ASW Helis + some missiles for the cruisers.

Really, with pretty much all unit combinations the way to counter them is to take them apart piece by piece. At the very least the limit to how many units you can stack makes it so you can not have an impenetrable stack.

Where are you going to launch the missiles from ? are we forgetting that frigates and cruisers will shoot down those missiles ? and cruisers itself will hit very hard or destroy those asw ? the only way to counter that navy is with more navy lets say submarines and crusiers and even so will be a hard combat. I tend to also add 1 naval officer to that stack for example 4 cruisers plus 1 naval officer then 5 frigates for anti air rest are attack subs.

From Aircraft, maybe ASF or SF doesnt really matter that much thotheir launch plattform is almost irrelevant in that regard; point of these CMs is to kill cruisers, maybe even frigs if the stacks have a bad composition.

Cruisers don’t really have much of a chance of killing cruise missiles. Really only time they do is as 5Stack against CMs lower than level 4; the boost to HP they get at 4 is kinda insane and it goes up to 15.

For comparison: A single Frigate deals 4 damage to Missiles at its max lvl

Ofc a lot of it depends on what unit is which level etc, but at the very core ASW Helis + CMs almost perfectly exploit the weaknesses of Frigate/Submarine/Cruiser.

Keep in mind that for Navy the stacking limit is 5, so you can’t make your stacks immune to everything. Sure you could always move them all close together but even that does not give you immunity to everything.

The big nasty thing about ASW Helis is the simple fact that as aircraft they heal extremely fast so any attrition based fight is in their favor by default. Now do mixed stacks and Navy doesn’t stand much of a chance; defacto the reason they nerfed damage to Navy for Helis and gave Cruisers more damage to Helis

AIP Subs+Frigates+Aircraft Carrier stacked with NASF is Doomsday fleet. (ASW helis or naval patrol get smoked by NASF, missiles get shit on by the frigs and AIP subs outrange all other ships.)

(obviously a late-game or apocalypse server stack lol)

PREFACE
I find that "concentrated" builds -- probably no more than 5 unit types total (one of those being regular infantry so 4 unit types total) at least until fully built your core forces out by day 30ish -- is the meta. You thus have tons of each unit type all high level. After day 30 you add whatever you need to combat specific remaining foes, e.g. you might have to do home missile defense.

One of the biggest mistakes players make is building lots of unit types -- a "balanced" build -- one player trying to have a navy and an airforce and some missiles and some ground armor, he then has few of anything and all are low level. Concentrated builds wipe balanced builds all day long.

And a concentrated navy build and a concentrated air build are the two metas. Ground units being mostly useless, missiles being fairly useless. Melee dmg units not being worth it generally -- so just ships, planes, artillery, and missiles can even be theoretically worth it, yet some of those not practically worth it.

And that a coalition of 2 -- one with each of these builds -- is the coalition meta. This combo cannot be beaten (assuming online all the time, good players with solid war strategy making, solid battle tactics, who work tightly together). So strong you don't need a 3rd coalition member.


NAVY META (this is what you asked about)

Split into 2 forces: home defense (usually do navy build on water country e.g. indonesia) and assassin group. Assassin group is the meta we're interested in.

Subs not worth it, they are too situational -- can't hit land, can't hit planes -- so I think your grouping isn't the navy meta. Situational units not being worth it in this game generally.

Assassin group meta: about 15 cruisers plus about 15 frigates, and navy officer (stacked with cruisers; can detect subs which is needed), and 2 destroyers (can be low level) just to detect subs in case you split the assassin group into 2-3 separate pieces.

Assassin group, with infantry in tow, stays in a ball I call "Enders Game formation" (think about why I call it that) -- stacks all tight together -- and travels the world wiping every coalition and live player (I just wipe them and leaves, I don't usually bother to stay and take any lands, well maybe 1-2 more countries worth sometimes if they are near home). I've done this alot with this build on rising tides -- the map where most cities are on water. Note: best way to travel together all at same speed is to do stacks like this: 3 ships plus 2 infantry or 4 ships plus 1 infantry.

