Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

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Poland pecelot
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Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

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Post by pecelot »

Today, let’s talk about Fishing Boats’ transport capabilities. Something — again — usually neglected or even entirely forgotten, but may appear handy in certain circumstances. :ship:

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First off, let’s study the procedure. Garrisoning units in Fishing Boats can be a bit counter-intuitive, as they do not have the special open-door icon (like the one you will see below in the interface) when you hover your mouse on them while having selected other land units. To challenge that, you need to look for a special „Garrison inside a building or ship." button in the bottom-right corner of the UI:

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The presented modified interface is called Ekanta and differs from the regular in-game one, but the place of the button remains the same. Unfortunately, it doesn't have a hotkey. With units in a group, press the button and then left-click on the ship.

Fishing Boats can take on board up to 10 land units of any kind, from Villagers and Explorers, to Elifents and Great Bombards. :chinese:

[spoiler=Villagers]Image

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[spoiler=Explorers]Image

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Francis Drake FTW :coin:[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Elifents]Image

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:aiz: :ship: :wood: :ship: :aiz:[/spoiler]
[spoiler=Great Bombards]Image

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Awesome, right? :kinggreen:

[spoiler=meme]Video:
https://www.facebook.com/ageofempires/videos/1312347508802652/


Image[/spoiler]


With that in mind, we can think of possible situations in which this particular knowledge can become useful.

1) Covering Villagers from raids. When opting for a water-boom-oriented strategy, it’s highly likely that you will be put under some pressure. Oftentimes there are hunts gathered near a shore, which in turn is not that far from your base on many maps. All of these factors create a case in which you can be gathering food near the water with some Fishing Boats nearby. What you can do then at this point is easy to guess — you can quickly get your Settlers on board to save them from enemy cavalry. That way you don’t really need to worry about security of them, as they are protected nicely by the ships — your infantry doesn’t have to camp on these hunts anymore. It may appear as an a-bit-unusual scenario, but it happened to me many times, for instance, in these 2 games:

Recording #1: in the Diplomunion tournament RO16 I faced @hleung — in the second game of the series I was doing a water boom on ESOC Florida as the Spanish, whereas he picked the Germans. Unfortunately, the stream was lost, but in the recording you can see it starting from 7th minute 50th second, as well as on these screenshots:

[spoiler=Screenshots]Image

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Image[/spoiler]


hleung comes for a raid and catches me off guard a bit, but I managed to hide my Settler into the ship and buy some time for my Pikemen to come and deal with the danger.

Recording #2: coming from not that long ago, in the famous Warsaw Pact clash between me and @EAGLEMUT in the RO64 of the Second Chance Tournament for Spring 2017 I was forced to do it again in the third game as the British against the Iroquois on the map ESOC Manchuria. Casters during the stream unfortunately missed it, but it happens around the 5th hour, 2nd minute and 35th second into the video. You can also watch it at the 27th minute and 45th second in the attached recording, or just look at the images below:

[spoiler=Screenshots]Image

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Image[/spoiler]


EAGLEMUT comes with his cavalry to prevent me from building my Town Center by sniping my Explorer, but I quickly garrison him into the nearby Fishing Boat, saving his life. Unfortunately, that wasn't enough to succeed :sad:

2) Transporting Explorers. It may see some usage on water maps like ESOC Indonesia, on which there are multiple islands spread around. In this case, make sure to familiarise yourself with one of my previous Tips of the Day for this particular map. However, you start there with a Marathan Catamaran that can already transport your units. Nevertheless, if you somehow get it killed, you can still use your Fishing Boats — just like on Honshu, where you spawn with 2 of these and a Dock Rickshaw, which you can use to get your Explorer to the TP-island, Northwest Territory, Caribbean and some others. That way, you don't have to pay 400 resources for a Caravel, but only 100 for a Fishing Boat — or even less with Schooners-type home-city shipments.

3) Transporting the army. On the same maps as in 2), you can instead get your army overseas to quickly attack your enemy. This surprising strategy may be really effective on water-heavy maps to pressure your opponent early on. Alternatively, you can use it to flank them on maps like ESOC Hudson Bay, Saguenay or ESOC Manchuria — transporting your cavalry from the top-right shore to the top-left — or vice-versa.



