This is a basic mod guide, since a lot of things will be confusing without looking into the raw code.

The core of the storyline revolves around the struggle between the belief in magic. You have the Pro-Magic faction (represented by the Shipgirlist faith, and shipgirl nations) and the Anti-Magic faction (initially only the Papacy). To a certain extent this means Catholic nations are their enemy of shipgirlism as well, but Catholics themselves aren't inherently hostile to Shipgirlists (at least any more than any other religion), but rather compelled to be hostile by the Papacy. So it's probably a much better long-term strategy to focus on taking out the Papacy rather than trying to destroy all of Catholicism.

Oh, there is also the Abyssals, the canonical enemy of Shipgirls in their original game. But they don't seem to make (much) of an appearance yet.

Shipgirlists get a lot of futuristic technologies like machinery and gunpowder so may look unstoppable at a glance, but be forewarned the Anti-Magic factions also get more a lot of more powerful men-at-arms than in vanilla to balance the game out. So don't be shocked if you can't just steamroll Europe with your fancy new technology. Oh, also the Papacy also regularly spawns giant armies via event, so punches far above its normal weight.

Important note: When a Shipgirlist religion country attacks a heathen country, it will push that entire religion in the direction of the anti-magic faction. This unlocks much more man-at-arms regiments and buildings for them. Keep this in mind for any long-term expansion plans.

Before Game Start
The recent history is that the Shipgirls were originally hanging out in Constantinople, in the Byzantine Empire, which is why their default culture-group is Byzantine and they speak Greek. Anyway, they began tinkering with eugenics, which enraged the Papacy and sparked the "One-Year War" which resulted in Shipgirls going the way of the Jews: Being kicked out of their homeland and wandering Europe, mostly living in the courts of other nations.

Storyline Part One: Sacking Rome
The first and immediate objective should be to occupy (note the word occupy; it's not necessary to annex or vassalize) Rome. There isn't really pressure to do so, however. While the Pope does spawn event armies at regular intervals, you can easily surpass his army growth by expanding your realm combined with Shipgirl techs. Also note that sacking Rome removes the buff that is negating your penalties for low authority/zeal (will be explained in the next section), so sacking Rome early may cripple you.

Storyline Part Two: Piech Champions
As soon as Rome is sacked, you'll get an event mentioning the rise of a warlord: the Piech Champion. This is effectively a demigod blessed by a higher power with the sole purpose of defeating Shipgirlists. Their already considerable bonuses get even stronger with the more Shipgirlist leaders they vanquish. Inversely, they will lose this bonus if they don't wage enough war against them. They will have a target goal usually of around 20-25 conquests, after which the game says they will "ascend to godhood".

They will remain idle for a few years, before they decide declare war on everyone in their de jure kingdom to consolidate land and power, before getting down to their real work. So if they happened to appear nearby, this may be the time to strike, before they can gain momentum.

United Fleet
At some point around 1000 AD, you may see an event mentioning something called the United Fleet. Enacting this decision spawns a super-aggressive mega army on the Chinese edge of the map which begins expanding, kind of reminiscent to Genghis Khan and his vast horde of Mongols. I'm not entirely certain if there's a point to doing so other than an interesting challenge.

The mod has two important global variables called Fantasy Zeal and Fantasy Might. These can be seen at any time in the NEOFORCE interface (more on that later). Both increase or decrease based on the military success of Shipgirlist faith nations. Almost all events that increase one will increase the other by the same amount, though the two have different amount of points needed to level up so don't progress the same. Progress is divided into ten levels/tiers, the points requirements for which are in the chart below.


Effects
The ten-tier scale provides penalties the farther you are below five, and bonuses the farther you are above five. You start at the bottom, so begin the game with severe penalties to nearly everything: -4 knights, -80% knight effectiveness, -20% damage, -25% tax, -15 vassal cap, and other penalties to almost every other variable you can imagine. However, you also begin the game with "One-Year War's Revenge Fever" which provides a major buff, largely negating these penalties until you occupy Rome. So try to avoid occupying Rome until Zeal/Might is high enough to negate these penalties.

Other notable effects of the scale include Rank 3 zeal unlocking religious wars and rank 6 might unlocking a new succession law, and higher zeal in general improving province conversion speed.

How to Increase the Global Variables

• Upon starting a new game, begin with roughly 8 points on earliest game start date, and additional 8 points for every century thereafter.
  
