Age of Ships: Battleships War Beginner's Guide – Build, Upgrade, and Dominate
Age of Ships: Battleships War offers an exciting mix of fleet management and strategic warfare, where your goal is to build the strongest navy and lead it to victory. The game’s unique autobattler mechanics mean you’ll spend most of your time managing and upgrading your fleet while battles play out automatically. This can feel a bit confusing for new players, especially when starting out with so many ships, upgrades, and options to choose from.
In this beginner’s guide, we’ll walk you through the basics of building your fleet, upgrading your ships, and getting the most out of every battle. With a little guidance, you’ll soon be leading your empire to success and mastering the game’s many challenges. Whether you’re battling other players or conquering the campaign, this guide will help you get started on the right foot.
The Main City Screen
In Age of Ships: Battleships War, the main city screen acts as the central hub for all your fleet management needs. Unlike city-building games, your base isn’t about expanding and managing resources for construction. Instead, it’s a collection of key facilities that help you unlock new ships, upgrade your existing fleet, and dive into missions. Everything here is designed to either boost your fleet’s strength or test it in battle. At first, many of these buildings are locked, but as you level up your account, more facilities and options will become available, giving you greater control over your naval empire.
Two essential buildings that you’ll have access to from the start are the Shipyard and the Wharf. The Shipyard is where you’ll construct new ships, adding valuable units to your growing fleet. On the other hand, the Wharf is where you manage your fleets, allowing you to organize, deploy, and optimize them for various battles. These two buildings form the foundation of your fleet’s power, and you’ll be spending a lot of time here as you work toward building the ultimate naval force.
Your Fleet
Your fleet in Age of Ships: Battleships War is the backbone of your success in every mission. Each time you set out to battle, you’ll deploy a specific selection of ships from your roster. You can access and manage your fleet by pressing the Fleet button on the main city screen, where you’ll be able to organize and prepare your ships for combat.
- On the left side of the Fleet screen, you’ll see your currently deployed ships. At the beginning, you’ll only have access to three deployment slots.
- You unlock additional slots as you level up:
- Level 10: Unlocks a fourth slot.
- Level 15: Unlocks a fifth slot.
- This pattern continues until level 30 when you unlock the seventh slot.
- Support ships can be added at level 55 and 65, enhancing your fleet in important ways.
Your main fleet consists of the ships you deploy in battle. As you unlock more slots, you’ll be able to bring additional ships into the fray. Later on, when support ships are available, you can add these to your fleet to replace fallen ships during combat. While they don’t fight directly, they contribute their speed stats, boosting your fleet’s mobility. However, support ships do not gain formation bonuses and cannot act as flagships.
Assist Ships vs. Support Ships
As you progress further, you’ll unlock Assist Ships, which provide passive bonuses to your fleet. These ships never enter the battlefield but help improve the overall effectiveness of your main combat units.
- The first two Assist Ship slots unlock at level 75.
- You’ll gain a third at level 90 and a fourth at level 100.
- Each Assist Ship provides a specific stat boost:
- First Assist Ship: Boosts ART ATK.
- Second Assist Ship: Boosts BUR ATK.
- Third Assist Ship: Boosts BUR DEF.
- Fourth Assist Ship: Boosts HP.
Keep in mind that Assist Ships don’t add speed to your fleet like Support Ships do, but their stat boosts can be key to surviving tougher battles. Managing your fleet effectively means balancing your combat units, support ships, and assist ships to ensure the best results on the battlefield.
Fitting Your Ships
Once you’ve deployed your ships in the fleet screen, you can click on any individual ship to dive into its stats and fittings. At the center of the screen, you’ll see detailed information about the highlighted ship, including its four important fitting slots: Weapon, Armor, Radar, and Engine. These fittings play a crucial role in boosting your ship’s performance, and you can acquire them through challenges and various in-game sources.
You can equip these fittings to your ships to see a significant improvement in their overall stats. Additionally, just like your ships, these fittings can be upgraded to further increase their effectiveness. Upgrading your fittings is a key way to keep your fleet competitive as you face tougher opponents.
