I always wish to build a good navy as a minor and winning battles against other minors or even majors. Everyone said it's not worth to build a navy, but I just can't get over the idea of a battleship tearing enemy fleet to sheds. Thanks for the guide man!
I I use Spain I normally rush for super battleships and converted cruiser carrier hulls because they move so quickly. I spam destroyers and light cruisers. If I have subs I keep them behind yo catch any stragglers that break away. I refit them later after I’m mostly through the war and know I can win. That way by the time I’m almost done the battleship and carrier will be done and will compliment the other ships I already have. I just refit them up later on with better tech and may occasionally make a handful of the more powerful ships since they are so expensive. I normally only try this in RT56
5:27 you cannot put the torpedoes you research in the naval weapons tree on a submarine, those are for surface ships. For each submarine hull you research, you get a better variant of the submarine torpedo tubes. Like with the engines, for each ship you research you get a more modern engine for that class of ship.
Holy shit it’s so nice not having to sit through an hour long rant. I can tell you only shoe horned the most valuable info here and the condensed style makes this so much easier. Very appreciated dude🤘🏻
Not stealing your time with ranting as well as being entertaining was the goal of the video alongside teaching navy of course! Glad you think it did that
Without a doubt the best video on Navy I have ever seen. Been playing HoI4 since release and never understood the Navy until now. I hope to see you explain more things about this game so many others including myself can improve greatly.
It's not a good video though, he is completely incorrect on the beta. CA's are useless now, light attack BCs are better. Screens also don't tank damage, they simply stop torpedoes penetrating into your back line.
Truth about navy in hoi4, is that there just isn’t any time for it. In a game I’d rather put my research into things that actually matter, rather then research every little gun and ship type. It would be great if paradox separated normal research from naval and gave us a base research slot or 2 for navy.
Just wanna say I've played for years and have always just defaulted to submarines because the navy shit was intimidating, but this is the first video that really made things make sense for me. Great job, not too much infortmation/data that it becomes hard to follow, but covers all the important stuff.
Thank you so much for this! I have 3000 hours in Hoi4 and yet have always sidestepped navy as much as possible, this video and the template video helped me tremendously. Very well made video as well, I enjoyed all the sick navy clips to help psych me up haha
Glad it helped you get into it! If you want a fun playthrough with that many hours try playing Portugal and becoming the global naval power, its doable.
Putting Never Repair on means that if a ship is damaged to the point of going 1.3 knots, then the entire fleet will go at that speed to keep pace. I don't think this applies in battles, where I'm confident each ship goes as fast as it can, but that would require micro-managing your fleets without to ensure that you don't end up having your fleets as sitting ducks for the far superior and more efficient naval bombers (In multiplayer, it is more efficient to not build a navy and to instead spam CAS capable of naval bombing, or just naval bombers). This would also mean that if you forget to split off a damaged ship, the whole fleet could get caught out if you are genuinely being chased by a superior force, or if you're in a battle, that ship could be so slow it can't retreat and will get caught up to and sink anyway. I'd recommend setting high repair priority and automatic split-off, meaning if a ship is damaged above 5%-10%, it will create a mini fleet, return to the nearest port, repair, then return to the parent fleet. The downside here is that a single ship is a sitting duck, so that's why you concentrate aerial and escort forces in the areas where ships would split off to, to ensure a safe return.
First playthrough and i hard focus industry and and trying to focus ships too (im a minor no dlc for it) My biggest sink is a british battleship and its escort (helping the war effort)
Thanks for this video, man. First time I've had free time in a while to do games and I wanted to pick this one up but it's a lot of info. Gonna go make a huge submarine fleet now. Cheers
I have watched MANY HOI4 Navy tutorials over the years, and was intimidated by some of them and disinterested in others. THIS tutorial hit many of the points that I needed explained to start using my Navy well. 10/10 beginner Navy tutorial!!
The best video I've ever seen when it comes to Navy, thank you so much! I wasn't able to play with my own country (Japan) because it requires so much Navy knowledge, but I think this video will do. Thanks!
VERY well put together video, not only have you done your research and are up to date with everything, but its put together in an organised and easy to understand/follow. Thanks for this, you've saved me many hours of research.
Great video man. Very informative stuff and it definitely helped to imagine the ships in more "RPG"-centric roles. Almost 1500 hours in and I still suck with navy and well, airforce now with bba. Some of the changes massively borked things so it's been hard to figure out how to manage through these huge changes.;
Yes, I like hoi4 naval combat but very rarely i would sink something. then y played japan and made a fleet following this guide, and i have sunk all of the US navy, thank you for the biggest dopamine hits i have ever experienced in a hoi4 game.
You underestimate small shops amor. A light cruiser with amor will almost always be attacked by enemy light cruisers and destroyers. If the have a amor that is higher than the enemy piercing they are almost indestructible. And they will destroy the screenships opening the area for torpedo attacks against he enemy large ships. This is crucial.
3:35. The use of snorkels on U-boats were not for them to help spot enemy ships. The purpose was for the U-boats to operate under water by using their diesel engines. Hence reduced the reliance on electric batteries which needed recharging after extended use when under water. When recharging electric batteries, an U-boat needs to surface and hence increased its risk of being detected.
Great video and some genuinely helpful tips that hopefully stop me getting wiped out as Italy every time 1939 comes around :) I never knew spotting and positioning was so impactful so will stop removing scout plains from my cruisers and maintain a 4:1 ratio instead of the 2:1 I currently do
Very amazing guide! The only thing I wish now was best starts for building Navies don’t know industrially when to start making them which types and when to build dockyards
Thanks! Thats a tough one to put in, for best starts certainly the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan come out on top. To a lesser degree Spain, USSR, China, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Portugal are all solid. As for when to start building dockyards earlier is better as you build a lot of your ships earlier, but by doing so you hurt your overall economy by sacrificing civs. Its really based on the game itself and your priorities which sounds like a non answer but that's just the case.
Thank you very much, I've been really enjoying your tutorials. Perhaps you could add timestamps/video sections to your videos so we can skip to the sections we're interested in more easily? I think I've already seen it on some of your other videos.
