Navy defense - Biremes or Fire Ships?

Biremes of Fire Ships? To answer quickly I will say that Fire Ships are better against Light Ships attacks however overall Biremes are more useful and should make most of our navy defenses. It also depends in what stage of the game you are. If you have only few cities then having Fire Ships in each of your harbours make sense however once you get 10+ cities and become part of a bigger alliance, then you need something more useful - Biremes.

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Description (from grepo wiki)

Fire ships 

are burning ships that approach enemy fleets and ignite them. Only the defender can use fire ships. During an attack (when defending), every Fire Ship destroys one enemy ship*, while destroying itself in the process. They are very slow, and are often passed up for biremes for support.

Biremes  

are strong ships that can be used especially well in defense.

Well, after that short description its easy to  understand the role of each one but if you know and understand facts behind their differences you will make better use of them.

*This description is misleading as it says that a Fire Ship sinks an enemy ship, while it actually sinks one enemy Light Ship. Fire Ships DO NOT KILL TRANSPORTS, HYDRAS, OR COLONY SHIPS. They fight last, and so are useless to defend sieges because the Colony Ship defends before them. Also they will not defend you against land attacks - they will sink the escort but will not touch transport ships. So basically Fire Ships are great as a defense against pure LS attacks but that's it - Biremes are more universal and practical.

 Lets first compare their attributes.

Parameters Comparison

Defense

Bireme = 160

Fire Ship = 1 - however 1 Fire Ship will sink 1 Light Ship and suicide itself. Its like a kamikaze bomber.

So to draw a picture lets say we are attacked by 200 LS wave. We can defend it with 250 BMs or 250 Fire Ships (its not important but all three groups are equal FS wise)

a) 250 Biremes = Losses: 250 Biremes, 200 LS

b) 250 Fire Ships = Losses: 200 Fire Ships, 200 LS

In example b) we left with 50 Fire Ships. Lets avoid any confusion here and lets say we are defending with 100 BMs and 100 FS.

a) 100 Biremes = Losses: 100 Biremes, 67 LS

b) 100 Fire Ships = Losses: 100 Fire Ships, 100 LS

Again Fire Ships win by sinking 33 LS more (1.5 times more than BMs)

Farm Space

1 Bireme = 8 FS
1 Fire Ship = 8 FS

Time of production

At Level 25 Harbor
Bireme = 1:39:31
Fire Ship = 0:40:12

You can build 3 Fire Ships in the time it takes to build 1 Bireme

Cost: (without Mathematics research)
Bireme = 800w 700 st 180 s, total = 1680
Fire Ship = 500 w 750 st 150 s, total = 1400

Fire ships are bit cheaper, save you wood and silver, and only cost 50  more stone 

So until here you would think that Fire Ships are better than Biremes and in terms of local defense against LS attacks they are. However we should not produce them in every single city, because its inefficient. Some of our cities will be focused on production of offensive units and as I explained in other guides, while you can stack defensive units in one city, you cant do that with your offensive forces. Therefore you should make your attack waves as big as possible, use every single Farm Space to make your attack stronger. In offensive cities you will not produce any defensive units, including Fire Ships and Biremes.

The problem is that your offensive specialised cities might get attacked and then you will need to send your defensive navy there to protect them. Also your teammates might need urgently your support. This is where Biremes become more useful in comparison to Fire Ships. Biremes are much faster.

Speed Very important attribute in supporting
Biremes = 15
Fire Ships = 5

Biremes are 3 times faster than Fire Ships - can support much quicker


Attack: You should never attack with you Biremes and cant do it with Fire Ships (unless they escort a Colony Ship but they wont protect your CS, will kill some LS only)
1 Bireme = 24 attack
1 Fire Ship = You can't attack with Fire Ships

Summary

Fire Ship wins in production time, resources, and defense against Light Ships only.

Biremes provide fast support.

If speed is not an issue then use Fire ships, however more often than not, you might need quick defensive ships.

Source grepo forum:

Trelane - But the absolute best defense is..............being online lol. Those who play this game 24/7 have a huge advantage because they can see the attack coming and either mass defense or dodge. So check into the game regularly.

You can mass hundreds of biremes in the harbor of a colonization attempt or in response to an incoming attack (so you should have lots of biremes). Stacked biremes are the single most effective naval defense (but you need to be online to do it - so partly your strategy depends on how close you are to strong opponents). Offensively, The only way to break such defense, is to use a Light Ships nuke. By nuke I mean 200+ lightships with 10% boost from Zeus.

However there are circumstances and situations in which Fire ships are preffered to Biremes. When speed is not an issue and you cannot build many Biremes, it is better to build Fire ships.

I realize these aren't new, but I thought I would throw them up as ways that highlight how fireships can be marginally effective in small numbers where similar amounts of biremes are less effective or useless.

1. Build some in a backwater town that is too far from the action to do anything and send 30 to the cities I expect to be attacked. When I dodge a land unit nuke, it would kill the escort, thus delaying a resend of that land nuke. When I dodge an ls nuke, I "tax" the attack for 30 ls and am getting more BP than the attacker.

2. Attached as an anchor. They are slow, slow so they can give multiple timing attempts. I.e. attach a fs and be aggressive with the timing, if it doesn't work, recall and resend later w/o the fs.

3. In Epsilon, I ran a reverse "GROMs Manoeuvre". We were up against an alliance that was dodging like crazy and had a dozed ls nuke cities very close to another to every conquest usually ended by ls nukes rolling it. We were in a resource battle. I had several close cities that I had conquested from. I sent a cs from a city far away and lined up some timed attacks just before it from a long was away that were ls+fs (as an anchor). He spied the attacks and saw the single ls and assumed it was a fake cs. We sent another cs, but just put a whack of fs as support (some land too). Anyways killed 600 or so ls with the cheap fireships and they couldn't rebuild and snipe the cs.

4. Was trading ls lobs on an active player (When I sent an ls nuke at his ls factory. He would dodge and send an ls nuke back trying to time it so it hit my ls factory when my ls as they got back to port). This went on for days. I built a 100 fireships and put them in place. It diminished the ls nuke which was the goal. Also, he no longer tried to snipe my ls nukes coming back to port, so I no longer had to get up at all hours to quickly dodge.

If you have any question or would like to add anything, please leave your comment

cheers :)