Lords of Magic: Special Edition – A Guide to Ships in LOMSE

Why Do You Need Ships?

 
In LOMSE, ships are a water-born unit, primarily used for transportation of units from coastline to coastline. 
 
Ships are valuable assets for launching invasions, getting access to some of the more unique dungeons, making a getaway from pursuing armies, and in some cases simply attacking an enemy at sea. While ships can be used for several purposes, they are primarily used to transport units over the seas, which can present unique opportunities, as well as challenges. 
 
A single ship can carry 1 champion and up to 3 units or creatures. In order to transport more units, up to 3 ships can form a party, capable of moving even the largest land parties to and from the battlefield. 
 
There are some limitations to ships, however. Unfortunately, while other parties can move over water on their own, in order to join parties with a ship, all units must board the ships. You cannot make a party with both ships and flying units to increase your battle ability, for example, as all units will be forced to stay on-board. This means that the maximum fighting strength of a party with ships is 3 ships, which even the best ships can be defeated with all hands lost… 
 
However, the benefits to mobility generally outweigh the risks, and most ships can at least hold their own in a fight, and if they can’t hold their own, they can usually outrun pursuers. 
 
Mid to late game, ships will be needed for moving armies, and can easily change the tide of the game. 
 
 

Which Ships are Best?

 
So you’re interested in using ships, eh? Well, there are some important things to remember about ships. I once saw a comment where someone said that all ships are a compromise between mobility and fighting ability. For the most part, the combat ability will be used for defense, but can also be used for attacking other ships, or units that have strayed too far from their allies. 
 
While it’s true that most ships are a compromise, and no ship is perfect, their are some clear outliers. Upon reviewing the stats and movement speeds of all of the ships, and their overall distances covered per turn, I was able to come up with the graphic below which roughly compares the abilities of the various ships. 
 
 
 
The results of my comparison didn’t surprise me much, though I must admit that I was surprised that Water’s ships were only average in fighting. 
 
The extremes of ships are as follows: 
 

• In terms of mobility, Water ships are, by a torrential flood, the best of all of the ships. Their combat is fairly average, but their mobility is absolutely the best. It should be noted that in my comparison, I checked both the number of movement points, and the length of an individual stride.(The distance covered by each movement point.) By testing the number of movement points consumed between fixed locations, I came to the realization that all of the other ships used 18 movement points to travel a distance water ships covered using only 10, nearly doubling the distance per turn versus Air ships, which had the same number of movement points. Air and Water ships for the most movement points at 32 points, while Earth and Fire tied for the least at 20. This means that a Water ship could cover nearly 3x the distance of an Earth or Fire ship in a given turn.

• In terms of the best combat ability, Earth was narrowly the strongest. Earth, Order, and Death ships were all very comparable in terms of combat stats, though their were still some notable differences among them. Earth ships had the best combination of attack, defense, and HP by a fair margin, but they are held back by a weaker and shorter-ranged missile attack. In combat, Earth ships would rely more on closing the distance and fighting in melee. While they lack mobility and range, they have enough HP to comfortably take hits while closing the distance. Order, on the other hand, has a fairly potent ranged attack, while still having good HP, Attack, and Defense. Death is more of a balance between melee and ranged combat, working reasonably well in both. While I ranked Earth as being the most potent overall, both Order and Death are very comparable, and would likely hold their own.

• Finally, it should come as no surprise that Fire’s ships are the worst in every regard. They had the lowest defense of any of the ships, as well as one of the lowest attacks, average HP, and beyond comparison the worst missile attack, both in range and in power. When combined with being tied with Earth for the least mobile, it comes as no surprise that Fire ships are the objectively worst ships in the game. From a lore perspective, however, this makes absolute sense. Would you expect the people who worship Fire, of the most land-locked nation, to have good ships? No. Would you expect Water, the people surrounded on 3 sides by sea, who worship water, to make good ships? Yes, obviously!

 
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However… I cannot stress enough that the raw stats of a ship are not the only things that matter, and that just about all of the ships can excel in the right situations, or can be overthrown with the right tactics… 
 
 

Tactics Part 1: Conventional Tactics

 
 
 
Since ships in Lords of Magic vary greatly in stats and abilities, tactics surrounding them vary just as much, if not more. Are their good ways to counter them? What’s the best way to use the ships of your favourite faith? Are ships really practical? 
 
