Naval Commander

I have yet to see a Naval Commander guide, so I decided I would give it a try. In this guide I will give you tips, and explain how to fully utilise the Naval Commander bonus so you can take full advantage of the most powerful standard units in the game; destroyers. Don't forget the awesome transport ship range either. In combination with stacks of infantry and without the disadvantage of -1 defence of Blitz, you can play an interesting, PD style game moving infantry huge distances with ships.



With NC Destroyers have +2 attack and defence, giving them 11 attack and 9 defence. The highest attack of any unit, and the highest defence bonus of any unit (equal to one PD infantry with it's own city/defensive line bonus). It is this massive defence and attack bonus that you must fully utilise.
With NC you will find that unless there is a large stack in a port city, not much will stop 4 or 5 destroyers hopping from coastal city to coastal city in the Mediterranean or Baltic seas. A destroyers to militia/infantry scale would be impractical, so I won't include one.

Countries to pick:
In a Europe map there are several good countries to pick. UK, Sweden, Russia NW, Spain, Turkey, Greece, maybe Italy.

Whatever country you choose, your first goal is to expand to as many other coast countries as you can. From Russia Northwest, Finland or Sweden you can capture the Baltic States, Denmark, Norway and Netherlands in the first couple turns with destroyers alone.
But do not forget about expanding by land too. Use infantry to capture inland cities and countries. Since infantry do not have a range, attack or defence nerf with NC, it is best to play your land game kind of like perfect defence. Building big stacks of infantry and defending inland cities with them. All port cities can be defended with destroyers and infantry. Fortunately destroyers have a very long range and within the Baltic sea they can reach most cities from most locations.

Port Hopping

This will cause a lot of dismay for your enemies such as in scandinavia. You can easily hop to taking countries. Sweden ----> Denmark ----> Norway. 1 hop and you got. Also with 1-2 destroyers you can easily take enemies badly guarded port cities forcing them to use expensive ATs instead of transports on. 1 destroyer can take down 1-2 militia ports and 2 can take double. French ports against a Uk can be quickly taken preventing France france from loading a quick transport to the UK, and taking away their whole country bonus. Also while taking countries you will always find you have a few destroyers left over at some points. Those destroyers are best used for taking enemies small ports. Distraction is key there because it is problematic for your enemies to take the time to try to take down a few destroyers and most players don't take the time and Destroyers have a +2 bomber defence. That means your enemy will have to waste a decent amount of money on bombers just to take them down.

When you play your game on land, play very defensively, don't over produce tanks as they are expensive and that money could be used to build even stronger destroyers. What you want to do when attacking inland cities is have collect a strong stack of land units in a coastal city, along with a big stack of destroyers. If your opponent is France, Italy, Spain or Turkey capture all of their coastal cities first. It will cut down their income considerably, and they will probably waste units trying to retake the cities. In a situation like that it is good to anticipate where he will launch his attack and reinforce those cities with destroyers, because like with PD infantry, your opponent cannot see the +2 defence bonus.

NC From Spain
This is probably one of the few countries you'd consider using NC for that doesn't have a port capital, and I'll explain why. It has to do with the transport ship range. With NC you can build two ships in Bilbao, Northern Spain, then pile 30 infantry in and rush Paris. If you use the Brittany shortcut you can get your infantry within striking range of Amsterdam. I'd only suggest this strategy if an enemy has UK and nobody has France. Otherwise you should stick to rushing Italy first turn. You can risk rushing italy too but you may have fewer units and risk missing it.

Transport Range

NC transport range and infantry is a deadly combination, especially if your enemy doesn't expect you to move troops such great distances. Also remember infantry don't have nerfed range unlike PD, so you have even greater range than on PD to defend and attack cities. Defending cities from a far distance with infantry is also another great tactic. ALso combining the range of transports is key. If your ship is a bit short of making a distance, add another transport to the stack from a port nearer to your desired location. It is quite easy to play a game using NC without using a single destroyer. Starting from Spain or Turkey is a good example of this. Tons of infantry moving far distances enemies would expect is how you win without destroyers.
Read the following section to learn more.

NC On Land!

