How to successfully Austro-Hungaria?

[wknehring]

Hello everybody o7

There are several problems with my Austro-Hungarian (KuK) games I start to play. At the moment I am playing my 3rd try and it is going to be the next aborted game.

My first try was on historical budget with manual built legacy fleet- unplayable! Once I had something like a playable fleet, I had unrest level 7, that dropped to 5 at the start of my first war and than I was instant blockaded for the whole 6 month duration war, than the Kaiser was assasinated. Well done!

My 2nd try was on game budget, also with manual built legacy fleet. There I tried to built a class of Bs I could hold as long as possible in my fleet by retrofits (I calculated with 1 engine-refit, 1 gun-refit and all firecontrol-refits to director firing). I built 4 Bs in Great Britain with 13" Qu.-2 Guns (worst decission you can imagine), 16 6" guns, 2,5" deck and 10" belt. In addition to that I built them with 19 knots speed and with the first retrofit to central firing, I bulged them for better torpedo protection- the speed dropped to 17 knots not to the expected 18"- this in addition to the crap 13" guns (less than 10k range) I didn´t get anything in gunrange to fight (all could outrun me). And in a few night fights in infight situations the penetration was so bad I hardly damaged any bigger ship than CL or DD. But they could take 1 torpedohit without any serious damage.
Than I build 2 CA with 10" guns for cruiser battles and as scouting group for fleet battles. As CL I tried an 8" CL (2x2 8", many 4" guns and 4 broadside torpedo tubes)- both with 23 knots of speed to keep them as long as possible in the fleet.
In addition I built ~16 standard DDs with 500ts. Later added some 600ts DDs with 3TT.
A first war against Italy I won with no gain of colonies after 6 months. And the next war lasted 28 months with a defeat. After 24 months leading with nearly no DDs and CL left in the Italian Navy 2 of my Bs were sunk- 1 was a victim by RNG by a submarine event and 1 was sunk after a battle by a submarine in the post battle screen. 4 months later unrest was so high, the Kaiser was assasinated again (poor guy).
There and in an Italian game I started to hate these 8" CL because the rate of fire is too low to hunt down enemy CL and sink them. And as screen against DD the accuracy is to bad to sink them.

Now I am in my 3rd game and disaster starts to strike again!

Legacy fleet: 3 Bs (2x2 12", 20 6", 11" belt, 11" turrets, 12" conning tower, 2,5" deck, 3" casemates, 2,5" BE, 1" DE, 20Kn- short range and low freeboard), 4 CA (2x2 10", 5" belt, 2" deck, 23Kn), 8 CL (8 6", 4TT, 2" Deck and Belt, 23Kn), 18 500ts DDs (28Kn, 2TT- short range)
I am in a war with France- at the moment for 24 months. I have sunk 6 of 10 French Bs, all French CA have sunk or interned. They only have 1 CL and a few AMC and DDs left. I am leading with 30k to 15k VP and I only had 2 events for peace (none with "press for hard terms"). I have lost 3 of my 4 CA (the only thing that hurts- 2 through flotation by heavy gundamage while they were in AI-mode as scouting force in fleet battles- I play rear admiral mode), 1 CL and a bunch of DDs.
And now the tide starts to turn! My last battle was a fleet battle, were I have sunk 2 French Bs and detonated the last French CA in action. All my big ships returned with low speed (only 4 DDs sunk, 3 by ruptured bulkheads, because they stop and accelarate like idiots instead of keeping low speed like my other ships- that´s so annoying!). In the end 1 of my Predreadnoughts was sunk by increased flooding (last log entry)! I had no message about that during the battle and was returning with 5 knots of speed! How is this possible? Unrest starts to climb and is at 3 now (because the Austrian folk lost one of their big ships).
I had a few months with a fleet value of 60 to 80 and France had 15 to 25 and I didn´t blockade them- how?

I had 6 new 600ts DDs in WU-status that were thrown in the next fleet battle instead of taking my old ones- 4 were lost (as mentioned above) because they behave like idiots in the battles- flotiilla-attack into secondary gunrange without droping torpedos and than retreat- all medium damaged. Next run, one was sunk and 3 heavy damaged. At the end my fleet was returning to base at 5 knots speed and these idiots accelerate to 20 knots and stop and so on until their bulkheads ruptured.

