Going from the US to Japan forces you to drop some technology and therefore unit choices (I used the US to learn how to play better) so in light of that what are the ideal units/technologies Japan likely doesn't need for fighting say Russia? For example could they avoid using armor?
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As Japan, what I do is I build some armor (it's a huge country and you're going to need some speed at some point), but mainly infantry. Attacking Nationalist China at Marco Polo incident doesn't really give enough time to build anything too slow in the beginning.
As far as fleets go, I usually pretty much drop battleships and battle cruisers ( and/or heavy cruisers) and just concentrate on carriers and light cruisers, keeping some DD prdouction for anti submarine warfare as losing your convoys will put you in a hopeless situation.
For Airplanes you can scrap others but I like to concentrate on interceptors/multi-roles, CAG's and Tactical Bombers.
All in all, it's quite intense country to play and much is up to Germany too, if they fall to soviets/allies quickly there's very little you can do against the red horde.
In general, it's not so much about technology but about the lack of IC to build any of those cool toys. You get plenty of leadership by conquering but not so much resources / IC, so building huge amounts of tanks or mechanized infantry isn't really even an option.
As far as fleets go, I usually pretty much drop battleships and battle cruisers ( and/or heavy cruisers) and just concentrate on carriers and light cruisers, keeping some DD prdouction for anti submarine warfare as losing your convoys will put you in a hopeless situation.
For Airplanes you can scrap others but I like to concentrate on interceptors/multi-roles, CAG's and Tactical Bombers.
All in all, it's quite intense country to play and much is up to Germany too, if they fall to soviets/allies quickly there's very little you can do against the red horde.
In general, it's not so much about technology but about the lack of IC to build any of those cool toys. You get plenty of leadership by conquering but not so much resources / IC, so building huge amounts of tanks or mechanized infantry isn't really even an option.
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If I were in your shoes (although I've never been) I would seriously think about dropping the tank techs, and licence-buy a few from Germany instead. For China the opponent is so much backward that you don't need something very sturdy, a few LARM+MEC on the coast and a few CAV+AC in the hinterlands should already do a good job. For the Soviet front you only need a very small army since the Russians are busy in Poland, and you certainly do not need to go into Siberia. If Germany looses you're dead anyway. What you want is first and foremost to defend against the US Navy and the US Marines.
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use militia in combination with infantry divisions for low infra regions-africa, asia, parts of russia. if you really want to go for russia, you must invade from european side, you wont be able to supply units thru siberia and will loose badly. drop destroyers certainly, use CLs instead-better at everything and adding so much needed range. also, completely drop HULL techs in ships, they are basically useless-adding more hull, reducing effective fleet size too much. you can go for nukes. also drop HARM and SHARM, not enough LS.
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What if I don't intend on joining the axis but do intend on crushing communism; how will I even get to Europe?
conquer your way all the way thru india and indochina, thru afghanistan, persia and turkey, to balkans. or if you can, just stop at turkey. from there you can hopefully capture crimea and supply your units from there. second, smaller attack with low supply force (militia+few AT infantry units) advance thru siberia.
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Thanks; it should make an interesting game. Too bad the game starts after Hirohito is emperor it would be interesting to also encourage Taisho democracy in the process.
you can mod it in. its not really difficult. AND, if i recall correctly, other nations can lower your party popularity and cause coup in your country, turning you democracy or communism, depends on nation making coup.
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Hull tech is still important if you plan on building capital ships - it is indeed useless for screens (the reason being that navies with decision making and target chance researched will be more and more likely to aim at and hit any capital ships you're carrying and will ignore your screens).
I mainly don't worry about the USSR as Japan - I mean if it's later game and you want to snatch up Vladivostok and Sakhalin, maybe that makes sense - but there's a *whole* lotta' nothing that you're going to have to walk over in god awful infrastructure for no good reason lol. Also Mongolia.
But I find Japan has more than enough LS to research everything you could ever possibly want. Mainly you just need 1 screen type. Maybe 1-2 capital ship types if you *really* want. The INF techs and doctrines, and at the very least light air craft and the interceptor doctrines. A 140% officer ratio isn't really necessary early game, because NAT CHI is basically a walk-over unless you've made some kind of dreadful mistake - or have a mod that makes them more difficult.
Armor can be nice, but as long as you have up to date CAS or AT you won't need them - and most of the areas you fight in have such crappy infrastructure, or over-seas supply concerns, that tanks supply need isn't really practical. Japan did build some interesting tanks IRL, but they all stayed on the home islands mostly lol.
