It seems to me that most players will readily admit they don't really know how the navy works, and I cannot blame them at all. Minor nations rarely have a reason or capacity to build a navy strong enough to compete with major nations, and major nations usually have enough of a starting navy to not really care; as a result, most can safely ignore intermediate naval strategy entirely.

But what about when you can't ignore it, or better yet, want to have fun with the navy, and feel that rush of dopamine as you crush an enemy fleet?

image credit u/hoiboi1

This guide aims to help explain the fundamentals of naval combat so you know what best to do in your future exploits across the seven seas!

Note: while this guide is written assuming you are playing against other players casually, it neither discusses serious MP meta nor singleplayer. Despite this, much of the guide can be applied to these scenarios.

Not so fast.

















I'd be doing you a massive disservice if I just pasted some templates here and called it a day. Naval combats aren't as straightforward as land battles, and there is no equivalent to a 14/4 or pure 20 that I can easily recommend you pump out. In order to understand which ships and templates to produce, we must first understand:

Ships, like divisions, have a slew of important stats that impact how they perform in a battle. Here is a sample pre-existing template from the UK of a heavy cruiser that demonstrates most of the stats.


Each module on the ship has been outlined in a color to better help you visualize what modules do what.

Speed (in purple): Speed is one of a ship's most important values. Speed, naturally, is determined by the class of the ship and by its level of engine. Speed does not only impact how quick your fleets move around like divisions on land. Speed also acts much like agility does for airplanes, meaning that ships with higher speeds are more likely to avoid being hit during a battle.

Max Range: This is how far your ship can travel. Larger and later-tech ships will have higher ranges. Smaller ships (sans submarines) will have less range. While this is much less of a concern for European powers (especially in the Mediterranean) it will have serious consequences on the naval battles fought by powers like the US and Japan in the vast expanses of the Pacific.

Organisation: Is much less important here than it is on land. You won't need to worry about this value too much.

HP, Reliability, Supply Use, and Manpower: these are self explanatory and function similar to land units. You don't need to worry about these too much, perhaps except for HP. Bigger ships have more of it.

Light Attack (in yellow): Light attack is... sort of like soft attack. You can increase the light attack on your ship by adding Rapid Fire Gun/Secondary Battery modules on your ship. Light attack is good at killing fast ships (screens). The light piercing value determines whether or not your light attack can pierce an enemy ship's armor, but this will usually be never.

Heavy Attack (in red): Heavy attack is... sort of like hard attack. You can increase the heavy attack on CAPITAL SHIPS (no screens allowed!) by adding Medium/Heavy Battery modules. Heavy attack, as the name implies, deals a whole lot more damage than light when it hits. The problem is, these Heavy Batteries are the massive, slow, bulking big guns on the ship, and that means they are unlikely to hit fast screen ships. But when they do, you can bet that screen is either dead or severely damaged. Heavy piercing is a whole lot higher than light piercing, meaning it is far more likely to deal full damage to armored vessels. As a result, heavy attack is your most reliable source of damage to heavy/capital ships.

Depth Charges: this ship has none, as these are only ever modules on screen ships. Depth charges are the only way (other than using naval bomber aircraft) to kill submarines. The higher your depth charge value, the more capable your ship is of sinking subs.

Armor (in orange): Armor is self-explanatory. If your ship's armor is higher than the piercing of the enemy ship's attacks, they will deal significantly reduced damage. It is important to note that the more armor your ship has, the slower its speed will be. When designing your ships, consider this tradeoff and decide if you'd rather have fast, evasive ships (vulnerable but less likely to be hit) or slow, resistant ones (going to be hit a whole lot, but can potentially tank the damage).

Anti Air (in blue): Anti-air, obviously, determines how well your ships can shoot down planes in the naval combat. This can be very important, especially considering how popular it is to ignore navy production in favor of building bombers to destroy ships instead. Unlike on land, anti-air will not give you any other bonuses.

Fuel Usage: self explanatory. Watch out for this if you've got a poor oil supply.

Surface Visibility: well, if no one can see you, who can shoot you? Lower visibility is better but there is little you can do to change this value. Big ships will have more, small ships less. Some things in the tech tree can help reduce it, however.

Surface detection (in green): well, if you can't see anyone, how will you shoot them? Higher detection is better, and there are things you can do to change this value! Although this ship does not have a module in this slot, adding radar will increase surface detection, as will plane-catapult modules (no, the plane catapult does not turn your light cruisers into aircraft carriers).

