Damn. I want to do that as well. Japan is my favorite country to play as.Definitely not in my game. Plan on pure naval supremacy. From the China sea to the Hawaiian islands. With that secure, Operation Kalifornia will take affect
Naval build up strategy for Japan
- Thread starter mdw1985
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Good ideas overall. I tend to follow the same formula that I started with back in the HOI II days. Build industry, Infantry, carriers, and aircraft from the start. Take down China, and from there I often help out Germany in their war against the allies. I take all of South East Asia, and I prepare for war with the USSR. When that comes I take as much of Siberia as possible and this always allows Germany a victory against the Soviets. While that is happening, India and then Australia/New Zealand are my goals. At any point I can go to war with the USA, but most of my land forces are kept busy. I think I should focus on them instead of Australia/New Zealand in HOI IV. I usually become complacent, and bored by this point while not wanting to tackle the USA because my spies tell me they have 30 fleet carriers in say 1943.
I think I will alter it, after China I will declare war on the Soviet Union at some point after Barbarossa, and then prepare for war with the USA/Allies while focusing mostly on the USA. Take the Hawaiian Islands, and protect the area with a very strong aircraft and carrier force, while my battleships and cruisers support landings all over the pacific, and my land armies push through to Singapore, then double back towards India. For all this, I need a heavy land force though and it tends to harm the size of my fleets. But with separate factories now it will be a totally different game.
Japan will have a hard time...no matter what...
They historically did have a hard time regardless, because they fought the war with too many enemies at once and not perfect capability to handle all that and manage their overextended empire at the same time.
My tactic is that of a pragmatic approach: if you can't beat them on their home front, make them join you. Just inlfuence the USA to join the Axis or stage a coup and the USA will become your greatest ally to destroy the brits' trading partners and take out Canada. Even if you can't make them join you, just sign a non-aggression treaty with the USA and you'll be fine on the esatern front. Doing that allows you as Japan to redirect your fleet costruction to counter the UK in the pacific and indian oceans. If you can make sure that they do not complete a strong presence in the area, invade and puppet Australia and New Zealand (make sure the islands are under a friendly force, yours or otherwise) and with those, you can just use their fleets and yours combined to push out the brits of the area, you should also already have a land route into India as long as you made sure China was subjugated, and take the British Rajj for yourself and make good use of all those resources and industries the UK so nicely built for you...
Small sidenote: If Mexico joins the allies but USA is uncertain, puppet Mexico and plant your invasion force within their borders. It doesn't matter if the USA has the navy to crush yours, if you take out their industry and ravage their national unity, they will falter, and then you deal the killing blow and puppet them.
Small sidenote: If Mexico joins the allies but USA is uncertain, puppet Mexico and plant your invasion force within their borders. It doesn't matter if the USA has the navy to crush yours, if you take out their industry and ravage their national unity, they will falter, and then you deal the killing blow and puppet them.
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It doesn't look like production efficiency increases over time with dock yards like it does with factories producing tanks and planes. If you look at the first WWW video at ~8:40, you can see that Jakob is producing army and air force equipment at 50% efficiency from the red and grey bar above their factories. Dockyards don't have this bar, and presumably don't lose efficiency when you switch from one type of ship to another. Because of this, it would probably be more efficient industry wise to pump out your convoys and maybe some escorts first, and then switch all your dockyards over to more advanced carrier production in 1938 or so. Of course, if you decide to full annex China in 1937, world tension is going to be through the roof. Don't be too surprised when you find yourself in world war 2 with the US involved in 1938.
GhostKiller01: Converting the U.S. over to fascism or at least authoritarianism is very likely to be a total crapshoot, as it has been in previous HoI games. Given that HoI4 is a little more sandbox-y I imagine that a Japanese player could potentially find a way to "ice" the U.S. into a later entry. However, expanding in any of the directions you've mentioned would skyrocket World Tension and galvanize U.S. industry. Keep in the mind the U.S. will be fighting the war via industrial production ("the great arsenal of democracy") and trade long before it fires a single bullet.
I have no idea what any of the World Tension values will be for any given outcome, nor do I know what Japan's national focus tree will look like, but I feel like after resource management World Tension management is the next most important objective for Japan and the Axis as a whole. These WT numbers will really determine what Japan can do before the U.S. + the Americas join the war. Think of it more as an inevitability, one that favors the commander that makes the first move.