I mainly don't worry about the USSR as Japan - I mean if it's later game and you want to snatch up Vladivostok and Sakhalin, maybe that makes sense - but there's a *whole* lotta' nothing that you're going to have to walk over in god awful infrastructure for no good reason lol. Also Mongolia.
But I find Japan has more than enough LS to research everything you could ever possibly want. Mainly you just need 1 screen type. Maybe 1-2 capital ship types if you *really* want. The INF techs and doctrines, and at the very least light air craft and the interceptor doctrines. A 140% officer ratio isn't really necessary early game, because NAT CHI is basically a walk-over unless you've made some kind of dreadful mistake - or have a mod that makes them more difficult.
Armor can be nice, but as long as you have up to date CAS or AT you won't need them - and most of the areas you fight in have such crappy infrastructure, or over-seas supply concerns, that tanks supply need isn't really practical. Japan did build some interesting tanks IRL, but they all stayed on the home islands mostly lol.
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well, in the late game, and we can say even mid game, you dont even want to use BBs and BCs because CVs just massively outweight their effectivity. its better to just follow path of history and abandon BBs and BCs or just dont research them anyway. IC increase and supply increase wont make any difference, and you may as well have 2 1918 BBS and 1 1948 or so BB and those 2 will smash that modern one. those 2 are cheaper, fit in smaller HULL and equal fuel. doctrines will also trendemously increase effectiveness of those 2 1918 BBs. so i maximally, if i really want some standing fleet, build either SHBB-they are more IC wise than BBs or BC and are faster build, and can stand up to cycle 4-5 BB. after that both are obsolete anyway and are replaced by CV fleets. or i build CA-cheap as fuck-due to single practical with cruisers. you can have 1/3 of these + 2/3 of CLs and just roll over anyone with numbers-due to low initial hull, allowing up to 20-22 ships in one fleet without significant stacking penalty, while BBs are not so IC effective and you cant fit enough of them in fleet as easily, and as you said-target doctrine will get them smashed anyway.
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Well if you stack your BBs or BC especially fleets with DD's they can easily catch and kill CTFs. You'll need more DDs for a BB fleet to close the gap as quickly. Another interesting thing about Japan is that you have such good admirals at the start (and numerous opportunities to level them). That you can get a level 7-8 admiral fairly rapidly, which will ablate any sort of hull-related stacking penalty, so you could have a fleet for 3-4+ BCs/BBs and however many DD's you can build without any *real* positioning penalty being felt by the fleet. Not that it will matter much since the AI never creates such fleets, and as such you'll always win lol. If you find that the fleet is unable to catch CTFs anymore, due to the carriers and escorts being too new, you just sub in some new DDs to raise the speed of the fleet further - which isn't that costly given how stupendously cheap DDs are.
For Japan CTFs are fine, but BBs + DDs or BCs+DDs or just a lot of CLs or DDs (like a lot 40+) will be more than sufficient. A few CA's tossed in here and there to soak fire are nice too. It's mainly up to taste, and what you want to spend time building.
For Japan CTFs are fine, but BBs + DDs or BCs+DDs or just a lot of CLs or DDs (like a lot 40+) will be more than sufficient. A few CA's tossed in here and there to soak fire are nice too. It's mainly up to taste, and what you want to spend time building.
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instead of DD use CL. better overall stats. DDs are for sub hunting. not for ship of the line job. CLs are and are even faster and can catch up to equall level tech CV in single battle. and CV give more AA in comparsion to DD. basic values + 1 per cycle for DD and 1.5 for CL per cycle. same goes for CA-you can use them as heavy AA but output of AA will be same as CLs, bbut you can field 3 CLs and only 2 CA, in 1918 tech giving respectively 18 and 12 AA. if you really want to use BB use them in home waters to repel any incoming fleets and, i cannot stress enough how important it is HAVE AIR COVERAGE. its must have to have your own fighters covering your BB fleets-without them not even your CLs will save your ass and you will pay dearly. you can use either INC or multiroles, both are better than CAGs.
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DDs are far faster than CLs at every tech level - and they share the same theoretical as BBs, that's why, if you're going to go into BBs (and I'd argue BCs too) they're the better bet - because they'll keep the average speed of your fleet as high as possible (which you will need if you intend to gun-down carriers lol). CLs are indeed faster than CVs, you'll just need more CLs to drag your BBs or BCs into range (unless your BC is teched ahead of the carrier - then it'll be faster - sometimes the case for the BB as well, but more rarely). Particularly if your BBs or BCs are an engine tech level behind the carriers DD's will give you more bang for your speed buck.
