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Are Submarines Worthless?

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Blue Emu, thank you for this thread!

I played vanilla doomsday as USA. Built up a fairly strong submarine force (about 7-8 fleets of 6 subs each fleet) and positioned them in the pacific ocean between Japan and the various islands they controlled. With appropriate fleets patrolling same areas to keep the Japanese fleet at bay, I was stunned to see the number Convoy and Escorts sunk messages I received.

By the time I had started my assault of Truk, it was a literal cakewalk for my Marines. The troops had been cut off from Japan and had attritted to almost no strength or organization and battles would last about 2 hours (in-game time). It took me about a month to claim the Central Pacific as mine.

To put this in contrast, I had previously tried it with little to no Convoy Raiding by what few subs I had made. It was a maddening assault after assault to take some islands and in some cases I had to make 2-3 assaults to take one island.

This kind of ties in with something I had read a long time ago regarding Submarine usage in the Pacific. American subs had focused on sinking the cargo ships and Japanese ships focused on the combat ships (more honorable foe or something like that, I might be wrong). One of the many things that lead to winning the war in the long run.

Thank you again, this made a big difference in my gameplay.
 
This thread has changed my way of playing. Now GErmany uses many subs in my Mod 34 games (well most) and i love watching Britian starved. You deserve a special medal from Paradox.
 
Thanks

I finally made time to read this thread and wanted to thank Blue Emu in particular, of course, but also the many others who contributed their own experiences and intelligent comment and questions. This has been a very interesting and useful strategy discussion and helped my understanding of this great game. It will undoubtedly improve my play, so again, thanks to Blue Emu et al!
 
If anyone wants to starve UK you should add an event (which i cant write). This event must be something like UK losing %95 of its stockpiles with the start of WWII and had to refill them. And GER player should have no more then historical number of SUBs in one time at sea. Im sure Blue Emu will give us numbers about this.
 
tonguz said:
If anyone wants to starve UK you should add an event (which i cant write). This event must be something like UK losing %95 of its stockpiles with the start of WWII and had to refill them. And GER player should have no more then historical number of SUBs in one time at sea. Im sure Blue Emu will give us numbers about this.
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to be fair, the UK should not lose its stockpiles unless everyone else does. The problem could be resolved if you played the 1939 campaign instead.
 
chrisgamer said:
Your analysis does not seem to fit Hitler's hoped for wish - to weaken Great Britain in order to get a successful invasion of the home islands. That meant not enough fuel to operate at full defense capability, shortage of vital rare materials to halt mass production of engines, lack of tires, and stopping replacement of aircraft and other lost war materials. Of course, just starving them all to death would have been nice too but Hitler was unaware of the Brit's fortitude and and their ability to dice up potatoes into so many smaller bits so that everybody stayed fed. Sorry, I don't recall any German effort to starve the colonies. Hitler was interestd in domination of Europe - not the Falklands or other "colonies" and his intent was to grasp Britain by the throat, not nibble at any fingers or limbs. Undoubtedly, the U-boat campaign had the secondary hope of demoralizing the British. Again, Hitler was ignorant of British resolve and the influential power of Churchill rearding "WE WILL NEVER SURRENDER". And today's submarines are designed to deliver holocaust to the heart of any targeted nation. Colonies just are not that important (in comparison to the homeland) because their surrender never causes the surrender of the home nation.
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Well, you could've relected Chamberlain :rofl:

But, yes, the idea was to lower British warfighting and producing ability and demoralize the population; and submarines could have helped achieve this with enough of them ready at the onset of the campaign combined with a successful bombing campaign, but neither of these things were to be.
 
midget_roxx said:
Yet again, another Blue Emu thread is dug up from the grave :p
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It does seem to mean that some folk are actually taking the time and effort to dig in and study up.

Luckily, most of us noobs are more like me. We don't study deep, we just start a new thread with the same old questions, over and over and... well...
 
Appropriate day to bring back this thread. Should have a link to Thriller somewhere, though.
 
I've never, EVER used submarines as "o hai zergrush kekekekek" to sink enemy ships when I bought HoI2DD some years ago. Especially after seeing what happens when they take head on with surface fleet with enough screens, instead convoy raiding ftw.

However, this thread pretty much wins points for demonstrating that submarines are excellent if used properly ;)
 
Are submarines still worthwhile in '42-'43? As convoy disrupters? It seems the attitude is they are tremendously useful, until 1940, after which they have 0 utility. Is this accuratE?

I certainly don't have the IC (as ITA) to fight off the combined USA/UK navy - multiple stacks of 6+ CV4s floating around. But I can spam subs.
 
I have a question... I have read up on submarine warfare theory before but this is the first game I am actually attempting to apply it. If I understand correctly, you only need a few sea areas to completely blockade the UK, no?

submarinewarfare.JPG


And Blue Emu, why did you use only 5 submarine stacks? How is that the ideal number? And why only at night? Less chance of being detected?

Also, it seems that my subs are being damaged even though I haven't been engaged by surface fleets. Is this the result of sinking escorts? (i.e. the escorts went down with a fight?)
 
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The areas that I use are:

The Grand Banks, The Seamounts, The Azores, The Portugese Coast (with a reserve stack nearby, eg: in The Western Approaches).

That completely cuts all shipping lanes in and out of the UK.

If and when I have enough U-Boats for a second line, I place it in:

Cape St Vincent (off Gibraltar), The Coast of Bissao, Cap Verde, The Coast of Recife (with a reserve stack nearby).

That forms a second complete cordon.

I use stacks of six as a compromise between survivability (large stacks) and stealth (small stacks). Night raiding is intended to assist both survivability (by handicapping attackers with Night penalties) and stealth.

Your damage might be coming from Convoy Escorts, yes... or from Air attack if you are near UK bases.
 
blue emu,

i just have one question to this excellent guide/AAR: you mentioned that from the start you were building the 1938 model of the subs. Now seeing as the start date is 1936, did you wait until the tech for 1938 was completed before you started your production queues? Or did you instead just build the older models while waiting for the tech?

In addition, seeing as how you mass produced your wolfpacks, would it be beneficial to research ship assembly line tech early on?

thanks
 
If I may ask a question as well. How do you get the popups to appear when your fleets encounter AI units. I can do the sub campaign but losses are reasonably heavy but I've managed to sink most of the AI convoys.

bluepara if I want to spam lots of subs/destroyers you can esearch them in advance. You will get the tech late 36/37 if you have your best naval team do the research. X6 subs don't eat up a huge amount of IC and by 39 you'll have a very large sub/destroyer fleet.
 
blueparapara said:
blue emu,
In addition, seeing as how you mass produced your wolfpacks, would it be beneficial to research ship assembly line tech early on?

thanks
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Yes, building your ship assembly lines would reduce the times even further.

If I may ask a question as well. How do you get the popups to appear when your fleets encounter AI units. I can do the sub campaign but losses are reasonably heavy but I've managed to sink most of the AI convoys.
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In the game log it will say you have engaged with a certain enemy. Right click on that message and set it so it will appear in a window.

C'mon guys, 6 months dead and you're bringing it back from the depths :p
 
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