In multiplayer ship, hackers are present and can affect your points in ranked games. They are mostly loners who don`t get along with others and deserve your utter contempt. To avoid hackers:
1. in ranked games, avoid 1x1 play altogether;
2. play with a friend(s) on your side only in 2x2, and 2x3 etc. and above in ranked games.
3. playing unranked is pretty safe from hackers; and
4. there are no guarantees to be safe from hackers in multiplayer games, you basically digitally open your legs when you play it. When you lose 2000 points for no good reason then that is an example of a hacker attack.

This next part might sound funny to some. The niceties of warfare at the time at sea were characterized by honor and respect. For example, orders might be given as, "My respects to Captain Wadmore, come right 90°, if you please!" This is because conditions on board one ship might overwhelm the larger Admiral's perspective, and so Captains were, above all, expected to exercise their own judgment. I say this because this same spirit of respect should characterize how we relate to each other in this game. We are all learning and respect and curtesy are rare quantitites these days....(I too have breached this at times and to those who have seen that, I apologize.) Surprisingly, ship it is a small world and what goes around may well come around.

For some Steam-ish reason, unless every player in a multiplayer game is on “game graphic settings > low” then the game will lag. You will find that setting in the main menu before you enter “multiplayer”. This is true whether you have the biggest baddest video card, computer hardware, Internet connection, etc. etc. etc., so don’t bore everybody with your equipment listing, your outrage, and your technical opinions on this issue (unless you want to write Steam). Just put your settings on low and get on with playing.

There are many good write ups on the naval warfare of the time, so I will not try to add to them now other than to say that things appear to move very slowly until the ships get within firing range. However, how you sail to that contact point will often determine who will win.

The question of new players is a often, "What ship should I use?" For one ship, the answer is simple. The first rates called a 106 or a 122 are the place to start. Everything else is under gunned. To this list of two, I would also add the ironclad. It too is under gunned, but its advantages of maneuverability, speed, and the ability to sail into the wind, make it a nasty raider when fighting alongside 106s or 122s in the hands of a skilled Captain in the ironclad. Finally, we could add the bomb. Alone, a bomb is easily and quickly killed. Properly defended by 106s in 122s, a bomb can be very strong. A bomb in Napoleon Total War ("NTW") is much superior to a rocket ship. In Empire Total War ("ETW") the rocket was very strong. That is no longer the case in NTW. That's it. Don't choose any other ships.

More importantly, whatever ship you choose, make sure that your ship has the highest experience rating that you have funds for. That means left clicking on your ship and then left clicking on the "+" until you don't have money for more.

The next question that new players ask is what nationality? You will quickly learn that the 106 is only available to a few nations. Beginners should begin with a British ship because it has the best all round performance. I will have more to say to in next topic, but experienced players will always begin with a British ship and carefully change its nationality to whatever they want by using what I call the "flag trick" explained below. Using this technique, you can have any ship, under any flag. For example, my favorite is a British 106 sailing under Swedish flag and I will explain why below.

Generally speaking, just as now, there were major nations at the time that maintained all different types of ships and there were other secondary nations, which only built certain types. Britain, France, Spain, and Russia are the clearest examples of major nations. Most of the rest are secondary nations.

Compare the same ship type from different nations and you will see that they have different characteristics. I have not explored all of these variations, so I will limit myself to explaining the types of differences and what I think are the best choices.

Speed: French ships are generally the fastest by a small margin, which adds up. They are followed by British and Spanish ships. Secondary nations are generally a little slower than average. The average is defined by Austrian ships. The ships of major nations are generally faster than the average. These differences apply only to sail ships because all ironclads travel at the same speeds.

Taking fire: the 122s and 106s are big strong ships that can take a lot of fire and still give it back. That's the problem with all the other ship types, they can dish something out, but they can't take it. Armor in this age is about thick, strong, complex woods from the respective national forests. In this, the more northerly the nation, the stronger its wood/armor. The historical skill and experience in shipbuilding is also a factor. For example, the Dutch ships from Indonesia, can't take a punch very well. Russian and British ships can take hits much better than French and Spanish ships.

When firing: this factor is about how fast the guns can be reloaded. It is an aspect of naval personnel organization and training. British guns reload the fastest. The rest are pretty similar.
The combination: Putting these things altogether with your style of play is what ship selection is all about. It is also about whom you're playing with on your team and who you are against, in multiplayer. You should know or discuss with your teammates, what ship you are all taking. Use the team chat.

The flag trick: Here is how you have the optimal set of all these factors for your style of play and maybe with your particular team. This is a perfectly legal technique to choose your ships. Think about it as when some nation would lend naval assets to other countries for economic or political reasons.

