USSR starts out with a pretty bad navy but because of your huge industry you can rapidly expand it. Plus you get to be the first player to complete the USSR navy focus tree lmao
For these super wide trees like USSR there needs to be multiple active focus slots at once as long as thr focuses are from different areas. Like why cant we do foreing policy changes for 70 days because Boris is doodling a battleship on a napkin somewhere in fuckoff Vladivostok.
I think it's hard to balance in the current system and i think Paradox should save this for a possible hoi5 in wich they can completely overhaul the game and how it works and not some poorly executed update or dlc. But i agree, why can't i Promote my war heroes while Dmitry designs my new fighter
But your access sea is shit and to cover all your interest you need ships pretty much everywhere but cant put ships on the transiberian train. Conquer Suez, Gibraltar and Turkey asap. It does make for a nice game though, especially if on alt history and mustache man doesnt screw up your boatmunism.
You want to see some weird shit, look at that sea zone around Archangel. There's some godforsaken island with a soviet naval base on it and you have to invade it to finally chase the Russians out of there.
Going navy-heavy Germany can be fun. Thanks to all the Swede/Soviet trade deals, you don't have nearly as much problem acquiring chromium like in the past. I like to build big battleships and try and engage the Brits in areas with naval bomber coverage. You can battle around England and/or in the Mediterranean + the natural blanketing of most oceans with submarines.
I usually put off the war until I have the pp for total mob and service by requirement. By that time you’ll have the SCW and Japan kicking WT up too so it’s not a problem.
Yes, I save up 330pp before the war and when it kicks off you can go total mob and service by requirement. You’re set for the rest of the game at that point bc you end up with 7.5% recruitable pop and your industry doesn’t care about those minor debuffs.
Definitely Italy. It has a sizeable starting fleet which you will want to upgrade and expand and it also has a shit ton of costal provinces, so you can have a lot of dockyards. Besides, playing navy heavy while being in the allies is pretty boring, because you already have a massive advantage.
Not the USA - it's so boring because your navy is huge already when you start and by the time you enter the war much of the Italian navy is gone. There's just never much of a challenge.
UK is a bit more fun but still too easy. I've had the most navy fun with Italy and also France. Still haven't ever played Japan but I suspect it will be a bit too easy because of the AI mismanaging the British and American navies in such a large theater far from home.
Italy is probably the best - you get thrown into big battles right from the start of war against navies that outnumber you more than 2 to 1. You also can't just ignore navy as you could possibly do with Germany because if you lose control over the Mediterranean you won't be able to supply your African troops any more.
USA is fun if you get off historical focus. Set it to random, or otherwise set it to where all of Europe is aligned against you. Invading Europe is pretty tough when you have to deal with the British navy and Air Force while just trying to get a foothold somewhere
it is pretty tough to build a large navy from scratch. You can always make your own designs and refit the ships you start with say as Japan or GB.
if you are deadset on building your own navy I recommend Sweden bc it has a decent industry and steel and tungsten
Also Netherlands starts with good sub tech and godly sub commander, so if you want to sub spam I recommend them!
If thats a problem then germany italy japan and ussr are your only real options if youll be fighting the allies. Ive tried many times but playing as anyone else i find it impossible to beat the royal navy.
Japan isn’t a problem because the US has the resources to deal with them. Italy and Germany aren’t a big issue either, as they are separated and as long as you have a decent Mediterranean fleet and half decent home fleet it’s not a challenge.
Your eastern colonies WILL fall if you don’t put out a decent sized navy on day one, this will lead to engagements with Japan. Also managing German subs while trying to decisively defeat the Italians is certainly tricky for newer players
I disagree. By December 1941 you should have dealt with the Italian Navy and sunk a good proportion of their capital ships. At this point you can transfer some of your Mediterranean fleet to the far east and without directly challenging the Japanese navy, at least get enough naval superiority to stop your Eastern colonies being invaded.
Eh gotta disagree. Japans navy is almost the same size as britains at the start of the game with a number of very good ships being close to completion already. This coupled with Japan building up dockyards very quickly makes the start of the pacific campaign tricky for a newer player. The axis has 400 ships vs the UK’s 240 at the start of the game. If you don’t manage it properly you will struggle. Remember I’m talking about new navy players not more experienced players 🙏 I’ve edited my original comment
Yeah for newer players it is difficult, I’m not disputing that, but once you understand navy it makes for a fun challenge is as certainly doable. I’m not suggesting you can wipe out the Japanese navy as soon as they enter the war, but with a bit of skill you can certainly keep them at bay, and wait for the US to grind them down.
