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I was a beta tester for the Expanded Battles DLC. It is releasing in a couple days, and they've now lifted the NDA on me, so I thought I would share my thoughts based on my experience testing, going over what I like about the DLC, along with what I feel like the biggest limitations to it are.
First, the DLC is basically a whole new game which compliments the campaign game you are familiar with, rather than a supplement or expansion of the campaign game. As you can see from the first image, the DLC has four main features: the ship designer, the scenario editor, the "scenario player," and the Quick Battle feature. Each can be used in ways that enhance your experience in the campaign game, but they also stand on your own. You can use the scenario player, the ship designer, and the Quick Battles feature to test out designs or tactics or to learn how the win tactical battles, but you can also have plenty of unrelated fun with them. They stand on their own.
The ship designer is a derestricted version of the campaign ship designer. You can build completely "illegal" ships with it and save them. This allows you to accurately simulate historical designs. It's quite easy to build a historical ship design in the ship designer, and the game also comes with a fair number of historical ships used in the scenarios. The one difficult thing is getting your ships to look good! If you really like building historical ship designs in Rule the Waves, you'll love the DLC ship designer.
The second major feature is the Scenario Editor. This allows you to create and edit scenarios. It's fairly well documented in the DLC manual, but I would advise you to start off by tweaking an already existing scenario, to help you learn the basics of the scenario editor. With the scenario editor, you can create historical battles, ahistorical battles, or do wacky things like have the 1915 British Battlecruiser Fleet fight a World War 2 Germany force. The Scenario Editor is fairly complete in what you can do with it. One advantage of having it included is that, if you dislike a decision that the scenario designer has made with a scenario, you can easily tweak the scenario to your liking.

The scenario player is the battle player from campaign mode, with the same strengths and weaknesses you're familiar with it. Unlike some other simulation games I could name (Command: Modern Operations), the enemy AI is reasonably intelligent and independent, if also imperfect. The DLC comes with nine scenarios already built:

Yellow Sea-this is classic predreadnought combat, if you are in to that sort of thing.

Dogger Bank-this is classic dreadnought combat, and a nice, relatively brief scenario. It's based heavily on the Dogger Bank scenario from Steam and Iron, for those who have that game.

River Plate-vicious combat at small, quick scale.

Rheinubung-This scenario is about Bismarck trying to break through the GIUK GAP into the North Atlantic. It's the longest scenario in the game, and one of my least favorites since often little action takes place. If you like stealth games, you might like this better than I do.

Rheinubung Hypothetical- This scenario is about what would happen if the "Twisted Sisters" tried to break out into the Atlantic at the same time as Bismarck. It adds some British convoys for you to run into, too. Finally, if you play it from the German side at maximum force size, you get the carrier Graf Zeppelin in support. These little tweaks make playing the scenario absolutely wonderful. Having a carrier to support your breakout and commerce raiding makes a huge difference. Rheinubung Hypothetical is a blast to play from the German side, and it's probably my favorite scenario.

Denmark Strait-It's what you'd expect. A brief, bloody, action-filled battle where Bismarck, Prinz Eugen, PoW, and Hood go at it.

Eastern Solomons- a good carrier battle. Landing decisive damage on the enemy is hard, just like it was in real life.

Second Guadalcanal- this is an amazing scenario to play from the American side. You're radar is imperfect, and your enemy has quite a supply of Type 93 torpedoes to ram down your throat. You have to tread carefully. It really feels like you're Admiral Lee himself.

Melee in the Med- probably my least favorite scenario. A small missile age battle.

A hidden gem of the scenario player is that you can play battles in computer vs. computer mode. This helps with testing scenarios you've built, but it can also be quite fun to watch the AI forces fight it out.

Quick Battles is probably my least favorite part of the DLC, but they can still be very fun. The user interface is set up so it only takes a handful of clicks to generate the fleets, select them, and start a battle. It's so much smoother than beginning a Fleet Exercise in campaign mode. Selecting fleet size, force size, which countries, battle location, etc. is incredibly easy. You can start a fleet engagement, if you want, in about 10 seconds. You can also manually build ships for both sides to use, reorganize divisions yourself, etc. if you wish.

