What I learnt about nuke warfare

[I had a bad name 99]

After playing with several nations on hard or hardest difficulty in the extreme late game, I was forced to resort to nuke warfare (also because the enemy AI used it on my troops, so I have to retaliate).

What I learnt about employing it successfully:

1. First make sure you are a technological powerhouse. You need to have massive air capabilities compared to your neighbors. Asking an underdeveloped African country to use nukes is not going to work sustainably.
2. Nukes are good for breaking up dense enemy formations so your troops can advance quicker. You can imagine just saturating the entire area with them. In the picture below, the war has already been won against Axis but I just wanted to speed up my conquest of remaining countries. So I just "spam" nukes to push them aside.
3. Nukes are extremely good "fortress-busters" and "mountain trespassers". Especially in extreme late game where enemies are building forts everywhere. You don't want to slow down the entire war effort and let enemy recovers.
4. Nuking the entire industry is also an option, but not so advisable. Nukes are expensive to create and the enemy can rebuild its industries if their IC is durable enough. I have tried a nuclear pre-emptive strike successfully as Japan, but not Italy. Ultimately air power and strategy bombers are what determines the course of war, not nukes. You use nukes ONCE you have the aerial technology (back to point 1).
5. In a nuclear confrontation between two superpowers, try to deny the enemy air superiority (75%) by turning the air zone to yellow. In the extreme late game, both power blocs have almost infinite air capabilities and ability to retaliate even after receiving the first massive blow from the other party. On an offensive note, use nukes tactically when the option presents itself. In a massive air war between you and your enemy, some of your air zones will turn green. If they cover important targets, you can use nukes to blow up enemy troops or break through bunkers (point 2 and point 3). Of course, make sure you have point 1 met first because you need to be able to last in an attritional aerial warfare. For example, in my current Italy campaign, I have nearly 5 times the fuel capabilities compared to Axis, even though they have much more planes.
6. The last minor benefit of nukes is to speed up encirclement by bombing the enemies trapped inside, creating an extreme supply bottleneck.

My massive air war with the Axis

 

[SophieX]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

My point of view regarding nukes:
In my games, there are no nukes at all.
I think, the way, how one can use nukes in this game, is completely ahistorical and stupid. Nuking a troops in a region where I planned to conquer and marching into.....crazy!

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

My point of view regarding nukes:
In my games, there are no nukes at all.
I think, the way, how one can use nukes in this game, is completely ahistorical and stupid. Nuking a troops in a region where I planned to conquer and marching into.....crazy!

I think nuke is stupid too. I myself don't like to use it. Completely messy and at times, overpowered (meaning no real strategy involved. Mine as well create a cheat code to kill all enemy troops at once). It is only useful in extremely late game, especially when the AI starts using it against you and conventional warfare is no longer the option (I once got my high-quality garrisoned troops almost blasted to extinction because the AI keeps spamming nukes in the area).

But I think nukes have their strategic and tactical purposes. Just limited.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

Nuking a troops in a region where I planned to conquer and marching into.....crazy!

I just thought about the point on why it is pointless to destroy infrastructure that you are about to march into. And it seems that this point has hit home whenever ppl discuss about the viability of strategic bombing and nukes, for that matter, in operational warfare. I do agree with it, except that in the extreme late game, you usually have a unearthly amount of civilian factories (and slave labor... Mwahahaha) that can allow you to repair any severely damaged territory that you walk into. So infrastructure damage is less of an issue than actually depriving the enemy rights to supply and effective logistics (providing that you have a lot more factories than them and theirs are heavily damaged by your bombs). An analogy would be Wolverine. He will tank a lot of damage but because of his high recovery rate, he can continue to take more quickly. Even though it is a better for him to learn to avoid damage and kill his opponent quicker. But he is not a good fighter, just a rough brawler.

