Massive British Fleet

[incognitus]

Don't know what to do with this one... it is 1941, basically the whole world is at war. I play Ireland (custom game), I had joined Axis early on and managed to conquer the baltic states and scandinavia, plus the usual suspects in the balkans (greece, albania, bulgaria, romania) pre-war, but couldn't move on to tackle Yugoslavia (which might have been to powerful for me to defeat anyways...), because the UK declared war on my German allies.

I managed to conquer the UK (not so hard, as you know), then tried to assist my German allies at the eastern front by taking Leningrad by sea, which I managed to do, but ultimately I had to Dunkirk my troops out of their again, because my 3(4?) division of 2Inf+2Art just couldn't deal with the Soviet onslaught mid-term. Ultimately I had to allow the Soviets to capture all my pre-war conquests in Scandinavia and the balkans, leaving me with only Portugal and the Portugese colonies, the UK and Ireland (plus Denmark) and Ecuador (the one South American country the US don't guarantee). Unable to deal with the Soviets, I focused on Africa, after taking Gibraltar. Now (April 1941) together with the Italians, who managed to capture Egypt (incl. Suez), I have completely driven the French and British from the dark continent.
With Gibraltar and Suez in Axis hand, enemy fleets cannot enter or exit the mediterranean, which has led to a major problem for me. There is a MASSIVE British fleet in the Gulf of Iskenderun, and by massive, I mean about 40 ships. Everything from carriers to battleships, transports, destroyers... you name it. Now, I wouldn't care too much, if I hadn't troops on Cyprus that I need to move through the Gulf of Iskenderun.

This huge fleet must get insane positioning penalties, but I'm not sure, if that is going to make a difference. I have 6 CLs (licence built, I'm Ireland after all) plus 3 Naval bombers, 4 tactical bombers, 2 cas and 4 multi-role fighters.
Is there ANYTHING I can do? I have tried to do naval strikes, but the fleet annihilates my planes within a single battle.

Edit: I want to add, that there is NOT A SINGLE allied port in the mediterranean, the closest British port is in India, I really don't understand how this fleet can stay supplied (it has full ORG).

 

[Kovax]

Unfortunately, if you take the last UK port in the Med, then the ships are supplied by the closest port, which is presently OUTSIDE the Med. Stupid, definitely, but that's how the game mechanics work. If you (and Italy, etc.) had left them with one port cut off from their capital, that would quickly deplete its supplies, with no further convoys able to reach it, and the fleet would then begin to degrade. Taking the last nearby port switches their source in this case to one that CAN be supplied (Kuwait?).

As it stands now, they can recover ORG normally, but any actual damage will remain unrepaired until/unless they return to port. If you had a carrier, that could (in theory) do damage via the cheesy "CAG Duty" mission (the carrier "fires" them as guns, rather than sending air strikes to be shot up), and hopefully you could retreat after doing some damage without completely losing ships or planes in the process (their own carrier will do damage to you in the same way, regardless of whether their CAGs have fuel to fly or not). You might want to try taking out their carriers' CAGs by launching land-based Air Superiority missions (which don't attack the ships), so you're only fighting their CAGs, not taking fire from their ships. Once the CAGs are gone, that's one less tool working against you. Sadly, EVERY ship gets to shoot at any aircraft doing naval strikes, while the effectiveness of your aircraft is highly limited by stacking penalties, so you can't mass bombers to spread out the damage to survivable levels.

Naval and air combats are broken in this game, and in the HOI4 sequel.

 

[incognitus]

Thank you, that is some valuable information. It will be hard, in future games, to prevent the Italians from taking that last Allied port, but it's worth trying.

No, it must be India or something. I have conquered all of Africa, plus all Allied nations in the middle east and the Arabian peninsula. Iraq, Yemen, Oman are conquered, all the British territories occupied and Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Persia are all neutral. [OT: Speaking of Neutral... what are the rules regarding Military Access rights in this game? Nat Spain are granting passage to the UK and Turkey to the Soviet Union. I think I heard that an enemy cannot "attack" from a country that grants Military Access. Is that true? Does that mean that once I have conquered all the provinces along the Turkish border, the Soviets cannot send any troops via Turkey? Does that mean the British troops in Spain cannot attack Gibraltar?]

