The bathtub model isn't the submarine meta. The bathtub model is to just spam the cheapest submarines so you have more ships and therefore naval supremacy. The bathtub subs will be completely destroyed by naval bombers and naval battles
They are short game strategy. They aren't supposed to maintain naval supremacy, only enough to get your invasions off for nations that are hard to invade, such as Britain and Japan. There is NO META for navies. Navies are for the most part irrelevant in HOI4, no matter how many bells and whistles they added to navies.
@@timothyhouse1622 Well I wouldn’t say irrelevant, you need the three branches to be well developed to have a good long game, it sucks trying to invade a country when you can’t naval invade it or air invade it, and you can also run into issues if you over develop one without the others being well developed
@@timothyhouse1622 Yup. They are unnecessary. That said, they ARE useful, so long as you're not chipping into your land force which should be high priority. It's really kind of pointless trying to build a navy unless you already have one to refit or just for the lols. They really need to fix naval supremacy mechanics, there's no reason t1 subs should be getting supremacy over entire updated fleets. I do like building navies for the lols, though. :P
@@infini_ryu9461 imo subs shouldn't give naval superiority unless they are up to date and able to actually fight. If not, they should only get naval supremacy if there are no enemy ships in the zone.
@@Snipurss No... IRL, American proximity-fuses went Brrrrt. The Japanese ONLY went for intentional Kamikazes because getting close to a US ship was basically suicide anyway, so you might as well go all-in... (the Bomber Maffia is a GREAT recommendation!)
@@NubDiePie Vs Ai it is easy. You just invade France and after you will put all your ships in eng channel after you already have 70 days of naval invasion preperations done. Submarines do patrol and basic templates ( battleships, cruisers, destroyers) do strike force. If you want you can add ship to do naval invasion. You put all air in there and just defend your land with fighters to not get bombed and there you have it. Then you basically win and when I fight Soviets in while they have enricicled all divisions and until they capitulated they can end up with 15-50 easily, so after British invasion I dont play anymore actually. France is easy too, you just take fast and declare one after another on Netherlans, then Lux, then Belgium and you just crush them before british will even start helping. I dont even call Italy in, only if i have troubles destroying them (I even use just basic tanks btw and only infantry with artilerry meaning I dont make any new until Barbarossa because of fuel shortage).
Patrol = Light Ships (and Submarines) Strike Force = Battleships, Cruisers, Capital Ships (Screens) Convoy Raiding = Submarines (10-15 per region) Convoy Escorting = Destroyers (6-8, depth charge and a light gun) (Heavy Ship guide) Every heavy ship has 8 destroyers in that fleet. OR Every heavy ship has 4 light cruisers in that fleet.
Na, soft attack light cruisers dominate as raiders. Escorts become futile, thus the enemy must seek decisive battle, freeing up your fleet when you win.
they are usually a novelty thing I add toward the end of the game, after I have already had access to significantly better ships. Japan getting early access is quite helpful if you are actually going to try and face down an enemy fleet.
@@trinalgalaxy5943 Even then for a country like a Japan, it already has a navy that can provide regional supremacy where it goes, so investing into an air force is more effective and you can switch production queues into something later.
You forgot the third naval meta for singleplayer. The NAVAL bomber meta. I swear, if you have the rubber and aluminium, just dont bother with ships go for planes. My macau my day portugal sank both the Japanese Imperial Navy, the French Republic armada and the Royal Navy, their mighty battleships and carriers reduced to ashes as they sank to the depths of the watery hell they so loved. And as such, my Luso-Brazillian fleet of like 70 ships escorted my marines to the shores of brystol as the 8 remaining british destroyers stared their bretheren being gunned down by chinese soldiers armed with brazillian weapons with portuguese planes garanteeing CAS support and Air superiority. It was because of this achievement run that i realized how powerful planes are in this game.
Partially because the AI is trash. The AI seems to *always* want to have a patrol in their sea zone, so once your naval bombers have sunk all their patrolling screens the AI will pull screens from their strike forces to put them on patrol. And once you've sunk those, they send their unescorted capital ships on patrols, and suddenly they don't have any ships for naval supremacy anymore. And you can invade them with just a handful of ships. I noticed this during a German playthrough where I was consistently sinking DDs and CLs in the English channel for several years, and suddenly I was sinking all kinds of capital ships on a daily basis. Both the British and American navy completely destroyed by a measly 5 mils on naval bombers. While in real life the bulk of the royal navy would sit in a Scapa Flow, completely safe from enemy bombers, and prevent an invasion with the threat of their presence alone - with or without patrols. If the AI left their strike forces untouched and stay in port even if there were no patrols left, naval bombers wouldn't be as powerful since there was still 20.000+ naval supremacy preventing an invasion. You'd have to do port strikes, which aren't as easy to pull off since they generally require bombers with bigger range and you'll encounter their entire fleet at once instead of picking off lone ships.
How to get Pride and Extreme Prejudice Achievement. As Germany don't attack any nation, just British Malaysia, and do naval bomber spam. If you can't find the Hood cheese a naval invasion into Hull, yoink the airport if possible and start spamming over Ireland or Scotland for range and try find it without capping the UK. If another major joins allies cap the UK, leave the Isle of Man and NI because their fleet will always go back to it eventually, and you can harass with bombers at sea and in port until the Hood gets chased to port to repair and then bombed to the seabed in repair. I had them in a spot where 23 of the High Seas fleet were under thousands of naval bombers and just raiding like hell in the Western approaches. They couldn't kill them because the bombers got them too quickly, and eventually I baited the Hood out and chased it to the port in Belfast before a port strike took it out as it was repairing.
Upgrading old outdated battleships to carier conversions is a fast way to increase your carrier count towards the end of the game. They are also faster than normal cariers when using battleship engines, if you want to meme with carrier convoy raiding or something.
If you are playing a long game and Annex some puppets that have cruisers or battleships you can convert them to carriers turning an old obsolete ship into something useful that you can upgrade.
@@zacharytaylor2423 Yeah it would be nice if you had even limited ability to upgrade annexed ships. Like if there was empty slots you can fill them out and maybe you can upgrade guns but only to the same model year as the ship? How hard could it be to upgrade torpedoes and depth charges to a foreign ship?
Thank you for this guide, I've watched a few about the navy but still leave with more questions than answers. This is the idiots guide to hoi4 navy I needed.
SPEED most important function is that it lowers enemy hit chance. RELIABILITY determines how likely a ship is to recieve a critical hit on pierced attack
Personally I think if they just rolled the naval gun research in with the ship models, but then kept the improvement research as separate it would help make the naval research feel more manageable. In all honesty I think actually just making everything locked behind ship models (torpedo launchers etc) you could streamline naval research so it feels much less of a timesink.
Or alternatively, if naval supremacy (in the abstract sense of having the most globally dominant navy, not just some sea zone you're trying to naval invade) were more consequential for the outcome of the war, you could justify devoting more research slots to naval. As it is stands though, trying to achieve naval supremacy is mostly a waste of time.
@@danieltemelkovski9828 that's really sad bruv. Boats are cool and Paradox does not understand or appreciate the art of boat warfare! >:( MtG was good though, glad they made that at least.
All the different modules are really annoying to research, they should be combine them into a few techs spread across the tree, that way you don’t have to research everything but still have progression through the years.
@@Adumb_ I hate this logic.. Why are all of these awesome in depth war games constantly being dumbed down like this? 'Justcombine it for simplicity!" Or use your brain... Seriously though.. The more you have to research, and more you have to pick and choose what you do and don't go for, and when can swing the way wars and battles go. By comining them all together you're removing those differences ultimately making every army fight the same no matter what... Maybe that seems better to you, but I'm not a simpleton.
A future I wish was added would be the ability to save ship designs across the game. Just so long as I have the naval XP and research it is waiting for me on the production menu. I play a lot of shorter games with friends so having to manually redo the ship designs every time is very draining and not fun. I find that a lot of this game in the first hour or two is fixing the bad templates and ship designs that you start with.
in the sea of stupid guide videos that seems to have flooded utube these days, your's the most informative. kudos, liked and subscribed. i dont know what the hell the other channel owners were on, some think they are rapping and have to speak as fast as humanly possible, some are just laughing non stop at themselves while talking about stuff that is completely not funny at all. again thanks for taking the time to make this video.