But of course I see your point. It is a more military sound strategy to have a fast moving invading army that can live off the land than a slow moving marauding one. But of course at this point i have not really mastered the micromanagement (I consider myself veteran, not a pro)yet. Ask me to finish a couple of elite campaigns, I can do it. But to execute a beautiful tactical maneover... ask Rommel or Patton . So a bit lazy at times.

 

[Neal Mac]

I just thought about the point on why it is pointless to destroy infrastructure that you are about to march into.

I think the point wasn't so much destroying the infrastructure, but having your men go into a radioactive area. I can't imagine the public would support their sons, brothers, husbands, father etc being put into that sort of situation, and the support for the war at home would plummet.

 

[I had a bad name 99]

I think the point wasn't so much destroying the infrastructure, but having your men go into a radioactive area. I can't imagine the public would support their sons, brothers, husbands, father etc being put into that sort of situation, and the support for the war at home would plummet.

In the game, there is no radioactive effect. But of course, I get what you mean. Basically like poison gas. But this game completely removes the mechanism for the horrors of civilian atrocities. It would be nice if they could add that in with the war support. There could be pop-up events like the mutiny, but it would be: Civilian support collapses due to food crisis or protests against immoral WMD. Quite true in WW1 for Germany and Russia.

The nuclear warhead in this game is more like a supercharged bomb with precision, not much different from the strategic bomb and CAS (which does cause military casualties in this game). I think I lost nearly 300k troops to American bombing during my Italian campaign.

 

[Neal Mac]

In the game, there is no radioactive effect. But of course, I get what you mean. Basically like poison gas. But this game completely removes the mechanism for the horrors of civilian atrocities. It would be nice if they could add that in with the war support. There could be pop-up events like the mutiny, but it would be: Civilian support collapses due to food crisis or protests against immoral WMD. Quite true in WW1 for Germany and Russia.

The nuclear warhead in this game is more like a supercharged bomb with precision, not much different from the strategic bomb and CAS (which does cause military casualties in this game). I think I lost nearly 300k troops to American bombing during my Italian campaign.

Yeah, I guess i get into a more immersive playing style and treat it as a story, and even without the mechanics in the game (it should be there tbh) I know how ridiculous it would be to nuke a city and then send your troops in to take it. Just a personal style. Doesn't make you wrong... even though you are.

 

[klinkvon13]

Thanks for sharing your experience.

My point of view regarding nukes:
In my games, there are no nukes at all.
I think, the way, how one can use nukes in this game, is completely ahistorical and stupid. Nuking a troops in a region where I planned to conquer and marching into.....crazy!

Quite right.
So far I thought nukes quite ineffective in hoi4 while mostly using them on major enemy cities, to little effect.
I would have thought that after doing 25 hiroshimas the enemy would back down. But no, not really. (sure, we can argue that carpet bombing over Germany was massive as well - but now we are in fact talking carpet bombing with nukes, a totally different scale)

So this example suggest using nukes as any other type of bomb. Odd. As it was a conventional warfare. There is a reason why it was not so.

It looks like they reduced effectiveness of the weapon to match gameplay.

Because treated like it should, nuclear bomb would otherwise lead of fast endgames and crumbling alliances (who would enjoy seeing an ally using nuclear weaponry on territory occupied by the enemy, core of an ally, for instance? Little cared that Hiroshima or Berlin was bombed - now think about making a nuclear waste out of Paris or Warsaw).

In the end, the feature is there, tuned down not to break the game, not to alter the gameplay. But it could be thought in a completely different way - more efficient and more unacceptable in terms of public relations, especially on occupied territory. That would mean mostly limiting it's acceptable usage to the core enemy territory, which is not the easiest to get air superiority.

 

[Casko]

Because treated like it should, nuclear bomb would otherwise lead of fast endgames and crumbling alliances (who would enjoy seeing an ally using nuclear weaponry on territory occupied by the enemy, core of an ally, for instance? Little cared that Hiroshima or Berlin was bombed - now think about making a nuclear waste out of Paris or Warsaw).

