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[Urist McScoopbeard]

Loving the game so far.

Even after reading the (original?) manual, I do have some questions. How do you keep abreast the times in tonnage? I absolutely dominated Italy as Austria-Hungary in my first war, but by the time the second (major) war rolled around in the 20s my battleships were half the size of France's, my battlecruisers speedy as hell but getting sunk left and right, and all my other ships basically useless--during the decisive engagement of the war I was hitting their BBs and BCs somewhere in the vicinity of 4-1 to 10-1 as many times as they were hitting mine but they just bodied the shots.

Speaking of which, how important is overall tonnage, and is there a button to design rebuilds? I cant seem to find one?

Finally, any design tips I should know? Like a good speed to keep the ships, etc.

EDIT: I do not envy rebuilding what is essentially a 100% obsolete navy in 1927 My battlefleet is gone and the bulk of my lighter ships are approaching 20 years old or worse.

Also what are the different roles of cruisers and destroyers? I am having a bit of a design theory crisis.

[EuchreJack]

1) Austria-Hungary is hard mode, its the hardest nation in the game (except maybe England).
2) You can have other countries build your ships, preferably allies, in order to build larger than your dock.  Also, don't forget to expand your dock, especially as AH.
3) Don't fight battles you can't win.  All those absolutely antiquated ships can still put up a good blockade, if you have the numbers of ships on your side.
4) You're using the intelligence system, right?  Your spies should have told you about the French ships well in advance of your war.
5) Design rebuilds by right clicking your ships, and selecting design rebuild.
6) With the enemy having BCs, cruisers are best used as raiders, which means cheap cheap cheap and long range.  Otherwise, they fight fast ships of the enemy, but in your case, they'll just get ganked by the BCs.  If you want to try running around the BCs and destroying merchant ships, go for speed and lots of smaller caliber guns.
7) I typically use my destroyers as Trade Protection ships, although they typically support your other ships, either as a support division that follows you around, or as Coastal Defense forces.  Torpedo boats mainly, so max speed and torpedoes, maybe put on a gun or two to fight merchant ships.  Maybe equip with mines so enemy ships more likely to hit a mine (its abstracted out based on the ships you have with minelaying capability).
8 ) If you have any aircraft that can drop bombs, build up your airports.  France doesn't have much territory in the Mediterranean, and you do, so your airplanes can start to wreck havoc on the French Fleet.
9) Don't despair about your fleet: in the late 20s, everybody has to transition over from battleships to aircraft carriers anyways.  You just don't have those soon-to-be obsolete battleships to maintain, so congrats.  Pick the largest tug you still have left and turn in into your first aircraft carrier.

Good luck, France isn't that hard, although they're not as wimpy as Italy, and you have to move your fleet to blockade their coastline.

[Karlito]

Loving the game so far.

Even after reading the (original?) manual, I do have some questions. How do you keep abreast the times in tonnage? I absolutely dominated Italy as Austria-Hungary in my first war, but by the time the second (major) war rolled around in the 20s my battleships were half the size of France's, my battlecruisers speedy as hell but getting sunk left and right, and all my other ships basically useless--during the decisive engagement of the war I was hitting their BBs and BCs somewhere in the vicinity of 4-1 to 10-1 as many times as they were hitting mine but they just bodied the shots.

Speaking of which, how important is overall tonnage, and is there a button to design rebuilds? I cant seem to find one?

Finally, any design tips I should know? Like a good speed to keep the ships, etc.

EDIT: I do not envy rebuilding what is essentially a 100% obsolete navy in 1927 My battlefleet is gone and the bulk of my lighter ships are approaching 20 years old or worse.

Also what are the different roles of cruisers and destroyers? I am having a bit of a design theory crisis.

Do you know about the almanac? You can see every ship in the world that's been built and get some basic data on their designs. Check it often.

[Dostoevsky]

And if, by chance, you're playing with variable technologies enabled, always be a bit cautious.

Doing my first run of RtW2, and wondering what all the hubbub about aircraft is -- in the early 40s at this point focusing on aircraft technologies, but me (and the rest of the world) are still relying on battlecruisers and battleships, since aircraft generally seem to be 'not that great'.

