Fuel silos used to not take up building slots. They were like infrastructure, you could build fixed amount per state but they changed it and now I rarely build them.
The absurdity. The T-35 is the supreme example of proficient reliable engineering and ingenuity. Why have 5 tanks with one turret when you can have 1 tank with 5 turrets!?
@@HerrLindstrom they should have made the tank even bigger, so they could have 5 commanders too. Also, change the name to Super TOG Eeit: and one turret should have a flamethrower, because hoi
Realistically the rockets for tanks shouldn't be the turret, as for example the shermans with rockets had an array on top, so it would make most sense for it to be a module that gives a reliability debuff and some breakthrough and soft attack
@@arielbemeliahu8619 yes, and Calliope was modiefied by its crews to allow the use of the gun and the rocket launcher. A good example of: "why not both?" :)
@@attanathos8408 Well I guess its like its 2 different roles and the cannon becomes more of a secondary armament so it changes the role of the tank a bit to rocket arty? But that might be me just talmuding or something idk.
Floating Harbours are amazing It means you don't need to take ports on day one. It's great for doing an amphibious landing on Japan or a well-defended UK. That 30-days is usually enough time to build a basic port in captured territory and ferry in reinforcements if for some reason you fail to capture a port on day 1 (this can also be a deliberate tactic as it gives you the ability to invade a place away from the ports where you are not expected super effective against Germany as Germany not only needs to Garrison the ports but defend the entire coastline of Europe which is so much harder). They are the difference between a failed invasion and losing a bunch of divisions and a tough invasion that eventually breaks through. If you come against a Japan or UK player who has a functional home Army then this is a must for any hope of a successful invasion While against Germany now they have to actively defend every coastal tile in Europe regardless of the presence of a port nearby.
@@youtuberobbedmeofmyname I know a lot of players who just put troops on ports and no where else so against them it can be pretty good. Also it allows you to put more troops in a area
@@youtuberobbedmeofmyname and it let you starve the port authority garrison whit out having to pry them out of every single shipping container just ignore them and park your army in every single nearby fast food joint because you got portable ports next to there port delivering lunch. where by before you only hope was to get the port authority garrison out of the port before your army ran out of Lunchboxes. and if 30 days is not enough just do a second naval invasion somewhere closely to get a second flooting harbor when the first one collapses). that said I do wish you could press a bottom to automatically replace the first one when it runs out and maybe even have it so that if the game notis that you have serious supplies issues by not enough ports and you got lots of flooting harbor it would place more along the coast you captured. and maybe a function that you can use a disision or something to turn a flooting port into a permanent one (for some kind of cost) at the expense of using up let say 3 extra flooting ports.
When I have floating harbours, I naval invade against a port and use the floating harbours to invade the adjacent regions. If the adjacent invaders get ashore the can help capture the port from a landers direction without too much fear of getting out of supply.
I use them all the time as Japan to make sure my initial attacks into southern China go well. Keeping a handful of marine divisions alive is hard enough already, and you do not need to place more than one naval factory on them to have enough to go through with it. They remain useful even in Indonesia while taking over puppets, as supply lines there suck. All that said, I only really ever use about a dozen of them in a game, so they are one of those things I can easily see people doing without, especially as the tech is kind of a pain to grab if naval invasions are not required for your country.
@@tunganhnguyen909 Sea supply's pathfinding, as well as Naval trade route pathfinding is a weird thing indeed. It has some magical moments and wonderful paths it may want to take.
He was also naval mining the sea region with his only open sea ports and was out of fuel. Not sure if either of those affect supply delivery I would have to test it but it would make sens3 if they do
@@melfice999😂 I once helped win a game as axis because the soviet supply officers ate too much glue, I had 14 bulgarian mech LARPing seelow heights, dday is popping off, we are on the verge of defeat, and the entire supply just....vanishes...we have no idea where it went, and then the soviets got rolled back, and the worst thing is; none of us quite understand why
I love how much of the "nobody uses it" comes down to "the AI is so bad and ill-equiped to deal with players that they either have already won or already lost by the time you could even think of making these". Kind of like Civ's many renaissance+ techs (if you are slow playing)
The purpose of the floating harbor is to buy time to build a level one harbor. It's very useful when you are in trouble with taking those existing harbors.
Object 1: Fuel silos can be handy depending on how easily you can get new oil. Allied nations usually generate enough of their own fuel, or have secured shipping to get more elsewhere. But if your country has issues getting more quickly (average non-cheese runs of Germany Italy or Japan for example) it COULD be worthwhile (but I understand why most don't)
I could be wrong because I haven't heard about them in a long time, but I believe they're also (just like real life) incredibly vulnerable to enemy bombers. So you're investing nearly a military factory's worth of building into them, giving up a building slot for them, trading for extra fuel to fill them (often buying from the people that are going to be your enemies), and then devoting a massive amount of AA and fighters to protect them, when instead you could just...build a synthetic refinery. Or better yet, invade somewhere with natural oil and become impervious to enemy bombers. They have a very, very specific niche and even within that niche they struggle against better alternatives. It's also worth noting that the AI absolutely *loves* these things. If you're doing any invading chances are pretty good you'll get a few free ones anyways, which makes it even less worth it to build your own.
Depending on your country just 1 or 2 fuel silos can't hold enough oil for long and sacrificing a lot of building slots to have a big oil bank is just not worth it. I think once I built 3 fuel silos in every state with Germany and then from the start of the war I had enough oil for a couple years. Building refineries is a lot better.
@@youtuberobbedmeofmyname if you build Silos in MP and Allies spot you doing that you can loose them with few TACs targetting them. Its better to just rely on Romanian Lend Lease as Italy.
Fuel silos used to be the meta for MP Japan. Build your stockpile of fuel to like 2-3M and when you go to war with the allies you have enough to use your fleet and airforce
@@tbeller80 quite funny thing is that these harbors exist whenever you commence a successful naval invasion order, so doing dramatic Operation Sealion on every single UK's coastal province is actually quite effective imo.
He's not harsh, just doing generalities! Look the video's title! Did he do a survey with every hoi4 player or just what he believes to be true based on his MP games? (when every paradox survey point the fact that most player do single only, but the game balancing is done for MP only... While MP players use mods doing balancing for themselves to prevent MP abuses, since they don't want to spend their time policing every player because for example, they did antitank before a certain time, making Germany's blitzkrieg useless)
@@tbeller80its funny how cheap they are when in reality the two mulberry harbours took a massive amount of production to build, they were practically a mega project just for D-day
I sometimes use naval mines when playing minor powers, the 10-13% naval supremecy they give is very helpful for getting naval invasions off against naval powers like britain/japan. They require very minimal investment, simply refit 10-20 submarines that you start with with mine laying tubes(takes like 30 days max for all of them combined). Assign them to an admiral who has the minelayer trait for extra 20% minelaying(concealment expert is also worth taking and it branches off the same trait) and have them mine key regions like the Sea of Japan, Mediterranean, Black sea, etc. On subs they are difficult to detect so they will rarely take losses, they can just do their thing all game for a small amount of fuel and can give that 10% or so supremacy that tends to be what you're lacking when you don't have a real navy, like China, Turkey, Austria Hungary etc.
When I use mines, since they only "at war" deployment, I start a small war what doesn't kick off a world war and use it to mine areas that need to mined, eg Mining the Channel and North Sea, "to protect my nation from a naval invasion by "
Rocket silo constantly pump out rockets out of thin air, like you could build a factory instead of it to make a fighter every... Month or so, or get rocket a day... Something between V2 and V3 with like 1K+ kms range would be nice tho (AND LET US NUKE SHIT WITH IT PARADOX, THE NUKE ICON BEEN HERE FOR AGES)
Rocket Silos admittedly are pretty bad, but there is a trick to using them - rocket silos can dump out their rockets VERY fast.So instead of setting them to a region then leaving them to fire at production rate, you're better to build up to the max stock of missiles at multiple bases, then unleash them all at once to overwhelm air defenses in a specific region, then once stocks have run out, hold fire and build up stocks for the next attack.
The rockets of the time were not big enough to carry the early atomic bombs, a theoretical nuclear rocket possible at the time would have a very low range(like 100km tops)
i build floating harbors when i got extra dockyards and steel and use that floating harbor invasion instead of regular naval invasion to give some leeway at start of invasion
The also mean you can have a lot more freedom where you invade, as if you are invading German Occupied Europe you can literally invade in a 1000 different possible places and Germany not only has to defend all the major ports but every coastal tile as 30 days is more than enough time to build a permanent port behind your advancing ports who just caught the Germans napping by invading somewhere unexpected.
