With the printed map and some game experience you will find your way around pretty easily. What really develops if you play the game multiple times is optimising routes, e.g. by postponing the pickup of a relative until you have another good reason to sail to a remote place. Also you get really allergic to sailing downwind over long distances. Then the speed of the fleet is determined by the slowest ship and damaged ships sail even slower not only in battle. While we enjoyed having fleets with big battleships with lots of storage room as kids and 300+ staff, I prefer a lean and fast approach to my fleet management today, i.e. mostly barques and the occasional frigate. That means to dump a lot of goods because you are out of storage really quickly but is the better approach in the long run.

Also nowadays I try to avoid fencing like hell since you can get wounded and that costs years of your prospective career.

Still, pick 'skill of fencing' as a beginner obviously.