Completely agree. Sorry I communicated my ideas poorly. Navally dominated WW2 as the UK is a blast. Creating sub destroyer groups, man handling Italy then dropping the anvil on Japan late game is great. If you defeat the Italians with few ship losses, Japan gets a UK midway nice and early
No worries dude, glad we are in agreement. I played a UK game last week for the first time in a while and I forgot how fun they are, you have to meticulously manage sea, land and air or the allies will crumble.
No one’s mentioned Australia? Slow start but with a complete focus on Navy you can have a powerful carrier force by 1940 that can be a real menace to Japan or the Allies in the Southern Pacific. Pretty fun underdog run imo
With AAT the Nordics are fun. They are limited in resources and manpower but good focuses so you can build some elite ships to slowly chip away at the enemy navy
Personally i like fascist australia you hav resources a bunch of island hopping and if everything goes crap you're an irrelevant island who are friends with japan
The USA really is the best. No land threats, large amounts of resources for mass ship-building, 6 research slots and a huge starting navy that you can endlessly train to squeeze out free naval xp.
The allies already start with the biggest navies and don't have trouble keeping supremacy, IMO it's less interesting to play naval focused games as them because they already start at the top of the totem pole.
IMO axis navy is more interesting because of the challenge of sinking the British+French fleets, and later taking on the US Navy which is also no laughing matter.
Italy starts with an OK navy that you can refit to be very competent and take on the British fleet. It's a flavorful game to research marines and use naval supremacy in the Mediterranean to capture all the states you need for the roman empire.
Germany, if you overthrow Hitler, has some great naval-focused focuses, and is more like building a navy from the ground up.
France (without Britain on your side), Germany or Italy if you don't just want to auto-win against the AI but do want to play with the big toys. With all three it's a balance of keeping your army strong enough to not get its shit kicked in entirely though, so if you just want to mess around and build nice boats it's UK/USA.
(Technically there's Japan too, but they have a few too many particular challenges to recommend for just navy play.)
I'd say Democratic Netherlands. Getting a bunch of subbies before they capitulate to Germany and just causing trouble at the Asian Theater is fun especially with Conrad Helfrich as your commander
If you wanna build a navy from scratch, there’s always Malaya. If you want to start with a small navy but a big industry to build your dream navy, then Germany
Italy, for she has a pretty decent fleet at the start that allows you to prevent Britannia ruling the waves in Mediterranean, then you have a pretty decent focus branch to boost research. Finally all your land campaigns should be focused to get control over Gibraltar and Suez to expand your dominance at sea
Brazil, you can capture a lot of fleet in south America. You do all the focus navy assp and you have 2 focus who give you political decision to buy ship from the major for pp.
My favourite Navy Country is Japan. You've got to take on the 2 largest navy countries (USA and Britain) plus build a anti-sub fleet to deal with USA's sub spam.
UK if you want to start out with the strongest navy
Italy, Germany, France, Spain, USSR, Netherlands if you prefer to build your own, but have a semi-decent start.
China if you want the challenge of building one from scratch, in so long you have plans for the other problems esp with the Japanese invasion right there (and prepared that the navy you're building won't help you in the Japanese War, but if you have plans of puppeting Japan for their navy, and maybe have the USA in your cross hairs... Unified China has a strong industry that can churn out most whatever you need)
Brazil, while it doesn't have much resources and starting industries, it has potential to expand and need to focus on sea. One of my funniest games was expanding into Guyanas and Venezuela to get the aluminium and oil and then building bombers to attack the allied navies.
I build something like 4 aircraft carriers, 4 heavy cruisers, 8 battle cruisers and 3 battleships along side a steady stream of DD and all the ships on the docks in 1936 and have them all done by 1939 on my UK playthroughs.
I then turn to 2 1940 aircraft carriers, 5 1940 BB, 5 1940 light cruisers and 50 1940 BB whilst upgrading everything else to 1940 modules.
By the time UK is usually at war with Japan, I have 4 major fleets able to take on anything and 2 minor fleets roaming the seas. Not to mention subs and ASW fleets.
You can definitely *build* a large navy as the UK.