Sub detection (also in green): submarines aren't surface ships, so they do not count in surface detection. In order to attack subs with your depth charges, you must first find them! Higher sub detection will make that easier. Adding a sonar ("hydrophone") module will increase your sub detection by a lot.

Both forms of detection may be increased across an entire naval zone based on your level of present radar stations, if you have scout planes out, and whether or not you have air supremacy, among other things.

Minelaying and Minesweeping: mines are things for screens (or subs) to deploy or sweep up and are simple enough to understand. Having mines in an area will make it harder for attackers to traverse the zone.

Refit Cost and Production Cost (lower-right corner): Production cost is how expensive the design is to construct. Refit cost is how expensive it would be to convert an existing ship into this new design.

You've probably noticed I skipped a few values, and that's because I wanted to save them for a picture of a submarine module:


Torpedo Attack: Torpedoes can be mounted on destroyers and cruisers as well, but naturally our first thought of them brings us to the infamous submarine. The special thing about torpedoes is that they completely ignore armor, meaning that if a torpedo hits, the target is in for serious damage!

Visibility and Detection, again: as you can see, subs have a very low surface visibility (understandably). They instead have most of their visibility under "sub visibility." Visibility is the most important for submarines, as they will begin battles undetected, and can thus launch torpedoes without risk of being attacked themselves. Detection is pretty much the same as before. While early models such as this sub cannot unlock it, upon unlocking sub 3's, you can research and add a "snorkel" module that will significantly reduce your visibility.

Now, you may be wondering: if they're really hard to even find, let alone kill, and can do massive damage with torpedoes, and are super-cheap to build, why not just make nothing but submarines?

Don't. Here's why:

The naval battlefield is divided into 10 sections, but really just 5 mirrored on either side. These being:

The Screen Line (red underline): the section closest to the middle. This is where all of your screen (destroyers, light cruisers) ships will be.

The Capital Line (orange underline): the section behind your screens. This is where all of your capital ships will be.

The Carrier Line (yellow underline): the section all the way in the back. This is where your aircraft carriers will be, and where plane counts will be displayed. This is also where convoys will be located if there are any.

Underwater (indigo underline): the section beneath the other three. This is where submarines are. Underneath this, in purple, is very underwater, where all sunk ships will be displayed.

Out of the Battle (grey box on outsides, highlighted blue): any ships that are in this region are not in the combat. This is where ships that are entering the battle after it has started will be until they arrive, or where ships that have retreated out of the battle while it is still going on will be displayed. These ships will have no bearing on the active combat until they enter one of the aforementioned regions.

So... what's so important about the ships being arranged in these lines?

Boxed in green, you will see the screening values for the Capital and Carrier Lines. The Capital line has 55% screening and the Carrier line has 100%. If you have 100% screening over a line, it will be immune to all torpedo attacks. Of course, the screens themselves will always be vulnerable to torpedoes, but they're fast enough to usually evade them.

In order to attain 100% screening, all you need is 4 screen ships for every capital ship and 1 capital ship for every aircraft carrier (assuming you even have one).

Having less than this ratio opens up the opportunity for torpedoes to break the screen line and hit the capitals behind them (or carriers, if there aren't any capitals). If you have 55% screening, there is a 45% chance the torpedo will break through, if you have 90%, the torpedo has 10%, etc.

Light attack can only shoot the closest enemy line during a battle. Usually this will be the screen line in a proper battle, or the "carrier" line in the event you intercept unescorted convoys.

Heavy attack can shoot two lines far. This means that heavy attack can bypass the screen line entirely (regardless of the screening %. What, do you think there are flying destroyers that'll intercept those shells midair?) and shoot the capital line directly. If there are no capital ships, the heavy attack can shoot whatever the hell it likes (RIP unescorted carriers...).

During a battle, each ship will randomly target one ship to shoot at every hour depending on what kind of attack it has (capitals with both heavy batteries and secondary batteries can choose two ships simultaneously).If it is fully depleted of HP, the ship will sink. The amount of damage dealt depends on the aforementioned damage values of the ship, and whether or not that attack pierces.

Torpedoes are very good at doing a lot of damage, but in addition to being countered by screening, will only fire once every four hours. Certain admiral traits will allow you to slightly decrease this cooldown. Also, much like heavy attack, torpedoes are unlikely to be able to hit fast ships, but if they do, they're probably as good as dead.