I find mine laying subs are very useful for maintaining naval superiority on your coast lines as Germany and other middling naval powers. The reduced speed (seems) to make naval strikes against ships way better and because subs are so cheap and get as much mine laying as a destroyer with one mine rack (20% more once you get torpedo mines) you can really spam them. Add to the fact that the subs need to be actively targeted, rather than the destoryer escorts able to wait for subs to attack convoys, and I find it a good way to use my subs as I wait to get a critical mass, or make it impossible for enemy navies to reinforce or retreat from a bad naval combat (against AI. A real player will just... avoid naval mine areas or deploy like 3 mine sweepers)
Yes. All those junky early subs that Italy and Germany have are far better used to lay mines, given that their navies operate in coastal waters close by for much of the war, than for sinking convoys. For every handful you get, it often costs much of the early sub fleet to do it. Not worth, imo.
I often refit all of my T-1 Subs with mines because it's very cheap and gives the bathtubs some utility. I notice if I use my T-1 subs for anything else they just get sunk.
I refit initial destroyers with two mine-laying racks. Give them their own admiral and set them to 'do not engage'. They rarely get targeted, and are more efficient than the subs.
Of note is, that Russian Empire in game, can get -20% cost reduction on Super Heavies. that I think stacks with the merge plants decision for -3% armor cost reduction, for total of 23% cheaper SH tanks. Viable? Definitely Not. But it is a meme you can do if you rush through the required focuses and cheese the civil war to win as fast as possible and research cycle to get them in time for you to actually start to produce Something.
I did that strat first successful run of the Empire and really the only downside you run into is just keeping them supplied. Russian production can produce more than you’ll ever need, and they rip through German lines, but the steppes aren’t friendly to them
Rockets interceptor use almost no fuel at all, and can be abused on modern plane to get the wonderwaffe of Goering : 1000 kmh / 1000 km range / 90ish attack or 90 ish agility. I always use those when possible to keep my fuel to move my bizilion tanks.
I always build 2 super heavy battleships when I play Japan, because they did irl. 🤷🏻♂️ I also build floating harbors sometimes when I know I’m about to do some big naval invades and have some extra dockyards with nothing better to use them on. The rest of the examples in your video I never build though.
The part that I like is that Rt56 does develop those techs further. It allows to develop ballistic missiles to true ICBMs, it develops superheavy tanks into one of the two ways you can get MBTs with final one being basically a mix of MBT-70 and Chieftain, it adds ability to mix superheavy battleship hull with nuclear powered capital ships propulsion and battleship missile silo projects like "missile Iowa" and so on. Basically it loops into semi-useful territory in the late game IF you can afford it. But such highly expensive equipment truly becomes worth it if you have national spirits that buff it. For example free range for strategic bombers for USA or CAS on steroids for Mexico.
Too bad that the game is effectively over before these late game techs can make a difference. What i find in Hoi4 is that if you can hold your defensive line, you've already won, there are so many ways to break through the enemy line such as OP tanks, paratroopers, air superiority with planes that trade 1v10 against the AI, etc
The real problem with super-heavy battleships is that they can't really be upgraded much. 1944 battleship is whole lot cheaper and nearly on the same level.
but you cant realistically build them until 1940 unless youre rushing tech, at least you can build sh battleships day 1 as britain or usa as long as you research the tech
There still a lot of work to do in other parts of the game, but I think a lot of these techs would benefit from Paradox making an update/DLC that adds more post-WW2 content where researching these techs will actually be relevant to the game
I remember playing as italy and I had to invest heavily into fuel silos due to a lack of fuel to trade with. Then I had to invest in rockets because I was fighting late game US and bombers were expensive. germany always stole my airports so that didn't help me either. I always invest most of my military on fighter planes so silos always made sense to me.
If you take a tech you can make submarines minelay without needing a dedicated module. Secondly making dedicated minelaying subs isn't all that bad, they're a little less effective at convoy raiding but they're pretty cheap to refit anyhow if you so wish. You can even make cheap minimum cost sub 1 bathtubs. Using it on surface vessels unless they had the module from the start is a waste of a slot. Although from my understanding minelaying slows down the game by causing lag. The Rocket module on tanks confuses me though. Is it supposed to represent the Sturmtiger? Or something like the Sherman Calliope? Because most "rocket tanks" didn't have rockets as their main armament, the more crude ones essentially just being launch rails mounted on the side of the turret, they were more an additional weapon suitable for one of the module slots rather than a main gun, although probably at a cost of a hefty relibility penalty. Although maybe they would be better suited as something similar to flame tanks
I'm pretty sure the rocket module is meant to represent mechanized MLRS systems like the Panzerwerfer. There is also a motorized rocket artillery tech derived from trucks. For Germany that used to be called "Panzerwerfer", but when No Step Back came out, they changed it to a generic "Motorized Rocket Artillery".
Naval mine is sort of okay, if you can spare some attention to do it properly, it randomly sunk ships but it’s not noticeable like naval battle results.
I know this is not be relevant to the vanilla meta, but if you use mods that add tech from the 50s and above like Ultimate Tech Tree, researching rockets is important because it often leads to better artillery and rocket artillery templates.
R56 hides CAS rockets under rocket artillery. They give similar ground attack to bomblocks with only one weight meaning you can either attach them to light single engine fighters for multipurpose lights or stack the hell out of them.
I love how pretty much every "wonder weapon" the Nazis actually proposed/developed during the war is instantly dismissed as either a meme choice, or as only viable when you have already won.
That is what caused the war in Europe to end sooner. They Germans were unfocused in their approach. V1 and V2 were expensive throw away bombs. A conventional bomber could do the same thing and return for another mission. Better to build bombers. A surface to air missile battery might have been worthwhile. The Nazis built those too. But not enough to matter. Something like that on the German coast might have impacted the war. But building such a battery meant that they were admitting they lost control of the air and it might put fighter pilots out of a job. So gorieng , head of the German air force and a former fighter pilot was unenthusiastic about the project even though several B17s had been shot down. Ego and poor judgement played a role. Super tanks cost as much a 3 tiger tanks.
@@forrestsory1893 yes, but it was more of Hitler's ego steering efforts from areas with better cost ration prospects and Germany being pressured in resources than actually lack of judgment or foresight. You can only rate results after all the research and design has been done. Science is a gamble and Germans also had their share of successes like the me 262 and the stg 44. But unfortunately for them, not even a dozen of f 22 could really make them hold for longer, much less turn the tables. The v2 was a disaster, but jet engines became a new standard after a few years.
@@forrestsory1893to be fair, everyone in the German high command and R&D was desperate. The generals don’t want to displease Hitler even with his increasingly delusional and deteriorating mind, the scientists and engineers don’t want to be conscripted into the military so they kept making up bullcrap projects like Super Heavies and early jet fighters even if they’re no where near ready for service and their reliability can only be considered uncooked meat in a fancy restaurant.
@@forrestsory1893 maybe make it that Rockets can get through despite the enemy air superiority, whilst bombers need effective escort to reach their targets otherwise enemy fighters just swat them down
@@forrestsory1893 The "Baby Blitz" with bombers of 1943 had horrible casualty rates, so going disposable actually was not a bad deal. The real failure was using the conventional bombers, V1 and V2 in waves rather than all at the same time, as the UK was able to adapt to each threat. That all said strategic bombing outside the harassment value was suboptimal in WW2, all these resources would have been far better used on the Russian front or gaining air superiority in the Med.
2:08 I would never build new minelayers, but many starting navies have a bunch. As UK, if I take Poland's navy, I'll make a minelaying fleet with exile ships and lay mines in Shallow Seas where they are most effective. This allows me to reallocate ships to other theatres in the long run.
I honestly do make Minelaying ships, they're great for making kill-zones and for assisting in coastal protection, just a super cheap Destroyer usually wont hinder you enough for it not to be worth it it also makes Super BB's semi-ish-kinda worthwhile since minefields slow the enemy enough to catch anything. I also use the Floating Harbor a lot, It's fuckin' useful if you're playing a nation or a style that envolves lots of Naval landings, being able to land on gibraltar and have supply for 30 days is totally worth it and lowers the bar for taking it.
If you play as the USA and you have enough screen ships (100+) and carriers then I found the super heavy battle ships very effective. Also shore bombardment. They are extremely expensive tho. I will add I didn't defeat the rest of the world until 1961. The war lasted very long for me in my last play through.
I agree with almost everything voiced here, except mining. The mined sea not only gives a number of debuffs, but, it seems, quietly drowns the fleet. I have noticed many times that my armada of destroyers evaporates somewhere when operating in mined waters.
