Pretty much agree with all of this! One other weakness of AH having only ports in Croatia is that all your ports are on the Adriatic, meaning you can be blockaded very easily. As well it is possible for the Croats to rebel and become independent so watch your unrest!
I would say the biggest problem with A-H is their god awful shipbuilding capaity. If you get a decent roll for your gdp growth you will swim in money but can't do that much with it.
I've seen the AI take third party territories with naval invasions frequently, often with what appears to be very small naval forces. They are hard to spot before completing, because the game doesn't notify you, or display one of those circles on the map. Instead, you get notified that a territory has changed hands, and you can spot the ships of the conquering nation sailing away. I suspect most of those events are equivalent to the "conquest" events you get as a player, but they are essentially the same as a naval invasion. Naval invasions by the AI against the player seem to be quite rare, but it has happened a few times in my campaigns. All such attempts have failed, because I was able to move ships into place and attack their forces, preventing them from having enough tonnage to succeed.
I'd love to see you play one of those "S" tiers with the intent from day 1 of the campaign to take over the entire world, just to see if it can be done.
@@xcritic9671 i conquered britain with germany fully, and its looking very good. Only bad thing is world conquest will be so difficult with the USA being at war with south america constantly
Just adding my own notes and commenting to help the algorithm. As a warning, this is a large amount of text: Britain: I agree, but would add the the army size is limited in comparison to nations such as China, Russia, and the US. It's something to be wary of should you find yourself having a land battle with them. Also, it means those in land territories are more likely to flip if your Unrest gets too high as the garrison is probably going to be quite small. The other thing I will say British superstructures of their ships are very large and it can be very annoying to try and mount a powerful secondary armament on them. Germany: Agree with everything. I generally bully Russia and just take control the Baltic, allowing me tow focus everything westward. Once you grab Central Russia from them through St. Petersburg, their army almost becomes a non-factor. Germany notably gets the largest hull in game at 130,000 tons. If you like big battleships, Germany is the way to go. France: Again, agreed. Maybe it is a bit understated, but with a 1890 start, getting forces to French Indochina to fight China or Japan, or to ward off a rebellion, is tough to do. Your last port in Madagascar and most ships of the period will hit low fuel before getting to Asia. Ship-wise, only problems I had was with the floating hotel aesthetics of some of their early ships and at least one of their modern BB hulls forces a HMS Nelson like main battery with it's hull layout. Or Dunkerque/Richelieu style I guess, as it is France. If you don't mind an all forward battery, it's not bad, but I prefer the more traditional ABX with a Y turret if the tonnage and balance can handle it. Spain: The hardest country for me to play. I have never made it to 1950 with them. You start out behind and it is extremely difficult to get caught up with everyone else. One thing you did miss is the Philippines always get oil at some point in the 1920's iirc. It is a cast iron b!$#@ to do, but if you can hold the Philippines, they are going to be a great source of income and a strategic port for Asian operations. But, on a 1890 start, trying to get ships to the Philippines during a war is no small task for Spain. They are even more port limited than France and can ill afford the large capital ships that maybe could get there in a decent amount of time. I would also recommend staying friendly with France or make any conflict with them limited and short. They seemingly have no issues taking Southern Spain with their army. Their ships, I suggest thinking small due to the economy and crew training rates. The ships they get are nothing special, though they do get the limited and weirdly expensive small dreadnought and advanced small battleship hulls. Italy: Agreed. Only thing to add is, during a protracted war, France and/or Austro-Hungrary have armies that will overrun your north. War with Austro-Hungrary for me usually turns the Adriatic into the Thunderdome and I am usually not satisfied until they collapse, thus securing my eastern flank. If you limit your campaigns focus to the Med and Africa, Italy can be an incredibly potent force with their ships. If you want global Italy, you risk over extending what your economy and shipyards can handle and risk a disastrous defeat. Japan: You hit the nail on the head with their situation. The only things I would add is, go to war with Spain before the US does, take the Philippines and get that oil. They're in no way able to effectively stop you in the 1890's to the 1910's. Also, when you inevitably go to war with China, Southern China is their weak spot. You are more likely to get a successful naval invasion there than Central and Northern China and taking it from them really hurts their already difficult economic situation while helping yours. Take the south and head north. Early game, your biggest worry it probably pissing off Britain. They can reach you and hurt you badly, though this is sometime limited by the AI's inability to figure out that stopping for a turn or two to refuel is a good thing. Japan's mid to late game ships like torpedoes. They have a couple of experimental torpedo cruisers to play with and I think it's their Modern Cruiser II that has internal bays to mount deck launchers, giving it a hilariously large torpedo broadside if you max it out. China: Yeah, you hit everything I would have. I think your latest campaign show exactly what China can and can't do. If you can survive the economy and unrest and take over your neighbors, global conquest is in the cards. Austria-Hungrary: Only time I have survived as this nation was completely taking over Italy. The Army can be ok but, as you mention here and with China, it is far too inconsistent. This means you may take over all of the Balkans and beyond, or the army might collapse trying to take Serbia. The Russians might take Galcia, or the army grabs everything west of the Urals. Or the army literally does nothing the entire game other than defending against the occasional Russian push. I have many of the same problems with them as I do Spain, but I like them a bit better because their territory is far more focused and the AI has a lot of problems pulling of naval invasions. But, if you stay bottled in the Adriatic and Ionian seas, by the 1920's you will be at risk of just simply being overwhelmed by far more numerically and technologically superior ships. And the only way I have found to consistently survive this is to take out Italy and take their ports and economic output. Russia: Only survived once with them, and that was only because Europe played nice with me long enough to remove Japan as a going concern and take them over. I find that early on, you have to decide whether to focus east or west and just go with it. Maybe after growing fat on conquest you can afford both by the 1930's, but the economy is simply not there to do so beforehand. The Black Sea and the south I tend to look at who the Ottomans are allied with. If you are lucky enough to get them to be allied with you, you have nothing to fear. When you go to war, the Ottomans simply close the Bosporus to enemy ships and they can't get in. In this case, you can effectively ignore the Black Sea. If someone else gets the Ottomans, I try to be their friends and hopefully get an alliance with them, allowing the Ottomans to yet again close the Bosporus to my enemies. If you can get your army logistics straight eventually, you have the second most powerful army behind China and can eventually start rolling into Europe pretty easily. But yeah, they were the second most challenging nation to play as for me, behind Spain. US: I actually prefer starting in the 1890's with the US. It gives you the opportunity to bully Spain for it's holdings in the America's and Caribbean. Against the British, I generally don't think it's worth it as the territories you gain aren't necessarily worth the risk of going up against the preeminent naval power of the world. Once you get into the 1920's and have some power projection, the US can go toe-to-toe with anyone. Strategically, you eventually get large oil reserves in the Southern US and you eventually get the Panama Canal if you don't lose Panama. Because of the large home population and potentially high GDP, you have an very large and effective army if you can keep up the logistics. You can invade anywhere and the army has a good chance of continuing to push on their own. The other thing I like about the US is the ship designs seem to just work. They seem to have far less issues with overly large superstructures or smokestacks that don't fit within the spots for them on the superstructures. The hulls tend to have plenty of space for armaments and later superstructures have pretty good mounting points for massed 5in guns. My only complaint with America is 1890-1910 tend to be a bit boring as it is mostly just building up your economy until you can build a large, long range fleet to spread freedom with. Once you start rolling though, very few nations can really stop you.
You speak of the floating hotel aesthetics of early French hulls as if they were a bad thing, but some of those hulls (the cruisers, particularly) are so much better than everyone else's equivalents that it's kind of funny.
The difference between HOI4 and UAD is that one is a grand strategy game where nobody understands naval warfare and the other is a grand strategy game where nobody understands land warfare. Tangential, but what would you like to see in a hypothetical UAD2 (I know the first one still is missing stuff and has issues, but you understand)
I'd like to see: - clearer explanation of all mechanics (from army logistics to pen mechanics) - expand time line to 1990 - playable smaller nations, even if it's with generic tech trees/without special hulls - some more peculiar designs (trimaran, hydroil) - missiles and counters to them - PT boats/patrol boats into the 1990 That's just a few that come to mind
@@Stealth17Gaming For the 1990, we would get heavily into missile warfare however, and that kinda completely changes how that works. Also naval aviation, and thats its own big can of works, just look at RtW
An interesting possibility for playing as a minor nation would technically be a different game but a game where you manage which major nation you have an alliance with and order ships for them (or attempt to) would be interesting. In some ways though, I would want to be able to order ships from any major power that I am not confrontational with.
Well it is 1900 after all. Every starting year countries have different relationship matrix, some acquire more stronger enemies from the getgo, some don't. Furthermore, it's even going to vary in mods that would fix weird relationships. (like Soviet Union for some completely unknown reasons liking German Reich in 1940 start, for the most obvious one)
@@avmlaa6639 in 1940 depending on exact date, Germany hadnt yet brokem Molotov Ribbentrop pact and was thus viewed as a friendly nation for trade of which there was a substantial amount. you can reference multiple texts by Catherine Merridale amd the book Absolute War for more.
Regarding the mention of unrest, it can be a real viable strategy to go for early game unrest in a nation without democracy to force a change in government. The early game will be tough, but it will set a minor nation up for great success in the later stages of the game. I did so with China and the economic boost made me a monster.