So that's it for today's tip — remember about it next time you do a water-boom or play on a water map :idea: Let me know if it was helpful or not — drop a like or a comment below with your experiences, notes or even suggestions for further tipsh!

:ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship: :ship:
Attachments
[EP3-1 SP] EAGLEMUT[IR] vs Pezet[BR] - ESOC Manchuria.age3yrec
Recording #2 — 27:45
(1001.06 KiB) Downloaded 104 times
ESOC Manchuria
ESOC Manchuria
Rules: Supremacy (1v1)
Version: ESOC Patch 3.1
Length: 31 minutes
[EP2-1 SP] Pezet[SP] vs hleung[GE] - ESOC Florida.age3yrec
Recording #1 — 7:50
(1.41 MiB) Downloaded 54 times
ESOC Florida
ESOC Florida
Rules: Supremacy (1v1)
Version: ESOC Patch 2.1
Length: 29 minutes
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Great Britain hleung
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by hleung »

Great thread! Keep them coming, please! Oh, and thanks for reminding me that I have to create some good water decks (already lost in my short-lived and much more inferior memory). :flowers:
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by _RDX_ »

Have to say, very nice and useful tip. Thank you! I am expecting more tips from you :smile:

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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

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Post by Pacc21 »

Gotta love the logic behind unit types garrisoning. Fits 10 great bombards but not 11 skinny villis
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

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Post by Aizamk »

Would just like to mention that transporting an army using fishing boats isn't exactly the safest thing to do, nor is it a method of "quickly" attacking your enemy. Don't use fishing boats for any sort of long distance transportation, or long duration transportation, as the risk is too large. They should really only function as a panic method of protecting units, e.g. garrisoning shore hunting villagers inside a fishing boat, and then into the dock for extra measure to buy time. Note you can also use the ungarrison trick with docks to teleport fishing boats quickly.

Something high level to note though, is that on TAD, outposts don't really counter fishing boats; they do something like 4 damage per shot. Plus, on top of the base 200hp, fishing boats get an extra boost from great coat. So if you find a position heavily defended by 2 or 3 outposts, and you need to get your pikemen over, guess what the best thing to do is? DON'T use a 800hp caravel, but use a few fishing boats! Well, assuming there aren't any warships there, anyway. For this reason you can also use fishing boats to tank outpost fire when you come in with caravels.

Just my input >:)
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by _RDX_ »

THX BAI
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by Jaeger »

If your explorer is inside while the ship sinks, the explorer appears somewhere on shore (not sure if the closest shore, or the shore it started on, or something else)
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Poland pecelot
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by pecelot »

Great! But isn't your second paragraph contradictory to the first one? You don't do it late into the game anyways, early on the worst you can meet is an Outpost, and as you said it doesn't deal almost any damage to the Fishing Boats. The main advantage of such a transportation is that it's cheap and available early, before your opponent has any other warships. Naturally, the more you delay your voyage, the bigger the risk of the Fishing Boat getting sunk.
And, naturally, like Ovi said, you can't lose your explorer in such a way. :chinese:
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by Aizamk »

pecelot wrote:Great! But isn't your second paragraph contradictory to the first one? You don't do it late into the game anyways, early on the worst you can meet is an Outpost, and as you said it doesn't deal almost any damage to the Fishing Boats. The main advantage of such a transportation is that it's cheap and available early, before your opponent has any other warships. Naturally, the more you delay your voyage, the bigger the risk of the Fishing Boat getting sunk.
And, naturally, like Ovi said, you can't lose your explorer in such a way. :chinese:


Transporting an explorer which you can't lose, (or 1 or 2 villagers), and transporting 1000+ resources worth of military units relatively slowly, are different things. Besides, if you actually have 10 milit pop worth of units + a dock + a fishing boat then it's not really early game anymore. Anyway, it's not just the risk of losing the fishing boat which is important here.

If you are transporting something, remember that that something is tied up and cannot be used, so long as it is on water. You have effectively lost those 10 units until they can get back to land.

