Germany's naval/dockyard gambit (A strategic discussion)
- Thread starter Denkt
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I doubt the amount of factories any country has right now are final. I would assume they simply threw some factories in so they are able to show the production system off and so that the people at the pressevent can actually produce something.
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I disagree with this gambit idea entirely because:
1. submarines are superior in 1938/1939 Techs Your most likely fighting 1938 or earlier versions of DD's and their sub hunting capabilities simply suck.
2. wasting valuable time and resources on something you will never be able to be superior on.
3. Thinking you need to defeat the US and UK navies. You don't need to defeat them, you simply need to sink their transports. Without transports the UK does not have fuel, cannot launch bombing raids, neither US or UK can launch invasions, and the US can't use UK as base because they can't get transports to the island.
Simply put Germany just needs to delay the strength/war with UK and US as long as possible, which is the best route with submarines only. They will not stand a chance in Africa with 0 transports, will not stand a chance if USSR falls, and if Med is secure + USSR is mostly secure, they stand no chance in Europe against an extremely well armed Germany.
Since you want to discuss Gambit strategies this is what I would do:
Day 1:
Convert all Naval factories to Civilian
Pump out as many infantry divisions as possible, focus on ground units only until 1938. Convert any military factories not needed for this and training to civilian.
Use now (30+ civilian factories) to build more civilian and synthetic oil factories until 1938.
1938:
once 1938 submarines unlocked and all updated, put all naval points into best variant possible and convert 15 civilian factories to Naval. Produce nothing but this variant of submarine until 1942.
Start building tanks, and a defensive air force. Convert civilian factories as needed. Switch laws to be more military oriented.
Produce 1938 variant of Tanks until 1942.
1940 put as many points as possible into Fighters/interceptors and dedicate up to 15 factories to producing this variant. Top priority.
1942:
New submarine variant and new Tank variant until the end of war.
1. submarines are superior in 1938/1939 Techs Your most likely fighting 1938 or earlier versions of DD's and their sub hunting capabilities simply suck.
2. wasting valuable time and resources on something you will never be able to be superior on.
3. Thinking you need to defeat the US and UK navies. You don't need to defeat them, you simply need to sink their transports. Without transports the UK does not have fuel, cannot launch bombing raids, neither US or UK can launch invasions, and the US can't use UK as base because they can't get transports to the island.
Simply put Germany just needs to delay the strength/war with UK and US as long as possible, which is the best route with submarines only. They will not stand a chance in Africa with 0 transports, will not stand a chance if USSR falls, and if Med is secure + USSR is mostly secure, they stand no chance in Europe against an extremely well armed Germany.
Since you want to discuss Gambit strategies this is what I would do:
Day 1:
Convert all Naval factories to Civilian
Pump out as many infantry divisions as possible, focus on ground units only until 1938. Convert any military factories not needed for this and training to civilian.
Use now (30+ civilian factories) to build more civilian and synthetic oil factories until 1938.
1938:
once 1938 submarines unlocked and all updated, put all naval points into best variant possible and convert 15 civilian factories to Naval. Produce nothing but this variant of submarine until 1942.
Start building tanks, and a defensive air force. Convert civilian factories as needed. Switch laws to be more military oriented.
Produce 1938 variant of Tanks until 1942.
1940 put as many points as possible into Fighters/interceptors and dedicate up to 15 factories to producing this variant. Top priority.
1942:
New submarine variant and new Tank variant until the end of war.
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Good overview here https://eh.net/encyclopedia/the-american-economy-during-world-war-ii/
And good bibliography. Basically any part of the U.S. That wasn't industrialized became so or got stripped of its population. A good example is Corpus Christi. In 1940 they started building the base(brown and roots first big construction job). In 41 it opened and they started on the outlying fields. By the end of the war 20000 people worked there repairing aircraft and 250000 airmen had graduated from school there. To give you a sense of scale the present army depot on the same footprint is the largest helicopter repair facility in the world and only employs 5000. Town had a prewar population of about 50000. It's not an uncommon story. California's population grew by 30% in five years.