I try to do as few as possible mistakes and now the game is starting to harass me.

What can I do? I win battles, I sink enemy ships to a level no navy could go any further, because it is going to be a fleet in being! France has 4 Bs in the Mediterranian with a screen of 1 CL and a hand full of DDs. All my battles start to happen near Tunis or near Corsica or the Southern French coast. For 1 year I had no battle in the Adriatic Sea- that says to me France is in the Defence. So why the heck do I not win this war?

Do you have any suggestions? Do you see any "no gos" I have done?

I am going to fight on and hope I get some new peace events and hopefully get some points for colonies. If not this will be the last try to be successful with the KuK navy for a long time! Because this is no funny way to get arse kicked all the time. If I do mistakes I can learn from them and do it better the next time (like this 13" mess earlier). But if you lose important ships because of some bugs or strange ingame things, this is no fun for me and I can´t do anything against that.

[gornik]

Hello, wknehring !

You've learned pretty fast, your 3rd game seem gone as well as it could for KuK. So I just try to clean some non-obvious rules of game.

There is difference between winning battles and winning the war. Country with whole navy underwater may live longer than without sea trade. France has main home possession in Northern Europe, so you can't blockade it from your ports, so it's time to raiding - without cruiser fleet France will suffer even from cheapest AMC raiders, and in Mediterranean you may even risk to send CL on it (if not short-ranging). After decent merchant loses country usually try to surrender in good (for you) terms. Or you may just wait more, using large war budget for building new ships. Once I saw war, which was 110 months long...

Ruptured bulkheads seem may happen even with stopped ship, so your DD captains are innocent. Also DD often got 1 unstoppable flooding which sunk them quite fast. And B may increase speed to hold battleline, especially if in another division, so I check all my big ships every hour of battle and after it, manually detaching most damaged ones (even without flooding - completely destroyed superstructures are torch waiting HE shell to lit it...). Detached ships usually turn to base at 10 knots. Anyway, early ships have bad damage control, so they may sunk from smallest hole - as there were no Hans Brinker to plug it! Weather may hit as well - low-freeboard ships are extremely prone to storm flooding if damaged. Sometimes you can do nothing with it...

Early DD are bad in flotilla attacks, as their torpedoes are extremely short-ranged (you may see their characteristics in ship's screen), while even 4" tertiary gun may sink them with single shell. So any YOUR launch is miracle before 1907-8, while loses of 6-8 DD I usually treat as "acceptable". This also means, that bulging Bs before this date may be bit overkill, if you don't plan regular night fleet battles.

Some notes about fleet building (from my experience):
- For smaller countries I usually build 2 types of legacy Bs. First 4-6 are nothing more than "hulks for statistic" - 10-12Kton, 2x12" or 4x10", but with decent protection. They should help you survive blockade. And 1+some half-ready "normal" as yours, they should actually do damage. (1 ready should prevent bad events like overweight or speed failing). They will surely be ready before first war.
- I personally love 2100 ton short-range bad-protected CL, they work quite well as scouts and may sink slow 4" raiding CL... sometimes. And they are extremely cheap!
- 400 ton DD serve as "good" as 500 ton, but are cheaper. Speed above 27 IMO don't needed for them.

And finally, to raise your spirit, picture from Die Muskete illustrated journal. KuK battleship approaches Adria's beach:

[jwsmith26]

gornik offered some great advice. Here's a bit more.

Regarding your 2nd game - Low penetration is a universal problem for all early guns. None can penetrate an average B's belt armor. The solution is to attempt to wreck the enemy's upper works and hopefully catch them on fire in the process. You should use HE ammo for this process and forgo armor piercing shells until your penetration figures rise. Setting "AP projectiles" research to "high" in the tech tree speeds this process. The drop in speed due to bulging is the right amount - bulging reduces speed by 10% which in your case would be 1.9 kts. Personally, I would not have used the British 13" -2 guns but your stated goal of later refitting them makes the choice a bit more palatable, but really, I believe the cost to do this is unjustifiably high, especially for a nation with such a weak economy. If your Bs survived torpedo hits without serious damage, you were very lucky. I wouldn't count on that being normal.