Naval bombers, as popular and effective as they are, aren't nearly as overpowered as they sound. While they are certainly cost effective and allow players to ignore dealing with the navy, they will only sortie and attack ships every 8 hours. Additionally, naval bombers not assigned to carriers but rather present in the naval region during the combat have a limit; if you have 1k naval bombers over the English Channel and your single destroyer engages the entire Royal Fleet, don't expect all 1k planes to join. A minimum of 20 will be always be allowed in, with the cap increasing depending on a ratio based on the total number of your ships' cumulative HP, in addition to a limit based on the airwing mission efficiency.

Naval bombers have weighted targets. They are more likely to shoot ships that are:

• Aircraft carriers > Capitals > Subs > Anything else
  
• Damaged > Undamaged
  
• Ships with less than 5 Anti-Air > ships with more than 5 anti-air

Each of these three determinations are weighted together to determine the targeting chances. Note that the <5AA determinant means that the bombers will have increased targeting weight on convoys.

Once an airwing has selected its target, the ship it targeted will shoot at the airwing (assuming it has AA). Whether or not the planes get shot is determined based on the AA value and the planes' agility. Any planes that survive the AA barrage will then be eligible to attack. If the naval bomber was based on a carrier present in the battle, it will deal an increased 500% damage.

Note that all airplanes will have a large efficiency debuff if the number of carriers in the battle exceeds 4.


All attacks that land have a 10% chance to be a Critical Hit! Critical hits will deal between 100%-600% extra damage based on the hit ship's reliability (100% reliability = 100%, upwards to 0% reliability = 600%). If that weren't bad enough, every critical hit also has a base 10% chance (which, likewise, scales upwards as reliability decreases) to horrendously cripple a part of the ship, with the part critically damaged each having its own effects, including but not limited to:

• Damaging a turret (disabling that battery module entirely!)
  
• Striking the magazine (extra extra damage!)
  
• Killing the rudder (ruin their speed and make retreat practically impossible, Bismarck style!)

All of these effects cannot be removed until the ship is repaired.

Torpedoes have an increased critical hit chance of 20%, but their critical hits will only do 100% extra damage, regardless of target reliability.

Another status effect ships can have are fires, though I'm not sure if these are caused only by critical hits or if they are started by any attack/after an amount of damage has been sustained. Unsurprisingly, having a fire on your ship will cause a gigantic penalty to everything it does.

Here we can see Admiral traits and stats. Beneath these are a series of numbers that tally some of the total fleet's cumulative stats for your convenience. From left to right:

Depth Charges, Anti-Air, Torpedo Attack, Heavy Attack, Light Attack, and the Positioning ratio.

Circled in lavender is the Positioning ratio. Both fleets in the image have 100%, but this will rarely ever occur in your own games. The positioning ratio is determined by several things, namely the size of your fleet in comparison to the enemy's. The larger a fleet is in comparison to its opponent, the worse the positioning ratio will be (100% maximum, and going downwards). This was added to discourage deathstacking. The ratio will also be affected by whether the fleet is attacking or defending (defending = higher %) and the fleet organization (lower = lower %).

The positioning ratio is extremely important, as it acts as a multiplier on your entire fleet's attack, etc.; this is one of the reasons why u/hoiboi1 (from the image at the beginning of the guide) was able to decimate a superior fleet.

Click the red cancel symbol underneath the progress bar and terrain to force retreat.

And now, the moment you've all been waiting for!

Now, seriously, we can't make templates if we haven't decided what our ships are even supposed to do, right? It's about time we figured out:

There are several things your navy can do, most of which are here to see with the missions menu:

From left to right:

Training: Your selected fleets will do some exercising. This will increase their experience and generate naval XP just like land divisions. If you have enough fuel, it is well worth the while to exercise your fleets since you can spend the XP on boosting some naval techs, and also because all newly produced ships will be green (and have a negative combat modifier). Also like land exercising, you really shouldn't do this during wartime, unless you want your entire fleet sunk.

Patrol: Patrol should be something you only ever set small (8 is a good number) squadrons of screens to do. They will go around the area and look for things. This does little on its own, and really only serves to boost other missions. Be warned that patrolling will cost you a lot of fuel.

Strike Force: This is a defensive mission. Fleets assigned to this mission will sit at port until the enemy fleet is found, after which they'll move out and engage. It is highly recommended to have planes out or screens patrolling the areas you are doing Strike Force on, since you'll never find the enemy fleet if no one is looking for them. This mission will save you a lot of fuel, and also produces a high amount of Naval Supremacy with little risk.