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Thanks for the info. I don't just want to make Germany's economy historical and leave others alone (a balance thing).
As germany you probably should rather focus on fast maneuverable convoyraiders rather than big bulky battleships which get picked apart by the royal navy. Germany used exactly that tactic and gave the royal navy alot of problems with their fast cruisers that managed to sink the enemy convoys and were gone before the royal navy could react. Later once they were pretty much blocked they focused on submarines which were pretty effective but werent avaiable in large enough numbers. If you ask me focusing on cheaper light cruisers and destroyers early on and latter expanding the submarine war in the atlantik seems to be the best tactic. Especially since the production gets an massive hit if you no longer have an consistant flow of materials. I dont know if he have naval bombers (not carrier based aircraft) in the game but that would be an good choice aswell.
Both Churchill and Donitz disagree with your assessment.
Germany should have bet everything on the U-boat if it wanted to strangle the UK. It probably wouldn't have won the war (Britain could still produce enough convoy escorts and destroyers to win that race), but a pure U-boat force would have inflicted far more damage, especially if Donitz had more than 57 U-boats in 1939.
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The thing to do is to come at the royal navy from multiple directions.
1. Fleet in being, you want a hard hitting but fast force that can zip out into the north sea, near Atlantic and channel to snap up convoys and sub hunter groups, I think light cruisers and battle cruisers maybe heavy cruisers but probably not battleships and you would be operating under land based air cover so you wouldn't need carriers.
2. Submarines to raid convoys.
3. Strong Airforce
2. forces your enemy to split up their light units to chase subs, 1 forces them to bolster these forces with heavier units which makes them less effective or to have heavy units on patrol which is draining or to keep them in ports near to your own forces to allow them to rush out. 3. allows you to strike at small sub hunter units and cause injury and to punish their fleet if they stay in ports near to your own forces.
Basically you can never out tech them unless you specialize in a small subset of units, you need at least technical parity and ideally you want to make it so that if their heavy units manage to catch your units you have a tech advantage that means ship for ship your units are just better. I would suggest go for a small fast hard hitting fleet in being rather then a broad fleet as that should be all that is needed to take down the UK. You also probably can't out build them either as you will be lagging already in ships and the means to produce more ships, you could go a very naval route but you'd be lagging far behind and would take quite a while to catch up and may be shooting yourself in the foot elsewhere. Aircraft techs and most units wil have utility elsewhere so funding into it won't screw anything else. The resources in the fleet in being and the subs are useful for when you eventually have to fight the big bad Americans.
I would suggest that this way you should be able to knock down the UK so that USA becoming involved in 1941 shouldn't be an immediate concern (either by invading the uk or just shutting them down, especially if continued with itallian support to break them in the Med). Without the use of airstrip one the Americans should be much less of a threat initially, this should allow for breathing space to deal with the USSR, in say 1942-44, by this point you should be able to ride to the rescue of the Japanese either through a south american invasion via africa and/or via alaska if you feel particularly mad and have taken the USSR in total.
Admittadly this could all go horribly wrong, the USSR invades you before you invade them, the british manage to catch your fleet in being and sink it/destroy your airforce/sink too many subs, the USA could get involved much earlier then historically true or just respond much faster, the japanese/itallians could be useless, but its a fairly good plan based on what the germans actually had.
1. Fleet in being, you want a hard hitting but fast force that can zip out into the north sea, near Atlantic and channel to snap up convoys and sub hunter groups, I think light cruisers and battle cruisers maybe heavy cruisers but probably not battleships and you would be operating under land based air cover so you wouldn't need carriers.