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aparently i made a mistake. initial speed of destroyers is 25 and CLs is 23. how stupid of me to use historical info and not those paradox "balance reasons" anyway, yes, in that case DDs are better. anyway, if you really want to engage CVs you should still use CLs-due to their air attack-if you are out of range with INC you have atleast some firepower. also, you can simply just use pure CL fleet-aparently they are, for unknown reason, extremely overpovered. as china, i build 16 1918 CLs and formed single fleet. then i managed to sunk 3 CVs, 4 BBs and couple of escorts. i dont really know why, maybe pure luck.
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Well the reason "zerg" fleets are, and have been, so effective throughout the life of the hoi franchise is the way targeting works. Ships are predisposed to target capital ships - but, as you have none, they just target whatever is in range, and since you have a plethora of targets all in range, it's very difficult to focus down 1-2 targets that are wounded because targets are being selected at random (whereas IRL, wounded ships got swarmed by screens). The same would happen to your fleets if the AI stacked only screens into fleets (or frequently occurs in multiplayer games). This behavior was present in hoi2 as well.
For a cost benefit analysis in the case of Japan, let's take a stroll into some maths.
Let's say the enemy has constructed a fleet of 1 CV + 6 CLs as screens. This isn't an ideal fleet, but it's about as fast of a CV fleet as the AI would field. Let's say they're using 1940 techs (pearl harbor with fancy new stuff!).
That fleet's average speed is 29.7, and cost somewhere in the order of 22.7 k/icd to build (counting a CAG)
A BB fleet with 3 BBs (I selected 3 arbitrarily) and 7 DDs (the common formula for surface fleets with capitals being screensx2 +1) of the same tech level:
The fleet's average speed is 30.6 - they will catch the carrier and will cost 31 k/icd
However, if the BB fleet has 3 BBs and 7 CLs, their average speed is 27.5 - they will not catch the carrier - they also cost 35 k/icd - so you're paying more for something that can't catch a carrier unless it gets lucky due to weather.
Granted, the AI typically makes its fleets weirdly, or includes *more* carriers (which will slow their fleet down more and also make it much more expensive).
If for example the fleet included 4 CVs, and 5 CLs - as is more commonly done by humans - has a speed of 28.5, which will be even more easily overtaken by the BB fleet, but will still be out of reach of the CL fleet. It will also be very costly to lose that fleet - as it costs somewhere in the order of 43.3 k/icd (if all the carriers have 2 cags on each of them). As long as the CAGs aren't allowed to pummel the BBs into a state of ineffectiveness, that fleet *will* be sunk - eventually.
If however, we used BCs instead of BBs in our CL fleet, they're still too slow to catch the lone CV, but will catch (barely) the more humanishly built 4 CV + 5 CL fleet, with an average speed of 28.85.
In short, if you want to built a SAG and you know it's going to fight somebody who has a carrier in play, it's best to go with DDs as your screen of choice OR BCs as your capital ship of choice. The advantage BCs present is their useful life will last longer because of their increased speed.
Of course, another thing to note, is that if you didn't use BBs or BCs, and instead just used CAs and CLs - that fleet of whatever composition - would *always* catch the carrier fleet - so long as the carriers weren't sporting a modern DD based escort. The only issue is that you'll need to have a *lot* of firepower in the tile to avoid losing ships because the fight will last slightly longer because the CVs won't be getting taken out in a shot or two and it will take the CAs and CLs slightly longer to come into firing range than a BB or BC.
If you want to go into raw Sea attack analysis. For the same cost of the 3xBB + 7 DD fleet, in terms of a monoculture fleet.
For the same price you can build 15 CLs - which will catch the carrier - and will have 112.5 sea attack in the fleet (which is higher than the BB fleet's 109.5)
For the same price, you can also build 21.5 DDs, which will have a total sea attack of 96.98 (less than the BB fleet).
For a cost benefit analysis in the case of Japan, let's take a stroll into some maths.
Let's say the enemy has constructed a fleet of 1 CV + 6 CLs as screens. This isn't an ideal fleet, but it's about as fast of a CV fleet as the AI would field. Let's say they're using 1940 techs (pearl harbor with fancy new stuff!).
That fleet's average speed is 29.7, and cost somewhere in the order of 22.7 k/icd to build (counting a CAG)
A BB fleet with 3 BBs (I selected 3 arbitrarily) and 7 DDs (the common formula for surface fleets with capitals being screensx2 +1) of the same tech level:
The fleet's average speed is 30.6 - they will catch the carrier and will cost 31 k/icd
However, if the BB fleet has 3 BBs and 7 CLs, their average speed is 27.5 - they will not catch the carrier - they also cost 35 k/icd - so you're paying more for something that can't catch a carrier unless it gets lucky due to weather.