I watched the guide and the templates and tried Italy but my navy got sunk in one battle against the uk. I had enough destroyers and didn’t refit but made your heavy cruisers but they all sunk. Btw awesome guide it’s for me to experiment more on navies in hoi4.
Britains navy is basically the big final naval boss of hoi4. You have to have a huge navy and engage them well to win it if they have their fleet together. Was your navy around their size?
Late comment but Italy is my favorite country to play as, and in the early stages of the war you have to hide from the UK fleet. Build plenty of naval bombers and keep your fleet docked in port. As soon as war breaks out, take your most mobile land divisions and rush to take the Suez canal. I only send out my surface fleet in order to launch a naval invasion of Gibraltar. There's some luck involved as hopefully your naval bombers did enough to cause the UK surface fleet to go for repairs or hopefully it otherwise won't be present to prevent launching the invasion. Once you close off your sea, then take your time removing all safe ports any lingering UK fleet can use. You do not want to force a large naval engagement early because you will likely lose unless you are exploiting the AI with cheese or console commands.
You don’t need to use your main fleet to spot the enemy. Use a light fast screen ship with attacks disable to spot. An admiral that have spotter and less visible are always the best for the spotter ships. The mains fleet will stay at the port waiting for an opportunity tho strike when an enemy fleet is found. Remember a consistent medium fleet might be best than a huge fleet because of the position debuff. Bad position will almost disable your fleet.
Amazing video with great points! 1500 hours on my Steam and I didn't even realise ships had org stats like land troops do. One thing that does bug me about the navy though is knowing how big a fleet can be before getting debuffs for overstacking. In my latest playthough i'm sticking with a 2 - 3 - 3 rule; 2 CV's, 3 BB's, 3 CA's and an even number of screens of 2 CL's and 2 DD's for each heavy ship. This puts each fleet size at around 40 ships but I am not sure if I can make it bigger without issues like positioning debuffs. Another aspect I struggle with is convoy escort and how many ships are needed per convoy to actually be efficient enough. I've assigned 20 ships to escort missions before and only sat on something like 5% efficiency.
I answered this on a reddit thread recently so I will copy and paste that "Going "Over" The limit deals with positioning. Positioning is a factor of naval combat primarily dictated at the start of the battle by spotting, as well as fleet sizes. There is not 1 number that dictates going over your limit and hurting this metric, its always relative to the other fleet. This means if in MP you met another player with a death stack with yours it wouldn't impact heavily. Positioning when it goes lower than 100% causes your screen coverage to go down. Your screens do the job of protecting your back lines from being hit, they intercept and with good speed will be missed. When your screen coverage is not at 100% there is a chance damage from the enemy will target your back lines which is much more damaging as losing a cruiser is drastic in a battle. The lower your positioning the lower your coverage goes. This is also of course dictated by you screen to capital ration 3:1 being optimal but 4:1 being better to cover you through the beginning to middle of the engagement. And capital to carrier ratio which is 1:1. Low positioning also decreases damage output up to 50% max at 0% positioning. So this stat is super important. Getting back to fleet size, again its dependent on the size of the enemy. So this is another reason intel is so key in hoi4. Infiltrating with a spy network will give you info on the enemy fleet to counter it, but also tell you where their task forces are and what size they are so you can fit your fleet to match You lose 25% positioning for every 100% more ships you have than the enemy. Lest say as the US you engage the enemy with a task force of 125 ships and they have 100. That means you have 25% more ships. (0.25 x 0.25) = 6.25% loss to org This scales dramatically. Lets say you get a death stack as the US of 300 ships and engage a German fleet of 100 ships. (0.25 x 3.0) = 75% positioning loss. This is also the maximum you can take from oversized fleets in 75% positioning loss. Now if you engage the enemy first with spotting, have a trait for positioning on your admiral, and the officer corp bonus you will still have a good bit. So really its about how you use your fleet and how you build your officer corp and admirals. One other note to make is that having more carriers also give you a positioning hit HIGHER_CARRIER_RATIO_POSITIONING_PENALTY_FACTOR = 0.2; -- penalty if other side has stronger carrier air force MAX\_CARRIER\_RATIO\_POSITIONING\_PENALTY\_FACTOR = 0.2; -- max penalty from stronger carrier air force Its vague in its language but you get up to another 20% positioning loss from having way more carriers. This can stack on tip of your fleet size. Given you have a death stack and they dont you probably have more carriers or they have none. So it goes up to 95% positioning loss which is bad." The amount needed is based on the amount of convoys moving through the sea zone, so you have to take it case by case
@@Hammurabae Thanks for the reply! Great explanation of how death stacking penalties work. Basically you want to match you enemy fleet size as much as possible but naval doctrine and admiral skills mean you can still stack more ships in a fleet against them depending on your doctrine choice. Quantity is king for convoy escort I guess, would still be nice if there was an actual number we could find. 1 convoy needs x escorts per sea zone is something I yearn to know.
Finally a great video on navy Just 2 questions 1- I need to know how much of each fleet should i have ? Like 1-2 battleships 3-4 crusiers 7-14 destroyers? 2- Should i go with all massive fleet (+100 ships) or i have to divide them ?
I do 4 CV, 12 HC, 8 LC, and 56 DD. It really depends on who you are fighting. Are you fighting the USSR in the Baltics? Are you fighting the British? If your fleet is too large, you get a -75% attack penalty (and other debuffs)! But if it is too small, you'll get stack wiped. For example, that fleet as Norway almost got destroyed fighting a Soviet destroyer force since I had very low positioning, but the same exact force stack wiped the Soviet fleet as the Germans in the Black Sea. I am sure I am not meta, but go experiment and do what's fun for you!
Does surface or sub detection increases gun hit chance? You can hit submarines or other ships only if you have detected them in naval combat? Also can torpedos hit screen ships and is it worth it to put anti-sub destroyers to task force?