There is no absolute answer to any of those questions, but there are some tactics that can help you utilize your ships properly, to supplement your ships weaknesses, or to use your ships to supplement your army’s weaknesses. 
 
These tactics are by no means totally comprehensive, but they should be a helpful starting point for people looking to extend their reach into the seas a bit. 
 
Tactics to use with ships: 

• Fire’s ship, the Ferry, is undoubtedly the weakest ship in terms of both combat and mobility. While this sounds like it is totally useless, you have to consider that it actually happily exists in a nation that doesn’t need a fast or powerful ship! It may be weak, but it is not useless. In fact, it compliments the Fire faith quite nicely. Ships are usually used for transportation of armies, however, Fire’s main combat champions, Sorceresses and Flame Giants, are actually already very mobile, covering far more ground than most comparable units in a given turn. As for combat over the waters, many times flying units are a better option than ships, and it happens that Fire’s mythical Dragons are one of the most potent flying units in the game, and could easily destroy enemy ships. With those things in mind, what does the Ferry do? What all Ferries do! They carry troops across narrow bodies of water to islands or nearby shores. To access an island can be a challenge without a boat, but if you just need to skip over a pond, you don’t need a Corsair that can travel half way across the world in a turn, nor do you need a beefy armada of Barges, you just need something that can float. And by the gods, a Ferry sure does meet that requirement! You’re not going to be winning the battle of Jutland with Ferries, and you won’t make it around the world in 80 turns,(Okay, you will, but the joke remains) but it will do the only thing Fire armies really need a ship for. Would other ships do the same thing more efficiently? It depends. One thing Fire ships have going for them is that they are A LOT cheaper than certain other ships.(Something like half the price of a Corsair, but still carries just as many troops across the pond.) 
   
• Water, Air, Life, and Chaos have the more mobile ships. With high mobility, these ships are far better at quickly transporting armies from one side of the map to the other. You can quickly rescue a damaged army group from certain doom, or bring in troops to crush your enemies with an army at their capitol’s door. Their mobility can usually let them avoid getting into fights, but Water, Life, and Chaos can also hold their own reasonably well if they come under attack. Air, on the other hand, is really better off avoiding battle and keeping a distance, which thankfully it should be able to do rather well. 
   
• Earth, Death, and Order ships excel in combat, and make for good attackers and defenders. If you want to prevent an invasion force from landing, a series of barges can deter enemies from attacking. If a fast ship comes in loaded with troops, only to get attacked just before reaching shore, it can be a devastating loss. These ships are reasonably robust in battle, and could be used to set up blockades in the straights, like the chokepoint between Water and Order, but it should be noted that there are some other units that could also have a huge impact here…

 
Tactics to use against ships: 

• Many other units can go in/on/over the seas, and some of them are more mobile than ships, some of them can fight better than ships, and perhaps most importantly, almost all of them can outnumber ships. This is a very important aspect, and it provides a challenge to the mariner builds. A party of ships can only have a maximum of 3 ships in one battle at a time, but most creatures, including the kinds you can encounter out at sea, can have 9 units or creatures, and possibly including up to 3 champions.(Note that among Champions, only Balkoth and Air Thieves have the ability to move over water.) Additionally, if a ship is too close to land, it can also be attacked from the land, presenting unique battles, possibly good or bad for either side, depending. Water has several marine-based creatures that can easily overpower ships in large groups. Krakens and Serpents both have powerful physical attacks, and they also both have a rather large amount of HP. While both of them also have ranged attacks, and the game’s AI prioritizes these over melee attacks, their ranged attacks are very very weak and short-ranged. Instead, it’s often better to force them to close the distance and move in for a melee battle. While a single serpent will struggle against most ships, 9 serpents can easily defeat any party of ships. Flying units pose an even greater threat to ships. Most flying units can move over great distances in a given turn. Units like Pegasi and Fae Slingers/Thieves can easily outrun the more combat-oriented ships, and can give good pursuit to even the faster mobility-oriented ships. Meanwhile, units like the Thunder Drakes and Dragons have enough power to easily overthrow fleet after fleet, assuming they can catch up to them. Then you have Giant Arachnids… to be honest, by the time they’re on the seen, I’ve never had enemies strong enough to summon ships, so I don’t know how they fair, but suffice it to say their unit size of two members would certainly make them a threat to any ship. In short, even the combat oriented ships face a hard to swallow truth; that ships are not the rulers of the seas. 
   