Granted, the AI typically makes its fleets weirdly, or includes *more* carriers (which will slow their fleet down more and also make it much more expensive).
If for example the fleet included 4 CVs, and 5 CLs - as is more commonly done by humans - has a speed of 28.5, which will be even more easily overtaken by the BB fleet, but will still be out of reach of the CL fleet. It will also be very costly to lose that fleet - as it costs somewhere in the order of 43.3 k/icd (if all the carriers have 2 cags on each of them). As long as the CAGs aren't allowed to pummel the BBs into a state of ineffectiveness, that fleet *will* be sunk - eventually.
If however, we used BCs instead of BBs in our CL fleet, they're still too slow to catch the lone CV, but will catch (barely) the more humanishly built 4 CV + 5 CL fleet, with an average speed of 28.85.
In short, if you want to built a SAG and you know it's going to fight somebody who has a carrier in play, it's best to go with DDs as your screen of choice OR BCs as your capital ship of choice. The advantage BCs present is their useful life will last longer because of their increased speed.
Of course, another thing to note, is that if you didn't use BBs or BCs, and instead just used CAs and CLs - that fleet of whatever composition - would *always* catch the carrier fleet - so long as the carriers weren't sporting a modern DD based escort. The only issue is that you'll need to have a *lot* of firepower in the tile to avoid losing ships because the fight will last slightly longer because the CVs won't be getting taken out in a shot or two and it will take the CAs and CLs slightly longer to come into firing range than a BB or BC.
If you want to go into raw Sea attack analysis. For the same cost of the 3xBB + 7 DD fleet, in terms of a monoculture fleet.
For the same price you can build 15 CLs - which will catch the carrier - and will have 112.5 sea attack in the fleet (which is higher than the BB fleet's 109.5)
For the same price, you can also build 21.5 DDs, which will have a total sea attack of 96.98 (less than the BB fleet).
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thats done tutorial. that targeting thingy is nice too. always wondered how the heck i won. what's your opinion on SHBB?
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Where do Heavy Cruisers fit into the mix? Will they be fast enough to make it down to DD, CL and them as the capital ship?
Back on land do I need mechanized/Armored forces or should I just us AT brigades (will that be enough)?
Back on land do I need mechanized/Armored forces or should I just us AT brigades (will that be enough)?
dont use AT. AT are for defence. and CAs are actually only 1 km/h in deflaut and are actually faster than CL and will stay as that-with proper techs, whole game. they are fastest capitals in the game, designed as CV hunters. but as the guy mentions above, spams of CLs are as effective due to targeting fuckery.
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For CAs, they will *always* be faster than an equally teched carrier.
But for fun let's look at the IC cost and sea attack we can get out of them.
Assuming 1940 techs for pearl harbor analogue.
If you spend the same K/icd as the BB + dd fleet (roughly 31 k/icd)
You'll net a fleet that could look like this:
4 CAs + 10 CLs (31.6 K/icd) with 127 sea attack in the fleet (higher than the BB fleet and CL monoculture fleet)
OR
5 Cas, + 8 CLs (30.1 k/icd SAVINGS!!) with 125 sea attack in the fleet (higher than the BB fleet).
The *only* consideration here is that the techs required for CAs and CLs are in different trees. But the techs for CAs are cheaper than either BCs or BBs to research themselves, so you could even more reasonably cheat on them and research ahead of time. You will likely lose CAs in a SAG battle but they're much cheaper to replace than if you were to lose a BB or BC.
The craziness gets more pronounced if you look at building multiple fleets. For example adding another BB fleet gives you a total of 6 BBs and 14 DDs, but for the same price you could field 8-10 CAs, and 16-20 CLs. With a sea attack comparison of 219 vs 254/250
With armor you have a few things to consider.
1stly, you could build *some* AT - AT is pretty cheap over all (it's the cheapest arty unit there is) and it provides *some* soft attack - but for Japan, especially if you go the carrier route, CAS is far more cost effective against tanks than building your own tanks, TDs, or AT brigades. In part because your AT brigades will hurt you in amphibious operations and in poor INFRA environments (because they require more supplies than another INF "brigade" or regiment). But they also provide the direct fire combined arms bonus so that's nice - especially if you want to set up a combined arms OOB - may as well attach AT to some INF units to train the generals in combined arms. The other upside to AT is they never go out of usefulness - as long as you keep the AT tech updated they'll still be effective against armor.
CAS is generally the preferred way to go for me, if you build carriers, because the CAS doctrines make your CAGs better, your light air craft practical will be high anyways, and you can move the CAS around much more effectively than an AT gun toting division. With the exception of the invasion of the USA - any time you encounter armor they'll be in such a crappy INFRA environment that it will be almost impossible to keep them in supply, so you won't have to worry about them for long (India/USSR). Before you land in America you're going to want to build at least *some* AT because the US typically has oodles of armored stuff - especially if you wait until later in the game to invade.
