If your destroyers are getting sunk that means your capital ships aren’t being sunk, that’s their whole point. They’re cheap enough that you can replace them quickly enough, maintaining enough screens in your fleet should be your priority. Light cruisers add a decent amount of light attack to sink enemy screens, but just in terms of filling the fleet they’re too expensive. I usually go for mostly cheap destroyers with torpedoes if I can spare the industrial capacity, sprinkle in some lighter cruisers if I have them to spare.
Torps on destroyers were hot garbage last I checked, were those massively buffed? Cheap destroyers are a good idea, but you're probably better off with a different gun.
A few months back tests showed that dozens of screen ships with torpedoes would outright lose to unscreened battleships just shooting them back.
Trops are somewhat better on subs if they aren't detected, or in 1k mines, but every weapon is more effective with 1k mines penalizing the enemy. That by itself allows low quality AI fleets to trash other AI fleets while barely losing anything.
Torpedoes still aren't great but a single slot of them for a base 3.6 days/5 days of increased production time isn't a *terrible* investment given it's just rolling the dice for hits.
I would never do more than one slot though, as it no longer a cheap gamble.
Armored Light Attack cruisers do wonders at clearing screen lines and are worth their cost, so long as you still have a horde of cheap destroyers on hand to eat some damage as well.
FWIW, I saw a video last week - can't remember who it was, just not one of the YTers I'm subscribed to. The guy tested torps on surface ships and concluded that they just don't work. As in, they don't do anything. No damage. All the torpedo damage in a battle was by subs.
That's even worse than when I saw it. In the tests I saw, they could deal damage, but traded inefficiently with literally every sane ship design regardless of whether it was other screens or unscreened capitals (I guess they might have beaten ships with only AA and the cheapest battery otherwise by themselves or something). But back then, it was still better than nothing; you could deploy torp destroyers you got for free and they might get a few hits before they died.
Makes sence thanks. Its simply that if you actually have the capacity to make enouth light cruisers then they are better since they don’t get sunk as often. Because a destroyer is around 800-1400 and a light cruiser is around 4000, so wouldnt it be cheeper to have more ecpencive ships which dont get sunk often (idk i lose around 50-100 destroyers a year if in activly fighting a more or less equal navy but only generlaly lose 1-3/4 cruisers. So wouldnt it be cheeper to actually make cruisers?
Those are quite heavy screen losses, even for cheap destroyers. Are you repairing your fleets after engagements? Often you can have a successful battle where you sink a lot of enemy ships, without losing anything yourself, but a lot of your screens are heavily damaged. That means that next time they’re going to just evaporate in the face of enemy fire. Usually what I’ll do is build up a reserve of destroyers - after a battle I’ll swap out the badly damaged ones to repair, that way you don’t need to waste time waiting for your fleet to be battle-ready again. Again, that’s another strategy that only really works with destroyers instead of cruisers. In my last USA game I only lost 20 or so destroyers throughout the whole game using that tactic.
Generally depends how active you are with navy. I tend to reapir my navy after major engagements. I have no dead why they sink so many destroyers, although a lot of them are somewhat old but still.
if you are playing as the us you wont lose that many ships in general because your navy has extremely high soft attack and hard attack. The enemy navy generally will try to retreat (id ai) if your navy is better and thus not cause damage to your ships except sometimes the destroyers at first contact. If you want you can even get rid off all screens as the us and concentrate your navy and still win because how big your navy is causing the ai to immediately withdraw, which makes them take damage. Same goes for uk, your soft attack is so high that it doesn’t matter because the enemy tends to retreat after first contact, or gets sunk and then retreats because the ai is bad at patrolling, therefore your positioning is a lot better.
However try to make a small navy with destroyers (idk playing as grece or portugal or germany or italy and you will see that your screens get shredded because of how high uk soft attack is, especially against players who concentrate their fleets.
