(August 3, 2014 at 7:25 pm)Chad32 Wrote: I started trying to get some tiny island maps with England, but I'm not sure it won't be too frustrating when trying to get land troops to other islands.
Once you get ships of the line and privateers, you don't need to use land troops pretty much at all. I don't worry about taking cities at all until this point of the game, and rarely initiate combat until then.
Once you have ships of the line, you can pretty much dominate the seas. On an island map, at this point all you have to do is prevent yourself from being invaded. Use your spies to learn who's planning what, and position your navy accordingly.
Get Refrigeration and submarines, and you can absolutely control the seas. Park a submarine outside of each port, and any naval unit that is foolish enough the leave port is toast. They will continue to build/buy naval units and embark units, and every one that you sink drains both their production capacity and economy.
Shell enemy cities with ranged naval units (ships of the line and battleships), and take them when it's safe to do so with naval melee units (privateers and destroyers). One thing that can seriously confound this strategy is aircraft and enemy artillery. Artillery is dealt with easily enough, but if an enemy has enough aircraft to bring to bear on an attacking force, I sometimes have to wait until I get nukes to deal with them. If you have enough battleships, it won't matter.
