Apologies to all if this has already been covered but a cursory search of the forum yielded nothing obvious.
Because I'm often very busy with real life stuff, I tend to play against the AI. However, when I play as the Union I find the South's efforts are hampered because Athena insists on building massive fleets. In games that go beyond, say, 60 turns the Confederates always end up with a much more powerful fleet than the Union, which is obviously at the expense of their land forces. Setting aside the fact that this is ahistorical, it means that Athena puts up much less of a fight than she could do if she concentrated on land forces.
I've only come up with two potential solutions:
First (this one is time consuming and messy) I play as the Union but every turn after I make my moves etc I save, then load the game as the Confederates and buy Athena's troops for her/make political decisions. This works, but I've noticed that Athena sometimes then doesn't move any of her troops - so I think I may be doing something that messes up the AI or thinks that both sides are being played by a human player.
Second, this is something I've not tried as I lack the modding knowledge (and time, frankly) - but is there a mod which hugely reduces the Confederate shipping pool so that Athena can't build such massive fleets?