Fighting battles in quick battles can be pretty enjoyable, and I warmed up to the feature quite a bit later in testing. However, you don't tend to have the same emotional attachment to the battles and their results as you do in scenario play or in campaign mode. Sometimes deployment of the fleets can be a little wonky, but when that happens, it's easy to regenerate the battle. One unfortunate thing about Quick Battles is that you can't adjust the doctrines of the sides, which is something you can do with scenarios.

One thing that really stands out to me about the DLC is that it's really a "universal naval warfare 1900-1950" simulator. Using the ship designer, the scenario editor, and the scenario player, you can create and fight any naval battle, real or hypothetical, between 1900 and 1950, and the game will simulate it fairly well. Want to have Bismarck take on the Grand Fleet? You can do it! Want to simulate a battle between Montana and Yamato? It can be done with ease. I expect that there will be a lot of ship designs and scenarios built by the community, taking full advantage of these features.

However, there are also some limitations. The reason I said "1900-1950" is that I don't feel like Rule the Waves handles combat 1890 to 1900 or combat 1950 to 1970 very historically.

Another limitation is that refueling is not currently included in the game. There's no tankers and no refueling in port, and the AI doesn't tend to pay attention to fuel state.

Carrier combat is the same as it is in the campaign game. The mechanics are sound, but it could use some tweaking to improve it's "feel."

Any questions?

Thanks for the review.

As a question; why do you think that the game does not work well for the 1890's?

I did some experiments with Steam and Iron many years ago and thought it did a reasonable job. There appears to be some enhancements (such as -3 guns) which should improve matters.

The big issue with this period is that there was rapid technological advancement but few actual battles. There was some tactical evolution from melee to line of battle but I would have thought that line of battle was the most likely approach in this decade.

Rate of fire was probably the single biggest issue and this can reasonably be simulated reasonably well. The fictional German v US scenario in S&I does a reasonable job with this (although it is set a little later) and Santiago de Cuba works well.

I was intending to try and recreate S&I Santiago with Expanded Battles.

martinworsey wrote: Sat Mar 21, 2026 11:46 am Thanks for the review.

As a question; why do you think that the game does not work well for the 1890's?

I did some experiments with Steam and Iron many years ago and thought it did a reasonable job. There appears to be some enhancements (such as -3 guns) which should improve matters.

The big issue with this period is that there was rapid technological advancement but few actual battles. There was some tactical evolution from melee to line of battle but I would have thought that line of battle was the most likely approach in this decade.

Rate of fire was probably the single biggest issue and this can reasonably be simulated reasonably well. The fictional German v US scenario in S&I does a reasonable job with this (although it is set a little later) and Santiago de Cuba works well.

I was intending to try and recreate S&I Santiago with Expanded Battles.

It's just a personal feeling. I just kind of think that Rule the Waves doesn't necessarily properly account for the absolute weirdness of 1880s and 1870s ship designs, many of which were still in service in the 1890s. There's also no provision for ram bows in the game, which is unfortunate because many 1880s ships were still designed with rams. Similarly there's no provision for early torpedo boats, which were considered the super weapons of the era and which some battleships even carried on them.

That being said, that stuff is more early 1890s than anything else. Like you say, the modeling aspects of the game are basically a comprehensive improvement on SAI in just about every way and if you were happy with Santiago in SAI, you'll be happy with recreating it in Rule the Waves 3. I would say that rate of fire for 1890s guns is actually modeled pretty well, too. Santiago is in 1898 anyways, and by that point we're well in into the predreadnought era, which Rule the Waves models well.

Honestly my perception on the early 1890s is more based on what I've heard from other people. I have never played through that period in campaign, and I barely touched it even while beta testing the DLC, because there weren't any scenarios set in that period. Maybe I tried out like a handful of quick battles then? Generally I don't find early game play that fun, since no one can hit anything!