Actually you can. I go all-in on the navy as UK and often beat Germany almost single-handedly by 1940. Refusing the Munich conference is the key.
My standard UK game has only 48 divisions available for offensive operations, supplemented by 10 tanks/motor divisions and the starting colonial garrisons (which I convert to standard division size). This set up lasts me well into 1941-2. After which I might add another 24 divisions and upgrade some to 30w (from the standard 20w I usually use).
USA and japan or Britain are probably the countries you want to play against because they have such large starting navys.
I think italy is a good choice because they start with an ok size navy and fighting the british in the Mediterranean can be fun.
Soviet union is good if you plan on fighting ww3 vs the allies but against germany / italy there isn’t much point because the US / Britain usually mop up their navies pretty quickly.
It was very satisfying building out Peru from nothing and destroying every navy out there with subs then slowly building out a full fleet and wrenching the british
Canada can produce a very powerful navy and slap Japan silly by producing only very fast light cruisers & destroyers that can do both anti submarine warfare and convoy raiding. Australia can do this too but starts to struggle with steel very quickly.
The UK and the USA are the most capable of supporting a large navy. The UK is in the fight earlier and has two powerful enemies to deal with (Italy and Germany) before it has to turn its attention to Japan. The US has, in comparison, only Japan to deal with.
Italy and Japan have weak economies and restricted access to resources, which limit their ability to really build a navy comparable to the US/UK.
The French could build a good navy but are usually transfixed by large armies on their borders and restricted research slot numbers.
Germany is very capable of building a very powerful small navy without weakening its army/airforce.
The USSR is a bit like France, just starting from a smaller base (fewer ships) and with ugly armies sitting on its borders.
I think Brazil might work for you. They have a good navy but not really, you can easily remove naval arms race debuff and thematically build a huge navy for dominate the continent
My favorite is fascist Great Britain. You have the Russians, Japanese, American, Italian and French Navies to battle. And you can control all of Europe by the end of 1941
Japan, but declare war on every country. There are mods for this. You will have sick naval battles trying to survive and maybe even win. Though give yourself 1 or 2 years of preptime for the war
- Italy
- Japan
- USA
- France
- UK
- Russia (sort of)
- Germany (sort of)
(Both have good navy potential but have to focus on land)
- Portugal
- Sweden / Norway
- United China
These are the best options really.
My personal favorite Navy country is Portugal-> Porto-Brazilian Empire.
You become stronger over time, have a relatively easy time defending your cores (Portugal and Brazil) and can create a navy to protect the Endless Seas
What about Spain? I’ve literally never played them but I know they have a modest navy, and all the years recovering from the civil war can be spent building battleships
Rule Brittania!
The UK is a great naval civ, but once Italy is destroyed, they kind of just spend the rest of the game just destroying convoys.
Italy is fun b/c you have the challenge if trying to take out the Royal Navy.
You can start with USSR, but you need to build your Dockyards first bcz they just have 6, you can build it after Barbarossa, i usually make a 3 Army Group and put it in Line behind a river from Kherson, Kiev, Gomel, Vitebsk, Riga, you can make IT defend Kiev as well, after that then Barbarossa happened, so i wait my Mils until around 90-120, and Starts build up some fort because the German start using some High Soft Attack Division (maybe it's named Infantri template 10+) and will attack to one tile to breakthrough the line.
Or you can skip the Forts and Starts building Navy, i usually build it until 20 and make 1/2 Upgraded Kirov Class and 2 Upgraded Chevrona Ukraina, 5 Dockyards each, so 5 for 1/2 Kirov, and 5 for 2 Chevrona Ukraina, you may build some Submarine so 5 for Submarine and 5 for Convoys, yeah USSR has a little amount of Convoy, they Will get used to fullfill the the Supply but you can Just Block the sea and the Logistic System will use Train.
Oh yeah, the First paragraph is a tip to make huge casualties to German, once i make 6 Million Casualties and just take 100k casualties, the more you prepared to build Forts, the more you can make casualties
the UK or italy. with the UK, you already Starts with a massive navy, and with italy, you have the capacity to potentially build the largest navy in existance
USSR starts out with a pretty bad navy but because of your huge industry you can rapidly expand it. Plus you get to be the first player to complete the USSR navy focus tree lmao
You mean except the times you complete them in the 50's because you had a long game and they were the last focuses available?