As far as SH:BB goes, I don't really like them for Japan, because you have the LS to burn on upgrading your stuff normally. SH:BB make sense for nations with IC to burn but little LS (like a Chinese Faction) or the USSR where you may not have much LS and hardly any naval practical/theory. So the cheapest (research-wise) route to building a modernish ocean going fleet is SH:BB + DD.
Let's take our 1940 example for a war with the USA again.
For the price of the 3 BB + 7 DD fleet (31.8 k/icd), we can build:
3 SH:BBs + 4 DDs (31.9 K/icd) speed: 27.7 (too slow to catch a 1940 carrier) with 102 sea attack (only better than a pure DD fleet in the same price range)
OR
2 SH:BBs + 10 DDs (32.25 k/icd) speed: 32.2 (fast enough!) sea attack: 101 (still less than any other fleet than pure DD).
If you for some reason didn't want any kind of a SAG, and wanted to spend the absolute minimum of research on it, as Japan, building *some* SH:BB could be used for coastal protection, but that shouldn't be necessary given the huge amount of ships you start the game with.
But for fun let's look at the IC cost and sea attack we can get out of them.
Assuming 1940 techs for pearl harbor analogue.
If you spend the same K/icd as the BB + dd fleet (roughly 31 k/icd)
You'll net a fleet that could look like this:
4 CAs + 10 CLs (31.6 K/icd) with 127 sea attack in the fleet (higher than the BB fleet and CL monoculture fleet)
OR
5 Cas, + 8 CLs (30.1 k/icd SAVINGS!!) with 125 sea attack in the fleet (higher than the BB fleet).
The *only* consideration here is that the techs required for CAs and CLs are in different trees. But the techs for CAs are cheaper than either BCs or BBs to research themselves, so you could even more reasonably cheat on them and research ahead of time. You will likely lose CAs in a SAG battle but they're much cheaper to replace than if you were to lose a BB or BC.
The craziness gets more pronounced if you look at building multiple fleets. For example adding another BB fleet gives you a total of 6 BBs and 14 DDs, but for the same price you could field 8-10 CAs, and 16-20 CLs. With a sea attack comparison of 219 vs 254/250
With armor you have a few things to consider.
1stly, you could build *some* AT - AT is pretty cheap over all (it's the cheapest arty unit there is) and it provides *some* soft attack - but for Japan, especially if you go the carrier route, CAS is far more cost effective against tanks than building your own tanks, TDs, or AT brigades. In part because your AT brigades will hurt you in amphibious operations and in poor INFRA environments (because they require more supplies than another INF "brigade" or regiment). But they also provide the direct fire combined arms bonus so that's nice - especially if you want to set up a combined arms OOB - may as well attach AT to some INF units to train the generals in combined arms. The other upside to AT is they never go out of usefulness - as long as you keep the AT tech updated they'll still be effective against armor.
CAS is generally the preferred way to go for me, if you build carriers, because the CAS doctrines make your CAGs better, your light air craft practical will be high anyways, and you can move the CAS around much more effectively than an AT gun toting division. With the exception of the invasion of the USA - any time you encounter armor they'll be in such a crappy INFRA environment that it will be almost impossible to keep them in supply, so you won't have to worry about them for long
(India/USSR). Before you land in America you're going to want to build at least *some* AT because the US typically has oodles of armored stuff - especially if you wait until later in the game to invade.As far as SH:BB goes, I don't really like them for Japan, because you have the LS to burn on upgrading your stuff normally. SH:BB make sense for nations with IC to burn but little LS (like a Chinese Faction) or the USSR where you may not have much LS and hardly any naval practical/theory. So the cheapest (research-wise) route to building a modernish ocean going fleet is SH:BB + DD.
Let's take our 1940 example for a war with the USA again.
For the price of the 3 BB + 7 DD fleet (31.8 k/icd), we can build:
3 SH:BBs + 4 DDs (31.9 K/icd) speed: 27.7 (too slow to catch a 1940 carrier) with 102 sea attack (only better than a pure DD fleet in the same price range)
OR
2 SH:BBs + 10 DDs (32.25 k/icd) speed: 32.2 (fast enough!) sea attack: 101 (still less than any other fleet than pure DD).
If you for some reason didn't want any kind of a SAG, and wanted to spend the absolute minimum of research on it, as Japan, building *some* SH:BB could be used for coastal protection, but that shouldn't be necessary given the huge amount of ships you start the game with.
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