I always build at least 4 fuel silos as Germany, cause yes, you do use up a building slot that could be a civ or mil but you're saving fuel that'll help prevent the need to trade for fuel in the future, which will save you multiple civs for other constructions. I usually play road to 56 too so building slots aren't usually an issue
I found super heavies on defensive units to be a viable strat. Also makes it easy cause you don't need to produce an ungodly amount of them, and your divisions can never be pushed. Kinda role playee but making an immovable iron curtain along the Russian border works quite nice.
@@Notmyname1593 I can remember Bokoen1 using pre-NSB heavy TD's in (some of) his infantry divisions, it worked very well in his MP game. I can imagine super heavy tanks in your infantry division could be a lot of fun, but you have to be able to afford them and at that point you may as well declare yourself the winner anyway.
The floating harbour is really strong if you know an enemy has stacked divisions on a port tile, you can use marines to invade that tile, whilst using non marines with floating harbours on the adjacent tiles (which are lightly defended or empty), you can then encircle the port tile with supply. You can also stagger the floating harbour naval invasions to ensure you always have supply. Granted a bit gimmicky but definitely has potential! I really like the idea of the hot/cold acclimatization, but agree at it's current stats it's not even something you think about. It would be really cool if they made it more impactful and added tech related to it (such as winter uniforms, or desert uniforms). I know they did buff the weather effects of tiles back in No Step Back, but I still feel it's not enough, winter during Barbarossa should really have the effect of grinding any advance to a halt (having the weather impact things like diesel engines freezing as well would be cool). I think Road to 56 did have some tech such as the clothes which was cool, it also had Jungle divisions but I must confess I haven't played it in a while.
ngl, all of them are either niche functions, wonder weapon fever dreams, or what only winning side would do with impunity just to add salt to the injury. Those things being bad looks like an intended feature.
Something you may want to review. Signal Companies are usually regarded as ineffective at it's best. Most of the time I see people describing SC I see them just add an SC to a division and demonstrate how it does nothing. I may be wrong, but I think they are meant to be used in conjunction with radars. If you are withing the range of a radar, SC's start making wonders. I've seen regular 7-2s winning against a force that is 2-3 times bigger in multiple games.
Signal companies are meant to be used with grand battleplan because they buff the planning speed, and because grand battleplan and mass assault are the worst doctrines, people tend to not use them.
@@pewterschmidt23lord99 Yeah, Battleplan is only useful during defenses where you literally can´t retreat, because if you do, you lose the entrenchment bonus, and mass assault is for supply use.
@@RedSander_BRTo be fair, grand battleplan has the potential of being the strongest due to the planning bonus Although waiting for max planning is boring, so I just ignore it unless I need to break through the Maginot for whatever reason Mass assault is, uh, well if you want pure infantry and guns, it works gloriously, but why would you choose to limit yourself like that?
Gas Turbine engine is today used on exactly of 2 serving tanks. M1 Abrams - and the AbramsX demonstrator replaces it with diesel-electric for fuel efficiency T-80 - If it hadn't been for arctic divisions, Russia would have stepped away from gas turbine-powered T-80 to T-80UD style tank with diesel. However GT engine is solid for extreme cold enviroment. Third tank that is no longer in service and the first tank to use GT engine was Strv103. One thing that I would find interesting is alternative fuel possibility. T-80 can in crisis "run on anything that burns" - out of diesel? Slap barrel of "samohonka" into it and it will go.
Considering there's only that much armor you can put on a tank until it becomes immobile/super unreliable then medium cannon does practically the same until 1943 when it's replaced with improved medium cannon.
About late games, to some countries it will be a new start after WW2, still some alternative history to explore, for example, as Soviet Union, you can experience the Cold War that breaks into WW3; as China, you just defeated Japan and unified the country, on the way to be a new super power; As Japan, you just controlled the whole Asia now you have the power to challenge the Europeans and Americans on their homeland. Late game can still be fun
I've done some rocket interceptor games when I had 0 fuel because they didn't use fuel. I'm not sure if that has changed. I did it because it was a challenge to see if it would work. :)
Yeah, playing Japan 1945 in the endsieg mod, no access to fuel, and loads of enemy bombing, building rocket interceptors is a actual legitmate strategy.
Only time i ever use mines is Italy - you start with like 12 minelayers and having an edge in the medi to naval invade alexandria is worth it. Pushing it on land is painful.
Plus if you can get docking rights from Spain or Portugal, you can turn all of Africa into the Royal navy's worst nightmare, and cut off their colonial forces
It's also pretty helpful for avoiding getting naval invaded. Getting just that little bit of extra supremacy can make the difference between your fleet getting repaired or getting cut in half before you can... Being three tiles long is a pain.
When playing Germany I usually make extremely cheap destroyers with mine layers to just mine the shit out of my coasts after taking France to make naval invasions practically impossible
typically in bigger nations i like to actually have a couple fuel silos never know when ya gonna spike usage suddenly and change from good to pissing out dry fast
1:30 It's actually worse than that because regular Infrastructure increases your fuel capacity and building up Infrastructure increases your factory construction speed in that state so while you're making a more long term investment in your factory construction speed, you're also increasing your fuel capacity and for much less construction cost.
I have built super heavies before, albiet in more fantasy-esque games that drag on until 44/45 and involve me fighting the entire world. They're pretty good at dislodging large stacks of infantry in plains provinces that can build up insane defense bonuses.
I like doing floating harbors in areas that are rough to invade, and then pushing out. I find that it gives me enough time to build a port in the area I took and bring supply in traditionally, though admittedly it's mostly good against AI that aren't doing full coastline defense and MP games where 1 port per province rules aren't in play. It can be a sneaky way to blindside someone and take resources away from another front.
Super heavy battleships can be incredibly good if you invest research into anti air, get the anti air light cannons and have a good screening portion of the navy and they won't get damaged easily
I already said that in one of your videos but these explanatory videos are so helpfull, especially because im not a Hoi4 main (i mostly play EU4 and once every month or two Hoi4). so watching your videos always helps me to get better at least a little bit and another thing, you have a really relaxing voice. Strange that the V2 rockets can shoot down, this makes absolutley no sense, the allies couldnt shoot down the V2 irl. Nice video as always, greetings from germany :)
Rocket engines need some gimmick or buff. Maybe a buff when only on interception. Maybe a buff to agility when only on intercept...? Basically have your rocket interceptors be fast/agile enough to intercept the bombers but not be intercepted or engaged (or have decreased chance to) by any escort fighters - if anything like that is currently possible.
In single player when I play as an allied nation I will build mine laying subs and mine sweeping destroyers just because I’m bored, and there really isn’t much of a threat at sea
floating harbors worked for me recently. I used them to land a bunch of medium tank divisions on Cuba as the USA, where without them I lost a bunch due to immediately running out of supply and failing to take the port
tried playing with V1-3 rockets, even max ones do so little logistical damage it's insanely bad compared to how many building slots and research you're doing. Which is a shame, I'd enjoy a feature to basically bomb someone into submission, cripple them to the point they have to surrender
I agree with everything but floating harbors. Though, I do like to refit tier 1 and 2 subs as minelayers when playing the US. They get found so quickly as raiders that its a better use imho.
super heavy battleships as naval invasion vessals are where they shine for me, but pretty much outside of stupid grind downs, cant build them fast enough to matter , but if they wind up needed, they great
Never stop making this videos, Dave. Because, my personal impression is that if you point out the game's flaws long enough, PDX will actually listen and do something about it. I mean, that's probably also why they are now doing monthly patches instead of waiting it out until the next DLC.
The question is where does he get his stats? Did every player answer his survey or does he get to decide what every player (single and multi) never use? For my part, I didn't get his survey so his video is just generalities based on his few MP games, not based on players. (how many dozen of players out of thousands is this based on?) For my part, I stopped his video at fuel silo, I always build those to get a good reserve. (and because if not, I only do civil&military and rubber and shipyard, and late game, some rocket to destroy buildings at little cost since rockets are built from air and only their bad range is the default)
Some time relatively soon after release (like my second or third save on the game after release) I did a Communist States of America run where I rushed rocket tech as soon as possible. The beauty of rocket technology is that it gives motorized rocket artillery an incredible boost in its stats on every tier. My divisions were just 3 lines of motorized rocket artillery with a line of mechanized infantry and a full set of support units, and they demolished everything they went up against
Mine laying has a niche role for nations that have a very small coastline, bordering only one seazone, and want to give an edge to their proportionately small fleet defending that zone. Retrofitting crappy old ships that would only get sunk in an engagement to be mine layers has its boons. Similarly, putting like 3 mine sweepers on a crappy old destroyer and having 8 -10 of those can clear out a sea zone very quickly - useful for axis to invade the American continent, as the AI loves to plant mines around there. As for the rocket engines, they used to have one major advantage: they consumed no fuel at all. Since BBA, they do consume some, but still very little. BBA also made them extremely useless in an actual fight, because you can't stack armor on rocket interceptors, due to the armor's additional range penalty -it can actually reduce range to 0.