As to ship roles, light cruisers and cruisers often end up being a budget option to the bigger battlecruisers and battleships. Light cruisers ideally will be a bit faster than battlecruisers, though, so they can raid/harass while still being able to run away. Since engagements won't always be big pitched battles, having a robust enough fleet to handle the smaller actions is helpful - in this game I kind of neglected light cruisers, and ended up in a war where every smaller action had me with just a 20-year-old light cruiser instead of my shiny battlecruisers.

Destroyers are good as trade escorts, but also make good screens against other lighter vessels. At night or rough weather they can easily get close enough to launch torpedoes, allowing them to punch far beyond their weight. (Which also means, if visibility is terrible it may not be safe to make the battlecruiser your vanguard.)

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Thanks for being so helpful peeps.

I have some more questions, after my first Austria-Hungary run (not finished, I just kinda wanted to restart) I am playing AH again and am wondering about fleet composition and rebuilds.

Questions:

1.) Is rebuilding ever worth it? In a test game I rebuilt my initial pre-dreadnought battleships into CAs, but their maintenance shot up and while theyre big guns were good at going toe to toe with the Italians they were otherwise fairly poor and often got outmaneuvered or stranded in larger operations. Likewise it seems infinitely cheaper to just build new ships.

2.) Even after looking at other designs, and building from existing designs, I am still having some trouble with ship design. Mostly BBs and BCs, how important is speed vs armor vs guns? I seem to have fairly speedy and durable designs, but I am almost always outlasted by the Italians (in my test game) and end up losing one or two of my core ships to engine hits without effectively damaging the Italian ships.

3.) in battle, how much of the operation do you leave to the AI and how much do you handle yourself? I've been increasingly frustrated as of late when my ships attack piecemeal or simply refuse to give battle with an equal or superior force.

Also would anyone be interested in a lets play or forum game of Austria Hungary???

[Vivalas]

I'm very curious at what would happened if I played AH but made my whole legacy fleet fast torpedo destroyers and did nothing but build more of them. If you just stick to night attacks and then swarm them from all sides, it seems like it could be very effective-- granted this tactic is why DDs and screening escorts were developed in the first place, at a large scale I don't think most AI fleets could counter it.

[Vivalas]

Thanks for being so helpful peeps.

I have some more questions, after my first Austria-Hungary run (not finished, I just kinda wanted to restart) I am playing AH again and am wondering about fleet composition and rebuilds.

Questions:

1.) Is rebuilding ever worth it? In a test game I rebuilt my initial pre-dreadnought battleships into CAs, but their maintenance shot up and while theyre big guns were good at going toe to toe with the Italians they were otherwise fairly poor and often got outmaneuvered or stranded in larger operations. Likewise it seems infinitely cheaper to just build new ships.

2.) Even after looking at other designs, and building from existing designs, I am still having some trouble with ship design. Mostly BBs and BCs, how important is speed vs armor vs guns? I seem to have fairly speedy and durable designs, but I am almost always outlasted by the Italians (in my test game) and end up losing one or two of my core ships to engine hits without effectively damaging the Italian ships.

3.) in battle, how much of the operation do you leave to the AI and how much do you handle yourself? I've been increasingly frustrated as of late when my ships attack piecemeal or simply refuse to give battle with an equal or superior force.

Also would anyone be interested in a lets play or forum game of Austria Hungary???

1. Rebuilding seems to be generally only worth it for larger guns and better fire controls. Refitting engines on a battleship from coal to oil costs almost as much as building a new cruiser or a handful of destroyers.

2. Generally the strategy for armor is to have at least enough armor to beat your own guns at 5k yards, and to go up from there for extra durability. Armor vs speed is always an interesting question, since greater armor will help your older ships remain non-obsolete, while speed is generally very important over all.

3. I typically control the main BB line and use the AI formations around it, and perhaps the satellite cruiser formations as well. One of my favorite things about RtW2 actually is how useful the AI is in battle. I can actually focus on tactics than just micromanagement. Generally I just switch formations on and off AI as the situation changes. Unknown contacts NE of the battleline? Break off a line of cruisers to investigate. The hierarchical AI is really cool, since whatever destroyer escorts the cruisers have will automatically go with them and maintain a screen with minimal input from you. The coastal patrol AI is cool too. Its always neat sailing towards a reported skirmish along the coast and seeing all of the destroyers swarming in to make one poor enemy cruiser very aware of its mistake.