Hey Hammurabae! Good guide on all the basics. I still have a couple very specific questions though. 1) I have a doom-stack strike force that I want to engage the enemy's main fleet (which I have adequately spotted and even tied up trying and failing to engage my own DD and subs) but it keeps zipping around mopping up penny-packets of DD and CL and chasing down raiding subs instead, not to mention burning up a lot of oil. Is there a way to force the strike force to prioritize a specific ongoing naval combat? Do I just park it in the relevant area and turn strike force off? I'm looking for some kind of manual override of the default behavior. I want to start the Pacific wars with something decisive so I can follow up with a chain of naval invasions. 2) If you had 100 dd's (with good ASW, torps, smoke screens, and 38+kn) in the Pacific Theater, how would you split them up into task forces? I usually put 10 sets of 5 on patrol (engage at favorable odds) and 10 sets of 5 on convoy escort, but that was kind of arbitrary. What are your thoughts there? Single player Japan vs. Allies, for context.
Of course! 1: So strike force is not the best mission and depends upon your fleets individual engagement level. Your engagement rule must be on always engage for it to attack a huge fleet like that, not sure if you have that on already. Generally if you have that on it should intercept, but alternatively you can just watch yourself for the neemy fleet to engage your convoys or patrols and manually send your death stack. Do so by turning off all active missions for it, click the select button, and right click the tile the naval battle is happening to have it move there. 2: Depends on what im doing there. If I have troops on the ground and need the convoy supply badly I would use patrols otherwise not. Generally I would have 1 deathstack in the region which I would strike on while using submarines to convoy raid the enemy. IF they get hit by enemy fleets the death stack should take care of them, if not you continuously attrition. If the enemy has their own wolfpacks put your anti sub destroyers on patrol missions to hunt them down with minor escorts. THey will also do the job of pulling out the enemies bigger fleets which you can use the death stack to kill. Also long range naval bombers help a ton, dont ignore those ever I have around half the video written for a naval mission tutorial as well, that will probably do a better job of explaining it. But genrelaly if you have death stack for killing fleet always engage and no repair should be one! Hope that helps, happy to answer any other questions or confusiona bout this one.
@@Hammurabae Thanks a bunch! You're right: taking your doom-stack off strike force and manually clicking on the ocean tile will initiate a fight. That helps a ton. I got decisive engagements earlier this way. Woohoo! Though... I'm finding it can also drop sea control elsewhere so a down-side may be leaving yourself open to naval invasions. Always engage is a given. I'm not having a problem with repair when automatic split-off is enabled though, and have enough control I'm not too worried about a lone ship getting picked off close to home. Maybe multiplayer is a different story. DD's on convoy escort seem critical. They don't exactly kill the subs, but they keep your convoys alive and help spot and engage for the patrol forces. Still playing with the right mix. I think the convoy escorts can run smaller than the patrol squadrons since the latter get themselves into trouble more often.
Yes. Make a ship design optimally a cruiser with all of our modules on top the planes for spotting and add it to your fleet. They spot eachother over time, the one who gets to see their other first gets a huge positioning advantage.
What I still find confusing is assigning regions to a specific fleet for a mission. I seems like all the assigned regions (to any of your fleets) are always marked green. So when selecting a fleet you can't see which specific regions of them it's actually assigned to.
I will stand by this till the day I die. My floating bird cages will shread your battleships every time. Never make huge battleships make good carriers (tier 2 or 3)
Tech 1 carriers are not very good due to not being able to put many planes on them and their lower stats. If you get some for free at game start feel free to refit and use to put as many carrier planes intoa battle as possible but expect to lose them. After game start you should only build new carriers tier 2+
3:35 You have confused a snorkel for a periscope. A periscope allows subs to spot ships without surfacing. A snorkel, on the other hand, allows a submarine to run their diesel engines to recharge their batteries without surfacing making them harder for the enemy to spot.
Ok so if I got this right I basically have to build heavy cruisers with a lot of heavy attack and destroyers with a lot of light attack and depth charges to have a good fleet (+ have radar and an airforce to spot enemies)?
Yep! Thats the stright and narrow of it, once you get that down you will be able to find more nuance if you choose to. Subs and naval bombers also work great unless you lose the air war
I wanted to about navy in major countries I do naval Patrol and naval invasion with 2 light cruiser and 18 destroyers, convoy raiding with 20 submarines strike force with 1 carrier 1 battleship 1 battlecruiser and 2 heavy crusier. Am I doing this right? Or should I reduce or increase number of screens or capitals in these naval operations?
Patrol gets your forces to just move through randomly, encountering navies rarely. Naval invasion will protect your convoys moving troops to a naval invasion. Convoy raiding will target enemy convoys and sink them reducing their ability to get resources. Strike force is best for getting naval superiority and your fleet will move to intercept enemy fleets as soon as they're spotted. Depends on what you want, they are all tools for different things
I can never remember the proper way to split forces up. I kind of wish they had a 'make fleet' button, you know? Like in my current game I have the Italian, French, and English navies all under my direct control and getting them in any sort of order is a gigantic pain.
The logistical aspect of navy is its Achilles heel, it really limits peoples interest and makes it seem so intimidating. Even when using it for a while its still a pain and unintuitive.
Probably won't work in MP, but I found decking out my destroyers and light cruisers with duel purpose batteries really slows down all the aircraft damage that Japan and UK likes to dish out. Kind of sad the meta is just death stack with always engage. I had suspected it, but still disappointed.
My main problem with navy as a new player is just how research intensive it seems. Feels like unless I have 5 research slots already, I have to pour everything into navy just to keep up in tech. Should I just skip certain techs and prioritize others?
Really depends on the country, for example: when i play the netherlands i focus on subs to disrupt convoys so i only need the 4 sub techs so when time allows it it just takes 1 slot
Im not an expert by any means but i like having a total of 18 subs spread between regiments of 6 and like 10 in reserve so once a sub gets destroyed i can immediately add a new sub to the regiment 👍🏼
@@Hammurabae Well back then we use warring nation motherland time+local time system for naval night checks. If both checks come ture its night in naval combat. So in some water for these gobally deployed nation there is always or at least mostly no night, Like operating in SEA as British. Roll back the game a few version and carriers can sortie full times all day everyday, as they said in Tora tora tora, "The cannon ball of yesterday can not hit us on today". Time lord magic, thats what make carriers so good in pacific. Its only for night checks on the sea, in land it is fixed long ago.
Very good explanations. It's a pity the video distracts a bit from your very valuable comments, or probably I can't focus well enough, so I had to repeat several times.