I always play as Austria-Hungary. They are so much easier to manage in the early game. I stay out of war for the first 10 years, just building economy and tech. I don't have to waste money on the bad early ships. THEN after 10 years I build a fleet and start to get active. The most recent game I took all of Italy in stages, and ended up with weird colonies in places like Hong Kong, Senegal, Somalia, Costa Rica and Samoa.
14:20 correction to the unrest discussion: it doesn't affect you, only the country's government type, and individual province might rebel and leave. You'll often get a different government type each time you get very high unrest, which can actually be a good thing. I try to get a revolution in every Russia campaign because the starting modifiers are terrible.
i saw you normally plays random. In historical Russia more or less always switch to communist and that is even worse than absolut monarchy. Absolut monarchy gives you naval budget and a decent army atleast.
I'd be tempted to rank the US as S+ tier. If you can avoid an early conflict with the British, which isn't that difficult, then you generally have time to allow the economy to hit the turbo button. You then have vast amounts of cash to throw at research & ship building in the mid to late game.
When i start playing America in 1890, in multiple campaigns i have taken all the British territories they have in Caribbean (that dont rebel from Britain or when nations collapsed easily) and then take the french Caribbean territories. America is the easiest to play.
In my current save as France, it's around 1912, Germany has been left out of wars for a while and is gunning down China like crazy. As for me, I didn't take care of my transports enough and I'm struggling to bring Italy to its knees (the game of alliances made it so Japan is also at war with me but my best ships are in the Mediterrannean so Japan is destroying my transports everywhere...) In a previous game, I grabbed some Chinese territories fast after destroying their puny ships. Then Spain fell to my might while China was kept at bay. Some Russians territories can be very easy to invade also. If you hold territories East of Germany from the Russians, you can prevent Germans of doing anything into the North Sea or the Baltic. Their logistics starts to crumble, take their African colonies for good measure and the if you are not at war with anyone else, it's in the bag, Germany will fall. Once it's fallen, finish off Russia by Naval Invasions on all the provinces that have ports. The game is lost for a nation if it loses all its ports. I then invaded Italy and China and Austro Hungary. The Brits were too strong to be defeated but I made them my allied. The USA were also too strong so the world was governed by USA, UK and France. With France, you've got to plan a fast war with a weak enemy before you can strenghten. If you want to strengthen first, you'll struggle. In the very early builds, Spain tended to lose very fast to either France, the Brits or the Germans, the Kingdom dissolved on many occasions... However they seem to want to grab Cuba and the Carribean very early on. Italy's position on the end of the Adriatic can prevent Austria Hungary of moving anywhere if you have higher tier minefields that can block outright any sortie, at least HP wise for the ships that will suffer considerable damage... So you better develop, create big minefields and then have a war with them to take their Adriatic territories. Then, if they have taken Black Sea territories, go fetch them and boom, landlocked, they lose. One thing the Austrian like to do in the game is to take Sebastopol and Odessa the quickest possible to avoid being locked in by the Italians. And as a result, Russia suffers a lot. If Italy or Austria are allied to France or Germany, they can take the Baltic territories to the Russians. The French can take the Far East Russian territories and boom, landlocked, Russia loses. Italy should take Northern Africa French colonies first and foremost, taking Marseille or Toulon will be too difficult at first, then take Corsica and secure Greek territtories if the occasion presents itself to lock down Austria into the Adriatic. Eastern Russian territories are crap as far as GDP is concerned but losing Russia their ports in the East won't do them any good, so if you can grab them for Japan the quickest, the better, same if you can take the smaller Chinese territories to block some of their mainland ports with minefields... Playing Japan, ally yourself with other enemies of Russia to attack the Russian Empire from all fronts. Austria can secure Black Sea pretty easily, Germany, UK or France can secure the Baltic, Japan and France secure the East and keep China in check. China is difficult to play, your tech doesn't develop fast and your armies can be quite weak despite their numbers (may be it changed, it's been a while since I playd them). The problem with securing the Black Sea is that you don't want the Dardanelles/Bosphorus Straight being blocked by Turkey/Ottomans if they are allied to your enemies... In all games I played, Russia became the USSR pretty early on because they kept having their asses kicked wether by Germany, Austria, China or Japan.
Germany has very bad cruiser hulls in the early game. And it takes some time before you get cruiser hulls that can have more than two turrets. Germany get good dreadnought hulls and battlecruiser hulls though. But what kind of ship hulls you get is also important. Because of the early pre-dreadnought hulls being so bad I'd dump Germany down to B tier. China actually has some pretty nice pre-dreadnought hulls, especially for early multi-turret battleships. I was surprised you didn't take hull options and culture specific hulls components into consideration. Well, most of the time. You did mention the torpedo battleship ^^
german bad early game cruiser hulls are balanced by having one of the best battleship hulls for a 1890 start. early game cruisers are only useful for a very short time anyway while you can stretch the usefulness of the early battleship hulls out quite a bit
Good video, so far I played, Austria, Spain and Japan, from those 3 Austria was the hardest by far. Spain loses on attrition with a long war. Japan is a breeze to play
I discovered the game about week ago and so far played 2 nations (both 1890 start). Germany (on normal) and USA (on legendary) and I find myself bored out of my mind in both - regarding campaign difficulty. Playing with ship builds is very entertaining for me though.
The campaign gets much more interesting if you don't play as the most powerful nations. With smaller nations you need to influence other nations a lot to not get crushed.
@@Qwarzz Fair enough, USA and Germany are (probably) amongst the more powerful nations, but still - virtually no challenge (even on legendary)? I had made some mistakes while learning the game (mainly in optimized ship building), but other than that? AI is not actively attacking me, my ships can take on many times the number and win (even in auto-resolve) and I can snipe any province I want. I am tempted to try Italy or Spain, but even then I doubt it will be that much challenging.
Just consider downloading mods that increase difficulty and AI competitiveness off of official site pinned by the devs. These probably also have starting gdp per every start year documented.
Excited for the Spain campaign. Spain is actually one of the countries you might want to start in 1890, since in the 1890 they still control Cuba, Puerto Rico and Phillipines. But you have to keep the US happy, since a war with the US is something you can't win in 1890. When I played spain I had a pretty good 1890 start by focussing the first 10-15 year on avoiding any war, building an economy, researching, and grabbing any neutrals I could. Then on 1920-1915 I had enough of a tech lead that I felt confident enough to start taking on majors. Maybe you want to consider starting in 1890, do something like me, and then start the actual series in 1900 or so, when the horrible 1890s ships are starting to get phased out.
I finally got this game on sale after watching your videos for years. And i still have no clue what I'm doing, but i sure am having fun with meme ships lmao
Maybe its just the economy and the difficulty I'm playing as but I've never had issues defending that territory as the UK. I'll do a 1920s start for the tech. BBs plus escorts for the european fleets, generally two in the Home Isles, and BCs plus lighter escorts for Asia though if I've got the funds I'll drop a few BB in Madras so I don't get bullied by Japan
For an example of how terrible China's army logistics are in the game, I had a British force of like 5000 invade the Chinese mainland with an army size of about 700,000. And the British force captured it
One of the things I really like about this game is how almost every nation has its own unique strategic challenges, not just from nation to nation, but also from decade to decade.
The US is really strong with how the AI doesn't know how to do naval invasions. Kinda helps being an ocean away from almost every major power in the game on top of the massive GDP and growth the US has.
I started a US campaign last week, began in 1900. About 1910 I had Russia, Germany, France, and Japan declare war on me one after another with in 3 months. Inside of a year I had almost nothing left so yeah you can "spark" with nations, it doesn't happen very often but it can happen.
A campaign mode I think would be fun, minor nations. You don't build ships you buy them from the major AI players. Ottoman Empire, Brazil, ect. I think that would be a fun thing.
Id love to be able to play as the ottomans honestly. It would be so much fun to play as them. I'm definitely in favor of more nations playable. Also adding more ports would be fun like allowing combat on the great lakes or the Caspian sea or svalbard island ports
@@brendonbewersdorf986 the problem with inland waterways is they are not connected to the main ocean But how cool would it be to play Netherlands and having to protect the Dutch East Indies and the homeland at the same time with limited resources
@@avus-kw2f213 the dutch would definitely be another fun one especially since they actually were trying to build up their navy. And yeah I understand about the inland waterways but it would still be fun imagine a naval invasion of the US from Canada on the great lakes haha 🤣 is there any news about future updates for this game? Or have they quit updating it?
The Dual Monarchy is hard, because, especially early on, it is easily blockaded. I have found that I often have to make severe concessions between funding research, and building up the Merchant Marine. With the ease that you can fall behind technologically, and the difficulty in building a large navy, it makes quite the interesting ride.
Doing a US campaign right now, started in 1890, now its early 1930s and I have most of the world. Only people left are germany and mainland uk, everything else became US territory lol
One time I played a 1920 start Germany and went to war with the Soviet Union. I did manage a successful naval invasion of Central Russia, which led to a funny looking map, and no real contender in the Baltic Sea, especially because I also managed to regain Poland.
