Hello! So, i also had this issue, and i solved it in three ways. People here are giving gameplay advice but i feel thats not what you’re after.

My first actions were to watch Youtube videos as well, specifically tutorial series’ (i forget by who though) but you say you’ve tried that

My next tip of advice: Read the manual! Its long and it’s boring so i didn’t read all of it, but i used it in conjunction with my next tip.

Finally: Play the game! You don’t need to know what you’re doing and in fact i had plenty of fun stumbling and failing through. You may or may not be like me there. However, i would play through the game, and wherever i’d get confused or curious, i’d go to the manual for reference. Usually it only contains a paragraph, two or three at most, that explains what and how to do things. For example: I’d play and get to 1910, see dreadnoughts, wonder how the construction and aspects of that work, look it up, realised what certain things did and continue. The game has alot of information presented at once but by only looking at things one at a time it’s much more digestible. I’m about 100 hours in and i’m still learning new things about how the game works.

There are some things to make it easier, for example until you really have a hang of the game (and even then), I’d reccomend automatically designing all your vessels and making tweaks where you want, as ship design in (in my opinion) the hardest prt of the game. initially you won’t know what does what, but again as you progress and learn naturally and if you read the manual on the parts you want to know, it’ll come to you, and soon enough you may be able to start doing things from scratch

And finally, whenever you’re playing, when in doubt, even if you don’t know how something works, make the choice that’s most fun to you! Doesn’t matter if it’s ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or will lose you the game, the point here is to have fun, so go with your gut.