Naval Warfare seems unbalanced?

Hey all. I've been playing AOE2 since I was small, and still do to this day. I've introduced a friend and his brother to it who I've been having matches with for the last few months. They've improved drastically (wonderful to see!) but there is one thing that always bothers me with our matches.

Whenever we try to engage in naval combat, there always seems to be a way my navy beats his, despite he having more ships and/or more counter ships. Notable games were me, Huns, vs him, Italians, and me, Teutons, vs him, Chinese. My ships, while being far less upgrade-able in the tech tree always seems to best his, especially in that Hun-Italian match, where he always had 3-5 more ships. We played on a 75 pop on both matches, and it bothers me greatly that there seems to be broken physics for the naval battles. While watching the battles, I see his ships seem to all move at the same time frequently, as if he's trying to redirect attacks or trying to outmanoeuvre mine. Can anyone explain what's going on (he's not happy with the naval warfare in this game because of this)?