I agree with everything except that carrier 1> battleship converted hull. in my experience i found that in all cases carrier 1= battleship converted hull as both have equqal number of slots and both can have the same number of planes i.e 60. The area where carrier 1< battleship converted hull is the engine equipping as since its a battleship converted hull you can equip a battleship engine to match the speed of the carrier with the fleet cause if your carrier leaves before the escorts then the enemy just obliterates of heavily damages the ships(especilly if a enemy carrier is present) and if the fleet leaves before the carrier then well best case scenario, you get a heavy damaged carrier. other than this i think you did a very good job with everything else and explained it really well.
If you're going for the sub strategy it is very important to pay attention to your engagement rule. Submarines will not engage screens unless they are set to "engage at high risk" or "always engage." Submarines using the default engagement rule will run away from enemy task forces instead of fighting them, unless they happen to come across a task force with poor screening efficiency (in which case they will try to take out the capital ships.) This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the stage of the game. But if you have enough advantages (admiral with sub traits, experienced crews, good technology, etc) it may be worth grouping your subs into larger task forces of 30-40, setting them on a higher engagement rule. This works especially well if you've run the enemy out of fuel with convoy raiding first.
Thanks for the detailed guide; I would usually deathstack everything I've got and throw it at the enemy; well, no wonder it's lost me so many naval engagements. Keep up the good work!
I have learned quite alot from you for the game, just putting on your videos, getting black to playing the game and running into something that i need more information on. I like seeing your playthroughs and learning stuff from it. You´ve made me enjoy a game i didn´t understand shit from at the start.
I've always HATED the Navy aspect of Hoi4, but this is definitely going to help me have an easier time and actually know what on earth im doing. Thank you so much!
Base strike also give a lot of naval targeting bonus so you can also go with that if you don't want to build and manage a navy go with that and build a planes for naval strikes, a radar if you can spare and use air power to destroy ships and convoys. It works surprisingly well.
At 02.40 Reliability is mentioned. One very important thing that comes from reliability is the chance for a ship to being hit by a critical hit. A critical hit is very bad, well it's critical!, and the higher reliability the lesser risk for a ship to take a critical hit.
I got about 300is hours in HOI 4 and even before man the guns i skipped all the naval part as it was way too complicated for me. It ruined every war with england japan etc as i just couldnt reach them and paratroopers also were hit or miss. At least for me. But now i won my first game with germany and Naval battle are such a blast. seeing the subs biting chunks out of the enemies convoys, the battleships obliterating the enemy navy. Thanks for this tutorial man. Improved my game by a lot
22:50 yeah that is how it is supposed to work, the British did that irl by keeping their fleet anchored in Scapa Flow in Northern Scotland where it was safe from German air raids but close enough to dissuade any invasion. That is the point of the "fleet in being" doctrine, that the threat of the navy is at times enough to force an enemy to go around or otherwise avoid what the navy is protecting, be it the home Island(s) or another important objective.
From what I have tried, CL convoy raiding is super powerful. You get 3-5 CL with max light attack and you shred convoys as they cannot run from your CLs. Pluss when the destroyer escorts come up to try and defend the convoys, you sink those too. Additionally, if you rush Cruiser 3 (very possible with many nations), and throw 2 torp tubes on it, it can effectively deal with capitals as well. I usually put a CA with max spotting just to find ships. I do often add in a Cruiser Carrier, even though it is not ideal, as a Minor, you cannot afford the research for more than one carrier, and the cruiser carrier benefits from your cruiser engines so it is able to keep up with the cruisers without dedicating more research. And if you rock up to an engagement with aircraft, and the enemy have no aircraft, you are golden. OR you just fill it (usually only have 1/group) with fighters and use it to keep your cruisers safe from enemy aircraft. I have been fairly successful in sinking much larger fleets with this comp. Not sure how it would compare to the torp meta
This, or making the techs faster when they are old. Hoi4 forces people to specialize research too much. It's hard to justify going back and and spending multiple years of research grabbing useless techs in the naval tree to get the up-to-date stuff. Even countries like the UK and USA who can get 6 slots and 40+% research bonuses can never really stay up to date in evwrything while doing doctrines. Hopefully this new update can help fix this by moving doctrines to the high command freeing up another research slot.
@@danielgloyd4529 exactly. When actuality, these would all be apart of standard military research. The navy doesn't jusy stop doing stuff because the army is researching stuff.
@@Soylent2024 That's true, but the idea behind limited research slots is to simulate a country managing its intellectual resources and being able to specialize more in one area than another. Just like in real life, you can't EVERYTHING you want to do; choosing to do one thing means sacrificing doing something else. That's not to say I think the way HoI4 simulates this is very good - eg am I gonna spend 200 days on a kick ass army doctrine, or 200 days on a better snorkel? Obvious choice. I don't know why the game designers thought that any more than 4-6 research slots would be "too confusing" for players. Research and focus tree management are the most interesting part of the game to me, so it would be pretty cool if there were like 20 or shit even 50 research slots.
Excellent, excellent guide. Oh, so much info. Just how to read the furschlunger Navy panel was amazing for me. (I know, really simple but...). Thanks so much.
Note on heavy attack, it can also be used to destroy light ships if no enemy heavy ships or carriers are present. Also, dual purpose guns are pretty good on heavy ships, they give a bunch of light attack for assisting on shredding the light screen and also provide a lot of anti-air. There is no reason to avoid light attack on your heavies if you already have lots of heavy attack. Remember, more heavy turrets = slower ship.
You only need four screens per capital, of any type, to achieve 100% screening efficiency. 4 destroyers, 4 cruisers, doesn't matter - as long as you maintain that 1:4 ratio, you'll get 100% efficiency. The rest is down to combat stats. Any additional screens in the task force beyond the amount required to fulfill the 1:4 ratio aren't counted for your efficiency, but are still included in the actual combat.
Only 3 screens are required per Cap. I tend to use 4 per Cap because you never want your screening efficiency to fall below 100. (Or trops will start hitting the Caps) Heavy Cruisers are broken. Each medium turret you add on adds to the HP. Battle ships are pretty much useless due to this. You always do damage regardeless of piercing. The damage is only reduced if you can't pierce. It is never completely stopped. What this means in practice is that by IC a group of heavy cruisers will always defeat an IC equal group of battleships. This has been tested to death and you can see tests here on youtube for yourself. Speed also helps you avoid being hit in battle. This is why I seldom use armor on my ships. It slows them down and just makes them cost more.
No man, maxed out LCs beat HCs (mostly because they're cheaper but don't count as capitals, so torps don't hit as hard once the screen gets blown apart) Speaking of, maxed out DDs are more cost efficient than LCs. Speaking of, SS-3s are more cost efficient than DD4s. Speaking of, naval bombers are more cost effective than subs. (which basically makes the whole naval game a massive waste of time and resources, which makes me VERY sad)
@@MrNicoJac HC's beat LCs if you build the HCs with only one heavy turret and maxed out light guns. Light attack HCs beat LC and LCs beat HCs setup for heavy attack. It"s been tested many times with equal naval costs. The HCs are also able to get better bonuses from Admirals doctern and high commands for many nations. I've seen DD spam tested. Both the light attack HCs and the LC win every time. Each cruiser one hits A DD. So basically the DDs get shredded before the screens go down. All tests I talk about are done with equal forces by naval production tested both with and without doctern/Admirals/High Command The biggest problem for the DD spam is thier torps hardly ever get hits on Crusiers. So they're fighting with the tiny pop guns only. If the torps were more effective the situation might change. Naval bombers can be countered by maxing out your AA and using DP secondaries in all available slots instead of LA turrets. Your can easily get the cruisers AA attack above 20 which I find makes going in naval bomber range possible. I agree that sub 3s break the AI. Truth is you don't really need much of a navy against the AI. The AI can't manage fuel so even crappy sub 1s can't get windows of naval supremacy for invasions.
Compared to the absolute joke of naval play in older versions of the game, the current state (with the DLC) is an enormous improvement. I've played as U.S. just up to the point where Japan declares and with my navy organized in a somewhat historical fashion and Japan did surprisingly well and most things functioned about like I would expect for a game that is striving to reflect naval warfare of the era. There was nothing really "wrong" about how things played out, except that some of the assumptions I had in mind when I organized and deployed my navy were faulty given how the game actually handles things: the stuff about task force limits on numbers of provinces and also how the missions work exactly was fuzzy, but your video has clarified that very well. It isn't the best naval mission system, but it works. I was impressed when my CV task force was searching down an enemy task force! 😂
Thanks you for this video. How I used to use navy in singleplayer was to merge all together with only one task force and I would only use it to naval invade. This is like opening a new game
If you go with plan Z you’ll end up diverting most of your war economy toward building a fleet Leaving you in a weaker position against The Soviet Union.
