Good naval composition? (2024)

I've been more into the naval aspect since i had about 100 years of England. I wanna ask you guys what naval composition is good?
like 1 heavy ship 2 galleys 1 light ship 2 transports? What are good ratios for countries around the Mediterranean, or countries away from it?

I usually can't afford many heavy ships so i use galleys to compensate

No galleys for England, France, Spain, Portugal, Netherlands, and other rich countries like a large Ottomans. Other countries bordering the Baltic and particularly the Mediterranean should employ lots of galleys.

As many light ships as you can afford to give you the desired trade power.

One transport carries one regiment. You don't need to be told how many of those to build.

Heavy ships depend on what country you are. Rich colonial nations like England, Spain and Portugal can sustain hundreds upon hundreds of them. And you often need that many if you want to keep your colonies and your homeland safe.

I'm currently played my 10th or so England game and the best naval compositions in my opinion are:

• Stacks of 10~20 light ships for trade, as many as necessary;
• One pure heavy stack per "controlled region" - one in England, another in the Colonial America, another in India, etc. - divided in 20~30 ships per group.
• One pure transport stack, as many as necessary to ferry your largest army without breaking it. Place it always near your 'mobile' army stack.

• Build Heavy Ships until you've got 1/3 or 1/4 more heavies than the second largest fleet in the game (see the ledger).
• Build Transports in sufficient number to ferry your largest army, no more.
• Build as many light ships as possible and keep them in the small stacks but in many groups, to avoid big stack wipes and to ensure survival of trade fleet during war.

Build transports that can carry the largest army stack I have, then build heavy ships until close to force limit.

All ships always stick together.

Light ships first and foremost, since they can actually make you money and are about as good in open sea as galleys.

Galleys, only in the Mediterranean, and only if you have a clear purpose in mind for them. You generally don't require naval superiority in the Med, so they only time I've ever built them was as Byzantium to split the Ottoman armies and block the strait. Once the Balkans were secured, they were all replaced with lights.

Heavies if you want to rule to waves. Look at whoever has the most heavies that you might have to fight, and figure out if you can support a fleet at least the same size. If you can't, don't bother unless your allies are solid naval powers too. If you can, build the fleet. If you want to actually fight the enemy fleet rather than just keep them away, build at least half your fleet again. You probably don't want to spend years rebuilding your grand navy after all, so you want numerical superiority (the ducats you shouldn't care about anyway if you have this much of a navy).

But don't forget about Admirals either. If you can have an Admiral with at least 4 fire/shock pips more than the enemy's, your equal sized fleet will smash theirs to pieces like they used balsa wood instead of oak. So if you're sure that you'll have a Lord Nelson on your hands whenever you need one, feel free to make do with an equal sized fleet. Particularly as England/English GB, since you have +10% heavy ship combat ability (Be wary of Castille/Spain, they have the same thing, but get it a little later). Same thing if you've taken Naval ideas and the enemy hasn't.

Transports, like people have said, enough to transport your largest stack. A couple of them if you've gone global, since you don't want to be waiting nearly two years for your transports to go from England to Japan so you can ferry troops. Less of a problem if the Panama and Suez canals have been built, but it's still a nice convenience even if they have been.

Mattimeo78 said:

Just build twice as many heavy ships as the runner-up and rule the seas for rest of game.

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well, you also need to make sure you have tech parity. outnumbering the enemy 2:1 isn't going to help if you're 1 or worse 2 ship tech-tiers behind
(e.g. a 200 Ming carrack-armada will still get gobsmacked to oblivion by a 50 three-decker Western-tech colonial nation fleet)

Chat said:

Light ships first and foremost, since they can actually make you money and are about as good in open sea as galleys.

Galleys, only in the Mediterranean, and only if you have a clear purpose in mind for them. You generally don't require naval superiority in the Med, so they only time I've ever built them was as Byzantium to split the Ottoman armies and block the strait. Once the Balkans were secured, they were all replaced with lights.

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Every nation which borders the Mediterranean and wishes to expand sooner or later requires a fleet of galleys, unless you don't care if the enemy blockades your ports, destroys your trade ships and so on.
I'm currently playing as Aragon and I built a lot of galleys and transports - in fact, I have probably twice as many galleys and transports combined than I have light ships because I fight a lot of countries who have fleets, too.
The same applies to Venice, Genoa, Provence, Savoy etc - all these countries and many more need galleys.

delpiero1234 said:

Every nation which borders the Mediterranean and wishes to expand sooner or later requires a fleet of galleys, unless you don't care if the enemy blockades your ports, destroys your trade ships and so on.
I'm currently playing as Aragon and I built a lot of galleys and transports - in fact, I have probably twice as many galleys and transports combined than I have light ships because I fight a lot of countries who have fleets, too.
The same applies to Venice, Genoa, Provence, Savoy etc - all these countries and many more need galleys.

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Trade ships go home at war, and can't say I've cared too much about my ports being blockaded. Nearly everyone in the Mediterranean is connected by land, with not that many straits to deal with. The people you're most likely going to be invading are going to be those neighbours. Sure, you might not be able to hit Venezia in that first war, but you can take everything else. By the next war, they won't be able to maintain as many ships, so you can then use your navy to deal with them.

Most of the islands around the place are generally too small to have a noteworthy navy that you can't just kill or scare into port with your trade ships anyway, and the ones that do have typically have plenty of presence on the mainland to fight instead. But I tend not to start on the islands until I've got a solid presence in the Mediterranean already, by which time I'm able to support a proper navy. There's just plenty of other targets to expand into instead.

Aragon though, I can see as being a nation where I'd build galleys as well, for the same reason as Byzantium; actually having to fight with the navy is important. Genoa and Venice would be a yes as well, since they have quite a bit of their holdings out where they have to access it by sea. Provence and Savoy though? I definitely wouldn't bother with galleys for them. There's plenty for them to fight that's connected directly to them by the land.