I have finally managed to free my LCs by sending in five of my CLs to distribute the incoming damage until I can flee from battle. Worked out, I didn't lose any ships and managed to evacuate my troops from Cyprus. Now that Island is useless to me, but what the heck. Come to think of it, that was actually the last port the British had, so it would probably have destroyed the ORG of their fleet to leave Cyprus alone...

And I agree. It is really a shame, how many broken mechanics detract from the joy one could have with this game. My biggest beef with HOI3 is the supply bullcrap. Like the game deciding which port on a land mass is the "supply hub" and you just having to deal with it...

Edit: I guess the upside is that a good chunk of the British fleet is stuck in the Med and doesn't move anymore. Would be worse if they were still in action in the Indian or Pacific Ocean...

 

[Kovax]

You can't attack from a neutral country, so those UK troops in Spain theoretically can't attack Gibraltar. By granting them passage, I believe they can be supplied, if they happen to be in a province with supplies, but not sure if it will create a supply line to them otherwise. I don't think you're allowed to rebase planes to neutral airfields, and fairly certain that you can't do missions from there into enemy airspace.

That's a shame about Cyprus, as it would have left most of the Royal Navy stuck with being based at a port with no source of supply (and you can Logistics Bomb the existing supplies, without being shot up by any ships in port). In several games, I took out the UK completely, and they surrendered. RN ships removed from the game, no more problem. The really cheesy move is to puppet them before the US joins the war, so the Axis gets those ships to use against the US if they enter the war after that.....which was fun ONCE, but I don't do that any more.

 

[incognitus]

Seems to hold true about the neutral territory. Shame, I wasted a whole Corps on guarding Gibraltar when a small retiree with a rubber mallet would have done...

Do you have any experience playing Axis (or Comintern?) Finland?

 

[Kovax]

Played several Axis minors (HUN, ROM), various minor powers (including Sweden, Brazil, etc.), several campaigns with GER, and at least one campaign each with ITA, JAP, NatChi, etc. Never played far into the game with Finland, France, or the Soviets (got about a month into a Soviet campaign and got frustrated with the sheer scale of it), and quit almost immediately upon starting a campaign as the UK.

Personally, I don't enjoy playing vast, scattered empires with stuff to keep track of all over the globe, I'd rather play a smaller and more "concentrated" country. I'd much rather do the "butterfly effect" thing where I tip the scales in a few critical spots to affect the war without getting into a meat grinder. Other than the SU, there's not much to do in the Commintern: playing Mongolia or Tannu Tuva really doesn't leave you with a lot of options, and the SU is simply too vast for my liking. Basically, you practically need to automate a lot more with the SU, and I'm not too fond of that. In my opinion, playing a scattered empire like the UK is some cruel form of punishment.

 

[incognitus]

Yeah, I completely agree. Germany, for me, is already pushing the limit of how much "work" I am prepared to do in a game. The SU or UK would be a nightmare to me.

I have almost exclusively played minors so far. Turkey first, then Nat Spain, the Netherlands (custom) and now Ireland (custom). Originally my goal was only to defeat the UK and reclaim my cores in Northern Ireland, but since we are both in factions, I will have to win the war now, to accomplish that. I wish I had disabled rebels and partisans before I started the campaign, since they are a) such a pain in the arse with the constant whack-a-mole and b) completely throw the Axis AI off, who will constantly order half the troops from the eastern front back to Belgium or France to fight a single rebel militia. It's ridiculous. First the amount of troops they keep in occupied France is a joke and then the fact that about 50% of the troops at the Soviet border are moving to and fro constantly, being effectively out of action.

By the way, if one faction meets all Victory Conditions, does the game end? I.e. I don't have to conquer the mainland USA?

 

[Kovax]

You need 12 victory conditions to win. I believe you can continue to play beyond that, but never dragged it out past the point where the outcome was inevitable. Once I've either got both Germany and Italy broken, or have the UK and SU defeated (the US is a mere formality in comparison), there's not much challenge left, and WAAAAAAAAY more tedium ahead. I've got an old saved game where my troops are waiting on the formerly British islands off the coast of Canada to invade, but I just don't have the ambition to deal with the tedium of fighting across and occupying the entire North American continent. Restarted as Australia, if I vaguely recall.

