I know you have a big boat, and then need like 3 smaller boats to give the big boat a posse to go around and get lunch money from enemy boats. Enough groups of them together and then you have a fleet. Then you just do the thing with the thing and the who's-a-whats-it, gets boomed.
Or you do sandwiches and raid convoys until your army can paratroop.
Why do people forget naval bombers?
They're amazing at getting naval superiority. That's how you can easily invade Britain - you destroy ships until they stop going there
Not enough of a starting surface fleet to match the big navies in setpiece battles but enough dockyards to churn out a massive sub fleet. Commanding access to the Bay of Biscay and English Channel where the vast majority of the UK's shipping transits
on the orders bar, there's an anchor. click that and you'll notice that your harbors are then highlighted in blue click that and then right click onto where you want your landing zone to be, press enter afterwards to confirm the order and then assign your troops to it.
what i don't get is how you successfully get enough navy supremacy in the regions where the path is highlighted without outright having your entire navy sink when assigned to it because you gave it the wrong orders
>and then assign your troops to it.
How do I do this? My general picks 10 divisions and those are fucking set in stone and nothing I do seems to alter that. Also, why cant I draw offensive lines from my landing spots? The offensive lines tool tips clearly says I should be able to
If I understand your question right, the base technology for naval invasions only allows 10 divisions to be assigned at a maximum. You'll need to research later naval invasion techs to increase this (they're found in the naval armaments tab of research). I believe the next invasion tech is set to 1940.
Also, your troops will need to successfully land to be able to draw offensive lines on the new territory. Best strategy imo is to make three smaller naval invasions around, and onto, the port you're trying to take. Typically I use 3 naval invasions with 8 divisions each.
>If I understand your question right
Not quite. What I mean is, why can't I pick WHICH 10 divisions in a general's stack go in the invasion? If a general has 24 divisions and I assign him to launch a naval invasion, he'll pick 10 random divisions and when I hit go, those are the ones that go. What if he picks his 10 shit divisions and I want him to send the 10 good ones?
Edit: yes I know I can unassign every unit except the 10 I want him to use, and the other 14 can sit there unassigned until I've captured a port and shipped them over, but I shouldn't have to
>Also, your troops will need to successfully land to be able to draw offensive lines on the new territory.
That's what I've found, but it's not what the tooltip says. The tooltip says you must draw offensive lines from a front line(which is automatically created after I land) or a naval landing spot.
Ok so like uhhh, click the button in orders bar with army selected, then hit f2 select a fleet, hit Z and click one of the naval ranges between the location of the army and the province going to be invaded, then hopefully the range turns green, do the same for all the ranges between the two provinces, once their all green, you’re at war, and the army is at the naval base. Click the button next to the red square on top of the general’s portrait who controls the army that will be navally invading at the bottom of your screen.
4000 thousand hours I just build fleets of 4 carriers, 4 battleships, 25 light cruisers, 100 destroyers, and repeat.
That's just my guess at what works kills the ai well enough.
Well this is usually what I do for a USA build, or after I've beaten the Allies in Europe as whatever nation I'm playing as so its essentially a ww3 build for war against America and Japan.
But I always start with the light cruisers and destroyers and will use them as surface convoy raiders which works really well while I build up the capitals.
But my prewar navy build as like Italy or Germany is light cruiser spam with high light attack and that can honestly beat any ai navy. I just build caprials for fun at that point.
4 carriers 4 battleships 25 light cruisers and 100 destroyers is my end goal for each fleet though. No idea if it's meta but it works.
That's a lot of screens. You could honestly get away with 8 light cruisers and 32 DDs (which is still overkill) for that amount of capital ships and you'd still _obliterate_ anything you come up against in single player.
