your raid goes as fast as the slowest unit you send, the best way to speed it up is to not include marauders or cannoneers in the raid. the slow units are good for prizes, since the travel time to a prize is always 1 minute.

*hugs*

Second half of that is to use nautical charts. If you don't have any the best solution is to check the stats of each unit type. Slowoest is pirates followed by mercs. Then fleet and fastest is armada. However, the strongest offensive armada unit Jugs are the slowest. The next fastest is Ships line. The weakest but fastest unit are schooners..Basically in the case of armada strongest is the slowest while fastest is the weakest(daggers)

the final way to speed up unit speeds is with pearls, in the witch doctors hut. The maximum pearls to apply is 40. Having not used pearls myself I'm not sure how much of a speed boost. The only unit though that pearls don't apply to are daggers.

I agree with Icy, although using charts on raids of inactive havens is, IMO, wasteful. If you're really in a hurry, speed them up on their way back. Boosts are easier to come by for free than charts.

You can also send a very slow raid to long distance, go away from the game, and return about the time it hits and again when it returns. It takes a bit of planning, but not much.

NavigatorNY said:

I try and use the fastest offensive ships, like a few Daggers which are supposed to be the fastest at 100 MPH, and only a few marauders and Bonnies, but still I am going only 6.7 MPH in the RAID!  What are the ways to speed it up? 

Greetings Navigator,

Firstly like as been previously stated the use of nautical charts, and whirlpools (expensive) I would also like to point, In your “Arsenal” Time is one of your weapons.

It would depend on why you wish to send a raid. We all have our own criteria, I am not going to discuss our ( Rum Raiders) criteria and crew training, for security reasons.

If you need resources and you know there is no defence on the island you wish to raid daggers are a good choice.

You should consider you may only have 50,000 resources from any one captain per week, there for it does not make sense to send more ships than can Carrie the maximum resources, as you would be exposing your fleet to an unnecessary combat exposure.

You may also consider joining a Brotherhood with a decent size Bastion for the knowledge base speed bonus, anything over Level 10 is not bad.

A Combat raid is different, over a certain amount of a players offensive capability you tend to blind raid, subject to what tournaments are on and the proportion of combat capability you feel is safe to loose. “ACL” Acceptable Combat Lose per engagement/mission.

Very basically if you have over 30 million offensive your ACL would be 10 million.

The thing is 10 million offence is expensive in time or money/resources to replace, thus your reward should be greater than the loss.

If you’re going to send 10 million out for the reason of revenge with the acceptable ACL, you need to review your game plan.

One more quick point, IMHO your better not buying Dread Fleet, for the same money you can buy normal fleet with more combat power.

Get Back to me if you need clarification or have any more questions.

Regards Raventor Le Barracuda

Very clear and helpful advice, Raventor.  One other thing:

Is it better to always scout before raiding, or just estimate strength of the haven and attack with surprise?  Plus, is there a way to get a warning of the scouting of your haven?

Thx, Navigator

NavigatorNY said:

Very clear and helpful advice, Raventor.  One other thing:

Is it better to always scout before raiding, or just estimate strength of the haven and attack with surprise?  Plus, is there a way to get a warning of the scouting of your haven?

Thx, Navigator

Hi Navigator,

I feel it is an advantage to know what is on a heaven, however if you scout it, you warn the player you are coming, you can get to a stage where this does not matter, because what you are sending is over a certain level most players can not defend on there own, or are not prepared to try and defend it because there raid loss is much lighter than what they would lose in setting a trap for you. We call it " Let them eat Sand"

Let them eat Sand means you can hide what you have so it doesn't matter if the raid you because they can not score if they get nothing, then you try to hit them when you think their fleet is returning home, where by You Do Score the pvp, XP, and what ever else may be on.

The problem is you can only take 50k resources, so if your going to send say 50 million offensive power to a target and you think you could accept 30% loses the ships you loose, will not be made up by the raid points and the 50k resources also factor in the time to make those 30% loses.

It is not worth the raid, even if there is a pvp on.

The forum tell you to raid with daggers, I do not like daggers, there expensive to replace, I have a different ship I send on resource raids, but I only send out enough to carrier away 50k resources, that way I am cutting down my exposure to loss.

Time is a significant factor here as well, for example if you are producing say 5,000+ of each resource every hour is there any real point raiding a bot that may take you 2 hours to get and 2 hours to get back from and you didn't get 50k worth of resources??? <>

The other time sensitive thing is the time it takes you to build a ship, so by the time you have them coming on line has your criteria changed for that build? I know my building queues are over 40 days so I try and spread them out for offensive and defensive, factoring in what I loose in general Bastion and Presidio attacks.

Regards Raventor

Very sage advice, Raventor, and timely because I am just at the cusp of gaining some serious firepower coupled with over 10,000 points of Haven Defense to destroy random small raids.

So what actions/raids do you concentrate on to gain max experience pts, etc at the least amt of time?

Thx, Navigator

NavigatorNY said:

[...] with over 10,000 points of Haven Defense to destroy random small raids.

Just to make sure: you do know that those points are worth nothing without having actual units to defend you, plus that bonus - as all the others - has no impact on Fireships?