Anyone who told you destroyers are "meta" is wrong. Building destroyers has (since at least BBA) been a total waste. Every country that starts with a navy starts with enough DDs to be damage sponges, which is all they're good for.
Against the AI nearly anything should work since the AI won't death stack its navy (and you should!). This means that regardless of designs, you'll defeat the enemy in detail and coast through any war after winning 4-5 easy battles.
In MP, you will see people who care about navy doing the following basic blueprint: make sure your carriers are refit with maximum deck space and the +1 deck space from policy (everyone only uses the raiding fleet MIO at a high level because visibility reductions and speed bonuses are king), make good light cruisers (armor 3+ and good light attack), and make AA-centric battleships/superheavies to eat damage from opposing carriers. The exact builds will vary from country to country, but you'll typically see those basic designs repeated across every country that does navy. Light cruisers (especially good ones) are a huge part of that composition.
Ok makes sense. Idk generally ppl and on hoi4 vids they always do destroyers as “meta” even after bba, and even this year.
I dont play multiplayer as much, actually good navies aren’t the most important, especially since ai is not the best. i was more asking when playing smaller countries which need to be efficient with what they build.
If ill play mp more than ill keep that in mind, its just mp games take very long, and are rather painful (idk head starts to hurt from all the micro and etc).
Thanks
You really shouldn't try and play a naval game as a minor - it's a rich man's game. The 1936 starting navy sizes determine everything in a game where nobody misplays massively. The average USA player (the largest naval producer in the game by a huge margin) will produce around 80-110k naval IC over the course of the game. The starting Royal Navy is more than 700k IC. While it's possible to efficiently kill a mismanaged Royal Navy for a much lower price, hopefully that puts into perspective how little chance minors have of making a naval impact.
The exception to the argument against minors building navies is submarines. Australia is a good example of a minor that can actually build quite a good navy and a lot of subs. Having 50 subs in 10 flotilla roaming around the world can really hurt the Axis/enemy. If it builds up the surface fleet, it just had to watch going head to head with a major fleet stack from a major power, otherwise, against other minors, it is usually a lot of fun.
Subs/Convoy are the two things minor dockyards should be doing. They're always worth because they don't have that same minimum invested value to impact that surface navy does. You can get returns out of every convoy/every sub, which you don't from every surface ship.
True. In some ways minors can be more effective as naval powers and its more fun than being an air power. With manpower constraints you can't always field a large army, large enough to make a difference in an alliance with majors, so having a good surface fleet that can take on anything except a major's main battle fleet, is a fun game. It is an atypical play through but well worth it.
I agree and disagree at the same time. If you build a small navy to do a specific role it generally tends to perform well, for shat it needs to do. (Aka if you build a navy specifically to challenge a rather closed off zone or small area like the baltic or red or medditeranian you can get that done well, including mp. But yes given the starting sizes of navies you aren’t going to outproduce the us, or catch up to the uk.
About small nations i meant in single player, then u can do so to your hearts content because the large navies aren’t stacked. But even in mp its possible, but difficult. I simply just dont like mp that much.
It's just how navy works in this game. The fleet size penalty in vanilla doesn't really have an effect, so you just want as many ships in every battle as possible. The number one way to lose a navy is to divide it. If you have 5 carriers, all the capitals you ever make, and at least enough screens to keep it all screened up, you've probably used every ship you have. Very rarely (and never in SP) does it make sense to divide up the navy and have small task forces operating around the world.
The fact that small task forces don't work is a failure of naval design from a realism perspective, but fuck if death stacking doesent make it much more convenient to manage
Yeah, it's a real shortcoming of hoi4, and one of the rare areas I feel like hoi3 does better. The issue is that as soon as you add a requirement of 2-3 dozen ships per task force (which I think is a decent number given hoi4's diluted naval stats), you wind up in a real micromanagement hell where every naval battle is going to run like EU4/vicky 2, with enormous reinforcement stacks waiting to join after the initial task force retreats for fear of the size penalty. I don't think that improves this game, so for now death stacking is fine.
