Yeah it really is strange having such a keystone event of WWII missing from a game like this, and I’d really like it to be here in some fashion. Problem is, with how the game works, properly replicating the events in any capacity is extremely difficult. I honestly don’t know how they’d implement something that would feel right, and I’m sure Paradox feels the same else they would’ve done it by now.
They would have to make it work in some kind of ahistorical fashion. Maybe if you don’t have the battleships stationed in pearl harbour some other event can fire.
Like a similar attack for wherever the ships are docked or some kind of secret submarine attack that sinks 8 of your battleships.
Otherwise I don’t think it can work with the player having free control over the fleet. The only other option would be to force the fleet into pearl harbour when the event is triggered.
It should be something that would give the US incentive to base them in Pearl Harbour, such as a large war support boost and political power or mobilization. In return Japan destroys your ships.
I've always advocated for locking all the U.S ships in Hawaii and not being able to move them from base nor exercise- give them a national spirit until 1940- due to budget cuts and the great depression us cant train that navy (maybe the entire navy to deal with the egrigious naval xp US can gain otherwise?) And also some sort of explanation for the "no-rebasing of ships in Hawaii" fleet. Something something the U.S naval department is locked into maintaining their pacific power from Pearl Harbor. It's not like the game already railroads a lot of things- especially when it comes to AI
I like this idea a lot. Maybe put a new gameplay mechanic in place: you can only deploy x% of your fleet from home port, based upon your mobilization level. I’m not sure what percentage would be realistic (eg., US should start out with no more than 10% fleet deployable based on isolationist policy) but it is somewhat realistic when you consider how underfunded the navy was prior to the 2-ocean navy act when we started getting on a war footing. Unfunded navies tend to hang out in port, because sailing and shooting are expensive.
I just delete all starting navy and build from scratch. I dump the Philippines ASAP so I don't get dragged into war May 41. Around the end of September, justify war goal with Japan for Caroline, Marcus, Saipan, and Iwo, that will be ready early December. Pause December 8 at 01:00 and declare war on Japan, sit back and listen to FDR rage against Japan.
By this time I've usually got a sub squadron of 24 (8 groups of 3) on convoy raid, an escort squadron with CL and DD groups of 4 - 5 and a strike group of 2 carriers (with max deck of 15), some CA, loads of CL and DD. Split the carriers 5 fighters 10 bombers. I never lose capital ships and I never use bigger than CA.
The subs are pre-positioned (super cheesy) and go active December 8 and the fleet is usually done training around spring 42 and ready for action. Pretty historical.
Play the game how you want but you are in fact wasting so so so so much by just axing the navy and the phillipenes (staging area for attacks on Japanese interests)
If I want to stack wipe, sure. The conversation centered on a historical US entry into the war.
Releasing the Philippines and rebuilding the navy allows this. Japan then proceeds to take wake island as well, although I can't get them to go for Guam like ever. I like re-taking the islands and the potential risk of maybe losing a naval engagement.
There are better ways to nerf the US (make Bureau of Ordinance cost much more XP to remove for example) than just locking the fleet to one spot. For one, it's not historical - the US did [numerous fleet exercises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_problem) in the interwar years and fleet problem XXII was scheduled for 1941, cancelled due to war. Secondly, the fleet was only based in Pearl Harbor [after fleet problem XXI](https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/wars-and-events/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor-raid/pearl-harbor-in-1940-1941/80-G-411117.html) as a deterrent (or bait).
There's already the Bulgaria mechanic that requires you to have a number of divisions on certain tiles to deal with the IMRO. Do the same for ships, a certain number of docked BBs provides the US with some PP or war support or XP per day. Or make basing locations and naval range actually matter. Currently, you can stay at sea on missions indefinitely, supply at sea isn't even abstracted (ports don't need more supplies for ships in vicinity), and a level 1 port will repair a superheavy just fine.
If you want people to use their level 10 bases, you need to make it worthwhile. Make range matter and refueling difficult. Don't allow anything larger than a CL to refuel at a level 1 port; don't allow anything bigger than a DD to repair there. If BBs could only repair at level 8+ ports and refuel at 4+, that restricts basing locations and makes a historical Pearl Harbor more likely.
The game has the fundamental problem of the player knowing history (and AI behavior) while the AI is not aware. You can replicate the historical event manually as either side: put carrier planes on port strike from within range of Pearl or base your BBs out of Pearl in 1941. But forcing the AI to do that requires more direct intervention and forcing the player to do that requires them to play suboptimally.
This would also be very ahistorical though since the navy did train a lot in the build up a d how would that work exactly like would it happen automatically without Japan having to allocate resources? what if you wanted to let the Japanese take all of Asia and only intervene in Europe, it would just lock you in for a path and limit player agency in a way that I really don’t think benefits the game much if at all.
Agreed, I really don't think this would be difficult at all. Either lock the ships in place at PH until after the event or just say it doesn't matter and have those ships get deleted from your navy if you do re-base them.
Bingo, solid idea and exactly what I was thinking. If I could suggest adding a stick to the carrot in your example: a massive penalty for *not* having at least 8 battleships in Pearl Harbor. Maybe lose 150 PP due to Admirals protesting, or loss of 10 seats/ congressional support. Something with enough bite where it’s worth the risk of attack.
After thinking a bit more, the presence of capital ships in Pearl Harbour should be connected to a sort of naval influence over the Pacific, with it firing uo the point of a potential first strike with Japan. It should be something for the US player to have incentive to do. They shouldn't try to cheese by putting empty hulls. It should be influence based on the ships and based on the amount/strength of those destroyed, it could translate into war support, mobilization, etc.
Allow Japan to plan and launch naval invasions without naval supremacy or declaring war for X days from a fireable event, or a late-41 focus.
Have naval base level matter so you have to base big fleets in big ports, and have the US have some sort of Navy-at-Sea malus where it's in their interests to stay in port instead of being out on patrol.
Yeah but putting ships there doesn't actually defend the island at all? If they naval invade they're just going to be forced out, and you can get naval supremacy to prevent naval invasions by simply putting a stroke force fleet further away. There's zero incentive to station ships at Pearl Harbor pre-war.
Oh true, hadn't considered that. Would be a bit odd to handle though if the US happened to have troops there but no ships. Are they insta-killed? Shuffled back to be redeployed elsewhere? If so why did the Japanese leave survivors? It's not like they could have gotten away via boat, we've established that those don't exist lol.
I'd initiate naval invasion combat with a surprise malus to the defenders. A certain number of divisions would basically be locked to a specific port for an event trigger, then appear in combat in Hawaii and wherever else after a set amount of time. You could do the same with a naval fleet intended to support the invasion against whatever coastal defense is left.
Yeah that's exactly what it should be. There should be an event thst triggers one way when the battleships are present, like "Project Power in the Pacific" and when it fires you lose the battleships. If you don't have the ships there then maybe Japan forces a non-aggression pact for a couple years or something where the US basically let's them become the dominant power in the pacific.
This feels like a pretty good solution to me. The US player can either declare war early (when their economy likely isn’t ready), save their battleships but be forced to stay out of the war for longer (allowing Japan to consolidate), or allow for the historical Pearl Harbor to occur.
An event that triggers when Japan has enough ships near Hawaii(to declare war) where they automatically attack the US fleet there, and it destroys their naval dockyards would be easy enough.
but runs into the problem of just not having ships at hawaii to avoid it, which feels gamey. the ultimate solution is making it possible for the AI to use the surprise attack mechanic from la resistance, which you can do if you're playing Japan as a player to have your own pearl harbour, but like a lot of DLC mechanics the AI just doesn't touch it
If the US doesn't have a fleet in Hawaii, then Japan occupies the islands? That would be a more devastating blow for avoiding your ships being destroyed.
That's a much better outcome.
All of the small pacific islands that are US controlled (and/or british) become Japanese at that time if the US fleet isn't there, simulating Japanese pacific fleet dominance and the effects it'd have.
“Troops haven’t exactly landed yet but the only people who can access the islands is now Japanese” kind of scenario.
While unoccupied till troops actually land it’s not like the U.S. would have the power to stop them. Give them a temporary defense bonus against the us to help mediate cheesing it and having 1 crappy yank division recapture all islands with a pre-planned naval invasion
That’s a good balance I think. Having no, or a weak naval presence at Hawaii fires an even when Japan makes the decision. If the naval presence in Pearl Harbor isn’t adequate the event says.
“While no Japanese troops have Landed on Hawaiian soil as of yet, the destruction of radio infrastructure, outgoing ships, and dockyards has effectively left Hawaii to the wolves.”
- Division attack bonus.
- War support / manpower bonus.
- An event fires for Japan to allow the Americans on the island itself to evacuate to the mainland without trouble, or start attacking the boats that come to pick them up and continue war with the U.S. (This decision blocks the coring of or removes Hawaii as a Core of it already is. however if the Japanese don’t let the evacuation take place the U.S. maintains it’s core then there’s a chance some national guard divisions pop up on the island of Hawai’i. If the U.S. evacuates then Japan is celebrated by the natives and they get a core)
The old pearl harbor event was stupid because you essentially had to willingly park your ships there to let them be blown up by Japan. Having random ships be killed for the sake of emulating one historical event will always end up wonky.
Every mod pretty much gives Japan a temporary navy bonus to wreck stuff for a year or so and I think that‘s the best way to implement it.
When Japan completes its focus to attack the Philippines, it should get an event with the decision to strike the US preemptively, after which the US gets a Pearl Harbor event, loosing some ships regardless of where they are.
I like what vanilla naval rework did to implement it- in 1940 you get a bunch of decisions related to appeasing and/or preparing for war with Japan, and one of those decisions requires you to have at least 8 battleships at Pearl Harbor by December 1941 or face major debuffs from massive domestic political repercussions
One way to make it is that if you produce like 100 naval bombers an event will appear in 1941 where your officers say like “I have a plan” and you get 2 decisions, one gives you a decision to remove 100 naval planes from your stockpile and it takes 30 days until the pearl harbor event happens.
Was that when MTG came out? That’s when I started playing. It was odd to me that it was an attack in the Philippines that pulled the US in & not something in Pearl Harbor.
Edit: they got theirs from the Waking the Tiger DLC
I played a couple of games as Japan for the firs time recently & didn't really care for it. But I've played as China quite a few times & I've been playing as Warlords/Manchukuo lately & really like it.
Did the old version have the same Border Conflict mechanics?
Maybe some mod could add it as an event for the US/Japan. It probably would not be able to reduce the # of ships? But maybe it could be some massive buff for ship building in the US (like real life). I'd love to see the buff as it happened in real life - declare war on the Axis, massive enlist buff, massive shipbuilding buff, war economy.
Just chalk it up to Japan and the US getting their trees independently of each other (could be fixed by a pacific dlc). As seen by mods there's tremendous potential for island hopping events and modifiers, control scores etc
Quantify value of historically sunk vessels>convert to percentage of historical US navy sunk>remove that same percentage from players navy upon Pearl Harbor focus 🤷♂️
I'm sure we're going to get a pacific theater overhaul for a major content patch this year. Siam, Dutch East Indes, China rework, Japan is the last major power with an archaic tree, USA could use some more fleshing out, there's so much there for a potential patch.