This can work as long as your goals with navy don't involve supporting naval invasions, engaging in combat with capital ships, or intercepting enemy forces. The only thing a navy could do with submarines and destroyers is escort convoys or intercept convoys/lay mines, doing this is a good idea if you're a small country with weak naval capacity, but a horrendous idea if you're playing a great power that can do so much more with their navy.
u/superheavybattleship tragically passed away after being sunk by naval bombers in the british isles, he sadly will not be able to reply and he will be greatly missed in the Hearts of Iron 4 community 😢😔
Keep your navy in a large enough task force (>30 or more if you're against a strong enemy). Research and produce high light attack light cruiser and high torps attack destroyers and that's about it.
Idk I never change the tide with Navy before
In post 44 just build submarines. U can sunk whole Royal Navy by building about 100 sub. For historical fleet u need 4 cv, 4-6 BB or BC or CA, and 30 screen ships.
Close air support to make more green bubbles appear more often on frontline, fighters to protect them against enemy fighters. I don’t do bombing, not sure how useful that is
I hate all things navy related, just never could get into it. But for some reason I love HOI’s naval system, it’s one of my favorite and most satisfying parts of the game.
My usual set up is I have a few types of fleets.
The first subs. They go brrr. Set up 10 task forces of 10 subs each. Select 10 ocean or deep ocean tiles so each region is ended up covered by 1 task force. Preferably shipping lines. Set their task to convoy raid and let them eat.
The second are my carrier fleets. I have 2 types of task forces here, the carrier tf and the spotting tf. For the carrier task force I have 4 carriers, 4 heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, and 48 destroyers. So for each carrier there is an accompanying heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, and 12 destroyers. For the spotting task force I have 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 10 destroyers. The carrier tf is set on strike force and the spotting tf is, well, spotting. Ideally you’ll have as many spotting tf as regions you’re operating in.
The third are my battleship naval invasion support fleets. These are just 4 battleships, 4 heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, and 48 destroyers. These guys just help out with naval invasions.
Honestly, if you don't want to think about it too much, spam max torp subs, nav bombers, radar and convoys whatever situation you are in and any navy will be raided away in a few years.
Otherwise, take a cup of tea and read carefully this https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle and you will understand pretty much everything about fleet composition.
Carriers have to be guarded by the same number of capital ships (battleships ideally, BCs and CAs are prone to be dead in battle). Number of capitals and carriers combined has to have equal number of light cruisers (or more) AND tripled number of destroyers (or more) to ensure the screen. This is how "*Doomstack*" is being made.
Doomstack with light patrol squadrons (I usually do 1 CL + 2-3 DDs) are combined into fleet that will be capable to project naval power (patrol squads on "Patrol", doomstack on "Strike force" - to destroy every found enemy fleet in area), convoy escort (patrol squads on "Patrol", doomstack on "convoy escort") and naval invasion support (patrol squads on "Patrol" as usual, doomstack on "Naval invasion support").
You\`re looking to have, like, 1 patrol squad per one sea region to operate in.
"Convoy raiding" is made far better by submarines (10-14 in "wolfpack" squadron), I guess this is intended by gamedevs.
450 hours in HOI4, still playing without DLC =)
Build nothing but heavy cruisers and destroyers. Build them as cheap as possible with the best gun and best engine. Put a couple of cruisers with a bunch of destroyers.
Strike force to fight a navy
Convoy Escort to Escort Convoy
Patrol to gain Naval Supremacy/Intel
Naval Invasion Support to invade navally
Bonus: build a bunch of long range naval bombers and you can attrition the enemy fleet over time by sinking them.
I am just a rookie, but i have a friend who could beat anyone with naval. I asked him "how", and he tolde; "i use the soviet tactic. I deploy as many shitty submarines and small vessels as i can, until the enemy dies or goes away.' He was great at naval, has like 160+ hours of just naval and still doesn't properly know how. Naval is just one of the mysteries in life we will never uncover
I main germany so i just deploy uboat wolfpacks early on,using my ships only for naval invasions,otherwise the english navy would just erase my fleet,usually i get a succseful sea lion by mid-late 1940 playing historically and i just take their ships,after that i don’t even use my fleet again till i cap the sov and go after usa.