• 3 points for each "restore [province]" decision
  
• 10 points for dismantle papacy decision
  
• 0.200 (zeal only) for occupying (not actually conquering) important provinces. Includes major northern Italy cities, and historically significant provinces or capitals (e.g., dublin, cario, baghdad, moscow, kiev, delhi, rome, etc).
  
• 0.005 (might only) when a shipgirl is promoted to rank 5 (Brigadier General). Additional 0.005 for each further promotion above that.
  
• 0.005 on winning a siege
  
• 0.100 on winning a war (vs other shipgirl faith)
  
• 0.200 on winning a war (vs heathens)

In direct opposition to the above is a hidden variable called either Anti-Magic or Fantasy Opposition. This is basically a rubber-band mechanic to stop Shipgirlism from simply steamrolling the entire world with their superior tech and armies, by unlocking similarly powerful tech and armies for non-shipgirl nations. Like the shipgirlist bonuses, they are unlock via religious doctrine, so all earned bonuses are accessible to everyone of that specific faith.

Like with Pro-Magic scores, Anti-Magic is divided into ten tiers which each unlock new bonuses and technologies. At the highest tiers, they even cause events to fire which further increase their fighting power.

What causes a faith to join the Anti-Magic faction?
When any Shipgirlist nation declares war on a nation of any other faith, that faith is flagged as automatically joining the Anti-Magic faction permanently. Furthermore, these bonuses are automatically and retroactively shared between faiths, meaning even faiths that have never previously fought against Shipgirlists will get access to the most advanced armies and buildings.

What increases the Anti-Magic score
It's pretty simple: Shipgirlist religious aggression. The more wars against heathens started by Shipgirlists, the more points are added to the score. Moreso if they win those wars. However, the opposite also applies: when a Shipgirlist country is a victim of a war of heathen aggression, the score is reduced. There doesn't seem to be any effect on the score when Shipgirlist faith nations go to war on one another, for better or worse.

Note that this score grows non-linearly, proportionate to what tier of Anti-Magic has been unlocked. For example, if tier 3 of Anti-Magic has been reached, each war will generate three times the amount of Anti-Magic score.

Shipgirl Ports are a holding type (like cities, temples, and castles) and can be developed into very powerful settlements similar to City of Wonders metropolises. They can be significantly better than any other vanilla holding type when fully developed.

Railways are a province modifier. They are initially unlocked by requesting the relevant boon from NEOFORCE, which then adds a county modifier to your capital. From there they will passively upgrade themselves and spread based on the development level of the county, as long as the provinces have land access to each other. You can also spread them to provinces without land connections by building the "Moe Ferry" structure four times (it deconstructs itself after each build). Another feature of railways is using gold to purchase railway cars, allowing you extremely rapid movement of troops through railway territories, though each railway car has a 30-day cooldown on reusing it.

Mass Drivers are a special building that provide passive bonuses to a province. According to their description they also allow you to para-drop troops or fire nuclear bombs, but I have not tested these features so I don't know if this is lore fluff or it's an actual working feature. To build them, you must: 1) Use a decision to select a province and prepare a site, 2) Request the relevant boon from NEOFORCE, 3) Have a free "special" building slot. There may be additional requirements I can't recall at the moment.

Professional Standing Army is a province modifier unlocked by decision. When enabled, any province above development 30 will no longer be able to raise levees (-200% levees size) -- but each such province will contribute to your global maximum man-at-arms cap and reduce upkeep costs for them slightly. Since the bonus each province gives is relatively small, this should only be used in the late game (when men-at-arms are much more powerful than levees), or in very large countries.

Honeymoon Palace is just an extra building that you can only unlock after marrying your first shipgirl and going on a honeymoon with her. Just adding it here because there's no other in-game indication of how it gets unlocked, unless you stumble upon it by luck.

Note: This feature only unlocks if you are a vassal of an empire and have over 40 provinces.

If you are the vassal of an empire, a new game mechanic is unlocked where you can build up influence and basically take control of an empire from the inside. While actually seizing the title is a long road, you can still use character interactions to control many aspects of the empire or negate any drawbacks of being a vassal (while bypassing the normal relationship requirements or skill checks).

The first step to unlocking these powers is a decision that basically involves getting the king drunk and scam him into signing a very bad contract. This is preceded by a long string of events which run attribute check die rolls. Failing rolls may result in war being declared on you by others in the empire. Success also means war -- but you only have to fight one versus one against the most powerful vassal, and get all their titles if you win.