The thing about long duration voyages, is that that army is effectively NOT there for that LONG duration. You can't easily turn back and redeploy those units in time to save a barracks at home, for example. On a map like manchuria, you'd have been better off just sending your army along the edge of the coast to avoid detection.

The correct tactical method (in my opinion) of using a fishing boat on that map would be:
1) For cheap sneaky transportation when they have walled up (but not the shore)
2) For ninja getaways when raiding, e.g. you've killed 3 villagers, 10 huss are after your 5, what do? Pop into fishing boat and save.

Transportation via fishing boat of a villager in transition to II (or a bit after) is really the only thing that pays off very well for long duration movement. Realistically 1 villager not working temporarily isn't that big of a deal, and being able to sneak a forward base behind enemy lines and mass additional units from there is pretty big tactically.
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by Aizamk »

Welp double post. To make use of this space, I would like to mention that use of the boats from the 3 fishing boat shipment is pretty gud, though, as you haven't had to spend that 200w on a dock, and no dock from you= no dock from then= happy carefree voyaging in most cases.
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by yemshi »

Or schooner boom into transporting the vill onto an island to build more docks.
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by noissance »

i use this strategy on NR 55 HM NWS, where i transport 5 vills to the back of the base. The rules specified no WAR ships after all :P

I have a question though, what happens if the fishing ship with units is deleted/destroyed? i know in aoe2 they get transported to closest land.
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

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Aizamk wrote:Transporting an explorer which you can't lose, (or 1 or 2 villagers), and transporting 1000+ resources worth of military units relatively slowly, are different things. Besides, if you actually have 10 milit pop worth of units + a dock + a fishing boat then it's not really early game anymore. Anyway, it's not just the risk of losing the fishing boat which is important here.

If you are transporting something, remember that that something is tied up and cannot be used, so long as it is on water. You have effectively lost those 10 units until they can get back to land.

The thing about long duration voyages, is that that army is effectively NOT there for that LONG duration. You can't easily turn back and redeploy those units in time to save a barracks at home, for example. On a map like manchuria, you'd have been better off just sending your army along the edge of the coast to avoid detection.

It doesn't have to be 10 military population worth of units. With that I had in mind mainly maps on which you're divided from your enemy by water, like Amazonia or Caribbean. Sure, units are idled then, but I don't really see a better alternative when it comes to transport. Even if your opponent manages to build a caravel, you can sneak your Fishing Boat from the side. Ultimately, the distance dividing two peninsulas is not that large. On Manchuria or Hudson Bay/Saguenay it's not that necessary, although still, at least on the latter, you can get a nice flank from an angle that is not expected. Sometimes players build their forward bases near the shore, as it's simultaneously around the middle of the map, and hence such a usage of Fishing Boats may be useful.

Aizamk wrote:I would like to mention that use of the boats from the 3 fishing boat shipment is pretty gud, though, as you haven't had to spend that 200w on a dock, and no dock from you= no dock from then= happy carefree voyaging in most cases.

Right, but it's just Japanese things, right? Or Portuguese consulate :hmm:

yemshi wrote:Or schooner boom into transporting the vill onto an island to build more docks.

Exactly, like on Indonesia or Hudson Bay (and sometimes Saguenay)!

noissance wrote:i use this strategy on NR 55 HM NWS, where i transport 5 vills to the back of the base. The rules specified no WAR ships after all :P

I have a question though, what happens if the fishing ship with units is deleted/destroyed? i know in aoe2 they get transported to closest land.

Clever! :idea:
When any ship is far from the shore, as in just not close, all units inside die. That's the case in AoE2, too, with the exceptions of explorer-type units and relics, respectively.
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by milku3459 »

Not Using Fishing Boats to Transport Explorers is Bad
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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by JakeyBoyTH »

noissance wrote:i use this strategy on NR 55 HM NWS, where i transport 5 vills to the back of the base. The rules specified no WAR ships after all :P

I have a question though, what happens if the fishing ship with units is deleted/destroyed? i know in aoe2 they get transported to closest land.

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Re: Tip of the Day — Fishing Transport Boat

Post by Imperial Noob »

Fishing boats can also be used when the enemy spots little, peaceful fishermen and thinks (Ardennes style) "nobody can come across that way"
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