Italy doesn't have much in the way of colonies outside of the Med and gaining Mediterranean colonies does not provide much benefit to AH. if you want colonies you probably need to take on (and beat) a different nation. That's a tall order for AH early in the game. Italy is your natural enemy and it can be difficult to avoid wars with them.

What can I say about the sub attacks - they were just bad luck and with a nation as fragile as AH you can't afford bad luck. Losing 2 Bs early is a killer blow for AH, but on the bright side (OK, the slightly less dim side) it does free some finances to build better ships. You are correct about the 8" cruisers. Rate of fire is extremely important, especially early when you're not going to get many penetrating shots. 8" guns don't often target destroyers, but then neither do 6" guns.

Regarding your third game - Random events can be irritating but that's war and they do happen in RL and should happen in a game simulating war, but playing a small nation like AH greatly magnifies their significance. If those losses happened to GB it would be an annoyance but would not cripple their chances to continue. If they really bother you, you can always reload an earlier save and soldier on - it is just a game after all. Just realize that by their nature those events will not occur this way in every game. I seldom lose ships to submarine attacks and I would cosnsider losing two in this way in a single war to be very unusual unless the enemy was fielding a massive submarine fleet. It is also possible that your very small destroyer force (you haven't mentioned any MS though I imagein you have at least the minimum deployed) has allowed a larger enemy submarine presence and the AI may have opted for a "Fleet support" policy for his subs, making it more likely that he would attack your capital ships.

Winning battles and sinking enemy ships is the name of the game so it looks like you're doing the right things in general. It is likely that you are again a victim of RNG in this respect as well, because war ending event pop-ups seem pretty random. All you can do in this respect is continue to bash the enemy and wait for one that actually succeeds in ending the war. I might also mention that not gaining colonies after winning a war is not necessarily a bad thing - you get a nice bump in your economy even if you refuse to take any. If your goal is to expand beyond the Mediterranean then France is a good nation to go after because they do have some nicely located colonies.

I don't believe that the location of your battles is a reliable way to assess whether you're doing well - the location of battles within a given area appears to be random. 
The only way to prevent death by acceleration for wounded ships is to keep them close to your flagship and monitor them constantly to keep them to a reasonable speed. It's a weak point in the game that is indeed quite irritating.

Under the best of circumstances AH is a hard nation to play and it sounds like you have been hit hard by random events. It sounds like you have improved quite significantly in the three games you have mentioned so I wouldn't abandon the nation even if you fail in the current game. Playing AH can be very frustrating but it offers great satisfaction when you manage to succeed, breaking out of the Med and capturing foreign colonies to become the type imperialist nation that we all love to hate.

[Deleted]

My takes:

A) A-H gets very rapid economic expansion.

1)Hang tight @ early game, beat Italy couple of times to gain economy points.
2)Get a war that collapses GB or Russia, and get a 10 point Northern Europe colony. Preferably Russia, as Ireland has a high chance of rebellion. Build the 10 point colony's base points non stop.
3)Mid/late game - Win, win, and win....

B) Currently, against France, A-H has no bases in N. Europe.

1) Distant blockade. Send ships to Europe any way, but take great care to not lose ships. If any ship gets repair time, immediately blank refit it. That pulls it back to the Med.
or 2) Raiding in a massive scale.
3) A combination of 1) and 2). i.e. for one turn do the blockade, the next turn pull ships back to the med and do the raiding.

None is very straightforward, but refer to A) - 1).

[jwsmith26]

gornik mentioned another aspect of the game that that I neglected to discuss that can be quite useful for small nations - raiding. For a long time I completely dismissed raiding as a strategy. After all, the game is about designing, building and fighting warships. It's about the big fleet battles and the small cruiser battles and about tiny destroyer actions. That's surely where the war is won, right? Not with some puny under-armed protected cruiser that could be shrugged off as a mere nuisance by any scout cruiser worth its name.

