Empire Total War: Naval Battles Guide.

The Basics:

Ship stats:
Guns: This tells you how many guns you have on your ship. Usually it's a good indication of the power of your ship. There are a variety of different artillery types used in ships, larger ships typically have powerful cannons on the lower deck, medium ones in the middle, and lighter cannons at the top of the ship.

Crew Size: How many sailors you have aboard your ship. The more you have, the better you can man and reload your cannons. So if your crew gets killed, you will notice a decrease in reload speed for your cannons, and you can even see your crew running from one end to the other to fire the cannons because you lack the manpower. Your crew are also valuable for boarding enemy ships. Typically the bigger crew wins a boarding, but not always.

Firepower: This is the total offensive power of your ship. The higher the number, the more damage it can do. Some ships have less cannons but more firepower. Since each ship typically has more than one different kind of cannon, it is difficult to calculate the firepower per cannon.

Hull: The stronger your hull, the more damage it can withstand without sinking. The weakest parts of all ships is the front and rear. The side of the ships is the strongest.

Maneuverability: How able the ship is to turn, very helpful when you want to fire, turn and fire again.

Speed: Self explanatory. A quick ship can generally go into the wind better than larger ships, better able to escape. Or catch routing ships.

Unit Experience: This is shown as chevrons and stars on the unit icon. The more experienced the crew, the more accurate their shots, the higher morale they possess (and thus less likely to rout) and the better they fight while boarding. Experience may have some other variables such as reload time, but I haven't seen concrete proof of this.


Interface basics:

Wind Direction. This is perhaps one of the most important parts of the game, and you should always keep an eye on wind direction as it can change from time to time. Generally you want the wind at your back, and your enemy to be facing into the wind. If you are forced to go into the wind, go either left or right and zigzag your way up the screen, much faster. Turning with the wind is a VERY quick turn, so keep this in mind when you want to fire one side, then turn and fire the other. You don't want to turn into the wind, because it will slow your turn down dramatically, especially if you have a larger ship.

Sail health. The white bar at the top indicates the status of your sails and masts. As your sails and mast takes damage, this white bar will decrease and slow down your ship's speed and turning capability.

Hull health. Separated into the left and right. So sometimes your ship is green on one side and orange on the other. The orange side is hit badly, the green side is in relatively good condition. You will generally sink once it goes dark orange-red, it's just matter of time.

Cannonballs: Used to damage the hull of your enemy's ship. It will take out a fair amount of cannons and people, but is mostly for hull destruction.

Chain shot: This fires a cannonball split in half with a chain linking the two. It destroys sails and masts, very effective way of disabling your enemies.

Grapeshot: This shot is used to kill the enemy's crew and weapons. Best used in close range before boarding.

Fire At Will: You can toggle this on and off by clicking the button or pressing T. Generally fire at will gives you the best accuracy in medium to long range.

Broadside: This is the manual broadside, only to be used at VERY close range. Point blank really. Don't use this often. Only if you are side to side with an enemy ship. A lot of people use it for long range fire, it is not effective in this manner.

Anchor: This is pretty useful if you have a superior position, for instance, if you have de-masted an enemy ship, park your ship behind it, so you can fire upon it without getting harmed. Just drop anchor and blast away.

Sail speed: This will adjust your sails, with all of them unfurled, you go the fastest. However, chain shot is more effective with unfurled sails. If you are under chain shot attack, I recommend furling your sails to protect them. Double right clicking an area will automatically unfurl the sails to full speed.

Group formation: Quite useful to make your fleet more manageable. You can use the standard Ctrl + 1-9 to set up a group. You can make your own formation and group them, or you can use a preset formation. In large naval battles where the numbers are equal, I recommend using Line Astern formation.

Focus fire: To focus your fire on a target hold ALT and right click on the target. This will make this ship a priority when firing upon, but won't change the direction of your ships. So they will attack someone else if it's more convenient, but will fire upon the target when possible. This is really handy, especially when you are in larger battles, you can take out their capital ship first and the rest is easy to deal with.




Combat tips:
Ideally, you want to pass by the enemy's front and rear, as they do the most damage and keep you safe from harm. Never present your rear or front of your ship to the enemy.

Right click to attack a ship is perhaps the worst thing you can do. It is hands down the worst naval option possible. If you right click on a unit to attack it, your ships will just go right up to them and get blasted to pieces. Worst possible option.

A wise strategy when facing a larger navy than yours is to go with the wind in front of them (or behind them) fire chain shots to slow them down, run away, then turn around and fire more chain shots from afar (chain shots are most effective when facing their front or rear, it tears through more sails)

Also, I suggest splitting their navy in half using your line astern formation. Fire at them, then turn into them and force the other half of their fleet to turn around and go upwind while you concentrate fire on their split up navy. When using this tactic, I recommend having a large broadside force of your biggest ships, and a smaller force of ships (quicker and more maneuverable ones) used to round them up and block them.

I'll post some pictures and videos a bit later to help. If anyone has any suggestions, feel free to email me or leave a comment.

Here's a replay where I split the enemy fleet and wrapped around them with broadsides.