Convoy Raiding: Fleets assigned to this mission will go out and look for convoys, then engage and try to sink them. Patrols will help make this more efficient.

If all you intend your navy to do is raid convoys, don't feel bad about only producing submarines; they're very good at that.

Convoy Escort: Fleets assigned to this mission will protect convoys in the selected regions. This mission generates the most Naval Supremacy.

Minelaying and Minesweeping: Guess

Naval Invasion Support: Sort of like Convoy Escort, but the fleet will stay in port until the invasion is launched and protect the convoys holding your divisions as they make their way to their destination. They will also provide shore bombardment once the land battle begins. From my personal experience, this mission for some reason provides less naval supremacy than convoy escort, so if you are having trouble getting supremacy to launch an invasion, consider putting your fleet on convoy escort, waiting for the invasion to launch, and then setting the fleet back on invasion support (naval invasions, once launched, will continue even if supremacy is lost).

Hold (the anchor): The selected fleet will not do anything. Usually this means sitting at port, but you can also manually direct a squadron (like microing a land division) to hold on a specific naval tile. This is very useful for blocking straits or providing shore bombardment.

The Trash Can : This isn't a mission, just a tool to remove regions from your mission.

There are also a few things your navy can do, namely while holding:


Holding a squad on a naval tile bordering the shore will allow you to see where others' divisions are on the coast. This can come in handy to see if there is an unguarded port you can invade, but be warned that attentive players can also see your fleet pass by with their divisions, and will expect an incoming invasion.

Holding on a naval tile that has land straits (the dotted red lines in Denmark) will prevent enemy divisions from crossing the strait until your fleet is destroyed or goes away.

As mentioned before, your navy can provide:
Squadrons in sea tiles adjacent to a land province where there is a battle going on (it doesn't have to be a naval invasion) will provide Shore Bombardment, which will give the enemy divisions a maximum of -25% attack and defense. Very useful!



Unfortunately, the tooltip will never tell you what the exact debuff is, so here's how it is calculated:

1 point of heavy attack = -0.1% debuff given
1 point of light attack = -0.05% debuff given

Since light attack values are already so low I usually ignore them when doing the math. So, if you have, say, 5 heavy cruisers, each with 40 heavy attack, you will give a 5(40/(-10)) = -20% debuff in shore bombardment. Some general/admiral traits (Naval Liaison, Ground Pounder) can increase the shore bombardment value but never above the -25% cap.

Keep in mind that you need enough squadrons in your fleet to make performing missions efficient. If you have selected more regions than you have squadrons, don't expect them to perform very well (the only exception being Naval Invasion Support, as the squadrons will follow the invasion path as it occurs).


Hover over the fraction icons to get an in-depth tooltip on your mission efficiency.

Speaking of squadrons, I should probably explain what those are. Admirals can control up to 10 squadrons (otherwise known as Task Forces). The task forces can contain an unlimited number of ships, but bear in mind the positioning penalty should it get in a battle. All of the squadrons under the command of one Admiral are referred to collectively as a Fleet.

Different squadrons within the same fleet can perform different missions in different regions at the same time, but this can sometimes be a pain to manage and I personally have a dedicated fleet for each mission I want to run at a given time (All Patrol Fleet, Strike Force/Naval Invasion Fleet, etc.)



In the above image, we can see the ledger for one of our Fleets. It is named the "Home Command", and is lead by Admiral John Tovey. We can see his stats and traits here as well. The Crown symbol to the right signifies that this Fleet contains the Pride of the Fleet, a special ship that gives you +5% war support and is less vulnerable to critical hits (so much for that, HMS Hood). If the Pride is sunk you lose the support (plus a bonus -10% support for a month), but can get it back by spending 100 PP to make a ship the New Pride.

Under the Admiral Traits is a at-a-glance summary of the Fleet's ships:

2 CVs (Carriers), 7 BBs (Battleships), 3 BCs (Battlecruisers), 4 CAs (Heavy Cruisers), 12 CLs (Light Cruisers), 62 Destroyers, and 13 Submarines.

The Barrel and Airplane symbols to the right, when hovered on, give info on the fleet's fuel consumption and assigned airwings, if any.

Below this are a number of buttons. The first, the red trash can, is the disband button. NEVER PRESS THE DISBAND BUTTON. Your deleted task force/ship will not be sent to a stockpile like equipment or aircraft. It will just be gone forever.

