Balance the budget
The name comes from the real thing. The Naval Estimates were the annual statement of what a navy would cost, laid before a parliament for approval - most famously the Royal Navy's, presented to the House of Commons each year by the Admiralty. Every battleship began its life not on a slipway but as a line in a budget, debated by politicians weighing the fleet against everything else a nation wanted.
Those debates could decide the fate of navies, and occasionally of governments. The dreadnought race turned the Estimates into front-page politics - the 1909 crisis over how many battleships Britain should fund produced the cry "We want eight, and we won't wait", and Parliament got its eight.
That is the game's thesis: sea power was won in committee rooms as much as at sea. Naval Estimates puts you in charge of the whole process - the budget, the design board, the shipyard, the fleet.
This deep dive is still being written, and will grow over time. Follow along with the latest updates.