• 8 of the 8 Faiths have access to at least some form of spell that can change terrain. When cast particularly close to a shoreline, these spells can actually change the size and shape of the coast, sometimes connecting bodies of land, and cutting off narrow straits. While some of the spells, like Pestilence, require an enemy unit to be present as a target to damage in order to change the land beneath it, other spells, like Create Plain, can be used anywhere. Spells like these are generally unpredictable as to whether they will cut off a body of water, or make a channel wider, but there is a notable exception: Make Land. With the Water spell Make Land, you can literally have a couple of Priestesses surround an enemy ship with land, making it impossible for them to move. You can cut off the route of a naval invasion, or you can even make a land bridge out to the enemy so that your ground forces can attack them. These tactics are difficult to use, but can completely stop an enemy invasion, or even reverse it. When you’re ready to invade a country, you don’t even need to buy ships. If you want, you can just walk across that new continent you made!

Tactics Part 2: Cheesy Tactics

 
Some of the tactics involving ships can even utilize game mechanics for some extra cheesy, borderline glitching/cheating exploits: 

• If you have a ship, and you fight an enemy that’s on the shore, often times your ship will have better range than their weapons, if they have range at all. Simply go out into the water, and shoot missiles at them until they’re all dead. However, it’s important to note that sometimes the rubber band is on the other claw, and the ground troops might out-range you! This is especially tricky with units that can fly, in particular Air Thieves, but that’s a topic for another guide. Note that when enemy troops cannot reach you with melee, the NPC AI will tell them to walk straight towards the target until they come to an impassible barrier, or within range to fire their missiles, whichever comes first.(This does mean that even if the body of water you’re in is small, if there is another impassible block between you and enemy archers, they AI will not tell them to go around it, and instead will have them stop. The AI will react more intelligently if you move to within melee range, however. 
   
• Do you want your non-water ships to move a lot further? Would you believe me if I told you that, without spells or cheat codes, you could get a Fire ship to go further in a turn than an Air ship? Or perhaps that an Air ship could go just as far as a Water ship? One of the game mechanics is that the distance covered by a stride, i.e. how far you go when consuming a movement point, is determined by the unit you have in the front. This is why a unit on its own doesn’t move very far at all, but if you have a Champion with them, they almost always move a lot further in a given turn. Well all ships have the same stride, with the exception of Water’s Corsairs, which cover 80% more distance per movement point. This means that if a Corsair is the lead ship, other faiths’ ships in the party will move 80% further than normal. Unfortunately, you can’t really boost the Corsairs by doing this, but if you wanted to buy some cheaper ships, and then have them tag along with a Corsair, you can transport more troops over considerable distance on a budget. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:  
   
  Additionally, while it’s not a cheat, overland movement spells, like Forced March, still seem to work on ships, which will make a very big difference very quickly. 
   
• Some ships have different Sight Radii, meaning they can see further or shorter, depending. This feature can mean that certain ships aren’t as good at exploring as others, or that enemies can get the drop on you, so more advanced warning would be nice. There are some spells that can boost how far a mage can see, but these spells actually reduce the mage’s movement points to 0, in exchange for an exceptional field of vision. But did you know that if your mage just boarded a ship that hasn’t left the shore yet, they can still cast that spell? And did you know that a ship can move parties that have no movement points? In other words: Put a mage on a boat, use a spell like Ranger’s Vision or Commune with Nature, and then set sail. The mage’s Sight Radius is greatly increased, far beyond what any ship can do, but the ship is the one doing all the moving. While this effect only lasts for one turn without stopping at shore to cast the spell again, it completely circumvents the lower Sight Radius of some ships, and allows for you to more quickly explore the world, or watch out for invasions from further away. Below is a picture showing how much Commune with Nature can extend a ship’s Sight Radius: 
   