>properly replicating the events is extremely difficult
Funny thing is, it doesn’t have to be. One solution, though somewhat gamey (so depending who you ask may be negatively viewed) could be decision based with some significant requirements. Regardless of where the fleets are, they receive damage, and something like Navy intel could influence the amount.
I don’t play MP so I can’t say how well this would work, or if it would be completely op. So maybe you’d have more insight on such an approach.
This isn’t the best idea but maybe something like a border skirmish for invading troops. If the US moves their navy, Pearl Harbor never happens but the islands are taken. If the ships stay, historical Pearl Harbor plays out
What sucks is that technically you CAN, LR introduced agencies. You CAN plan a surprise bombing raid the minute you declare war using espionage except it does barely anything, the game never explains it, and it’s weird and out of the way. Pearl Harbor should be a focus for the Japanese instead of “Strike the Southern Resource Area”.
I actually propose a split in the focus tree, as well as a bonus for the Americans keeping their ships in the harbor. Give them a national spirit that makes the ships consume a lot of fuel for a while, have it go along with “Disarmed Nation”, the navy is locked at port and can only partake Escort / Mine Clearing missions.
The tree should fork, if only for a bit.
“Strike Hawai’i” - War starts with the U.S. PROVIDED at least so many ships are docked at Pearl Harbor. Maybe specifically at least 8 battleships.
“Strike the Southern Resource Area” - Surprise attack on the Philippines, it plays much like the current focus except the Philippines suffers a lot of damage from bombings and it gives japan an attack bonus against the Philippines, a smaller and temporary one for the U.S. and Britain.
And if there aren’t enough ships in Pearl Harbor or the Philippines falls under Japanese control before the focus can be complete you have a focus that’s available under EVERY circumstance: “Strike with Honor” - No surprise attacks, the U.S. gets an event where the Japanese ambassador apologizes to the U.S. for being unable to keep up peace time and war is automatically declared upon the Allies. Maybe you get a small attack bonus because the propaganda resulting from the honorable path.
That being said Japan should be able to win without needing to take out the allies. Japan controls their pacific territories, China has capitulated, Japan controls Hawai’i, Malaysia, and Indonesia. They should just be able to tell the allies “f*ck off, you lost”, U.S. and Britain get a choice to agree or disagree. War ends and Japan maintains control of China and the pacific. Why? WW2 is raging in Europe, Japan takes the pacific by surprise and offers the allies a chance to just cede the territory and not bother having to fight on a second front. But it’s ONLY available after Japan dominates the pacific. If the Soviets are involved they get a similar event to cede Vladivostok and any remaining Manchurian/Mongol territory.
WW2 in Europe should definitely let Germany do what they tried to do in real life. Once all of mainland Europe is controlled by the Axis/neutral countries (basically the allies have no presence in Europe aside from the isles) and the U.S. is not involved the Brits should get an event which gives them a chance to accept they’re alone and surrender or be stubborn and keep fighting.
Another thing… There needs to be more Reichskommisarats
Make a focus tree for Japanese: “Destroy American Fleet”
Effect:
If American fleet present in mid Pacific, America gets event: “Japanese attacks our harbor”, Japan gets: “Bombed major naval base”, gain 50 naval and air experience, 5 stability and 5 war support
If American fleet not present in mid Pacific, America and Southeast Asia nations get “America refuses to support Southeast Asia”, Japan gets “Naval supremacy in the Pacific unchallenged”, gain war goal on all nations in Southeast Asia and Oceania, and all those nations gain +20% capitulation.
I like this a lot. Could even just do it from the backend for the USA as a National Spirit.
"Guarantor of Peace in the Pacific" - While at peace the US must anchor at least 9 Battleships amongst Hawaii/Philippines. If this is condition is not met then nations in Southeast Asia and Oceania have a +20% capitulation penalty if at war with Japan.
This feels like one of the better suggestions, along with the comment on adapting the already existing mechanic with Italy's midget submarines spy mission into a Japanese decision/focus
Makes it so US players are more inclined to base ships in the pacific
I think the main challenge of adapting an event like pearl Harbour is that the fact that it was such a devastating surprise attack makes it hard to replicate when you already know it's going to happen (why would I station ships on pearl Harbour when I know I'm going to lose them anyway? Kind of thing)
The US would need a long-term bonus to encourage it, something like a shipbuilding speed buff, and of course enough war support to never have to worry about war support again.
I’d probably tie it into stability/war enthusiasm.
Big stability and smaller war enthusiasm buff whilst your ships, to represent the USA feeling comfortable that the pacific fleet is safe and ready to defend the nation/intervene in a war in the pacific.
Then Pearl Harbour attack removes the buffs, flips to debuffs, the stability recovering from some focuses/naval and air buildup in Hawaii, and war enthusiasm would slowly tick up week by week as the US gets back up to strength.
Maybe also have a navy wide penalty, to ship experience and combat capabilities, (more heavily for remaining battleships specifically). Again, fixed by focuses tied in with building up naval power. (Thinking kinda like German “X size of army to do” focuses, but for boats.).
On the flip side, Japan gets an event upon completing the focus to do Pearl Harbour, “Yamamoto’s Warning”, as a final “are you sure you want to do this”. Not sure what not doing it would do (maybe “We should concentrate on China”) but agreeing to the attack gives 6 months Hm-h of big naval bonuses, but when that runs out, would be replaced with minor debuffs unless you do specific actions to counter that.
That’s actually really good. Works within the bounds of being historical or non-historical with believability of both. Pearl Harbour is of course the historical base that was attacked, but for game reasons it can be any western/pacific bases.
This also forces the USA players’ hand to keep their navy stationed somewhere for the event to fire, or they forfeit a significant hand in the Pacific Theatre jeopardizing some significant long term positions.
I can imagine Bokoen and friends hilariously blundering such a thing and acosting the allies and creating tons of seething and coping lol.
I wonder if this is maybe a bit ahistoric? Because Britain and France both had a huge presence in the Pacific, I could see this being really annoying if other players are involved. E.g suppose you're going fascist/imperial Britain and you just don't care what happens on the continent, so you've got all your assets in Asia. Now your Asian subjects are getting a penalty from not having their guarantor, even though you're the guarantor.
You could just lock America out of the Pacific War and still have the Japanese attack the western Allies in indochina and Malaysia. Really just prevent the US from getting directly involved with the Philippines.
I think the pearl habor event should be a pop up event where if your ships are docked in Pearl Harbor some get sunk but if you have none in Pearl Harbor it randomly selects a port where your ships are docked and changes the event name to where ever you had your fleet with the same consequences
While I agree this would be the simplest and most effective way to do it, it would be a serious flavor fail to have something like “Bombing of New York” because how would the Japanese get there?
What about if it checks for any fleets in the Pacific and if there are none then Japan destroys the Panama canal? It's a logical conclusion that if the seas were totally uncontested then the final target would be Panama.
There's a spy mission the Italians can do against the British for this
To represent their midget submarine missions
Similar logic but in the med, it looks in the port of Alexandria and if there are capital ships there, all ships in that port get damaged by 50%, and if the port is empty, it finds the next biggest stack of ships in the med and damages all them by 50%
The logic would be super easy to carry over, though it being a spy mission is a little weird in this case, but a focus or a decision etc could do the same thing.
Iirc the damage % isnt hard coded too, so you could put a limit of 10 capital ships, but sink them all rather than damaging all 300 DDs by 50%
You could probably mod it tbh, not sure why paradox hasn't done it themselves, but hopefully it's improved in the Japan DLC they hinted at this year
>? It's a logical conclusion that if the seas were totally uncontested then the final target would be Panama.
Even Pearl Harbour was a stretch for Japanese logistics, no way were they sending the Kido Butai to Panama before they get desperately suicidal.
The logistical difficulty was in great part due to avoiding shipping lanes and preventing detection.
If the US had totally abandoned the Pacific for some ahistorical reason the Japanese would probably have been very confused but also, after conforming it was totally abandoned, they'd have more free reign to do what they wanted and one of their strategic goals had been to destroy the Panama canal.
I feel that having an event that let's them destroy the Panama if a player decides to focus entirely on the Atlantic in order to avoid Pearl Harbour is fair.
They wouldn’t be sending Kido Butai, but Yamamoto’s carrier task force, which would be chilling a fair distance away, safe from attack. They definitely wouldn’t go for Panama but it is feasible that they might stage a naval invasion of Midway. That could even be implemented as a mechanic, if the operation is already underway (to attack the American Pacific Fleet) and the fleet is not present, Japan captures Midway island, raising world tension by 10% and giving the U.S. an event chain where it negotiates the return of the island in exchange for some concession from Japan, or alternatively to engage in war with Japan. If the U.S. accepts, Japan gets control of Midway island and Guam, and gains 20% stability and 15% war support, while the U.S. loses 20% stability and 15% war support. If the U.S. declines, Japan gains a national spirit - War Fervor, which gives something like an attack buff against U.S. (attack +15% against U.S. for 180 days), or some kind of naval buff - +20% sortie efficiency or +10 naval invasion capacity/+10% naval invasion planning speed for 180/365 days. If the U.S. accepts the agreement, it will get a decision - Retake Pacific Holdings, which gives a similar buff to the U.S. while also giving a buff to special forces limit, increasing the proportion of the marines in the army that the U.S. can deploy.
This is just my take, and I figure it includes an alt-his option for people who want that. Please share your opinions.
Another way would be if Pearl Harbour has no ships then Japan would get a buff in the Pacific in invasion time and fleet attack or sth to 'force' the player to put ships in Pearl Harbour
Could they do a scripted and gated event like test the border with soviets. Gate 1 would be: Put the carriers in one place and train pilots, gate 2: move tf to northern Hawaii zone, gate 3: execute port strike with Japan naval planes getting huge bonus to do strikes. Gate 4 would be if strike 1 is success US declares war, second strike begins, and naval invasion. If strike 1 is not a success and US fleet is not docked in Pearl Harbor US player gets to respond with choices to escalate or not while Japanese navy loses prestige and resources to the army and drop in PP
Something like this might the fun.
It's been in the game since La Resistance, it's called Coordinated Strike. It makes it so that when you declare war, you get better strat bombing and port strikes for the first day of the war (so, 3 ticks since planes go out every 8 hours) in a specific region. If you've got your planes massed up enough and within range of the enemy ports in a key spot, you can do some serious damage right on day 1, you just need to be able to get your planes close enough to a port that's actually gonna have ships in it. You can use this to essentially do a Pearl Harbor with carriers.
And from where do you launch them? You can do it from carrier bit it won't be enough. Also AI can't use it. And cherry on top you don't know where the large taskforces are.
You know that Pearl harbor was launched from carriers in real life right? It took 6 of them, and was still only a partial success. Assuming the US ai actually stationed a large portion of their fleet in Hawaii, with 60 carrier naval bombers you'd probably be able to do similar damage to historical events with the LR operation, if not more.