This assassin group is impenetrable, in many matches I've never lost a single ship in it no matter what any player has had, and I've wiped many entire coalitions of highly skilled, active players with it on my own -- not only without losing a single ship but many times without taking a single hit. Details on that:

- No one I've yet seen has a navy even half this size, and regardless of navy size they don't ball them all up in Enders Game formation so I detect one or two stacks at a time and one-shot them as I go. I shoot from 100 range and they most often are at 50-75 range so I most often don't take a single hit from ships in the vast majority of matches. (Indeed most players use destroyers, these I find to be a waste for actual combat, only useful as sub detectors). Even if players have cruisers they never have even 10% of enough so this assassin group one-shots stacks of them too (again, never lost a single ship of an assassin group -- ever). And attack subs -- whose sole purpose is anti-ship -- are irrelevant against the assassin group with their shorter range in fact never have subs even gotten a single shot off at the assassin group.

- This group usually one or two shots entire air forces. I try to bait them -- arrive on shore, hiding the frigates not allowing them to fire, send a stack of 5 or more infantry on shore as bait (gotta send enough to draw out whole stacks of planes), they send waves of planes in response, frigates surprise wipe them all before they get a shot off at the infantry. Even navy recon planes can't do enough dmg to matter, they are squishy and we're talking 15 frigates tightly packed -- you'd have to send dozens of navy recons all in a tight grouping not to stop the assassin group but just to do some damage to it, and NO ONE does a build like that.

- This group one shots any missiles flung at it. I've never taken any missile damage, even the time I recall when probably 20ish cruise missiles flung at once by a big gold spender. (Or something like that, it was a big blurry patch of them with loads of combat messages scrolling -- but some idiosyncratic punk with too much time on forums will probably shoot me the math on that lol.)

In sum, the navy assassin group I described is, I believe, the navy meta. But the meta is not just what units, its also how many of each, and in what formation the stacks are in -- Ender's Game formation.

Note: once I know a player is on the ropes I'll be safe enough to split up the assassin group into 2-3 smaller groups to finish him off, indeed 5 cruisers + 5 frigates + destroyer is a mighty small stack on its own. (This is where knowing a host of good battle tactics comes in, e.g. placing frigates in the path between his airfield and your invading infantry). But when I set sail for the next big, experienced player/coalition to wipe I'll go back into the undamageable Ender's Game formation.

ASW helis are better at detecting subs with less cost and more effective against them.
No naval battle group is impenetrable. You can make it damn hard, but there's always going to be a weak spot.
In over 100 games you've never encountered a navy of more than 15 ships?


Trigger AA and take out your cruisers and destroyers with CMs and ASW heli would have finished off your frigates. Even if you mix the stacks a shot off would create a def opening to volley at.

^ reads more like someone who doesn’t know how aa works or simply gambles on the opponent not knowing

also love completely dismissing subs as useless while building a navy centered around submarines as weakness

Many aggressive players successfully dominate most of their public games by Day 30-ish (Day 20-ish on the smaller maps). Those aggressive players purposefully do early attacks on anyone they notice trying to build up (but not use yet) a big army. Advice that doesn't explicitly include that important information is severely flawed.

All from the same player? If so, that's a lot of research slots and rare materials so likely low lvl.

If different players in a coalition all specialize in one, that's gonna be tougher but you don't always need a bigger navy to win. Strategy, terrain, location of the fight, experience, traps, organization are all elements in every fight in the game plus more. It's very difficult for a group to organize a naval attack or chase for a long period. Much more difficult than it is for one player, so it's not difficult to divide and separate them. I'm responding generally, before people who spend 25 hours a day, with extreme activity, on this game come after me

ASW helis can't attach in middle of ocean, need to be near a shore with airbase