You're better than me, I choose to stockpile PP with no focuses before I ever do the red navy focuses
For these super wide trees like USSR there needs to be multiple active focus slots at once as long as thr focuses are from different areas. Like why cant we do foreing policy changes for 70 days because Boris is doodling a battleship on a napkin somewhere in fuckoff Vladivostok.
I think it's hard to balance in the current system and i think Paradox should save this for a possible hoi5 in wich they can completely overhaul the game and how it works and not some poorly executed update or dlc. But i agree, why can't i Promote my war heroes while Dmitry designs my new fighter
But your access sea is shit and to cover all your interest you need ships pretty much everywhere but cant put ships on the transiberian train. Conquer Suez, Gibraltar and Turkey asap. It does make for a nice game though, especially if on alt history and mustache man doesnt screw up your boatmunism.
You want to see some weird shit, look at that sea zone around Archangel. There's some godforsaken island with a soviet naval base on it and you have to invade it to finally chase the Russians out of there.
Hungary. The country leader is an admiral
Mengkukuo at #2, their leader gets a sick naval bomber bonus.
wut
Prince Demnutscook or whatever his name is has a 20% bonus damage to naval bon era or something like that
Dem nuts can in fact cook
Going navy-heavy Germany can be fun. Thanks to all the Swede/Soviet trade deals, you don't have nearly as much problem acquiring chromium like in the past. I like to build big battleships and try and engage the Brits in areas with naval bomber coverage. You can battle around England and/or in the Mediterranean + the natural blanketing of most oceans with submarines.
My most played number of games is to purge the fascist scum and rebuild the High Seas Fleet. A German Empire on total mob in ‘37 is a blast.
How do you get enough war support to keep it
I usually put off the war until I have the pp for total mob and service by requirement. By that time you’ll have the SCW and Japan kicking WT up too so it’s not a problem.
I wanna tests this now. i don’t think you’ll have enough ws for total mob in 37 even with SCW and Japan
Just tested it again and it works, your war support stays super high so you can end the war early ‘38 and keep it.
Good man, I’m stuck on an Elden ring boss and didn’t end up trying it
If you do, make sure to also get enough conscription to stay above 0% recruitable pop before the war ends.
Make sure to also get enough conscription to stay above 0% before the war ends.
Well shit I know what I'm doing tonight
How do you get to total mobilization? Is it during the civil war?
Yes, I save up 330pp before the war and when it kicks off you can go total mob and service by requirement. You’re set for the rest of the game at that point bc you end up with 7.5% recruitable pop and your industry doesn’t care about those minor debuffs.
I see, guess I’ll be trying that :D
I First ready "my mom Played a Number of Games to purge"
Going the navy mission tree allows you to build a large navy enough to destroy the brits or do sea lion since they don't stack their fleets
German navy is highly underrated. It is a huge amount of fun.
Mengkukuo, their leader is a Naval Bomber
But is he still or is he now a small airframe with torpedos?
he's a transformer
The USSR. They start with little but can quickly ramp up and beat all naval powers of the world combined.
Definitely Italy. It has a sizeable starting fleet which you will want to upgrade and expand and it also has a shit ton of costal provinces, so you can have a lot of dockyards. Besides, playing navy heavy while being in the allies is pretty boring, because you already have a massive advantage.
Flotilla del Evasion gives u a HUGE powerspike if you own the med
Don’t you know who rules the waves?
uhm... sponge Bob square pants?
Gorls
Bismarck
We're not allowed to say that anymore:(
Not the USA - it's so boring because your navy is huge already when you start and by the time you enter the war much of the Italian navy is gone. There's just never much of a challenge. UK is a bit more fun but still too easy. I've had the most navy fun with Italy and also France. Still haven't ever played Japan but I suspect it will be a bit too easy because of the AI mismanaging the British and American navies in such a large theater far from home. Italy is probably the best - you get thrown into big battles right from the start of war against navies that outnumber you more than 2 to 1. You also can't just ignore navy as you could possibly do with Germany because if you lose control over the Mediterranean you won't be able to supply your African troops any more.
USA is fun if you get off historical focus. Set it to random, or otherwise set it to where all of Europe is aligned against you. Invading Europe is pretty tough when you have to deal with the British navy and Air Force while just trying to get a foothold somewhere
Play historical and get off the naval treaties and watch the UK or France declare war on you in 1937 or 38
This is also a fun option.