First, save the strongest ship you can as a saved team. Because you want the fastest reload rates, the best strength when taking fire, along with decent speed, you should begin with a British 106 or 122. Choose your favorite name and save it as a team with full experience (check out the disc arrow up and arrow down buttons in the 3 o'clock position on your screen). Note that there are ways to change these names, but I will leave that for someone else's guide.

Second, in the multiplayer team building area, load that saved ship. Then do it again overwriting it with the same ship, but this time only single left click it in the list of save ships. You are going to complete its selection by pressing “enter” this time with your “other” hand, while your dominant hand still on the mouse. Take aim with that mouse at the down arrow of the previously loaded saved ship in order to quickly select the nationality of your ship.


Thirdly, press enter with your other hand and then immediately thereafter, change the nationality of that new ship with your mouse hand.

You now have your British first rate sailing under a different flag. It does not retain all the characteristics of the British ship. For example, it will be as fast as the nationality you have now selected. However, it will retain the British reload rates and ability to take fire.
I said I was going to explain why my favorite is a British 106 sailing under Swedish flag. Firstly, the Swedes are a secondary nation and them being chosen, calms my opponent. Secondly, I think Swedish ships can take the most punishment (complex northern woods and long experience at shipbuilding). It will be slower ship, however. This works for me because I am better at sailing so I can compensate for less speed by better direction and use the good firing and ability to take punishment in close action. You need to experiment with your own combination.

This is the cultural difference between soldiers and sailors. Here is how to become a sailor. The first thing to notice is the arrow in the 12 o'clock position on your screen during a battle indicating the wind direction. It is backwards. If you have ever looked at a weathervane on top of a barn you know that the arrow points in the direction the wind is coming from. That is the same way that naval indicators work. Here in this game, however, the arrow points in the direction the wind is going. Now that you know that, commit it to memory.

Now the theory. Think of the face of a clock floating on the ocean. Spin that face until the 12 is closest to where the wind is coming from. If your ship is in the center of that clock face and is sailing towards the six, it will go the fastest it can. It can sail in the direction of anywhere between 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock with its sails up (ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two). If it tries to sail on the other part of a clock face (10:15, 11, 12, 1, 1:45) the sails will not be up and it will move in that direction only slowly. This was historically called sailing "into the wind". In this game, but not in real life, you can sail into the wind and you need to often do that in this game. It will be slower, but you often must anyway. If you are sailing into the wind to one of your friends, we say that you are downwind of your friend and he is upwind of you. (Also in real life, the clock face is replaced by a compass face which has 360 instead of 12 at the top and is divided into 360 degrees rather than 12 hours. Enough said on that for now.)

The easiest way to move your ship is to right-click on the water where you want it to go. In the center of your control panel (press F6 and F7 repeatedly, if you don't see this) you can see your ship will have one, two, or three sails up, corresponding to from slow to fast. A single right-click will mean it will go with two sails (being the regular speed). A double right-click will send it on at full speed. At full speed your ship will turn more sluggishly. So speed and maneuverability are a tradeoff. In general, use full speed for getting somewhere, regular speed when you're in a fight, and slow speed when you want to hold position, like when you are upwind and want to stay there. In general, try to minimize the amount of turns you need to make. If you have time in a large turn, gradually reduce sail until halfway through the turn, then increase it again for the other half of the turn (three, two, one, two, three, in a 180° turn, for example). This makes for a faster turn.

So, in a three on three multiplayer game, your three ships are typically going to be lined up abreast (side by side in the centre of your boxes) facing towards the enemy. One of you is downwind, one is upwind and one is in the middle. The most important thing you have to do now as a team, is get your ships together in the same place, so that you can bully the other ships 3×1 or 2×1 etc. To do this, you will need to organize where the three of you are sailing to. Typically, I announce one of their ships to be the primary target ship, impliedly asking my teammates to sail towards that ship, so we can overwhelm it together. Going after a primary ship doesn't mean you can't shoot the others, it just means you should sail towards that primary ship and shoot it, when you can. Yes, one of you will be sailing predominantly into the wind. Above all, you don't want to be caught alone by them on you 3×1 etc. because they are doing the same thing.

Any time you can get your ship and especially your team, upwind of the enemy, means that you have many more choices about where to sail to and how fast you can go. In historical terms, you "have the wind gauge". Some people believe that your shot goes a little farther too, blowing downwind a little further [Mith].

It's all been leading up to this. In the end, it is all about who can fire accurately and rapidly.
Basically, there are two forms of firing: broadside and auto fire. Looking at your screen, the two circles in your control panel at the 5 o'clock and 7 o'clock position control your broadside fire on your right and left sides of your ship respectively. Keeping those things correctly in your mind in relation to the wind arrow and the direction of your ship is your challenge! It has to become second nature.