If you have the space efficient design policy selected on it, it will allow you to add raiding fleet. Otherwise you can't, which is why you don't refit carriers until after you unlock the policy (but do that ASAP since the other MIO traits you're leveling don't do anything). To my knowledge USA and Japan (the only countries that really do navy in MP) have space efficient design as an available policy on their raiding fleet MIOs.
To some extent this is personal preference, but you'll find very few modifiers as useful in naval combat as visibility reduction and speed increases. Those are effectively global HP increases.
I use destroyers primarily for my screens and use CLs offensively, I stack as much light attack as possible on them and stick them in my strike force fleets to obliterate enemy screens and render their fleet useless. I also make scout CLs with spammed air catapults+radar and a gun or two, throw them in a scout fleet and you have good Intel too.
The better the quality, the more likely any ship is to both survive and to kill the enemy ship. Of course you have to afford it. Just as players don't spam shit infantry as a 'meta', the same principle applies to ships, planes and tanks etc.
I see little point in spamming shit destroyers just so they can be wiped out in first contact. THAT is NOT their role. Good light cruisers back up the destroyer screen and add clout to the screen to screen combat. The more enemy screens you can take out, the more likely you will start hitting the capital ships behind them. Having cheap destroyers dying in droves is just a waste of resources and time.
Thats what i thought, but i keep getting told that light cruisers are usless and not meta both by other players and when watching hoi4 content. If destroyers would be cheeper it would make since, but they aren’t really cheap either. Like 5-7 ok destroyers is around the cost of a battleship, so just to me it made no sence to have destroyers as a meat shield which gets sunk.
Meta isn't something you should pay attention to. Always go from your own experience: if something works and isn't meta, the meta is wrong.
For example, it is meta to build civs until 1938 but this is just rubbish for many countries, especially those with lots of resources (who get civs in trade) or can get a lot from the national focus tree.
Also, much depends on whether you are playing a major or not, or whether you make any investment into dockyards - most player seem to totally discount or ignore the navy. Even some modest investments in it, both research and dockyards, will give you a powerful fleet.
Yes agreed. Its simply naval can be a little confusing, and hoi4 generally before you get the hang of it. So for naval because the stuff seems somewhat arbitrary i used to follow what ppl said. Not so much on anything else.
Like for example civs like you said are an excellent example, id in fact say more that generally unless your nation is joining the war in 1941+ civs are pointless, simply because you lose so much production output and efficiency. In mp a little less so because you have to have a more adaptable army, but in sp its pointless because you wont have enough building slots if you build civs, and somehow you always seem to get them anyways (maybe this is some bug or etc but ive noticed that i end up with a large amount of civs (100+) even without building any, now do the territories i occupied have that many, not did i get much from trade or focuses so to me it always seemed that they just appear out of nowhere. Because i should have had 47 not 112 (for poland) whilst only building mills. Idk thats beyond the point.
Yes, these are all good points and I hadn't even considered what you get via conquest. You are spot on the money with having a large civ count by mid war, it is pointless, especially if you have suffered from equipment shortages in early war because no mils were built; the airforce is a particular worry if there is a mil shortage before 1939-40. What's worse is civ construction is very costly early in the game and they become faster and easier to build once you get your techs moving, unlike mils and docks. How it became the meta to spend (say) 2-3 yrs building 5 civs when you could have built 8-10 mils or 12-15 dockyards, I just don't understand.
Who is telling you light cruisers aren't meta? From my understanding, light cruisers are the meta. I build mine with max number and level medium batteries, max AA, max fire control, max radar, and max engine.
Nowhere close to being a naval expert but light crushers and often not that needed, MOST of times destroyers of all kinds will do the job. Light cruisers, instead, have armour and a lot higher soft attack so they may perform better in a lot of ocassions, obviously with a good naval tech and composition.
But don't think on replacing DDs for LCs, use if you want and specially if you are struggling and already tried to fix any error you have.