Five shipyards is no big deal if you're pumping out subs and destroyers as your main fleet, especially as a major power. When I unlock them I run one line of them just to make invasions a little less of a hassle. I'm terrible at planning naval invasions, so any edge I can get is welcome. Here's how bad I am. Down the War Powers tree for the United States, you get a war goal on Cuba. Aside from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is only one province thick, so there are no encirclements to be had, only pushing to Havana. I lost an entire fully-equipped Space Marine army to a single cavalry brigade because it counterattacked at just the right time and overran them because they were too slow to retreat. I learned my lesson. Now I'll only invade with disposable expeditionary troops from the Philippines.
Ngl, I only use floating harbor to send 5 armies instantly trough the field Marshall. And having the frontline that was made on the landing site not being a horror stack to the eyes.
Super Battleships are honestly fantastic for naval invasion and coastal bombardment. They hit super hard and can have less troops in battle on the coast
Floating harbors are great for invading Australia since they have hardly any naval bases on the northern coast. Just pick a spot where your marines can defend one tile away and it gives you 15 days of 30 required for a level 1 naval base. You can also plan a second naval invasion with a floating harbor and fire it off to land and finish out the last 15 days needed.
there is actually some merit to shbbs since u can make them expensive enough to make planes choose it as the target and not the carriers more often and in bb vs bb engagements they absolutely shread aswell since they usually cant be penetrated
The only time I've ever used fuel silos is playing Italy on historical, since when the war starts your fuel expense is massive because you're using your full air power, navy, and motorized/tanks constantly. Having 2 years of fuel banked is very useful so you don't have to put like 10+ factories on oil for trade, and it's very easy since Italy has a 35 day focus which makes fuel gain 100% faster and fuel silos build 100% faster for (2 years?) or so. This makes it to where you can build 6-9 fuel silos in North Africa very cheap and the fuel will accumulate quickly to max right in time for the war just off the oil you already have developed plus the usual synthetics which you've got for rubber.
Me who used to built Silos, Rocket Sites, Fleets just for Minelaying and created 1 Superheavy Battleships for each fleet.. but I do havent played since some years
The super heavy battleship is an amazing damage sponge and fly swatter. Max out the AA on it, chance of naval targeting is proportional to total HP so the super heavy is > 2x more likely than the other capitals to be targeted by plane attacks. I always like to build at least 1 for the main fleet
I build Fuel silos. I usually do that when I'm playing as a country with little to no domestic fuel production to keep make my fuel stores last longer.
with fuel silo, i honestly might just built 1 or 2 of them and its more than enough for almost everything i needed. i sometimes build them, but only like 3 of them max, its more than enough for most purposes
Minelaying is amazing, helps with naval supremacy, gets you more favorable engagements due to speed limitations and can send enemy ships straight to the repai dock while they patrol
Honestly the bigger problem with module equipment is that its largely hidden in the tech interface. The research buttons need to be expanded to show what you get for each research button instead of searching through them to find what you are looking for. The research could be greatly improved by making the details more front and center.
Also we need to keep in mind for fuel silos and rocket sites m, while the costs are similar to the one of a mil, in your usual game you'll often end up getting a significant construction boost for mills making them an even better option
Too work mulberry harbors need some in inventory, they will last longer, also, they tend to provide listed supply so you would build an invasion of a lot of tiles and focus on encircling and taking the port
1:14 In my opinion, that is the meta for nations that do not have access to any oil. Just build one fuel silo before war to get the ~30% capacity increase from it, as the diminishing returns on fuel silos is extremely steep. Especially if you are a minor nation with no oil, you only start with 50k fuel capacity, so one silo would be a 200% increase.
I swear by floating harbors. Thing is, for logistics, they help a lot. Even if I have captured a port, it alone hasn’t got much supply. However, if I fan out with floating harbors, I have much greater supply for a little, allowing me to push for more ports at maximum effectiveness.
One very niche edge case for minefields? Is that it slows down the enemy trying to flee, allowing them to be chased and destroyed. So. If the enemy fleet keeps fleeing and you can't pin them down. Then bait them into attacking a small force, then send massive reinforcements, and you can kill a bunch of ships while they're trying to flee. But that basically only works if you already have naval supremacy and outnumber/overpower the enemy fleet anyway. So yeah. Most of the time it's not worth it.
Superheavy BBs are actually good. The idea is that you want to take out enemy escorts with surface raiders and when a battle between the enemy and your heavy ships come, you can make super heavy BBs to deal with them.
Actually, super heavy battleships can be used effectively with carriers and rich screens + other, smaller battleships in group. Its just that they need to be protected very, very well.
Super Heavy Battleships I have found to be very effective. I build them early game, then refit them with advanced fire control and radar. They dish out a ton of damage and take very little damage themselves. In many battles, a couple of super heavy battleships will sink more ships than any other class.
The ports are quite useful is you use it as a spam invasion feedback. I invaded japan and won like half of the land without touching any port. It gaves you a tactical advantage to surround a port and take it with any problem
Fuel silos you wanna use if you want your offesnsive to go longer, after extensive use of air and navy you gonna need refuel so fuel silos can make combat go longer before refuel-ing
Fuel silos used to not take up building slots. They were like infrastructure, you could build fixed amount per state but they changed it and now I rarely build them.
If they changed it back I would absolutely build them, even if they were like 2x as expensive as they are now. I want to play tall darn it!
I make them to help keep extra fuel for tank spam
Really? Shame isn't still a thing
@@maciejl20 sorry I’m not a coder nor do I want to open my HOI4 files and break my game😬
But then it is too op
So you want to tell, that a WW1-style, 3 turret supertank doesn't worth it? Impossible
Don't give Hobart any ideas lol
IMPOSSIBRUUU!
The absurdity. The T-35 is the supreme example of proficient reliable engineering and ingenuity. Why have 5 tanks with one turret when you can have 1 tank with 5 turrets!?
@@HerrLindstrom they should have made the tank even bigger, so they could have 5 commanders too. Also, change the name to Super TOG
Eeit: and one turret should have a flamethrower, because hoi
@@HerrLindstrom You dont get actually more then 1 turret in hoi. Secondary stats are complete crap.
Realistically the rockets for tanks shouldn't be the turret, as for example the shermans with rockets had an array on top, so it would make most sense for it to be a module that gives a reliability debuff and some breakthrough and soft attack
It did make the gun unqble to operate so maybe thats why they did that ingame
@@arielbemeliahu8619 in later versions the gun was entirely functional.
@@alistairsmith4297 really? The only one I know of is calliope.
@@arielbemeliahu8619 yes, and Calliope was modiefied by its crews to allow the use of the gun and the rocket launcher. A good example of: "why not both?" :)
@@attanathos8408 Well I guess its like its 2 different roles and the cannon becomes more of a secondary armament so it changes the role of the tank a bit to rocket arty? But that might be me just talmuding or something idk.
Floating Harbours are amazing It means you don't need to take ports on day one. It's great for doing an amphibious landing on Japan or a well-defended UK. That 30-days is usually enough time to build a basic port in captured territory and ferry in reinforcements if for some reason you fail to capture a port on day 1 (this can also be a deliberate tactic as it gives you the ability to invade a place away from the ports where you are not expected super effective against Germany as Germany not only needs to Garrison the ports but defend the entire coastline of Europe which is so much harder). They are the difference between a failed invasion and losing a bunch of divisions and a tough invasion that eventually breaks through. If you come against a Japan or UK player who has a functional home Army then this is a must for any hope of a successful invasion While against Germany now they have to actively defend every coastal tile in Europe regardless of the presence of a port nearby.
Floating Harbours make sense invading Africa, China late game, and the Far East as well as Libya if no ports exist.
@@youtuberobbedmeofmyname I know a lot of players who just put troops on ports and no where else so against them it can be pretty good. Also it allows you to put more troops in a area
@@youtuberobbedmeofmyname and it let you starve the port authority garrison whit out having to pry them out of every single shipping container just ignore them and park your army in every single nearby fast food joint because you got portable ports next to there port delivering lunch.
where by before you only hope was to get the port authority garrison out of the port before your army ran out of Lunchboxes.
and if 30 days is not enough just do a second naval invasion somewhere closely to get a second flooting harbor when the first one collapses).
that said I do wish you could press a bottom to automatically replace the first one when it runs out and maybe even have it so that if the game notis that you have serious supplies issues by not enough ports and you got lots of flooting harbor it would place more along the coast you captured.
and maybe a function that you can use a disision or something to turn a flooting port into a permanent one (for some kind of cost) at the expense of using up let say 3 extra flooting ports.