Influence: What to spend it on

• As part of the first decision mentioned above, you get vassalage with almost no obligations. If you have the Port Authority government type you get an additional contract amendment that makes it so you drain a lot of bonuses from the Emperor and give them to you. You also get a trait which you can mouse over to see your current influence number in the tooltip. Also, the Emperor is considered an ally so will automatically join you on any wars against outside powers.
  
• "Kindly ask the monarch to die": Self-explanatory.
  
• "Rely on the emperor to command the princes": Grants you a pressed claim against your fellow vessel, and amends your vassalage contract to include sanctioned wars
  
• "Expansion of the administration": Gives you a permanent +2 domain limit, and amends your vassalage contract to include coinage rights.
  
• "Become the leader of ministers": Gives you a permanent +20 vassal limit, and amends your vassalage contract to include a guaranteed council seat.
  
• "Force the monarch to grant a title": Self-explanatory.
  
• "Forced monarchy marriage": Force the emperor to divorce their current wife and marry any of your non-ruler courtiers.
  
• "Take control of the inner court": Force the emperor to designate a valid heir of your choosing
  
• "Reaffirm harem laws": Sleep with the emperor's wife. Doesn't seem to provide any direct benefits, except maybe getting some future hooks on the empress from blackmail or maybe producing a bastard to later legitimate and put on the throne?
  
• "Invite the monarch to dinner": Grants you a weak hook on the emperor
  
• "Dispatch the imperial family hanging": Appears to have a mistranslated name. It allows you to transfer a courtier with a maid trait, which acts as a weaker version of a spymaster assigned to "find secrets", but without actually occupying your spymaster. It also allows you to force a white peace on any wars of aggression the emperor starts, effectively preventing them from going to war without your order.
  
• "Final preparations for regime change": Self-explanatory.
  
• "Second Court": Gives you a trait granting +2 domain limit, and modifies your vassalge contract to add coinage rights.
  
• "Head of the ministers": Gives you a trait granting +20 vassals, and modifies your vassalage contract to add a guaranteed council seat.

Influence: How to get it

• Being guardian to the current (child) emperor can grant you up to +150 over the guardianship, dependent on skill check die rolls over the years
  
• Realm size: Being 50 provinces gives you +10 influence, with a further +10 for every 25 provinces past 50, up to a max of 200 provinces.
  
• Prestige level: +5 influence per level
  
• "Melt the mind and body of the monarch": If you are female, you can forcefully sleep with the emperor, making him your lover while granting +20 influence.
  
• "A maid for the monarch": Transfer a female courtier to the emperor's court for +30 influence. This can be done every few years.
  
• Creating new dutchy titles grants +10 influence. Presumably creating new kingdom titles grants influence as well.
  
• Many random events relating to the emperor seem to grant you influence after successful skill check rolls. So having higher stats and befriending the emperor to increase the odds of being picked for random events can help.

Assuming you have no UI mods that overwrite the UI changes from this mod, you'll see on the right some extra buttons. Most of them require you to adopt a Shipgirlist religion to be visible (reformed/custom Shipgirlist religions count, not just initial ones).

NEOFORCE: This is basically the exact same as the Chinese Empire interaction interface from CK2. Gift them things (gold, commanders, eunichs) to get currency. And request various rewards by spending said currency. In case I can't translate them, the boons are as follows, in this order:

• Request regiment
  
• Request techpriest (reduces construction costs by 15% for a century, and unlocks a council position which can completely stop artifact decay)
  
• Request doctor
  
• Grant Damage Control System: an upgrade/trait for shipgirls that provides a massive health boost and a minor martial skill boost
  
• Shipgirl Conversion: turn a regular character into a shipgirl
  
• Random NEOFORCE technology (Religious Doctrine). Each of these "technologies" actually gives your current religion a new doctrine that grants very powerful effects.(WARNING: Most of these very overpowered and will turn the game into very easy mode, recommend never using since shipgirl nations are already more powerful than average. Also note that because they are religious doctrines, they apply to ALL followers of your current faith, including rivals and enemy nations.)
  
• "Angel Health" Religious Doctrine: Adds a new doctrine to your religion. In your religion's provinces reduces disease outbreak probability to a tiny fraction of the default. For characters, provides a major health buff. (WARNING: Like the previous option, it applies to all your religion's followers indiscriminately, friend and foe alike.)
  
