Structural integrity of wood

>absolute and ever-lasting

>Our kingdom, known for its awesome steel, has figured out the way how to make metal ships!
>b-but muh wood

Yes. It's almost more dense than mahogany.

Basically it was necessary to ensure that the world is never united under one country, no matter what, because that would be boring. The island naval civilization would never be invaded due to its eternal naval supremacy, whilst it could never invade the mainland because its land army sucked.

Absolutely. English oak was a competitive advantage for them, not that other countries didn’t have trees that worked, but oak was key for the English, and it was all they had- without the oak they didn’t have much.

When explorers went out around the world, they kept an eye out for where they could find tall straight timber. Cook kept coming back to Marlborough sounds in nz as a base because of the trees, not cause it was near anything.

>Basically it was necessary to ensure that the world is never united under one country, no matter what, because that would be boring.

So, overcomplicated solution to the nonexistent problem?

>Ironwood is a real thing

Oh, shit, learn something new every day. I thought you meant the D&D Ironwood, probably because I was looking up that ritual yesterday.

You were the chosen one! You were supposed to bring balance to the sperg, not leave it in tardness!

Why does its army suck? Because it builds good ships? That doesn't make any sense.

The biggest empire in IRL history was famous for its navy, but its army was still capable.

>absolute and ever-lasting based on type of tree
>Plainsland spy swallows a pinecone in Coastonia, holds his shit until back over the border
>no longer absolute or ever-lasting
this should be a lesson to you in why setting absolutes and themeparkist "the only one that does x" are bad.

focus on what built real-life dominant naval powers, read, either a limited land area and dense population encouraging trade, a lack of land borders allowing military spending to go into ships and sailors rather than mercenaries and fortifications, or just a good old-fashioned spanish-style lucky expedition.

It's... It's just nice to live in a world that you know will always be vibrant forever, you know?

"always be" is the opposite of "vibrant". vibrant is ever-changing, full of new life, new ideas, floating upon the currents of time which sometimes find doldrums but sometimes roil.
the only true "forever" is the grave.

>The biggest empire in IRL history was famous for its navy, but its army was still capable.
Nah, the brits have pretty much always had a shitty army compared to other European powers.

I don't understand how sorting every nation into a tidy little box makes things "vibrant".

>but its army was still capable
It was okay but it relied on naval power for its safety and wait for the moment when European competitors were at their weakest to strike.

As in the world has a comfortable sense of familiarity. You know that dynasties and what not may change, but their will always be some level of familiarity.

My point is Britain's land forces still had the resources and training to oversee an empire. They weren't the "Navy but Nothing Else" force they would be if OP were GMing real life.

And it will stay like that. Only in bad fantasy novels overtaking empire completely subjugates others' culture, in most cases the original culture either stays until the empire inevitably collapses under its own weight, or it merges with it into some weird but interesting cultural chimera.

Global politics also has enough self-regulating processes for all-assimilating empire to eventually collapse.

If you keep shipdudes as mediators so your precious aztecs don't get fucked like they were IRL, sorry, that just won't work. Better solution will be giving each nation its own edge that makes steamrolling them impossible.

>Better solution will be giving each nation its own edge that makes steamrolling them impossible.

I have that as well, but a good navy is one such example.

It’s possible, if you engineer the world right. Trees evolve to their environment- and generally the best ship building trees are in temperate climates- Northern Europe, Canada, etc. tall, straight, narrow base- straight to the sun, minimum sideways spread to minimize snow. Tropical trees tend to the wide, gnarly, because they don’t need to worry about snow but need to compete with water against undergrowth.

Remember until steam power, the taller the mast the more power. And you can’t build composite masts as strong.

Tl;dr; if your naval power is the only one in the temperate zone where only the tall trees can grow, maybe. Until steam.

>My point is Britain's land forces still had the resources and training to oversee an empire
As I said it was okay but British army didn't roflstomp Europeans.

You understand the Roman Empire's significance continues to this day, right?