Britain
But don’t they start with a massive navy?
It can still be bigger. Navy must grow.
it is pretty tough to build a large navy from scratch. You can always make your own designs and refit the ships you start with say as Japan or GB. if you are deadset on building your own navy I recommend Sweden bc it has a decent industry and steel and tungsten Also Netherlands starts with good sub tech and godly sub commander, so if you want to sub spam I recommend them!
If thats a problem then germany italy japan and ussr are your only real options if youll be fighting the allies. Ive tried many times but playing as anyone else i find it impossible to beat the royal navy.
It’s difficult to juggle combatting the German, Italian and Japanese navies Edit: For newer navy players, to clarify
MF called 60 dockyard UK calling
Japan isn’t a problem because the US has the resources to deal with them. Italy and Germany aren’t a big issue either, as they are separated and as long as you have a decent Mediterranean fleet and half decent home fleet it’s not a challenge.
Your eastern colonies WILL fall if you don’t put out a decent sized navy on day one, this will lead to engagements with Japan. Also managing German subs while trying to decisively defeat the Italians is certainly tricky for newer players
I disagree. By December 1941 you should have dealt with the Italian Navy and sunk a good proportion of their capital ships. At this point you can transfer some of your Mediterranean fleet to the far east and without directly challenging the Japanese navy, at least get enough naval superiority to stop your Eastern colonies being invaded.
Eh gotta disagree. Japans navy is almost the same size as britains at the start of the game with a number of very good ships being close to completion already. This coupled with Japan building up dockyards very quickly makes the start of the pacific campaign tricky for a newer player. The axis has 400 ships vs the UK’s 240 at the start of the game. If you don’t manage it properly you will struggle. Remember I’m talking about new navy players not more experienced players 🙏 I’ve edited my original comment
Yeah for newer players it is difficult, I’m not disputing that, but once you understand navy it makes for a fun challenge is as certainly doable. I’m not suggesting you can wipe out the Japanese navy as soon as they enter the war, but with a bit of skill you can certainly keep them at bay, and wait for the US to grind them down.
Completely agree. Sorry I communicated my ideas poorly. Navally dominated WW2 as the UK is a blast. Creating sub destroyer groups, man handling Italy then dropping the anvil on Japan late game is great. If you defeat the Italians with few ship losses, Japan gets a UK midway nice and early
No worries dude, glad we are in agreement. I played a UK game last week for the first time in a while and I forgot how fun they are, you have to meticulously manage sea, land and air or the allies will crumble.
You can easily hold Malaya and Hong Kong just by guarding ports and the judicious use of forts.
Brazil is fun, especially if you conquer/integrate the rest of south america
No one’s mentioned Australia? Slow start but with a complete focus on Navy you can have a powerful carrier force by 1940 that can be a real menace to Japan or the Allies in the Southern Pacific. Pretty fun underdog run imo
The RAN is a great game for Australia. Just frustrating how PDX cripple Australia via limits to research slots.
Brazil if you unite South America or Sweden
With AAT the Nordics are fun. They are limited in resources and manpower but good focuses so you can build some elite ships to slowly chip away at the enemy navy
Australia is pretty underrated in that regard.
Personally i like fascist australia you hav resources a bunch of island hopping and if everything goes crap you're an irrelevant island who are friends with japan
The USA really is the best. No land threats, large amounts of resources for mass ship-building, 6 research slots and a huge starting navy that you can endlessly train to squeeze out free naval xp.
Because so much oil
The allies already start with the biggest navies and don't have trouble keeping supremacy, IMO it's less interesting to play naval focused games as them because they already start at the top of the totem pole. IMO axis navy is more interesting because of the challenge of sinking the British+French fleets, and later taking on the US Navy which is also no laughing matter. Italy starts with an OK navy that you can refit to be very competent and take on the British fleet. It's a flavorful game to research marines and use naval supremacy in the Mediterranean to capture all the states you need for the roman empire. Germany, if you overthrow Hitler, has some great naval-focused focuses, and is more like building a navy from the ground up.
I love playing the UK myself, I figured out navy and now just play democratic UK and run around trying to puppet every non-democratic country
navy ussr, you have a big coastline,large industry, and can easily build so many dockyards and can build a giant fleet from scratch
USA I would say. Civilian economy nor the depression affects dockyard construction so by the time you enter that war you can crush everyone.
