I have a deck for water maps which contains some usefull cards for water like: advanced dock, privateers, some other free boats in age 2 ,towers.
Some general tips (feel free to add correct):
-go heavy on wood/gold when u have the resources to go to age 2, you'll need lots to build some war and fishing boats,towers
-Try getting your dock up before age2 so you can start building ships immediately in age 2 and scout for his fishing boats, docks without tower, guy building a dock...
-If you use only one shipment in age 1 you'll have another one where you can get a boat shipment from immediately in age 2
-Towers are very good against ships so they provide safety for healing ships and shore fishing..
-Build "radar" houses and towering near your coastline so you can see a landing party coming, in team games discuss who will cover which area of the coastline
-Try to at least maintain parity on sea, if you lose on water try landing unseen to slow him down. If you gain upperhand on water maintain control and boom with fishing while making vils at tc, consider landing on their island too (much easier with boat support)...
-The small boats that cannot make troops (sorry forgot the name) can fish too so if in best case you pushed him out of the water you can use these boats to support your economy
-Do not forget to use the broadside attack of your warships!
-On carribean do not forget the small island on the side with trading posts,and more gold piles..
-An alliance with natives lets you create some extra "canoe" boats, sometimes usefull in stalemates on water..
These are some things i keep in mind while playing water, sorry to see that water is even less played then in aoc. I just loved those archipelago/islands/migration games [This message has been edited by ToNiC (edited 11-25-2005 @ 10:59 AM).]