I added them to try to make the video a bit more entertaining so people dont doze off, I always did in other naval tutorials where there was just monologuing. Hope it helped anyways
i often see people on reddit say that subs in surface fleet battles are a terrible idea if you already have torpedo destroyers since they contribute to the positioning penalty without contributing much to the fight. is this correct, or is it just another Reddit Moment(tm)?
Awesome guide, however, what I can here for isn’t touched on but briefly. That’s refitting. Even with having upgraded a variant of say a light cruiser, the existing ones are not given the “button” to refit. I’m not sure what I’m missing to properly refit the same hull design. Perhaps it’s the company thing, as in a company upgrades and trait points etc, I tick that when adding improved components and it makes another variant of that ship. I’ve noticed that the AI does not tend to make any more ships than what they start with and what is in que on game start. Nothing new as in 1940 hulls and stay at ‘36. Making it incredibly easy to destroy their fleets.
Thats a good guide, but must admit that those clips from movies/documentaries are distracting. I would prefer just to look on simple screens of what you are talking about. Anyway, good guide.
Always conflicted on that. Unfortunately the YT data says these kinda clips keep people interested wayy more than just gameplay of what im talking about. Glad the guide helped though!
Everyone tells me i am shooting myself to leg by playing italy lol. fighting france + Uk navies alone in mediteranean ... now i understand why i always lose horribly xD still , i have set personal achievement to succesfully fend them off one time... but Malta is damn hard nut to crack. gotta implement your style of fleet organization , make sub fleet , perhaps two. one for just spotting and one for convoy escort.
Taking on two of the most powerful navies at once is never easy 😂 In a situation like that you need good naval bombers to attrition them down before you fully engage
Remember to put AA on your ships, refitting before big battles will also be huge in make or break especially adding radar and control systyems. Never engage without green air, and optimally have some wings on air recon where youre trying to engage their fleets. Also remember naval terrain is huge based on your enemies fleet comp.✊
I have a couple of questions. First, could you share the web with the doctrine bonuses? Second, a while ago I read that light cruisers with armour were really strong as they can take a lot of damage, and they could be a quality over cuantity approach to naval warfare. And last but not least, you said that port strike is the best doctrine as it buffs planes and subs? I didn't thought it would improve normal planes, only carrier ones, and I thought that rade interdiction was the better one for subs.
Sure! The wiki is generally a great resource hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_doctrine Maybe way way back. Speed is king now, so armor really only goes on battleships. Light cruisers were meta due to a game mechanic failing that allowed you to hide them in the second line. Navy has changed a lot over the last couple years Base strike gives all your planes a 50% increase to port strike and a 40% bonus to naval targeting universally for planes. Those are really really really strong Trade interdictions is absolutely the best purely for subs, but subs need planes to be able to utilize properly if you dont build a proper fleet so base strike is generally better due to being able to make the planes you use incredibly stronger
@@Hammurabae thanks for the detailed explanation friend! Good to know, especially the plane modifiers. What are some plane designs that you would think for land-to-sea operations?
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I always wish to build a good navy as a minor and winning battles against other minors or even majors. Everyone said it's not worth to build a navy, but I just can't get over the idea of a battleship tearing enemy fleet to sheds. Thanks for the guide man!
Enjoy! Im putting out a navy templates video next week too
having lot of fun playing full navy sweden, you can become quite a force and in later years 41+ you can even fight majors if they dont focus on navy
@@rustcohle3088 cool aoe2 monk pfp
@@quannguyen297 sadly i can Wololo navy only in peace deals
I I use Spain I normally rush for super battleships and converted cruiser carrier hulls because they move so quickly. I spam destroyers and light cruisers. If I have subs I keep them behind yo catch any stragglers that break away. I refit them later after I’m mostly through the war and know I can win. That way by the time I’m almost done the battleship and carrier will be done and will compliment the other ships I already have. I just refit them up later on with better tech and may occasionally make a handful of the more powerful ships since they are so expensive. I normally only try this in RT56
5:27 you cannot put the torpedoes you research in the naval weapons tree on a submarine, those are for surface ships.
For each submarine hull you research, you get a better variant of the submarine torpedo tubes. Like with the engines, for each ship you research you get a more modern engine for that class of ship.
Thanks for throwing that in here. I thought I included that but must have missed it.
"I don't make meta guides" is an instant thumbs up from me.
I also avoided the Navy when I started playing but now I’m starting to get more serious about campaigns so this will help.
Holy shit it’s so nice not having to sit through an hour long rant. I can tell you only shoe horned the most valuable info here and the condensed style makes this so much easier. Very appreciated dude🤘🏻
Not stealing your time with ranting as well as being entertaining was the goal of the video alongside teaching navy of course! Glad you think it did that
Without a doubt the best video on Navy I have ever seen. Been playing HoI4 since release and never understood the Navy until now. I hope to see you explain more things about this game so many others including myself can improve greatly.
Thanks, glad it helped you learn!
It's not a good video though, he is completely incorrect on the beta. CA's are useless now, light attack BCs are better. Screens also don't tank damage, they simply stop torpedoes penetrating into your back line.
Truth about navy in hoi4, is that there just isn’t any time for it. In a game I’d rather put my research into things that actually matter, rather then research every little gun and ship type. It would be great if paradox separated normal research from naval and gave us a base research slot or 2 for navy.
Seperating naval research would be huge. Its still a lot of fun, you just have to focus less on land
You’re doing gods work I wish I had this to watch a year ago
Glad you enjoyed dude. And same, it was such a pain to learn
Just wanna say I've played for years and have always just defaulted to submarines because the navy shit was intimidating, but this is the first video that really made things make sense for me. Great job, not too much infortmation/data that it becomes hard to follow, but covers all the important stuff.
Glad it helped, hopefully you start to enjoy the system. Once youre past the understanding/learning curve its really enjoyable and rewarding.
Thank you so much for this! I have 3000 hours in Hoi4 and yet have always sidestepped navy as much as possible, this video and the template video helped me tremendously. Very well made video as well, I enjoyed all the sick navy clips to help psych me up haha
Glad it helped you get into it! If you want a fun playthrough with that many hours try playing Portugal and becoming the global naval power, its doable.