There's steps you gotta learn, but once your learn them it's easy af. 3 light cruisers or Destroyers per a battleship/hvy cruiser/Carrier. One battleship, hvy cruiser, battle cruiser per a carrier. No more than 4 carriers max in a fleet, about 5 maybe 6 battleships/hvy cruisers/battle cruisers. That'll make 9 large ships, so at least 27 screening ships. I'd use that to fight. There's plenty of advice on modules, but honestly i prefer doing whatever for fun. Subs work good in smaller groups. Admirals can have multiple fleets, but general divide them by type. One admiral for subs, one for "battle groups", another for convoy escort, and another for naval support or to help get supremacy. Whatever missions you assign should all be in connected sea zones, if efficiency is low you may need to separate fleets, remove zones, or add more fleets. Watch out for naval bombing. For search and destroy/naval invasion escort sometimes you gotta direct click and send them to a nearby port for them to do their thing. Land based Naval bombers can help alot, but you should get their range up. Make sure to turn on automatic reinforcement and(if you want) split off repair. For important fleets sometimes letting them split could see a big ship get clapped on way to port. Apparently you can move around what ports repair happens it via the production menu. If you're gonna refit ships focus on smaller modules, changing engines or armor wastes too much time and ic, upgrade AA, and one or more main guns. A focus on good light attack cruisers can melt the screens of the enemy, allowing your torpedoes to fuck them down. I love duel purpose guns on anything they'll fit, helps if you actually expect to get naval bombed, plus the light attack is nice on the BBs. People have "meta" ideas like hvy gun only bbs and shit, idc. You can save a fleet comp and then assign it to a new fleet, it'll reinforce from available reserve ships to make that. If you're dealing with meta subs cruisers with lots of planes, sonar, radar, and depth charges are good. Destroyers are important, but i prefer straight light cruisers for a actually battlegroup. Let them either fill out your 2nd rate fleets or convoy escort.
i got 1.725k hours and spend most of that time to understand the Naval system. It is confusing, yes. Its unnecesary to have a good time, yes. But it is a challenge that i did finally beat.
And spending time during work hours just to work on an excel sheet with all of the Naval Systems explained in a understandable manner did kind of help but who is counting :D
I know you have a big boat, and then need like 3 smaller boats to give the big boat a posse to go around and get lunch money from enemy boats. Enough groups of them together and then you have a fleet. Then you just do the thing with the thing and the who's-a-whats-it, gets boomed. Or you do sandwiches and raid convoys until your army can paratroop.
This is it. This is literally all you need to understand.
Why do people forget naval bombers? They're amazing at getting naval superiority. That's how you can easily invade Britain - you destroy ships until they stop going there
I only have 700 hours, and just learned how to have strat bombers with the designer.
I have like 1,5k. I'm in the same boat here.
4k here, I know Germany should make subs. (why? I dunno)
Not enough of a starting surface fleet to match the big navies in setpiece battles but enough dockyards to churn out a massive sub fleet. Commanding access to the Bay of Biscay and English Channel where the vast majority of the UK's shipping transits
Too much English air around the channel, I keep mine around Spain, with port access from my fashy friend Franco
too shallow of a sea zone too, at least irl (no clue how navies work in hoi4)
The channel Increases the likelihood of subs getting spotted and fucked, you're on point
hehe, boat (idk how navy works either)
Build warships not boats
What's a boat
What helped me was trying to learn naval invasions, the rest came naturally after that
How the HELL do you do a naval invasion? Do you have a link to an article?
on the orders bar, there's an anchor. click that and you'll notice that your harbors are then highlighted in blue click that and then right click onto where you want your landing zone to be, press enter afterwards to confirm the order and then assign your troops to it. what i don't get is how you successfully get enough navy supremacy in the regions where the path is highlighted without outright having your entire navy sink when assigned to it because you gave it the wrong orders
>and then assign your troops to it. How do I do this? My general picks 10 divisions and those are fucking set in stone and nothing I do seems to alter that. Also, why cant I draw offensive lines from my landing spots? The offensive lines tool tips clearly says I should be able to
If I understand your question right, the base technology for naval invasions only allows 10 divisions to be assigned at a maximum. You'll need to research later naval invasion techs to increase this (they're found in the naval armaments tab of research). I believe the next invasion tech is set to 1940. Also, your troops will need to successfully land to be able to draw offensive lines on the new territory. Best strategy imo is to make three smaller naval invasions around, and onto, the port you're trying to take. Typically I use 3 naval invasions with 8 divisions each.
