For something different I went with the Netherlands for my next game. This shouldn’t take long.
My plan is to go on the defense and see how long I can hold out then move to my colonies when the homeland falls. I go with a fortress building program and start to turn the whole country into a citadel. For technology we concentrate on infantry and it’s doctrines, artillery, fighters, encryption, radar, and industry. Hopefully in three years our defense will at least be adequate. I also work on improving relations with the UK.
Germany starts with Poland first. I offer military access to the UK and they accept. In 1940, Germany declares war on the Low countries.
The bastards outsmarted me and did a naval invasion behind my lines
Amsterdam falls but Rotterdam holds out and this allows French reinforcements time to counterattack.
Getting cocky, the Germans declare war on Denmark and Norway.
Our defenses give the British and French a secure foothold from the blitzkrieg. They counter attack and pull a reverse Schifflen.
Not expecting a breakout and with some of their forces diverted north to Scandinavia, the German line collapses.
Things seem to be going well, the Allies are making big gains.
Merde!
Sacré bleu! The French capitulate.
Around this time the Japanese join the Axis and declare war on us. Luckily, I’ve kept the East Indies neutral so there’s no immediate threat to them from the Japanese. My fortress plan pays off as a German flanking movement is halted and the Allied force in Belgium is saved from encirclement. However, there is bigger news from the front.
Berlin has fallen! The Nazis flee to their new capital in Vienna. Things not going to plan, Adolf?
This encourages the Americans and they send us volunteers. As they begin to arrive, the Yanks call everyone “comrade”. Wait a second…
WTF America?
End Part One.
Spock
1757
Hilarious, @Gutsball! That last screenshot made me laugh out loud!
What difficulty do you guys play on? I think I’m on Regular, but I’m wondering if I chose Veteran. I’m getting my butt kicked!
Does air supremacy matters all that much? I enjoy it everywhere, but I keep losing territory everywhere anyway. In general, I’m sorta disappointed with my naval-air wing; we rarely seem to hit anything, lol.
Also, I think I made too many carriers, not enough escorts. As in the real war, there’s an unending need for CL/DDs to set up patrols, or to serve as convoy escorts. I have maybe 150 DDs; not nearly enough to screen TFs and cover two oceans with escorts. I’m cranking 'em out now, but maybe too little too late?
Indeed, my game as the USA does not go well! It’s mid-1942, and Japan is steamrolling India now. Japan has 150-200 divisions already, and I’ve got about 65. If most of those divisions were tied down in China, as they were historically, I might be okay. But they’ve already mopped up China, and once they’re through with India, it’ll be my turn. I’ve already lost the Philippines, Guam, Wake Island, and just now Phoenix Island – even as I was trying to put together an offensive to take Tarawa or some such.
What’s more, the Germans recovered from their early stumbles in Russia and took Leningrad, and now they’re nearing Moscow. My contribution has mostly been to strategic-bomb Germany from England, but it’s not helping much. I’m half-tempted to throw in the towel, but I’m still having boatloads of fun.
How do you move troops over water? I move them to port, and see nothing but invasion as option to move somewhere else. Also, I can’t even get amphibious assaults to work even though I’m following the directions.
KevinC
1759
Just right-click on another province with a port to move them.
If your naval invasions aren’t working, you should be able to hover the mouse over the “play” button for the order and it will tell you why. Make sure you:
-have naval supremacy along the route
-have not assigned too many divisions to the attack.
You are limited in the number of divisions that can be involved in naval invasions at one time and if you had exceeded that I think they won’t go. The tooltip should tell you why.
KevinC
1760
Air supremacy is a big deal, but it’s complimentary to ground forces. If you don’t have enough boots on the ground, you will likely still get pushed back. It gives some really nice boosts in combat, though, and of course lets your bombers get to work.
Carriers have been pretty good throughout the majority of HOI4 but they’re a little underpowered in the naval rework that just happened with Man the Guns. Battleship-based fleets are ahistorically outperforming them right now. They’re not useless or anything, just not as good as they should be right now. Japanese torpedos are nasty so you’ll definitely want a lot of screens to soak up damage and hunt down the subs as well as take out their cruisers.
Spock
1761
Thanks for the explanation, @KevinC. Yeah, I’m thinking I over-invested in carriers.
So what’s the ideal size and composition of fleets and TFs? For a fleet designed to hunt ships and establish naval supremacy, maybe 4 TFs: 1 strike force and 3 patrols, one for each area assigned to that fleet. For a convoy-escort fleet, even just 1 TF might suffice, or 3 TFs, with 3 sea areas designated for patrol. Is that about right?
What’s TF stand for?
@Gutsball that is so funny! If you’re up play past WWII it should be very interesting to see how America Russia works out. Congrats on taking Berlin!
@Spock. I’ve seen screening mentioned many times but don’t even know what it is or how you set one up?
KevinC
1763
“Screen” is a role for a ship, in HOI4 it includes Destroyers and Light Cruisers.