Putting Never Repair on means that if a ship is damaged to the point of going 1.3 knots, then the entire fleet will go at that speed to keep pace. I don't think this applies in battles, where I'm confident each ship goes as fast as it can, but that would require micro-managing your fleets without to ensure that you don't end up having your fleets as sitting ducks for the far superior and more efficient naval bombers (In multiplayer, it is more efficient to not build a navy and to instead spam CAS capable of naval bombing, or just naval bombers). This would also mean that if you forget to split off a damaged ship, the whole fleet could get caught out if you are genuinely being chased by a superior force, or if you're in a battle, that ship could be so slow it can't retreat and will get caught up to and sink anyway.
I'd recommend setting high repair priority and automatic split-off, meaning if a ship is damaged above 5%-10%, it will create a mini fleet, return to the nearest port, repair, then return to the parent fleet. The downside here is that a single ship is a sitting duck, so that's why you concentrate aerial and escort forces in the areas where ships would split off to, to ensure a safe return.
First playthrough and i hard focus industry and and trying to focus ships too (im a minor no dlc for it)
My biggest sink is a british battleship and its escort (helping the war effort)
Remember that all ships are good at convoy raiding, not just subs and theyre one of the biggest ways to have an impact on a big war even as a minor!
carriers are fixed now and work properly
Yep! Theyre very very effective again
@@Hammurabae i know it’s amazingly as beans
Thanks for this video, man.
First time I've had free time in a while to do games and I wanted to pick this one up but it's a lot of info.
Gonna go make a huge submarine fleet now. Cheers
I have watched MANY HOI4 Navy tutorials over the years, and was intimidated by some of them and disinterested in others. THIS tutorial hit many of the points that I needed explained to start using my Navy well. 10/10 beginner Navy tutorial!!
Thanks I've always felt offput by naval stuff but this actually makes it look fun and more simple.
The best video I've ever seen when it comes to Navy, thank you so much! I wasn't able to play with my own country (Japan) because it requires so much Navy knowledge, but I think this video will do. Thanks!
Glad it helped! The Japanese navy is one of the best to start with, you should have no issue ruling the waves
VERY well put together video, not only have you done your research and are up to date with everything, but its put together in an organised and easy to understand/follow. Thanks for this, you've saved me many hours of research.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Clearly he hasn't done any research because heavy cruisers are useless now...
appreciate this quite a bit, told me a lot more about stuff I never even knew about.
Great video man. Very informative stuff and it definitely helped to imagine the ships in more "RPG"-centric roles. Almost 1500 hours in and I still suck with navy and well, airforce now with bba. Some of the changes massively borked things so it's been hard to figure out how to manage through these huge changes.;
They naval changes definitely made things difficult, glad it helped with understanding it!
A thousand hours later and I feel like I'm finally ready for this.
Yes, I like hoi4 naval combat but very rarely i would sink something. then y played japan and made a fleet following this guide, and i have sunk all of the US navy, thank you for the biggest dopamine hits i have ever experienced in a hoi4 game.
Happy it helped! Welcome to the few of us who are addicted to Naval dopamine rushes 🙏
You underestimate small shops amor.
A light cruiser with amor will almost always be attacked by enemy light cruisers and destroyers. If the have a amor that is higher than the enemy piercing they are almost indestructible. And they will destroy the screenships opening the area for torpedo attacks against he enemy large ships. This is crucial.
Thank you so much for this
Fantastic explanatory video
This video really helped, i managed to dominate the atlantic in one of my games
Very helpful video thanks so much. Can’t wait to get started on this game and build the fleets of my dreams Lmao
3:35. The use of snorkels on U-boats were not for them to help spot enemy ships. The purpose was for the U-boats to operate under water by using their diesel engines. Hence reduced the reliance on electric batteries which needed recharging after extended use when under water. When recharging electric batteries, an U-boat needs to surface and hence increased its risk of being detected.
You are so underrated man, really good tutorial
Thanks dude 🙏
Great informative video man, thanks a ton!
Youre welcome!
Thank you sir for this excellent guide. Very helpful indeed.
Youre very welcome!
Great video and some genuinely helpful tips that hopefully stop me getting wiped out as Italy every time 1939 comes around :)
I never knew spotting and positioning was so impactful so will stop removing scout plains from my cruisers and maintain a 4:1 ratio instead of the 2:1 I currently do
Very amazing guide! The only thing I wish now was best starts for building Navies don’t know industrially when to start making them which types and when to build dockyards
Thanks! Thats a tough one to put in, for best starts certainly the USA, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Japan come out on top. To a lesser degree Spain, USSR, China, Turkey, Brazil, Mexico, Portugal are all solid. As for when to start building dockyards earlier is better as you build a lot of your ships earlier, but by doing so you hurt your overall economy by sacrificing civs. Its really based on the game itself and your priorities which sounds like a non answer but that's just the case.
Thank you very much, I've been really enjoying your tutorials. Perhaps you could add timestamps/video sections to your videos so we can skip to the sections we're interested in more easily? I think I've already seen it on some of your other videos.
Should be in the video already?
I watched the guide and the templates and tried Italy but my navy got sunk in one battle against the uk. I had enough destroyers and didn’t refit but made your heavy cruisers but they all sunk. Btw awesome guide it’s for me to experiment more on navies in hoi4.
Britains navy is basically the big final naval boss of hoi4. You have to have a huge navy and engage them well to win it if they have their fleet together. Was your navy around their size?
Late comment but Italy is my favorite country to play as, and in the early stages of the war you have to hide from the UK fleet. Build plenty of naval bombers and keep your fleet docked in port. As soon as war breaks out, take your most mobile land divisions and rush to take the Suez canal. I only send out my surface fleet in order to launch a naval invasion of Gibraltar. There's some luck involved as hopefully your naval bombers did enough to cause the UK surface fleet to go for repairs or hopefully it otherwise won't be present to prevent launching the invasion. Once you close off your sea, then take your time removing all safe ports any lingering UK fleet can use. You do not want to force a large naval engagement early because you will likely lose unless you are exploiting the AI with cheese or console commands.
You don’t need to use your main fleet to spot the enemy.
Use a light fast screen ship with attacks disable to spot. An admiral that have spotter and less visible are always the best for the spotter ships.