2. Submarines to raid convoys.
3. Strong Airforce
2. forces your enemy to split up their light units to chase subs, 1 forces them to bolster these forces with heavier units which makes them less effective or to have heavy units on patrol which is draining or to keep them in ports near to your own forces to allow them to rush out. 3. allows you to strike at small sub hunter units and cause injury and to punish their fleet if they stay in ports near to your own forces.
Basically you can never out tech them unless you specialize in a small subset of units, you need at least technical parity and ideally you want to make it so that if their heavy units manage to catch your units you have a tech advantage that means ship for ship your units are just better. I would suggest go for a small fast hard hitting fleet in being rather then a broad fleet as that should be all that is needed to take down the UK. You also probably can't out build them either as you will be lagging already in ships and the means to produce more ships, you could go a very naval route but you'd be lagging far behind and would take quite a while to catch up and may be shooting yourself in the foot elsewhere. Aircraft techs and most units wil have utility elsewhere so funding into it won't screw anything else. The resources in the fleet in being and the subs are useful for when you eventually have to fight the big bad Americans.
I would suggest that this way you should be able to knock down the UK so that USA becoming involved in 1941 shouldn't be an immediate concern (either by invading the uk or just shutting them down, especially if continued with itallian support to break them in the Med). Without the use of airstrip one the Americans should be much less of a threat initially, this should allow for breathing space to deal with the USSR, in say 1942-44, by this point you should be able to ride to the rescue of the Japanese either through a south american invasion via africa and/or via alaska if you feel particularly mad and have taken the USSR in total.
Admittadly this could all go horribly wrong, the USSR invades you before you invade them, the british manage to catch your fleet in being and sink it/destroy your airforce/sink too many subs, the USA could get involved much earlier then historically true or just respond much faster, the japanese/itallians could be useless, but its a fairly good plan based on what the germans actually had.
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I'd hope that any massive buildup of dockyard capacity by Germany would ratchet up the World Tension, since keeping a lid on German maritime power projection was a primary interest of the UK. I'd imagine some large air raids wrecking the production facilities would be just the start of the response. Followed by a reoccupation of Germany to remind them they lost the last war, largely unopposed because the land warfare has been neglected.
Building ships takes frickin' ages. Ages in which the keels and the slipways can be bombed into rubble.
Building ships takes frickin' ages. Ages in which the keels and the slipways can be bombed into rubble.
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Considering what the UK allowed the German Reich to do before they did anything to stop them, including letting them rearm their airforce and land army way past what the treaty of versailles allowed, I doubt that they would directly bomb German dock yards to rubble. The UK loves its naval superiority and hates when others try to rival it, but I don't think they would be that aggressive.
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Aye, I don't think it'd lead to hostilities, but I think it would give the British Government the political clout to re-arm sooner and more intensely, and there's no way that Germany could build a surface navy to keep pace with the UK and an army to take on the French and Soviets at the same time if it'd set the UK off on an earlier and stronger rearmament trajectory.
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If you can conquer France and have air superiority over the English Channel you don't need a huge fleet.
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Britain was more sensitive about naval stuff than the build up of land forces, and the continual line-overstepping of the Germans eventually led to war. Violating Versaille's provisions on naval affairs even more blatantly would only accelerate the process of the Detente doing something about German aggression. I don't think you could build up the German navy to rival the RN before war kicked off, and at that point, your naval build up stops because the slips are rubbled, since you haven't been spending enough time building Me109s to shoot down the Wellingtons. And then Russia shows up and kicks your ass on land. I wonder if a German army neglected in favour of the Kriegsmarine could even take Poland, and whether the Russians would honour a MRP when the Germans didn't already hold Warsaw.
Take Poland as your ally instead of taking them over. Going for the Kriegsmarine is already ahistorical. Of course trying to follow the historical path of the landwar won't go over well if you go for ahistorical naval play. Avoid being screwed over on land by not fighting too much on land. At least not at two fronts at once. A strong airforce helps both, your navy and your army.