When I have floating harbours, I naval invade against a port and use the floating harbours to invade the adjacent regions. If the adjacent invaders get ashore the can help capture the port from a landers direction without too much fear of getting out of supply.
I use them all the time as Japan to make sure my initial attacks into southern China go well. Keeping a handful of marine divisions alive is hard enough already, and you do not need to place more than one naval factory on them to have enough to go through with it. They remain useful even in Indonesia while taking over puppets, as supply lines there suck.
All that said, I only really ever use about a dozen of them in a game, so they are one of those things I can easily see people doing without, especially as the tech is kind of a pain to grab if naval invasions are not required for your country.
In your scenario, of using the floating harbor, you still had supply problems because you had no supply route through the Danish Belts.
How can you provid a supply route? Would a port in northern Germany not do it?
@@tunganhnguyen909 you’d think, but I think it’s a new bug. It happened to me yesterday. No matter if I blocked the zone off or not.
@@tunganhnguyen909 Sea supply's pathfinding, as well as Naval trade route pathfinding is a weird thing indeed. It has some magical moments and wonderful paths it may want to take.
He was also naval mining the sea region with his only open sea ports and was out of fuel. Not sure if either of those affect supply delivery I would have to test it but it would make sens3 if they do
@@melfice999😂 I once helped win a game as axis because the soviet supply officers ate too much glue, I had 14 bulgarian mech LARPing seelow heights, dday is popping off, we are on the verge of defeat, and the entire supply just....vanishes...we have no idea where it went, and then the soviets got rolled back, and the worst thing is; none of us quite understand why
I love how much of the "nobody uses it" comes down to "the AI is so bad and ill-equiped to deal with players that they either have already won or already lost by the time you could even think of making these". Kind of like Civ's many renaissance+ techs (if you are slow playing)
The purpose of the floating harbor is to buy time to build a level one harbor. It's very useful when you are in trouble with taking those existing harbors.
Object 1: Fuel silos can be handy depending on how easily you can get new oil. Allied nations usually generate enough of their own fuel, or have secured shipping to get more elsewhere. But if your country has issues getting more quickly (average non-cheese runs of Germany Italy or Japan for example) it COULD be worthwhile (but I understand why most don't)
I could be wrong because I haven't heard about them in a long time, but I believe they're also (just like real life) incredibly vulnerable to enemy bombers. So you're investing nearly a military factory's worth of building into them, giving up a building slot for them, trading for extra fuel to fill them (often buying from the people that are going to be your enemies), and then devoting a massive amount of AA and fighters to protect them, when instead you could just...build a synthetic refinery. Or better yet, invade somewhere with natural oil and become impervious to enemy bombers. They have a very, very specific niche and even within that niche they struggle against better alternatives. It's also worth noting that the AI absolutely *loves* these things. If you're doing any invading chances are pretty good you'll get a few free ones anyways, which makes it even less worth it to build your own.
Depending on your country just 1 or 2 fuel silos can't hold enough oil for long and sacrificing a lot of building slots to have a big oil bank is just not worth it. I think once I built 3 fuel silos in every state with Germany and then from the start of the war I had enough oil for a couple years. Building refineries is a lot better.
Maybe useful as Italy in a historical mp since they have a HUGE fleet and no easy way to get fuel in the big war.
@@youtuberobbedmeofmyname if you build Silos in MP and Allies spot you doing that you can loose them with few TACs targetting them. Its better to just rely on Romanian Lend Lease as Italy.
@@melfice999 I forgot that tbh.
Fuel silos used to be the meta for MP Japan. Build your stockpile of fuel to like 2-3M and when you go to war with the allies you have enough to use your fleet and airforce
Floating harbors are actually useful and I highly recommend to split one or two dockyards to build some if you're planning for future naval invasions.
I agree I think he was too harsh and didn’t use the floating harbor properly in an actual naval invasion against divisions
The funny thing about building them is just one factory is usually enough to build the number that you'll need for the rest of the war
@@tbeller80 quite funny thing is that these harbors exist whenever you commence a successful naval invasion order, so doing dramatic Operation Sealion on every single UK's coastal province is actually quite effective imo.
He's not harsh, just doing generalities! Look the video's title! Did he do a survey with every hoi4 player or just what he believes to be true based on his MP games? (when every paradox survey point the fact that most player do single only, but the game balancing is done for MP only... While MP players use mods doing balancing for themselves to prevent MP abuses, since they don't want to spend their time policing every player because for example, they did antitank before a certain time, making Germany's blitzkrieg useless)
@@tbeller80its funny how cheap they are when in reality the two mulberry harbours took a massive amount of production to build, they were practically a mega project just for D-day
I sometimes use naval mines when playing minor powers, the 10-13% naval supremecy they give is very helpful for getting naval invasions off against naval powers like britain/japan. They require very minimal investment, simply refit 10-20 submarines that you start with with mine laying tubes(takes like 30 days max for all of them combined). Assign them to an admiral who has the minelayer trait for extra 20% minelaying(concealment expert is also worth taking and it branches off the same trait) and have them mine key regions like the Sea of Japan, Mediterranean, Black sea, etc. On subs they are difficult to detect so they will rarely take losses, they can just do their thing all game for a small amount of fuel and can give that 10% or so supremacy that tends to be what you're lacking when you don't have a real navy, like China, Turkey, Austria Hungary etc.
Mines are great, too bad I rarely do all the research (and I don't check the result, if some ships sank due to my mines)
When I use mines, since they only "at war" deployment, I start a small war what doesn't kick off a world war and use it to mine areas that need to mined, eg Mining the Channel and North Sea, "to protect my nation from a naval invasion by "
Rocket silo constantly pump out rockets out of thin air, like you could build a factory instead of it to make a fighter every... Month or so, or get rocket a day... Something between V2 and V3 with like 1K+ kms range would be nice tho (AND LET US NUKE SHIT WITH IT PARADOX, THE NUKE ICON BEEN HERE FOR AGES)
When general MacArthur drops an, atomic bomb
I do find it a bit odd, but considering the tech tree goes to 1945,
It sorta makes sense that only bombers can launch nukes
Rocket Silos admittedly are pretty bad, but there is a trick to using them - rocket silos can dump out their rockets VERY fast.So instead of setting them to a region then leaving them to fire at production rate, you're better to build up to the max stock of missiles at multiple bases, then unleash them all at once to overwhelm air defenses in a specific region, then once stocks have run out, hold fire and build up stocks for the next attack.
The rockets of the time were not big enough to carry the early atomic bombs, a theoretical nuclear rocket possible at the time would have a very low range(like 100km tops)
Rockets not beig able to have nuclear warheads in HOI4 is perplexing when Nuke+Rocket combi works fine in HOI2
i build floating harbors when i got extra dockyards and steel and use that floating harbor invasion instead of regular naval invasion to give some leeway at start of invasion
The also mean you can have a lot more freedom where you invade, as if you are invading German Occupied Europe you can literally invade in a 1000 different possible places and Germany not only has to defend all the major ports but every coastal tile as 30 days is more than enough time to build a permanent port behind your advancing ports who just caught the Germans napping by invading somewhere unexpected.
I find mine laying subs are very useful for maintaining naval superiority on your coast lines as Germany and other middling naval powers. The reduced speed (seems) to make naval strikes against ships way better and because subs are so cheap and get as much mine laying as a destroyer with one mine rack (20% more once you get torpedo mines) you can really spam them. Add to the fact that the subs need to be actively targeted, rather than the destoryer escorts able to wait for subs to attack convoys, and I find it a good way to use my subs as I wait to get a critical mass, or make it impossible for enemy navies to reinforce or retreat from a bad naval combat (against AI. A real player will just... avoid naval mine areas or deploy like 3 mine sweepers)
Yes.
All those junky early subs that Italy and Germany have are far better used to lay mines, given that their navies operate in coastal waters close by for much of the war, than for sinking convoys. For every handful you get, it often costs much of the early sub fleet to do it. Not worth, imo.
I often refit all of my T-1 Subs with mines because it's very cheap and gives the bathtubs some utility. I notice if I use my T-1 subs for anything else they just get sunk.
I refit initial destroyers with two mine-laying racks. Give them their own admiral and set them to 'do not engage'. They rarely get targeted, and are more efficient than the subs.
Also as Italy in the Med I find it quite useful for the IC.
I use it exactly as you described but for ireland since the british navy deploys their entire navy on my coast.