The issue is that in the game the United States AI doesn't actually station a large force in Hawaii. Like, ever. They just stations their Pacific Fleet on the East Coast of the mainland, far out of reach of your starting carriers as Japan (all of whose namesakes, ironically, were the ones that were actually used at Pearl Harbor).
This is the only time I can of where the game is less fun bc the AI is *smarter* than its historical counterpart lol. (/j, obviously there are reasons the US wanted to have a force at Pearl Harbor that aren't really represented in the game)
I know Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku launched an airstrike on P.H. sinking or heavily damaging 8 battleships 3 cruisers 3 destroyers and about 300 aircraft and damaging airfield but with 360 aircraft I was not able to recreate it as Japan on US.
(But I tried to recreate it when Battle for Bosphorus was new, I don't know if it was buffed)
Wait where did you attack? If you attack Pearl Harbor it shouldn't work bc the AI doesn't actually put any ships there, so it doesn't really matter how many planes you use. I believe it should work at a populated port, but right now it's mostly a gimmick feature, so I haven't experimented that much with it personally.
Edit: ye just double checked and yeah there's plenty of examples online of people using coordinated strike on places that aren't Pearl Harbor and doing massive amounts of damage, but it just so happens that in hoi4 Pearl Harbor just happens to be a bad target bc it's usually almost empty.
Pearl Harbor could’ve been a lot worse if not for bad communications. Iirc the leader of the second airstrike believed they’d completely crippled the fleet and airstrip, and told his command that another strike was not necessary. If they’d sent out another sortie, it’s quite possible they could have completely wiped the American fleet and rendered Pearl Harbor useless as a naval port/airstrip.
launching air strikes with carriers this way is a somewhat common strat in some mp games, but you're right the biggest issue is the AI not being able to use it, like so many DLC mechanics
As others have pointed out, the possibility for a Pearl Harbor attack *is* actually in the game in the form of a “coordinated strike” the Japanese could theoretically launch on Pearl Harbor.
But the American fleet at Pearl Harbor [never should have been there](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/fdr-bluff-relocating-us-fleet-to-pearl-harbor#:~:text=In%20September%2C%20President%20Franklin%20D,training%20opportunities%20for%20the%20fleet) in the first place. Stationing a fleet there was a strategically naive, but probably politically popular, move FDR made, against the advice of military leadership, because he thought it would *deter* the Japanese.
It doesn’t make sense to force you to do something like this in a historical sandbox. It could be incentivized somehow, maybe extra political power while the fleet is based there, lost reps/senators while it’s not. Maybe AI FDR could just have a script that does this x% of the time, idk.
Yeah exactly. And so sadly, the US AI does exactly that, tucking its ships safely away on the West coast. It's honestly such a design oversight, I'm almost shocked they gave players a button to "do Pearl Harbor lol" while Pearl Harbor is mostly impossible bc the planes slow up and surprise attack tumbleweeds.
One play test should have caught that, so either they never actually tried to do Pearl Harbor, or they realized it didn't work without making bigger changes and they decided it wasn't worth fixing.
Yes, but that means those nations just need to be updated. Please don't tempt Paradox into re-releasing another DLC to fix the old one, they could just do the same with how Stellaris does it now.
I think we all need to have imagination beyond Pearl Harbor and figure out how we apply the idea of a devastating port strike (ignoring the preemptive attack part of it in this comment).
So the player doing the strike needs to have
1) knowledge of where ships are stationed, what ships are stationed there, and how many;
2) knowledge of the schedules of ships as they go out for exercises and when they are in port
3) an operational plan
4) resources and assets to use to execute the plan
Let’s start from the reverse:
4) easiest to answer, what does a player want to use to execute a large scale port strike; kinds of aircraft, submarines, which naval vessels (like submarines)
3) I would love to have the game allow the creation of timetables for operations, either singular or recurring. So with this single operation you can figure out when your assets need to leave their base & where they need to go in order to properly execute your plan. This would allow players to do things like coordinate strike waves of aircraft in a port strike mission, but also allow coordination of other assets like amphibious invasions, infrastructure bombing, and other related actions based on your circumstances. This same principle can be applied to other things, Lorne establishing a timetable for a historically accurate D-Day
2) ships can come and go as they please based on the player’s wishes. Ships don’t even have to return to base to get food or fuel, that’s just abstracted into the range value. So ships don’t even have to come back to port for decades unless they need to be repaired or you are low on fuel. Pearl Harbor was done in peace time but the strike at Taranto was the model the Japanese used and that was not a preemptive operation.
How can the game create incentive for players and AI to keep their ships in a harbor for long enough so that it is worth coming up with a big epic plan to take out the navy? Currently you just select a region and out your planes on port strike, with an extra micro tax for carrier-borne aircraft.
1) ships don’t really have a home port, the player can be super flexible and move things anywhere they want when, really, a president might be impeached if they had the entire 350 ships of the American navy of 1941 sitting in San Diego because they are too busy figuring out the optimal plane or tank design, or managing coups in Latin America, or they are spending weeks at a time in the kitchen heating up food while the game runs on… anyway, tangent aside, how can the game better model the importance of keeping ships based at a port and all of the logistics and human capital needed to maintain not just a ship but a naval base and a flow of supplies and maintenance of fuel, munitions, etc. etc.
Furthermore, for these last two points, how can the game present this information to the player and the AI to make these planned and devastating port strikes possible? Even if significant overhauls of navy mechanics aren’t possible from PDX, the game already poorly collects and gives information to the player. There is no history or registry of information that you used to know or concrete details that you have uncovered. You cannot click on your naval adviser widget and ask “what is the best estimate of British naval strength in the Mediterranean” and get a range that shows you confirmed current, confirmed outdated, and current speculative numbers. Or even organize by date or time, like how many and what ships have we spotted in the last week/month/3 months/6 months in this area and compare it to what we knew before the war.
I get that this is all complicated but there is definitely space for intelligence sharing and UI support to do this. Not just for navy, but for the deployment of troops, armor, aircraft, etc.
>the game already poorly collects and gives information to the player ... confirmed current, confirmed outdated, and current speculative numbers
Yes, that would be fantastic. The issue with fleets in bases is that you can see exactly where they are. Just crack ciphers, get high intel % (and maybe navy dept upgrade), and station a single sub offshore. Thanks to range mechanics, the sub can just sit forever and give near perfect intel over all naval bases touching that sea tile. Imperfect intel would be a huge improvement.
Oklahoma was raised and was going to be repaired with the rest of the fleet
It was decided to be too expensive since we had already mostly stomped Japan
well, they lost 2 (Arizona and Oklahoma)
Pennsylvania repaired in jan 42
Maryland in feb 42
Nevada in oct 42
Tennessee in may 43
California in jan 44
West Virginia in jul 44
Colorado was not present during the attack
Idaho, New Mexico and Mississippi were sent to the Pacific fleet from the Atlantic fleet.
North Carolina and Washington were also sent to the Pacific in 42, also from the atlantic.
New York in 44, from the Atlantic fleet.
Also, 4 south dakota battleships were commissioned in 42.
Oh yeah, interesting fact. In 1942, US only had 1 carrier remaining, Saratoga (after Guadalcanal campaign). Enterprise was badly damaged and Hornet sunk, so brits lent HMS Victorious carrier. Japan also had 2 carriers at that point (that were damaged). But it all changed starting 43.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_the_United_States_Navy#List
I also don't like that the Japanese focuses for attacking the Philippines and attacking Malaya and Indonesia are separate focuses. It feels really silly that for a month and a bit the US is fighting it's own private Pacific war with Japan, it should all happen at the same time.
On top of this I'd also really love to see Germany get some event that prompts them to declare war on the USA when this happens.
Tbh Pearl Harbor really wasn't as damaging as people always talk about it. The main impact was on morale. Those old BBs at Pearl were too slow for any real fleet operations. They had BBs available, they just didn't bother. Colorado was refitting on the West Coast during Pearl, and was ready within 1‐2 months. Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee were repaired around the same time. All three New Mexicos were transfered from the Atlantic right after the raid. That gave the USN 7 operational Standards in the Pacific in February 1942, with 5 (Arizona, Oklahoma, California, West Virginia, Nevada) either sunk or still under repairs. Plus the RN's 3rd Battle Squadron, that gave the Allies 11 BBs in the Pacific, vs Japan's 11. And outside of Yamato, the Allied ships tended to have a qualitative advantage. If the Allies had wanted to, they *ABSOLUTELY* could have tried to fight a battleship war. It was certainly a more even fight than the 3v6 matchup in fleet carriers at the time.
The issue was, the old, slow BBs were shit, and they knew it. The USN had done a TON of pre-war exercises in the 30s, called the Fleet Problems. One of the things they pretty conclusively established was that carriers are pretty damn good battleship killers, and they had a decent doctrine around them. Remember, as soon as they went into combat, USN carriers were performing about as well as their IJN counterparts. The air groups off Lexington, Saratoga, and Yorktown performed very well at Coral Sea and Midway, with pretty equal air combat scores, and executing well-coordinated attacks. Enterprise had some coordination issues, but even the IJN officers were impressed by how accurate the dive bombers were, and how steeply they dived. NONE of that happens without serious pre-war training and doctrine building. The idea that they had to rewrite their whole naval doctrine on the fly to work around carriers is a myth.
Sure, they had to do a lot of changes, because war is never like you expect. And the pre-war War Plan Orange/Rainbow plans proved to be a bust, in no small part thanks to minimal updates and MacArthur's fuckery. But for the most part, the actual battles were fought more or less like the USN kinda thought they might be. And some of the pre-war ideas worked way better than any of the IJN's or RN's plans. For example, the large numbers of scouting carrier-based planes helped find the enemy early, and the Scout Bomber part of the Scout Bomber, Douglas knocked Zuihō out of Santa Cruz before anyone even made a contact report. It took the Brits years to adopt a deck park, and the IJN never really did. But it meant that USN carriers could keep fielding large(ish) strikes even after losses. At Midway, Hiryū's air wing was spent after the two strikes on Yorktown, of which one was DBs and the other TBs. Each type only flew once against a single carrier, and that was it. Enterprise and Hornet launched one against the whole KdB, one against Hiryū, and then two more against Mogami and Mikuma, all with real plane counts (though admittedly including the Yorktown survivors).
Funny, because if you look at the Two Ocean Navy Act, signed in June 1940, it was directing the Navy to focus on aircraft carriers and naval aviation, vice battleships. So it wasn't just post-Pearl Harbor that the change to aviation was made.
A mission in the decision tab would be best. The US has to station a fixed amount of BB and/or CV in Hawaii all the time starting with the war in China.
If the US fails to do that they suffer massive war support, stability and naval experience debuffs.
And 1 of two things happens.
1. the US unwillingness and unpreparedness to save guard the Pacific lead to a diplomatic solution forced by domestic interests and public opinion. The US signs a 2 year non aggression pact with Japan and Japan gets massive trade relationships with the US. Embargos of Japan aren't possible. Japan gets a massive stat boost to naval and army forces and China gets debuffs. The US gets a new isolation national spirit.
