Power of Navy & Escorting Convoys

[T86]

Navy wins wars.
If you can cut of supplies from enemy generals you will win.

But there is a problem with the current system:
You cannot select a specific route when you give the order to "escort convoys".
It appears from the interface that you would select a coast (which actually would solve the problem) but you are not.
You are selecting a "friendly" HQ. (also from another trade partner)
This creates a whole bunch of problems:

- Sometimes it happens that its impossible to select an escorting mission that protects the sea node which is actually getting raided.
- Doing a marine invasion will give an automatic order to the admiral to protect supply route as doing manually but he then cant reach the actual sea node it should protect.
This is caused by the fact that the admirals will take the shortest route between the two HQs they protect instead of protecting from coast to coast (or node to node)
Simple fix to it would be:
Let us manually select both or simply just two sea nodes when giving the escort order where an admiral will then protect inbetween.

Something which i found a little bit strange also is:
When you successfully invade with a navy on a coast whose connected sea node is already raided then your generals start with 100 attrition although they "freshly" came with an actual navy.

Another annoying thing but lil bit something else:
I cannot protect coasts for my allies in wars.
My navy will just let the other navy invade.


Here some pictures to show what i mean:

First, if you win the naval war you win. Enemy Army just dies of attrition.
I have green 100 strenght although i am outnumbered by a multitude.
"always outnumbered, never outgunned"



Here is the problem:
I played Japan and when selecting the escort order to the coast you see above in the picture it would only protect between the southern most japanese node and east of borneo. Not the sea node which actually connects to this coast. It was (almost) impossible to reach eastern indonesia (new guinea):

Check the 17 strong japanese Admiral
He even wont protect it would i have naval invaded east-neuguina.

First picture is the escort convoy order.
although i clicked on new guinea cost the admiral wants to protect "whole" japanese territory in Indonesia HQ which ends up him only protecting the middle and north western seanode. Not the eastern one.
The patrolling coast order actually works for the whole territory if you check out the 16 strong admiral which protects coast or better, all coasts in indonesia HQ.

BTW: When i would release my colony in Borneo (the western yellow territory) then they actually would protect the full distance to new guinea and its sea node.

I figured this out when i was losing in a previous war on the same territory and my guys were dying of attrition although i won the naval war overwhelmingly. Just not on the actual sea node that the generals in new guinea where connected to.
After a while and In the end i could protect it but only because i happened to luckily also have a navy in mandschuria which i could then send to a trade partner in brazil.
all my japanese coreland routes to brazil would have gone on the northern route and wouldnt even come across this sea node.
so, if this happens you can establish some "temporary trade routes" as a workaround so you can somehow reach that node. but its not always possible because of lack of trade partners. either because there are no or they might be in a custom union. (I couldnt just trade with Australia for example)

here are two pictures where you can actually see where to find out which sea nodes are essential for the (enemy) generals in battles and they are even highlighted in yellow then so you know where you have to raid and you also see how much attrition the generals have:
Its on the front overview when you hover over the present generals.
In the second picture you can see that i even let my dominion handle the superior german army.


And here you can see that my navy patrolling the coast of my ally is useless!
(It would also not help if my ally didnt have a navy at all. So its no priority issue)

 

[za3tarani]

the navy is a joke. it's invisible and not fun to engage with at all. also the fact that no supply system exist makes it even worse... this in a time where navy was essential to maintain oversee territories. the whole thing is a joke :/

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Technically supply systems exist to feed your overseas armies. The thing is, it’s not that hard to avoid having penalties for not being supplied unless you have like, 10 flotilla fighting a power with 100. And yes, the fact that no flotillas actually get destroyed and you only lose manpower with naval combats is downright nonsensical.
Add to that the fact that you can naval invade from anywhere to everywhere, yeah. Naval system does need a rework ASAP.

 

[T86]

well there are actually 2 supply systems:

the one for generals which get sent oversea which i focused on in the opening post. raiding and protecting convoys is essential here and pretty effective. it affects attrition.
the other one is market access of oversea territories.
sometimes you or the enemy have a "colonial army". meaning they have build a local army with a local general there who is fighting.
you cant affect attrition with convoy raiding like in the first example.
although you can disconnect the territorial market access which then will result in the supply shortage malus for the army which lowers their offense and defense stats. unless they are selfsufficient ofcourse. but this is much slower and not close as effective. when they outnumber you by a lot they still might win although their territory has zero market access.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

Correct. Right now, it’s basically impossible to effectively harass the enemy supply system unless your navy is an order of magnitude larger than theirs.

 

[T86]

well i guess you are not supposed to beat the britains early to mid in the naval game as greece for example.

in the example war above i was fighting against Britain and USA. They definitely had the bigger numbers together but i admit i was pretty focusing on navy techs this game.
On the other hand you gotta invest in navies when you playing any kind of colonial (oversea) game.


but in general, at least against the AI it helps organizing your Navy correctly and send the right amount of navies to the relevant tasks.
the protecting/escorting side always has the advantage against an even enemy.
something to consider.
so when you getting raided just check out the size of enemies and send out your own accordingly.
or just check who is escorting before sending your raiding navy.
against the AI its really not too hard.

i dont find the navy game in general too bad actually. It would do the job, would it work as it should without all those annoying little things which make it kind of tedious.
i mean sure, there still is much room for more deepness.

 

[T86]

Just because we are at it:

Some countries are especially endangered when you go for their supplies.
I once had a war as Austria against Britain. War goals of them was on my hometerritory so i just had to defend my coast to not drop below zero warscore and didnt touch my wargoal so "i had all the time i wanted to have fun."
i was not even raising a single army but just convoy raiding britain.
after a while they were really struggling. Their gdp dropped more than a half and oversea territories were starting to revolt.

It wouldnt work quite well against russia or america i guess cause they are much more self sufficient.

 

[Oglesby]

Correct. Right now, it’s basically impossible to effectively harass the enemy supply system unless your navy is an order of magnitude larger than theirs.

You can harass by smartly picking the nodes and moving them if you find resistance. In my Mexico v America war, my navy was much smaller than the USA but was able to raid them over near Europe to reduce some of the products they needed for war (don't recall what it was anymore).

I have done it elsewhere with smaller navies where I was raiding convoys that were providing market access and/or army supply too.

 

[$ilent_$trider]

You can harass by smartly picking the nodes and moving them if you find resistance. In my Mexico v America war, my navy was much smaller than the USA but was able to raid them over near Europe to reduce some of the products they needed for war (don't recall what it was anymore).

I have done it elsewhere with smaller navies where I was raiding convoys that were providing market access and/or army supply too.

I mean, if that works because you keep node hopping just like HoI4 whack-a-mole air missions, then sure. It’s still a lot of micro to keep changing the node raiding…
But then, that goes into how your navy has unlimited reach to anywhere in the world…
Paradox needs to limit the amount of nodes your navy can reach from a naval base and set up some diplomatic action to get port access…

 

[Oglesby]

I mean, if that works because you keep node hopping just like HoI4 whack-a-mole air missions, then sure. It’s still a lot of micro to keep changing the node raiding…
But then, that goes into how your navy has unlimited reach to anywhere in the world…
Paradox needs to limit the amount of nodes your navy can reach from a naval base and set up some diplomatic action to get port access…

I didn't typically have to 'constantly node hop' just if I chose poorly I moved them.