I'll kick things off by saying that I feel that four fleets are the maximum useful fleets for operating in any given ocean. Only countries like France or Russia can usefully employ more than four for strategic purposes in the ocean. More than four for Germany, England, Italy, turkey, or Austria and you're going to wind up with fleets in coastal territories or supporting coastal territories.

You never need 12. Period.

As England you might. You need 4 to fend off Russia and 5 in the Med trying to face to 18. Meanwhile, you have 2 more to help deal with an Italian fleet behind your lines?

What if you're England, and you want to have fleets in Nwg/Nth/Eng/Mao? Or if you're Italy, and are simultaneusly trying to sneak a fleet past Wes/Mao, and working some mayhem in Ion/Adr/Gre, or Ion/Aeg/Eas? Or Germany that is taking on England in a fight for Nth?

There's definitely a use for *many* fleets. I usually strive for a 50-50 fleet/army balance. I don't know why, but it feels about right.

I tend to always build fleets if I can. The only exception might be England and Italy, where I try to build armies. Russia might be a toss up.

What do you guys think is the 'general' preferred balance? Since units are pretty hard to remove from the game, building is often an irreversible choice. Where do you think the golden balance lies?

Depends on the long term. Really, if you are Austria and you're working with Italy do you really think fleets are the thing you should build?

Tru Ninja did statistics of the game and included the typical numbers of fleets. Austria typically gets about 3, and rarely hits 6. England averages at 8 and sometimes hits double digits. France and Germany both averaged out at 6 in a game. Italy typically gets 6 or 7 and occasionally hits 9. Russia hits 5 to 6 and Turkey gets about 6.
The link to the full report is here: http://tinyurl.com/DiplomacyReport
Presumably these stats only come from games where the power in question reached a certain number of units because otherwise there would be a tonne of small results to balance out the large numbers.

Bavano, I usually gun for as close to 50/50 as possible, depending on the situation. As England, you may need 4 fleets and two armies, but that's about as far percent-wise as I like to go.

Yeah, it completely depends on the situation, I've seen england's win with 14 fleets and 3 armies, and I've see Englands win with 2 fleets and about 13 armies. It just depends on how many fleets you need to control the areas around you. And that is always based on how many fleets everyone else builds and who you are allied with.

Subquestion: When do you build fleets as Austria?

I build them when I can. With your only fleet-building center also being one of two bordering another power's home center, you often have a unit there and really need to build them when you can.

Russia gets special mention for Sev/StP. Whichever one you build your fleet in, it's stuck up (or down) there. Oh yeah, and StP has two coasts.

The number of fleets I build as Russia (and where I build them) depends on who I'm allied with. I usually try to ally with England and Turkey, and if I pull it off, I might have to build one StP(sc) fleet the whole game and all armies after that.

Sounds like a lot of you guys build more fleets than you should.

Completely depends on the country and situation. I can't be bothered to find it now, but I'm pretty sure I won a a game as England with 3 or 4 armies. And really, when you look at it, it makes perfect sense for England to go fleet crazy. If you take the traditional western 18 on the stp-tun diagonal, only two are landlocked, and a stalemate line can be held with 3. England's priority early is typically in around nth and in scandinavia, which requires lots of fleets. To get the solo, England typically has to break into the Med very quickly after the north falls, which requires fleets that might not be quick enough coming around.
Conversely, I know I've won gunboats as Austria with 3 or fewer fleets.

whoops, sorry. didn't see jmo's response.

@Jacob perhaps you build too few

@ jmeyersd and Lando +1

@Lando: Although, he does have a combined win-draw percentage of 77% over 43 games so it must work for him.

I don't see why'd you need more than 4 fleets ever. There's just not a lot of space for them to go. Fleets on the coast are pretty useless.

You tend to see more, I think, if the politics result in a bona fide naval battle.

http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=56566#gamePanel
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=40604#gamePanel
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=24543#gamePanel
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=20879#gamePanel
http://www.webdiplomacy.net/board.php?gameID=8710#gamePanel

I think that is a pretty good sampling of excellent players using fleets with skill.

Particularly the second down, the most points won by an individual in a single game, all made possible by fleets!

Look, I'm not saying there aren't situations where more fleets are good or beneficial. All I'm saying is that if I'm France with for fleets and you're Italy with 10 fleets, you can't get past me. All it takes is four fleets to effectively control any sea passage.

As diplomat33 said, the second game where babak won is a great example of effective fleet usage. Look how many there are: 5. Look how many are being effectively used at game's end: 4. Now imagine if Babak had built 6 or 8 as some of you are suggesting is the proper balance. His fleets would be bottlenecksd and he wouldn't have enough armies for 18 centers.

Consider a victory, however, where England holds TUN through STP with armies in BUR/MUN/RUH/BER/MAR and the rest fleets. This would be effective use of armies, right, by exactly the inverse of your example.

"All I'm saying is that if I'm France with for fleets and you're Italy with 10 fleets, you can't get past me. All it takes is four fleets to effectively control any sea passage."


All I'm saying is that if I'm France with one army and you're Italy with 17 armies, you can't get past me. All it takes is two armies to control the stalemate line.

That would be tough to do Landon. It would require exceptionally stupid play on the pArts of the other countries. It's tough for five or six armies to mount a major inland campaign against a united front. You just typically need more army support

True jmeyers. That's why Italy needs four fleets. Maybe as many as six in some games.