I find that Plan Z can’t really be done in a way that would allow you to beat the British and French fleet. But it can work if you make plenty of naval bombers to help it😈. I usually have 2 1936 carriers, 6 battleships, 4 heavy cruisers, 16 lights, and 60-70 destroyers. With the naval bombers and that fleet you can wear down the allied fleet.
Very solid and detailed guide as always,but this is why i dont play islands or naval invade, i just build enough subs and naval bombers to blot out the sky and the sea to protect me from naval invasions
Important addition to Missions: "Naval invasion support" does not only support the invasions themselves but EVERY troop transport! So, if you're shipping troops around it might be a good idea to keep them safe with that. "Convoy escort" also tries to defend your troops at sea, but might randomly abandon them for trade or supply convoys while NVI will always be ready to engage (unless you have an invasion planned in which case they will prioritise staying in the port of the invasion.)
Did you know that you can train up carrier aircraft if you fly them to a land base? When returning them to the carriers waiting in port they'll tend to all stack on one deck, but you can organize them after clicking on the airbase icon that represents the various carrier decks in that port, just as if you were transferring from one airbase to another.
One thing, the faster a fleet is the better it is at spotting enemy fleets, so I always have a few task forces of a couple light cruisers and destroyers out spotting for my bigger Strike force.
My favourite Fleets at the moment. Destroyer with 2 Torpedo, 1 Depth Charge, Active Sonar set to Escort. Lightcruiser with 2 or 3 Light battery's, 2 or 3 catapult, Armour and Radar set to spotting. Battlecruiser with 2 or 3 Heavy Battery's, secondary or dual purpose guns and Armour set to strikeforce. All under the same Admiral they will support each other if assigned to the same region's As time goes on I make newer models and more firepower, add 1 torpedo to the lightcruisers and Radar 3, battecruiser upgrade to dual purpose guns and Radar 3. Don't bother upgrading Armour and Engines it takes way too long. I go Battlecruiser because they have similar stats and the armour only adds +7% to production cost rather than +20% for the Battleship.
One thing I'll add to the fleet makeup as intended, if you go for Carriers you probably will want to pair them with Battlecruisers rather than battleships. Battleships are slow if you don't upgrade their speed and they will slow down your fleet. And in scenarios where your carrier fleet is late to the party, I *think* its possible they will arrive later than your carriers. So user battle cruisers because they have the speed to not slow down your fleet while still packing a decent punch.
@TheEmuEmpire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I guess I assumed they would apply changes to the meta in all forms, It'd be cool to be able to integrate colonial pops to core pops through the decisions. And maybe allowed the ability to fight wars using guerilla tactics.
@TheEmuEmpire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It seems like a meta overhaul for the entirety of hoi4, from this upcoming patch, I would assume that they will overhaul the other Navel, Air, and Land forces as well as combat in general meta.
I don't believe fleet/task force organisation is brought up again after it is mentioned at 16:37. My two cents regarding naval organisation are that it's important to realise that regions are assigned on a fleet-by-fleet basis; indivdual taskforces can not deviate from their fleet's region assignment, but taskforces from separate fleets *can* collaborate if their regions overlap. I'd advise creating strike fleets, patrol fleets, and escort fleets. All taskforces in patrol and/or escort fleets should be permanently assigned to their corresponding mission, and are controlled by selecting sea regions for the fleet to be active in. The same method applies to raiding, minelaying and/or minesweeping fleets, which are optional supplements to the aforementioned three types. Strike fleets are a little different, and are (in my experience) best controlled by sailing each taskforce manually towards a port where you wish them to be based. When used in this manner, the strike fleet itself should be set to be active on *every* sea region on the map. Its taskforces will respond to any threat within their own range, so by stationing the fleets as close to the action as possible, optimal response times are achieved without the need to ever adjust the fleet's regions. Note that when utilising the navy in this fashion, a change in patrol regions for one of your patrol fleets should usually be followed by a change in home port for one (or more) of your strike fleet taskforces. Indvidual strike fleet taskforces can be changed between the strike force and naval invasion support missions as necessary. edit: enjoyed the video btw, sry for the rant
Some notes about carriers. If you are a major power with a lot of resources the 1936 Carrier is probably the best option and spot for you. If you are a minor the converted hull light carrier works really well especially with the Pacific Design Company as it will make a 40 deck CVL into a 50 deck. Thats just 10 planes less than a major powers pre-researched 1936 carrier for just a single research on carrier 1's. Also light Carriers (CVL's) are very very effective at being a total nuisance to fleets. By making a Heavy Cruiser to guard the CVL and an appropriate screen you can put the CVL in a sea zone and do air missions in the zone or all around and start tagging subs and enemy fleets with NAV1's or NAV'2. If that sub or fleet runs into you then you engage with those NAV's and unless they are built up they are going to pay a price. I will say that the Converted BB carrier is probably the weakest of the bunch and while many of the original majors (USA, England, and Japan) come with them they are at least free carriers and will tide you over just fine. The carrier 2 (CV2) research is the best bang for the buck production and research wise for a large nation but not so for a smaller nation due to the steel cost unless you are planning on building a cut down version and then refitting later. Again for a small nation a light carrier is a good sweet spot. Example as Australia you can very easily go with Carrier 1 research (or just license it from England and covert the CL1 to a CVL) then go into either CL3 or DD3 production. You could even go cross eyed and make BB1 or BB2's and refit but it will take the steel to do so and I suggest going Heavy Cruisers (CA2) instead as CA's kill anything but battleships and your light cruisers well kill everything.
It should be noted that strike force will intercept any enemy fleets, not just the ones who were found by patrol missions. If your convoy escort is being attacked, strike force will try to join the battle as well. So while defending against superior enemy fleet patrol missions aren't necessary. But of course, finding the enemy and striking first is always better.
Complete all your partially finished ships at the start and go for battlecruisers; stick anything you have that runs at 30 knots with them. Rely on your CAS for naval strike; invest your air xp into extra range and max them out if you want. Go Rhineland, then the two naval focuses. Time your 4 year plan focus with you completing concentrated industry 2 and go for 3. You should have enough to beat the British consistently if they're also fighting italy.
It's really not hard. It's just like the rest of the game - you figure it out and end up doing the basically the same thing everytime. I think people just have the mindset it's complicated, but it's really the same as the rest of the game. Far less micromanaging than land or air as well.
@@154Kilroy I disagree, I would also say it is at some point boiled down to a few things, but it’s not “just in our heads” I think it is far less intuitive then land or air combat, for example how exactly movement or the different stats work, and the different missions, engagement goal (no engagement, always engage etc) as well as how home bases and repares work all are different things you have to learn that are not intuitive, and many people still don’t fully understand how naval supremacy works, So tldr: your right it’s not impossible to learn almost fully, but I would argue that for whatever reason be it factors or lack of intuition that it is objectively harder to learn as players often take many more hours to learn it to a point of near mastery. Took me 50 hours to understand land combat to a good degree 300 hours to understand the basic concepts of almost all of the game, and 1,300 hours to learn navy, so maybe I am just a retard but this is my thoughts. (Sorry for making a wall of text about HOI lol.)
Actually I find spamming out cruiser conversions as escort carriers to be an extremely effective strategy if you can. With some good naval dockyard output I was able to spit out one escort carrier and half a year almost. Get a handful of lines going of escort carriers to let it run for a year or two early game by the end of it you'll have a decent fleet of carriers. Granted for that method he won't have much for AA or anything else, but just having one hanger is all you need for an escort role
I started playing the game a little over a year ago and navy was the very last thing I learned because it just gave me headaches every time I tried to learn how to do the proper navy. I stay determined and continued to research as much as I could giving myself breaks so my brain wouldn’t hurt but now I can say I very much enjoy navy. Not just spamming submarines but having a proper navy although without the unlimited docks mod building any battleships or refitting them is almost impossible
Higher speed also makes you harder to hit. As the ods to hit are based on you visibility/speed. Light guns have a much better profile than heavy guns, and both are much better than torpeados. This gives CA a very clear role. Without armor, top engines, and lots of light guns, you have a screen killer. As a "capitol" ship, light guns will have to clear the screens to take a shot. With a moderate visibility but high speed, heavy guns will have trouble scoring hits (BB penetration is so high that it is better to go without armor and try and evade). This burns thru enemey screens, letting you CLs and DD unleash torps on the capitol ships. Of cource there are counters, the best is a traditional CA with armor and meadiun guns. They are cheap enough to bring that they can bring a lot of guns to shread the light CAs.