Upgrading Your Ships
Upgrading your ships is essential to staying ahead in Age of Ships: Battleships War, and there are three main ways to achieve this:
- Upgrading Skills in the Fleet Screen: On the Fleet screen, you can click on a ship’s skills to upgrade them individually. These skills offer specific combat enhancements, and upgrading them will improve their overall effect. You can also manage skill upgrades through the Wharf building under the “Upgrade” tab.
- Leveling Up Ships in the Wharf: By visiting the Wharf building, you can find a list of all your ships. Clicking on any ship allows you to access detailed information and upgrade them in several ways. Most notably, you can level up your ships by using Gold. However, keep in mind that a ship’s level cannot exceed your current account level. This is the simplest and most direct way to enhance your ship’s stats.
- Converting Ships for Big Boosts: The Conversion feature lets you use duplicate ship designs along with Gold to increase a ship’s Conversion Level. Each conversion not only provides a massive stat boost but also unlocks passive bonuses that can be game-changers in battle.
While these are the most common methods to upgrade your ships, you’ll find more options as you progress, allowing for even greater customization and improvement. Staying on top of these upgrades will help you maintain a powerful fleet capable of facing the toughest challenges.
Building New Ships
In Age of Ships: Battleships War, building new ships is a vital part of growing your fleet, and it all happens in the Shipyard. Whenever you collect a ship’s design by completing challenges or advancing through the game, you can head to the Shipyard to construct that ship. By paying the necessary fee, you can build the selected ship and then deploy it into your fleet through the Fleet menu. These ship designs are not only key to building new units, but also play a crucial role in converting ships, as discussed earlier.
But building ships is just one option for managing your designs. Here are a few other ways to handle ship designs in the Shipyard:
- Decomposing Designs: If you have designs you don’t plan to use, you can decompose them to gain Design materials. This process essentially breaks down the design into useful resources that you can then save for future use.
- Synthesizing Designs: With enough Design materials, you can synthesize specific ship designs. This allows you to craft the exact ships you need by recycling designs you no longer want. It’s a great way to get more value out of unused blueprints.
- Transforming Designs: If you have an orange-quality design (typically the best ship designs) that doesn’t suit your needs, you can convert it into another random design via the Transformation tab. This gives you another shot at getting a ship that better fits your strategy, ensuring nothing goes to waste.
All of these functions are housed in the Shipyard building, making it your go-to location for expanding and fine-tuning your fleet. Whether you’re building new ships, recycling old designs, or hoping for a lucky transformation, the Shipyard offers everything you need to manage your fleet’s growth and adapt to the challenges ahead.
The Battle System
Battles are fully automated in this game, meaning that once your fleet is deployed, the combat unfolds without any further input from you. At higher VIP levels, you can even skip the battle entirely, instantly receiving the results. Whether you watch the fight or skip it, the outcome will be the same, so skipping battles is a convenient way to save time, especially as the animations can become repetitive after a while.
Since you don’t control the battles directly, your success relies heavily on how well you’ve prepared beforehand. Ensuring your fleet is upgraded, properly fitted, and strategically organized is key to performing well in combat. By keeping your ships in top shape using the upgrade methods we discussed earlier, you can consistently come out on top, even without actively managing the fights themselves.
How to Progress Efficiently
To progress quickly in Age of Ships, the best tip or trick is to focus on the Battle tab, which serves as the main campaign of the game. By consistently pushing through the campaign, you’ll unlock new ships, resources, and features that will help strengthen your fleet. Shortly after starting, you’ll also unlock daily quests and achievements, which should be prioritized as they offer valuable rewards.
- Daily quests refresh every day, giving you a steady flow of resources.
- Achievements, on the other hand, are long-term goals that you’ll complete over time, with each one yielding substantial rewards when completed.
In addition to the campaign, staying on top of these daily tasks and achievements is essential. As you level up and unlock new features, make sure to explore the other game modes and challenges that become available, as they often provide the materials and resources needed to keep upgrading your fleet. The more you farm and collect, the faster you’ll expand and progress in the game.
With these tips in mind, you’ll be well on your way to building a powerful fleet and conquering your enemies. And remember, for the best gaming experience, you can always play Age of Ships: Battleships War on PC using BlueStacks, where you’ll enjoy better performance and controls, among many other benefits.