The mains fleet will stay at the port waiting for an opportunity tho strike when an enemy fleet is found.
Remember a consistent medium fleet might be best than a huge fleet because of the position debuff. Bad position will almost disable your fleet.
Perfect guide!
Thank you!
Amazing video with great points! 1500 hours on my Steam and I didn't even realise ships had org stats like land troops do. One thing that does bug me about the navy though is knowing how big a fleet can be before getting debuffs for overstacking. In my latest playthough i'm sticking with a 2 - 3 - 3 rule; 2 CV's, 3 BB's, 3 CA's and an even number of screens of 2 CL's and 2 DD's for each heavy ship. This puts each fleet size at around 40 ships but I am not sure if I can make it bigger without issues like positioning debuffs. Another aspect I struggle with is convoy escort and how many ships are needed per convoy to actually be efficient enough. I've assigned 20 ships to escort missions before and only sat on something like 5% efficiency.
I answered this on a reddit thread recently so I will copy and paste that
"Going "Over" The limit deals with positioning. Positioning is a factor of naval combat primarily dictated at the start of the battle by spotting, as well as fleet sizes. There is not 1 number that dictates going over your limit and hurting this metric, its always relative to the other fleet. This means if in MP you met another player with a death stack with yours it wouldn't impact heavily.
Positioning when it goes lower than 100% causes your screen coverage to go down. Your screens do the job of protecting your back lines from being hit, they intercept and with good speed will be missed. When your screen coverage is not at 100% there is a chance damage from the enemy will target your back lines which is much more damaging as losing a cruiser is drastic in a battle. The lower your positioning the lower your coverage goes. This is also of course dictated by you screen to capital ration 3:1 being optimal but 4:1 being better to cover you through the beginning to middle of the engagement. And capital to carrier ratio which is 1:1. Low positioning also decreases damage output up to 50% max at 0% positioning. So this stat is super important.
Getting back to fleet size, again its dependent on the size of the enemy. So this is another reason intel is so key in hoi4. Infiltrating with a spy network will give you info on the enemy fleet to counter it, but also tell you where their task forces are and what size they are so you can fit your fleet to match
You lose 25% positioning for every 100% more ships you have than the enemy. Lest say as the US you engage the enemy with a task force of 125 ships and they have 100. That means you have 25% more ships. (0.25 x 0.25) = 6.25% loss to org
This scales dramatically. Lets say you get a death stack as the US of 300 ships and engage a German fleet of 100 ships. (0.25 x 3.0) = 75% positioning loss. This is also the maximum you can take from oversized fleets in 75% positioning loss. Now if you engage the enemy first with spotting, have a trait for positioning on your admiral, and the officer corp bonus you will still have a good bit.
So really its about how you use your fleet and how you build your officer corp and admirals.
One other note to make is that having more carriers also give you a positioning hit
HIGHER_CARRIER_RATIO_POSITIONING_PENALTY_FACTOR = 0.2; -- penalty if other side has stronger carrier air force
MAX\_CARRIER\_RATIO\_POSITIONING\_PENALTY\_FACTOR = 0.2; -- max penalty from stronger carrier air force
Its vague in its language but you get up to another 20% positioning loss from having way more carriers. This can stack on tip of your fleet size. Given you have a death stack and they dont you probably have more carriers or they have none. So it goes up to 95% positioning loss which is bad."
The amount needed is based on the amount of convoys moving through the sea zone, so you have to take it case by case
@@Hammurabae Thanks for the reply! Great explanation of how death stacking penalties work. Basically you want to match you enemy fleet size as much as possible but naval doctrine and admiral skills mean you can still stack more ships in a fleet against them depending on your doctrine choice.
Quantity is king for convoy escort I guess, would still be nice if there was an actual number we could find. 1 convoy needs x escorts per sea zone is something I yearn to know.
Easily the best channel name I've seen.
For your musket battle - Naval battle analogy the submarines could be cavalry lmao. Also thanks for the video, wish I found it sooner.
That would have been a good way to put it haha
19:50 Now I know why people watch this part so much, IT FREAKING CONFUSING!
Finally a great video on navy
Just 2 questions
1- I need to know how much of each fleet should i have ? Like 1-2 battleships 3-4 crusiers 7-14 destroyers?
2- Should i go with all massive fleet (+100 ships) or i have to divide them ?
I do 4 CV, 12 HC, 8 LC, and 56 DD. It really depends on who you are fighting. Are you fighting the USSR in the Baltics? Are you fighting the British? If your fleet is too large, you get a -75% attack penalty (and other debuffs)! But if it is too small, you'll get stack wiped. For example, that fleet as Norway almost got destroyed fighting a Soviet destroyer force since I had very low positioning, but the same exact force stack wiped the Soviet fleet as the Germans in the Black Sea. I am sure I am not meta, but go experiment and do what's fun for you!
Great guide
Thanks man!
Naval guides come. Naval guides go. And yet I have no clue on how it works.
What didnt you get after watching?
Thanks
Does surface or sub detection increases gun hit chance? You can hit submarines or other ships only if you have detected them in naval combat? Also can torpedos hit screen ships and is it worth it to put anti-sub destroyers to task force?
Hey Hammurabae! Good guide on all the basics. I still have a couple very specific questions though.
1) I have a doom-stack strike force that I want to engage the enemy's main fleet (which I have adequately spotted and even tied up trying and failing to engage my own DD and subs) but it keeps zipping around mopping up penny-packets of DD and CL and chasing down raiding subs instead, not to mention burning up a lot of oil. Is there a way to force the strike force to prioritize a specific ongoing naval combat? Do I just park it in the relevant area and turn strike force off? I'm looking for some kind of manual override of the default behavior. I want to start the Pacific wars with something decisive so I can follow up with a chain of naval invasions.
2) If you had 100 dd's (with good ASW, torps, smoke screens, and 38+kn) in the Pacific Theater, how would you split them up into task forces? I usually put 10 sets of 5 on patrol (engage at favorable odds) and 10 sets of 5 on convoy escort, but that was kind of arbitrary. What are your thoughts there? Single player Japan vs. Allies, for context.
Of course!