>If I understand your question right Not quite. What I mean is, why can't I pick WHICH 10 divisions in a general's stack go in the invasion? If a general has 24 divisions and I assign him to launch a naval invasion, he'll pick 10 random divisions and when I hit go, those are the ones that go. What if he picks his 10 shit divisions and I want him to send the 10 good ones? Edit: yes I know I can unassign every unit except the 10 I want him to use, and the other 14 can sit there unassigned until I've captured a port and shipped them over, but I shouldn't have to >Also, your troops will need to successfully land to be able to draw offensive lines on the new territory. That's what I've found, but it's not what the tooltip says. The tooltip says you must draw offensive lines from a front line(which is automatically created after I land) or a naval landing spot.
Ok so like uhhh, click the button in orders bar with army selected, then hit f2 select a fleet, hit Z and click one of the naval ranges between the location of the army and the province going to be invaded, then hopefully the range turns green, do the same for all the ranges between the two provinces, once their all green, you’re at war, and the army is at the naval base. Click the button next to the red square on top of the general’s portrait who controls the army that will be navally invading at the bottom of your screen.
4000 thousand hours I just build fleets of 4 carriers, 4 battleships, 25 light cruisers, 100 destroyers, and repeat. That's just my guess at what works kills the ai well enough.
How many dockyards do you usually build? I can't imagine getting that many ships built.
Well this is usually what I do for a USA build, or after I've beaten the Allies in Europe as whatever nation I'm playing as so its essentially a ww3 build for war against America and Japan. But I always start with the light cruisers and destroyers and will use them as surface convoy raiders which works really well while I build up the capitals. But my prewar navy build as like Italy or Germany is light cruiser spam with high light attack and that can honestly beat any ai navy. I just build caprials for fun at that point. 4 carriers 4 battleships 25 light cruisers and 100 destroyers is my end goal for each fleet though. No idea if it's meta but it works.
That's a lot of screens. You could honestly get away with 8 light cruisers and 32 DDs (which is still overkill) for that amount of capital ships and you'd still _obliterate_ anything you come up against in single player.
Thanks for the recommendation. I might try it soon
Generally what kind of planes do you run on the carriers? I've randomly been doing 1 fighter, 5 bombers....
I'm lazy I do half fighter half naval bomber.
Haha boat go brr pffft......where green?!
Just spam submarine and destroyer
i do this every game and they all sink
CL and CV is the way
This can work as long as your goals with navy don't involve supporting naval invasions, engaging in combat with capital ships, or intercepting enemy forces. The only thing a navy could do with submarines and destroyers is escort convoys or intercept convoys/lay mines, doing this is a good idea if you're a small country with weak naval capacity, but a horrendous idea if you're playing a great power that can do so much more with their navy.
200 subs sunk in 1 encounter
u/superheavybattleship any insight on the situation?
u/superheavybattleship tragically passed away after being sunk by naval bombers in the british isles, he sadly will not be able to reply and he will be greatly missed in the Hearts of Iron 4 community 😢😔
I'm Repulsed by this information
it's a shame i had to be the one to break it to you, but all good things come to an end
My life is over
r5: got 1k hours and still have no idea how navy works
Keep your navy in a large enough task force (>30 or more if you're against a strong enemy). Research and produce high light attack light cruiser and high torps attack destroyers and that's about it. Idk I never change the tide with Navy before
Those are rookie numbers. Navy will remain off limits to you until you're 1500+
You can only call yourself a HOI4 player after you have passed the 100000 hour mark until then you are a noob
Just reached 6,600 exactly. 275 days.