I've had a couple of great games with Hungary, including one where I drove my own separate invasion corridor all the way to Stalingrad (surrounding and destroying over 20 Soviet divisions in the process), and occupied the entire Balkan Peninsula aside from a couple of provinces controlled by Italy. GER ran itself out of manpower in mountainous interior of Norway in that game (over 120 brigades sitting out of supply, mostly armor and motorized), and the Axis lost despite my efforts. In another HUN game, I took the Balkans and Turkey, then helped Italy close the Suez (by attacking through Palestine), and eventually invaded and conquered the British Isles almost entirely by myself (GER got in on the act at the very end and grabbed 2-3 empty provinces), by using a lone license-built sub as a spotter and sneaking my 3 loaded transports across the Channel while the Royal Navy was out of position.

One of my games with Nat China was pretty decent, although I had even more fun in China during one GER game by guaranteeing China, and then sending a Corps to help drive the Japanese off the mainland after the "Marco Polo Bridge" incident. My one fundamental house rule in all cases is "If I don't take it, I can't claim it", so no piggybacking wargoals off of other countries: either I take the territory myself or I don't get it. Playing GER/ITA, I don't invade the British Isles until I've rendered the Royal Navy powerless to stop me, and closed off the Med on both ends. For example, the last GER game, the only thing in the Atlantic that the UK could muster against my landing fleet was a single damaged CL and a couple of DDs; the rest of the RN was either far off in the Pacific, trapped in the Med, or had been converted into submersibles.

 

[incognitus]

One of these days I would like to defeat the US, but I agree. Tedium. So much of it. And they have so many VPs scattered all over the country. That's what I love about Romania. You move in from Bulgaria, occupy like three provinces from the border: boom, victory. XD

Surrounding and destroying divisions is SO satisfying. I had that situation in my current game with Ireland. As I wrote earlier, the Soviets captured all my early conquests in Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Albania. The German/Italian/Hungarian front was fairly stable and crept eastwards and they actually managed to take Odessa, thus cutting off the Soviet troops in the Balkans. I landed my troops in Greece and along the Bulgarian coast (including some Heavy Armour I had licence built from Germany (Königstiger), which absolutely rocked!) and made a first encirclement in northern Greece, taking out about 10 divisions (including one Special Forces) and when I had driven the Soviets all the way to the Hungarian border and encircled the last 10-20 divisions of stragglers in Cluj, that was the mother of satisfaction. So sweet. Unfortunately now the eastern front is crumbling from the Axis AI's incompetence and I'm not sure I can do anything about that with my 7 corps.

 

[marxianTJ]

I dont find playing the USSR to be that bad once you work out a few labor saving devices - they're one of my favorite nations to play because they have enough flexibility to allow you some breathing space to try new things - but not so much that you can just do whatever you want - and so you're always trying to find ways to be more efficient, which is neat. Plus weird things happen when you play the USSR enough. For example, one time Japan declared war on me in 1939, for reasons I'm still not sure I fully understand. I assume it's because I had too lightly garrisoned the border, but you just never know. That was quite the struggle as I had to figure out what % of my army to send East knowing full well Germany was going to try to come and kick over my collectivized fruit stand in 2 years time. Also games where Italy randomly runs wild and you have to create an army to liberate most of Western Asia lol.

I've played the UK a few times, but I find to stay sane, the easiest way to do it is to determine what you're willing to lose first, and create an army that essentially acts as a fireman, and deposit some garrisoning forces around the 1-2 imperial areas you *can't* afford to lose. So a fire breaks out in the med? In comes the army. They put the fire out, and move on to the next fire. If you try to hold everything from day 1, not only will you hate playing the game, but I doubt that it's even really plausible to do.

I usually try to conquer the world if I feel I'm strong enough - it's the capstone to the campaign - invading the USA can go poorly at first, but essentially once you get a solid beachhead and land all of your units, you can set the AI just to conquer all of North and South American and wrap up the game lol.

 

[incognitus]

Victory!