1: So strike force is not the best mission and depends upon your fleets individual engagement level. Your engagement rule must be on always engage for it to attack a huge fleet like that, not sure if you have that on already. Generally if you have that on it should intercept, but alternatively you can just watch yourself for the neemy fleet to engage your convoys or patrols and manually send your death stack. Do so by turning off all active missions for it, click the select button, and right click the tile the naval battle is happening to have it move there.
2: Depends on what im doing there. If I have troops on the ground and need the convoy supply badly I would use patrols otherwise not. Generally I would have 1 deathstack in the region which I would strike on while using submarines to convoy raid the enemy. IF they get hit by enemy fleets the death stack should take care of them, if not you continuously attrition. If the enemy has their own wolfpacks put your anti sub destroyers on patrol missions to hunt them down with minor escorts. THey will also do the job of pulling out the enemies bigger fleets which you can use the death stack to kill. Also long range naval bombers help a ton, dont ignore those ever
I have around half the video written for a naval mission tutorial as well, that will probably do a better job of explaining it. But genrelaly if you have death stack for killing fleet always engage and no repair should be one!
Hope that helps, happy to answer any other questions or confusiona bout this one.
@@Hammurabae Thanks a bunch! You're right: taking your doom-stack off strike force and manually clicking on the ocean tile will initiate a fight. That helps a ton. I got decisive engagements earlier this way. Woohoo! Though... I'm finding it can also drop sea control elsewhere so a down-side may be leaving yourself open to naval invasions.
Always engage is a given. I'm not having a problem with repair when automatic split-off is enabled though, and have enough control I'm not too worried about a lone ship getting picked off close to home. Maybe multiplayer is a different story.
DD's on convoy escort seem critical. They don't exactly kill the subs, but they keep your convoys alive and help spot and engage for the patrol forces. Still playing with the right mix. I think the convoy escorts can run smaller than the patrol squadrons since the latter get themselves into trouble more often.
Does the snorkel allow a sub to see enemy ships or does it allow the sub to run and exhaust it's diesel engines while submerged?
IT reduces visibility meaning its harder to hit your submarines. They die less often. No effect on fuel
Can you do vid explaining the navy missions ie patrol, strike force and when to use them
I can at some point!
My ship tech screen doesnt have all those techs coming out of the ships, is that a dlc thing or something or just something they took away?
Okay but like the amount of detail just in the navy part of this war game is crazy good
The naval mechanics are great
thank you, now i understand it.
Glad it helped!
So have one set of ships scouting and then another on strike force or do they automatically enter battle when they find each other?
Yes. Make a ship design optimally a cruiser with all of our modules on top the planes for spotting and add it to your fleet. They spot eachother over time, the one who gets to see their other first gets a huge positioning advantage.
Thx
What I still find confusing is assigning regions to a specific fleet for a mission. I seems like all the assigned regions (to any of your fleets) are always marked green. So when selecting a fleet you can't see which specific regions of them it's actually assigned to.
This is a really stupid question but could you possibly make a guide if you don't have by Blood alone by any chance or do not use it
Why would Basestrike be the best doctrine for subs? Trade Interdiction gives them much more stats
I will stand by this till the day I die. My floating bird cages will shread your battleships every time. Never make huge battleships make good carriers (tier 2 or 3)
I'll need this for the next time I play Iran
I remember that navy haha. We gotta do another one of those again sometime
Paradox on their way to build a full naval battles system for people to just spam destroyers and naval bombers
You can, its much more fun to do a proper navy tbh
Question: You said a large number of carriers is very powerful (if inefficient to build). Is that true even if they are mostly tech 1 carriers?
Tech 1 carriers are not very good due to not being able to put many planes on them and their lower stats. If you get some for free at game start feel free to refit and use to put as many carrier planes intoa battle as possible but expect to lose them. After game start you should only build new carriers tier 2+
3:35 You have confused a snorkel for a periscope. A periscope allows subs to spot ships without surfacing. A snorkel, on the other hand, allows a submarine to run their diesel engines to recharge their batteries without surfacing making them harder for the enemy to spot.
Ok so if I got this right I basically have to build heavy cruisers with a lot of heavy attack and destroyers with a lot of light attack and depth charges to have a good fleet (+ have radar and an airforce to spot enemies)?
Yep! Thats the stright and narrow of it, once you get that down you will be able to find more nuance if you choose to. Subs and naval bombers also work great unless you lose the air war
This feature is kind of unused really (by a lot of people) so it will be very interesting
Learning navy is the easiest way to get dramatically better at hoi4 honestly
I just realized it's the same channel that did the millenium dawn guides
Hello there
I wanted to about navy in major countries I do naval Patrol and naval invasion with 2 light cruiser and 18 destroyers,
convoy raiding with 20 submarines
strike force with 1 carrier 1 battleship 1 battlecruiser and 2 heavy crusier.
Am I doing this right? Or should I reduce or increase number of screens or capitals in these naval operations?
Patrol gets your forces to just move through randomly, encountering navies rarely. Naval invasion will protect your convoys moving troops to a naval invasion. Convoy raiding will target enemy convoys and sink them reducing their ability to get resources.
Strike force is best for getting naval superiority and your fleet will move to intercept enemy fleets as soon as they're spotted.
Depends on what you want, they are all tools for different things
I can never remember the proper way to split forces up. I kind of wish they had a 'make fleet' button, you know?
Like in my current game I have the Italian, French, and English navies all under my direct control and getting them in any sort of order is a gigantic pain.
The logistical aspect of navy is its Achilles heel, it really limits peoples interest and makes it seem so intimidating. Even when using it for a while its still a pain and unintuitive.
How many of what type of planes should I put on my carriers?
Naval bombers optimally, as many as you can fit on max flight decks. Dont forget to put AA on them.
Probably won't work in MP, but I found decking out my destroyers and light cruisers with duel purpose batteries really slows down all the aircraft damage that Japan and UK likes to dish out.
Kind of sad the meta is just death stack with always engage. I had suspected it, but still disappointed.
My main problem with navy as a new player is just how research intensive it seems. Feels like unless I have 5 research slots already, I have to pour everything into navy just to keep up in tech. Should I just skip certain techs and prioritize others?