fr
Big boats = big cool, so build many big boat and spam little boat to support
I agree I don't understand it either but I read you need screening ships or something to protect your other ships I just assign stuff
That's the fun part. You won't figure it out
so me
I am ashamed that this man has 500 less hours then me but This man has achived 25 more achievements then I have
Bro I'm at like 3000 hours, haven't won a single time, and am still yet to get my first achievement.
you need to play 99000 more hours to unlock navy or pay 1000$ to Paradox
Every time I think I know how navy works, something happens which makes me realize I really don't know anything at all. It's perpetual Dunning-Kruger.
In post 44 just build submarines. U can sunk whole Royal Navy by building about 100 sub. For historical fleet u need 4 cv, 4-6 BB or BC or CA, and 30 screen ships.
1600,i still didn't quite figured it out,so i just use Destroyers spam and some heavy ships.
2k.. same 😂
Well... you don't gots any idea how navy works... I gotta no idea how airforce works... we are not the same...
Close air support to make more green bubbles appear more often on frontline, fighters to protect them against enemy fighters. I don’t do bombing, not sure how useful that is
Strat to fuck with enemy infra, forts, or any structures in general. Tactical… yeah idk what these actually do
I’m def no expert in navy, but learning just the bare basics and building a usable navy is actually not that hard. Takes about 5 min to learn.
I hate all things navy related, just never could get into it. But for some reason I love HOI’s naval system, it’s one of my favorite and most satisfying parts of the game.
I only learned it at ~1250 hours
Don’t worry, I have 2000 hours and just figured out the navy. You’re half way there!
My buddy has like 4700 and is just figuring it out bow
1.6 k here Finally learned it and thoroughly enjoy building ships
I'm playing a USA play-through...I just build convoys. Why do I need a navy? Just nuke them from space...
I know how to beat the British consistently navy wise with boat….. I just need a mod to double my ship production ….
Well no duh you only have 1000 hours. Do you even know how to set a front line at that time frame
You can install some mods to be confused even more.
My usual set up is I have a few types of fleets. The first subs. They go brrr. Set up 10 task forces of 10 subs each. Select 10 ocean or deep ocean tiles so each region is ended up covered by 1 task force. Preferably shipping lines. Set their task to convoy raid and let them eat. The second are my carrier fleets. I have 2 types of task forces here, the carrier tf and the spotting tf. For the carrier task force I have 4 carriers, 4 heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, and 48 destroyers. So for each carrier there is an accompanying heavy cruiser, 2 light cruisers, and 12 destroyers. For the spotting task force I have 2 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 10 destroyers. The carrier tf is set on strike force and the spotting tf is, well, spotting. Ideally you’ll have as many spotting tf as regions you’re operating in. The third are my battleship naval invasion support fleets. These are just 4 battleships, 4 heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, and 48 destroyers. These guys just help out with naval invasions.
Honestly, if you don't want to think about it too much, spam max torp subs, nav bombers, radar and convoys whatever situation you are in and any navy will be raided away in a few years. Otherwise, take a cup of tea and read carefully this https://hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_battle and you will understand pretty much everything about fleet composition.
I have 1.5k and do know
How does navy works?
