Historically, the French should definitely not have more battleships than the Germans. If you are only counting Dreadnaught class battleships and battlecruisers, the Germans had about 5 times as many as the French in 1914. If you are lumping pre-Dreadnaught types in with them, the Germans should still have about twice as many. Of course, if you are doing that, the British would get even more. The Germans also had about twice as many cruisers as the French, although the French had about twice as many as anyone else (except the British and Americans - but half the US cruisers would have been in the Pacific).
I’ve been playing with fleets that are closer to historic proportions. After much discussion on another thread, and a small amount of playtesting (I plan to do more), this is what I’ve come up with:
British:
SZ 2: 1 cruiser, 1 transport
SZ 9: 3 battleships, 4 cruisers, 1 sub, 1 transport
SZ 14: 1 cruiser
SZ 19: 2 cruisers, 1 transport
SZ 29: 1 cruiser, 1 transport
(Note: The British should actually have more subs, but historically they used most of them defensively, since they were afraid of a German invasion. So most of the subs are abstracted into the “minefield,†which I consider to actually represent coastal artillery, monitors, torpedo boats, and obsolete ships, as well as mines).
Germans:
SZ 5: 2 subs
SZ 7: 2 subs
SZ 22: 1 cruiser
SZ 10: 2 battleships, 3 cruisers, 1 transport
French:
SZ 15: 1 cruiser, 1 transport
SZ 16: 1 battleship, 1 cruiser, 1 transport
Russians:
SZ 12: 1 battleship
SZ 21: 1 cruiser
Ottomans:
SZ 20: 1 cruiser
Austrians, Italians, and Americans (half the US fleet is assumed to be in the Pacific) are the same as OOB.
So far, I’ve only played one partial game using the new movement of 5 sea zones for ships. The German cruiser in SZ 22 plus one more cruiser from SZ 10 teamed up with the subs to trash the Canadian fleet in SZ 2 and the French fleet in SZ 15. They kept everything else in SZ 10 and built 1 sub. I’m still waiting to see if the British will brave the minefields to attack SZ 10 or go after the raiders.