Of note is, that Russian Empire in game, can get -20% cost reduction on Super Heavies. that I think stacks with the merge plants decision for -3% armor cost reduction, for total of 23% cheaper SH tanks.
Viable? Definitely Not. But it is a meme you can do if you rush through the required focuses and cheese the civil war to win as fast as possible and research cycle to get them in time for you to actually start to produce Something.
Who is the girl in your pfp ?
Papal Italy gets an even bigger one.
@@qsal305 Tanya from Youjo Senki.
@@melfice999 That's what I guessed .
It is a cute picture, could you send it to me ?
I did that strat first successful run of the Empire and really the only downside you run into is just keeping them supplied. Russian production can produce more than you’ll ever need, and they rip through German lines, but the steppes aren’t friendly to them
Rockets interceptor use almost no fuel at all, and can be abused on modern plane to get the wonderwaffe of Goering : 1000 kmh / 1000 km range / 90ish attack or 90 ish agility. I always use those when possible to keep my fuel to move my bizilion tanks.
I always build 2 super heavy battleships when I play Japan, because they did irl. 🤷🏻♂️ I also build floating harbors sometimes when I know I’m about to do some big naval invades and have some extra dockyards with nothing better to use them on. The rest of the examples in your video I never build though.
I build one as Germany and make it the Joy of the fleet....she always rekts.
I occasionaly do the same as the UK but most of the time I try to make the G3 or Incomparable class Battlecruisers.
Doesnt japan have afocus that starts them off partially built
@@thespiritphoenix3798make the big 4
I mean they arnt battleships but still
Super heavy tanks: "if you can aford it, you kinda won the war alread"
Germany: "Are you sure about that ?"
Bro google translate is free
The part that I like is that Rt56 does develop those techs further. It allows to develop ballistic missiles to true ICBMs, it develops superheavy tanks into one of the two ways you can get MBTs with final one being basically a mix of MBT-70 and Chieftain, it adds ability to mix superheavy battleship hull with nuclear powered capital ships propulsion and battleship missile silo projects like "missile Iowa" and so on.
Basically it loops into semi-useful territory in the late game IF you can afford it.
But such highly expensive equipment truly becomes worth it if you have national spirits that buff it. For example free range for strategic bombers for USA or CAS on steroids for Mexico.
odd I haven't been able to make nuclear powered ships since the naval update. I assumed they never bothered to fix it.
@@KingofDiamonds117 have you tried designing it, it's under propulsion tab in ship designer, no?
@@TheArklyte I have never seen or heard of what you are talking about?
Too bad that the game is effectively over before these late game techs can make a difference.
What i find in Hoi4 is that if you can hold your defensive line, you've already won, there are so many ways to break through the enemy line such as OP tanks, paratroopers, air superiority with planes that trade 1v10 against the AI, etc
@@guncolony or allowing enemy to pocket themselves[HappyChinaPlayerNoizes]
The real problem with super-heavy battleships is that they can't really be upgraded much. 1944 battleship is whole lot cheaper and nearly on the same level.
but you cant realistically build them until 1940 unless youre rushing tech, at least you can build sh battleships day 1 as britain or usa as long as you research the tech
@@nikolaspinneo5066 Sure, I can start bulding them early on, but they take ages to complete. I also prefer having ships with more speed than 30.
When I build them they usually complete in mid to late 1939 at which point they will absolutely crush any opposing capital ships.
There still a lot of work to do in other parts of the game, but I think a lot of these techs would benefit from Paradox making an update/DLC that adds more post-WW2 content where researching these techs will actually be relevant to the game
Fuel silos help for me, especially on JP. Just spam buy oil with like 16 civ for 2-5 days until full, then stop import.
I remember playing as italy and I had to invest heavily into fuel silos due to a lack of fuel to trade with. Then I had to invest in rockets because I was fighting late game US and bombers were expensive. germany always stole my airports so that didn't help me either. I always invest most of my military on fighter planes so silos always made sense to me.
Silos have sense indeed
If you take a tech you can make submarines minelay without needing a dedicated module. Secondly making dedicated minelaying subs isn't all that bad, they're a little less effective at convoy raiding but they're pretty cheap to refit anyhow if you so wish. You can even make cheap minimum cost sub 1 bathtubs. Using it on surface vessels unless they had the module from the start is a waste of a slot. Although from my understanding minelaying slows down the game by causing lag.
The Rocket module on tanks confuses me though. Is it supposed to represent the Sturmtiger? Or something like the Sherman Calliope? Because most "rocket tanks" didn't have rockets as their main armament, the more crude ones essentially just being launch rails mounted on the side of the turret, they were more an additional weapon suitable for one of the module slots rather than a main gun, although probably at a cost of a hefty relibility penalty. Although maybe they would be better suited as something similar to flame tanks
Wow I didn't know that
I'm pretty sure the rocket module is meant to represent mechanized MLRS systems like the Panzerwerfer. There is also a motorized rocket artillery tech derived from trucks. For Germany that used to be called "Panzerwerfer", but when No Step Back came out, they changed it to a generic "Motorized Rocket Artillery".
Naval mine is sort of okay, if you can spare some attention to do it properly, it randomly sunk ships but it’s not noticeable like naval battle results.
I've tried mines recently. The only ships they sunk were my ships.
I know this is not be relevant to the vanilla meta, but if you use mods that add tech from the 50s and above like Ultimate Tech Tree, researching rockets is important because it often leads to better artillery and rocket artillery templates.
It would be nice for Paradox to expand the game into more modern wars where the style of fighting was similar such as what you are saying. 😊
@@walkingwolf01sounds like a 60 dollar dlc!
@@iamacatperson7226 knowing Paradox, probably 80
@@YataTheFifteenth real. Whilst they continue ignoring Austria
R56 hides CAS rockets under rocket artillery. They give similar ground attack to bomblocks with only one weight meaning you can either attach them to light single engine fighters for multipurpose lights or stack the hell out of them.
I love how pretty much every "wonder weapon" the Nazis actually proposed/developed during the war is instantly dismissed as either a meme choice, or as only viable when you have already won.
That is what caused the war in Europe to end sooner. They Germans were unfocused in their approach. V1 and V2 were expensive throw away bombs. A conventional bomber could do the same thing and return for another mission. Better to build bombers. A surface to air missile battery might have been worthwhile. The Nazis built those too. But not enough to matter. Something like that on the German coast might have impacted the war. But building such a battery meant that they were admitting they lost control of the air and it might put fighter pilots out of a job. So gorieng , head of the German air force and a former fighter pilot was unenthusiastic about the project even though several B17s had been shot down. Ego and poor judgement played a role. Super tanks cost as much a 3 tiger tanks.
@@forrestsory1893 yes, but it was more of Hitler's ego steering efforts from areas with better cost ration prospects and Germany being pressured in resources than actually lack of judgment or foresight. You can only rate results after all the research and design has been done. Science is a gamble and Germans also had their share of successes like the me 262 and the stg 44. But unfortunately for them, not even a dozen of f 22 could really make them hold for longer, much less turn the tables.
The v2 was a disaster, but jet engines became a new standard after a few years.
@@forrestsory1893to be fair, everyone in the German high command and R&D was desperate. The generals don’t want to displease Hitler even with his increasingly delusional and deteriorating mind, the scientists and engineers don’t want to be conscripted into the military so they kept making up bullcrap projects like Super Heavies and early jet fighters even if they’re no where near ready for service and their reliability can only be considered uncooked meat in a fancy restaurant.
@@forrestsory1893 maybe make it that Rockets can get through despite the enemy air superiority, whilst bombers need effective escort to reach their targets otherwise enemy fighters just swat them down
@@forrestsory1893 The "Baby Blitz" with bombers of 1943 had horrible casualty rates, so going disposable actually was not a bad deal.
The real failure was using the conventional bombers, V1 and V2 in waves rather than all at the same time, as the UK was able to adapt to each threat.
That all said strategic bombing outside the harassment value was suboptimal in WW2, all these resources would have been far better used on the Russian front or gaining air superiority in the Med.
2:08 I would never build new minelayers, but many starting navies have a bunch. As UK, if I take Poland's navy, I'll make a minelaying fleet with exile ships and lay mines in Shallow Seas where they are most effective. This allows me to reallocate ships to other theatres in the long run.
I honestly do make Minelaying ships, they're great for making kill-zones and for assisting in coastal protection, just a super cheap Destroyer usually wont hinder you enough for it not to be worth it it also makes Super BB's semi-ish-kinda worthwhile since minefields slow the enemy enough to catch anything.
