeas is a lighter trade-type ship in the Baltic which is actually more similar to the Aramon War Galley.

I suppose it does make sense, though, that the Aramon ship can handle smaller critters on/under the waves, though. It was meant to be their sole diverse ship, sort of like a frigate or cutter, and not a Ship-of-the-Line like the Veruna Man o' War. Those guys aren't meant to be skirmishers with the lighter creatures of the sea, but to get into bigger gun battles with ships and to lay down fire on coastal positions.

For the smaller creatures, that's why you want to have a mixed unit tactic of slipping in a couple of Harpoon Ships and maybe even a Skiff or two as flankers.

Bardan wrote:

I suppose it does make sense, though, that the Aramon ship can handle smaller critters on/under the waves, though. It was meant to be their sole diverse ship, sort of like a frigate or cutter, and not a Ship-of-the-Line like the Veruna Man o' War. Those guys aren't meant to be skirmishers with the lighter creatures of the sea, but to get into bigger gun battles with ships and to lay down fire on coastal positions.

I actaully haven't thought of it that way, interesting...

Vhaerun wrote:

Lol, play on OTAK, not CB and Veruna's Man of War will certainly outclass Aramon's War Galley.

Oh yes, the War Galley is far inferior with CB off. I would go as far as saying that even the Harpoon ship outclasses it as well becuase of the weapon range advantage. By the time Aramon vessels got within range to fire their cannons they would already be dead in some cases

I never play with CB. Not sure why. I suppose I like to play with the racial strengths as they are. I should Probly expand my horizons.

Original TAK as racial strengths? That does bring a good point versus CB. Was CB balanced because racial strengths were distributed evenly among the various races, such as the Aramon War Galley being on par with the Verunian Man of War?

I'm not sure. I tried a while back to deduce a formula for the unit production. So I could figure which units were more worthwhile per mana spent. Things like range and maxdamage and so forth. But it's an odd thing to figure. I hypothesized that such a price tag would indicate the real strengths per race... Maybe a rabbit hole, but meh.

I'm rambling.

Anyway, that's how I always took CB. But it could be merely that OTAK was for campaign purposes only.

OTAK is more "stylish/soul" one, but its totally broken in balance terms (stone giant can counter 2 jungle orcs, even almost in hand to hand situation), generally there were some very useless units and so much superior one

CB, is good for mutliplayer (in almost all cases better balance), but campaign with CB, would look a bit "without soul" xD

About war galleys
imo they are very strong, and better than man of war (more usefull, almost same strenght, can counter swiming units, easier to build etc)
man of war has 2 strong problems:
1.can't hit swiming units
2.sometimes cannons can't aiming anything (get stuck)(like caged demon, or guard tower)

Yeah the OTAK/CB difference is huge with the Aramon and Veruna ships. Veruna ships seem to be hugely outclassed when it comes to Creon ships in both situations though

Sure, Creon is steam age iron ships versus wooden ships of the 17th-18th century. The cannonballs from the wooden ships should be bouncing off the hulls of the iron/steel ships.