I just use LC with maximum torps and 1 depth charge, HC with maximum light attack turrets (only 1 medium to make it heavy), absolutely destroys anything ai throws at you because they make really bad ships
I may have to watch this a few times. I'm playing a co-op game as Australia focusing on subs as America does the main push against Japan. Lots of good tips here... Just as I was watching this video I heard there's going to be some changes to the Navy. More realistic but maybe less fun.
Question: how much do submarine/convoy raids impact on supply? You mention this in the video but I remain curious. I have totally isolated Japan a few times by destroying all of their convoys, but their forces on islands and in China never seem to be out of supply. I'm curious how big the effect of losing all convoys actually is.
It's extremely detrimental. However, Japan can still use local supply. Small forces on islands don't take.muxh supply and can survive, while china is massive and if Japan has a large enough chunk of it, that can support their army well enough to defeat the AI. Also the AI cheats when it come to supply, so aplayer would feel it much, much harsher
@@Bitt3rSteel Agreed. I find a good way to push Japan over the edge is to combine Port strikes, especially on the northern ports. When Japan starts to fall behind, the AI tends to use those ports for repair/hiding their ships.
When I play US I typically take the pacific fleet and split it into 3 taskforces The ones with surface ships generally get 1CV, 5BB, 5CA, 10CL, 30DD I make sure to modify a few of the destroyers in each taskforce to have sonar II and all new CL get a fuck ton of catapults and RADAR. And generally by endgame each taskforce will have 3CV. I don't bother making more BB or BC. As for the Atlantic I make some small escorts with 1CA, 3CL, and 10DD.
Pro tip: build heavy cruisers and try to max out the light attack. This will make them eat through screens, as they are behind the screens but can target them well.
Theres a way to make really cheap carriers for escort or for a poor mans fleet carrier called an 'Escort Carrier' you take whatever carrier hull you have and just have 1 hanger and add on radar to give that little extra detection along with the escorting destroyers found them to be a interesting tool to both harass targets with low cost carriers to keep them on their toes and give them that extra punch against subs or standard warships
I never use Battleships to escourt carriers. Use heavy cruisers to keep the speed of the carrier strike group as high as possible. The faster it is the more intercepting it does. I use to use BBs but they're to slow. The BB/Carrier strike group will sit in port twice as much as a Heavy Cruiser/carrier strike group. Simply due to the difference in speeds. The CA/CVs will intercept stuff the BB/CVs can't catch. Naval AA is super powerful once you hit Naval AA 3s and Dual Purpose Secondaires. When your AA values on ships start moving towards 20ish you won't have problems with planes anymore and can move into the zones you called too dangerous.
Converted carriers are incredibly useful for nations which inherit weaker navies and old battleships, but also the industry to realistically build the fleet up again, such as France, Germany, and the USSR. Bonus points if you're planning on fighting a war in the Pacific - because carriers are a complete waste of production in Europe.
I've found it incredibly useful, if you have fighters only on cheap carriers, as Germany I was able to keep my fleet up so much longer and was able to sealion much easier
Against ai the 2 best fleets I've found is 1) spam battleships with light cruiser screens, you might get a couple skirmishes before the ai completely abandons the naval zone. with 28 ships I was able to naval invade england as germany before france surrendered. 2) is similar but you spam only carriers with 25%/75% fighters/naval bombers and instead of being scared to fight and abandoning sea zones you just sink the entire ai navy each engagement. The sortie penalty doesn't matter when everything instantly dies.
Battlecruiser, dual purpose secondaries, raiding fleet designer, bold admiral and the second doctrine in raiding fleet tree will make your battlecruisers the bane of every naval power. With Lvl 4 Engines and 28cm guns you can reach insane speed (almost 50knts). Add Radar 4 and Spotter Plane 2 to round it up. A couple of BCs like these will destroy any convoy+escort. Eventually the enemy will run out of escorts and render their capitals useless. I have managed to destroy hundreds of ships with just 4 of those BCs
The reasonable way to exercize is to establish a navy school, i.e. a task force doing nothing but exercizing. Every single ship that has reached the desired level is immediately transferred to another, moored TF. Also, I made the experience that a scouting task force does not need to have more than two light cruisers.
4 months late but this helped. Would like to see more on the task force designer thing. Not sure how to work that, would really like to pump out organised fleets
Yeagh I fiddle with that and they just dont seem to create a fleet properly. They just naturally create little fleets of 1- 3 each. I would rather they grouped together.
Awesome video. Thank you. I'm looking for a good video on refitting ships... Especially as Japan. In other words, what to do with the starting ships, and what to do later on with the ships you built early on. Do you refit, or just build new ones?
I treat the Man the Guns navy like I treat Caravan in new vegas, something really interesting that I am terrified of.
This comment made me lul. I can relate 100%
Bruh how u even play it?
@@hescoming4544 with my hands
Man, once you conquer caravan, you will be swimming in caps, it literally breaks the game, much more than gambling which is limited and tedious.
@@aciduzzoliterally lmao and no bark Noonan in Novac always replenishes his 2000 caps after a while giving you an infinite supply
"A carrier is a lot easier to see than a submarine"
Japanese I-400 carrier submarine: Pathetic
The bathtub model isn't the submarine meta. The bathtub model is to just spam the cheapest submarines so you have more ships and therefore naval supremacy. The bathtub subs will be completely destroyed by naval bombers and naval battles
They are short game strategy. They aren't supposed to maintain naval supremacy, only enough to get your invasions off for nations that are hard to invade, such as Britain and Japan.
There is NO META for navies. Navies are for the most part irrelevant in HOI4, no matter how many bells and whistles they added to navies.
@@timothyhouse1622 Well I wouldn’t say irrelevant, you need the three branches to be well developed to have a good long game, it sucks trying to invade a country when you can’t naval invade it or air invade it, and you can also run into issues if you over develop one without the others being well developed
@@timothyhouse1622 Yup. They are unnecessary. That said, they ARE useful, so long as you're not chipping into your land force which should be high priority. It's really kind of pointless trying to build a navy unless you already have one to refit or just for the lols. They really need to fix naval supremacy mechanics, there's no reason t1 subs should be getting supremacy over entire updated fleets.
I do like building navies for the lols, though. :P
@@infini_ryu9461 imo subs shouldn't give naval superiority unless they are up to date and able to actually fight. If not, they should only get naval supremacy if there are no enemy ships in the zone.
@@bismarckandthekriegsmarine2954 , tell that to the USS Indianapolis, sunk by a submarine.
Naval warfare in hoi4: naval bomber goes brrrrr
yes
Just like irl
@@Snipurss
No... IRL, American proximity-fuses went Brrrrt.
The Japanese ONLY went for intentional Kamikazes because getting close to a US ship was basically suicide anyway, so you might as well go all-in...
(the Bomber Maffia is a GREAT recommendation!)
Me when i play italy
Lmao true, but I want to leanr
Even after 2k hours of HOI4 there's something new to learn. Nice.
1200 hours and i feel like such a noob watching these videos, but very informative
700 hours and i still cant invade Britain lol
@@NubDiePie Vs Ai it is easy. You just invade France and after you will put all your ships in eng channel after you already have 70 days of naval invasion preperations done. Submarines do patrol and basic templates ( battleships, cruisers, destroyers) do strike force. If you want you can add ship to do naval invasion. You put all air in there and just defend your land with fighters to not get bombed and there you have it. Then you basically win and when I fight Soviets in while they have enricicled all divisions and until they capitulated they can end up with 15-50 easily, so after British invasion I dont play anymore actually. France is easy too, you just take fast and declare one after another on Netherlans, then Lux, then Belgium and you just crush them before british will even start helping. I dont even call Italy in, only if i have troubles destroying them (I even use just basic tanks btw and only infantry with artilerry meaning I dont make any new until Barbarossa because of fuel shortage).
That sounds pretty much be the tagline of this game!
1.9k hours and I still almost never touch ironman or navy stuff, I prefer alt history, not grand stagey.