I also use the Floating Harbor a lot, It's fuckin' useful if you're playing a nation or a style that envolves lots of Naval landings, being able to land on gibraltar and have supply for 30 days is totally worth it and lowers the bar for taking it.
If you play as the USA and you have enough screen ships (100+) and carriers then I found the super heavy battle ships very effective. Also shore bombardment. They are extremely expensive tho. I will add I didn't defeat the rest of the world until 1961. The war lasted very long for me in my last play through.
I agree with almost everything voiced here, except mining. The mined sea not only gives a number of debuffs, but, it seems, quietly drowns the fleet. I have noticed many times that my armada of destroyers evaporates somewhere when operating in mined waters.
I always build at least 4 fuel silos as Germany, cause yes, you do use up a building slot that could be a civ or mil but you're saving fuel that'll help prevent the need to trade for fuel in the future, which will save you multiple civs for other constructions. I usually play road to 56 too so building slots aren't usually an issue
I found super heavies on defensive units to be a viable strat. Also makes it easy cause you don't need to produce an ungodly amount of them, and your divisions can never be pushed. Kinda role playee but making an immovable iron curtain along the Russian border works quite nice.
I imagine making them casemates would make them fair bit cheaper too. Especially as in this role the breakthrough isn`t a relevant stat.
@@Notmyname1593 I can remember Bokoen1 using pre-NSB heavy TD's in (some of) his infantry divisions, it worked very well in his MP game. I can imagine super heavy tanks in your infantry division could be a lot of fun, but you have to be able to afford them and at that point you may as well declare yourself the winner anyway.
The floating harbour is really strong if you know an enemy has stacked divisions on a port tile, you can use marines to invade that tile, whilst using non marines with floating harbours on the adjacent tiles (which are lightly defended or empty), you can then encircle the port tile with supply. You can also stagger the floating harbour naval invasions to ensure you always have supply. Granted a bit gimmicky but definitely has potential!
I really like the idea of the hot/cold acclimatization, but agree at it's current stats it's not even something you think about. It would be really cool if they made it more impactful and added tech related to it (such as winter uniforms, or desert uniforms). I know they did buff the weather effects of tiles back in No Step Back, but I still feel it's not enough, winter during Barbarossa should really have the effect of grinding any advance to a halt (having the weather impact things like diesel engines freezing as well would be cool). I think Road to 56 did have some tech such as the clothes which was cool, it also had Jungle divisions but I must confess I haven't played it in a while.
ngl, all of them are either niche functions, wonder weapon fever dreams, or what only winning side would do with impunity just to add salt to the injury. Those things being bad looks like an intended feature.
Something you may want to review. Signal Companies are usually regarded as ineffective at it's best. Most of the time I see people describing SC I see them just add an SC to a division and demonstrate how it does nothing. I may be wrong, but I think they are meant to be used in conjunction with radars. If you are withing the range of a radar, SC's start making wonders. I've seen regular 7-2s winning against a force that is 2-3 times bigger in multiple games.
Signal companies are meant to be used with grand battleplan because they buff the planning speed, and because grand battleplan and mass assault are the worst doctrines, people tend to not use them.
@@RedSander_BR yep why use battleplan or mass assault when you can make either uber doom tanks or uber doom artillery
@@pewterschmidt23lord99 Yeah, Battleplan is only useful during defenses where you literally can´t retreat, because if you do, you lose the entrenchment bonus, and mass assault is for supply use.
@@RedSander_BRTo be fair, grand battleplan has the potential of being the strongest due to the planning bonus
Although waiting for max planning is boring, so I just ignore it unless I need to break through the Maginot for whatever reason
Mass assault is, uh, well if you want pure infantry and guns, it works gloriously, but why would you choose to limit yourself like that?
They are not. Use them on armored divisions to make them faster in battle (initiative). Speed kills and signal companies help in this.
Gas Turbine engine is today used on exactly of 2 serving tanks.
M1 Abrams - and the AbramsX demonstrator replaces it with diesel-electric for fuel efficiency
T-80 - If it hadn't been for arctic divisions, Russia would have stepped away from gas turbine-powered T-80 to T-80UD style tank with diesel. However GT engine is solid for extreme cold enviroment.
Third tank that is no longer in service and the first tank to use GT engine was Strv103.
One thing that I would find interesting is alternative fuel possibility. T-80 can in crisis "run on anything that burns" - out of diesel? Slap barrel of "samohonka" into it and it will go.
One cool thing with super-heavy tanks is that you can build Heavy Tank Destroyers with the super heavy cannon which will pierce everything in the game
Considering there's only that much armor you can put on a tank until it becomes immobile/super unreliable then medium cannon does practically the same until 1943 when it's replaced with improved medium cannon.
About late games, to some countries it will be a new start after WW2, still some alternative history to explore, for example, as Soviet Union, you can experience the Cold War that breaks into WW3; as China, you just defeated Japan and unified the country, on the way to be a new super power; As Japan, you just controlled the whole Asia now you have the power to challenge the Europeans and Americans on their homeland.
Late game can still be fun
I've done some rocket interceptor games when I had 0 fuel because they didn't use fuel. I'm not sure if that has changed. I did it because it was a challenge to see if it would work. :)
Yeah, playing Japan 1945 in the endsieg mod, no access to fuel, and loads of enemy bombing, building rocket interceptors is a actual legitmate strategy.
Only time i ever use mines is Italy - you start with like 12 minelayers and having an edge in the medi to naval invade alexandria is worth it. Pushing it on land is painful.
Plus if you can get docking rights from Spain or Portugal, you can turn all of Africa into the Royal navy's worst nightmare, and cut off their colonial forces
It's also pretty helpful for avoiding getting naval invaded. Getting just that little bit of extra supremacy can make the difference between your fleet getting repaired or getting cut in half before you can...
Being three tiles long is a pain.
When playing Germany I usually make extremely cheap destroyers with mine layers to just mine the shit out of my coasts after taking France to make naval invasions practically impossible
I love the aerial minelaying, esspecially if you have some obsolete aircraft doing nothing, just convert them into minelayers and use them for that
typically in bigger nations i like to actually have a couple fuel silos
never know when ya gonna spike usage suddenly and change from good to pissing out dry fast
Why don’t you use those civs on buying fuel?
You don't mine-lay to damage fleets, you mine-lay because the speed reduction to enemy allows you to grind down their fleets a lot more effectively.
1:30 It's actually worse than that because regular Infrastructure increases your fuel capacity and building up Infrastructure increases your factory construction speed in that state so while you're making a more long term investment in your factory construction speed, you're also increasing your fuel capacity and for much less construction cost.
I have built super heavies before, albiet in more fantasy-esque games that drag on until 44/45 and involve me fighting the entire world. They're pretty good at dislodging large stacks of infantry in plains provinces that can build up insane defense bonuses.
I like doing floating harbors in areas that are rough to invade, and then pushing out. I find that it gives me enough time to build a port in the area I took and bring supply in traditionally, though admittedly it's mostly good against AI that aren't doing full coastline defense and MP games where 1 port per province rules aren't in play. It can be a sneaky way to blindside someone and take resources away from another front.
Minelaying would be so much better if you could either do it out of war/certain warsupport/world tension
Super heavy battleships can be incredibly good if you invest research into anti air, get the anti air light cannons and have a good screening portion of the navy and they won't get damaged easily
I already said that in one of your videos but these explanatory videos are so helpfull, especially because im not a Hoi4 main (i mostly play EU4 and once every month or two Hoi4).
so watching your videos always helps me to get better at least a little bit and another thing, you have a really relaxing voice.
Strange that the V2 rockets can shoot down, this makes absolutley no sense, the allies couldnt shoot down the V2 irl.
Nice video as always, greetings from germany :)
Rocket engines need some gimmick or buff. Maybe a buff when only on interception. Maybe a buff to agility when only on intercept...? Basically have your rocket interceptors be fast/agile enough to intercept the bombers but not be intercepted or engaged (or have decreased chance to) by any escort fighters - if anything like that is currently possible.
But what about using them for carrier's planes? I suppose in this case their short range doesn't matter if we use carrier planes only in naval battles
In single player when I play as an allied nation I will build mine laying subs and mine sweeping destroyers just because I’m bored, and there really isn’t much of a threat at sea
floating harbors worked for me recently. I used them to land a bunch of medium tank divisions on Cuba as the USA, where without them I lost a bunch due to immediately running out of supply and failing to take the port
tried playing with V1-3 rockets, even max ones do so little logistical damage it's insanely bad compared to how many building slots and research you're doing. Which is a shame, I'd enjoy a feature to basically bomb someone into submission, cripple them to the point they have to surrender
rocket munitions for tanks should be an extra weapon module like machine guns that still gives you a base gun as well.
