I was just wondering what we really know about naval battles, I'll start with a couple of things I don't know and some I do...
My objective with this is not so much finding the best naval strategy but just trying to figure out the predictable part of the battle resolution.


1- battles are between stacks, rather than all ships in a sea region.

2- superiority in numbers matters for the outcome, as does the quality of the admiral (don't really know how, though). Both of these seem to matter more than the actual quality of the ships.

3- How does speed matter? Can a slower ship ever catch a faster ship moving out of the sea region?

4- I've noticed that outcomes can differ when you reload, so the randomness is calculated at the time of the battle and is significant. The cheesy tactic of reloading to get a decent outcome should work (which doesn't make it any less cheesy... )

5- Although I tend to attack with good attack ships and leave good defense ships to wait, I don't know whether defense ability matters when attacking and vice-versa...