I just try everything until i get green sea for naval invasion
-some guy with more than 3000 hours of hoi4
Lol take that from someone with over 4000
Anyone with 2000+ hours on HoI4: Exists.
"So you're a good player, right?"
Insert crying cat meme.
Literally me….
I just deathstack everything and build new ships according to a dice
-a guy with ~8000 hours on hoi4
Patrol = Light Ships (and Submarines)
Strike Force = Battleships, Cruisers, Capital Ships (Screens)
Convoy Raiding = Submarines (10-15 per region)
Convoy Escorting = Destroyers (6-8, depth charge and a light gun)
(Heavy Ship guide)
Every heavy ship has 8 destroyers in that fleet.
OR
Every heavy ship has 4 light cruisers in that fleet.
nc
Na, soft attack light cruisers dominate as raiders. Escorts become futile, thus the enemy must seek decisive battle, freeing up your fleet when you win.
My fleet never finds the big navy fleet of UK should i let them all go on patroll or waiting on the docks
@@damn8179 Think: why would the Royal Navy be at sea? You've got to coax them out first with convoy raiding.
@@Pax.Britannica so i should go for convoy raid and let my troops in the docks until the big fleet was found
If you want super heavies then go Japan, they have a focus that gives you two that are significantly pre built
they are usually a novelty thing I add toward the end of the game, after I have already had access to significantly better ships. Japan getting early access is quite helpful if you are actually going to try and face down an enemy fleet.
@@trinalgalaxy5943 Even then for a country like a Japan, it already has a navy that can provide regional supremacy where it goes, so investing into an air force is more effective and you can switch production queues into something later.
@@garrettjohnson343 Even so it is on average better to go the carrier focus rather than the battleship one due to the better power.
I allways do the zero bc you get a pretty good fighter and as japan you have no proplem with exp
You forgot the third naval meta for singleplayer. The NAVAL bomber meta. I swear, if you have the rubber and aluminium, just dont bother with ships go for planes. My macau my day portugal sank both the Japanese Imperial Navy, the French Republic armada and the Royal Navy, their mighty battleships and carriers reduced to ashes as they sank to the depths of the watery hell they so loved. And as such, my Luso-Brazillian fleet of like 70 ships escorted my marines to the shores of brystol as the 8 remaining british destroyers stared their bretheren being gunned down by chinese soldiers armed with brazillian weapons with portuguese planes garanteeing CAS support and Air superiority. It was because of this achievement run that i realized how powerful planes are in this game.
Partially because the AI is trash. The AI seems to *always* want to have a patrol in their sea zone, so once your naval bombers have sunk all their patrolling screens the AI will pull screens from their strike forces to put them on patrol. And once you've sunk those, they send their unescorted capital ships on patrols, and suddenly they don't have any ships for naval supremacy anymore. And you can invade them with just a handful of ships. I noticed this during a German playthrough where I was consistently sinking DDs and CLs in the English channel for several years, and suddenly I was sinking all kinds of capital ships on a daily basis. Both the British and American navy completely destroyed by a measly 5 mils on naval bombers. While in real life the bulk of the royal navy would sit in a Scapa Flow, completely safe from enemy bombers, and prevent an invasion with the threat of their presence alone - with or without patrols.
If the AI left their strike forces untouched and stay in port even if there were no patrols left, naval bombers wouldn't be as powerful since there was still 20.000+ naval supremacy preventing an invasion. You'd have to do port strikes, which aren't as easy to pull off since they generally require bombers with bigger range and you'll encounter their entire fleet at once instead of picking off lone ships.
@@FLUX.2226 100% true. Nonetheless naval bombers are OP
How to get Pride and Extreme Prejudice Achievement. As Germany don't attack any nation, just British Malaysia, and do naval bomber spam. If you can't find the Hood cheese a naval invasion into Hull, yoink the airport if possible and start spamming over Ireland or Scotland for range and try find it without capping the UK. If another major joins allies cap the UK, leave the Isle of Man and NI because their fleet will always go back to it eventually, and you can harass with bombers at sea and in port until the Hood gets chased to port to repair and then bombed to the seabed in repair. I had them in a spot where 23 of the High Seas fleet were under thousands of naval bombers and just raiding like hell in the Western approaches. They couldn't kill them because the bombers got them too quickly, and eventually I baited the Hood out and chased it to the port in Belfast before a port strike took it out as it was repairing.
Upgrading old outdated battleships to carier conversions is a fast way to increase your carrier count towards the end of the game. They are also faster than normal cariers when using battleship engines, if you want to meme with carrier convoy raiding or something.
If you are playing a long game and Annex some puppets that have cruisers or battleships you can convert them to carriers turning an old obsolete ship into something useful that you can upgrade.
Unfortunately you can't refit ships that you did not originally build.
@@zacharytaylor2423 Yeah it would be nice if you had even limited ability to upgrade annexed ships.
Like if there was empty slots you can fill them out and maybe you can upgrade guns but only to the same model year as the ship?
How hard could it be to upgrade torpedoes and depth charges to a foreign ship?
@@zacharytaylor2423 Well, yes you can. You just need to get the production license first.
@@chrisscott6254 Oh, neat! TIL
If they add, reduce refit cost to the equipment conversion tech. I think that would change every meta and make the naval more competitive.
Aaaaaand they did :D
Thank you for this guide, I've watched a few about the navy but still leave with more questions than answers. This is the idiots guide to hoi4 navy I needed.
I hope to update and expand on this! I received a lot of great feedback
SPEED most important function is that it lowers enemy hit chance.
RELIABILITY determines how likely a ship is to recieve a critical hit on pierced attack
Personally I think if they just rolled the naval gun research in with the ship models, but then kept the improvement research as separate it would help make the naval research feel more manageable. In all honesty I think actually just making everything locked behind ship models (torpedo launchers etc) you could streamline naval research so it feels much less of a timesink.
time SINK HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Or alternatively, if naval supremacy (in the abstract sense of having the most globally dominant navy, not just some sea zone you're trying to naval invade) were more consequential for the outcome of the war, you could justify devoting more research slots to naval. As it is stands though, trying to achieve naval supremacy is mostly a waste of time.
@@danieltemelkovski9828 that's really sad bruv. Boats are cool and Paradox does not understand or appreciate the art of boat warfare! >:(
MtG was good though, glad they made that at least.
All the different modules are really annoying to research, they should be combine them into a few techs spread across the tree, that way you don’t have to research everything but still have progression through the years.
@@Adumb_
I hate this logic.. Why are all of these awesome in depth war games constantly being dumbed down like this? 'Justcombine it for simplicity!" Or use your brain...
Seriously though.. The more you have to research, and more you have to pick and choose what you do and don't go for, and when can swing the way wars and battles go. By comining them all together you're removing those differences ultimately making every army fight the same no matter what...
Maybe that seems better to you, but I'm not a simpleton.
thank you so much for making this. I have almost 900 hours, and still couldn't quite wrap my head around this navy stuff. This is super helpful!
A future I wish was added would be the ability to save ship designs across the game. Just so long as I have the naval XP and research it is waiting for me on the production menu. I play a lot of shorter games with friends so having to manually redo the ship designs every time is very draining and not fun. I find that a lot of this game in the first hour or two is fixing the bad templates and ship designs that you start with.
Same for every game building the cavalry templates for the garrisons
Dope idea.
in the sea of stupid guide videos that seems to have flooded utube these days, your's the most informative. kudos, liked and subscribed.
i dont know what the hell the other channel owners were on, some think they are rapping and have to speak as fast as humanly possible, some are just laughing non stop at themselves while talking about stuff that is completely not funny at all.
again thanks for taking the time to make this video.
What a timing, I just bought Man the guns lmao
So?
@@lovablesnowman what lol?
@@lovablesnowman another So? guy -_-
@@generalgrievous9503 This guys a troll on this channel he constantly comments hate
I agree with everything except that carrier 1> battleship converted hull. in my experience i found that in all cases carrier 1= battleship converted hull as both have equqal number of slots and both can have the same number of planes i.e 60. The area where carrier 1< battleship converted hull is the engine equipping as since its a battleship converted hull you can equip a battleship engine to match the speed of the carrier with the fleet cause if your carrier leaves before the escorts then the enemy just obliterates of heavily damages the ships(especilly if a enemy carrier is present) and if the fleet leaves before the carrier then well best case scenario, you get a heavy damaged carrier.
other than this i think you did a very good job with everything else and explained it really well.