If those circles are outlined in red you can fire your guns by clicking within the circle and it will fire broadside. To turn broadside off and fire on auto fire, you need to click the crosshairs, which are a couple of buttons to the right. If you have done that, you will need to click the crosshairs one more time in order to turn auto fire on (that circle lights up when on). With auto fire on, your gunners will fire when they are reloaded on their own, and you don't have to aim other than to keep your target within the arcs of their possible fire (see the arcs on the water approximately 30 to 60° off each side). In broadside fire, you have a single narrow pathway of fire. With auto fire you have a wider arc of fire. (If you ever lose your ability to see these marked pathways on the water simply press "h". This often happens when you are typing text and fighting at the same time.)
Why would you use one or the other? The answer is quite a few reasons. So let's cover the basics to begin with. There are two methods of firing and three types of projectiles:
Broadside fire: has slightly more range, must be manually controlled, you have to click in the red circle (e.g. if you have two possible targets, one high-value one low value...with broadside you can ensure that your fire goes on the valued target, rather than going to the closer lower value target, that your crew would fire on with auto fire).
Auto Fire: can be devastating and is significantly more accurate than broadside fire. It is automatic, so it will occur even when you're distracted by other events.

The three types of projectiles are:

• Round shot: goes farthest, slows down that receiving ship and works to sink that ship.
  
• Chain shot: useful for taking out sails, kills personnel at long-range, and does “lofting”.
  
• Grapeshot: not useful for much, except very short range as an antipersonnel weapon against a damaged ship. It doesn’t usually turn the tide…

With these two combinations of fire and three of projectiles, there are many combinations. I will only concentrate on the optimal firing patterns and give you some examples of lousy ones. But first a comment about range:

The farthest arc of range is round shot on broadside;
• the next closest arc is chain shot on broadside against personnel;
• the next closest arc is round shot on auto fire;
• the next closest arc is chain shot on broadside against sails;
• the next closest arc is chain shot on auto fire against sails;
• the next closest arc is grapeshot on broadside;
• the closest arc is grapeshot on auto fire.

Lousy players seek to board the other. Good players fire at the extremes of range at the fastest rate of fire that they can. So the next comment is about how to maintain the highest rate of fire.

Because auto fire has an automatic rate, this comment is only about broadside fire. You click in the circle to fire your guns in broadside and then you must immediately click there again to commence reloading (your practice should be to click twice on firing to do both). This significantly increases your rate of fire.

Given that in a fight you need to shoot and change direction, your pattern should be:

• left click shoot,
  
• right-click to adjust your direction, (sail for a bit)
  
• right-click to correct your aim, and
  
• finally left click to fire again.
  
• Repeat.

Your challenge is to resist the temtation to change your sail, don't just keep the right click going in the cycle....exceptions for sure...


Good players will fire at the other ship at the extreme of long-range with round shot and keep doing so. If the opponent is doing the same thing, they will immediately turn away after firing in order to present a smaller target for the wall of round shot arriving and then immediately turned back to fire again. If the opponent next moves closer, they will then hit them with chain shot on broadside, which is not close enough to hit their sails, but will still get to their hull, causing much tearing of flesh. If they come a little closer, it becomes a time to switch to auto fire on round shot. Good players will seek to avoid this, because with the computer doing auto fire, the players are now even. Good players will now often move to expand the range again. However, If they move significantly closer again, you fire with chain shot again, which will now go against their sails. Closer than that you have many alternatives including auto fire against sails with chain, auto fire with round shot against the hull, and I'm sure you can make up the rest.

To avoid having your own sails taken out at closer range hit the anchor button after you have made the movement or the turn you need to, then drop your sails immediately. This is especially useful against the faster ships like ironclads. Make your turn while they are reloading, hit the anchor button just before they are finished reloading, let your ship fire on auto fire with round shot into them while they fire chain into your empty masts, then right-click to make your next turn etc. Repeat.

Once in contact: FIRE, FIRE, FIRE.

Try not to miss the reload speed, in order to fire again. It is the overall weight of shots that kills your enemy (weight equals # guns x rate of fire). If you have chosen the higher reload to rate ship, this is where it matters.

It is better to take that extra directional correctional time, then to fire off target in a valiant effort, which partially or mostly misses, and when in sail ship, never chase steamships. They are faster and they help their side to win, by distracting you from your real tasks. Treat ironclads like mosquitoes. Fire on them only when they appear as targets of opportunity, otherwise ignore them. Focus on killing the sail ships, but watch for the ironclad's cheap shots on your sails…

• When you have a disabled/surrendered enemy who still has its masts up out of the water, you can come close and fire chain shot against their sails. Because you are close, the chain will have to follow a high arc, actually, that chain will carry on for an unrealistically long distance. Called "lofting", this is a way to get the sails of ships that are far out of your range. This is basically infuriating to those enemies because they have no recourse, but to dodge and weave.