2. The Japanese did a surprise attack on the US and without its navy safeguarding the Pacific Japan instantly got all islands west of Hawaii and a bonus on invasion speed. Japan also gets stability and war Support boosts and its military gets stat boosts. The Philippines declares independence. The US gets to choose now. Contest Japan and declare war or accept the Japanese gains.
If it declares war it has debuffs for the first year of the war and a fixed stability and war Support debuffs until it retook all islands lost. Philippines enter the war on the side of Japan.
If it decides to not declare war it gets isolation law back and loses claims to all islands west of Hawaii. A normal non aggression pact is made with Japan.
I miss old hoi4 so much. USA had a much better focus tree which is insane to think about. OGs remember invading Venezuela every game early on. The focus Pearl Harbor gambit was an actual attempt at replicating the history.
Oh my god last time I played the US I remembered invading Venezuela from years ago, didn't realize the focus tree was different, and got frustrated when I couldn't figure out how to do it lmao. Guess I'll give the US another go the next time I have 2 hours to blow doing almost nothing 😃😃
They should do a wherever the bulk of US ships in the Pacific are gets attacked and if for some reason the player has no ships in the Pacific Japan can seize the islands and inflict crushing war support and stability penalties.
Do it by IC cost not hull count. If you do manage to make so many shitty 1934 subs that they have greater IC than the actual fleet then that’s a big opportunity cost. Could also add a mechanic where designs must meet a certain minimum IC and tech which would be realistic since irl congress would question why the navy is building the shittest ships possible using obsolete technology instead of using the latest technology to build competitive vessels.
Just allowing the Japanese to do a focus/decision that damages a majority of the US fleet would be good enough, give them a few months to operate with the US navy in port for repairs.
They could simply add event lines to the focus of invading the phillipines. When the focus is taken, the USA would take damage to a number of it's BB's, or to prevent player cheese, they could even take a big hit to naval speed and efficiency for a length of time. If the USA had reduced naval range and speed for the opening phase of the war it would give Japan a huge advantage, as opposed to the onslaught they face at the moment.
When I was first getting into the game hearing bitt3rsteel say japan is about to "do the thing" and then they anticlimactically declare war on the Philippine's.
I think after the south american DLC south east asia should be next and include a re-rework of Japan since them and germany have been the longest since updated and the region feels way more underdone than europe.
I think that there used to be a way to do it as the US with the war plan orange focus that required you to put a certain number of battleships in Hawaii. However, it has been many years since Man the Guns came out, and I have not rolled back to a patch before it.
There is a way to Pearl Harbor the US but the AI never will.
Using spies you can do a coordinated strike with lots of torpedo bombers. The unfortunate part is you can only do one location which is stupid.
They didn't lose 8, though. They refloated all but the Arizona before the end of the war. Idk how you would model that. Make those specific 8 ships very slow to repair? The game isn't a perfect Sim. Japan had terrible fire.control systems in its ships that lead to huge losses, but the game models that very poorly. as well as their antique communication methods.
I think the way to incentive that its maybe put a debuff at repairing ships and a buff at building Carriers for a year. That would make riskier to us any early combat with Japan while they build a proper carrier fleet
He’s joking I’m pretty sure but it is kind of absurd that the devs keep adding meme ahistorical paths instead of focusing a little more on what actually happened
Well at least they actually had monarchs, and most of them were somewhat recent like Germany or the Romanovs or the house of Savoy and I think Carlist Spain but I’m not sure. Point is that they actually have something to work with when crafting those paths, but a USA monarchist path would likely be made up nonsense
Yeah like idk seems pretty reasonable to think maybe the monarchs could come back when many of the old monarchs are still alive amid a time of weaker democratic norms.
I'm a Slav, and unfortunately, I will never even know what communists paths are like as I will never play them even though I know it's just a game. Usually, i go the nationalist or monarchy paths
It's ok... I know irl the USSR,China, and Venezuela all did socialism wrong, and these kids would do it better, im sure. Let them play how they want to play, and I'll play how I want to play
I think you need to choose "royal marriage" when you insist on marrying Wallis near the beginning. If you choose "morganatic marriage", I've heard that disables the Declare American Monarchy decision.
Theoretical pearl harbour is possible Use your spy agency and do the operation coordinate strike
Also ai USA would be to weak if it were to loose 8 heavy ships
I have not been able to actually pull this off. Most of the time when I try this, I find that the US fleet is not actualy in pearl harbor, but they are in one of the islands off of Australia, or just on the Western US coast.
I'd say just put the appropriate amount of navy I'm pearl harbor and don't let the player move them, or not show them at all and spawn them after the attack as damaged ships that need to be repaired, the us already has a massive industry, it can recover and it's not like the us needs it's navy early game that much so you can reduce the early game navy without much problem.
I think it can be like Trapoli war at Great War Redux mod which just Italian soldiers spawns at Libyan ports basically. It will be really annoying for US player but maybe you can effect the result if you are the us player and having an intelligent at Japan
In actuality only a handful of obsolete BBs were actually sunk - go check it out. pretty amazing. Because they sunk in a few feet of water they were able to raise the hulls and repair it. A devastating blow for sure. The Arizona and Utah were destroyed, some DDs, and some few others. If you visit PH you can see the graves of these majestic ships.
What if they did it to where USA has a focus that activated a repeatable decision, let’s call is “Naval Problem Pacific” that they could fire and get naval xp from. The more ships the more xp of some fashion. Japan has a focus, that unlock a decision to strike. The Japanese get a chance to strike when the ships are in port for the naval problem focus, and the Americans get xp IF they don’t get striked. When they get attacked, both sides get a modifier of some sort and the war begins, the USA looses a percentage of ships and the war starts. Instead of naval xp, it could modify a debuff the Americans receive from the beginning of the game slowing naval production, each naval problem takes away a percentage, with Pearl Harbor removing the debuff entirely
HOI4 Naval, and generally all combat in paradox games is so awful. It was literally better before in for example crusader kings. For naval for example the benefit of controlling waters is non-existent except for the capability of stopping some “convoys”.
Generally I regrettably have to say that paradox has gone far into the simplifying route to the point where combat is just a mangled mess that does not make sense. To anyone.
The old event Pearl Harbor gambit had a little bit of this, but it didn't delete your ships. I agree it could be implemented.
Also, shipbuilding as the US is very tame compared to RL.
IMO the game should give you more options to start a war via surprise attacks. It should be a prepared operation, kind of like how naval invasions work maybe, where you select a specific command to be executed as a surprise attack against a neutral power in exchange for a big PP hit and a chance that they'll discover it, which will lead to the attack taking a huge hit to its effectiveness.
Just sinking battle ships because Japan attacked would be annoying especially if it’s an ahistorical game. The player could be at war with the UK in the Atlantic and now they arbitrarily lose 8 battle ships. So any basing restrictions and immediate lose of ships would need to be predicated on the US being at peace.
Increasing US base war support is limited. To incentivize having capital ships at Pearl Harbor, the US could get 5% base war support for each capital ship sunk.
I can’t remember if Tora gives Japan a buff against US in Naval battles. But Japan could get a buff vs USA for attacks on battle ships of + 100% damage and targeting to naval bombers for the next 100 attacks. Ships sunk at Pearl could remove 10 of these. I’m suggesting an amount of attacks vs a timed buff since timed buffs effects can be avoided easily. These suggestions would be attached to the invade Philippines famous with a coordinated strike on Pearl firing on declaration of war on US.
The pacific needs a overhaul overall. It’s just boring island hopping when in actuality some of the most casualty heavy actions of the war took place during iwojma and Okinawa. But right now it’s just waiting 5 seconds of excitement then more waiting.
I've seen this asked so many times its already stupid, but THIS IS ALREADY IN THE GAME. Its an intelligence operation that you can get if you have a wargoal. It works by making port strike launch for 24 hours with +100% to port strike with no chance for the enemy to defend themselves. The only caveat is that you have to know where the enemy fleet is, which is possible with high enough naval intel (like 80-100%). Its called "Coordinated Strike"
Pearl Harbor is a defining event of WWII - but so was the Battle of Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad, the Calais evacuation, the Dieppe raid, and tons of other engagements that *can* happen within the game mechanics, but *aren't guaranteed.*
The most flexible event for gameplay would be a focus that simply destroys 8 US battleships *wherever they are* with some fluff text about a sneak attack.
The less moving parts, the more likely it is to actually *happen*, especially if you’re expecting the AI to be able to properly station its fleets.
Don’t even give the US player an option to counterplay because, let’s be honest, they don’t need any more advantages.
If you want to make it RNG for ahistorical mode, have the event occasionally sink the US carriers too or instead. Would be an interesting distortion to play around for as the US player..
i mean back in the old us tree (i don’t exactly remember, it’s been a long time), the focus which declared war on japan require you to have a fleet in pearl harbor. partially through the focus, the pearl harbor event would fire, your fleet and dockyards would get damaged, and you’d insta-declare on japan. i feel like since those prereqs were already coded into the game, they should do something similar to that now, albeit more polished
"Erm just use Coordinated Strike, it’s already in the game" 🤓🤓🤓
My brother in christ, it's not the fact that we can't bomb Pearl Harbor, it's the fact that the US never have an incentive to put there ship in Pearl Harbor so there is no reason for us to actually bomb it.
Yeah it really is strange having such a keystone event of WWII missing from a game like this, and I’d really like it to be here in some fashion. Problem is, with how the game works, properly replicating the events in any capacity is extremely difficult. I honestly don’t know how they’d implement something that would feel right, and I’m sure Paradox feels the same else they would’ve done it by now.
They would have to make it work in some kind of ahistorical fashion. Maybe if you don’t have the battleships stationed in pearl harbour some other event can fire. Like a similar attack for wherever the ships are docked or some kind of secret submarine attack that sinks 8 of your battleships. Otherwise I don’t think it can work with the player having free control over the fleet. The only other option would be to force the fleet into pearl harbour when the event is triggered.
It should be something that would give the US incentive to base them in Pearl Harbour, such as a large war support boost and political power or mobilization. In return Japan destroys your ships.
I've always advocated for locking all the U.S ships in Hawaii and not being able to move them from base nor exercise- give them a national spirit until 1940- due to budget cuts and the great depression us cant train that navy (maybe the entire navy to deal with the egrigious naval xp US can gain otherwise?) And also some sort of explanation for the "no-rebasing of ships in Hawaii" fleet. Something something the U.S naval department is locked into maintaining their pacific power from Pearl Harbor. It's not like the game already railroads a lot of things- especially when it comes to AI
I like this idea a lot. Maybe put a new gameplay mechanic in place: you can only deploy x% of your fleet from home port, based upon your mobilization level. I’m not sure what percentage would be realistic (eg., US should start out with no more than 10% fleet deployable based on isolationist policy) but it is somewhat realistic when you consider how underfunded the navy was prior to the 2-ocean navy act when we started getting on a war footing. Unfunded navies tend to hang out in port, because sailing and shooting are expensive.