The four middle buttons in beige are used to quickly alter and manage the size of your task forces.

The crossed wrenches button will tell your fleet to immediately stop what it's doing and go to port to repair.

The last four buttons, from left to right, do as follows:
1. Toggle automatic reinforcement: ships will automatically be pulled from your reserve (more on that later) to replace any lost ships in the fleet.

2. Toggle automatic split-off: ships will automatically leave the task force mission to repair while the rest of the task force continues the mission. Can be useful but potentially dangerous as it may significantly affect screening or fighting ability.

3. Repair Priority: this can be set to High, Medium, Low, or Never. Depending on what it is set to, your fleet will ignore damage and continue operating its mission (or always repair, if High).

4. Engagement Risk: one of the most fundamentally impactful naval buttons there are. This will determine whether or not your Fleet will engage enemy fleets. It may be set to Always, High risk, Medium Risk, Low Risk, or Never. Patrols should be set to Low or Never to keep them alive; otherwise, you may set this to how confident you are in your navy/ how much you want to blow up the enemy fleet.




In your production queue, ships will default to deploy "Auto". They will spawn in a random port of yours and be placed into your reserve fleet. The reserve fleet cannot be assigned missions, but is waiting to be placed into an actual fleet. The reserve ships can be found in the right-most slot next to the rest of your admirals on the naval tab.

If you click "Auto" in your production queue, you can change where you want ships in that production line to be deployed; you can select a specific port for it to spawn in (and still have it go to the reserve) or select one of your Squadrons (not fleets! Only squadrons) for it to automatically join once production is finished.

The number between the + and - represents how many ships will be produced in this line until the line stops. Pressing - while it is at 1 will set it to infinity.

You can hover over the projected date of completion for an overview of how many ships this production line can produce in a year. Naval dockyards have a base daily production of 2.5 and always have 100% efficiency, unless you are missing resources.

Also, you can click the tab where it has the ship's name to create and add your own custom ship names!

I usually never use the minelaying mechanics, but here it is in brief:

Ships with minelaying modules can lay mines in naval zones. Some zones (check the terrain) will be better than others for this. Having friendly mines causes enemy fleets to suffer a number of maluses (especially to that all important Positioning!) and even a chance of taking damage or sinking if they hit one. The fuller your minelaying percentage is, up to 100%, of a region, the worse these effects will be. Your own fleets will also suffer penalties but not nearly as bad as the enemy. Mines are also a cheap way to gain naval supremacy, and can give minors an easy way to stave off naval invasions from more powerful adversaries. Mind that minelaying is a very slow process.

Set your fleets on minesweeping to slowly get rid of them and bring that % back down.

If you really want to be a greasy player, intentionally stay at war with a weak enemy (ie Italy v. Ethiopia) to fill up entire seas with mines before WW2 even begins.

In all honesty the only reason I even made this a section was so I could have that Admiral Farragut quote on the sidebar (back in the day, mines were referred to as torpedoes).

Some things in the Navy Tech tab must be added manually to your ship designs, while others provide general bonuses you don't need to alter production for. Other things aren't even in the navy tab.

Below, things you need to edit templates/production for are in red, and bonuses are in yellow.
Whenever you research a ship hull, you will also automatically unlock the new level of engine for it. Sub hull techs also auto-research that level of submarine torpedo launcher.






Anti-air modules are unlocked with the same AA techs as in the artillery tab:


Other modules can be found in the Electronics tab:


Here is a brief description of the naval doctrines:



Choose Fleet in Being if you are building a nice big navy with a focus on battlecruisers and battleships.

Choose Trade Interdiction if you are building/have a very small navy, especially if you only plan on building subs to intercept convoys (in which case you can ignore the beige 2/3rds of the tree).

Choose Base Strike if you are building a nice big navy with a focus on aircraft carriers.

REMEMBER! You do not need to research every single tech and sub-tree of the doctrines.

It's probably about time I actually told you the difference between each type of ship.

Capital Ships:
You can tell a ship is a capital ship because the ship designer will have a checkmark over the blue diamond symbol in the top left corner.

Aircraft Carriers: carry aircraft. Very useful, quite expensive, and not good at defending themselves alone.

Converted Carriers: These are aircraft carriers built out of what used to be a different ship. They're much cheaper than normal carriers but also a lot worse. For simplicity's sake I usually just pretend these don't exist.