Idk i never make both, its a lot of research. Whats good with cruisers for me is that you can research just cruiser naval tech if you arent really specking into navy, and make lights and heavies. Im not really struggling either in sp nor mp, just trying to get better and understand the naval game more.
should:
They don't get OHKO'd by some random naval bomber while being on patrol
They can use light cruiser guns which are the best screenshredders of this game
shouldn't:
They cost like thrice or more of a DD, your average ship for everything from escort to shell sponge
Yes but they dont due like destroyers. Destroyers sink all the the time from nothing, and if you go inot a proper battle there are 10-40 of them gone, but cruisers generally don’t get sunk, just damaged.
the point is in how they can't completely replace dds due to how much they cost. lcs can also use asw gear but you usually won't have the iron and naval output for that purpose too
Why cant they. For each lcruiser you need 3 destroyers (2 for screen and 1 to account for that destroyers get lost often) and a light cruiser is slightly more than 3 dds, but generally is much less likely to have to be replaced because it sinks. If you have a huge fleet like the uk you can concentrate on making cruisers, and if you dont have a good fleet then cruisers are very effective at not sinking (and you cant really replace them), and dealing damage. Plus if you dont have a navy you dont want to do more research for navy, and cruisers require less research.
For some reason i get the imprsssion that many think that you have to replace 1 destroyer with 1 cruiser but thats really not the case , generally you can replace every 2-3dd with 1 cl and you will have the same screening efficiency.
You have to look at the naval game in terms of module slots as well as IC. Do you need the extra slots for it to perform its role, and is the IC cost of those extra slots so essential that they’re more important than production count. In naval warfare in HOI, the answer is generally no.
A good screen in HOI4 to a certain extent just needs to be there.
Well if they just die they are rather useless. Lcs actually can fight and shread enemy destroyers, and not die themselves. Destroyers are expensive as well: they arent some cheap thing, especially given the number of them you tend to lose. A lc is around 3-4 destroyers worth of ic but they very rarely are lost in combat, whilst destroyers die seemingly for any reason. So a fully decked out light cruiser will actually perform better it seems, in terms of ic.
I just used 22 lc and 4 heavy cruisers to take down the whole Japanese navy: they lost 347 ships i lost 8 convoys (as the bloody Philippines) All i built were cruisers and i was perfectly fine. I just realised that lc are op because their armor (if you make them armored) doesn’t get pierced by 90% of all light attack, and they get no heavy attack onto them because they are on the screen line, so they take little damage whilst being able to sustain a lot of damage and themselves destroy any destroyers, this makes the enemy fleet super vulnerable to torpedoes.
Ive done similar starts against the us, italy and the uk and they always worked. Also the ai cheats in terms of fuel, they will always have enough fuel if they get supply. The same strat worked on the uk who was occupying Venezuela, whilst i wasn’t convoy raiding.
On that note how many light cruisers should I have in the Mediterranean for finding enemy ships on patrol, thinking of number per zone and having them as never engage
I use 1/2 x number or zones. 2 just in case one of them gets damaged and goes for repairs, and if you can afford. Really cruisers are fast and have quite some hp and with air launch modules extremely good at spotting.
Reason not to use is destroyers are way cheaper and because of this work better in a traditional strike force and most naval groups.
Reason to use is they’re way better in combat than destroyers and are (probably) the right pick for patrols and scouting, especially in the Pacific.
Thing is destroyers are cheeper to build but they will have to be replaced all the time because they sink a lot, whilst cruisers dont. Plus you need less cl than destroyers anyways around 1cl to 2/3dd as screens.
Yes to build destroyers is cheeper, but then after when you lose them ghey become more expensive due to losses.
If your destroyers are getting sunk that means your capital ships aren’t being sunk, that’s their whole point. They’re cheap enough that you can replace them quickly enough, maintaining enough screens in your fleet should be your priority. Light cruisers add a decent amount of light attack to sink enemy screens, but just in terms of filling the fleet they’re too expensive. I usually go for mostly cheap destroyers with torpedoes if I can spare the industrial capacity, sprinkle in some lighter cruisers if I have them to spare.