• Railways: Deploys railways to a province
  
• Mass Driver: Creates a mass driver special building in a province
  
• Mass Driver Nuke: I haven't tried this yet, but I think the name might hint at what it does.

Military Staff: These are basically extra councillor roles. Each of them provide assorted passive stats increases based on their relevant skill.

Minato Joint Conference: Similar to Military Staff, but with much more strict criteria: only shipgirls, and ones that hold landed titles, are allowed to work here.

Secretary Interface: Allows you to swap costumes for shipgirls (both from this mod and the Azur Lane mod). Unlocking costumes requires oathing said character. (Note: On characters with multiple costumes, there is a very small left/right arrow pairing in the same row as the name/age display in the character window, which can be used to quickly cycle through alternative costumes, if available. However, "damaged" skins can only be manually enabled using the Secretary Interface).

Throne World: Not sure what exactly this is, I think it's a vassal overview interface.

Maid Interface: You probably will never see this one, since it's located in the character window, and the vanilla character window is so crap that almost everyone uses mods to improve the UI. (Which will mean overwriting the changes that adds the maid interface button). Fortunately it doesn't seem to do to much other than let you change your head maid; the rest is just showing you info.

The author apparently has added elements from their Europa Universalis 4 maid-themed mod to this mod.

Maid Features

• Maids have superior genetics. They start with beauty, intelligent, and hale, and are free of the vast majority of negative traits.
  
• Maids have their own education trait with five ranks alongside the normal education traits. And like normal education traits, higher ranks grant both higher stats and increase the quality of the trait that gets passed on to children they are raising.
  
• Unlike normal guardians, you can choose (via popup event) which education specialization they will receive instead of automatically copying it from the guardian. e.g., a maid with a stewardship education can give wards a martial education.
  
• Maids automatically attempt to assassinate any court guardians that are at high-risk of harming children (sadistic, callous, hates their ward, vengeful AI personality).
  
• If you have the Port Authority government, maids have a unique character interaction to inspect vassals, which is pretty much identical to the "discover secrets" spy councillor interaction.
  
• There is a rare battlefield event where maids can duel an enemy monarch and automatically force a white peace, bypassing normal war score requirements.

Maid Types and Obtaining Them
There are two types of maids. The first are prefabricated maids with fixed traits, stats, names, and appearance, which are drawn from popular media. These are obtained from the "Country of Maids" decision which randomly selects one of ~70 pre-fabricated ones. You can never own more than six of these prefabricated maids, as the decision will become and remain hidden until at least one dies to bring your total below six.

The second type are "natural" maids. These can be produced if all three conditions are met:
1) One parent is the player
2) The mother is a maid
3) The guardian is a maid
Or can be alternatively are produced using lowborn children that are educated by maids, and you don't select a specialization when the popup event happens. These maids draw from a pool of about 30 fully randomized maids + 10 prefabricated ones

Maid School
There is a character interaction with maids that says something along the lines of "establish a maid school". This effectively lets you hand over a county to that character, creating a landless dutchy title for them and making them a vassal. This vassal seems to be completely loyal and use its own unique, non-hereditary inheritance system -- but besides that seems to function as a normal vassal.

This is a "scheme" that is somewhat similar to vanilla seduction, but is more complex, interactive, and has the condition that the other party must be available (the target must have no oath, marriage, or lover, besides yourself, though concubines are allowed). If you win a challenge, you progress the scheme. If you fail, you reduce progress. It's worth noting that mini-game outcomes are completely unrelated to character attributes or traits.

Mini-games include:

• Dueling: Duel each other in a combat mini-game. Stage 1 involves five rounds of checking each others equipment (i.e., attempting sabotage) for a certain number of rounds. Whether you succeed or not on sabotage is based on whether the part is "sensitive" (which is assigned at random). Stage 2 is the actual combat. Note that your personal attributes or traits have no bearing here; both parties have the same amount of attack and HP, modified only by the outcome of the sabotage stage.
  
• Drinking: Stage 1 has eight rounds. Every round you are given three choices of drink which add or subtract strength, intelligence, or agility. Same for your opponent. Stage 2 involves playing a drinking game where you choose one of the three attributes, and checking your score in a stat versus their score to determine who wins.
  
• Shopping: Your chance of success is based on total spent. Literally pay-to-win. You can get various currencies or stat boosts in return, at least.