In my 2nd campaign playthrough, i picked japan. Started in 1900, and went teching up early to get ahead, while calming down russia by spamming the imrpove relations button. Then came an unplanned war with china and somehow i got a hold of central china through a naval invasion, and it snowballed to the entire country being wiped by both my army and my navy within 2 years. Fast forward and i now control half the world in 1960. Didnt quite make it for the global conquest motif. Starting another one in 1890 this time, maybe i can do it now :p A side note, the AI sometimes designs really stupid ships that are VERY effective at countering yours. Eg. Had an invasion fleet of 6 >100000t battleships and 8 heavy cruisers get completely trashed by a fleet of 20 BCs. They had maxed out main belt armor, and none elsewhere. Modern 2 armor, which renders my battleships' and cruisers' guns ineffective against them. Since at range, AP overpens, HE also overpens, and close up, HE gets blocked and AP still overpens. But before my AP can do anything, my BBs and CAs get trashed by their 14in. Guns that they're armed with. Since at 10km, 14in. Can pen everything except the main belt on my BB. Torps didnt work either, since they had anti torp 5. in the end, half of my BBs surrendered, 1 sank, 2 were dead in the water, half listed to one side and just sitting ducks. CAs were all but scrap at that point. TL;DR rng basically made a perfect hard counter to my sniper/brawler BBs and torp heavy CAs. Playing as the japanese btw.
Italy (1940) so far is the only campaign that I have finished without losing and seeing it to the end without starting a new campaign, I wish the game didn’t stop at the 1970s, would have love to have seen how far I could have gotten at rebuilding the Roman Republic.
With Spain you have a little more to do on 1890 if your diplomatics secure peace with USA or at least UK and France are at your side. Beacouse you have the Philipines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and a lots of tiny islands (very funny to play if yours allied entry on war with Japan or Russia).
This ranking system seems to leave out a lot of design availability considerations as well as circumstantial starting situations related to start year. A poor list, especially for anyone new to the game who might have the misfortune of choosing Britain because you said it was S tier, thinking their campaign will be simple and easy. Not for a new player it won't.
Hi, have you tried deliberately force government change for the nation by increasing unrest? Where would you recommend it and what government type is the best. Or is it totally random?
I've done this a few times, and it appears to be somewhat random what you get, though I also usually play on Random. I'm guessing that it's less random if you play historical.
USA should be S++ tier in my opinion, borders with a lot of minor nations and powerfull army from the 1890 means they expand quite fast on thier own without drop in logistics compared to colonial wars, own tons of oil and can take even more from minors. Economy grows like crazy, stability is almost never an issue and other nations can never invade your mainland. Compared to that Brits have bigger nombers but most of it has to go defending colonies all over the world, you are allways losing transports and have most infuriating superstructures on big ships.
I have a couple of critiques. I wish you had given hull design a bit more importance. They greatly changed the feasibility of the game, particularly in 1900, when starting in the Predreadnought era with a country like Germany, which had access to some of the worst battleships and heavy cruiser designs in that era. It limits their early growth potential. Spain has a shipyard problem, and I'd put it in the F tier because sometimes you can't even build a battleship at the game start.
I do so better playing Austria Hungary then Germany. Germany i normally settle for light cruiser designs and try not to get in any wars until there is a few dreadnoughts built.
I heavily disagree with putting British in S tier, because the amount of micromanaging you have to do drastically increases the patience you have to have for such a campaign. It also means you need to design your fleet with range in mind, which leads to the compromises that requires. Having to defend so many zones also means it puts your merchant marine at risk with every conflict you're in regardless of your navy's actually combat capability, because defending it everywhere requires paying attention everywhere. They're a solid A rank, but not an S.
I'd have probably lowered China one tier and raised Russia one tier based off my own playthroughs. Even then though I'd say all your points are completely valid and make complete sense to me.
I do agree with this tier list other one thing is I would personally Rank Japan higher for you can out tech and out grow China and definitely Russia due to their economy
Hi Op. Just to say, i'm no expert at this game but still my first playthrough with russia went well. Ok i agree the start is more on the WTF than i'm golden ^^ Yeah the chinese took vladivostok and had the first decade quite hard but you don't need fleet in the Black or baltic sea. I played with spain territories and nobody tried anything funny with those ports so i speak with experience. Just my 2 cents. Yes that's a hard country but not D for me.
Honestly I wish we could play the smaller powers. The Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru all come to mind as fun potential campaigns for playing as the underdog. That said, the big issue I see with this game is no real way to influence land campaigns in places like Central Europe or inner Asia. This is a naval game at heart with abstracted land battles. You can influence them FAIRLY well if they are coastal in some way like a continental coast or an island, since you have all the naval ships. But you can do farq all to really save Hoetzendorff from bungling his way through Galicia or the Russians and Chinese fighting “One Eye and the Blind” in Mongolia.
japan at that time does border russia with the north eastern bit of korea that touches russia in that narrow bit so the russian army at vladastock and that area can make the push in to korea from that angle and vice versa for japan and any korean conscrpts etc. also the admerality and the admeral has the marine corps as there disposal and marine divisions that can and do fight deep inland and do well. if we get the chance to use the marine divisions and all and outfit them for war to work with the army etc then one can influence the land war a bit by how well your marine divisions are in terms of equipment and other factors.
Yeah big problem Russia has always struggled with to be a naval power is having 3 completely separate coastlines (Baltic, Black sea and Pacific). While you could call the arctic a 4th, no one really puts much in the way of naval forces up there besides submarines as it's frozen half the year. I don't think anyone has ever really considered launching a major naval force against Arkhangelsk! So with 3 active coastlines to defend so far apart (especially in case of the pacific fleet) rather than needing one navy, they kind of needed to have 3 at once. At no point in their hisory have they had anywhere near the funds needed to have 3 navies, all being competetive, at the same time.
One of the US's greatest strengths, and also weaknesses, in the early game is how far away they are from everyone else. Any fleet showing up off the US coast has maybe a few turns worth of fuel, and the AI is really bad at withdrawing when fuel gets low. They also are bad about sending forces to other theaters, but there is no shortage of free territory close to home, so why bother?
Had a japan campaign going where i had taken spain, sumatra, the phillipines, mongolia, the russian far east, the sahkalin islands, kamchatka, eastern siberia, bhutan, all of germanies holdings in the pacific and africa, cuba, puerto rico, venezuela and northern colombia and i was in the process of invading germany itself but the brits kept extorting money from me then the update hit
I mostly agree with your ranking, Stealth, except I would swap the positions of Austria-Hungary and Russia. Russia is actually more like the US --- a slow start but growing stronger --- if you manage both the economy and relationships. Russia must avoid war as much as possible until after the inevitable revolution, then concentrate on crushing Japan before turning its attention westward. Austria-Hungary on the other hand, really suffers from being pinned into the Adriatic sea, and by having no starting colonies. The lack of ports slows your progress at enlarging your fleet. Austria-Hungary as an AI player seems to have no trouble conquering the Balkan states, which in addition to having ports are a good source of oil. Austria-Hungary as a human player rarely seems to be offered those conquest opportunities, and there is no other way to take those provinces. Starting date can definitely change the outcome for certain nations. Spain, for instance, seems to do better if you start in 1890 before she loses the Caribbean and Pacific colonies. Austria-Hungary does better with an early start, too. Japan does better starting after 1900, when she has the colonies on the mainland.
I would not flop the two but I would agree with your secondary points. Partially because diplomacy is important for both. Maintaining a good relationship with italy until you are ready to invade is one of the keys of AH. The only is postponing the almost inevitable war with Russia until you have enough forces to secure ports in the black sea (preferably Ukraine).
@@admiraltorvosaurus8513 how did you beat the USA, but not Germany and britain? On my campaign the USA is constantly at war with south america and they have around 500 ships constantly. I can barely sustain my 200
@@admiraltorvosaurus8513 oh, youre lucky then, they attacked me while i was at war with france and China in 1917 , i got lucky that i could make peace with them before the rest of their fleet arrived. But to be honest in a 1v1 only Germany, britain and USA are really difficult enemys.
If you play in 1890 and your economy is questionable, I highly recommend basing your fleet on heavy cruisers rather than battleships. Because of the weird design choices from the creators, the 8" gun is *ungodly* throughout the game, and early on accuracy is an issue for everything else. Heavy Cruisers with 8.9" guns are exceptional bang for the buck. Combine this with how you build better ships by far than the AI, and these heavy cruisers can take on anything one-on-one. Switch to Dreadnoughts the moment they're available, obviously (and push your research to Dreads, but not necessarily Turbines). A Heavy Cruiser navy for China should be able to beat the inevitable onslaught of Japan.
frances gdp quickly spirals out of control since all of their provinces grow rapidly in value. they can quickly build hundreds of ships overpowering any other nation making them s-tier. the uk gets a head start on tech and with their large budget they can widen that gap even more letting them always have the strongest ships. again s-tier. germany has the strongest land army allowing them to quickly take over most of asia. they can also quickly win most wars just by taking over colonies in africa or the americas making them s-tier as well. russia, china and spain are absolute garbage. russia cant properly defend their eastern teritory because those provinces are cheap and most of their fleets are required to defend their western coast. china is prone to rebellions and their economy sucks. and spain has such a weak economy and land army that they cant even hold colonial provinces much less get new ones. in every game i played spain was the first to disappear and be gobbled up by the uk, france and the us. italy, austria, japan and the us are between a and c tier at least early on. the us can grow quite a lot but it takes time and their early ship hulls are absolute trash. austria can be destroyed very early on because they only control one sea tile but their land army is quite strong. japan starts out very weak but are in the position to take russias easter provinces early on and can take all of china with a bit of preparation. they can also easily take most of the pacific islands letting them grow quicker. they also have some of the best ship hulls in the game. and italy is either very capable or absolutely useless with no in between.