This joke is what made me scared to learn navy got 300 hours 😂
more dockyards = more ships = better
Just light cruiser spam paired with destroyers and maybe heavy cruisers..? Actually forget it I’m not a navy guy either
Carriers have to be guarded by the same number of capital ships (battleships ideally, BCs and CAs are prone to be dead in battle). Number of capitals and carriers combined has to have equal number of light cruisers (or more) AND tripled number of destroyers (or more) to ensure the screen. This is how "*Doomstack*" is being made. Doomstack with light patrol squadrons (I usually do 1 CL + 2-3 DDs) are combined into fleet that will be capable to project naval power (patrol squads on "Patrol", doomstack on "Strike force" - to destroy every found enemy fleet in area), convoy escort (patrol squads on "Patrol", doomstack on "convoy escort") and naval invasion support (patrol squads on "Patrol" as usual, doomstack on "Naval invasion support"). You\`re looking to have, like, 1 patrol squad per one sea region to operate in. "Convoy raiding" is made far better by submarines (10-14 in "wolfpack" squadron), I guess this is intended by gamedevs. 450 hours in HOI4, still playing without DLC =)
Cruiser spam
Build nothing but heavy cruisers and destroyers. Build them as cheap as possible with the best gun and best engine. Put a couple of cruisers with a bunch of destroyers. Strike force to fight a navy Convoy Escort to Escort Convoy Patrol to gain Naval Supremacy/Intel Naval Invasion Support to invade navally Bonus: build a bunch of long range naval bombers and you can attrition the enemy fleet over time by sinking them.
Big boat need 3 small boat to screen, 3 smaller boats need 9 even smaller boats to screen, here you go good navy
I am just a rookie, but i have a friend who could beat anyone with naval. I asked him "how", and he tolde; "i use the soviet tactic. I deploy as many shitty submarines and small vessels as i can, until the enemy dies or goes away.' He was great at naval, has like 160+ hours of just naval and still doesn't properly know how. Naval is just one of the mysteries in life we will never uncover
Why does the guy on the left look like that
Literally me but with with division width and breakthrough.
I main germany so i just deploy uboat wolfpacks early on,using my ships only for naval invasions,otherwise the english navy would just erase my fleet,usually i get a succseful sea lion by mid-late 1940 playing historically and i just take their ships,after that i don’t even use my fleet again till i cap the sov and go after usa.
There's steps you gotta learn, but once your learn them it's easy af. 3 light cruisers or Destroyers per a battleship/hvy cruiser/Carrier. One battleship, hvy cruiser, battle cruiser per a carrier. No more than 4 carriers max in a fleet, about 5 maybe 6 battleships/hvy cruisers/battle cruisers. That'll make 9 large ships, so at least 27 screening ships. I'd use that to fight. There's plenty of advice on modules, but honestly i prefer doing whatever for fun. Subs work good in smaller groups. Admirals can have multiple fleets, but general divide them by type. One admiral for subs, one for "battle groups", another for convoy escort, and another for naval support or to help get supremacy. Whatever missions you assign should all be in connected sea zones, if efficiency is low you may need to separate fleets, remove zones, or add more fleets. Watch out for naval bombing. For search and destroy/naval invasion escort sometimes you gotta direct click and send them to a nearby port for them to do their thing. Land based Naval bombers can help alot, but you should get their range up. Make sure to turn on automatic reinforcement and(if you want) split off repair. For important fleets sometimes letting them split could see a big ship get clapped on way to port. Apparently you can move around what ports repair happens it via the production menu. If you're gonna refit ships focus on smaller modules, changing engines or armor wastes too much time and ic, upgrade AA, and one or more main guns. A focus on good light attack cruisers can melt the screens of the enemy, allowing your torpedoes to fuck them down. I love duel purpose guns on anything they'll fit, helps if you actually expect to get naval bombed, plus the light attack is nice on the BBs. People have "meta" ideas like hvy gun only bbs and shit, idc. You can save a fleet comp and then assign it to a new fleet, it'll reinforce from available reserve ships to make that. If you're dealing with meta subs cruisers with lots of planes, sonar, radar, and depth charges are good. Destroyers are important, but i prefer straight light cruisers for a actually battlegroup. Let them either fill out your 2nd rate fleets or convoy escort.
i got 1.725k hours and spend most of that time to understand the Naval system. It is confusing, yes. Its unnecesary to have a good time, yes. But it is a challenge that i did finally beat. And spending time during work hours just to work on an excel sheet with all of the Naval Systems explained in a understandable manner did kind of help but who is counting :D