My question: what are the best times and places to acquire these ribbed planks? I can never find enough. Unless your fleet comfortably outnumbers and outguns the enemy s, you might well lose this ship. The enemy will follow it and keep attacking it until it is well out of range (and of course, the more damage it has sustained, the more slowly it moves). In my experience, if the enemy fleet contains more than two ships, it is best to pull the first ship attacked out of battle immediately if at all possible. Enemies seem to attack the weakest ships first. Given a fleet of several small warships, only some with ribbed planks, they will be the last to be attacked. (4) The best item to socket in a small warship seems to be ribbed planks.

What is the initial maximum? I've never yet reached it, but would gladly build more trading ships but for fear of being unable to build warships when I need them. (3) There are a couple of rather advanced attainments that increase the maximum number of ships you can build. (2) When I wish to exchange things between a ship and a warehouse, sometimes the strongbox tab appears at the bottom left of the popup window, and sometimes it doesn't. What I've done to exit is click on the 'build' icon, but it seems like just an awkward work-around. This can be disastrous if one doesn't notice the mistake immediately. This sends the ships towards wherever I've clicked and they drop what they were assigned to do. Often after directing ships to such an activity, I scroll around the map and click somewhere. (1) After sending a ship or fleet to an activity such as escorting or attacking, how do we exit that process to do something else? Neither a right-click nor a left-click on the mouse seems to do it.

Silver ship in anno 1404