I feel like due to how land battles work, Austro-Hungary is in S tier due to having more regions attacking into fewer regions situation against both Russia and Italy thus allowing player to grow is a more controlled manner, no?
I have seen Austria-Hungary lose multiple times to russia in land wars. If Germany is also at war with russia it is normally easy for Austria-Hungary to take some territory. When i played Austria-Hungary i focused on the Mediterranean going to war with France and Britain. Didn't intend for it to be at the same time but that was one of the hardest wars i have fought with many epic battles.
@@torlekjpec5708 I guess RNG wasn't in their favour ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ However since it's still RNG, having 3 rolls vs opponent's 2 rolls is a very good exchange rate.
After several attempts each, I have concluded that Spain, Russia, and Austro-Hungary are close to unplayable. Spain and Russia especially suffer from poor quality ships, such that your research must constantly be on construction improvements, which essentially means you have only 66% of the technical potential of other navies. I don't just mean ships that are not up to spec.--I mean truly abysmal ships that are one-shot wonders that in a battle situation, will almost certanly be lost. The only (partial) solution to this problem seems to be to pump out a lot of ships and sell off the flawed ones to allies, or scrap them outright. Even Germany has some serious flaws. In order to play Germany, it seems necessary to base strategy on not having medium cruisers. You really have to use a BB and scale it down to make a Panzerschiffe in order to have a decent heavy cruiser that can deal with enemy DDs and CLs. The inherent advantage is that the Panzerschiffe type can operate with the BBs if need be. Playing Germany, everything seems to hinge on killing off Russia early in the game.
Yes. It doesn't appeal to me. Tried it but didn't like it. Plus, people want to have something to look at, more than just a top down view, is my experience.
@@Stealth17Gaming I understand. I like the more detailed ship building, nation diversity, fleet management, and presence of carriers and missiles but find the actual combat lackluster and boring to the point I get burn out during large wars.
Provinces should determine GDP but they don't (or there are bugs from preventing this from happening) Playing as russia i took all the territory of Austria-Hungary in Europe but they took Madagascar which prevented Austria-Hungary from being wiped out. March 1917 Austria-Hungary 1 CA 1DD 1TB Population 2,313,010 Army force 4,189 GDP 47,804,320,000 That GDP is above China, Spain and Japan's GDP Spain has all of spain and all starting 1890 colonies plus 1 Provence. China did lose mainland territory to France and Germany. Japan has all of there starting territory (but i have them blockaded and about to finish the first naval invasion. Bit Austria-Hungary is at war with Russian, France, America, Italy, Japan, and Spain. With Britain at -96 diplomacy level And Austria-Hungary is definitely blockaded by France and Italy West Indian Ocean- Madagascar France 2 BB, 4 CA, 5 CL, 5 DD, 10 TB Italy 2 BB, 1 CA, 3 DD, 1 TB
I think Japan is a bit better. You have your home area where everyone else just has colonies, you should be able to brutalize China again and again, the Philippines and Spanish Pacific are easy pickups, Russia arrives peacemeal, and the U.S. is too far away initially. You have only a small naval area to patrol against Transport losses, and you will often launch attacks into China, which may work with naval support. Even places like the Russian Pacific and Alaska can be grabbed. Invading the U.S. West Coast is kina difficult, though... :-)
AH had real GALLICIA which was the southern Part of Poland and Western Part of Ukraine. They Had Transsilvania, Bukovina and Banat. So the Developers have away 4 Provinces.
This is a rather useless tier list when not mentioning all starting years? Like China being extremely strong, has huge army potential and easy to defend in every starting years except 1900 and 1910 where it has lowest starting gdp of all. Britain is extremely easy to get deprived of transports if AI is smart. Austria is extremely easy to defend by seas even though easy to invade via land and very weak in 1920, 1930 and 1940. The only accurate ones are USA which is also rather piss easy, and Russia because it takes a lot of skill to do the job of 3 admirals all by yourself.
@@heneagedundas the entire list isn't specifically about 1900, and I mean the rank list itself, not disproving facts mentioned in video because obviously Stealth has played this game quite a lot (though still not perfect), so surely he knows what comments mean.
@@Tuck-ShopI just said I've seen throughout entire length of the video that the year was 1900 on the bottom right corner, bud. Which is exactly the issue. The problem is in the statistics lists, as said. Imagine if countries of other years are included as separate modules. As in, isn't it obvious that 1900 US with like 105% gdp (world-relative) and bad growth is completely incomparable with 1940 US that has 150% gdp and really big growth? Cannot be same tier! Same exact gdp weight case for Japan in 1940, all the meanwhile AH is left in the dust with less budget than Spain had in 1900, the latter already ranked D?..
@@uteriel282 Maybe they could make it so that you need a minimum amount of naval prestige in order to influence the army to attack a certain province and the more you gain after that threshold is met the more likely the army is to listen to your suggestions. Of course the AI can still do its own attacks whenever it wants.
@@samkornrumph8545 or paying a certain amount of prestige to initiate an invasion into a specific province. kind of like calling in a favor with the government. and if the invasion is successful and the province is taken over you get a few points refunded cause it was the admirals idea. the prestige cost for the invasion could depend on either the value of the province or the army size in it. really anything would work as long as its not "wait for the ai to feel like doing something."
@@uteriel282 Yeah, something like this would make the game more enjoyable and would add an additional layer of strategy while not giving you direct control over the army.
Since when Spain doesn't control central American? I used to leverage Spain by playing mostly there, when the US are not that powerful. Also, i think Spain used to control the Philippines.
@@Stealth17Gaming i wonder if ij the future.. but i dunno what about Nations said.. tech is same... since its dreadnought.. about BB/BC hulls? Too not interesting i quess Then only the nations it is
Pretty much agree with all of this! One other weakness of AH having only ports in Croatia is that all your ports are on the Adriatic, meaning you can be blockaded very easily. As well it is possible for the Croats to rebel and become independent so watch your unrest!
Pretty much agree with all of this! One other weakness of AH having only ports in Croatia is that all your ports are on the Adriatic, meaning you can be blockaded very easily. As well it is possible for the Croats to rebel and become independent so watch your unrest!
I would say the biggest problem with A-H is their god awful shipbuilding capaity. If you get a decent roll for your gdp growth you will swim in money but can't do that much with it.
@@farbrorag Spain has a similar problem
@@BrotherMunro Spain might have a few more problems than just the shipbuilding capacity...
@@farbrorag spain has all the problems
A-H is a fine underdog to play as. But as you mentioned blockading is a big issue early on.
I have never seen an Ai pull off an Naval Invasion.
It's really not against the player, but it takes a lot anyway, or tries to take it, in the most unexpected places.
I've seen the AI take third party territories with naval invasions frequently, often with what appears to be very small naval forces. They are hard to spot before completing, because the game doesn't notify you, or display one of those circles on the map. Instead, you get notified that a territory has changed hands, and you can spot the ships of the conquering nation sailing away. I suspect most of those events are equivalent to the "conquest" events you get as a player, but they are essentially the same as a naval invasion.
Naval invasions by the AI against the player seem to be quite rare, but it has happened a few times in my campaigns. All such attempts have failed, because I was able to move ships into place and attack their forces, preventing them from having enough tonnage to succeed.
really only happens if you leave your land completely open to attack otherwise ai will prioritize attacking ships
I have only seen one and no. Ships in 7 turns
I see AI complete invasions quite often. (I near always start in 1890)
Invasions get harder as the ports get more tonnage over time.
The German Big Guns campaign is my favorite series of stealth
I'd love to see you play one of those "S" tiers with the intent from day 1 of the campaign to take over the entire world, just to see if it can be done.
I would definitely like to see a U.K. world conquest campaign after the Spanish one.
I did it with uk on a playthrough. I think I finished with 280 provinces or something silly like that. Was fun but a bit boring at the same time.
@@xcritic9671 i conquered britain with germany fully, and its looking very good. Only bad thing is world conquest will be so difficult with the USA being at war with south america constantly
Me: This video is fairly useful. I can use this information to survive my first few campaigns.
Tex from BPL: Torpedo boats go Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!
No surprise here, Tex is tex... what did you expect? lol
Just adding my own notes and commenting to help the algorithm. As a warning, this is a large amount of text:
Britain: I agree, but would add the the army size is limited in comparison to nations such as China, Russia, and the US. It's something to be wary of should you find yourself having a land battle with them. Also, it means those in land territories are more likely to flip if your Unrest gets too high as the garrison is probably going to be quite small. The other thing I will say British superstructures of their ships are very large and it can be very annoying to try and mount a powerful secondary armament on them.
Germany: Agree with everything. I generally bully Russia and just take control the Baltic, allowing me tow focus everything westward. Once you grab Central Russia from them through St. Petersburg, their army almost becomes a non-factor. Germany notably gets the largest hull in game at 130,000 tons. If you like big battleships, Germany is the way to go.
