Naval strategy

[gornard]

There doesn't seem to be a detailed naval section on the wiki that answers these questions.
I know theres a number of ships in a fleet were by any additional ships will lead to no increase in fighting ability (25?). However is there an optimum number of ships to have in a fleet?
Also is it best to mix fleets up or keep them homogeneous with your strongest war ships?
At what point is it worth getting rid of your older ships if ever? i'm aware that there are classes of ship as tech increases which have an unseen advantage over older types e.g. commerce raiders can beat men of war.

Any other tips

 

[henryjai]

I think losing your ships in combat would lose prestige, 1 per capital ship it seemed. I didn't really try this out myself but I saw the prestige of UK/Russia drop like hell(and in the units of 1) during the Crimean War. It is highly unlikely to be caused by things other than naval combat.

Ships don't cost much to maintain, so, whether you like to hide your old navy in your bases (to maintain a military score), or send them as cannon-fodders is your own choice, for me,

(this is what I called a level, Protected cruiser is one level behind Light Cruisers, pre-dreadnought is one level behind dreadnoughts, Raiders are one level behind monitors)

1. Old ships one level behind - escorting transport squadrons, cannonfodder of my better warships
2. Old ships two levels behind - only retain the best ships, such as MWs, FRs are scrapped.
3. Old ships three level behind - all scrapped

note that ships like clipper transports are slow like hell, I scrap them if I have the money for steamers, both are quite similar in terms of their cost to maintain.

old ships aren't all worthless, they could be at least used to blockade your enemy's colonies, however, how often you'll be blockading instead of landing and take them all? Strangely, even clipper transports can blockade ports.

For me, a navy as huge as possible is the key to win naval battles. The effectiveness penalty is negligible unless you stack like 300 ships. If you could afford, 300 dreadnoughts could pretty much wipe out any kind of fleets in seconds, except of course a fleet of the modern battleships.

Commerce raiders did have an advantage over men of war, but make sure you aren't outnumbered badly. A decent sized Men of War navy could still annihilate your raiders. However, no matter how many raiders you have I think you're gonna to have troubles versus those Ironclads. Same for protected cruisers, a few of them could easily beat a huge fleet of ironclads/monitors. Dreadnoughts are monsters that one could annihilate your entire fleet of protected cruisers. (you aren't gonna sink that dreadnought no matter how hard you try, you might still knock it to retreat... well)

I don't really know how submarines worked, they are effective against old level ships, and with a good admiral, they could also sink the better ships if you massed enough of them. I'd think that they are useful for blockades, but blockades aren't useful, so... they aren't even qualified as a poor-man's navy as they are relatively costly to build.

 

[gornard]

Thanks for that.
I like the idea of having several all purpose fleets to work with rather then just one monster. In my current japan game i have 3 fleets of 12 raiders 1 iron clad and 3 steamers each (i'm working on building iron clads but i only just have the technology). The americans i'm fighting only have 2 monitors and slightly less raiders then me, but a whole load of Men of war, they also have these ships mainly concentrated in a 50 odd ship mega fleet on the east coast, assuming they move this fleet as one, i'll probably have to have all 3 of my fleets in one big lump to counter them if the effectiveness penalty is negligable. I have maybe 2 more naval techs then they do

 

[pizza de oveja]

The manual states that any ship of bigger class will defeat ships of a lesser class, I understand aside from tecnological advancements, leaders and everything else. While torpedoes were able to be launched by small ships and had the potential to sink even mighty dreadnoughts and given the fact that even by Jutland battle in 1916 I read that acuracy despite all the huge tecnological advances was around 2%-6& hits of shells fired, I think that is not very clear that this combat system is the most realistic thing to have, but I guess it is a good compromise to avoid player frustration.

IMHO vic should have the penalties of Hoi2 to megafleets however I sometimes forget that vic is already an ancient game and thus I shouldnt be asking for things that newer paradox games implementes. you should get a +75 penalty above 25 ships or so. They have that in a wwII game and those guys had radio and stuff! Now...comand 2000 ships with flag signals in the age of coal ships...not even our current goverments would compare to the chaos that would suppose.

In my glorious prussian campaing the royal navy had a 2000+ ship gargantuan fleet that only lacked a hovering death star. It was more than unstopable and able to sink my whole fleet in seconds.
Being the age of coal, well Im guessing that when that fleet left scapa they would have noticed it in the black sea, but I never spoted it until it attacked one of my fleets, which the ai didnt have any problem finding, nor continously blockading the sea next to my port for months and that without suffering any attrition whatsoever!.

With the Ai having radar sonar and satellite info to track my fleets and the player not been able of spoting not even fleets that are performing a landing in one of the player's provinces (a paradox ol' time favorite that Im guessing will never be adressed) until the enemy troops have ocupied the provincial capital that was a clear exploit on the part of the Ai...however I guess I shouldnt complain given all the exploits we players can enjoy, and that is not counting outright cheating! Those damn brits are lucky there is not a cheat code to get a new instant dreadnought...that would be the day...

 

[henryjai]

The manual states that any ship of bigger class will defeat ships of a lesser class, I understand aside from tecnological advancements, leaders and everything else. While torpedoes were able to be launched by small ships and had the potential to sink even mighty dreadnoughts and given the fact that even by Jutland battle in 1916 I read that acuracy despite all the huge tecnological advances was around 2%-6& hits of shells fired, I think that is not very clear that this combat system is the most realistic thing to have, but I guess it is a good compromise to avoid player frustration.

IMHO vic should have the penalties of Hoi2 to megafleets however I sometimes forget that vic is already an ancient game and thus I shouldnt be asking for things that newer paradox games implementes. you should get a +75 penalty above 25 ships or so. They have that in a wwII game and those guys had radio and stuff! Now...comand 2000 ships with flag signals in the age of coal ships...not even our current goverments would compare to the chaos that would suppose.