That said, its also similarly somewhat silly, to nuke entire East coast of US of A from Florida to New England to make the American Horde thin enough so your naval invasion has a chance to success, and still needing to march from Washington to Los Angeles, even after the devastation brought down by the said nuclear devastation from the start of the war.

 

[RolandRahn]

I think the point wasn't so much destroying the infrastructure, but having your men go into a radioactive area. I can't imagine the public would support their sons, brothers, husbands, father etc being put into that sort of situation, and the support for the war at home would plummet.

I doubt it.

First of all, back in the mid-1940s, there was no awareness about the long-lasting effects of radiation.

Second, even with that knowledge, the guys on the frontline might accept them as the lesser evil.

Imagine you would be among the first wave to hit Tarawa, Iwo Jima or Omaha beach....and you would have the option that while you are already in the Landing Craft, they would drop several nukes onto the beach and the areas immediately behind it.

You would cover in your craft, feel the shockwave and then the craft would speed into the blastzone.

Compared to the craft would hit a well defended beach.

Two pretty bad choices.....but with a few precautions (invade when the wind blows from the sea into the land e.t.c.), the long-term losses from the radiation may be fewer than the additional short-term losses from hitting a defended beach that was not softened by nukes.

 

[Reman]

Bombing infra near the frontline is a bad idea as people have pointed out, as you destroy the highways your own troops need to use to move and get supplies. Even with max factories on repair it'll take a while to get things back to normal.

The ways more experienced players use nukes is the following:

• Nuke the enemy's capital supply region. This drops their supply throughput everywhere. Given that supply is the main limiting bottleneck in late game fights, this can singlehandedly win wars. Nukes are also more precise than strat bombing because supply regions are smaller than air regions. An example is with a naval invasion of the USA. Using strats to bomb Washington will cause everything from Pennsylvania to Florida to be flattened, including ports you need to start the invasion. With nukes, you can confine the destruction to around Virginia.
• Use nukes to snipe airports. This also vaporizes up to 2000 enemy planes. Very useful for winning the air war in places that don't have a high concentration of airports (i.e. anywhere outside of Europe).
• Dislodging stubborn defenders. You can drop nukes on mountain holdouts or forts you can't push through, but this should only be used as a last resort due to collateral damage to infra. NEVER nuke ports you plan to invade through. You'll take the port, but ports take ages to repair.

 

[Neal Mac]

I doubt it.

First of all, back in the mid-1940s, there was no awareness about the long-lasting effects of radiation.

Second, even with that knowledge, the guys on the frontline might accept them as the lesser evil.

Imagine you would be among the first wave to hit Tarawa, Iwo Jima or Omaha beach....and you would have the option that while you are already in the Landing Craft, they would drop several nukes onto the beach and the areas immediately behind it.

You would cover in your craft, feel the shockwave and then the craft would speed into the blastzone.

Compared to the craft would hit a well defended beach.

Two pretty bad choices.....but with a few precautions (invade when the wind blows from the sea into the land e.t.c.), the long-term losses from the radiation may be fewer than the additional short-term losses from hitting a defended beach that was not softened by nukes.

Well the scientists were well aware of the danger, as well as FDR and the top Generals, but yes that probably wasn't passed down to the lower levels. I would have bristled at the notion of our leaders purposefully sending troops into a radioactive hot zone knowing it will kill them in a matter of years, if it even took that long, but now sadly it seems entirely plausible with what I know about our government.
In fact I find is highly suspicious that Harry Daghlian supposedly had his deadly exposure while researching RIGHT AFTER we dropped the bombs, and not before. Almost as if it was kept quiet to keep plausible deniability on the after effects of the radiation. It seems much more likely that kind of accident would happen while still researching and not after the bomb has already been made and used.

ETA - Or maybe it was just kept quiet to keep from having to explain things or tip off what we were developing. Might have kept his body in the reefer until after the bombs were deployed.

 

[Neal Mac]

BTW will USA use nukes on their home soil on Japanese invading/occupying forces when they are facing imminent and near defeat?