France: Again, agreed. Maybe it is a bit understated, but with a 1890 start, getting forces to French Indochina to fight China or Japan, or to ward off a rebellion, is tough to do. Your last port in Madagascar and most ships of the period will hit low fuel before getting to Asia. Ship-wise, only problems I had was with the floating hotel aesthetics of some of their early ships and at least one of their modern BB hulls forces a HMS Nelson like main battery with it's hull layout. Or Dunkerque/Richelieu style I guess, as it is France. If you don't mind an all forward battery, it's not bad, but I prefer the more traditional ABX with a Y turret if the tonnage and balance can handle it.
Spain: The hardest country for me to play. I have never made it to 1950 with them. You start out behind and it is extremely difficult to get caught up with everyone else. One thing you did miss is the Philippines always get oil at some point in the 1920's iirc. It is a cast iron b!$#@ to do, but if you can hold the Philippines, they are going to be a great source of income and a strategic port for Asian operations. But, on a 1890 start, trying to get ships to the Philippines during a war is no small task for Spain. They are even more port limited than France and can ill afford the large capital ships that maybe could get there in a decent amount of time. I would also recommend staying friendly with France or make any conflict with them limited and short. They seemingly have no issues taking Southern Spain with their army. Their ships, I suggest thinking small due to the economy and crew training rates. The ships they get are nothing special, though they do get the limited and weirdly expensive small dreadnought and advanced small battleship hulls.
Italy: Agreed. Only thing to add is, during a protracted war, France and/or Austro-Hungrary have armies that will overrun your north. War with Austro-Hungrary for me usually turns the Adriatic into the Thunderdome and I am usually not satisfied until they collapse, thus securing my eastern flank. If you limit your campaigns focus to the Med and Africa, Italy can be an incredibly potent force with their ships. If you want global Italy, you risk over extending what your economy and shipyards can handle and risk a disastrous defeat.
Japan: You hit the nail on the head with their situation. The only things I would add is, go to war with Spain before the US does, take the Philippines and get that oil. They're in no way able to effectively stop you in the 1890's to the 1910's. Also, when you inevitably go to war with China, Southern China is their weak spot. You are more likely to get a successful naval invasion there than Central and Northern China and taking it from them really hurts their already difficult economic situation while helping yours. Take the south and head north. Early game, your biggest worry it probably pissing off Britain. They can reach you and hurt you badly, though this is sometime limited by the AI's inability to figure out that stopping for a turn or two to refuel is a good thing. Japan's mid to late game ships like torpedoes. They have a couple of experimental torpedo cruisers to play with and I think it's their Modern Cruiser II that has internal bays to mount deck launchers, giving it a hilariously large torpedo broadside if you max it out.
China: Yeah, you hit everything I would have. I think your latest campaign show exactly what China can and can't do. If you can survive the economy and unrest and take over your neighbors, global conquest is in the cards.
Austria-Hungrary: Only time I have survived as this nation was completely taking over Italy. The Army can be ok but, as you mention here and with China, it is far too inconsistent. This means you may take over all of the Balkans and beyond, or the army might collapse trying to take Serbia. The Russians might take Galcia, or the army grabs everything west of the Urals. Or the army literally does nothing the entire game other than defending against the occasional Russian push. I have many of the same problems with them as I do Spain, but I like them a bit better because their territory is far more focused and the AI has a lot of problems pulling of naval invasions. But, if you stay bottled in the Adriatic and Ionian seas, by the 1920's you will be at risk of just simply being overwhelmed by far more numerically and technologically superior ships. And the only way I have found to consistently survive this is to take out Italy and take their ports and economic output.
Russia: Only survived once with them, and that was only because Europe played nice with me long enough to remove Japan as a going concern and take them over. I find that early on, you have to decide whether to focus east or west and just go with it. Maybe after growing fat on conquest you can afford both by the 1930's, but the economy is simply not there to do so beforehand. The Black Sea and the south I tend to look at who the Ottomans are allied with. If you are lucky enough to get them to be allied with you, you have nothing to fear. When you go to war, the Ottomans simply close the Bosporus to enemy ships and they can't get in. In this case, you can effectively ignore the Black Sea. If someone else gets the Ottomans, I try to be their friends and hopefully get an alliance with them, allowing the Ottomans to yet again close the Bosporus to my enemies. If you can get your army logistics straight eventually, you have the second most powerful army behind China and can eventually start rolling into Europe pretty easily. But yeah, they were the second most challenging nation to play as for me, behind Spain.
US: I actually prefer starting in the 1890's with the US. It gives you the opportunity to bully Spain for it's holdings in the America's and Caribbean. Against the British, I generally don't think it's worth it as the territories you gain aren't necessarily worth the risk of going up against the preeminent naval power of the world. Once you get into the 1920's and have some power projection, the US can go toe-to-toe with anyone. Strategically, you eventually get large oil reserves in the Southern US and you eventually get the Panama Canal if you don't lose Panama. Because of the large home population and potentially high GDP, you have an very large and effective army if you can keep up the logistics. You can invade anywhere and the army has a good chance of continuing to push on their own. The other thing I like about the US is the ship designs seem to just work. They seem to have far less issues with overly large superstructures or smokestacks that don't fit within the spots for them on the superstructures. The hulls tend to have plenty of space for armaments and later superstructures have pretty good mounting points for massed 5in guns. My only complaint with America is 1890-1910 tend to be a bit boring as it is mostly just building up your economy until you can build a large, long range fleet to spread freedom with. Once you start rolling though, very few nations can really stop you.
You speak of the floating hotel aesthetics of early French hulls as if they were a bad thing, but some of those hulls (the cruisers, particularly) are so much better than everyone else's equivalents that it's kind of funny.
@@taiko1237 I don't deny their usefulness, I just don't like the look.
The difference between HOI4 and UAD is that one is a grand strategy game where nobody understands naval warfare and the other is a grand strategy game where nobody understands land warfare.
Tangential, but what would you like to see in a hypothetical UAD2 (I know the first one still is missing stuff and has issues, but you understand)
I'd like to see:
- clearer explanation of all mechanics (from army logistics to pen mechanics)
- expand time line to 1990
- playable smaller nations, even if it's with generic tech trees/without special hulls
- some more peculiar designs (trimaran, hydroil)
- missiles and counters to them
- PT boats/patrol boats into the 1990
That's just a few that come to mind
@@Stealth17Gaming For the 1990, we would get heavily into missile warfare however, and that kinda completely changes how that works.
Also naval aviation, and thats its own big can of works, just look at RtW
@@xxxm981 Yes, that's the point. Have Ultimate Admiral Dreadnought evolve in Sea Power
An interesting possibility for playing as a minor nation would technically be a different game but a game where you manage which major nation you have an alliance with and order ships for them (or attempt to) would be interesting. In some ways though, I would want to be able to order ships from any major power that I am not confrontational with.
@@Stealth17Gaming You can try the Game rule the waves 3.
This Game have a campaign (1890-1980) and IS very complete and difficult
Stealth speaking of the British : *"What about their, let's say natural adversary : Germany ?"*
Me as a French : *"Oh, come on !"*
Well it is 1900 after all. Every starting year countries have different relationship matrix, some acquire more stronger enemies from the getgo, some don't. Furthermore, it's even going to vary in mods that would fix weird relationships. (like Soviet Union for some completely unknown reasons liking German Reich in 1940 start, for the most obvious one)
@@avmlaa6639 in 1940 depending on exact date, Germany hadnt yet brokem Molotov Ribbentrop pact and was thus viewed as a friendly nation for trade of which there was a substantial amount.
you can reference multiple texts by Catherine Merridale amd the book Absolute War for more.
Regarding the mention of unrest, it can be a real viable strategy to go for early game unrest in a nation without democracy to force a change in government. The early game will be tough, but it will set a minor nation up for great success in the later stages of the game. I did so with China and the economic boost made me a monster.
I always play as Austria-Hungary. They are so much easier to manage in the early game. I stay out of war for the first 10 years, just building economy and tech. I don't have to waste money on the bad early ships. THEN after 10 years I build a fleet and start to get active. The most recent game I took all of Italy in stages, and ended up with weird colonies in places like Hong Kong, Senegal, Somalia, Costa Rica and Samoa.
14:20 correction to the unrest discussion: it doesn't affect you, only the country's government type, and individual province might rebel and leave. You'll often get a different government type each time you get very high unrest, which can actually be a good thing. I try to get a revolution in every Russia campaign because the starting modifiers are terrible.
i saw you normally plays random. In historical Russia more or less always switch to communist and that is even worse than absolut monarchy. Absolut monarchy gives you naval budget and a decent army atleast.
but tzar is fun
I'd be tempted to rank the US as S+ tier. If you can avoid an early conflict with the British, which isn't that difficult, then you generally have time to allow the economy to hit the turbo button. You then have vast amounts of cash to throw at research & ship building in the mid to late game.
When i start playing America in 1890, in multiple campaigns i have taken all the British territories they have in Caribbean (that dont rebel from Britain or when nations collapsed easily) and then take the french Caribbean territories.
America is the easiest to play.
In my current save as France, it's around 1912, Germany has been left out of wars for a while and is gunning down China like crazy.
As for me, I didn't take care of my transports enough and I'm struggling to bring Italy to its knees (the game of alliances made it so Japan is also at war with me but my best ships are in the Mediterrannean so Japan is destroying my transports everywhere...)
In a previous game, I grabbed some Chinese territories fast after destroying their puny ships. Then Spain fell to my might while China was kept at bay.
