Imperial Japanese Navy (4 yrs old) looking for a ship to shoot at

[Fallschirm Naeger]

As Japan on HARD level , Iron Man flipped on, I have built 4-5 years on a beautiful navy with carriers, airplanes etc. Used the editor to make cool ships in different variants. Now its 1941 and I conquered the whole pacific, India, New Guinea: there is NO ONE TO USE MY NAVY ON. Literally no one. A few subs and some cornered Dutch Cruisers. Thats it. No English navy, no Americans, nobody. I gained like 10 naval experience the whole way.

I am now going for Hawaii spoiling for a fight but no one is showing up yet. What an anti-climax.

Please don't tell me I should have downloaded Workshop Material to get a decent AI. If I buy a game it should not be required of me to use clandestine material to get a NORMAL experience. What a horrible mess of a game. What a waste of my time.

[OXKART]

there on full retreat gj

[Shortpower]

AI bad sorry.
I sunk the entire British and Italian navies as Ireland and Greece respectively with just a handful of Nav bombers and cheap subs to bring them out.
I've killed millions of allied troops as unmodded Bhutan because they pushed well past their supply lines and left a path to their only port open.
I've conquered France repeatedly as Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal/Spain; frankly as Belgium the Dutch are harder to kill since the AI can't screw up its frontline. France capitulates so easily because of modifiers that you can field 20 divisions of 2 battallion horses you can capitulate them as late as '40.
The same is true of the US though you need more divisions to make sure they don't take VPs back.
The AI in this is unholy levels of terrible and the new supply system will be another thing players can abuse that the AI will either need cheats to fix or be gimped on.

At least the AI let's you have a historically accurate winter war lol.

You can use high level radar on islands to find their navy and actively chase after it though.

[Blaei ⁧⁧V4]

If you look into the intel tab you can see how many ships they have.

Maybe they wasted them all on another war?

Also, use STRIKE FORCE to locate a task force and your navy auto targets.

If you use patrol your navy only might engage with the ships there.

[Mikey]

Originally posted by < blank >:

If you look into the intel tab you can see how many ships they have.

Maybe they wasted them all on another war?

Also, use STRIKE FORCE to locate a task force and your navy auto targets.

If you use patrol your navy only might engage with the ships there.

Strike Force doesn't "locate" any enemies. They just sit around until someone else finds the enemy

@OP, the AI will not risk their ships willy nilly. Try and find out where their fleets are docked and then use patrol fleets to prevent them from sortieing from there with your main force on strike force mission on the same zone just in case.

[Blaei ⁧⁧V4]

Originally posted by Mikey:

Originally posted by < blank >:

If you look into the intel tab you can see how many ships they have.

Maybe they wasted them all on another war?

Also, use STRIKE FORCE to locate a task force and your navy auto targets.

If you use patrol your navy only might engage with the ships there.

Strike Force doesn't "locate" any enemies. They just sit around until someone else finds the enemy

That's what I meant.

Originally posted by Mikey:

@OP, the AI will not risk their ships willy nilly. Try and find out where their fleets are docked and then use patrol fleets to prevent them from sortieing from there with your main force on strike force mission on the same zone just in case.

^

[Vuyek]

try the extreme ai 4.0 mod

I wonder how it does naval war

[mark.r.hendrickson]

The AI usually will not come out and play if your Naval force is too dominant. Better to coax them out with a smaller force and then pounce.

Spies really pay off here because you can find out where they are. A huge part of naval warfare: finding them.

[Fallschirm Naeger]

Supposedly even the Expert AI mod doesn't fix this problem, as they don't focus on unit placement and movement. Finding out is going to take another 36 hrs of my life.

How can this game get a positive review in this state after 5 years?

[Shortpower]

Originally posted by Fallschirm Naeger:

Supposedly even the Expert AI mod doesn't fix this problem, as they don't focus on unit placement and movement. Finding out is going to take another 36 hrs of my life.

How can this game get a positive review in this state after 5 years?

Because the result of the AI being brain dead means you can paint the map how you like as any country and because in theory you're killing powerhouse nations as the underdog you feel like you're good at the game.

[Toaster]

Originally posted by Fallschirm Naeger:

Supposedly even the Expert AI mod doesn't fix this problem, as they don't focus on unit placement and movement. Finding out is going to take another 36 hrs of my life.

How can this game get a positive review in this state after 5 years?

Because little percentage of players cares about the navy. Seriously, no matter what size, tactics, reserarch you do except a meta navy of subs for convoy raiding, it will ALWAYS be countered by naval bombers. Even if you have DDs with just best AA, it doesn't matter. Naval losses except DDs and subs take way too long to replace to have any fun out of them.