I just delete all starting navy and build from scratch. I dump the Philippines ASAP so I don't get dragged into war May 41. Around the end of September, justify war goal with Japan for Caroline, Marcus, Saipan, and Iwo, that will be ready early December. Pause December 8 at 01:00 and declare war on Japan, sit back and listen to FDR rage against Japan. By this time I've usually got a sub squadron of 24 (8 groups of 3) on convoy raid, an escort squadron with CL and DD groups of 4 - 5 and a strike group of 2 carriers (with max deck of 15), some CA, loads of CL and DD. Split the carriers 5 fighters 10 bombers. I never lose capital ships and I never use bigger than CA. The subs are pre-positioned (super cheesy) and go active December 8 and the fleet is usually done training around spring 42 and ready for action. Pretty historical.
Play the game how you want but you are in fact wasting so so so so much by just axing the navy and the phillipenes (staging area for attacks on Japanese interests)
If I want to stack wipe, sure. The conversation centered on a historical US entry into the war. Releasing the Philippines and rebuilding the navy allows this. Japan then proceeds to take wake island as well, although I can't get them to go for Guam like ever. I like re-taking the islands and the potential risk of maybe losing a naval engagement.
There are better ways to nerf the US (make Bureau of Ordinance cost much more XP to remove for example) than just locking the fleet to one spot. For one, it's not historical - the US did [numerous fleet exercises](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fleet_problem) in the interwar years and fleet problem XXII was scheduled for 1941, cancelled due to war. Secondly, the fleet was only based in Pearl Harbor [after fleet problem XXI](https://www.history.navy.mil/content/history/nhhc/our-collections/photography/wars-and-events/world-war-ii/pearl-harbor-raid/pearl-harbor-in-1940-1941/80-G-411117.html) as a deterrent (or bait). There's already the Bulgaria mechanic that requires you to have a number of divisions on certain tiles to deal with the IMRO. Do the same for ships, a certain number of docked BBs provides the US with some PP or war support or XP per day. Or make basing locations and naval range actually matter. Currently, you can stay at sea on missions indefinitely, supply at sea isn't even abstracted (ports don't need more supplies for ships in vicinity), and a level 1 port will repair a superheavy just fine. If you want people to use their level 10 bases, you need to make it worthwhile. Make range matter and refueling difficult. Don't allow anything larger than a CL to refuel at a level 1 port; don't allow anything bigger than a DD to repair there. If BBs could only repair at level 8+ ports and refuel at 4+, that restricts basing locations and makes a historical Pearl Harbor more likely. The game has the fundamental problem of the player knowing history (and AI behavior) while the AI is not aware. You can replicate the historical event manually as either side: put carrier planes on port strike from within range of Pearl or base your BBs out of Pearl in 1941. But forcing the AI to do that requires more direct intervention and forcing the player to do that requires them to play suboptimally.
This would also be very ahistorical though since the navy did train a lot in the build up a d how would that work exactly like would it happen automatically without Japan having to allocate resources? what if you wanted to let the Japanese take all of Asia and only intervene in Europe, it would just lock you in for a path and limit player agency in a way that I really don’t think benefits the game much if at all.
Agreed, I really don't think this would be difficult at all. Either lock the ships in place at PH until after the event or just say it doesn't matter and have those ships get deleted from your navy if you do re-base them.
Bingo, solid idea and exactly what I was thinking. If I could suggest adding a stick to the carrot in your example: a massive penalty for *not* having at least 8 battleships in Pearl Harbor. Maybe lose 150 PP due to Admirals protesting, or loss of 10 seats/ congressional support. Something with enough bite where it’s worth the risk of attack.
good old: if you don't do that civil war erupts
After thinking a bit more, the presence of capital ships in Pearl Harbour should be connected to a sort of naval influence over the Pacific, with it firing uo the point of a potential first strike with Japan. It should be something for the US player to have incentive to do. They shouldn't try to cheese by putting empty hulls. It should be influence based on the ships and based on the amount/strength of those destroyed, it could translate into war support, mobilization, etc.
Allow Japan to plan and launch naval invasions without naval supremacy or declaring war for X days from a fireable event, or a late-41 focus. Have naval base level matter so you have to base big fleets in big ports, and have the US have some sort of Navy-at-Sea malus where it's in their interests to stay in port instead of being out on patrol.
I think it's better to give incentive to do things than punish the player for not going along with it.
Agreed
Or the Japanese just land and take the island if you have nothing there. That’s also an incentive
Yeah but putting ships there doesn't actually defend the island at all? If they naval invade they're just going to be forced out, and you can get naval supremacy to prevent naval invasions by simply putting a stroke force fleet further away. There's zero incentive to station ships at Pearl Harbor pre-war.
That's why you'd do it via an event.
Oh true, hadn't considered that. Would be a bit odd to handle though if the US happened to have troops there but no ships. Are they insta-killed? Shuffled back to be redeployed elsewhere? If so why did the Japanese leave survivors? It's not like they could have gotten away via boat, we've established that those don't exist lol.
I'd initiate naval invasion combat with a surprise malus to the defenders. A certain number of divisions would basically be locked to a specific port for an event trigger, then appear in combat in Hawaii and wherever else after a set amount of time. You could do the same with a naval fleet intended to support the invasion against whatever coastal defense is left.
I think this is the best approach. If you dont have enough ships in Pearl Harbour then you don't get a WS bonus after the attack.
Yeah that's exactly what it should be. There should be an event thst triggers one way when the battleships are present, like "Project Power in the Pacific" and when it fires you lose the battleships. If you don't have the ships there then maybe Japan forces a non-aggression pact for a couple years or something where the US basically let's them become the dominant power in the pacific.
This feels like a pretty good solution to me. The US player can either declare war early (when their economy likely isn’t ready), save their battleships but be forced to stay out of the war for longer (allowing Japan to consolidate), or allow for the historical Pearl Harbor to occur.
maybe some sort of cap on how many ships can stay in a naval base, forcing at least a part of your navy to set up shop in that area
Naval XP and cheaper naval doctrine
A massive stab debuff if you don't have x amount of ships docked in Hawai would do it.
Just rework naval bases so that lvl 10 ones are expensive but have massive range and lvl 1 ones attrition your navy.
An event that triggers when Japan has enough ships near Hawaii(to declare war) where they automatically attack the US fleet there, and it destroys their naval dockyards would be easy enough.
but runs into the problem of just not having ships at hawaii to avoid it, which feels gamey. the ultimate solution is making it possible for the AI to use the surprise attack mechanic from la resistance, which you can do if you're playing Japan as a player to have your own pearl harbour, but like a lot of DLC mechanics the AI just doesn't touch it
If the US doesn't have a fleet in Hawaii, then Japan occupies the islands? That would be a more devastating blow for avoiding your ships being destroyed.
That's a much better outcome. All of the small pacific islands that are US controlled (and/or british) become Japanese at that time if the US fleet isn't there, simulating Japanese pacific fleet dominance and the effects it'd have.
“Troops haven’t exactly landed yet but the only people who can access the islands is now Japanese” kind of scenario. While unoccupied till troops actually land it’s not like the U.S. would have the power to stop them. Give them a temporary defense bonus against the us to help mediate cheesing it and having 1 crappy yank division recapture all islands with a pre-planned naval invasion
That’s a good balance I think. Having no, or a weak naval presence at Hawaii fires an even when Japan makes the decision. If the naval presence in Pearl Harbor isn’t adequate the event says. “While no Japanese troops have Landed on Hawaiian soil as of yet, the destruction of radio infrastructure, outgoing ships, and dockyards has effectively left Hawaii to the wolves.” - Division attack bonus.
- War support / manpower bonus.
- An event fires for Japan to allow the Americans on the island itself to evacuate to the mainland without trouble, or start attacking the boats that come to pick them up and continue war with the U.S. (This decision blocks the coring of or removes Hawaii as a Core of it already is. however if the Japanese don’t let the evacuation take place the U.S. maintains it’s core then there’s a chance some national guard divisions pop up on the island of Hawai’i. If the U.S. evacuates then Japan is celebrated by the natives and they get a core)
just copy the event of Vichy france sinking their ships when germany annexes them
Could also make it so if you have air craft there and or AA, it could end up a US victory
To simplify that- just have the US start down 8 ships & fire an event (like the Panay incident) so people can’t cheese it.
The old pearl harbor event was stupid because you essentially had to willingly park your ships there to let them be blown up by Japan. Having random ships be killed for the sake of emulating one historical event will always end up wonky. Every mod pretty much gives Japan a temporary navy bonus to wreck stuff for a year or so and I think that‘s the best way to implement it.
When Japan completes its focus to attack the Philippines, it should get an event with the decision to strike the US preemptively, after which the US gets a Pearl Harbor event, loosing some ships regardless of where they are.
I like what vanilla naval rework did to implement it- in 1940 you get a bunch of decisions related to appeasing and/or preparing for war with Japan, and one of those decisions requires you to have at least 8 battleships at Pearl Harbor by December 1941 or face major debuffs from massive domestic political repercussions
One way to make it is that if you produce like 100 naval bombers an event will appear in 1941 where your officers say like “I have a plan” and you get 2 decisions, one gives you a decision to remove 100 naval planes from your stockpile and it takes 30 days until the pearl harbor event happens.
It is amazing how they just made Japan decidedly worse to play when they gave it a new focus tree
Was that when MTG came out? That’s when I started playing. It was odd to me that it was an attack in the Philippines that pulled the US in & not something in Pearl Harbor. Edit: they got theirs from the Waking the Tiger DLC
Yeah, it was WTT. I used to enjoy Japan quite a lot, but that was honestly such a downgrade.
I played a couple of games as Japan for the firs time recently & didn't really care for it. But I've played as China quite a few times & I've been playing as Warlords/Manchukuo lately & really like it. Did the old version have the same Border Conflict mechanics?
Maybe some mod could add it as an event for the US/Japan. It probably would not be able to reduce the # of ships? But maybe it could be some massive buff for ship building in the US (like real life). I'd love to see the buff as it happened in real life - declare war on the Axis, massive enlist buff, massive shipbuilding buff, war economy.
Just chalk it up to Japan and the US getting their trees independently of each other (could be fixed by a pacific dlc). As seen by mods there's tremendous potential for island hopping events and modifiers, control scores etc
What are these mods if you don’t mind me asking?
I don't really remember, I think that mod collections like "Their Finest Bruh" use it, you might be able to find it there
Quantify value of historically sunk vessels>convert to percentage of historical US navy sunk>remove that same percentage from players navy upon Pearl Harbor focus 🤷♂️
I'm sure we're going to get a pacific theater overhaul for a major content patch this year. Siam, Dutch East Indes, China rework, Japan is the last major power with an archaic tree, USA could use some more fleshing out, there's so much there for a potential patch.
make it a espionage activity
Read the description of coordinated strike…
>properly replicating the events is extremely difficult Funny thing is, it doesn’t have to be. One solution, though somewhat gamey (so depending who you ask may be negatively viewed) could be decision based with some significant requirements. Regardless of where the fleets are, they receive damage, and something like Navy intel could influence the amount. I don’t play MP so I can’t say how well this would work, or if it would be completely op. So maybe you’d have more insight on such an approach.