Thanks, I must have been looking at a converted cruiser hull because I swear those are smaller in terms of deck size...
Yep they’re small 40 planes max and are completely useless as you said in the video
If you're going for the sub strategy it is very important to pay attention to your engagement rule. Submarines will not engage screens unless they are set to "engage at high risk" or "always engage." Submarines using the default engagement rule will run away from enemy task forces instead of fighting them, unless they happen to come across a task force with poor screening efficiency (in which case they will try to take out the capital ships.)
This can be a good thing or a bad thing depending on the stage of the game. But if you have enough advantages (admiral with sub traits, experienced crews, good technology, etc) it may be worth grouping your subs into larger task forces of 30-40, setting them on a higher engagement rule. This works especially well if you've run the enemy out of fuel with convoy raiding first.
Thanks for the detailed guide; I would usually deathstack everything I've got and throw it at the enemy; well, no wonder it's lost me so many naval engagements. Keep up the good work!
Glad I could help!
@@Bitt3rSteel replying to a comment from a half-year old video? BASED, I'm glad I subbed.
I have learned quite alot from you for the game, just putting on your videos, getting black to playing the game and running into something that i need more information on. I like seeing your playthroughs and learning stuff from it. You´ve made me enjoy a game i didn´t understand shit from at the start.
I've always HATED the Navy aspect of Hoi4, but this is definitely going to help me have an easier time and actually know what on earth im doing. Thank you so much!
Base strike also give a lot of naval targeting bonus so you can also go with that if you don't want to build and manage a navy go with that and build a planes for naval strikes, a radar if you can spare and use air power to destroy ships and convoys. It works surprisingly well.
I’ve been wanting a naval guide for ages
At 02.40 Reliability is mentioned. One very important thing that comes from reliability is the chance for a ship to being hit by a critical hit. A critical hit is very bad, well it's critical!, and the higher reliability the lesser risk for a ship to take a critical hit.
I was thinking yesterday, that this guy needs to make a navy focused vid.
Today..... I’m impressed 🤗
I got about 300is hours in HOI 4 and even before man the guns i skipped all the naval part as it was way too complicated for me. It ruined every war with england japan etc as i just couldnt reach them and paratroopers also were hit or miss. At least for me. But now i won my first game with germany and Naval battle are such a blast. seeing the subs biting chunks out of the enemies convoys, the battleships obliterating the enemy navy. Thanks for this tutorial man. Improved my game by a lot
This is the best naval guide a have ever seen well done!
Literally just started a German Empire naval game. Thanks helped a lot.
Thank you. Another well organized guide. Clearly I picked up the game at the right time. Channel is subscribed and bookmarked.
22:50 yeah that is how it is supposed to work, the British did that irl by keeping their fleet anchored in Scapa Flow in Northern Scotland where it was safe from German air raids but close enough to dissuade any invasion. That is the point of the "fleet in being" doctrine, that the threat of the navy is at times enough to force an enemy to go around or otherwise avoid what the navy is protecting, be it the home Island(s) or another important objective.
From what I have tried, CL convoy raiding is super powerful. You get 3-5 CL with max light attack and you shred convoys as they cannot run from your CLs. Pluss when the destroyer escorts come up to try and defend the convoys, you sink those too. Additionally, if you rush Cruiser 3 (very possible with many nations), and throw 2 torp tubes on it, it can effectively deal with capitals as well. I usually put a CA with max spotting just to find ships. I do often add in a Cruiser Carrier, even though it is not ideal, as a Minor, you cannot afford the research for more than one carrier, and the cruiser carrier benefits from your cruiser engines so it is able to keep up with the cruisers without dedicating more research. And if you rock up to an engagement with aircraft, and the enemy have no aircraft, you are golden. OR you just fill it (usually only have 1/group) with fighters and use it to keep your cruisers safe from enemy aircraft.
I have been fairly successful in sinking much larger fleets with this comp. Not sure how it would compare to the torp meta
There just sint enough research slots to go into Navy. They should make a separate research slot that only research navy, for balance.
This, or making the techs faster when they are old. Hoi4 forces people to specialize research too much. It's hard to justify going back and and spending multiple years of research grabbing useless techs in the naval tree to get the up-to-date stuff.
Even countries like the UK and USA who can get 6 slots and 40+% research bonuses can never really stay up to date in evwrything while doing doctrines. Hopefully this new update can help fix this by moving doctrines to the high command freeing up another research slot.
@@danielgloyd4529 exactly. When actuality, these would all be apart of standard military research. The navy doesn't jusy stop doing stuff because the army is researching stuff.
@@danielgloyd4529 Hopefully in barbarossa this will be less of a problem because doctrines will no longer take up a research slot
@@Soylent2024 That's true, but the idea behind limited research slots is to simulate a country managing its intellectual resources and being able to specialize more in one area than another. Just like in real life, you can't EVERYTHING you want to do; choosing to do one thing means sacrificing doing something else. That's not to say I think the way HoI4 simulates this is very good - eg am I gonna spend 200 days on a kick ass army doctrine, or 200 days on a better snorkel? Obvious choice. I don't know why the game designers thought that any more than 4-6 research slots would be "too confusing" for players. Research and focus tree management are the most interesting part of the game to me, so it would be pretty cool if there were like 20 or shit even 50 research slots.
@@danieltemelkovski9828 but if you look at the US or Germany, they had ALL those techs researched
That was exactly what I was looking for. Only have two years left until WWII and haven avoided the navy until now.
21:12 the mic change makes it sound like your really excited about the battleships and the big boys! haha :)
I just lost my Enterprise and other 6 carriers like an hour ago, and that was because my horrible composition, thanks for the guide and amazing video
You are how every other HOI4 RUclipsr should be. You explain exellently.
Excellent, excellent guide. Oh, so much info. Just how to read the furschlunger Navy panel was amazing for me. (I know, really simple but...). Thanks so much.
Note on heavy attack, it can also be used to destroy light ships if no enemy heavy ships or carriers are present. Also, dual purpose guns are pretty good on heavy ships, they give a bunch of light attack for assisting on shredding the light screen and also provide a lot of anti-air. There is no reason to avoid light attack on your heavies if you already have lots of heavy attack. Remember, more heavy turrets = slower ship.
You only need four screens per capital, of any type, to achieve 100% screening efficiency. 4 destroyers, 4 cruisers, doesn't matter - as long as you maintain that 1:4 ratio, you'll get 100% efficiency. The rest is down to combat stats. Any additional screens in the task force beyond the amount required to fulfill the 1:4 ratio aren't counted for your efficiency, but are still included in the actual combat.
"I will not get too in-depth here" > 38 min video > "Yeah this is a paradox game"
Only 3 screens are required per Cap. I tend to use 4 per Cap because you never want your screening efficiency to fall below 100. (Or trops will start hitting the Caps)
Heavy Cruisers are broken. Each medium turret you add on adds to the HP. Battle ships are pretty much useless due to this. You always do damage regardeless of piercing. The damage is only reduced if you can't pierce. It is never completely stopped. What this means in practice is that by IC a group of heavy cruisers will always defeat an IC equal group of battleships. This has been tested to death and you can see tests here on youtube for yourself.
Speed also helps you avoid being hit in battle. This is why I seldom use armor on my ships. It slows them down and just makes them cost more.
Naval combat really is fundamentally broken and has been since day 1. It's a shame because naval combat was so pivotal to ww2
No man, maxed out LCs beat HCs
(mostly because they're cheaper but don't count as capitals, so torps don't hit as hard once the screen gets blown apart)
Speaking of, maxed out DDs are more cost efficient than LCs.
Speaking of, SS-3s are more cost efficient than DD4s.
Speaking of, naval bombers are more cost effective than subs.
(which basically makes the whole naval game a massive waste of time and resources, which makes me VERY sad)
@@MrNicoJac HC's beat LCs if you build the HCs with only one heavy turret and maxed out light guns. Light attack HCs beat LC and LCs beat HCs setup for heavy attack. It"s been tested many times with equal naval costs.
The HCs are also able to get better bonuses from Admirals doctern and high commands for many nations.
I've seen DD spam tested. Both the light attack HCs and the LC win every time. Each cruiser one hits A DD. So basically the DDs get shredded before the screens go down. All tests I talk about are done with equal forces by naval production tested both with and without doctern/Admirals/High Command
The biggest problem for the DD spam is thier torps hardly ever get hits on Crusiers. So they're fighting with the tiny pop guns only. If the torps were more effective the situation might change.