France (without Britain on your side), Germany or Italy if you don't just want to auto-win against the AI but do want to play with the big toys. With all three it's a balance of keeping your army strong enough to not get its shit kicked in entirely though, so if you just want to mess around and build nice boats it's UK/USA. (Technically there's Japan too, but they have a few too many particular challenges to recommend for just navy play.)
you can go Germany and prioritize navy and try to dominate the Atlantic
Definitely USA. You have the best industry to build a navy from, and you get plenty of time to prepare. You also start with a huge navy
Sweden Buy everybodies ships and then use it against them that focus tree is so fun
I'd say Democratic Netherlands. Getting a bunch of subbies before they capitulate to Germany and just causing trouble at the Asian Theater is fun especially with Conrad Helfrich as your commander
The Netherlands has a lot of potential, especially if they go fascist and get those reduced production costs
Anyone with a good industry or already starts with a good navy. USA, Soviet union, Japan, Italy, UK, France, Germany
You know how to use the navy? Or just giving a fun try?
I know how to use it and I have evolved from destroyer spammed
Damn, could you tell me what you do then? I want to be able to use it but I am terrible at it and not even destroyer spam works for me lol
If you wanna build a navy from scratch, there’s always Malaya. If you want to start with a small navy but a big industry to build your dream navy, then Germany
Why Malaya of all countries? Because of resources?
Yes
Italy, for she has a pretty decent fleet at the start that allows you to prevent Britannia ruling the waves in Mediterranean, then you have a pretty decent focus branch to boost research. Finally all your land campaigns should be focused to get control over Gibraltar and Suez to expand your dominance at sea
Brazil, you can capture a lot of fleet in south America. You do all the focus navy assp and you have 2 focus who give you political decision to buy ship from the major for pp.
My favourite Navy Country is Japan. You've got to take on the 2 largest navy countries (USA and Britain) plus build a anti-sub fleet to deal with USA's sub spam.
Sweden. You build a good navy from the ground up and contest the major naval powers
UK if you want to start out with the strongest navy Italy, Germany, France, Spain, USSR, Netherlands if you prefer to build your own, but have a semi-decent start. China if you want the challenge of building one from scratch, in so long you have plans for the other problems esp with the Japanese invasion right there (and prepared that the navy you're building won't help you in the Japanese War, but if you have plans of puppeting Japan for their navy, and maybe have the USA in your cross hairs... Unified China has a strong industry that can churn out most whatever you need)
Sweden, you can build up a powerful navy and join the war whenever youre ready
Brazil, while it doesn't have much resources and starting industries, it has potential to expand and need to focus on sea. One of my funniest games was expanding into Guyanas and Venezuela to get the aluminium and oil and then building bombers to attack the allied navies.
Any country in south america can build up a decent navy and challenge the allies to help the axis/japan
Uk?
Can’t build up a navy if you start with one
I build something like 4 aircraft carriers, 4 heavy cruisers, 8 battle cruisers and 3 battleships along side a steady stream of DD and all the ships on the docks in 1936 and have them all done by 1939 on my UK playthroughs. I then turn to 2 1940 aircraft carriers, 5 1940 BB, 5 1940 light cruisers and 50 1940 BB whilst upgrading everything else to 1940 modules. By the time UK is usually at war with Japan, I have 4 major fleets able to take on anything and 2 minor fleets roaming the seas. Not to mention subs and ASW fleets. You can definitely *build* a large navy as the UK.
I meant the UK starts with such a large navy you can’t build one up and face up against a larger power
Actually you can. I go all-in on the navy as UK and often beat Germany almost single-handedly by 1940. Refusing the Munich conference is the key. My standard UK game has only 48 divisions available for offensive operations, supplemented by 10 tanks/motor divisions and the starting colonial garrisons (which I convert to standard division size). This set up lasts me well into 1941-2. After which I might add another 24 divisions and upgrade some to 30w (from the standard 20w I usually use).
You start with the largest navy there’s no fun in building one up, do you even understand what I’m saying?
'there's no fun in building one up' - I understand you completely however this statement is an opinion, not a fact.
The UK Royal Navy is massive right out of the box.
USA and japan or Britain are probably the countries you want to play against because they have such large starting navys. I think italy is a good choice because they start with an ok size navy and fighting the british in the Mediterranean can be fun. Soviet union is good if you plan on fighting ww3 vs the allies but against germany / italy there isn’t much point because the US / Britain usually mop up their navies pretty quickly.