1) if it's sufficiently malleable and can achieve a buoyant weight:surface area ratio, it works for making ships.
2) superior wood helps but does not guarantee success. British naval superiority was assisted by the fact that their ships were predominantly oak (and live oak which was vastly harder to build with) from the american colonies and teak from india. but their primary strengths were 1st the fact that the frames of the ship were very nearly flush (think of frames as ribs, big thick timbers) compared to the french who had typically a gap of 1 to 2 feet between the frames. that means that the hulls of british ships was typically 7+inches thicker at their narrowest point than the enemy. 2nd, under Nelson and afterwards, the gun crews drilled nearly constantly, achieving a listed rate of fire of 3 shots per 5 minutes even on the massive 42lb guns on the main gundeck, double or even triple the rate of fire of spanish and french crews.
3) morale
superior ships do not the battle win. Have a look at the Russian brig Mepкypий. She, an 18 gun brig, engaged the Turkish 110 gun Selimiye and the 74 gun Real-Bei, and crippled both ships before disengaging.

Assuming magic exists in your setting, your naval nation's forests are blessed by lingering fey magic and/or they've cultivated extensive (top secret) methods of druidcraft that let them build ships out of enchanted wood that can do things like produce on-board branches that grow food (keeping sailors healthy and reducing the requirement of supply lines) or sprout fines that grow over leaks to keep ships floating longer than they should.

Otherwise, they've just got the most trees with the best quality lumber.

Put a Roman in today's world and see if he finds it familiar.

I never said it did. Where are you getting that?

"Capable" doesn't mean "superior"

You don’t need to make everyone have shit trees to make for naval supremacy. Just have every other county not be secretly run by a powerful kraken

Better yet, put a roman from early Kingdom era into late Empire, and see how familiar he finds it.

At the height of the empire, sure. But early days, no. Elizabeth I had no standing army at all, when all the European powers had professional standing armies. The Spanish Armada situation is exactly the situation OP is describing, although that was only for a period in history.

for the longest time the brit reputation was a fleet of shitty little duty-dodgers that usually made it over the channel with whatever they were smuggling, but with relatively well-fed and well-trained soldiers.

Only trees blessed by the goddess can be used to make ships, because they are the ones that repel the vicious monsters of the deep that eat all the other ships. Small vessels exist but can't be too big or they attract the wyrms.

Don't try for a non-magical solution because the whole situation is contrived.

Nice thinking there.

Ofcourse there is.

Balsa and very weak softwoods are he obvious choice but you could also go to the other end of the scale in a fantasy setting and have them have only high value wood like Purpleheart or something thats far too difficult to work to reasonably make ships out of.

Ships are usually made of Oak or Fur. Softwood rots faster but that only means it won’t weather centuries like Oak on Oak ships.

This was a big factor in countries wealth for centuries.

No, good navy the way you did it is a bad example. Absolute unchangeable naval supremacy would only lead to shipdudes either bullying coastal towns into joining their empire (yes, the very thing you're trying to prevent) or other countries collectively ganging up on shipdudes and/or stealing their ships.

>b-but weak land army
They don't even need an army. If you're the only one country with ships, you pretty much have infinite money and infinite influence (unless other countries can trade and deliver goods by air, then the nation with unquestionably best air forces is going to figuratively and literally shit on all other countries).

But more to the point, who cares? What’s implausible about - this island kingdom has the most powerful navy? Who scoffing at the iron islands in GoT having a powerful navy as implausible?

Unless it’s a plot point, it doesn’t really matter. Unless you go with this guys idea, and the quest is to smuggle out a magic acorn.

The other countries have some ships, due to limited usable wood, just not enough to challenge the naval civ.

>Why does its army suck? Because it builds good ships? That doesn't make any sense.
It's very expensive to have a great standing army and great fleet. Ships as awesome as they are cost a lot, require regular repairs, supply base, skilled sailors (some countries went as far as press ganging fishermen and random sailors into fleet) and long time to build. Army and fleet cost a lot to build and mantain and require expenditures years in advance. Someone has to pay for this greatness to continue.

>And you can’t build composite masts as strong.

Actually they did. By the end of the age of Sail masts were so huge they had to be multi tree composites. S S Great Britain in Plymouth has a great display of its original masts and they’re construction.

...

Then your naval civ is going to bully every country that depends on the sea for anything. Unless you go for "a wizard did it" your scenario will fall apart at the seams, and you're spending way too much time thinking how something that's not even a problem can be fixed, because it's unlikely your players will go all "hey let's CONQUER THE WORLD!"

It's weird how OP is hung up on maintaining social and technological stasis when games rarely ever take place over a long enough time frame for that to even be an issue.

>Someone has to pay for this greatness to continue.
Fortunately, Britain spent the latter part of the 1600's laying the foundation for their mercantile empire, and throughout the 18th century were among the most affluent nations in the world. let's not forget that in the early 1700s the British navy began to massively expand, to a total of 239 warships, of which more than 90 were Ships of the Line, by 1750. More than 40,000 men in standing reserve for the navy alone. and during this time, they kept expanding. it was not an appreciable weight on the immensity of British commerce.