There are effectively three "levels" of relationship here, requiring at least 100 more than the subsequent level. Ranking up a level requires successfully completing the scheme, meaning multiple date events each.

• Level 0: This is where you always start; as strangers, basically.
  
• Level 0.5: Not a real level, but at 50 points you can request they transfer a courtier to your court.
  
• Level 1: You can request a weak hook on them. You can also ask them to help make one of their family members, consort, or lovers into your lover.
  
• Level 2: You can propose an alliance. (Bypassing the normal requirements of needing blood relations or marriage to ally).
  
• Level 3: They will accept vassalization, if rank permits. (Again, bypassing most normal requirements)

(Sidenote: While the localisation files refer to it as dueling and combat, the raw code uses terms like "yuri", "foreplay", "touching" and "part sensitivity". I suspect this mini-game was intended to be NSFW but was later re-written to be more, ahem, all-ages friendly)

Generate Magic Baby: Functionally, this is a cloning option. Available for players in a lesbian relationship, use on the interact menu.

Send to Youth Academy: Available at age 12, lasts about 3 years. Send a child away for a few years in exchange for a stat-boosting trait. Results may vary depending on their stats and traits.Note that Youth Academy and Naval Academy do not conflict; you can earn traits from both on one character.

Send to Misit Guard (aka, Naval Academy): Available at age 16, lasts about 6 years. Send a young adult off to something similar to the Vangarian Guard in exchange for a stat-boosting trait. Their attributes and traits will be "tested" with a number of hidden checks during that time to determine which of the three graduation trait tiers they will receive.

Also note there are two versions of the Naval Academy: A domestic academy (not unlocked until later-game technologies are reached), which yields mediocre results but charges very little gold per student. And an international academy unlocked from the game start, which is more expensive but yields better results. The elite academy is a special title like the Ecumenical Patriarchate, so it can be destroyed under certain conditions. If this occurs, there is a decision to sponsor/host the creation of a new elite academy, though you will still pay full price for elite academy enrolment even if you are a sponsor.

The mod has a new government type similar to the bureaucracy from CK2. Noteworthy features:
- Using the shipgirl summoning decision automatically convert your government type to this type (with only a few exceptions). Keep this in mind if playing with a government you absolutely want to keep.
- Much higher base stability (+30 popular opinion)
- Unique feudal contract choices
- Negates foreign culture and religion penalties
- Easier title revocation
- Elective Succession based on power (but unlike standard ones, you do not get a game over if a non-dynastic heir is elected; so you can safely change dynasties).
- Viceroy titles and CK2 law sliders (see below)

This government introduces the old sub-law sliders from CK2, meaning you can change what things you aren't/are allowed to do by passing reforms. Most are pretty straight-forward. It also allows viceroy governors: instead of the normal method of a title passed on hereditary to the holder's children when they die like normal, viceroyality will instead offer you a choice on whether you want it returned to you, or for the game to spawn a new random shipgirl to continue ruling over it for you. This results in an extremely stable government by eliminating fights over inheritances and making internal politics much easier than before. Recommend not using the Viceroyality system if you want a normal level of internal political difficulty in your game.

The county of Pilan (immediately east of Venice) is to Shipgirls what Rome is to Catholics or Mecca is to Islamists. Not only does it have a powerful wonder that generats tons of gold, capturing it allows you to re-construct one of the holdings into the much more powerful Shipgirl Port holding. It also allows you to reform the Shipgirlist religion and make yourself the religious head.

Milano also has a special wonder that can be upgraded up to ten (!) times for a whopping +20 gold, +40% local tax.

These other provinces have unique wonders, though far less extreme in power than the Pilan and Milano ones:
Rome
Tunis
Brandenburg (i.e, Berlin)
Constantinope
Antioch
Pilan
Krakow
Venice
Glamorgan (Tibet)
Shazhou (found east of Tibet)
Vodi (Found east of Estonia)

Whenever a shipgirl wins a siege, or battle with another army, there is a chance for them to earn a promotion. There are nine ranks in total. After rank 5 (Brigadier General) and above, they qualify as being "high rank", which unlocks special effects like being able to contribute to global Fantasy Zeal score.

Also note there is a significant dropoff in promotion speed after Rank 5. So you may mistakenly think the promotion system is broken when you get stuck at those ranks for a prolonged period of time.

Ranks: