Ship

## Abilities

Only heals while in cities

Loses movement when damaged

Becomes disabled when health is below 30%

Can blockade cities and other ships

Can act as a port for supply

Can transport units

Ships are a costly naval unit with a diverse set of powerful abilities. They deal tremendous damage to land units with their land bombardment. They can also blockade enemy islands and landmasses depriving areas of adequate supply.

In many cases, a dominant naval position can swing the tide of land wars by denying supply and threatening island captures and amphibious landings.

### Combat

#### Dealing damage

Ships have three combat options: normal attacks (60 damage), naval bombardment (40), and land bombardment (200). Of these three, only land bombardment can be used against land units.

Although normal attacks deal more damage than naval bombardment, when performing a normal attack against another ship both side deal and take damage. Naval bombardment results in high net damage since no damage is taken in return. Another advantage of naval bombardment is that it can be done at range (2 squares) and a ship can continue moving afterwards. Normal attacks consume all movement points of the attacking ship.

The main advantages of normal attacks is that they deal damage faster and benefit from the flanking bonus. In ship on ship combat it is often more important to quickly deal damage to a single target rather than trade efficiently. This is because when a ship's health drops below 30% it becomes disabled, thus removing it as a threat.

#### Disabling ships

Ships whose health is below 30% are considered disabled. When disabled, a ship cannot attack or bombard.

### Movement

Ships have a base movement value of 8. The more damaged a ship is the less movement it has. A ship loses one percentage point of movement for each percentage point of health a it is missing. So if a ship is at 75% health it will have only 75% of its movement (in this case 6).

This, along with the disabling mechanic, makes taking damage very dangerous for a ship as a low health cannot out run a full health ship. This can make ship on ship combat snowball quickly.

Ships ignore ZOC.

### Gold cost

The base gold cost of a ship is 2 gold. For every existing ship of yours that is on the map or is being trained, the cost of your next ship is increased by 1 gold. So if you have 3 ships, your fourth will cost 5 gold. This makes large navies more expensive to maintain than smaller navies since replacing lost ships becomes more expensive the larger your navy is.

### Supply and blockading

On land, supply is shared via territory. For supply to be shared across bodies of water, both land masses must have a port. Cities adjacent to the water are ports. Additionally, ships can act as a port so long as they are adjacent to a territory square.

When a ship is next to an enemy city that city becomes blockaded, and as such no longer acts as a port. If every port city on an island is blockaded then the supply consumption and production of that island will be cut off from other land masses.

Just as cities can be blockaded by enemy ships, ships acting as ports can also be blockaded by enemy ships.

#### Strategy

For landmasses that produce more supply than they consume, fully blockading them can starve off other landmasses thus giving your forces an advantage in war so long as the blockage remains. On the other hand, when performing a naval landing on an island, fully blockading the island first can severely weaken the defending land units.

### Transporting units

Each ship can transport an infinite amount of units. Units load on to ships by moving into the ship. Units lose all their movement points when loading onto a ship and so can't unload until the next turns. Similarly, when a unit unloads from a ship it is unable to move or attack until the next turn.

Loading and unloading both respect ZOC. This is particularly important when performing amphibious landings as defending land units can block ships from unloading with their ZOC.

### Healing

Ships only heal while in cities. Unlike other units, ships will not heal if they take damage during their turn. On the other hand, ships will still heal on the next after bombarding. Healing is particularly important for ships because a ship's movement is proportional to its health.