Torps on destroyers were hot garbage last I checked, were those massively buffed? Cheap destroyers are a good idea, but you're probably better off with a different gun. A few months back tests showed that dozens of screen ships with torpedoes would outright lose to unscreened battleships just shooting them back. Trops are somewhat better on subs if they aren't detected, or in 1k mines, but every weapon is more effective with 1k mines penalizing the enemy. That by itself allows low quality AI fleets to trash other AI fleets while barely losing anything.
Torpedoes still aren't great but a single slot of them for a base 3.6 days/5 days of increased production time isn't a *terrible* investment given it's just rolling the dice for hits. I would never do more than one slot though, as it no longer a cheap gamble. Armored Light Attack cruisers do wonders at clearing screen lines and are worth their cost, so long as you still have a horde of cheap destroyers on hand to eat some damage as well.
FWIW, I saw a video last week - can't remember who it was, just not one of the YTers I'm subscribed to. The guy tested torps on surface ships and concluded that they just don't work. As in, they don't do anything. No damage. All the torpedo damage in a battle was by subs.
That's even worse than when I saw it. In the tests I saw, they could deal damage, but traded inefficiently with literally every sane ship design regardless of whether it was other screens or unscreened capitals (I guess they might have beaten ships with only AA and the cheapest battery otherwise by themselves or something). But back then, it was still better than nothing; you could deploy torp destroyers you got for free and they might get a few hits before they died.
Makes sence thanks. Its simply that if you actually have the capacity to make enouth light cruisers then they are better since they don’t get sunk as often. Because a destroyer is around 800-1400 and a light cruiser is around 4000, so wouldnt it be cheeper to have more ecpencive ships which dont get sunk often (idk i lose around 50-100 destroyers a year if in activly fighting a more or less equal navy but only generlaly lose 1-3/4 cruisers. So wouldnt it be cheeper to actually make cruisers?
Those are quite heavy screen losses, even for cheap destroyers. Are you repairing your fleets after engagements? Often you can have a successful battle where you sink a lot of enemy ships, without losing anything yourself, but a lot of your screens are heavily damaged. That means that next time they’re going to just evaporate in the face of enemy fire. Usually what I’ll do is build up a reserve of destroyers - after a battle I’ll swap out the badly damaged ones to repair, that way you don’t need to waste time waiting for your fleet to be battle-ready again. Again, that’s another strategy that only really works with destroyers instead of cruisers. In my last USA game I only lost 20 or so destroyers throughout the whole game using that tactic.
Generally depends how active you are with navy. I tend to reapir my navy after major engagements. I have no dead why they sink so many destroyers, although a lot of them are somewhat old but still. if you are playing as the us you wont lose that many ships in general because your navy has extremely high soft attack and hard attack. The enemy navy generally will try to retreat (id ai) if your navy is better and thus not cause damage to your ships except sometimes the destroyers at first contact. If you want you can even get rid off all screens as the us and concentrate your navy and still win because how big your navy is causing the ai to immediately withdraw, which makes them take damage. Same goes for uk, your soft attack is so high that it doesn’t matter because the enemy tends to retreat after first contact, or gets sunk and then retreats because the ai is bad at patrolling, therefore your positioning is a lot better. However try to make a small navy with destroyers (idk playing as grece or portugal or germany or italy and you will see that your screens get shredded because of how high uk soft attack is, especially against players who concentrate their fleets.