Some Russians territories can be very easy to invade also. If you hold territories East of Germany from the Russians, you can prevent Germans of doing anything into the North Sea or the Baltic. Their logistics starts to crumble, take their African colonies for good measure and the if you are not at war with anyone else, it's in the bag, Germany will fall. Once it's fallen, finish off Russia by Naval Invasions on all the provinces that have ports. The game is lost for a nation if it loses all its ports.
I then invaded Italy and China and Austro Hungary. The Brits were too strong to be defeated but I made them my allied.
The USA were also too strong so the world was governed by USA, UK and France.
With France, you've got to plan a fast war with a weak enemy before you can strenghten. If you want to strengthen first, you'll struggle.
In the very early builds, Spain tended to lose very fast to either France, the Brits or the Germans, the Kingdom dissolved on many occasions... However they seem to want to grab Cuba and the Carribean very early on.
Italy's position on the end of the Adriatic can prevent Austria Hungary of moving anywhere if you have higher tier minefields that can block outright any sortie, at least HP wise for the ships that will suffer considerable damage... So you better develop, create big minefields and then have a war with them to take their Adriatic territories.
Then, if they have taken Black Sea territories, go fetch them and boom, landlocked, they lose.
One thing the Austrian like to do in the game is to take Sebastopol and Odessa the quickest possible to avoid being locked in by the Italians.
And as a result, Russia suffers a lot. If Italy or Austria are allied to France or Germany, they can take the Baltic territories to the Russians. The French can take the Far East Russian territories and boom, landlocked, Russia loses.
Italy should take Northern Africa French colonies first and foremost, taking Marseille or Toulon will be too difficult at first, then take Corsica and secure Greek territtories if the occasion presents itself to lock down Austria into the Adriatic.
Eastern Russian territories are crap as far as GDP is concerned but losing Russia their ports in the East won't do them any good, so if you can grab them for Japan the quickest, the better, same if you can take the smaller Chinese territories to block some of their mainland ports with minefields...
Playing Japan, ally yourself with other enemies of Russia to attack the Russian Empire from all fronts. Austria can secure Black Sea pretty easily, Germany, UK or France can secure the Baltic, Japan and France secure the East and keep China in check.
China is difficult to play, your tech doesn't develop fast and your armies can be quite weak despite their numbers (may be it changed, it's been a while since I playd them).
The problem with securing the Black Sea is that you don't want the Dardanelles/Bosphorus Straight being blocked by Turkey/Ottomans if they are allied to your enemies...
In all games I played, Russia became the USSR pretty early on because they kept having their asses kicked wether by Germany, Austria, China or Japan.
Germany has very bad cruiser hulls in the early game. And it takes some time before you get cruiser hulls that can have more than two turrets. Germany get good dreadnought hulls and battlecruiser hulls though. But what kind of ship hulls you get is also important. Because of the early pre-dreadnought hulls being so bad I'd dump Germany down to B tier.
China actually has some pretty nice pre-dreadnought hulls, especially for early multi-turret battleships.
I was surprised you didn't take hull options and culture specific hulls components into consideration. Well, most of the time. You did mention the torpedo battleship ^^
german bad early game cruiser hulls are balanced by having one of the best battleship hulls for a 1890 start. early game cruisers are only useful for a very short time anyway while you can stretch the usefulness of the early battleship hulls out quite a bit
Good video, so far I played, Austria, Spain and Japan, from those 3 Austria was the hardest by far. Spain loses on attrition with a long war. Japan is a breeze to play
I discovered the game about week ago and so far played 2 nations (both 1890 start). Germany (on normal) and USA (on legendary) and I find myself bored out of my mind in both - regarding campaign difficulty. Playing with ship builds is very entertaining for me though.
The campaign gets much more interesting if you don't play as the most powerful nations. With smaller nations you need to influence other nations a lot to not get crushed.
@@Qwarzz Fair enough, USA and Germany are (probably) amongst the more powerful nations, but still - virtually no challenge (even on legendary)? I had made some mistakes while learning the game (mainly in optimized ship building), but other than that? AI is not actively attacking me, my ships can take on many times the number and win (even in auto-resolve) and I can snipe any province I want. I am tempted to try Italy or Spain, but even then I doubt it will be that much challenging.
Just consider downloading mods that increase difficulty and AI competitiveness off of official site pinned by the devs. These probably also have starting gdp per every start year documented.
@@avmlaa6639 Oh cool, didn´t explore mods yet. it is good to know there are such mods.
@@michalvoh Yea... the AI is pretty bad in everything really :)
Excited for the Spain campaign. Spain is actually one of the countries you might want to start in 1890, since in the 1890 they still control Cuba, Puerto Rico and Phillipines. But you have to keep the US happy, since a war with the US is something you can't win in 1890. When I played spain I had a pretty good 1890 start by focussing the first 10-15 year on avoiding any war, building an economy, researching, and grabbing any neutrals I could. Then on 1920-1915 I had enough of a tech lead that I felt confident enough to start taking on majors. Maybe you want to consider starting in 1890, do something like me, and then start the actual series in 1900 or so, when the horrible 1890s ships are starting to get phased out.
I finally got this game on sale after watching your videos for years. And i still have no clue what I'm doing, but i sure am having fun with meme ships lmao
nice guide to get started
Here’s an idea: Spain 1890 with an autogenerated fleet, and if you lose an og colony you have to start over!
No thanks
Maybe its just the economy and the difficulty I'm playing as but I've never had issues defending that territory as the UK. I'll do a 1920s start for the tech. BBs plus escorts for the european fleets, generally two in the Home Isles, and BCs plus lighter escorts for Asia though if I've got the funds I'll drop a few BB in Madras so I don't get bullied by Japan
For an example of how terrible China's army logistics are in the game, I had a British force of like 5000 invade the Chinese mainland with an army size of about 700,000. And the British force captured it
Lol!
This actually happened in real life
One of the things I really like about this game is how almost every nation has its own unique strategic challenges, not just from nation to nation, but also from decade to decade.
The US is really strong with how the AI doesn't know how to do naval invasions. Kinda helps being an ocean away from almost every major power in the game on top of the massive GDP and growth the US has.
I've once seen the US invade the Brits 😀 Both being AI of course.
Good guide. Looking forward to the next campaign
I started a US campaign last week, began in 1900. About 1910 I had Russia, Germany, France, and Japan declare war on me one after another with in 3 months. Inside of a year I had almost nothing left so yeah you can "spark" with nations, it doesn't happen very often but it can happen.
A campaign mode I think would be fun, minor nations. You don't build ships you buy them from the major AI players. Ottoman Empire, Brazil, ect. I think that would be a fun thing.
Ultimate admiral dreadnoughts needs 2 things
quicker load times
more countries
Id love to be able to play as the ottomans honestly. It would be so much fun to play as them. I'm definitely in favor of more nations playable. Also adding more ports would be fun like allowing combat on the great lakes or the Caspian sea or svalbard island ports
@@brendonbewersdorf986 the problem with inland waterways is they are not connected to the main ocean
But how cool would it be to play Netherlands and having to protect the Dutch East Indies and the homeland at the same time with limited resources
@@avus-kw2f213 the dutch would definitely be another fun one especially since they actually were trying to build up their navy.
And yeah I understand about the inland waterways but it would still be fun imagine a naval invasion of the US from Canada on the great lakes haha 🤣
is there any news about future updates for this game? Or have they quit updating it?
@@brendonbewersdorf986 I think they have ended major updates
@@avus-kw2f213 ahh that's a shame :/
The Dual Monarchy is hard, because, especially early on, it is easily blockaded. I have found that I often have to make severe concessions between funding research, and building up the Merchant Marine.
With the ease that you can fall behind technologically, and the difficulty in building a large navy, it makes quite the interesting ride.
Doing a US campaign right now, started in 1890, now its early 1930s and I have most of the world. Only people left are germany and mainland uk, everything else became US territory lol
One time I played a 1920 start Germany and went to war with the Soviet Union. I did manage a successful naval invasion of Central Russia, which led to a funny looking map, and no real contender in the Baltic Sea, especially because I also managed to regain Poland.
In my 2nd campaign playthrough, i picked japan. Started in 1900, and went teching up early to get ahead, while calming down russia by spamming the imrpove relations button.
Then came an unplanned war with china and somehow i got a hold of central china through a naval invasion, and it snowballed to the entire country being wiped by both my army and my navy within 2 years.
Fast forward and i now control half the world in 1960. Didnt quite make it for the global conquest motif.
Starting another one in 1890 this time, maybe i can do it now :p
A side note, the AI sometimes designs really stupid ships that are VERY effective at countering yours.
Eg. Had an invasion fleet of 6 >100000t battleships and 8 heavy cruisers get completely trashed by a fleet of 20 BCs.
They had maxed out main belt armor, and none elsewhere. Modern 2 armor, which renders my battleships' and cruisers' guns ineffective against them.
Since at range, AP overpens, HE also overpens, and close up, HE gets blocked and AP still overpens.
But before my AP can do anything, my BBs and CAs get trashed by their 14in. Guns that they're armed with. Since at 10km, 14in. Can pen everything except the main belt on my BB.
Torps didnt work either, since they had anti torp 5.
in the end, half of my BBs surrendered, 1 sank, 2 were dead in the water, half listed to one side and just sitting ducks. CAs were all but scrap at that point.
