Please help with verifying or updating older sections of this article. At least some were last verified for version 1.23.
Sailors represent the trained seamen of a nation. Only coastal provinces provide sailors, and the amount of sailors depends on the development of the province.
Sailors are used for ships just as manpower is used for troops. They differ from manpower both in what they are used for and in how they are acquired. Sailors are required when constructing new ships, and when ships are “repaired”. Not all ships require the same amount of sailors, with heavy ships needing the most and transports the least. A country whose stockpile of sailors is depleted will be unable to build new ships or repair damaged ones.
AI nations are coded to never run out of sailors since version 1.24 because they were too ineffective at managing them, so sailors are in effect only relevant to player nations.
Base sailors is determined by the development level of the province. Each level of development adds 60 men[2]. The starting development level of a province is a preset in the game files[3]. See the economic list of provinces for these values. The development level of a province can be increased by spending monarch points.
Sailors are used to man naval vessels and when raising marines. Different vessels require differing numbers of sailors to be at full strength. Similarly, sailors are required to return a damaged ship to full strength, and the number of sailors used to do this is an equivalent fraction of that for the whole ship (repairing a ship from 50% uses 50% of its initial sailor cost). It takes 1000 sailors to recruit a Marine. Sailors are also used for reinforcing depleted regiments.
Please help with verifying or updating this section. It was last verified for version 1.23.
Sailors replenish over time until they reach the maximum level. It takes 10 years[5] to fill the sailor reserves from zero. The monthly recovery rate is:
If a nation owns at least one coastal province, sailors have a minimum recovery rate of 5 sailors per month.
Mothballing a fleet will make it immobile and decrease its maintenance costs by 50%, and will cause it to lose 5% of the sailors in the fleet per month (also durability) until the fleet reaches a minimum of 25% sailors/durability. Sailors lost from mothballing are returned to the national sailor pool, but only up to the national sailor limit; any additional sailors above the limit are lost. Un-mothballing a fleet will cause it to repair at the standard rate.
Certain nations can gain sailors from raiding another nation’s coastal provinces, even if the maximum number of sailors has been reached. A province that has been raided cannot be raided for another 10 years.
By exploiting the base production of a province, a nation can get a large number of sailors instantly. Doing this will give 60 months worth of that province's sailors.