Oh, and the whole invading North America as Japan idea - keep dreaming. Maybe in 1946 if you've completed your laundry list of conquests. That's assuming Germany will invade at the same time... And that you have nukes... And lots of heavy armor...
South America on the other hand ...
I have no idea what any of the World Tension values will be for any given outcome, nor do I know what Japan's national focus tree will look like, but I feel like after resource management World Tension management is the next most important objective for Japan and the Axis as a whole. These WT numbers will really determine what Japan can do before the U.S. + the Americas join the war. Think of it more as an inevitability, one that favors the commander that makes the first move.
Oh, and the whole invading North America as Japan idea - keep dreaming. Maybe in 1946 if you've completed your laundry list of conquests
. That's assuming Germany will invade at the same time... And that you have nukes... And lots of heavy armor... South America on the other hand ...
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GhostKiller01: Converting the U.S. over to fascism or at least authoritarianism is very likely to be a total crapshoot, as it has been in previous HoI games. Given that HoI4 is a little more sandbox-y I imagine that a Japanese player could potentially find a way to "ice" the U.S. into a later entry. However, expanding in any of the directions you've mentioned would skyrocket World Tension and galvanize U.S. industry. Keep in the mind the U.S. will be fighting the war via industrial production ("the great arsenal of democracy") and trade long before it fires a single bullet.
I have no idea what any of the World Tension values will be for any given outcome, nor do I know what Japan's national focus tree will look like, but I feel like after resource management World Tension management is the next most important objective for Japan and the Axis as a whole. These WT numbers will really determine what Japan can do before the U.S. + the Americas join the war. Think of it more as an inevitability, one that favors the commander that makes the first move.
Oh, and the whole invading North America as Japan idea - keep dreaming. Maybe in 1946 if you've completed your laundry list of conquests
South America on the other hand ...
By the time Mexico is puppeted, the world tension would already be off the charts. Germany would be deep into Russia, the Allies would have sent their forces into Africa, China would have fallen a while ago, Japan would dominate the Pacific Ocean and have puppeted both New Zealand and Australia, and have potentially landed a invasion force in Vancouver. So the world tension would be high as hell. The thing is, you don't want war with the US, you want the US to be on you side, and if that is not feasible, to at east make it neutral. In all my HoI 3 games, I influence the USA to join my faction as the Axis, if only to block the UK from influencing another nation, but also to slowly draw it to me as I change its ideology and ruling party. The invasion of the USA is only something to do as a last resort, when you know that it will join the Allies soon, and so you place an invasion force in Mexico and Canada, and plunge into their lands in force, hoping that their national unity crumbles before their armies come to stomp you to the ground.
Yeah it will be hard, and we won't have to deal with the historical infighting between the Army and Navy that sometimes lead to assassinations, the Axis sure were good at being totally dysfunctional at inter service cooperation. Event he famous close air support by Germany early in the war it was Luftwaffe personnel on the ground calling in airstrikes, not the Army. The US does that today, but the Army is allowed to call directly for air support when they need it at least.
Anyways as stated earlier, we have hindsight and know carriers are key. Without being totally gamey Japan is simply going to lose the long game against the US, invading the US is pure suicide, at least it was in real life for Japan or Germany. It really depends on what the game is set up for as far as the enemy suing for peace, waiting for that DD.
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Oh, and the whole invading North America as Japan idea - keep dreaming. Maybe in 1946 if you've completed your laundry list of conquests
South America on the other hand ...
The key to victory is to control the ocean, preferable with a large Carrier and Land Based aircraft supporting. This is to help disrupt and isolate the US to it's mainland. It really all depends on when the US get's involved. If there is a normal entry, at Pearl Harbor, Japan should have about a year or so depending on how the US player runs things. But if the US is AI and follows a "historical" route I could see Japan making a lot of ground early on and if they focus heavily on infantry/airforce while also focusing on destroying/weakening American naval power in the Pacific could very well "isolate" the USA in this manor.
In my strategy I would have to gauge how much industry and more importantly resources I would gain by invading Australia and at what cost. It may be better to just project Naval dominance over the Commonwealth nations than complete conquest, at least early on. The key to Japan is to not over expand too quickly. The factories and dockyards need to keep up with military expansion in order to see any kind of victory.