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Poland won't be able to stand up to the Soviet army, no matter how many aircraft you put over there to help them. And the Soviets are, indubitably, coming over the border. Getting Poland as an ally (when they know that all they are is a buffer to slow the Soviets down - Naval Germany's lack of land power won't be an encouragement to join forces) will hopefully be more problemmatic than just an airy wave of the hand.
Possibly, because HoI4's naval mechanics are meant to be different. Probably more use for mixed fleets. Germany would probably need to have a strong naval bombing force up until '41-'43 when their navy is off the production line. In HoI3 you could wreck the AI naval units with one or two Surface Action Groups, or just port them by throwing a CTF at them, and you never really needed that many if you were content to have some downtime and co-operate with the airforce for finishing kills.
Yes, it would.
Let's keep in mind that we're talking about a complex system. Even when historical Hitler denounced the Anglo-German Naval Agreement in 1939, the Royal Navy told Chamberlain that Germany (building ships as fast as she could) would not even reach the tonnage limits of that treaty until 1943 at the earliest.
In a scenario where Germany starts expanding dockyards at a furious rate, I can't see Chamberlain getting a mandate to invade Germany or attack her directly, but I can see Commons voting for more ships right away with the understanding that Germany is so far behind that there is time to come up with another solution or rearm.
Hell, even the isolationist Congress of the US passed the Two-Ocean Navy Act in 1940 in response to the Fall of France after one hour of debate with a unanimous vote. A furiously rearming Germany who spamming dockyards would not provoke the same reaction from Commons, but there would definitely be a response in kind of naval construction.
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Well, of course the UK would do something, but they wouldn't directly bomb German dock yards right away. They would start rearming of course. Someone said the UK would bomb the dockyards, that's all that I'm doubting. Of course the UK would certainly be upset and it would ruin British-German relations.
The point that you're missing is that the Germans couldn't catch the RN before the war started for some reason, and as soon as hostilities began, the effort to catch up would stall. Making it rather pointless in the first place.
No, you're right, the British wouldn't say "Oh, slipways, eh? We'll bomb the blighters then!" They'd bring economic and political pressure to bear, stopping resources reaching the Germans (Sweden isn't going to be threatened into supplying iron ore if the Germans aren't being aggressive; they'll be easier to convince that the Allies can protect them - hard to build extra warships without extra steel) ratcheting up the tension, while Japan and Italy, chafing at the bit, do their own escalations, until Germany either has to do something or the Russians are going to get the drop (I'll bet the Russians can act sooner than the democratic nations can). Then the hammer falls on Kiel, Hamburg and the rest of the shipbuilding concentrations, and all the defenseless keels that have been laid down.
An escalation of naval production is an obviously aggressive move. It's more threatening to some (the UK) and less threatening to others (France, Scandinavia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, the Low Countries, though if you see the big guy next door eyeing up the even bigger guy three doors down, you know the neighbourhood isn't going to be friendly), and it visibly weakens the Heer against its main foe, the USSR. What point being able to beat the RN if the Red Army is at the gates of Berlin? If the AI doesn't spank you for it, that's because the AI hasn't been coded to notice the issue, not because it's a good strategy.
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I've never said it is good strategy. The opposite is the case, I think it's a horrible strategy. The German Reich simply can't be a naval power that rivals the Royal Navy.
Well, an unholy alliance with the USSR is a thing as we know. The USSR deals with the land business, the German Reich creates a strong Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine? That could work, sort of, if the Soviets can be trusted. In game of course. I mean heck, just split Europe between the two. USSR gets the whole East, the German Reich the west. Guess west europe also makes good Lebensraum.
Well, an unholy alliance with the USSR is a thing as we know. The USSR deals with the land business, the German Reich creates a strong Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine? That could work, sort of, if the Soviets can be trusted. In game of course. I mean heck, just split Europe between the two. USSR gets the whole East, the German Reich the west. Guess west europe also makes good Lebensraum.
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