u/ANerd22

New to the game, but not the series. I'm on my second attempt, I turned off pirates since they were kicking my ass, but decided to try playing with the Anarchist. I've gotten a decently sophisticated economy, up to Artisans in the Old World, and the second tier in the new world, mostly keeping them all happy. I'm barely balancing the budget, but most of that has gone into my military I suspect, since I built a fleet of over a dozen ships of the line.

The Anarchist starts causing my pop happiness to go down so I decide my fleet will teach him a lesson. Only they are absolutely obliterated by his port. He didn't even have any ships, just a couple turrets at his city. Half my fleet was gone before it even got close enough to fire. It was a military catastrophe. Now I have no fleet, and he's pissed off, I'm sure my karma is coming in the form of an Anarchist fleet on my doorstep any minute now.

So the question is how do I actually defeat an enemy in this game? I had 12 Ships of the line, more than I could afford, and they barely made a dent. Are you not meant to attack the AI? It felt like fighting a late game boss with starter equipment. Or is there something I'm missing here?

I had a similar experience in my first game with the pirates, but I figured their lairs are meant to be unbeatable to prevent you from wiping them out completely, since they similarly deleted my fleet of ships of the line.

EDIT:

Thank you all for the feedback, I've learned I need to either build a massive force of ships to spam the harbour, or wait till I get better technology. The AI has pretty thoroughly outpaced me so it looks like I'm limited to the former option. The only other Anno games I've played are the first two, 1602 and 1503, and while they are goated games, they did not prepare me for the challenge.

I am playing a multiplayer game as Rome with my friend as Carthage. He has categorically won almost every single field battle we have fought. He even nearly beat me when I was ambushing him, I was only saved by outnumbering him enormously. I am running out of legions and I can't recruit more because I am out of generals.

He is mainly using African Pikemen, Sacred Band, Libyan Peltasts, Noble Cavalry, and War Elephants. I really don't know how to kill any of it. His cav is so fast and deadly that its almost impossible for me to keep my Velites alive to actually shoot anything. I've tried wide front formations and closed boxes and everything in between. In open formations he just envelops me with the cav, while deleting my Evocati from the front with Pikes and Sacred Band, and when I tried a closed box, he just sat and softened up the front line with peltasts before charging in with elephants and totally disrupting the whole formation.

I gave up on roman cavalry a while back after they consistently failed to be able to defeat even his ranged peltasts. I've got Praetorians now who hold out for a while, but I can't keep any other units alive in the battle long enough for them to be useful. I have an army of 100% Praetorians on the way, with another of 75% praetorians and the rest velites, so I can try some different strats, but I am running out of ideas here. Any suggestions are welcome