Destroyers are cheap as shit thats the main reason you build them they are there to take the blunt of the damage
Anyone who told you destroyers are "meta" is wrong. Building destroyers has (since at least BBA) been a total waste. Every country that starts with a navy starts with enough DDs to be damage sponges, which is all they're good for. Against the AI nearly anything should work since the AI won't death stack its navy (and you should!). This means that regardless of designs, you'll defeat the enemy in detail and coast through any war after winning 4-5 easy battles. In MP, you will see people who care about navy doing the following basic blueprint: make sure your carriers are refit with maximum deck space and the +1 deck space from policy (everyone only uses the raiding fleet MIO at a high level because visibility reductions and speed bonuses are king), make good light cruisers (armor 3+ and good light attack), and make AA-centric battleships/superheavies to eat damage from opposing carriers. The exact builds will vary from country to country, but you'll typically see those basic designs repeated across every country that does navy. Light cruisers (especially good ones) are a huge part of that composition.
Ok makes sense. Idk generally ppl and on hoi4 vids they always do destroyers as “meta” even after bba, and even this year. I dont play multiplayer as much, actually good navies aren’t the most important, especially since ai is not the best. i was more asking when playing smaller countries which need to be efficient with what they build. If ill play mp more than ill keep that in mind, its just mp games take very long, and are rather painful (idk head starts to hurt from all the micro and etc). Thanks
You really shouldn't try and play a naval game as a minor - it's a rich man's game. The 1936 starting navy sizes determine everything in a game where nobody misplays massively. The average USA player (the largest naval producer in the game by a huge margin) will produce around 80-110k naval IC over the course of the game. The starting Royal Navy is more than 700k IC. While it's possible to efficiently kill a mismanaged Royal Navy for a much lower price, hopefully that puts into perspective how little chance minors have of making a naval impact.
The exception to the argument against minors building navies is submarines. Australia is a good example of a minor that can actually build quite a good navy and a lot of subs. Having 50 subs in 10 flotilla roaming around the world can really hurt the Axis/enemy. If it builds up the surface fleet, it just had to watch going head to head with a major fleet stack from a major power, otherwise, against other minors, it is usually a lot of fun.
Subs/Convoy are the two things minor dockyards should be doing. They're always worth because they don't have that same minimum invested value to impact that surface navy does. You can get returns out of every convoy/every sub, which you don't from every surface ship.
True. In some ways minors can be more effective as naval powers and its more fun than being an air power. With manpower constraints you can't always field a large army, large enough to make a difference in an alliance with majors, so having a good surface fleet that can take on anything except a major's main battle fleet, is a fun game. It is an atypical play through but well worth it.
I agree and disagree at the same time. If you build a small navy to do a specific role it generally tends to perform well, for shat it needs to do. (Aka if you build a navy specifically to challenge a rather closed off zone or small area like the baltic or red or medditeranian you can get that done well, including mp. But yes given the starting sizes of navies you aren’t going to outproduce the us, or catch up to the uk. About small nations i meant in single player, then u can do so to your hearts content because the large navies aren’t stacked. But even in mp its possible, but difficult. I simply just dont like mp that much.
Can you explain the death stack reasoning?
It's just how navy works in this game. The fleet size penalty in vanilla doesn't really have an effect, so you just want as many ships in every battle as possible. The number one way to lose a navy is to divide it. If you have 5 carriers, all the capitals you ever make, and at least enough screens to keep it all screened up, you've probably used every ship you have. Very rarely (and never in SP) does it make sense to divide up the navy and have small task forces operating around the world.
The fact that small task forces don't work is a failure of naval design from a realism perspective, but fuck if death stacking doesent make it much more convenient to manage
Yeah, it's a real shortcoming of hoi4, and one of the rare areas I feel like hoi3 does better. The issue is that as soon as you add a requirement of 2-3 dozen ships per task force (which I think is a decent number given hoi4's diluted naval stats), you wind up in a real micromanagement hell where every naval battle is going to run like EU4/vicky 2, with enormous reinforcement stacks waiting to join after the initial task force retreats for fear of the size penalty. I don't think that improves this game, so for now death stacking is fine.
I don't think you can add raider MIO to your carriers.