This is a great occasion, because it is the first time in probably close to 3000 hours of game play that I have finished ANY Paradox game. Having played EU3, CK2 and EU4 with HOI3 being the game I picked up last. I have to admit that I cheesed a bit towards the end, though. After learning that it takes 12 Victory Conditions to "win" and having 8 in the bag already, I decided to make the last 4 Gibraltar (already had Gibraltar, but Nat Spain was neutral), Port Moresby, Honolulu and Leningrad. The three conditions that would remain unfulfilled were Stalingrad, Moskva and Barbarossa.
First, after defeating the UK by taking some VPs in India, I took to the Pacific, taking Port Moresby and eventually Honolulu (and in the process discovered that you can load troops onto LCs without a port by giving a ctrl+right click move command :/). This was easy enough.
I then gathered my troops and shipped off to Denmark, preparing one full army to take on Leningrad. At this point in time, the eastern front ran from Memel via 4-5 sectors west of Smolensk down to the Gulf of Azov. The army consisted of 5 corps, 4 of which were my initial model of 2INF+2ART with one Division per Corps having 2INF+1ART+1AT instead and the HQs also getting 2INF+1ART and the 5th corps with my later model of 2INF+1RART+1AT. I went like a hot knife through butter, it was almost too easy to take Leningrad and secure the area around it along the rivers and lakes.
Before I could move on to Tangers, I received the message that the Yanks were storming the beaches in Honolulu, which (stingy as I am) I had left undefended. I sent a single Corps with 4xMAR and 4 divisions or GAR to the pacific to eventually retake Hawaii and committed the remainder of my second army to taking Tangers from Nat Spain. Before I issued the order to storm the beaches in Tangers, however, I was pleasantly surprised by my Japanese allies, who lo and behold, had actually managed to retake Honolulu while I was busy. Great job, Hirohito! One day later and my marines took Tangers and for the first time in my life I saw that sweet victory pop-up. Nice. Erin go Bragh!

 

[Kovax]

Well, that seems like a pretty impressive win with a minor country, if you ask me. Any ideas for your next campaign?

 

[incognitus]

Thank you. I guess I cheated a little by using the custom game exploit. But not too much, a little more manpower doesn't make thaaaat much of a difference I guess ^^
(Talking about minors... I think the tech system is badly flawed for minors. Ireland have virtually no techs, they were hardly THAT backwards, were they? I mean compared to Tibet or Ethiopia?)

I was thinking about Finland, but I'm not sure how much fun that would be. That would probably have to be a custom game as well. Do you know how their starting conditions compare to Ireland? I mean IC, manpower and army size wise? I have to check, if they have a naturally low neutrality that would be excellent.
Other ideas are a game as SU with the sole target of taking out Germany before anyone else joins Axis or trying to win as France without custom game.
I wonder also if it is possible to fight the SU as Germany without being attacked by the Allies. I love how the British are the real warmongers in HOI3 ^^

By the way, when playing a minor where manpower is a consideration, what are your favourite division builds? And what are your favourites when playing majors?

 

[Kovax]

Virtually ALL of the minor countries have identical starting techs in HOI3. Sweden, Hungary, Finland, or Ireland all get pretty close to the same tech levels as Tibet, Oman, Bhutan, etc. The biggest difference is in how much Leadership they get to advance beyond that, and it's still not a big difference. The majors get large starting tech advantages, and far more Leadership to pull ahead even further. Basically, if you're not Germany, the US, or the UK, you're treated as a bunch of tribal villagers brandishing spears against enemy tanks and aircraft.

No matter how much you take over, your initial low Leadership prevents you from ever becoming competitive across the board, since you only get a small slice of "on board" Leadership from conquered territory, and none of their "off board" Leadership. In one game playing HUN, I annexed virtually all of the Balkans, Vichy France, and the UK, and STILL had slightly less Leadership than Italy starts out with.

As for starting Neutrality, that's the reason for playing Hungary. They've got low Neutrality and cores in 3 neighboring countries (taken several months after the end of WWI in the Trianon treaty to provide homelands for various minority groups, but leaving Hungary with only around 40% of its former land...most of which the game doesn't even give them cores for). You can drop your production laws by a notch as soon as you have the cash to afford the change (by selling Supplies to the SU) to reduce your effective IC below 30, then enact the "Prepare for War" decision, which will gradually drop your Neutrality by around 50 points over the next 10 months. After that, you're free to declare wars....but any wars you declare will raise your Threat, making Allied and Commintern countries able to pass more aggressive production laws. Basically, one early war is pretty much a "freebie", but any more before GER turns into a scary monster will hurt the Axis in the long run.

 

[incognitus]

Okay, that explains why Hungary is such a popular choice among minors. Maybe I will give it a go someday as well.