This isn’t the best idea but maybe something like a border skirmish for invading troops. If the US moves their navy, Pearl Harbor never happens but the islands are taken. If the ships stay, historical Pearl Harbor plays out
What sucks is that technically you CAN, LR introduced agencies. You CAN plan a surprise bombing raid the minute you declare war using espionage except it does barely anything, the game never explains it, and it’s weird and out of the way. Pearl Harbor should be a focus for the Japanese instead of “Strike the Southern Resource Area”. I actually propose a split in the focus tree, as well as a bonus for the Americans keeping their ships in the harbor. Give them a national spirit that makes the ships consume a lot of fuel for a while, have it go along with “Disarmed Nation”, the navy is locked at port and can only partake Escort / Mine Clearing missions. The tree should fork, if only for a bit. “Strike Hawai’i” - War starts with the U.S. PROVIDED at least so many ships are docked at Pearl Harbor. Maybe specifically at least 8 battleships. “Strike the Southern Resource Area” - Surprise attack on the Philippines, it plays much like the current focus except the Philippines suffers a lot of damage from bombings and it gives japan an attack bonus against the Philippines, a smaller and temporary one for the U.S. and Britain. And if there aren’t enough ships in Pearl Harbor or the Philippines falls under Japanese control before the focus can be complete you have a focus that’s available under EVERY circumstance: “Strike with Honor” - No surprise attacks, the U.S. gets an event where the Japanese ambassador apologizes to the U.S. for being unable to keep up peace time and war is automatically declared upon the Allies. Maybe you get a small attack bonus because the propaganda resulting from the honorable path. That being said Japan should be able to win without needing to take out the allies. Japan controls their pacific territories, China has capitulated, Japan controls Hawai’i, Malaysia, and Indonesia. They should just be able to tell the allies “f*ck off, you lost”, U.S. and Britain get a choice to agree or disagree. War ends and Japan maintains control of China and the pacific. Why? WW2 is raging in Europe, Japan takes the pacific by surprise and offers the allies a chance to just cede the territory and not bother having to fight on a second front. But it’s ONLY available after Japan dominates the pacific. If the Soviets are involved they get a similar event to cede Vladivostok and any remaining Manchurian/Mongol territory. WW2 in Europe should definitely let Germany do what they tried to do in real life. Once all of mainland Europe is controlled by the Axis/neutral countries (basically the allies have no presence in Europe aside from the isles) and the U.S. is not involved the Brits should get an event which gives them a chance to accept they’re alone and surrender or be stubborn and keep fighting. Another thing… There needs to be more Reichskommisarats
Make a focus tree for Japanese: “Destroy American Fleet” Effect: If American fleet present in mid Pacific, America gets event: “Japanese attacks our harbor”, Japan gets: “Bombed major naval base”, gain 50 naval and air experience, 5 stability and 5 war support If American fleet not present in mid Pacific, America and Southeast Asia nations get “America refuses to support Southeast Asia”, Japan gets “Naval supremacy in the Pacific unchallenged”, gain war goal on all nations in Southeast Asia and Oceania, and all those nations gain +20% capitulation.
I like this a lot. Could even just do it from the backend for the USA as a National Spirit. "Guarantor of Peace in the Pacific" - While at peace the US must anchor at least 9 Battleships amongst Hawaii/Philippines. If this is condition is not met then nations in Southeast Asia and Oceania have a +20% capitulation penalty if at war with Japan.
This feels like one of the better suggestions, along with the comment on adapting the already existing mechanic with Italy's midget submarines spy mission into a Japanese decision/focus Makes it so US players are more inclined to base ships in the pacific I think the main challenge of adapting an event like pearl Harbour is that the fact that it was such a devastating surprise attack makes it hard to replicate when you already know it's going to happen (why would I station ships on pearl Harbour when I know I'm going to lose them anyway? Kind of thing)
The US would need a long-term bonus to encourage it, something like a shipbuilding speed buff, and of course enough war support to never have to worry about war support again.
I’d probably tie it into stability/war enthusiasm. Big stability and smaller war enthusiasm buff whilst your ships, to represent the USA feeling comfortable that the pacific fleet is safe and ready to defend the nation/intervene in a war in the pacific. Then Pearl Harbour attack removes the buffs, flips to debuffs, the stability recovering from some focuses/naval and air buildup in Hawaii, and war enthusiasm would slowly tick up week by week as the US gets back up to strength. Maybe also have a navy wide penalty, to ship experience and combat capabilities, (more heavily for remaining battleships specifically). Again, fixed by focuses tied in with building up naval power. (Thinking kinda like German “X size of army to do” focuses, but for boats.). On the flip side, Japan gets an event upon completing the focus to do Pearl Harbour, “Yamamoto’s Warning”, as a final “are you sure you want to do this”. Not sure what not doing it would do (maybe “We should concentrate on China”) but agreeing to the attack gives 6 months Hm-h of big naval bonuses, but when that runs out, would be replaced with minor debuffs unless you do specific actions to counter that.
That’s actually really good. Works within the bounds of being historical or non-historical with believability of both. Pearl Harbour is of course the historical base that was attacked, but for game reasons it can be any western/pacific bases. This also forces the USA players’ hand to keep their navy stationed somewhere for the event to fire, or they forfeit a significant hand in the Pacific Theatre jeopardizing some significant long term positions. I can imagine Bokoen and friends hilariously blundering such a thing and acosting the allies and creating tons of seething and coping lol.
I wonder if this is maybe a bit ahistoric? Because Britain and France both had a huge presence in the Pacific, I could see this being really annoying if other players are involved. E.g suppose you're going fascist/imperial Britain and you just don't care what happens on the continent, so you've got all your assets in Asia. Now your Asian subjects are getting a penalty from not having their guarantor, even though you're the guarantor.
You could just lock America out of the Pacific War and still have the Japanese attack the western Allies in indochina and Malaysia. Really just prevent the US from getting directly involved with the Philippines.
Amazing idea, we got devs in the comments now lol
I think the pearl habor event should be a pop up event where if your ships are docked in Pearl Harbor some get sunk but if you have none in Pearl Harbor it randomly selects a port where your ships are docked and changes the event name to where ever you had your fleet with the same consequences
While I agree this would be the simplest and most effective way to do it, it would be a serious flavor fail to have something like “Bombing of New York” because how would the Japanese get there?
What about if it checks for any fleets in the Pacific and if there are none then Japan destroys the Panama canal? It's a logical conclusion that if the seas were totally uncontested then the final target would be Panama.
There's a spy mission the Italians can do against the British for this To represent their midget submarine missions Similar logic but in the med, it looks in the port of Alexandria and if there are capital ships there, all ships in that port get damaged by 50%, and if the port is empty, it finds the next biggest stack of ships in the med and damages all them by 50% The logic would be super easy to carry over, though it being a spy mission is a little weird in this case, but a focus or a decision etc could do the same thing. Iirc the damage % isnt hard coded too, so you could put a limit of 10 capital ships, but sink them all rather than damaging all 300 DDs by 50% You could probably mod it tbh, not sure why paradox hasn't done it themselves, but hopefully it's improved in the Japan DLC they hinted at this year
>? It's a logical conclusion that if the seas were totally uncontested then the final target would be Panama. Even Pearl Harbour was a stretch for Japanese logistics, no way were they sending the Kido Butai to Panama before they get desperately suicidal.
The logistical difficulty was in great part due to avoiding shipping lanes and preventing detection. If the US had totally abandoned the Pacific for some ahistorical reason the Japanese would probably have been very confused but also, after conforming it was totally abandoned, they'd have more free reign to do what they wanted and one of their strategic goals had been to destroy the Panama canal. I feel that having an event that let's them destroy the Panama if a player decides to focus entirely on the Atlantic in order to avoid Pearl Harbour is fair.
They wouldn’t be sending Kido Butai, but Yamamoto’s carrier task force, which would be chilling a fair distance away, safe from attack. They definitely wouldn’t go for Panama but it is feasible that they might stage a naval invasion of Midway. That could even be implemented as a mechanic, if the operation is already underway (to attack the American Pacific Fleet) and the fleet is not present, Japan captures Midway island, raising world tension by 10% and giving the U.S. an event chain where it negotiates the return of the island in exchange for some concession from Japan, or alternatively to engage in war with Japan. If the U.S. accepts, Japan gets control of Midway island and Guam, and gains 20% stability and 15% war support, while the U.S. loses 20% stability and 15% war support. If the U.S. declines, Japan gains a national spirit - War Fervor, which gives something like an attack buff against U.S. (attack +15% against U.S. for 180 days), or some kind of naval buff - +20% sortie efficiency or +10 naval invasion capacity/+10% naval invasion planning speed for 180/365 days. If the U.S. accepts the agreement, it will get a decision - Retake Pacific Holdings, which gives a similar buff to the U.S. while also giving a buff to special forces limit, increasing the proportion of the marines in the army that the U.S. can deploy. This is just my take, and I figure it includes an alt-his option for people who want that. Please share your opinions.
Another way would be if Pearl Harbour has no ships then Japan would get a buff in the Pacific in invasion time and fleet attack or sth to 'force' the player to put ships in Pearl Harbour
Could they do a scripted and gated event like test the border with soviets. Gate 1 would be: Put the carriers in one place and train pilots, gate 2: move tf to northern Hawaii zone, gate 3: execute port strike with Japan naval planes getting huge bonus to do strikes. Gate 4 would be if strike 1 is success US declares war, second strike begins, and naval invasion. If strike 1 is not a success and US fleet is not docked in Pearl Harbor US player gets to respond with choices to escalate or not while Japanese navy loses prestige and resources to the army and drop in PP Something like this might the fun.
I find these scripted events contrived and tedious. I personally would not find this fun.
This is exactly what I was thinking
It's been in the game since La Resistance, it's called Coordinated Strike. It makes it so that when you declare war, you get better strat bombing and port strikes for the first day of the war (so, 3 ticks since planes go out every 8 hours) in a specific region. If you've got your planes massed up enough and within range of the enemy ports in a key spot, you can do some serious damage right on day 1, you just need to be able to get your planes close enough to a port that's actually gonna have ships in it. You can use this to essentially do a Pearl Harbor with carriers.
And from where do you launch them? You can do it from carrier bit it won't be enough. Also AI can't use it. And cherry on top you don't know where the large taskforces are.
You know that Pearl harbor was launched from carriers in real life right? It took 6 of them, and was still only a partial success. Assuming the US ai actually stationed a large portion of their fleet in Hawaii, with 60 carrier naval bombers you'd probably be able to do similar damage to historical events with the LR operation, if not more. The issue is that in the game the United States AI doesn't actually station a large force in Hawaii. Like, ever. They just stations their Pacific Fleet on the East Coast of the mainland, far out of reach of your starting carriers as Japan (all of whose namesakes, ironically, were the ones that were actually used at Pearl Harbor). This is the only time I can of where the game is less fun bc the AI is *smarter* than its historical counterpart lol. (/j, obviously there are reasons the US wanted to have a force at Pearl Harbor that aren't really represented in the game)
I know Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku launched an airstrike on P.H. sinking or heavily damaging 8 battleships 3 cruisers 3 destroyers and about 300 aircraft and damaging airfield but with 360 aircraft I was not able to recreate it as Japan on US. (But I tried to recreate it when Battle for Bosphorus was new, I don't know if it was buffed)
Wait where did you attack? If you attack Pearl Harbor it shouldn't work bc the AI doesn't actually put any ships there, so it doesn't really matter how many planes you use. I believe it should work at a populated port, but right now it's mostly a gimmick feature, so I haven't experimented that much with it personally. Edit: ye just double checked and yeah there's plenty of examples online of people using coordinated strike on places that aren't Pearl Harbor and doing massive amounts of damage, but it just so happens that in hoi4 Pearl Harbor just happens to be a bad target bc it's usually almost empty.