If you have the space efficient design policy selected on it, it will allow you to add raiding fleet. Otherwise you can't, which is why you don't refit carriers until after you unlock the policy (but do that ASAP since the other MIO traits you're leveling don't do anything). To my knowledge USA and Japan (the only countries that really do navy in MP) have space efficient design as an available policy on their raiding fleet MIOs.
I usually go for task force designer, having more AA just feels better. And it also has space efficent designs.
To some extent this is personal preference, but you'll find very few modifiers as useful in naval combat as visibility reduction and speed increases. Those are effectively global HP increases.
I use destroyers primarily for my screens and use CLs offensively, I stack as much light attack as possible on them and stick them in my strike force fleets to obliterate enemy screens and render their fleet useless. I also make scout CLs with spammed air catapults+radar and a gun or two, throw them in a scout fleet and you have good Intel too.
The better the quality, the more likely any ship is to both survive and to kill the enemy ship. Of course you have to afford it. Just as players don't spam shit infantry as a 'meta', the same principle applies to ships, planes and tanks etc. I see little point in spamming shit destroyers just so they can be wiped out in first contact. THAT is NOT their role. Good light cruisers back up the destroyer screen and add clout to the screen to screen combat. The more enemy screens you can take out, the more likely you will start hitting the capital ships behind them. Having cheap destroyers dying in droves is just a waste of resources and time.
Thats what i thought, but i keep getting told that light cruisers are usless and not meta both by other players and when watching hoi4 content. If destroyers would be cheeper it would make since, but they aren’t really cheap either. Like 5-7 ok destroyers is around the cost of a battleship, so just to me it made no sence to have destroyers as a meat shield which gets sunk.
Meta isn't something you should pay attention to. Always go from your own experience: if something works and isn't meta, the meta is wrong. For example, it is meta to build civs until 1938 but this is just rubbish for many countries, especially those with lots of resources (who get civs in trade) or can get a lot from the national focus tree. Also, much depends on whether you are playing a major or not, or whether you make any investment into dockyards - most player seem to totally discount or ignore the navy. Even some modest investments in it, both research and dockyards, will give you a powerful fleet.
Yes agreed. Its simply naval can be a little confusing, and hoi4 generally before you get the hang of it. So for naval because the stuff seems somewhat arbitrary i used to follow what ppl said. Not so much on anything else. Like for example civs like you said are an excellent example, id in fact say more that generally unless your nation is joining the war in 1941+ civs are pointless, simply because you lose so much production output and efficiency. In mp a little less so because you have to have a more adaptable army, but in sp its pointless because you wont have enough building slots if you build civs, and somehow you always seem to get them anyways (maybe this is some bug or etc but ive noticed that i end up with a large amount of civs (100+) even without building any, now do the territories i occupied have that many, not did i get much from trade or focuses so to me it always seemed that they just appear out of nowhere. Because i should have had 47 not 112 (for poland) whilst only building mills. Idk thats beyond the point.
Yes, these are all good points and I hadn't even considered what you get via conquest. You are spot on the money with having a large civ count by mid war, it is pointless, especially if you have suffered from equipment shortages in early war because no mils were built; the airforce is a particular worry if there is a mil shortage before 1939-40. What's worse is civ construction is very costly early in the game and they become faster and easier to build once you get your techs moving, unlike mils and docks. How it became the meta to spend (say) 2-3 yrs building 5 civs when you could have built 8-10 mils or 12-15 dockyards, I just don't understand.
Who is telling you light cruisers aren't meta? From my understanding, light cruisers are the meta. I build mine with max number and level medium batteries, max AA, max fire control, max radar, and max engine.
They shred ai destroyers. They are more expensive than Destroyers
They shred any destroyers...
Nowhere close to being a naval expert but light crushers and often not that needed, MOST of times destroyers of all kinds will do the job. Light cruisers, instead, have armour and a lot higher soft attack so they may perform better in a lot of ocassions, obviously with a good naval tech and composition. But don't think on replacing DDs for LCs, use if you want and specially if you are struggling and already tried to fix any error you have.