TL;DR rng basically made a perfect hard counter to my sniper/brawler BBs and torp heavy CAs. Playing as the japanese btw.
I like the Italian, the British, the French and German Campaign in Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts
Italy (1940) so far is the only campaign that I have finished without losing and seeing it to the end without starting a new campaign, I wish the game didn’t stop at the 1970s, would have love to have seen how far I could have gotten at rebuilding the Roman Republic.
With Spain you have a little more to do on 1890 if your diplomatics secure peace with USA or at least UK and France are at your side. Beacouse you have the Philipines, Cuba, Puerto Rico and a lots of tiny islands (very funny to play if yours allied entry on war with Japan or Russia).
This ranking system seems to leave out a lot of design availability considerations as well as circumstantial starting situations related to start year. A poor list, especially for anyone new to the game who might have the misfortune of choosing Britain because you said it was S tier, thinking their campaign will be simple and easy. Not for a new player it won't.
Hi, have you tried deliberately force government change for the nation by increasing unrest? Where would you recommend it and what government type is the best. Or is it totally random?
I've done this a few times, and it appears to be somewhat random what you get, though I also usually play on Random. I'm guessing that it's less random if you play historical.
Personally i like Austria-Hungary
USA should be S++ tier in my opinion, borders with a lot of minor nations and powerfull army from the 1890 means they expand quite fast on thier own without drop in logistics compared to colonial wars, own tons of oil and can take even more from minors.
Economy grows like crazy, stability is almost never an issue and other nations can never invade your mainland.
Compared to that Brits have bigger nombers but most of it has to go defending colonies all over the world, you are allways losing transports and have most infuriating superstructures on big ships.
I have a couple of critiques. I wish you had given hull design a bit more importance. They greatly changed the feasibility of the game, particularly in 1900, when starting in the Predreadnought era with a country like Germany, which had access to some of the worst battleships and heavy cruiser designs in that era. It limits their early growth potential. Spain has a shipyard problem, and I'd put it in the F tier because sometimes you can't even build a battleship at the game start.
I do so better playing Austria Hungary then Germany.
Germany i normally settle for light cruiser designs and try not to get in any wars until there is a few dreadnoughts built.
19:15 Russia and Japan have a land border (or potential land border) in Northeastern Korea.
IMO France has the best pre-dreadnought hulls for all their ships.
I heavily disagree with putting British in S tier, because the amount of micromanaging you have to do drastically increases the patience you have to have for such a campaign. It also means you need to design your fleet with range in mind, which leads to the compromises that requires. Having to defend so many zones also means it puts your merchant marine at risk with every conflict you're in regardless of your navy's actually combat capability, because defending it everywhere requires paying attention everywhere. They're a solid A rank, but not an S.
I'd have probably lowered China one tier and raised Russia one tier based off my own playthroughs. Even then though I'd say all your points are completely valid and make complete sense to me.
I still think that you as a player should be able to play the lesser nation, like Netherlands or Denmark
This is basically the inverted list of which nations you should be playing as if you want to have any sort of challenge :)
Not really, the British campaign requires a ton of micromanagement.
I do agree with this tier list other one thing is I would personally Rank Japan higher for you can out tech and out grow China and definitely Russia due to their economy
Hi Op. Just to say, i'm no expert at this game but still my first playthrough with russia went well. Ok i agree the start is more on the WTF than i'm golden ^^ Yeah the chinese took vladivostok and had the first decade quite hard but you don't need fleet in the Black or baltic sea. I played with spain territories and nobody tried anything funny with those ports so i speak with experience. Just my 2 cents. Yes that's a hard country but not D for me.
Need a 1890 Tier list
spain is so fun but needs to not do a lot of mistake
Honestly I wish we could play the smaller powers. The Netherlands, Greece, Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Brazil, Argentina, Chile, and Peru all come to mind as fun potential campaigns for playing as the underdog.
That said, the big issue I see with this game is no real way to influence land campaigns in places like Central Europe or inner Asia. This is a naval game at heart with abstracted land battles. You can influence them FAIRLY well if they are coastal in some way like a continental coast or an island, since you have all the naval ships. But you can do farq all to really save Hoetzendorff from bungling his way through Galicia or the Russians and Chinese fighting “One Eye and the Blind” in Mongolia.
japan at that time does border russia with the north eastern bit of korea that touches russia in that narrow bit so the russian army at vladastock and that area can make the push in to korea from that angle and vice versa for japan and any korean conscrpts etc.
also the admerality and the admeral has the marine corps as there disposal and marine divisions that can and do fight deep inland and do well. if we get the chance to use the marine divisions and all and outfit them for war to work with the army etc then one can influence the land war a bit by how well your marine divisions are in terms of equipment and other factors.
I started with Russia as my first campaign, and I guess I got lucky because I absorbed Austria-Hungary, and now it's going pretty well for me.
I think Russia is probably why they added submarines to the game, considering how hard a time Stealth had using a high difficulty playthrough.
Yeah big problem Russia has always struggled with to be a naval power is having 3 completely separate coastlines (Baltic, Black sea and Pacific). While you could call the arctic a 4th, no one really puts much in the way of naval forces up there besides submarines as it's frozen half the year. I don't think anyone has ever really considered launching a major naval force against Arkhangelsk!
So with 3 active coastlines to defend so far apart (especially in case of the pacific fleet) rather than needing one navy, they kind of needed to have 3 at once. At no point in their hisory have they had anywhere near the funds needed to have 3 navies, all being competetive, at the same time.
The campaign starts for all stats and ships are pretty random, I auto generated Japan 1890/1900 and it gave me 19 battleships I recall
One of the US's greatest strengths, and also weaknesses, in the early game is how far away they are from everyone else. Any fleet showing up off the US coast has maybe a few turns worth of fuel, and the AI is really bad at withdrawing when fuel gets low. They also are bad about sending forces to other theaters, but there is no shortage of free territory close to home, so why bother?
Spain is dire, but the worst of the game is the Ai, you can play like freekin Nimitz against Admiral Bot Mess in 2 hours
Had a japan campaign going where i had taken spain, sumatra, the phillipines, mongolia, the russian far east, the sahkalin islands, kamchatka, eastern siberia, bhutan, all of germanies holdings in the pacific and africa, cuba, puerto rico, venezuela and northern colombia and i was in the process of invading germany itself but the brits kept extorting money from me then the update hit
I mostly agree with your ranking, Stealth, except I would swap the positions of Austria-Hungary and Russia.
Russia is actually more like the US --- a slow start but growing stronger --- if you manage both the economy and relationships. Russia must avoid war as much as possible until after the inevitable revolution, then concentrate on crushing Japan before turning its attention westward.
Austria-Hungary on the other hand, really suffers from being pinned into the Adriatic sea, and by having no starting colonies. The lack of ports slows your progress at enlarging your fleet. Austria-Hungary as an AI player seems to have no trouble conquering the Balkan states, which in addition to having ports are a good source of oil. Austria-Hungary as a human player rarely seems to be offered those conquest opportunities, and there is no other way to take those provinces.
Starting date can definitely change the outcome for certain nations. Spain, for instance, seems to do better if you start in 1890 before she loses the Caribbean and Pacific colonies. Austria-Hungary does better with an early start, too. Japan does better starting after 1900, when she has the colonies on the mainland.
I would not flop the two but I would agree with your secondary points. Partially because diplomacy is important for both. Maintaining a good relationship with italy until you are ready to invade is one of the keys of AH. The only is postponing the almost inevitable war with Russia until you have enough forces to secure ports in the black sea (preferably Ukraine).
I gotta say Japan is really a campaign were youre gonna fight heavily, so if you like difficulty, but fun, i would suggest Japan.
I have begun to play Japan as my first campaign
And I have beaten every single nation except the Brits and the Germans, taking territory from everyone
@@admiraltorvosaurus8513 how did you beat the USA, but not Germany and britain? On my campaign the USA is constantly at war with south america and they have around 500 ships constantly. I can barely sustain my 200
@@LeroxYT They haven't attacked yet
@@admiraltorvosaurus8513 oh, youre lucky then, they attacked me while i was at war with france and China in 1917 , i got lucky that i could make peace with them before the rest of their fleet arrived. But to be honest in a 1v1 only Germany, britain and USA are really difficult enemys.
If you play in 1890 and your economy is questionable, I highly recommend basing your fleet on heavy cruisers rather than battleships.
Because of the weird design choices from the creators, the 8" gun is *ungodly* throughout the game, and early on accuracy is an issue for everything else. Heavy Cruisers with 8.9" guns are exceptional bang for the buck. Combine this with how you build better ships by far than the AI, and these heavy cruisers can take on anything one-on-one.
Switch to Dreadnoughts the moment they're available, obviously (and push your research to Dreads, but not necessarily Turbines).