[ndkid]

Thanks for being so helpful peeps.
1.) Is rebuilding ever worth it? In a test game I rebuilt my initial pre-dreadnought battleships into CAs, but their maintenance shot up and while theyre big guns were good at going toe to toe with the Italians they were otherwise fairly poor and often got outmaneuvered or stranded in larger operations. Likewise it seems infinitely cheaper to just build new ships.

I think the main value to rebuilding is that it gets you a ship sooner. If you're in the middle of a war, or think one is looming, and you don't think that old BB can cut it as a BB, getting a new raider out of it in 12 months might be what you want. The second case where I rebuild is when converted CVLs become available, because, especially if you want carriers as early as possible, there's a point where you need a carrier to put your ship air ops research at high priority. (This can be valuable for scouting, too, but not as much for offense, since you'll pretty much never have torp bombers at the point you can start doing CVL conversions.)

2.) Even after looking at other designs, and building from existing designs, I am still having some trouble with ship design. Mostly BBs and BCs, how important is speed vs armor vs guns? I seem to have fairly speedy and durable designs, but I am almost always outlasted by the Italians (in my test game) and end up losing one or two of my core ships to engine hits without effectively damaging the Italian ships.

I am by no means a tactical expert in RtW, but what I have found is that the AI is not amazing at maintaining range advantage when it has a slight speed advantage, so if you can at least stay close to your opponent's speed, you'll be okay, but being faster is better. I'm finding armor a little harder to calibrate than it used to be, because while it still reports gun effectiveness in terms of inches of penetration, the new system makes armor more effective rather than lighter, making it (From what I can tell) much harder to determine whether you have enough armor for the task. Basically, I try to get to a 12" belt on my BBs as soon as possible, and work from there.

3.) in battle, how much of the operation do you leave to the AI and how much do you handle yourself? I've been increasingly frustrated as of late when my ships attack piecemeal or simply refuse to give battle with an equal or superior force.

Part of me wishes RtW took either a step in the micro direction, and had you always telling every division what to do, or a step back, and didn't even give you the choice of micromanaging the flagship division. Overall, I focus on my lead division, and accept that, excepting carriers, my other ships are going to be useless.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

I am once again, 20 years into another AH run. This time I won a lengthy 1st war with Italy and took the torch to France's mediterranean possessions with modern 20-40k battleships (probably a bit ahead of their time in 1910-17).

I have mostly left the battling to the AI unless I see an obvious advantage to exploit, sometimes its too tempting to run two CAs past a damaged CL and DD to blow up 15 merchant vessels.

Likewise, I have avoided rebuilding ships. However, I am facing the problem of what to do with older designs. It was an easy decision to scrap Austria's disastrous legacy Bs, but in a campaign where I have to make some decisions its difficult for me to get rid of ancient CAs and CLs. Not sure what to do with them? DDs are both easy to replace and if its not financially feasible fine to keep around for trade protection, so no problem there.

Just made my first purpose CVLs so no conversions necessary.

ALSO, everyone has corvettes but im not sure what theyre used for? Minesweeping?

[EuchreJack]

If it helps any, a Corvette can be thought of as a larger destroyer without torpedoes.  Mine sweeping, mine laying, scouting, coastal defense, trade escort, colony postings, these can all be done by the Corvette.

But, since you're playing as AH, a destroyer is usually better, since torpedoes can sink battleships, but light guns usually can't.  It may be worthwhile to design Corvettes, as even if you never build them, they still appear as coastal defense ships.

[Dostoevsky]

Yeah. Corvettes really aren't suitable for fighting in actual battles in every respect, but are (comparatively) dirt cheap to make and can fulfill trade protection requirements of X ships. They're useful in the strategic layer (e.g. fending off raiders and submarines), not really in the combat layer.

Since they're so basic they also don't really need to be updated much, so you can build a dozen then let them do their thing for decades without touching them.

Doing conversion CVLS with old hulls also isn't that bad of a thing; while the number of planes they can field isn't great, they're more useful than the old ships and can get good ASW capacity. Assuming you're not touching the machinery it's not terribly expensive to do, but their speed may relegate them to trade protection duties. I think their maintenance once converted may not be terrible? Don't quote me on that, though...

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Thanks again for the crash course in RtW peeps.