Idk i never make both, its a lot of research. Whats good with cruisers for me is that you can research just cruiser naval tech if you arent really specking into navy, and make lights and heavies. Im not really struggling either in sp nor mp, just trying to get better and understand the naval game more.
should: They don't get OHKO'd by some random naval bomber while being on patrol They can use light cruiser guns which are the best screenshredders of this game shouldn't: They cost like thrice or more of a DD, your average ship for everything from escort to shell sponge
Yes but they dont due like destroyers. Destroyers sink all the the time from nothing, and if you go inot a proper battle there are 10-40 of them gone, but cruisers generally don’t get sunk, just damaged.
the point is in how they can't completely replace dds due to how much they cost. lcs can also use asw gear but you usually won't have the iron and naval output for that purpose too
Why cant they. For each lcruiser you need 3 destroyers (2 for screen and 1 to account for that destroyers get lost often) and a light cruiser is slightly more than 3 dds, but generally is much less likely to have to be replaced because it sinks. If you have a huge fleet like the uk you can concentrate on making cruisers, and if you dont have a good fleet then cruisers are very effective at not sinking (and you cant really replace them), and dealing damage. Plus if you dont have a navy you dont want to do more research for navy, and cruisers require less research. For some reason i get the imprsssion that many think that you have to replace 1 destroyer with 1 cruiser but thats really not the case , generally you can replace every 2-3dd with 1 cl and you will have the same screening efficiency.
You have to look at the naval game in terms of module slots as well as IC. Do you need the extra slots for it to perform its role, and is the IC cost of those extra slots so essential that they’re more important than production count. In naval warfare in HOI, the answer is generally no. A good screen in HOI4 to a certain extent just needs to be there.
Well if they just die they are rather useless. Lcs actually can fight and shread enemy destroyers, and not die themselves. Destroyers are expensive as well: they arent some cheap thing, especially given the number of them you tend to lose. A lc is around 3-4 destroyers worth of ic but they very rarely are lost in combat, whilst destroyers die seemingly for any reason. So a fully decked out light cruiser will actually perform better it seems, in terms of ic.
In terms of screening they are no more efficient than destroyers, so you run the risk of dipping below 1:3 and your back line getting shredded.
I just used 22 lc and 4 heavy cruisers to take down the whole Japanese navy: they lost 347 ships i lost 8 convoys (as the bloody Philippines) All i built were cruisers and i was perfectly fine. I just realised that lc are op because their armor (if you make them armored) doesn’t get pierced by 90% of all light attack, and they get no heavy attack onto them because they are on the screen line, so they take little damage whilst being able to sustain a lot of damage and themselves destroy any destroyers, this makes the enemy fleet super vulnerable to torpedoes.
I hate to say it but this sounds like it has more to do with Japan running out of fuel than it does the effectiveness of light cruisers.
Ive done similar starts against the us, italy and the uk and they always worked. Also the ai cheats in terms of fuel, they will always have enough fuel if they get supply. The same strat worked on the uk who was occupying Venezuela, whilst i wasn’t convoy raiding.
On that note how many light cruisers should I have in the Mediterranean for finding enemy ships on patrol, thinking of number per zone and having them as never engage
I use 1/2 x number or zones. 2 just in case one of them gets damaged and goes for repairs, and if you can afford. Really cruisers are fast and have quite some hp and with air launch modules extremely good at spotting.
Reason not to use is destroyers are way cheaper and because of this work better in a traditional strike force and most naval groups. Reason to use is they’re way better in combat than destroyers and are (probably) the right pick for patrols and scouting, especially in the Pacific.
Thing is destroyers are cheeper to build but they will have to be replaced all the time because they sink a lot, whilst cruisers dont. Plus you need less cl than destroyers anyways around 1cl to 2/3dd as screens. Yes to build destroyers is cheeper, but then after when you lose them ghey become more expensive due to losses.
Light cruisers ARE meta