• While trying to get the screenshot above without having to change the location of the Fire Ferry, I actually came up with a new method that, used correctly, could move a small party across the entire map in a single turn. The mage had boarded a ship, which then joined this ship waiting out at sea. You can then have that ship move to another ship, move the troops to the new one, and so on. It’s not very cost effective, but it can get a party from one side of the map to the other without the foot soldiers using all their movement points up, and without using cheat codes!(Fun little exploit, but it still doesn’t compare to some games made by a certain studio we’ll just call “Methresda”)

Data not used in/Missing from this Guide

 
This guide is not a totally comprehensive guide to everything pertaining to ships in this game, and is lacking in several factors that can change the usefulness of ships. It’s very important to know that there are some types of data, like sight radius or price-to-stat ratios that can be important factors, but are very difficult to assay in game, and dedicated to making a good guide as I may be, I am not about to spend several hours calculating the economics of a hired merc. ship versus a trained ship for every faith. 
 
What I can do, however, is tell you what information could still be relevant that I did not collect, so you can look into differences yourself, if you should so choose. Please note, however, that I really did do my best to give a fair and accurate assessment of the ships and their usefulness. 
 
Missing Data: 
 

• Prices of ships. I did roughly compare the price of the Fire Ferry to the Water Corsair, and noticed that the Corsair is roughly double the price(!) and that this could have very significant implications to the meta of building a navy for transportation or for battle. Unfortunately, this adds a level of complexity that makes it difficult to fairly calculate the practicality of different faiths. Each ship can be bought as a mercenary or as a trained unit, which would mean you would have to factor in both initial cost, as well as upkeep, in comparing them. Additionally, with higher upkeep, you would have to factor in what purpose you’re using the ship for, for example sending Fire Ferries to suicide attack Water Corsairs, along with the mobility. How long would it take for the Ferries to reach the Corsairs? How much damage would they do? Would it still be more cost effective to send mercenaries, or should they be trained to use up less resources in the long run? Price complicates the comparisons a lot.

• Combat speed. While the data of overworld mobility was reasonably easy to collect, taking me only about 15 or 20 minutes, combat mobility would be far harder to measure, and would require a lot more work to calculate. Additionally, there is a fairly high chance that the combat mobility of the ships would be comparable to the overworld mobility, likely being similar, with Air and Water being most mobile, while Earth and Fire were the least mobile. This could impact combat abilities of different ships, but I did not investigate it, since I considered the impact relatively small. Note that the Agility stat of ships seems to have little or no impact on its actual mobility, seeing as how ships have some of the lowest Agility of any units in the game, however they also have the highest overall mobility. Since all the ships I checked had either 3 or 4 Agility, and it seemed to have no correlation with overworld mobility, I did not consider it worth assessing.

• Sight Radius. While looking out for enemies or exploring the area near the seas, Sight Radius is a very important factor, however, difficulty in measuring it, and the lessening need for it, since you often have exploratory spells and watchtowers later in the game, I did not look deeply into this stat. I will note, however, that Water ships again seemed to be particularly good, while Fire ships seemed to be particularly bad in regards to Sight Radius. Sight Radius is also brought up in the “Tactics” section of this guide, and with spells like Ranger’s Vision or Commune with Nature, the sight radius of a ship is largely a moot point.

• Hidden Combat Stats. There are several stats used in combat that are not readily accessible that can have impacts on the combat viability of different units. These include, but are not limited to, rate of attack(Melee), rate of fire(Missile), missile speed, hit recovery(How long an attack staggers a unit), magic resistance, and stealth.(I’m not sure if stealth has any use for ships, to be honest… I think it only affects Thieves.) Additionally, outside of combat you also have health regeneration rate, which I have observed to be quite slow for ships, but I do not have any figures on if any ships are better than others, or how that may come into play in relation to economics.

• Legends of Urak/Multiplayer battles. In LoU, there are a few occasions where you will get to use ships. Since each legend is different, and uses some different rules to conventional single player, I do not know any of the specifics. Additionally, I have never even tried multiplayer, and I do not know if anything is changed about how viable ships are in PvP.

 
There may also be other factors that I did not include in my assessment, however I stand by my guide, in that it is a reasonably thorough guide for the use of ships in Lords of Magic: Special Edition, and that discrepancies will be rather minor. 
 

This is all about Lords of Magic: Special Edition – A Guide to Ships in LOMSE; I hope you enjoy reading the Guide! If you feel like we should add more information or we forget/mistake, please let us know via commenting below, and thanks! See you soon!