• Bombs fire only out of their bow. To fire a bomb, right-click on a target and when you get about 1 1/2 times the range of round shot on broadside, then press the anchor button. The bomb always fires on auto fire, there is no way to manually fire it. Basically, your job as a bomb is to stay out of range of your enemies and keep the bombs firing (and stay behind your covering 106s and 122s ).

• When taking fire from a bomb, turn the crosshairs to off (the circle is unlit). This allows the leadership of each gun crew to abandon their station and fight fires instead.

• When you are fighting with an ally and firing at long-range, remember to think about where his arc of fire intersects with yours against the enemy. You should you be in:

• line together; or
• getting ready to turn into line to fire together.

The next set of topics needs to be how you fight together as a team. I invite others to post comments on what I've written and pick up on this next set of topics. I'm sure some of the things I have said above are also controversial and I welcome the oncoming debate…

I want to thank all those who have taught me over the years I apologize for not citing each tip specifically. I blame my medication.

Some that I will mention by name are: Scotty, fREDDIE, and Sir Ultimate; Spartan, bb3a, and lute; (and yes, even Commodore (may he sometime return from the Darkside...).
Happy sailing, and always…

Watch out for those Swedish Girls…

There are a number of little small points that players are missing and only learn once they have been in the game a number of hours. This is an attempt to add some advanced coaching to the basics that I have already described:

Coming at the enemy from an upwind position allows you much greater freedom of movement and a very slight increase in range. The idea is that you should come from the up wind position and continue to cross, left and right across that wind, to maintain that position and keep firing. Upwind is where the feathers on the arrow in the upper centre of the screen are. The wind comes from the feathers to the point of the arrow.

In a fight, you need to endeavor to stay within the range of only one enemy ship and not two or three enemy ships, while getting only one enemy ship within the circle of two or three of yours. Basically, you should think about a circle around each ship and how those circles are intersecting (Grade 5 Mathmatics calls these "Venn Diagrams": Google it if you need to...). The circle diameter is given by what I have said already about range. That means the diameter of your circle will vary with the ordinance you use. In other words, try and get two or three of your team circles intersecting with one of their ships and none of yours. Read about Venn diagrams on the internet.

Inevitably, you will sometimes be the last ship of your team downwind at the start. You will need to head upwind to join them, and to stay alive. If the wind is coming from the right you want to turn more right to stay alive. Vice versa.

Ironclad ships are faster than sail ships. Don’t chase them. They will come back to you, in time. Instead, listen to your Admiral, who will tell you which sail ship to concentrate on. Once you start to do a good job on them, those steamy’s (ironclads) will show up. Treat the ironclads like mosquitoes. Swat them when opportune, ignore them otherwise.

There may come a time when you face a bomb. Charge right at him as fast as you can and most importantly turn your crosshairs off when taking fire from them. This allows part of your gun teams to fight fires rather than aiming. Less fires result.

On the other hand, when you are piloting a bomb after sail ships, your range is 1.5 times that of them. As a result, your best strategy is to sail right at the target until 1.5 range, then press the anchor button. Wait for a launch. Move again. Repeat. Bombs can only autofire (crosshairs on and broadside off). You can never voluntarily fire the bomb.

When you’re shooting in a non-bomb ship, make sure you anticipate how far ahead you have to shoot and time it correctly. A shot that lands is better than three valiant attempts.

When facing all ironclads from a sail ship, view them as a wolf pack which you can never chase without being run down and eaten. The sheep that goes astray is dinner. Instead, try to circle the wagons like muskox do. Butts to the centre and heads out in a circle. Now you are got them them, so stay calm and keep firing. As usual try to never miss firing once a reload is complete.

Reloading should be your only limitation on firing, 95% of the time. If you are not in position to fire once reloading has completed, you are using up your 5%. So sail so reloading is the only real limitation on your firing. This means you need to follow Wayne Gretsky’s advice and sail to where the fight is going, not where it is. Or in other words sail only in the time it takes to reload and then anchor, then start again when safe.

If you are having troubles seeing your firing arcs press h. If you are having trouble seeing your ships or control options play around with F6 and F7.

In one ship games choose only a 122, 106 or an ironclad or a bomb. 122s take damage faster than 106’s but have slightly greater range. If you are in the 106, close to your range and maintain full speed as you turn. If you are a noob, resist the temptation to take the Trinidad (Trin) which has the most guns. You will notice that those guns on the Trin “spray” rather than give focused fire like the 106 and are slow to turn and sail upwind. This means that a 106 should always beat a Trin.

If you like an ironclad like many noobs do use it like a hit and run vehicle, like a wolf. Going toe to toe with a 122 and 106 you will lose almost all the time.

If you take the Trin anyway you need to stay away because you have slightly more range than a 122 and slightly more again than a 106 and slightly more again than an ironclad. However, you can’t sail upwind or turn as well, so you will need to trade off.

Good hunting and see you soon on the sea...