Its 1942 and I've taken control of all of the Mediterranean outside of the UKs possessions, Sicily (Italy), and Albania (Neutral). The last few wars have been a bit grindy taking my destroyers down from the mid 70s to around 40 and losing my antiquated CAs. The only real blow came when my experimental BC was sunk in a surprise duel with two Italian BCs (RIP, it was too lightly armored though so it was for the best).

Over the past decade I scrapped my 20k Bs and remaining CAs and CLs--not to mention my destroyers below 900 tons. I've rounded out my BB squadron with five 40k+ ships and an old transitional 30k one (of varying ages). 3 CVs, 2CVLs, and 10 brand new CL raiders compose the core of my fleet while I've somehow modernized my utility fleet with 50+ 2500-900 ton destroyers. (a leading nation in submarines and naval aircraft too, though I am now starting to max out my budget)

In short, it feels like I am set up to finish in very good position finally! We'll see if maybe I can wrest control of Sicily from Italy and get lucky enough to acquire Albania--I'll consider that a winning game. Although I have an alliance with the US so theoretically I might be able to take on the UK?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Doing my first run of RtW2, and wondering what all the hubbub about aircraft is -- in the early 40s at this point focusing on aircraft technologies, but me (and the rest of the world) are still relying on battlecruisers and battleships, since aircraft generally seem to be 'not that great'.

As to ship roles, light cruisers and cruisers often end up being a budget option to the bigger battlecruisers and battleships. Light cruisers ideally will be a bit faster than battlecruisers, though, so they can raid/harass while still being able to run away. Since engagements won't always be big pitched battles, having a robust enough fleet to handle the smaller actions is helpful - in this game I kind of neglected light cruisers, and ended up in a war where every smaller action had me with just a 20-year-old light cruiser instead of my shiny battlecruisers.

Just wanted to reply and say I have also experienced having aircraft be not that great. I have yet to witness any of my bombers even sink a ship?

Also for me, my heavy cruisers are what seem to get outdated the fastest. Sure they're great against other CAs but then BCs roll around and they're toast, and there's no real point in CAs doing CLs job in convoy attacks. Likewise, once you have a good BB squadron, it seems like their only real purpose is additional fire support (if they manage to find themselves in the right spot) or just die.

[Dostoevsky]

In the early 50s I finally started to have some success with torpedo bombers (and get more annoyed by harassment from enemy dive bombers launched from airfields). But since the game normally ends at 1955 (though you can keep going to 1970, just with tech leveling off) wasn't much time to appreciate it.

Might have also been that my wars were against enemy fleets without a lot of carriers, and took me a while to learn how the whole strike order system works (strikes from your fleet must be manually ordered from a somewhat clunky interface).

Still, for a first run from Japan I think I did pretty well. NE Asia all Japanese except the core Eastern Russia, a good portion of SE asia (even after the gov't granting some independence), prestige just over 50, and helped defeat a fascist coup. Even supported social reforms and had a nominally healthy/happy country. Woo.

Edit: Should also boastingly add that I pretty much kept Russia from ever having a decent navy via blowing up their ships, and fended off both French and British ambitions in the Asiatic. Lost a few battles, some badly, but never lost a war.

[EuchreJack]

In the early 50s I finally started to have some success with torpedo bombers (and get more annoyed by harassment from enemy dive bombers launched from airfields). But since the game normally ends at 1955 (though you can keep going to 1970, just with tech leveling off) wasn't much time to appreciate it.

Might have also been that my wars were against enemy fleets without a lot of carriers, and took me a while to learn how the whole strike order system works (strikes from your fleet must be manually ordered from a somewhat clunky interface).

Still, for a first run from Japan I think I did pretty well. NE Asia all Japanese except the core Eastern Russia, a good portion of SE asia (even after the gov't granting some independence), prestige just over 50, and helped defeat a fascist coup. Even supported social reforms and had a nominally healthy/happy country. Woo.

Edit: Should also boastingly add that I pretty much kept Russia from ever having a decent navy via blowing up their ships, and fended off both French and British ambitions in the Asiatic. Lost a few battles, some badly, but never lost a war.

Congrats, sounds like a great game.

Of course, if you had lost more, your prestige would probably be double.  In a losing war, there is an event that fires regularly that asks if you want to continue the war.   By insisting on continuing the war, you get one prestige.  It fires several times a year.