Overall I would like to see a Peace Treaty with the US (provided Germany has won it's goals in Europe), I know in previous HoI games Peace was only an afterthought when the enemies capital lay in ruins mainly due to how the scripts worked. But after seeing HoI4's dev blogs it may handle it much better now. Perhaps it would make more sense to sue for peace in 1945-46~ to be given time to build up more and prepare for WW3?
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I wonder if improve relations with US can keep them from going to war with you (I think US will eventually enter the war against you, like Soviet against Germany).
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I have no idea if this will actually play out in the context of the game but 'building lots of small carriers' was fairly close to what the Japanese did and it didn't work out very well for them. Much can and should be said about the differences between American damage control and Japanese damage control but less mentioned is the fact that only 3 of Japan's purpose-built carriers displaced more then the Yorktown class, which themselves were fairly light. There's just a lot less you can do to save smaller ships from 1000 pound bomb impacts and the fires they start and the fact that the Shokaku class missed Midway not because it was sunk after being bombed but because it needed repair speaks to the fact that the Japanese could do better.
Large fleet carriers weren't just better due to air wing size, they had huge survivability improvements before you even get to the armored deck carriers.
One thing you can't protect against is torpedoes though, so don't neglect ASW
I think HOI 4 Japan will have a better chance of survival but that's because they can separate themselves from Germany. I think by joining the Axis they put themselves at a disadvantage by having too many enemies. It may be beneficial for an alternate history path, one where Japan creates its own faction. It would be wise for this Japan to take China quickly and possible install a puppet government. Then Japan would be able to declare war on the allies while they are fighting Germany but never have to deal with USSR. This would allow puppet China to fight the land war in SE Asia and India and allow the Naval Focused Japan to concentrate on taking AUS and NZ and massing naval forces for a decisive early victory over the US. If you could beat China quickly, it might be possible to accomplish all of this by 1941-1942.
I think that's how I might try it anyway.
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This can be improved on with re-fitting old classes. My assumption is that building many smaller carriers sooner will be cheaper than investing into larger carriers. I'm also flexible in that once newer technology comes around I won't build one or two fleet carriers, but my other assumption is that if I can build 2-3 small carriers to one fleet carrier I'd rather have the the many smaller ones.
That is the inherent problem with fleet carriers, because of the increased size they will need more resources and time to build. When I can build 2-3 smaller carriers to 1 fleet carrier why bother? Having many smaller carriers allows for greater losses well, as it will be less expensive to replaced lost ranks. Additionally carriers are only as strong the aircraft they carry, investing heavily into aircraft technology even on Tier I or II carriers are just as deadly as on Tier IV carriers. Basically it comes down to a balancing act of materials, factories and manpower. Plus with the ability to retro-fit carriers from experience, by having more carriers of the same Tier presumably there will be more carriers fighting which in turn equates to more experience gained which goes into a re-fit model. This is assuming that naval and army experience are separated and not pooled, I'm not sure really.
Well I can't speak for the game since it's not out yet, etc etc but history suggests that the price difference shouldn't quite that much as light carriers bottom out at around 10000 tons displacement and early fleet carriers of the time would be around 20000 ( excluding a number of Japanese 'fleet carriers' as their light construction both in terms of displacement and protection sorta preclude them being categorized alongside properly built carriers, including their own Shokaku class ).
To get an idea of the survivability difference compare the Shokaku to the lightly built 'fleet carrier' Soryu. The former would get bombed heavily ( 3 or more 1000 pound bomb hits each time ) twice in it's career and survive both, only later getting sunk with a combination of torpedoes and bombs, Soryu got hit by 3 1000 pound bombs at Midway and was lost.... fast. Now a Soryu displaces around 65% as much as a Shokaku, so it won't be that much cheaper and they have similar flight wings but the Soryu is a lot less survivable, damage that sunk the Soryu was repaired for the Shokaku in 10 days ( once they got it into drydock ).
There's certainly still room to build light carriers to support operations where you aren't expecting enemy aircraft but if HoI 4 follows history's example much you're going to want fleet carriers for your flight for the Pacific.