Naval bombers can be countered by maxing out your AA and using DP secondaries in all available slots instead of LA turrets. Your can easily get the cruisers AA attack above 20 which I find makes going in naval bomber range possible.
I agree that sub 3s break the AI. Truth is you don't really need much of a navy against the AI. The AI can't manage fuel so even crappy sub 1s can't get windows of naval supremacy for invasions.
Compared to the absolute joke of naval play in older versions of the game, the current state (with the DLC) is an enormous improvement. I've played as U.S. just up to the point where Japan declares and with my navy organized in a somewhat historical fashion and Japan did surprisingly well and most things functioned about like I would expect for a game that is striving to reflect naval warfare of the era. There was nothing really "wrong" about how things played out, except that some of the assumptions I had in mind when I organized and deployed my navy were faulty given how the game actually handles things: the stuff about task force limits on numbers of provinces and also how the missions work exactly was fuzzy, but your video has clarified that very well. It isn't the best naval mission system, but it works. I was impressed when my CV task force was searching down an enemy task force! 😂
I was seriously wanting this you read my mind
Thanks you for this video. How I used to use navy in singleplayer was to merge all together with only one task force and I would only use it to naval invade. This is like opening a new game
I'm playing Germany rn, should I go Plan Z? or stick with U-boats.
Never go plan Z, you will never match the british or american navy, its better to use the U boat bonus to get 1940 or 1944 subs early.
If you go with plan Z you’ll end up diverting most of your war economy toward building a fleet Leaving you in a weaker position against The Soviet Union.
just uboat stack
I find that Plan Z can’t really be done in a way that would allow you to beat the British and French fleet. But it can work if you make plenty of naval bombers to help it😈. I usually have 2 1936 carriers, 6 battleships, 4 heavy cruisers, 16 lights, and 60-70 destroyers. With the naval bombers and that fleet you can wear down the allied fleet.
@@HoratiusCocles1 kill France leave 1 or 2 provinces annex their Navy.
Light cruisers are the best for convoy raiding. Job is done in 1-2 days. Subs kill convoys in weeks. Also there's good training for admirals.
Very solid and detailed guide as always,but this is why i dont play islands or naval invade, i just build enough subs and naval bombers to blot out the sky and the sea to protect me from naval invasions
Important addition to Missions:
"Naval invasion support" does not only support the invasions themselves but EVERY troop transport! So, if you're shipping troops around it might be a good idea to keep them safe with that.
"Convoy escort" also tries to defend your troops at sea, but might randomly abandon them for trade or supply convoys while NVI will always be ready to engage (unless you have an invasion planned in which case they will prioritise staying in the port of the invasion.)
Did you know that you can train up carrier aircraft if you fly them to a land base? When returning them to the carriers waiting in port they'll tend to all stack on one deck, but you can organize them after clicking on the airbase icon that represents the various carrier decks in that port, just as if you were transferring from one airbase to another.
One thing, the faster a fleet is the better it is at spotting enemy fleets, so I always have a few task forces of a couple light cruisers and destroyers out spotting for my bigger Strike force.
This was the video I needed to make the Navy click for me, thank you!
i just started playing the game and am overwhelmed by so much thanks for the help tho
My favourite Fleets at the moment.
Destroyer with 2 Torpedo, 1 Depth Charge, Active Sonar set to Escort.
Lightcruiser with 2 or 3 Light battery's, 2 or 3 catapult, Armour and Radar set to spotting.
Battlecruiser with 2 or 3 Heavy Battery's, secondary or dual purpose guns and Armour set to strikeforce.
All under the same Admiral they will support each other if assigned to the same region's
As time goes on I make newer models and more firepower, add 1 torpedo to the lightcruisers and Radar 3, battecruiser upgrade to dual purpose guns and Radar 3.
Don't bother upgrading Armour and Engines it takes way too long.
I go Battlecruiser because they have similar stats and the armour only adds +7% to production cost rather than +20% for the Battleship.
i really needed this guide, thank you so much
Thanks for this guide! Really helpful. Would love to see a quick guide on spy agencies and how to use them effectively.
One thing I'll add to the fleet makeup as intended, if you go for Carriers you probably will want to pair them with Battlecruisers rather than battleships. Battleships are slow if you don't upgrade their speed and they will slow down your fleet. And in scenarios where your carrier fleet is late to the party, I *think* its possible they will arrive later than your carriers. So user battle cruisers because they have the speed to not slow down your fleet while still packing a decent punch.
Decent naval guide, I wonder how much pdx will change the meta in the upcoming patch.
@TheEmuEmpire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I guess I assumed they would apply changes to the meta in all forms, It'd be cool to be able to integrate colonial pops to core pops through the decisions. And maybe allowed the ability to fight wars using guerilla tactics.
@TheEmuEmpire!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! It seems like a meta overhaul for the entirety of hoi4, from this upcoming patch, I would assume that they will overhaul the other Navel, Air, and Land forces as well as combat in general meta.
I expect few if any naval changes with the next patch/release.
15:00 "[The AI] is not really suited to naval warfare"
Neither are we. Neither are we.
I don't believe fleet/task force organisation is brought up again after it is mentioned at 16:37.
My two cents regarding naval organisation are that it's important to realise that regions are assigned on a fleet-by-fleet basis; indivdual taskforces can not deviate from their fleet's region assignment, but taskforces from separate fleets *can* collaborate if their regions overlap. I'd advise creating strike fleets, patrol fleets, and escort fleets. All taskforces in patrol and/or escort fleets should be permanently assigned to their corresponding mission, and are controlled by selecting sea regions for the fleet to be active in. The same method applies to raiding, minelaying and/or minesweeping fleets, which are optional supplements to the aforementioned three types.
Strike fleets are a little different, and are (in my experience) best controlled by sailing each taskforce manually towards a port where you wish them to be based. When used in this manner, the strike fleet itself should be set to be active on *every* sea region on the map. Its taskforces will respond to any threat within their own range, so by stationing the fleets as close to the action as possible, optimal response times are achieved without the need to ever adjust the fleet's regions. Note that when utilising the navy in this fashion, a change in patrol regions for one of your patrol fleets should usually be followed by a change in home port for one (or more) of your strike fleet taskforces. Indvidual strike fleet taskforces can be changed between the strike force and naval invasion support missions as necessary.
edit: enjoyed the video btw, sry for the rant
A really good naval guide! Thank you!
Some notes about carriers.
If you are a major power with a lot of resources the 1936 Carrier is probably the best option and spot for you. If you are a minor the converted hull light carrier works really well especially with the Pacific Design Company as it will make a 40 deck CVL into a 50 deck. Thats just 10 planes less than a major powers pre-researched 1936 carrier for just a single research on carrier 1's.
Also light Carriers (CVL's) are very very effective at being a total nuisance to fleets. By making a Heavy Cruiser to guard the CVL and an appropriate screen you can put the CVL in a sea zone and do air missions in the zone or all around and start tagging subs and enemy fleets with NAV1's or NAV'2. If that sub or fleet runs into you then you engage with those NAV's and unless they are built up they are going to pay a price.
I will say that the Converted BB carrier is probably the weakest of the bunch and while many of the original majors (USA, England, and Japan) come with them they are at least free carriers and will tide you over just fine. The carrier 2 (CV2) research is the best bang for the buck production and research wise for a large nation but not so for a smaller nation due to the steel cost unless you are planning on building a cut down version and then refitting later. Again for a small nation a light carrier is a good sweet spot.
Example as Australia you can very easily go with Carrier 1 research (or just license it from England and covert the CL1 to a CVL) then go into either CL3 or DD3 production. You could even go cross eyed and make BB1 or BB2's and refit but it will take the steel to do so and I suggest going Heavy Cruisers (CA2) instead as CA's kill anything but battleships and your light cruisers well kill everything.
Good video man, thanks for the pointers, sucks how long it takes to build capital ships as a minor nation even majors takes forever.
It should be noted that strike force will intercept any enemy fleets, not just the ones who were found by patrol missions. If your convoy escort is being attacked, strike force will try to join the battle as well. So while defending against superior enemy fleet patrol missions aren't necessary. But of course, finding the enemy and striking first is always better.
Thanks for all the great content!
