Sure... The Venetian arsenal is nasty but can get expensive. If playing against an MP player you may struggle a bit as they will be fairly cunning.
In SP the AI cannot produce units that fast as it has a poor production model for its cities and so its not the end of the earth. More likely the fact that they have a string navy.
First off defending your cities. It can be done fairly easily against frigates but gets a lot harder with battleships because that 3 tile range is nasty.
Having a ranged unit and a ranged ship in your city with city walls does allow 3 shots, add an encampment and you are talking 4-5 shots which will soon whittle down an attack. This is the foundation, defense first, as soon as the AI has a sniff of a navy get the walls up and get a few quads built and consider a couple of strategic encampments. You do not have to cover every coastal city but as long as you are aware a bridgehead will allow a large force to deploy fairly fast if it is behind the fleet.
For dealing with their navy, the AI is not good at Naval combat at all.
Most important is first shot. Having first shot in a turn based game means you The better visibility you have the better, but it is hard.
Having a combination of shooting ships and combat ships all moved to flanking positions before attacking provides the ability to kill more or larger ships in one move which is important. You need to practice to understand you do not necessarily need a +10 flanking bonus to win and kill one ship but totally surrounding when 2 partial surrounds with +6 flanking will kill 2 ships.
Using the great admiral also gives bonus and should not be ignored so make sure the great admiral is within 2 tiles of attacking ships at the end of every turn so next turn they get the benefits.
An error also made at sea is the support bonus gets lost because ships spread out. When defending you get support bonus for adjacency and so Huddle those ships around a great admiral before attack, attack and outflank but keep adjacent and keep that admiral in there and you get better bonuses and also cannot be completely surrounded.
The AI tends to shoot at max range but get your shooters in for that flanking and support bonus help
Against a navy twice your size you should win easily with the above... if larger you may consider the following
If you are attacking correctly and efficiently you are likely to do more damage than they will do when counter attacking, at that stage you need to assess if it is worth continuing or you would be better in a series of hit and runs. There are quite a few things to consider including speed of ship production and ability to combine.
Probably the most important thing is speed ... so the great lighthouse gives +1, England's RNDY gives +1 and admirals give +2 ... Whoever has the faster fleet has an implicit advantage in pursuit (ability to chase AND fire) and also more flanking opportunity. Flight does include lack of visibility and even a slower fleet can get some ships away but flight against a faster foe is a risky business. Speaking of which, the AI really does not deal with privateers well at all, that visibility difference can make a BIg diff, especially if you have sea dogs.
The mausoleum wonder is scary, doubling admirals charges.... I would rather have the mausoleum than the Venetian personally. Those admiral upgrades like early fleet /armada ironclad/battleship can make a BIG difference especially when doubled but also singly. But also a free upgrade twice with an admiral is really nice and Nelsons +50 flanking bonus twice allows a +20 flanking bonus, enough to take out higher level armadas.
Upgraded ships and better strategy combined snowballs the difference so well promoted ships vs their fresh built does help a lot.
Typically most of the above is on your side and they typically have less skilled ships being pumped out and badly sailed. I guess I should do a guide with some pretty pictures, its just the time ... Meh
if people think the above is really worth putting in a guide with a few other insights then perhaps.
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You are against England... so they will be +1 speed and have admirals... if they have the great lighthouse you have less chance but that still does not mean you cannot try! Loosing is great learning. I would try and muster a small fleet and give it a go.