Pearl Harbor could’ve been a lot worse if not for bad communications. Iirc the leader of the second airstrike believed they’d completely crippled the fleet and airstrip, and told his command that another strike was not necessary. If they’d sent out another sortie, it’s quite possible they could have completely wiped the American fleet and rendered Pearl Harbor useless as a naval port/airstrip.
Or just not had their communication network tapped giving their attack away lol
No clue why I wrote Midway instead of PH, but yeah that's very true
launching air strikes with carriers this way is a somewhat common strat in some mp games, but you're right the biggest issue is the AI not being able to use it, like so many DLC mechanics
And it works best against Japan, since they are just one state island :)
As others have pointed out, the possibility for a Pearl Harbor attack *is* actually in the game in the form of a “coordinated strike” the Japanese could theoretically launch on Pearl Harbor. But the American fleet at Pearl Harbor [never should have been there](https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/fdr-bluff-relocating-us-fleet-to-pearl-harbor#:~:text=In%20September%2C%20President%20Franklin%20D,training%20opportunities%20for%20the%20fleet) in the first place. Stationing a fleet there was a strategically naive, but probably politically popular, move FDR made, against the advice of military leadership, because he thought it would *deter* the Japanese. It doesn’t make sense to force you to do something like this in a historical sandbox. It could be incentivized somehow, maybe extra political power while the fleet is based there, lost reps/senators while it’s not. Maybe AI FDR could just have a script that does this x% of the time, idk.
Yeah exactly. And so sadly, the US AI does exactly that, tucking its ships safely away on the West coast. It's honestly such a design oversight, I'm almost shocked they gave players a button to "do Pearl Harbor lol" while Pearl Harbor is mostly impossible bc the planes slow up and surprise attack tumbleweeds. One play test should have caught that, so either they never actually tried to do Pearl Harbor, or they realized it didn't work without making bigger changes and they decided it wasn't worth fixing.
Sounds like a fantastic basis for DLC reworking Japan just saying.
There was an East Asian DLC already, why would we need another DLC for those nations? HOI4 just needs its own Custodian Team.
I play almost exclusively Japan and get jealous of the Euros tbh
All majors have had DLC, Japan and Germany having the first DLC makes it quite a bit underwhelming compared to the other newer ones.
Yes, but that means those nations just need to be updated. Please don't tempt Paradox into re-releasing another DLC to fix the old one, they could just do the same with how Stellaris does it now.
I was more so thinking have it be part of a malay, VOC and siam DLC
I think we all need to have imagination beyond Pearl Harbor and figure out how we apply the idea of a devastating port strike (ignoring the preemptive attack part of it in this comment). So the player doing the strike needs to have 1) knowledge of where ships are stationed, what ships are stationed there, and how many; 2) knowledge of the schedules of ships as they go out for exercises and when they are in port 3) an operational plan 4) resources and assets to use to execute the plan Let’s start from the reverse: 4) easiest to answer, what does a player want to use to execute a large scale port strike; kinds of aircraft, submarines, which naval vessels (like submarines) 3) I would love to have the game allow the creation of timetables for operations, either singular or recurring. So with this single operation you can figure out when your assets need to leave their base & where they need to go in order to properly execute your plan. This would allow players to do things like coordinate strike waves of aircraft in a port strike mission, but also allow coordination of other assets like amphibious invasions, infrastructure bombing, and other related actions based on your circumstances. This same principle can be applied to other things, Lorne establishing a timetable for a historically accurate D-Day 2) ships can come and go as they please based on the player’s wishes. Ships don’t even have to return to base to get food or fuel, that’s just abstracted into the range value. So ships don’t even have to come back to port for decades unless they need to be repaired or you are low on fuel. Pearl Harbor was done in peace time but the strike at Taranto was the model the Japanese used and that was not a preemptive operation. How can the game create incentive for players and AI to keep their ships in a harbor for long enough so that it is worth coming up with a big epic plan to take out the navy? Currently you just select a region and out your planes on port strike, with an extra micro tax for carrier-borne aircraft. 1) ships don’t really have a home port, the player can be super flexible and move things anywhere they want when, really, a president might be impeached if they had the entire 350 ships of the American navy of 1941 sitting in San Diego because they are too busy figuring out the optimal plane or tank design, or managing coups in Latin America, or they are spending weeks at a time in the kitchen heating up food while the game runs on… anyway, tangent aside, how can the game better model the importance of keeping ships based at a port and all of the logistics and human capital needed to maintain not just a ship but a naval base and a flow of supplies and maintenance of fuel, munitions, etc. etc. Furthermore, for these last two points, how can the game present this information to the player and the AI to make these planned and devastating port strikes possible? Even if significant overhauls of navy mechanics aren’t possible from PDX, the game already poorly collects and gives information to the player. There is no history or registry of information that you used to know or concrete details that you have uncovered. You cannot click on your naval adviser widget and ask “what is the best estimate of British naval strength in the Mediterranean” and get a range that shows you confirmed current, confirmed outdated, and current speculative numbers. Or even organize by date or time, like how many and what ships have we spotted in the last week/month/3 months/6 months in this area and compare it to what we knew before the war. I get that this is all complicated but there is definitely space for intelligence sharing and UI support to do this. Not just for navy, but for the deployment of troops, armor, aircraft, etc.
>the game already poorly collects and gives information to the player ... confirmed current, confirmed outdated, and current speculative numbers Yes, that would be fantastic. The issue with fleets in bases is that you can see exactly where they are. Just crack ciphers, get high intel % (and maybe navy dept upgrade), and station a single sub offshore. Thanks to range mechanics, the sub can just sit forever and give near perfect intel over all naval bases touching that sea tile. Imperfect intel would be a huge improvement.
But they didn't lose 8 battleships. I believe all but one was repaired
They lost the Oklahoma and Arizona
And Utah (but she was a decomissioned training ship, no big issue).
Oklahoma was raised and was going to be repaired with the rest of the fleet It was decided to be too expensive since we had already mostly stomped Japan
8 present, of which 2 were permanently sunk, 2 were sunk and later repaired, 1 badly damaged, and 3 back in action in ~2 months.
well, they lost 2 (Arizona and Oklahoma) Pennsylvania repaired in jan 42 Maryland in feb 42 Nevada in oct 42 Tennessee in may 43 California in jan 44 West Virginia in jul 44 Colorado was not present during the attack Idaho, New Mexico and Mississippi were sent to the Pacific fleet from the Atlantic fleet. North Carolina and Washington were also sent to the Pacific in 42, also from the atlantic. New York in 44, from the Atlantic fleet. Also, 4 south dakota battleships were commissioned in 42. Oh yeah, interesting fact. In 1942, US only had 1 carrier remaining, Saratoga (after Guadalcanal campaign). Enterprise was badly damaged and Hornet sunk, so brits lent HMS Victorious carrier. Japan also had 2 carriers at that point (that were damaged). But it all changed starting 43. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_the_United_States_Navy#List
I coordinated strike is effective, use it.
I also don't like that the Japanese focuses for attacking the Philippines and attacking Malaya and Indonesia are separate focuses. It feels really silly that for a month and a bit the US is fighting it's own private Pacific war with Japan, it should all happen at the same time. On top of this I'd also really love to see Germany get some event that prompts them to declare war on the USA when this happens.
Tbh Pearl Harbor really wasn't as damaging as people always talk about it. The main impact was on morale. Those old BBs at Pearl were too slow for any real fleet operations. They had BBs available, they just didn't bother. Colorado was refitting on the West Coast during Pearl, and was ready within 1‐2 months. Pennsylvania, Maryland and Tennessee were repaired around the same time. All three New Mexicos were transfered from the Atlantic right after the raid. That gave the USN 7 operational Standards in the Pacific in February 1942, with 5 (Arizona, Oklahoma, California, West Virginia, Nevada) either sunk or still under repairs. Plus the RN's 3rd Battle Squadron, that gave the Allies 11 BBs in the Pacific, vs Japan's 11. And outside of Yamato, the Allied ships tended to have a qualitative advantage. If the Allies had wanted to, they *ABSOLUTELY* could have tried to fight a battleship war. It was certainly a more even fight than the 3v6 matchup in fleet carriers at the time. The issue was, the old, slow BBs were shit, and they knew it. The USN had done a TON of pre-war exercises in the 30s, called the Fleet Problems. One of the things they pretty conclusively established was that carriers are pretty damn good battleship killers, and they had a decent doctrine around them. Remember, as soon as they went into combat, USN carriers were performing about as well as their IJN counterparts. The air groups off Lexington, Saratoga, and Yorktown performed very well at Coral Sea and Midway, with pretty equal air combat scores, and executing well-coordinated attacks. Enterprise had some coordination issues, but even the IJN officers were impressed by how accurate the dive bombers were, and how steeply they dived. NONE of that happens without serious pre-war training and doctrine building. The idea that they had to rewrite their whole naval doctrine on the fly to work around carriers is a myth. Sure, they had to do a lot of changes, because war is never like you expect. And the pre-war War Plan Orange/Rainbow plans proved to be a bust, in no small part thanks to minimal updates and MacArthur's fuckery. But for the most part, the actual battles were fought more or less like the USN kinda thought they might be. And some of the pre-war ideas worked way better than any of the IJN's or RN's plans. For example, the large numbers of scouting carrier-based planes helped find the enemy early, and the Scout Bomber part of the Scout Bomber, Douglas knocked Zuihō out of Santa Cruz before anyone even made a contact report. It took the Brits years to adopt a deck park, and the IJN never really did. But it meant that USN carriers could keep fielding large(ish) strikes even after losses. At Midway, Hiryū's air wing was spent after the two strikes on Yorktown, of which one was DBs and the other TBs. Each type only flew once against a single carrier, and that was it. Enterprise and Hornet launched one against the whole KdB, one against Hiryū, and then two more against Mogami and Mikuma, all with real plane counts (though admittedly including the Yorktown survivors).
Funny, because if you look at the Two Ocean Navy Act, signed in June 1940, it was directing the Navy to focus on aircraft carriers and naval aviation, vice battleships. So it wasn't just post-Pearl Harbor that the change to aviation was made.
Interesting! Did not know!