Yes, I have strong defensive units as well, enough to inflict serious damage to raiding party. If fire ships come my way, it means I am in the midst of some heavy back and forth w the enemy, so that's fine, I will answer that one back by messaging SOS to all my Level 90+ friends.

What is your response to fire ships, Crow?

Navigator

NavigatorNY said:

What is your response to fire ships, Crow?

Spend and turtle, for two reasons:

1. A wasted Fireship is a (small) victory against the one who sent it. The only one that's possible.
2. It's been many months since the last time someone tried to raid me without first "scouting" with Fireships to ensure that there is no def left, so any defence would just be wasted to provide cowards with money-fuelled PvPs. And since my res are mostly spent most of the time, there is no interesting damage a raid can do.

Got it.

So in terms of defensive strategy, if I ever get attacked by fireship after fireship, presumably by an enemy who has nothing better to spend rubies on, and is too stupid to use craft and guile to attack, do I draw down all my resources, send every unit to the Harbor, and just hunker down and not try to be a Big boy and stand and fight?

Then I rise from the harbor at midnight 2 weeks from that point, and I hit him back with everything, and maybe I get a friend to hit him 5 minutes after I do?

And, at what point do you raise shields in your battles with a determined enemy?

I get the part about not messing with the Big Gun BHs who can call on many BH members to hit me back.

Thx,

Navigator

NavigatorNY said:

So in terms of defensive strategy, if I ever get attacked by fireship after fireship, presumably by an enemy who has nothing better to spend rubies on, and is too stupid to use craft and guile to attack, do I draw down all my resources, send every unit to the Harbor, and just hunker down and not try to be a Big boy and stand and fight?

Depends on who it is (how strong, which BH,...), how they play, etc. For example, some players will FS until they hit your Royal Cannon (meaning that there is no more def left) and then raid with overcharting. So, if you turtle most of your def, let them kill some scraps (so it looks like you didn't turtle, but they actually wasted your def), then wait for the incoming raid and defend... you get the idea. ;-) I killed the same guy's off twice that way. Double-digit millions.

Resources are not a primary concern here. You'll want to activate haven def bonus, prestige, def or off+def boosters, exp booster,... and all that with their troops already on their way (because you cannot know ahead if they'll actually send units).

One guy charted so much that my units returning from the harbour (15 sec + the time needed for clicking) were to be late, but there is a way around that too: boosts. Use the shortest one you have and it can save you those few valuable seconds.

Most of them, however, will be happy to have just killed your Cannon. Not much you can do against a chicken that dares not send real units, except FS them at random times and hit properly when you find something interesting out.

Then, some people will be shielded all the time. Then you can check them frequently and hit quickly when their shield is down. They tend to forget that they have a harbour, and you end up killing some very nice off, but it requires patience and dedication.

NavigatorNY said:

Then I rise from the harbor at midnight 2 weeks from that point, and I hit him back with everything, and maybe I get a friend to hit him 5 minutes after I do?

That, too, depends on who it is. For example, if they have prestige and lots of haven improvements (so, visual signs that any def you encounter will be heavily boosted), a hit might not be worth it.

You can start with a Fireship. Get a feel of what kind of units are there. They may FS you back (and confirm that they are on-line, so don't go for it then).

Also, "midnight" doesn't mean much. Not everyone lives in your timezone. ;-)

NavigatorNY said:

And, at what point do you raise shields in your battles with a determined enemy?

If you mean full or scouting protection, I've never used those.

Sorry, no. To "turtle" is a slang for "sending them to the harbour". Because, you know, you're acting like a turtle (the animal), hiding in your hard shell where you're unreachable.

So called "Chinese" units are, IMO, useless. Only if you absolutely know that you'll need to defend against predominantly one type of unit (almost only Pirates, or almost only Mercs, or...), then they are useful, but you'll know that so rarely, if ever, that it's not worth counting on that to train those units.

If you're defending constantly, I'd say put out what you don't mind losing.

If you're defending against an actual incoming attack, defend with all that you have (BH reinfs too) to splat them properly. Also, ideally, you'd unturtle (recall from the harbour) and the reinfs would arrive as late as possible andyou'd returtle and send the reinfs back home immediately after the attack, to reduce the chance of Fireships doing some extra damage.

OK<>

NavigatorNY said:

So when it comes to spending resources to upgrade Discoveries, does it pay to upgrade at all the Turtle ships or the Junk ships?  And to be honest, it is as if Plarium just creates Bull$%t extra Discoveries to make you think you are actually doing something worthwhile.  For example, why bother upgrading Brigantines when u can wait and upgrade more powerful Frigates in order to create a more powerful raiding force?!  But hey, u get Brigantines first for upgrade so u get sucked into wasting time and resources for them.  Whats up with THAT?

Discoveries are simple: you upgrade what you use in big numbers.

Brigs are obtained through some ruby packs and tournaments, so you may end up with lots of them even if you never build a single one. Whether you'll just kill them off on prizes (in which case upgrading them is hardly useful) or actually use them against enemies (in which case the upgrades might be quite useful), it's up to you.

If you play the game right, at some point the time will remain the only valuable resource, with gold, lumber, and rum losing their value completely.