You Won't Believe How Strong Naval Japan is in HOI4!

In this video, we'll explore if it's really possible to make Naval Japan strong in HOI4. Watch to see if you can dominate the seas in Hearts of Iron IV!

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[Nerazmus]

Honestly, ship combat is not that complex. It's just something that can be ignored, so most people don't bother looking at it. So I'll comment my thoughts.

14:00 Honestly, not a bad design. I personally would go string for Secondary II, because the cost is not that much higher and as Japan you will have enough Shipyards. But to each their own. Tho for MIO, you should definitely go with Task Force MIO for your Cruisers, you want to pump that Light attack as high as you can. Visibility is not that important for Capital ships.

21:00 Pro tip: Torpedo ships are garbage. Torpedos do nothing against screens, but they are also unexpectedly ineffective at sinking heavy ships. They just don't deal their damage fast enough in a standard naval engagement as torpedoes fire four times slower than guns. For Subs, that's fine because they have super low visibility.
As for MIO... it depends. For your torpedo destroyer, Raiding Fleet would be the best. Task Force is best for speed destroyers. And Escort for offensive destroyers, be it LA or anti-sub.

31:30 By Neptun's beard... I mean, fair. China doesn't have a navy, so you don't need to bother sorting yours yet. But putting it on Strike doesn't make much sense here. Strike stays in port until you spot a fleet. Should have put it on Invasion Support to get the Bombardment bonus. It's not much, but it would help you take the ports just that bit faster. Which is always good.
34:20 ah, good.



40:30 Tho you could probably sort it before fighting the Royal navy.
Definitely should have sorted it before fighting in Pacific tho.


Some additional pro tips, since you haven't really shown much naval stuff or talk about it :D

*Task Force only moves as fast as the slowest ship in it. So you really don't want subs in your non-sub fleets. Having slow subs makes it really difficult for you to actually catch the enemy.

*As mentioned before, torpedo ships are garbage. To deal with enemy capital ships, either bring your on heavy ships or naval bombers. Or have a sub strike fleet.

*To achieve 100% Screening, you need at lest 3 Screens per non-screen and at least 1 Capital ship per Carrier. It's generally not an issue, but something to keep in mind if you are dedicating Destroyers to other tasks than just main fleet (Mining, sub-hunting, escorting).

*You can only have 4 carriers per taskforce without penalty. Therefore, it's best to just max hagarspace and not bother with guns. Leave shooting to other ships.

*Mining is underrated, if you are able to chain wars.

*Spoting is very important. If you can't see them, you can't kill them. Light cruiser with catapults is the optimal spotter.

*None of this matters because AI sucks.

[vilmaksp]

Awesome! Navy is always a treat, even if it's so confusing lmao.

[sethbowman]

For Japan’s starting bombers, another reason to produce the Ki-3 instead of the Ki-2 is production cost. The Ki-2 production cost is at 32 while the while the Ki-3 is at 18. The reason why is that the Ki-2 uses 2 engines instead of 1 engine. There is no reason to make Ki-2s.

[Daniel-]

You did a great job on this video!
One tip is that you don't have to use so many ships against China. 31:30 China has like 8 ships and you don't have that much oil.😉

[theCharmoftheSeer]

I would recommend naval landings at the base of a peninsula rather then the tip like you did that way it's much harder to get trapped. If you land on all sides around Qingdao you can cut the peninsula and once you capture the peninsula you have 2 ports and some strategic depth which makes it much less likely you will be pushed back into the sea. You can also push out northwest, west and southwest easier.

[figvs]

19:13 Professional officer corps does not give you more army experience only more divsion experience

[xristospoulis]

I mean with japans navz zou dont even need to fight the usa zou can just one stack it and invade them lol

[zach]

Overall, good video, but the historian in me laughs at “You won’t believe how strong [Historic Naval Superpower] is at naval” :D

Like actually funnily enough that’s THE most believable thing for Japan to be good at

[JulianBorgad]

Great Video 😊 when i Play as Japan the chinese Stil Beat my armies complitly in an attack and i dont know What is the Problem 😂but with the Navy you can work

[m.d.]

steel and alu always trade with manchuria...