Battleships: Expensive, heavily armored, packs a massive punch. Slow. Superheavy variants are especially expensive, extremely armored, pack massive punches, and are even slower.

Battlecruisers: Less expensive and less armored than battleships, but have decent speeds and can still pack a punch. Whether a ship (heavy hull) is a battleship or battlecruiser depends on what armor you put on it.

Heavy Cruisers: The cheapest capital ship. Whether a cruiser is a light or heavy cruiser is determined by whether or not it contains a medium battery. They aren't as powerful as their counterparts but can get good speeds, the fastest among Capitals.

Screens:

Light Cruisers: The most expensive (still cheap, though) screen. Can have armor. Good speeds, and can carry decent armament (no heavy attack, though).

Destroyers: The fastest ship. Weak, cheap and can't have armor.

REMEMBER! 4 screens for every capital, 1 capital for every carrier. Or if making a task force of only screens, 1 L Cruiser and 4 destroyers or 8 destroyers is good. 100% Screening protects you from those dastardly torpedoes!*

Other:

Submarines: Very, very cheap. Potentially very powerful but just as easily countered. Task forces best in groups of 8-12, some others suggest 20s or 30s.

Convoys: You should know what these do.

There are also a few Country Specific Ships! that only some nations have access to.

As far as I am aware, there are two:

1. Torpedo Cruisers ("Screen") are exclusive(?) to Japan. They are light cruisers but are capable of massive torpedo damage. They are unlocked via focus.

2. Cruiser Submarines are exclusive to Germany, Japan, and the US. They are unlocked via focus but Japan starts with them (I think). They are like normal submarines but have significantly higher range and extra modules for all sorts of neat things.

*There is an admiral trait, Long Lance, that gives 20% screen penetration. It is ridiculously OP, but thankfully it is a very hard trait to unlock. Unfortunately, Japan has a focus of the same name that gives 20% screen penetration without the hassle of getting all that admiral XP. Hoo boy. I weep for my capitals.

Oh come on, you don't need my advice for these things!

You now know everything you need to know to make your own ships! Each country and player will need their own specific templates for their own specific needs, so open up that ship designer and get thinking!

Just remember that you don't need to fill out every single module with something; small countries especially may be better off with less-equipped but cheaper ships.

Do not only build subs and expect to sink anything other than convoys

Light attack is useless against capital ships

Heavy attack is unreliable against screen ships

Do not only build subs, screening makes them practically useless in the long term

4 Screens to a capital, 1 capital to a carrier (note: since carriers are also capitals, you'd need 8 screens total for a screened carrier group)

Remember, you need oil.

If you do build subs, put snorkels on them.

Speed is a lot more important than it sounds

You can learn a lot of information just by hovering over stuff

Even though there is a minimum number of necessary screens, consider having more than that to maintain screening if one is sunk.

The author is of the opinion that subs are very bad and a waste of time.


Torpedo cruisers and destroyers are a lot more funny.

Hopefully the information in this guide has proved useful, insightful, mildly humorous, and accurate.

For my final words, I will suggest a few applications of this knowledge for multiplayer and other fun:

1. Most players will probably just spam subs. So long as you keep your screening up you'll be safe! Build plenty of destroyers fitted with sonar and depth charges to blow them out of the water.

2. Most players will probably deathstack. Try to take this into consideration when engaging the enemy fleet; they will be very powerful (if a major) but may cripple themselves if you have a big (but smaller) modernized fleet with superior positioning.

3. Screens have bad range. When in the Pacific, you may find fleets with insufficient screening.

4. Most players will ignore most of the extraneous stuff in the naval tech/electronics tree. Researching these can give you a massive upper hand.

5. Many minor nations have no capital ships. If you are also a minor nation, consider building one, as the enemy navy will be practically incapable of killing it.

6. Given that country roles in multiplayer are often very specialized, consider making specialized fleets as a minor. Some of the best fun I've had is as Australia with a fleet built only to reach the Shore Bombardment bonus as cheaply as possible.

Edit: I have now completed a sequel which covers Intermediate Navy Strategy and delves deeper into multiplayer application, fleet composition, and the state of the meta.

Also available is the "Advanced" Guide, which addresses changes to the navy introduced in No Step Back and is continuously updated with additional sections going into deep depth of the game's systems, and how best to use them to your advantage.

Please leave comments if there is anything unclear or unanswered I can help you with, unless it is a template.

Best of luck, and Anchors Aweigh!