Really depends on the country, for example: when i play the netherlands i focus on subs to disrupt convoys so i only need the 4 sub techs so when time allows it it just takes 1 slot
Hey, i still dont understand how do i make more ships? Like how you recruit infantry and train, can you do the same with ships??
This video explains it. Ship production comes from dockyards, put ships into production in the menu. you can train like infantry after in sea zones
How many ships to form a perfect task force?, like 15 subs are good for raining convoys?
Im not an expert by any means but i like having a total of 18 subs spread between regiments of 6 and like 10 in reserve so once a sub gets destroyed i can immediately add a new sub to the regiment 👍🏼
Whats the movie/show that you were playing when you were explaining the tech 5:55
Yamamoto
Back in when you make this video some nation/water got no nights. And we can finally make flote port for naval invasion.
Hmm?
@@Hammurabae Well back then we use warring nation motherland time+local time system for naval night checks. If both checks come ture its night in naval combat. So in some water for these gobally deployed nation there is always or at least mostly no night, Like operating in SEA as British. Roll back the game a few version and carriers can sortie full times all day everyday, as they said in Tora tora tora, "The cannon ball of yesterday can not hit us on today". Time lord magic, thats what make carriers so good in pacific.
Its only for night checks on the sea, in land it is fixed long ago.
Very good explanations. It's a pity the video distracts a bit from your very valuable comments, or probably I can't focus well enough, so I had to repeat several times.
I added them to try to make the video a bit more entertaining so people dont doze off, I always did in other naval tutorials where there was just monologuing. Hope it helped anyways
i often see people on reddit say that subs in surface fleet battles are a terrible idea if you already have torpedo destroyers since they contribute to the positioning penalty without contributing much to the fight. is this correct, or is it just another Reddit Moment(tm)?
My naval tech tree only has ships not specific tech. was there a change since this was recorded?
Do you have all dlc? Specifically man the guns?
Great video, but what is the movie in the background called
Midway and Greyhound
we need this to md
Made one for MD already czcams.com/video/UGN5gppPOFk/video.html
Awesome guide, however, what I can here for isn’t touched on but briefly. That’s refitting. Even with having upgraded a variant of say a light cruiser, the existing ones are not given the “button” to refit. I’m not sure what I’m missing to properly refit the same hull design. Perhaps it’s the company thing, as in a company upgrades and trait points etc, I tick that when adding improved components and it makes another variant of that ship. I’ve noticed that the AI does not tend to make any more ships than what they start with and what is in que on game start. Nothing new as in 1940 hulls and stay at ‘36. Making it incredibly easy to destroy their fleets.
100%, its super key and I didnt touch on it. Im making an updated version of the vid soon ish and will go into detail
So all ships (besides the submarines) should be controlled by just one admiral?
If you can fit them under a really good one sure. Generally I recommend having two, 1 for you main fleet, and 1 for your subs as their traits overlap.
Me, who starts building my Navy in 42 as Germany:
-So, I guess I'm a role player 😢
wow, video made me instantly sub
Would you design Japan's Torpedo Cruisers as Heavy or Light Cruiser?
Light
@@holechek Why? Last time I made them heavy so they're protected by the screens
Researching torpedos doesnt make sub torpedos better
I still don't get it. Too many random ship templates with 1000 different attachments. Especially if you play Japan or the UK
Nothin' like needing a 30 minute guide to understand 1/3rd of the game
Strategy games 🤌
@@Hammurabae Paradox games my beloved
Do screens sacrifice themselves to stop Torpedos hitting the capitals?
Yep
Who else has over 100 hours and watching this vid?
Navy is so fun, but I’m horrible at it, so I really appreciate this guide. Thank you ( :
Will you do an air force guide?
Releases tomorrow 😆
Perfect video. No bullshitting.
Thats a good guide, but must admit that those clips from movies/documentaries are distracting. I would prefer just to look on simple screens of what you are talking about. Anyway, good guide.
Always conflicted on that. Unfortunately the YT data says these kinda clips keep people interested wayy more than just gameplay of what im talking about. Glad the guide helped though!
Everyone tells me i am shooting myself to leg by playing italy lol. fighting france + Uk navies alone in mediteranean ... now i understand why i always lose horribly xD still , i have set personal achievement to succesfully fend them off one time... but Malta is damn hard nut to crack. gotta implement your style of fleet organization , make sub fleet , perhaps two. one for just spotting and one for convoy escort.
Taking on two of the most powerful navies at once is never easy 😂 In a situation like that you need good naval bombers to attrition them down before you fully engage
Is this still up to date or there are only minor differences that can be overlooked?
98% up to date!
Alright let's see if this time I don't get destroyed in mp
Remember to put AA on your ships, refitting before big battles will also be huge in make or break especially adding radar and control systyems. Never engage without green air, and optimally have some wings on air recon where youre trying to engage their fleets. Also remember naval terrain is huge based on your enemies fleet comp.✊
@@Hammurabae will do thank you !!
I have a couple of questions.
First, could you share the web with the doctrine bonuses?
Second, a while ago I read that light cruisers with armour were really strong as they can take a lot of damage, and they could be a quality over cuantity approach to naval warfare.
And last but not least, you said that port strike is the best doctrine as it buffs planes and subs? I didn't thought it would improve normal planes, only carrier ones, and I thought that rade interdiction was the better one for subs.
Sure! The wiki is generally a great resource hoi4.paradoxwikis.com/Naval_doctrine
Maybe way way back. Speed is king now, so armor really only goes on battleships. Light cruisers were meta due to a game mechanic failing that allowed you to hide them in the second line. Navy has changed a lot over the last couple years
Base strike gives all your planes a 50% increase to port strike and a 40% bonus to naval targeting universally for planes. Those are really really really strong
Trade interdictions is absolutely the best purely for subs, but subs need planes to be able to utilize properly if you dont build a proper fleet so base strike is generally better due to being able to make the planes you use incredibly stronger
@@Hammurabae thanks for the detailed explanation friend! Good to know, especially the plane modifiers. What are some plane designs that you would think for land-to-sea operations?
this guy sounds like farengar from skyrim
Stop stealing my soul gems
Did they fix the issue with carriers yet?
Yep! Completely viable