KevinC
1764
Still trying to feel this out myself since so much changed in MtG. One rule of thumb is no more than 4 carriers though, otherwise they’ll get stacking penalties.
Spock
1765
@jpinard, TF stands for Task Force. Sorry about that. I often find it annoying when people use abbreviations without explanation, and then I did it myself!
As for screening, it refers to picket ships that screen your capital ships from enemy submarines, aircraft, and fast surface ships that can launch nasty torpedoes. In HOI4, that means CLs (light cruisers) and DDs (destroyers). DDs screen capital ships by guarding against subs and engaging other DDs and CLs. You want Japanese DDs, with their nasty Long Lance torpedoes, fighting your DDs, not your CVs (carriers), CAs (cruisers) and BBs (battleships). CLs help screen by contributing anti-aircraft fire and by engaging other light cruisers.
I keep reading that the optimal screen-to-capital ship ratio is 4:1. So for every CV/CA/BB, you want 4xCL or 4xDD or a mix. E.g., CVx4, CAx2, CLx6, DDx18. Good luck having enough CLs and DDs to do that for every Task Force! I sure don’t have enough.
Spock
1766
Yep, I grok that on CVs: no more than 4. I’m glad they added that limitation, because it’s roughly historical, and it inhibits doomstacks.
I must be doing something wrong as the US, because I just haven’t produced a lot of CLs. I suppose it’s partly because I over-invested in CVs. CLs still take a lot of time and resources.
KevinC
1767
One thing I noticed while playing the US is that it seems naval dockyards start giving diminishing returns. I think I found ~7 dockyards being assigned to each light cruiser to be the sweet spot for me and 5 for destroyers. Any more than that and the gains just didn’t seem worth it. For example, going from 3 to 4 dockyards might knock a month and a half off the construction time but going from 9 to 10 might only shave off a week or two. Don’t know if that’s still the case in 1.6.2 but that’s how it was when I played the US when MtG initially released.
Spock
1768
Hmm, that might explain some of my difficulties making DDs. I have 10 dockyards pumping out two lines of DDs, and a third with 5 dockyards doing the same. Maybe I’d be better off with 5 x 5-dockyard lines.
@Spock glad you’re asking questions on the naval stuff as that’s my next project and I wouldn’t have thought to ask the questions you are. Are you and @gutsball playing with historical focus checked?
@KevinC I think I’ve run into a problem. Now that I’m super mammoth and have billions of military factories and at war with everyone but Japan, I discovered a bunch of units aren’t being made because I can’t trade for nearly enough materials. Should I have not been adding factories to production every time I got them because it keeps increasing the amount of raw materials needed? If so, should I trim the number of factories way down?
Spock
1770
@jpinard Yep, I’m playing with the historical focus checked. On Normal difficulty, I think.
I look forward to @KevinC 's answer to your question on resources. I’ve learned a few options by trial-and-error. One is to build infrastructure in US provinces with resources like steel. More infrastructure increases output of most (not all) resources. Another is to build more synthetic plants for rubber. And another is to trade like crazy for stuff you need.
One related question I have for Kevin is whether/when to switch from Free Trade to a law that doesn’t export as much of our steel.
Do you guys ever move your navy around manually? Or move them somewhere and park them to defend a certain spot?
Also - lol - if you don’t have much of a navy how do you get naval supremacy to move units via ships? Can you get it by just air bombing the ever living crap out of enemies in the navy zones?
KevinC
1772
Yeah, if you have so many military factories and not enough resources to fuel them, they won’t do you much good. One thing you’ll want to do if you haven’t already is to restrict your exports as much as possible. As the USSR, I believe you should be able to go with Closed Economy (I think that’s what it’s called) where you keep 100% of your resources and export nothing.
Aside from that, you want to make sure to build up Infrastructure to 10 in every province that is generating resources. You also want all the Extraction techs (in the Industry research tab). You also want to check your Decisions screen. There are often decisions here that can increase the resources you generate! The US in particular has tons of them where you can spend political power and temporarily tie up Civilian factories to increase Steel production in Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, etc. I’m not familiar with the USSR but I would not be surprised if they have a good amount of those decisions like that too.
If your’e still resource-starved beyond that, you just need to prioritize what you build. Ships and heavy tanks and the like are far more expensive on resources than infantry equipment. Planes tend to take aluminum instead of steel so if you don’t have enough steel but a surplus of aluminum, build more of them. That sort of thing.
Dang - wish I’d known this earlier lol. I wasted an entire year not doing that! Bah!
KevinC
1774
As the US in particular? I don’t really have a standard rule to follow, but I just try to weigh when the research/construction speed and factory output are worth giving up civilian factories for. Once I end up importing 6 or so Civ factories worth of steel, I usually just switch. No idea what’s optimal though, that’s just my particular pain point. :)
Spock
1775
Thanks. Yeah, I meant as the USA. I’m not quite at your pain point yet, but I’m getting close…