A Heavy Cruiser navy for China should be able to beat the inevitable onslaught of Japan.
frances gdp quickly spirals out of control since all of their provinces grow rapidly in value.
they can quickly build hundreds of ships overpowering any other nation making them s-tier.
the uk gets a head start on tech and with their large budget they can widen that gap even more letting them always have the strongest ships.
again s-tier.
germany has the strongest land army allowing them to quickly take over most of asia.
they can also quickly win most wars just by taking over colonies in africa or the americas making them s-tier as well.
russia, china and spain are absolute garbage.
russia cant properly defend their eastern teritory because those provinces are cheap and most of their fleets are required to defend their western coast.
china is prone to rebellions and their economy sucks.
and spain has such a weak economy and land army that they cant even hold colonial provinces much less get new ones.
in every game i played spain was the first to disappear and be gobbled up by the uk, france and the us.
italy, austria, japan and the us are between a and c tier at least early on.
the us can grow quite a lot but it takes time and their early ship hulls are absolute trash.
austria can be destroyed very early on because they only control one sea tile but their land army is quite strong.
japan starts out very weak but are in the position to take russias easter provinces early on and can take all of china with a bit of preparation.
they can also easily take most of the pacific islands letting them grow quicker.
they also have some of the best ship hulls in the game.
and italy is either very capable or absolutely useless with no in between.
I feel like due to how land battles work, Austro-Hungary is in S tier due to having more regions attacking into fewer regions situation against both Russia and Italy thus allowing player to grow is a more controlled manner, no?
I have seen Austria-Hungary lose multiple times to russia in land wars. If Germany is also at war with russia it is normally easy for Austria-Hungary to take some territory.
When i played Austria-Hungary i focused on the Mediterranean going to war with France and Britain. Didn't intend for it to be at the same time but that was one of the hardest wars i have fought with many epic battles.
@@torlekjpec5708 I guess RNG wasn't in their favour ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
However since it's still RNG, having 3 rolls vs opponent's 2 rolls is a very good exchange rate.
Honestly i wish there was more playable nations. Because I would love to play campaign as the Dutch, Ottomans or Mexico
based video
After several attempts each, I have concluded that Spain, Russia, and Austro-Hungary are close to unplayable. Spain and Russia especially suffer from poor quality ships, such that your research must constantly be on construction improvements, which essentially means you have only 66% of the technical potential of other navies. I don't just mean ships that are not up to spec.--I mean truly abysmal ships that are one-shot wonders that in a battle situation, will almost certanly be lost.
The only (partial) solution to this problem seems to be to pump out a lot of ships and sell off the flawed ones to allies, or scrap them outright.
Even Germany has some serious flaws. In order to play Germany, it seems necessary to base strategy on not having medium cruisers. You really have to use a BB and scale it down to make a Panzerschiffe in order to have a decent heavy cruiser that can deal with enemy DDs and CLs. The inherent advantage is that the Panzerschiffe type can operate with the BBs if need be. Playing Germany, everything seems to hinge on killing off Russia early in the game.
Why do you not play more of Rule the Waves 3? Is it because the graphics are less viewer friendly?
Yes. It doesn't appeal to me. Tried it but didn't like it. Plus, people want to have something to look at, more than just a top down view, is my experience.
@@Stealth17Gaming I understand. I like the more detailed ship building, nation diversity, fleet management, and presence of carriers and missiles but find the actual combat lackluster and boring to the point I get burn out during large wars.
They should add Ottomans and Brasil
Adding more nations from South America would be fantastic!
Provinces should determine GDP but they don't (or there are bugs from preventing this from happening)
Playing as russia i took all the territory of Austria-Hungary in Europe but they took Madagascar which prevented Austria-Hungary from being wiped out.
March 1917
Austria-Hungary 1 CA 1DD 1TB
Population 2,313,010
Army force 4,189
GDP 47,804,320,000
That GDP is above China, Spain and Japan's GDP
Spain has all of spain and all starting 1890 colonies plus 1 Provence.
China did lose mainland territory to France and Germany.
Japan has all of there starting territory (but i have them blockaded and about to finish the first naval invasion.
Bit Austria-Hungary is at war with Russian, France, America, Italy, Japan, and Spain. With Britain at -96 diplomacy level
And Austria-Hungary is definitely blockaded by France and Italy
West Indian Ocean- Madagascar
France 2 BB, 4 CA, 5 CL, 5 DD, 10 TB
Italy 2 BB, 1 CA, 3 DD, 1 TB
I always play for Russia, and I don't have any problems.))) I need to try for Spain.
Russia is nowhere near as hard to play as spain imo
I think Japan is a bit better. You have your home area where everyone else just has colonies, you should be able to brutalize China again and again, the Philippines and Spanish Pacific are easy pickups, Russia arrives peacemeal, and the U.S. is too far away initially. You have only a small naval area to patrol against Transport losses, and you will often launch attacks into China, which may work with naval support.
Even places like the Russian Pacific and Alaska can be grabbed. Invading the U.S. West Coast is kina difficult, though... :-)
AH had real GALLICIA which was the southern Part of Poland and Western Part of Ukraine. They Had Transsilvania, Bukovina and Banat.
So the Developers have away 4 Provinces.
This is a rather useless tier list when not mentioning all starting years? Like China being extremely strong, has huge army potential and easy to defend in every starting years except 1900 and 1910 where it has lowest starting gdp of all. Britain is extremely easy to get deprived of transports if AI is smart. Austria is extremely easy to defend by seas even though easy to invade via land and very weak in 1920, 1930 and 1940. The only accurate ones are USA which is also rather piss easy, and Russia because it takes a lot of skill to do the job of 3 admirals all by yourself.
He does say starting in 1900 at the beginning of the video.
@@heneagedundas the entire list isn't specifically about 1900, and I mean the rank list itself, not disproving facts mentioned in video because obviously Stealth has played this game quite a lot (though still not perfect), so surely he knows what comments mean.
0:35
Not even 1 minute of your time if you rewatch
@@Tuck-ShopI just said I've seen throughout entire length of the video that the year was 1900 on the bottom right corner, bud. Which is exactly the issue.
The problem is in the statistics lists, as said. Imagine if countries of other years are included as separate modules. As in, isn't it obvious that 1900 US with like 105% gdp (world-relative) and bad growth is completely incomparable with 1940 US that has 150% gdp and really big growth? Cannot be same tier! Same exact gdp weight case for Japan in 1940, all the meanwhile AH is left in the dust with less budget than Spain had in 1900, the latter already ranked D?..
@@avmlaa6639 no need to imagine.
The list is for starting a campaign in 1900. Not later.
The campaign map is still the worst thing about this game.
How do you initiate land invasions?
You don't. The AI does
an invade province (select target) button is what most players want cause waiting for the ai to randomly decide to do something is the worst.
@@uteriel282 Maybe they could make it so that you need a minimum amount of naval prestige in order to influence the army to attack a certain province and the more you gain after that threshold is met the more likely the army is to listen to your suggestions. Of course the AI can still do its own attacks whenever it wants.
@@samkornrumph8545
or paying a certain amount of prestige to initiate an invasion into a specific province.
kind of like calling in a favor with the government.
and if the invasion is successful and the province is taken over you get a few points refunded cause it was the admirals idea.
the prestige cost for the invasion could depend on either the value of the province or the army size in it.
really anything would work as long as its not "wait for the ai to feel like doing something."
@@uteriel282 Yeah, something like this would make the game more enjoyable and would add an additional layer of strategy while not giving you direct control over the army.
Seeing it in this video, I'm surprised Turkey/Ottoman isn't a faction in the game.
The Ottomans and the Dutch should be made into playable nations. They would be a ton of fun.
Do you think they should add the Ottoman empire to the game?
I think Japan is easier than you expect. By 1918 in my first campaign I own half the pacific 😂😂
If memory serves right the various Russian provinces in the east and some of the *stan's serve as their "colonies" during peace negotiations.
S tier :)
Why is the map of Europe wrong?
Austria-Hungary is oddly shaped because Transsilvania belonged to Hungary
While I agree with British as S tier, I wouldn't recommend it for a player who's very new with the game. Just too much to handle.
I've unfortunately scene multiple Ai land invasions it ain't fun. And playing Japan is fun I took out Russia and China within 8 yrs of the game.
Spain is pain
Who should i start with in 1940
Anyone you like. Depends on what hulls you like
Damn, those borders look atrocious.
The Developers should be ashamed for that historical WRONG Map!! That is NOT GALLICIA that is Slowakia. GALLICIA was a Part of the Ukraine.
AUSTRIA S TIER!! FUUUUU-
Who here thinks brasil should be a faction?
I'd first like to see the Ottoman empire become playable.
Brasil would be boring without Argentina and Peru to keep company. Then Minas Gerais makes sense.
@@CanalTremocos i think you mean Argentina and Chile?
@@eduardorocha1585 I did! That's such a fail on my part I feel I should run for US president.
@@CanalTremocos nice one
Since when Spain doesn't control central American? I used to leverage Spain by playing mostly there, when the US are not that powerful.
Also, i think Spain used to control the Philippines.
It's the 1900 start, after the Spanish-American war.
@@TheAlcmeonida I see, thanks
The barking dog is quite annoying.
Mr. Stealth.. are there more tier list videos?
Not at the moment
@@Stealth17Gaming i wonder if ij the future.. but i dunno what about
Nations said.. tech is same... since its dreadnought.. about BB/BC hulls? Too not interesting i quess
Then only the nations it is
Pretty much agree with all of this! One other weakness of AH having only ports in Croatia is that all your ports are on the Adriatic, meaning you can be blockaded very easily. As well it is possible for the Croats to rebel and become independent so watch your unrest!
And thank you for the shout out!! (which I heard after writing the first comment) 😂