Play this similarly to how you would PD, but remember your infantry are not as strong as PD infantry. Make up for this by making even more infantry and using your great transport range to your advantage. Make the enemy throw itself at you! Build infantry to defend against your opponents attacks and lure them into battles they can't win. What do I mean by battles they can't win? Well I mean you can leave gaps open or/and not building infantry in places until the turn you think someone is going to attack and let their units attack you and obliterate their stack. You can also bring in infantry from places other players may not be able to see, in the defence of poland the opponent may not expect you to have the range for your transport to be able to transport units to Warsaw from Norway! With NC you can bring infantry from Saint Petersburg to Berlin if you ferry the transports. This is similar to PD except you need to leverage your transport movements of infantry more to make up for lower defence. Just as in PD you will advance and expand because your opponent blew his or her stack against you leaving them open for room for an infantry stack to move into their country and take it. If you like this strategy I recommend you also learn the basics of PD pretty well.

In Europe navigating the Mediterranean is a bit different than the Baltic because there is only one country with a capital on the sea, Greece, the rest are inland. There are however many coastal cities. Capturing all of the cities in Turkey, and Italy can choke that player out; they will try desperately to retake their cities consequently losing more units. You can then land a transport of infantry or tanks into one of the coast cities you have, already full of destroyers, and capture the capital city. Then once you capture the capital, you already have control of the coastal cities so you can immediately produce more infantry to hold the capital, or destroyers to hold the coastal cities or launch more attacks.

Ultimately NC is kind of like a maritime combination of PD and RA. You have the advantages of both PD for all cities within infantry range of the sea, and RA for coastal cities. You must therefore take advantage of the defence and attack of destroyers, while keeping your inland territories defendable. The best way to win with NC is to devastate enemy stacks by rushing coastal cities with big stacks of destroyers, or defending cities with big stacks of destroyers. Attacking or defending, you have a huge advantage over your enemy because of the strength of the destroyers. Obviously NC is best if you have an ally using a land strategy, but I have won World games alone using NC from Japan or Indonesia, and Europe using UK or Russia North West. Play around with the strategy, it's pretty fun and offers a unique gameplay compared to most land based strategies.

I hope this guide helped. I'm still working on my strategy with NC, but I will post more if I come up with anything new.


Know your shortcuts!
Essentially anywhere a peninsula narrows, you can try to squeeze a ship through. Let me know if I missed any.

Denmark Shortcut

Here you can send ships from Hamburg to Sweden, Denmark to Netherlands and ultimately shorten any journey into or out of the Baltic sea.


Glasgow from the East

Glasgow is possible to invade by ship from the East, and infact straight from Bergen. If your opponent leaves his Northern city unwalled, which is likely since most UK players only bother walling Birmingham and London, then you can surprise your opponent with a nice stack of destroyers in Britain. You can also get ships out of Glasgow to the East, although this is tricky.


Belfast to London (Can also be Dublin to London)

This move can include ships from Glasgow too, 3 destroyers from Glasgow + 2 destroyers from Belfast still have the range to take this shortcut to London. That's an additional 5 destroyers you can pile into London not including the additional 3 you can from Ireland.
This move involves a few shortcuts through Wales, Cornwall and East Sussex, but can be very helpful in utilising the port cities on the British Isles.

London to Nantes (Just a shortcut through Brittany)


This one is tricky and it will take practice. Cutting through narrow peninsula's is easy, but cutting through Brittany takes precision. This is especially useful if you start with UK. It is also useful for bringing ships from Spain to the UK, and vice versa. Practice this shortcut first before you intend to utilise it in a real game.

West Athens and Cutting through Italy


If you're careful you can move ships out of the West part of Athens and through the Southern peninsula of Italy. This is useful for capturing Naples with destroyers, or moving infantry with a reduced range to Rome.


Here is an example of how to 'ferry' troops really long distances. This allows you to fully take advantage of the increased range of naval transports.


In this example I had built 8 tanks in Athens and was able hop them all the way to Spain. When you combine two naval transports the distance it can travel is then averaged between the two ships. In this case, my ship from Athens was able to make it almost to Sardinia but not quite. Then I built a ship in naples, one from Sicily, Sardinia and Marseille, and was able to bring the troops all the way to Spain. This is just a proof of concept, and using four or five transports is kind of pointless, it's best just to maximise the range of two or three.