Hey guys, some Qs on naval invasions / amphibious assaults.
1. Is it only possible to amphibiously assault provinces with naval bases? As Germany, I kept trying to invade UK provinces in Africa, but it did not work (the transports just went back every time upon getting to the adjacent sea province). Transports had full org.
2. Does that mean it is unnecessary to defend provinces without naval bases against invasions by AI? Right now as Germany I have a garrison division in every single coastal province from Spain to Denmark. Did I waste a lot of manpower and IC?
1. Apparently this is a common problem when your HQs are in the boats: the HQ can't fight (if it doesn't have a front line brigade attached), so aborts the debarkation. Try ordering the transports to move, then manually selecting and ordering the attack for whichever div.s you want to make groundfall (the HQ can maybe stay in the boat until a landing has been cleared
). It's sometimes handy to keep the transports nearby, too, in case the ground troops get beaten back, or need to redeploy again (using the "invasion" order has them immediately return to their base port after drop-off, iirc). The other nice thing about ordering invasions manually is that you can split your divisions over several targets, e.g. either side of a fortified position.
2. In my experience, the AI doesn't seem to risk invasions a lot, if ever: they'd rather move troops to a friendly-held port and walk it (although I have seen the Allies land in occupied Yugoslavia in the earlies, but this may be because I set them some Victory targets).
My practice is to station some GAR in positions of strategic importance: coastal regions that count for VP, provide resources or IC, or that are easy to defend, and build up coastal forts there. The idea is, if the AI wants to invade, they'll have to contend with a landing zone that's heavily defended, or perhaps land in the middle of an empty plain, where they won't suffer from amphibious/fort penalties, but they will be under constant harassment by air, and have little cover when the tanks arrive.
Note: if your nation can't afford tanks or planes, you probably still can't afford to garrison every coastline, and your best strategy may be to hope that the AI is more concerned with fighting your more powerful friends to bother with invading your poor backwater nation!
edit: emu'd.
And yes, you don't have to attack ports directly, but they should be your next target so that you can bring in reinforcements and supplies; otherwise your nice expensive marine divisions will soon be dying of starvation.