In my glorious prussian campaing the royal navy had a 2000+ ship gargantuan fleet that only lacked a hovering death star. It was more than unstopable and able to sink my whole fleet in seconds.
Being the age of coal, well Im guessing that when that fleet left scapa they would have noticed it in the black sea, but I never spoted it until it attacked one of my fleets, which the ai didnt have any problem finding, nor continously blockading the sea next to my port for months and that without suffering any attrition whatsoever!.

With the Ai having radar sonar and satellite info to track my fleets and the player not been able of spoting not even fleets that are performing a landing in one of the player's provinces (a paradox ol' time favorite that Im guessing will never be adressed) until the enemy troops have ocupied the provincial capital that was a clear exploit on the part of the Ai...however I guess I shouldnt complain given all the exploits we players can enjoy, and that is not counting outright cheating! Those damn brits are lucky there is not a cheat code to get a new instant dreadnought...that would be the day...

Try to do some "price tweak" of ships(remember to backup), add a zero to the price would significantly lower the number of ships the RN have, however, it would still be numerous.

 

[gornard]

I've learned never to fight the UK at sea in this game.

 

[henryjai]

I've learned never to fight the UK at sea in this game.

You can win the UK navy, you only need to tech rush and build build build like a hell and DOW UK immediately after your ships are ready, you could sink the entire RN in a month.

OR

Build a hell-huge navy, about 0.75 the size of the RN, lure the RN out with your steamer transports (preferably loaded) when the war started, the RN would send 10 strength ships to fight your navy, eat them piecewise, retreat your damaged ships to your naval base, this is a tough way but nevertheless it works. If you don't have spare units to invade india send your submarines to blockade them to cripple their economy as much as possible.

 

[pizza de oveja]

It is historic after all for the Royal navy to be invencible, after all it had destroyed the glorious spanish fleet in the napoleonic wars, and the french one (which had robbed the dutch fleet) thus creating an at start supperiority in ship numbers that would remain until almost mid XX century, but 2000+ ships fleets to do that in game is just lame.

 

[gornard]

you can probably change the fleet size target variable in the save game file if you wanted to curtail britains insane naval ambitions somewhat.

The best time to start a naval war against another power is just after they've finished fighting the british, usually they don't have two ships to rub together.

 

[Alyosha]

Fleet target size is probably the only way to do it as the AI pays no army/navy maintenance. In other words, charging more to build the ships will likely do nothing to alter fleet sizes as the AI can stockpile huge amounts of cash without having to pay for its military.

I know I bring this bone of contention up frequently but it really breaks the game after 1900. The AI has absolutely no semblance of reality when it comes to military sizes - a standing army of 100+ divisions? That's completely ridiculous for this time frame. It would be great if we could push the AI to use the mobilization pool instead but unfortunately that seems to make things worse - the AI mobilizes and with the "manpower rush" that comes from said mobilization builds more regular divisions.

Of course then there exists the problem of the AI not disbanding regulars. Too many factors are at play and I'm not sure if we can address any of them.

 

[unmerged(164401)]

I've learned never to fight the UK at sea in this game.

i came close once with Japan, as i heavily relied on my navy to secure my home land. i focused on Navy-Industrial techs in probably 80% of the game. whenever i had huge amount of money, i would build no less than 20 of my best ships. i rarely sold any steamers to the world market though, which i think was the reason why all (but UK) other factions never came close to the amount of navy i had. the US had a fair navy, but still..

 

[pizza de oveja]

Hi Alyosha

Is that confirmed that the Ai does not pay upkeep for its armed forces???
And we still defeat it?
woh!:wacko:

In my current glorious french campaing I plan on being perpetually in good terms with the british overlords so they perhaps help me in the wars against prussia, but somehow I fear they will eventually DOW'ed for no reason.

Sockingly enought they just did satellite Rusia in the crimian war and got a mega huge penalty to prestige(the brits), making me the top one in the prestige chain, but with russia as ally for UK in all wars from now I guess they will be getting top prestige in no time.

Russia+Uk in victoria! time to buy all tea stocks at 20x its price, put english as main language in france schools and possibly marry one of the kings sons with napo the III...

By the way that guy just made a coup and totally crippled my economy! I will try to reform to a cons. monarchy because its either that or Im going bankrupt in a month...losing 76 cash each day and going down baby...oh gods curse that family!

 

[gornard]

Fleet target size is probably the only way to do it as the AI pays no army/navy maintenance. In other words, charging more to build the ships will likely do nothing to alter fleet sizes as the AI can stockpile huge amounts of cash without having to pay for its military.

i didn't know that, no wonder the major AI nations always have vast amounts of cash.

pizza de oveja: in the save file different countries have different tendancies towards making friends and enemies, if your concerned about which ally will double cross you, have a look at the file.

 

[pizza de oveja]

i didn't know that, no wonder the major AI nations always have vast amounts of cash.

pizza de oveja: in the save file different countries have different tendancies towards making friends and enemies, if your concerned about which ally will double cross you, have a look at the file.

Excellent tip gornard...
While the head of the glorious french empire is mighty pleased with it, I dare say that would be outright cheating so I will refrain from using that. Not that being able to know that the prussian are event-scripted to DOW me in 1860 is not but... One has to draw the thin red line someplace so...
I have a few champagne-soaked divisions ready at my glorious maginot decafeinated line(level 2 sig-sig) waiting for them! Lets hope that is enought to defeat those pesky sausage eaters

 

[gornard]

i understand if you think it's cheating, i don't tend to look at it either.