To be honest, I find mine layers quite potent. I recall using them as Greece against Turkey and they excelled at that.
I agree with everything but floating harbors. Though, I do like to refit tier 1 and 2 subs as minelayers when playing the US. They get found so quickly as raiders that its a better use imho.
super heavy battleships as naval invasion vessals are where they shine for me, but pretty much outside of stupid grind downs, cant build them fast enough to matter , but if they wind up needed, they great
Never stop making this videos, Dave. Because, my personal impression is that if you point out the game's flaws long enough, PDX will actually listen and do something about it. I mean, that's probably also why they are now doing monthly patches instead of waiting it out until the next DLC.
The question is where does he get his stats? Did every player answer his survey or does he get to decide what every player (single and multi) never use? For my part, I didn't get his survey so his video is just generalities based on his few MP games, not based on players. (how many dozen of players out of thousands is this based on?)
For my part, I stopped his video at fuel silo, I always build those to get a good reserve. (and because if not, I only do civil&military and rubber and shipyard, and late game, some rocket to destroy buildings at little cost since rockets are built from air and only their bad range is the default)
Some time relatively soon after release (like my second or third save on the game after release) I did a Communist States of America run where I rushed rocket tech as soon as possible. The beauty of rocket technology is that it gives motorized rocket artillery an incredible boost in its stats on every tier. My divisions were just 3 lines of motorized rocket artillery with a line of mechanized infantry and a full set of support units, and they demolished everything they went up against
Mine laying has a niche role for nations that have a very small coastline, bordering only one seazone, and want to give an edge to their proportionately small fleet defending that zone. Retrofitting crappy old ships that would only get sunk in an engagement to be mine layers has its boons. Similarly, putting like 3 mine sweepers on a crappy old destroyer and having 8 -10 of those can clear out a sea zone very quickly - useful for axis to invade the American continent, as the AI loves to plant mines around there. As for the rocket engines, they used to have one major advantage: they consumed no fuel at all. Since BBA, they do consume some, but still very little. BBA also made them extremely useless in an actual fight, because you can't stack armor on rocket interceptors, due to the armor's additional range penalty -it can actually reduce range to 0.
The floating harbours are good for marine minors like aus/nzl and rom
it seems like 1100km range was implied for rocket 3, but somebody made a typo.
fun fact: you can use extra fuel module for planes to signicantly reduce the range penalty for rocket engines cuz the percentages sum up.
When I'm playing for the first time, I remember build super heavy tank division only and send them to the Himalayan mountain for lols and giggles.
Rocket tech applies to the Rocket artillery so if you want rocket arties those bonuses are really helpful
Five shipyards is no big deal if you're pumping out subs and destroyers as your main fleet, especially as a major power. When I unlock them I run one line of them just to make invasions a little less of a hassle. I'm terrible at planning naval invasions, so any edge I can get is welcome. Here's how bad I am. Down the War Powers tree for the United States, you get a war goal on Cuba. Aside from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba is only one province thick, so there are no encirclements to be had, only pushing to Havana. I lost an entire fully-equipped Space Marine army to a single cavalry brigade because it counterattacked at just the right time and overran them because they were too slow to retreat. I learned my lesson. Now I'll only invade with disposable expeditionary troops from the Philippines.
Ngl, I only use floating harbor to send 5 armies instantly trough the field Marshall. And having the frontline that was made on the landing site not being a horror stack to the eyes.
Super Battleships are honestly fantastic for naval invasion and coastal bombardment. They hit super hard and can have less troops in battle on the coast
You forgot the guided anti-ship missile in the final rocketry research
That's good
Floating harbors are great for invading Australia since they have hardly any naval bases on the northern coast. Just pick a spot where your marines can defend one tile away and it gives you 15 days of 30 required for a level 1 naval base. You can also plan a second naval invasion with a floating harbor and fire it off to land and finish out the last 15 days needed.
there is actually some merit to shbbs since u can make them expensive enough to make planes choose it as the target and not the carriers more often and in bb vs bb engagements they absolutely shread aswell since they usually cant be penetrated
The floating harbor was use in the D-Day invasive to help unload cargo ship like it was a harb or on the D-Day beachs.
The only time I've ever used fuel silos is playing Italy on historical, since when the war starts your fuel expense is massive because you're using your full air power, navy, and motorized/tanks constantly. Having 2 years of fuel banked is very useful so you don't have to put like 10+ factories on oil for trade, and it's very easy since Italy has a 35 day focus which makes fuel gain 100% faster and fuel silos build 100% faster for (2 years?) or so. This makes it to where you can build 6-9 fuel silos in North Africa very cheap and the fuel will accumulate quickly to max right in time for the war just off the oil you already have developed plus the usual synthetics which you've got for rubber.
"super harvy thanks are"
me how litrally just uses light tanks all the time °__°
I never use fuel silos, building synthetic refineries works better since you get fuel and rubber
Me who used to built Silos, Rocket Sites, Fleets just for Minelaying and created 1 Superheavy Battleships for each fleet.. but I do havent played since some years
The super heavy battleship is an amazing damage sponge and fly swatter. Max out the AA on it, chance of naval targeting is proportional to total HP so the super heavy is > 2x more likely than the other capitals to be targeted by plane attacks. I always like to build at least 1 for the main fleet
I build Fuel silos. I usually do that when I'm playing as a country with little to no domestic fuel production to keep make my fuel stores last longer.
Turns out I'm nobody.
Welcome to the 0.001%
with fuel silo, i honestly might just built 1 or 2 of them and its more than enough for almost everything i needed.
i sometimes build them, but only like 3 of them max, its more than enough for most purposes
1:33 Most of the time, AI mexico's opener is: Construct Fuel Silo, Import 8 oil
Minelaying is amazing, helps with naval supremacy, gets you more favorable engagements due to speed limitations and can send enemy ships straight to the repai dock while they patrol
Honestly the bigger problem with module equipment is that its largely hidden in the tech interface. The research buttons need to be expanded to show what you get for each research button instead of searching through them to find what you are looking for. The research could be greatly improved by making the details more front and center.
Also we need to keep in mind for fuel silos and rocket sites m, while the costs are similar to the one of a mil, in your usual game you'll often end up getting a significant construction boost for mills making them an even better option
Too work mulberry harbors need some in inventory, they will last longer, also, they tend to provide listed supply so you would build an invasion of a lot of tiles and focus on encircling and taking the port
1:14 In my opinion, that is the meta for nations that do not have access to any oil. Just build one fuel silo before war to get the ~30% capacity increase from it, as the diminishing returns on fuel silos is extremely steep.
Especially if you are a minor nation with no oil, you only start with 50k fuel capacity, so one silo would be a 200% increase.
Paradox really needs to buff rocket sites, especially level 1 the range should be way higher
Fuel supply should be moved to the same building type as supply hubs. Then the price can remain. Otherwise nobody is going to use it.
I swear by floating harbors. Thing is, for logistics, they help a lot. Even if I have captured a port, it alone hasn’t got much supply. However, if I fan out with floating harbors, I have much greater supply for a little, allowing me to push for more ports at maximum effectiveness.
If hoi4 was more playable past 8 years ig then I could definitely see the floating harbors being used more.
One very niche edge case for minefields? Is that it slows down the enemy trying to flee, allowing them to be chased and destroyed. So. If the enemy fleet keeps fleeing and you can't pin them down. Then bait them into attacking a small force, then send massive reinforcements, and you can kill a bunch of ships while they're trying to flee.
But that basically only works if you already have naval supremacy and outnumber/overpower the enemy fleet anyway.
So yeah. Most of the time it's not worth it.
I do, even even if just for larp. Laying mines from a plane is not bad btw if you're landlocked.
Superheavy BBs are actually good.
The idea is that you want to take out enemy escorts with surface raiders and when a battle between the enemy and your heavy ships come, you can make super heavy BBs to deal with them.
Actually, super heavy battleships can be used effectively with carriers and rich screens + other, smaller battleships in group. Its just that they need to be protected very, very well.
Super Heavy Battleships I have found to be very effective.
I build them early game, then refit them with advanced fire control and radar.
They dish out a ton of damage and take very little damage themselves.
In many battles, a couple of super heavy battleships will sink more ships than any other class.
The ports are quite useful is you use it as a spam invasion feedback.
I invaded japan and won like half of the land without touching any port.
It gaves you a tactical advantage to surround a port and take it with any problem
Minelaying speed reduction have a huge impact on naval battle, to the point where you can reliably hit destroyers with torpedoes.
Fuel silos you wanna use if you want your offesnsive to go longer, after extensive use of air and navy you gonna need refuel so fuel silos can make combat go longer before refuel-ing