I have also never played Japan, maybe that would be an idea. In my Ireland game Japan managed to capture a huge part of Russia, all the way west to the Afghan/Persian border. Maybe Japan is even strong enough to take on the US 1:1, if they stay out of Axis? Might be worth trying. I just don't like the scripted events that you basically have to look up in the wiki if you don't want to miss out.

It's a pity there's no simple "enhancement" mod for HOI3. BICE looks polished and all, but it's such a complexity monster, I'm not going to bother. Plus there are so many versions of it, that it is impossible to find a YouTube tutorial that is still up to date...

 

[incognitus]

OMG Japan is like a completely different game to me. So far, I have basically ignored air force and navy in my games (because air units are ineffectual enough to ignore and navies can be circumvented so easily, you don't need anything other than LCs), but I have a strong feeling in this campaign I will need to make peace with using those unit types. But I need help... how do I compose good fleets with Japan?

 

[marxianTJ]

Well for Japan you need to make a decision pretty early on as to whether you're going to use CVs or BBs.

BBs are cheaper over all, but they also will tend to get sunk more, and have a harder time sinking enemy CVs (so they will constantly harass you). You *could* just build CL-zerg fleets, but you'll want *some* capital ships so as to be able to shore bombard as Japan because you'll be doing a lot of amphibious invasions (well most likely, unless you leave the USA alone and take on the USSR instead).

Or CVs, which are more expensive, but hardly ever get sunk and can give you a ton of different options. Their only real weakness is that earlier in the game they don't sink many ships, and 2 they can't outright repel an enemy invasion fleet that is actively invading one of your islands.

Once you sort out which you prefer, you just focus on building the screens that go with them or that you prefer (CLs have more guns and more range, but are slightly slower, so paired with BBs they're far less likely to allow you to catch CV fleets, and they are also worse at finding subs - which will be a MAJOR concern for you).

Both routes have their ups and downs, but it's *really* hard to build both because of the practical reductions you get for building ships is so solid that you want to stick to producing 1-2 types of ships only.

You'll also want to make sure you have plenty of convoys.

For the air, Japan really can get by with MRFs - they have longer range than INTs, but can fight fairly well, and they can bomb things, not as good as a TAC or a CAS, but it's cheaper in leadership, and they have longer range than CAS. *Some* NAV may be worthwhile, but aren't especially necessary, although if you go with CVs you'll be researching a lot of NAV techs so you may as well build a few.

 

[incognitus]

That sounds like great advice. Thank you! I guess BBs would be more "my style" because that's simpler and straight forward, but from what I've heard CVs are more powerful in the bigger picture. So that would mean building CV+CL fleets, right? Is 3+3 still the recommended composition or should I throw in a few more CLs?

Only MRFs sounds great. Do I need many of them, if I have CAGs?

Edit: Also, since you start with so many BC and BB... how do I compose those fleets?

 

[Wraith11B]

My way was to group them by class, and use comparable level of escorts. Since battle speed averages across units, getting super fast destroyers can help in raising the average speed and thus overcome some of the disadvantages with regards to the CVs of any opponents. I sent the battlecruisers out with one CVL and my Nagato-class with the newer stuff.

As time went on, I tried to work in a replacement for the older escorts (getting rid of most of the DD-I level stuff and having them patrol rear echelon places for ASW work).

I did get a bit of my teeth kicked in by a massive British fleet (they sent almost everything they had to the Pacific after German-me sank most of their battlewagons), but didn't loose too much.

Another recommendation: build replacement CAGs. Seriously. If you use them too hard for too long, they will de-org and then die after some time.

 

[incognitus]

That's good stuff, thank you! The US have surprisingly strong CV fleets even in 1937. I managed to win the battle of the Pacific, but it wasn't easy. I have now taken all Islands, Alaska, Seattle and Puerto Rice, southern Florida and am in the process of taking Panama (fierce fight, as you can imagine, as I have to fend off both their Atlantic and Pacific fleets. It would have been much easier to just declare war on Panama, but I think that's a bit cheesy. So I have to do it amphibiously, but of course I don't have any marines just yet (Jun '37).

My one CV fleet so far has 3 CV and 6 CL. My SAGs are usually composed of 5 capital ships and 8 screens, I have 2 fleets with BB/BC and Destroyers and one with CA and CL. One of those SAGs also has my spare CVL. Does that all make sense to you?