If you want a somewhat ok naval AI to fight against, try the R56 mod. Noticed The British navy going all out against kriegsmarine (just for the former to be annhilinated, of course) but you can bait out the enemy navies much easier. I myself use meta of just spamming medium maritime bombers in that mod (japanese navy stops existing in less than a year if I play the US), but hey, that one time I tried making a US Fleet in pacific I had real engaging and tense naval battles, subs raiding convoys supplying landed forces in china just for the entire japanese fleet to show up, hoping for my strike force to get there in time (And one battle where I actually got my ass kicked, so I just went back to mm bombers again)

[t_steinke]

Hmmm, AI is not coming out and give you the desired battle? How stupid.
In my Japan game, US navy left Hawai after I bombed the Port with Longe range bombers and the marines suffered heavy attrition due my convoy raiding. A reasonable AI decision, so I got Hawaii for free.
The whole pacific is conquered, so there are no supply routes to protect.
So, what do you think is now the task of US Navy in that situation?
Same with the British, I’m raiding their Atlantic convoys with subs. The British are sending some light cruisers and destroyers to get rid of my subs. I sink them with two heavy cruisers and six screening ships.
The AI is sending the „Hood“ to get rid of my CAs and I got them with my waiting task force (2 battle cruisers, 6 DDs). The Hood escaped but was sunk later by my subs. Now the British Grand Fleet is hiding in Gibraltar, but won’t came out due my 200 naval bombers operating over the spanish cost. My main fleet is waiting if they try.
That’s the way naval warefare works in the game.

[Fallschirm Naeger]

Originally posted by Toaster:

Originally posted by Fallschirm Naeger:

Supposedly even the Expert AI mod doesn't fix this problem, as they don't focus on unit placement and movement. Finding out is going to take another 36 hrs of my life.

How can this game get a positive review in this state after 5 years?

Because little percentage of players cares about the navy. Seriously, no matter what size, tactics, reserarch you do except a meta navy of subs for convoy raiding, it will ALWAYS be countered by naval bombers. Even if you have DDs with just best AA, it doesn't matter. Naval losses except DDs and subs take way too long to replace to have any fun out of them.


If you want a somewhat ok naval AI to fight against, try the R56 mod. Noticed The British navy going all out against kriegsmarine (just for the former to be annhilinated, of course) but you can bait out the enemy navies much easier. I myself use meta of just spamming medium maritime bombers in that mod (japanese navy stops existing in less than a year if I play the US), but hey, that one time I tried making a US Fleet in pacific I had real engaging and tense naval battles, subs raiding convoys supplying landed forces in china just for the entire japanese fleet to show up, hoping for my strike force to get there in time (And one battle where I actually got my ass kicked, so I just went back to mm bombers again)

If that's the case, you can just as well forgo Japan entirely. Japan without pacific naval battles is like sushi without the raw fish pieces.

[Fallschirm Naeger]

Originally posted by mark.r.hendrickson:

The AI usually will not come out and play if your Naval force is too dominant. Better to coax them out with a smaller force and then pounce.

Spies really pay off here because you can find out where they are. A huge part of naval warfare: finding them.

Even when their important territories are under threat? You can just walk in anywhere in the pacific as Japan, no one stopping you.

[Fallschirm Naeger]

Originally posted by Shortpower:

AI bad sorry.
I sunk the entire British and Italian navies as Ireland and Greece respectively with just a handful of Nav bombers and cheap subs to bring them out.
I've killed millions of allied troops as unmodded Bhutan because they pushed well past their supply lines and left a path to their only port open.
I've conquered France repeatedly as Luxembourg, Belgium, Portugal/Spain; frankly as Belgium the Dutch are harder to kill since the AI can't screw up its frontline. France capitulates so easily because of modifiers that you can field 20 divisions of 2 battallion horses you can capitulate them as late as '40.
The same is true of the US though you need more divisions to make sure they don't take VPs back.
The AI in this is unholy levels of terrible and the new supply system will be another thing players can abuse that the AI will either need cheats to fix or be gimped on.

At least the AI let's you have a historically accurate winter war lol.

You can use high level radar on islands to find their navy and actively chase after it though.

What bothers me most about this , I remember 2012 when there was a game called HOI3 and that AI knew how to put up a proper fight. Why have we gone backwards so hard in 10 yrs time ? HOI3 had many things figured out better than HOI4 (apart from the graphics). Why is this so much to ask in the 2020s ?

[Toaster]

Originally posted by Fallschirm Naeger:

Originally posted by Toaster:

Because little percentage of players cares about the navy. Seriously, no matter what size, tactics, reserarch you do except a meta navy of subs for convoy raiding, it will ALWAYS be countered by naval bombers. Even if you have DDs with just best AA, it doesn't matter. Naval losses except DDs and subs take way too long to replace to have any fun out of them.


If you want a somewhat ok naval AI to fight against, try the R56 mod. Noticed The British navy going all out against kriegsmarine (just for the former to be annhilinated, of course) but you can bait out the enemy navies much easier. I myself use meta of just spamming medium maritime bombers in that mod (japanese navy stops existing in less than a year if I play the US), but hey, that one time I tried making a US Fleet in pacific I had real engaging and tense naval battles, subs raiding convoys supplying landed forces in china just for the entire japanese fleet to show up, hoping for my strike force to get there in time (And one battle where I actually got my ass kicked, so I just went back to mm bombers again)

If that's the case, you can just as well forgo Japan entirely. Japan without pacific naval battles is like sushi without the raw fish pieces.

Why? You can take over China and Attack burma and india, and nobody says you can't do some island hopping campaign. What I'm saying is the ai won't just throw it's navy to a situation where it would be at a clear disadvantage. One can entirely skip the naval aspect of the game with little to no loss in gameplay. After you conquer india you can naval invade madagaskar and move on to africa and so on.