They have an alliance with the dryad queen. Their trees are alive and the masts are trees, with vicious, big-booty, spellcasting pirate hoes thrown in as an add on.
Basically the ships regrow, are near impossible to set on fire and wood magic makes for some pretty wild rides.
It also explains why ships are called she.

So what great victories Britain had in the 18th century?

>From 1700 to 1850, Britain was involved in 137 wars or rebellions. It maintained a relatively large and expensive Royal Navy, along with a small standing army. When the need arose for soldiers it hired mercenaries or financed allies who fielded armies. The rising costs of warfare forced a shift in government financing from the income from royal agricultural estates and special imposts and taxes to reliance on customs and excise taxes and, after 1790, an income tax. Working with bankers in the City, the government raised large loans during wartime and paid them off in peacetime. The rise in taxes amounted to 20% of national income, but the private sector benefited from the increase in economic growth. The demand for war supplies stimulated the industrial sector, particularly naval supplies, munitions and textiles, which gave Britain an advantage in international trade during the postwar years.

That doesnt really make tons of sense. A better reason would be that they lack the craftsmenship required to make ships, or that the nation which has supremacy has enough slaves to work drydocks. Another possibility could be that the Naval nation simply has more widespread cities, and therefore a much more developed navigational corpus.

I think you need to check your data sheets

Diffferent species of mahogany run from specific gravities of 0.5 - 0.85 so they all float in water.

Various species called ironwood range from around 1.2 - 1.4 so they all sink unless hollow.

Since you're learning stuff.

A solid lump of ironwood will sink in water but a hollow shaped piece can float, same as for iron.

Ironwoods tend to be hard to work and have low strength to weight ratios compared to ship building timbers. So for the same strength they weigh a lot more.

For a particular sized ship needing to be a certain strength, the iron wood would have to thicker to make it the same strength as say, oak. A thicker piece of wood is heavier, and with ironwood that means it's much heavier. So a ship made of ironwood would sit lower in the water and .thus carry less cargo than the same size oaken ship.

Also, harder to row and sail due to increased inertia and water drag and harder to steer due to inertia. And you're not going to hear any stories about sailors floating to deserted islands on broken planking.

Muh worldbuilding ;_;

India
>GB invested £400 million
>in 1820 PPP GDP per Capita of India (as % of UK) was 31.25%
Economic growth both at home and in foreign holdings and colonies sufficiently funded their military and navy. as a reminder - Britain did something that nearly no other country did, and maintained a standing and trained military force. Compare that to the French navy - largely untrained, with inexperienced officers(even if the officer bit was primarily because they kept beheading their nobility)

I should've said in Europe to be specific
>Britain did something that nearly no other country did
Sure, Britain did it thanks to its fleet. If any other country tried to do that it wouldn't be able to protect all the shippings of oriental goodies and would soon lost the control to bigger meaner naval power.

That's actually pretty interesting. Is there anything Ironwood is good for?

Hush hush little user, you tried, it was a cute attempt~

...

Apparently ironwood bark is resistant to forest fires and shipworm. It could lower maintenance costs and time spent repairing the ship.

Britain's deal wasn't an unchallengeable navy that it parlayed into colonies, it was a specific variety of colonies which expanded rapidly, only then both funded and requiring an unchallengeable navy. There was a long history of the French and Dutch in particular prioritizing easy commodity money while the British focused on mercantilist development, which in turn provided the basis for a strong local army, which led to land victories over competing powers, which only then built an empire which could justify full control over the seas.
Quite the opposite of what you or OP is getting at, other European powers tended to have a navy which could hold off the Brits but to be completely at a loss to handle large colonist militias nearly as well-equipped as regulars. See the Seven Years' War and its aftermath in the western hemisphere: New France was outnumbered 30-to-1 on land by New England and in the end the French signed away "a few acres of snow" (read: modern Canada) in favor of keeping control of the sugar-producing Caribbean islands that their navy could hold.

Sorry, but this whole British Army was terrible is wrong. For most of the British empire, it was the only professional "volunteer" army. It was better trained than any other continental army bar the Prussian, and when well led, they always performed well. It also was the only army which trained with black powder. What Britain always was at a disadvantage was that its army size was smaller, and the Militia and Navy got first pick of recruits.