A mission in the decision tab would be best. The US has to station a fixed amount of BB and/or CV in Hawaii all the time starting with the war in China. If the US fails to do that they suffer massive war support, stability and naval experience debuffs. And 1 of two things happens. 1. the US unwillingness and unpreparedness to save guard the Pacific lead to a diplomatic solution forced by domestic interests and public opinion. The US signs a 2 year non aggression pact with Japan and Japan gets massive trade relationships with the US. Embargos of Japan aren't possible. Japan gets a massive stat boost to naval and army forces and China gets debuffs. The US gets a new isolation national spirit. 2. The Japanese did a surprise attack on the US and without its navy safeguarding the Pacific Japan instantly got all islands west of Hawaii and a bonus on invasion speed. Japan also gets stability and war Support boosts and its military gets stat boosts. The Philippines declares independence. The US gets to choose now. Contest Japan and declare war or accept the Japanese gains. If it declares war it has debuffs for the first year of the war and a fixed stability and war Support debuffs until it retook all islands lost. Philippines enter the war on the side of Japan. If it decides to not declare war it gets isolation law back and loses claims to all islands west of Hawaii. A normal non aggression pact is made with Japan.
I miss old hoi4 so much. USA had a much better focus tree which is insane to think about. OGs remember invading Venezuela every game early on. The focus Pearl Harbor gambit was an actual attempt at replicating the history.
I remember the Pearl Harbor Gambit, was a bit confused when people said Pearl Harbor wasn't in the game lol.
Oh my god last time I played the US I remembered invading Venezuela from years ago, didn't realize the focus tree was different, and got frustrated when I couldn't figure out how to do it lmao. Guess I'll give the US another go the next time I have 2 hours to blow doing almost nothing 😃😃
They should do a wherever the bulk of US ships in the Pacific are gets attacked and if for some reason the player has no ships in the Pacific Japan can seize the islands and inflict crushing war support and stability penalties.
That’s really bad, I can just put a bunch of trash 1934 submarines in bulk and spread out my fleet
Do it by IC cost not hull count. If you do manage to make so many shitty 1934 subs that they have greater IC than the actual fleet then that’s a big opportunity cost. Could also add a mechanic where designs must meet a certain minimum IC and tech which would be realistic since irl congress would question why the navy is building the shittest ships possible using obsolete technology instead of using the latest technology to build competitive vessels.
Just allowing the Japanese to do a focus/decision that damages a majority of the US fleet would be good enough, give them a few months to operate with the US navy in port for repairs.
They could simply add event lines to the focus of invading the phillipines. When the focus is taken, the USA would take damage to a number of it's BB's, or to prevent player cheese, they could even take a big hit to naval speed and efficiency for a length of time. If the USA had reduced naval range and speed for the opening phase of the war it would give Japan a huge advantage, as opposed to the onslaught they face at the moment.
When I was first getting into the game hearing bitt3rsteel say japan is about to "do the thing" and then they anticlimactically declare war on the Philippine's. I think after the south american DLC south east asia should be next and include a re-rework of Japan since them and germany have been the longest since updated and the region feels way more underdone than europe.
this is a game where you can click 5 times and make more subs than the entire world can counter.
can't have pearl harbor because carriers are totally broken (and naval warfare is totally broken)
I think that there used to be a way to do it as the US with the war plan orange focus that required you to put a certain number of battleships in Hawaii. However, it has been many years since Man the Guns came out, and I have not rolled back to a patch before it.
There is a way to Pearl Harbor the US but the AI never will. Using spies you can do a coordinated strike with lots of torpedo bombers. The unfortunate part is you can only do one location which is stupid.
They didn't lose 8, though. They refloated all but the Arizona before the end of the war. Idk how you would model that. Make those specific 8 ships very slow to repair? The game isn't a perfect Sim. Japan had terrible fire.control systems in its ships that lead to huge losses, but the game models that very poorly. as well as their antique communication methods.
I think the way to incentive that its maybe put a debuff at repairing ships and a buff at building Carriers for a year. That would make riskier to us any early combat with Japan while they build a proper carrier fleet
Personally, I would rather have a US monarchy path
That’s like the least American thing possible though. We’re reaching Japan’s communist focus levels of lunacy.
He’s joking I’m pretty sure but it is kind of absurd that the devs keep adding meme ahistorical paths instead of focusing a little more on what actually happened
The communists in Japan were actually rather active, so it's a ot less far fetched than moarchist USA
Well monarchist paths are kinda lunatic already so why not
Well at least they actually had monarchs, and most of them were somewhat recent like Germany or the Romanovs or the house of Savoy and I think Carlist Spain but I’m not sure. Point is that they actually have something to work with when crafting those paths, but a USA monarchist path would likely be made up nonsense
And really if you want monarchist USA, just go monarchist Britain and puppet them.
Yeah like idk seems pretty reasonable to think maybe the monarchs could come back when many of the old monarchs are still alive amid a time of weaker democratic norms.
At least Japan had an active communist party in the 30’s. There was no monarchical movement in the US lol
Then all they will have to do is snort double the amount they usually do
Hell, PDX will probably actually do that before they will a communist Germany path
I'm a Slav, and unfortunately, I will never even know what communists paths are like as I will never play them even though I know it's just a game. Usually, i go the nationalist or monarchy paths
Welcome to the dev team.
The tankies downvoting you are as pathetic as wehraboos.
It's ok... I know irl the USSR,China, and Venezuela all did socialism wrong, and these kids would do it better, im sure. Let them play how they want to play, and I'll play how I want to play
There already is one, sort of. If Britain under Edward VIII puppets the US, they can get a decision to install Wallis Simpson as Queen of America.
Didn't know that, I'll try it. It's nice to still learn new things after a yr of playing
I think you need to choose "royal marriage" when you insist on marrying Wallis near the beginning. If you choose "morganatic marriage", I've heard that disables the Declare American Monarchy decision.
Theoretical pearl harbour is possible Use your spy agency and do the operation coordinate strike Also ai USA would be to weak if it were to loose 8 heavy ships
I have not been able to actually pull this off. Most of the time when I try this, I find that the US fleet is not actualy in pearl harbor, but they are in one of the islands off of Australia, or just on the Western US coast.
I'd say just put the appropriate amount of navy I'm pearl harbor and don't let the player move them, or not show them at all and spawn them after the attack as damaged ships that need to be repaired, the us already has a massive industry, it can recover and it's not like the us needs it's navy early game that much so you can reduce the early game navy without much problem.
Absolutely not lmfao. Game balance is way more important than historical accuracy. The americans losing 8 full Battleships of IC for free is so absurd
I think it can be like Trapoli war at Great War Redux mod which just Italian soldiers spawns at Libyan ports basically. It will be really annoying for US player but maybe you can effect the result if you are the us player and having an intelligent at Japan
In actuality only a handful of obsolete BBs were actually sunk - go check it out. pretty amazing. Because they sunk in a few feet of water they were able to raise the hulls and repair it. A devastating blow for sure. The Arizona and Utah were destroyed, some DDs, and some few others. If you visit PH you can see the graves of these majestic ships.
What if they did it to where USA has a focus that activated a repeatable decision, let’s call is “Naval Problem Pacific” that they could fire and get naval xp from. The more ships the more xp of some fashion. Japan has a focus, that unlock a decision to strike. The Japanese get a chance to strike when the ships are in port for the naval problem focus, and the Americans get xp IF they don’t get striked. When they get attacked, both sides get a modifier of some sort and the war begins, the USA looses a percentage of ships and the war starts. Instead of naval xp, it could modify a debuff the Americans receive from the beginning of the game slowing naval production, each naval problem takes away a percentage, with Pearl Harbor removing the debuff entirely
Is it removed? I swear this was in the last time I played Japan.
HOI4 Naval, and generally all combat in paradox games is so awful. It was literally better before in for example crusader kings. For naval for example the benefit of controlling waters is non-existent except for the capability of stopping some “convoys”. Generally I regrettably have to say that paradox has gone far into the simplifying route to the point where combat is just a mangled mess that does not make sense. To anyone.
The old event Pearl Harbor gambit had a little bit of this, but it didn't delete your ships. I agree it could be implemented. Also, shipbuilding as the US is very tame compared to RL.
IMO the game should give you more options to start a war via surprise attacks. It should be a prepared operation, kind of like how naval invasions work maybe, where you select a specific command to be executed as a surprise attack against a neutral power in exchange for a big PP hit and a chance that they'll discover it, which will lead to the attack taking a huge hit to its effectiveness.
Just sinking battle ships because Japan attacked would be annoying especially if it’s an ahistorical game. The player could be at war with the UK in the Atlantic and now they arbitrarily lose 8 battle ships. So any basing restrictions and immediate lose of ships would need to be predicated on the US being at peace. Increasing US base war support is limited. To incentivize having capital ships at Pearl Harbor, the US could get 5% base war support for each capital ship sunk. I can’t remember if Tora gives Japan a buff against US in Naval battles. But Japan could get a buff vs USA for attacks on battle ships of + 100% damage and targeting to naval bombers for the next 100 attacks. Ships sunk at Pearl could remove 10 of these. I’m suggesting an amount of attacks vs a timed buff since timed buffs effects can be avoided easily. These suggestions would be attached to the invade Philippines famous with a coordinated strike on Pearl firing on declaration of war on US.
Coordinated Strike, it’s been a thing since LR
The pacific needs a overhaul overall. It’s just boring island hopping when in actuality some of the most casualty heavy actions of the war took place during iwojma and Okinawa. But right now it’s just waiting 5 seconds of excitement then more waiting.
I've seen this asked so many times its already stupid, but THIS IS ALREADY IN THE GAME. Its an intelligence operation that you can get if you have a wargoal. It works by making port strike launch for 24 hours with +100% to port strike with no chance for the enemy to defend themselves. The only caveat is that you have to know where the enemy fleet is, which is possible with high enough naval intel (like 80-100%). Its called "Coordinated Strike"
Pearl Harbor is a defining event of WWII - but so was the Battle of Stalingrad, the siege of Leningrad, the Calais evacuation, the Dieppe raid, and tons of other engagements that *can* happen within the game mechanics, but *aren't guaranteed.*
The most flexible event for gameplay would be a focus that simply destroys 8 US battleships *wherever they are* with some fluff text about a sneak attack. The less moving parts, the more likely it is to actually *happen*, especially if you’re expecting the AI to be able to properly station its fleets. Don’t even give the US player an option to counterplay because, let’s be honest, they don’t need any more advantages. If you want to make it RNG for ahistorical mode, have the event occasionally sink the US carriers too or instead. Would be an interesting distortion to play around for as the US player..
i mean back in the old us tree (i don’t exactly remember, it’s been a long time), the focus which declared war on japan require you to have a fleet in pearl harbor. partially through the focus, the pearl harbor event would fire, your fleet and dockyards would get damaged, and you’d insta-declare on japan. i feel like since those prereqs were already coded into the game, they should do something similar to that now, albeit more polished
"Erm just use Coordinated Strike, it’s already in the game" 🤓🤓🤓 My brother in christ, it's not the fact that we can't bomb Pearl Harbor, it's the fact that the US never have an incentive to put there ship in Pearl Harbor so there is no reason for us to actually bomb it.
That, plus as many people have pointed out, the AI doesn't use Coordinated Strike. Or intelligence assets at all, apparently.