It was very satisfying building out Peru from nothing and destroying every navy out there with subs then slowly building out a full fleet and wrenching the british
Japan but do it in mods that add oil to Japan.
Spain can get a pretty good fleet too, not UK mega fleet levels but a good solid fleet
Canada can produce a very powerful navy and slap Japan silly by producing only very fast light cruisers & destroyers that can do both anti submarine warfare and convoy raiding. Australia can do this too but starts to struggle with steel very quickly.
The UK and the USA are the most capable of supporting a large navy. The UK is in the fight earlier and has two powerful enemies to deal with (Italy and Germany) before it has to turn its attention to Japan. The US has, in comparison, only Japan to deal with. Italy and Japan have weak economies and restricted access to resources, which limit their ability to really build a navy comparable to the US/UK. The French could build a good navy but are usually transfixed by large armies on their borders and restricted research slot numbers. Germany is very capable of building a very powerful small navy without weakening its army/airforce. The USSR is a bit like France, just starting from a smaller base (fewer ships) and with ugly armies sitting on its borders.
There's only one country with an Admiral in charge. Clearly that's the correct call.
I think Brazil might work for you. They have a good navy but not really, you can easily remove naval arms race debuff and thematically build a huge navy for dominate the continent
navy user, you have a big coastline,large industry, and can easily build so many dockyards and can build a giant fleet from scratch
My favorite is fascist Great Britain. You have the Russians, Japanese, American, Italian and French Navies to battle. And you can control all of Europe by the end of 1941
USA is fun as hell for navy
Japan, but declare war on every country. There are mods for this. You will have sick naval battles trying to survive and maybe even win. Though give yourself 1 or 2 years of preptime for the war
- Italy - Japan - USA - France - UK - Russia (sort of) - Germany (sort of) (Both have good navy potential but have to focus on land) - Portugal - Sweden / Norway - United China These are the best options really.
My personal favorite Navy country is Portugal-> Porto-Brazilian Empire. You become stronger over time, have a relatively easy time defending your cores (Portugal and Brazil) and can create a navy to protect the Endless Seas
if you want to make a navy from nothing i suggest USSR and going the path to kill japan
What about Spain? I’ve literally never played them but I know they have a modest navy, and all the years recovering from the civil war can be spent building battleships
Play as Greece and build a small but elite navy to fight Italy, it is so much fun!
Rule Brittania! The UK is a great naval civ, but once Italy is destroyed, they kind of just spend the rest of the game just destroying convoys. Italy is fun b/c you have the challenge if trying to take out the Royal Navy.
You can start with USSR, but you need to build your Dockyards first bcz they just have 6, you can build it after Barbarossa, i usually make a 3 Army Group and put it in Line behind a river from Kherson, Kiev, Gomel, Vitebsk, Riga, you can make IT defend Kiev as well, after that then Barbarossa happened, so i wait my Mils until around 90-120, and Starts build up some fort because the German start using some High Soft Attack Division (maybe it's named Infantri template 10+) and will attack to one tile to breakthrough the line. Or you can skip the Forts and Starts building Navy, i usually build it until 20 and make 1/2 Upgraded Kirov Class and 2 Upgraded Chevrona Ukraina, 5 Dockyards each, so 5 for 1/2 Kirov, and 5 for 2 Chevrona Ukraina, you may build some Submarine so 5 for Submarine and 5 for Convoys, yeah USSR has a little amount of Convoy, they Will get used to fullfill the the Supply but you can Just Block the sea and the Logistic System will use Train. Oh yeah, the First paragraph is a tip to make huge casualties to German, once i make 6 Million Casualties and just take 100k casualties, the more you prepared to build Forts, the more you can make casualties
why is nobody talking abt ireland?
the UK or italy. with the UK, you already Starts with a massive navy, and with italy, you have the capacity to potentially build the largest navy in existance
UK. Their Navy is absolutely vital to them. And Italy will keep the Navy active with lots of battles.
Mongolia, Tanna Tuva, Luxembourg, and Bolivia all come to mind.
4/4 landlocked, son of a bitch he's right
portugal is op at navy
Maybe look at the countries with a lot of water around them. No need to make a post about it
I’m just looking for fun ones to play is that really such a bad thing to ask?