It is funny how the cheese way is kind of the evolution of naval strategy, smaller and faster ships to support for the carriers
BRILLIANT GUIDE and very well presented
Complete all your partially finished ships at the start and go for battlecruisers; stick anything you have that runs at 30 knots with them. Rely on your CAS for naval strike; invest your air xp into extra range and max them out if you want. Go Rhineland, then the two naval focuses. Time your 4 year plan focus with you completing concentrated industry 2 and go for 3. You should have enough to beat the British consistently if they're also fighting italy.
Maybe after hundreds of hours I will learn how to play the Navy
Took me 1300 hours so take ur time lol, it’s funna be a while...
It's really not hard. It's just like the rest of the game - you figure it out and end up doing the basically the same thing everytime. I think people just have the mindset it's complicated, but it's really the same as the rest of the game. Far less micromanaging than land or air as well.
@@154Kilroy I disagree, I would also say it is at some point boiled down to a few things, but it’s not “just in our heads” I think it is far less intuitive then land or air combat, for example how exactly movement or the different stats work, and the different missions, engagement goal (no engagement, always engage etc) as well as how home bases and repares work all are different things you have to learn that are not intuitive, and many people still don’t fully understand how naval supremacy works,
So tldr: your right it’s not impossible to learn almost fully, but I would argue that for whatever reason be it factors or lack of intuition that it is objectively harder to learn as players often take many more hours to learn it to a point of near mastery.
Took me 50 hours to understand land combat to a good degree 300 hours to understand the basic concepts of almost all of the game, and 1,300 hours to learn navy, so maybe I am just a retard but this is my thoughts.
(Sorry for making a wall of text about HOI lol.)
Actually I find spamming out cruiser conversions as escort carriers to be an extremely effective strategy if you can. With some good naval dockyard output I was able to spit out one escort carrier and half a year almost. Get a handful of lines going of escort carriers to let it run for a year or two early game by the end of it you'll have a decent fleet of carriers. Granted for that method he won't have much for AA or anything else, but just having one hanger is all you need for an escort role
I never liked navy till i watched a tutorial 😂
Its just too complicated and hard to master but when you start understanding it dopamine kicks in
I started playing the game a little over a year ago and navy was the very last thing I learned because it just gave me headaches every time I tried to learn how to do the proper navy. I stay determined and continued to research as much as I could giving myself breaks so my brain wouldn’t hurt but now I can say I very much enjoy navy. Not just spamming submarines but having a proper navy although without the unlimited docks mod building any battleships or refitting them is almost impossible
Higher speed also makes you harder to hit. As the ods to hit are based on you visibility/speed.
Light guns have a much better profile than heavy guns, and both are much better than torpeados.
This gives CA a very clear role. Without armor, top engines, and lots of light guns, you have a screen killer. As a "capitol" ship, light guns will have to clear the screens to take a shot. With a moderate visibility but high speed, heavy guns will have trouble scoring hits (BB penetration is so high that it is better to go without armor and try and evade).
This burns thru enemey screens, letting you CLs and DD unleash torps on the capitol ships.
Of cource there are counters, the best is a traditional CA with armor and meadiun guns. They are cheap enough to bring that they can bring a lot of guns to shread the light CAs.
I just use LC with maximum torps and 1 depth charge, HC with maximum light attack turrets (only 1 medium to make it heavy), absolutely destroys anything ai throws at you because they make really bad ships
Thanks for this. Certainly earned a like and subscribe. Cheers.
Great stuff! Finally the game is kind of playable ;)
Just curious how applicable this guide still is after No Step Back and By Blood Alone. Love your guides. They have helped me so much.
Thanks, great to see new meta
I may have to watch this a few times. I'm playing a co-op game as Australia focusing on subs as America does the main push against Japan.
Lots of good tips here... Just as I was watching this video I heard there's going to be some changes to the Navy. More realistic but maybe less fun.
Question: how much do submarine/convoy raids impact on supply? You mention this in the video but I remain curious. I have totally isolated Japan a few times by destroying all of their convoys, but their forces on islands and in China never seem to be out of supply. I'm curious how big the effect of losing all convoys actually is.
It's extremely detrimental. However, Japan can still use local supply. Small forces on islands don't take.muxh supply and can survive, while china is massive and if Japan has a large enough chunk of it, that can support their army well enough to defeat the AI. Also the AI cheats when it come to supply, so aplayer would feel it much, much harsher
@@Bitt3rSteel Agreed. I find a good way to push Japan over the edge is to combine Port strikes, especially on the northern ports. When Japan starts to fall behind, the AI tends to use those ports for repair/hiding their ships.
Great video. Thank you!
When I play US I typically take the pacific fleet and split it into 3 taskforces The ones with surface ships generally get 1CV, 5BB, 5CA, 10CL, 30DD I make sure to modify a few of the destroyers in each taskforce to have sonar II and all new CL get a fuck ton of catapults and RADAR. And generally by endgame each taskforce will have 3CV. I don't bother making more BB or BC.
As for the Atlantic I make some small escorts with 1CA, 3CL, and 10DD.
Pro tip: build heavy cruisers and try to max out the light attack. This will make them eat through screens, as they are behind the screens but can target them well.
Thank you so much!!
Theres a way to make really cheap carriers for escort or for a poor mans fleet carrier called an 'Escort Carrier' you take whatever carrier hull you have and just have 1 hanger and add on radar to give that little extra detection along with the escorting destroyers found them to be a interesting tool to both harass targets with low cost carriers to keep them on their toes and give them that extra punch against subs or standard warships
I never use Battleships to escourt carriers. Use heavy cruisers to keep the speed of the carrier strike group as high as possible. The faster it is the more intercepting it does. I use to use BBs but they're to slow. The BB/Carrier strike group will sit in port twice as much as a Heavy Cruiser/carrier strike group. Simply due to the difference in speeds. The CA/CVs will intercept stuff the BB/CVs can't catch.
Naval AA is super powerful once you hit Naval AA 3s and Dual Purpose Secondaires. When your AA values on ships start moving towards 20ish you won't have problems with planes anymore and can move into the zones you called too dangerous.
Good point, I used BB and CA interchangeably when talking about capital escorts
Converted carriers are incredibly useful for nations which inherit weaker navies and old battleships, but also the industry to realistically build the fleet up again, such as France, Germany, and the USSR.
Bonus points if you're planning on fighting a war in the Pacific - because carriers are a complete waste of production in Europe.
I've found it incredibly useful, if you have fighters only on cheap carriers, as Germany I was able to keep my fleet up so much longer and was able to sealion much easier
Against ai the 2 best fleets I've found is 1) spam battleships with light cruiser screens, you might get a couple skirmishes before the ai completely abandons the naval zone. with 28 ships I was able to naval invade england as germany before france surrendered.
2) is similar but you spam only carriers with 25%/75% fighters/naval bombers and instead of being scared to fight and abandoning sea zones you just sink the entire ai navy each engagement. The sortie penalty doesn't matter when everything instantly dies.
I learned more about naval stuff in 30 minutes video and yet still haven't figured out division template
Battlecruiser, dual purpose secondaries, raiding fleet designer, bold admiral and the second doctrine in raiding fleet tree will make your battlecruisers the bane of every naval power. With Lvl 4 Engines and 28cm guns you can reach insane speed (almost 50knts). Add Radar 4 and Spotter Plane 2 to round it up. A couple of BCs like these will destroy any convoy+escort. Eventually the enemy will run out of escorts and render their capitals useless. I have managed to destroy hundreds of ships with just 4 of those BCs
Sehr gut erklärt. Danke!
The reasonable way to exercize is to establish a navy school, i.e. a task force doing nothing but exercizing. Every single ship that has reached the desired level is immediately transferred to another, moored TF.
Also, I made the experience that a scouting task force does not need to have more than two light cruisers.
u helped a lot bro thx
Yay finally a guide to the cryptic and confusing naval system
4 months late but this helped. Would like to see more on the task force designer thing. Not sure how to work that, would really like to pump out organised fleets
Yeagh I fiddle with that and they just dont seem to create a fleet properly. They just naturally create little fleets of 1- 3 each. I would rather they grouped together.
I'd really like to see a video where you do the cruiser + torpedo destroyer + tugboat strategy
Wow.. Didn't know about "Shallow Sea" and the +100% sub visibility..
Awesome video. Thank you. I'm looking for a good video on refitting ships... Especially as Japan. In other words, what to do with the starting ships, and what to do later on with the ships you built early on. Do you refit, or just build new ones?
I'd build new ones, boats a boat even if it's old
Very good video, thanks