On its surface raiding can seem quite insignificant. You spend all this money on fancy, weakly armed, long-ranged cruisers and then send them off into the void, never to be noticed again. The results seem paltry, perhaps 20 to 50 victories points per turn if you're lucky. Compared to the thousands of VP you garner from sinking even a single enemy battleship this is a complete yawn. But here's the thing with raiders - their impact goes far beyond VPs and those effects are largely hidden from you. Successful raiding directly impacts the enemy nation's unrest level and can cause a much more rapid collapse or surrender. The same applies to submarine warfare. Wars can be won by targeting the enemy cruiser force, wiping it out or nearly so, while sending a flood of small cruisers out to attack the enemy's merchant marine. Winning a war is not about gathering a huge superiority in VPs. Wars are won by causing the enemy morale to collapse. And raiders are tailor made to do just that.

[krankey]

I have enjoyed a few games as Austria Hungaria. Pick a tech strategy and keep it.

Until I can build suitable raiding ships and submarines, I tend to play defensively. I don't mind if I'm Blockaded too much as long as I can win enough DD engagements or Cruiser on Cruiser fights. You earn enough VP to negate the blockades. To do this turn away from heavy fleet engagements if you need to. You can earn multiple hundreds of VP sinking a CL or CA so turn up for battle then scarper if you need to once you've sussed out the enemy strength.

Because you can't face ship to ship almost any nation, you need to give yourself a different edge. Speed is one method, make your ships lighter but faster, or make them really strong builds and outfight lighter opponents 2-1.

I tend to go for raiding and submarines early game and design and build B to avoid blockades. I tend to design my B's along the lines of the Graf Spee a very heavy cruiser. Go 20or 21 knots 11 or 12" x2 guns main and a lot of 6" secondaries or split 7" & 4". Once you have greater secondaries tech than 7" you could go 11" main 9" secondaries etc and 4" tertiary to hit DD's. Making them that 1 or 2 knot faster will normally keep your ships in line longer or permit withdrawal or an outmanoeuvre.

Don't ignore the use of AMCor long range fit CL's for commerce raiding. As you are only based in the Med all of your raiders will be in area of supply. if you can't outfight the enemy yet, out raid them. Their civilians will force them to the peace table.

I don't think you are doing anything wrong, its just a steep learning curve and you are picking a "Hard mode" in going for one of the smaller nations. So I wish you future luck

PS if you check out my other posts you can see that I too have only recently been in your position of new to the game. I hope you will have as much fun as I have and coming to the forums is a great idea, a lot of very experienced players who are happy to share there advice as you have seen from the replies above.
 

[ddg]

I think Austria is frequently underrated as a nation in this game. Its only real weakness is the small resource base at the start—its traits are generally advantageous and it has good bonus techs. Its great strength, however, is position. My advice for a starting Austria player is to aim for a wholly Mediterranean game: Every ship should be short-legged and cramped unless intended for raiding. Fight Italy if you can. Don't take any colonies except by invasion (in general, take colonies only for geostrategic reasons, not economic ones; unspent points are better for the latter and Mediterranean Austria benefits only minimally from the former). You might try galagagalaxian's Mediterranean Powers Pack version of Austria that would put you up against Spain and the Ottoman Empire for some foes more in your weight class.

People will give you all kinds of strategies but I'll note that I've had strong games as Austria using an 18-knot battle line (through 1925), using 8-inch protected cruisers, using 14x7-inch (iirc) CAs, using 4x10-inch Bs, and other oddities, so you absolutely don't have to stick to a single correct way to play. I would suggest trying out a quantity-over-quality battle line at the start (4x10 12x6 6-7" belt, maybe) next time and playing them conservatively, leaning on cruisers for aggressive action.

[rimbecano]

Another thing that I haven't really tried, but is a good strategy when you're the little guy, is to build and train your fleet for night action, and avoid daytime engagements. Both the Germans in WWI, and the Japanese in WWII, did this.

[aeson]

I generally agree with ddg's suggestions, in particular to at least experiment with short range and cramped accommodations on your ships while you only have one sea zone that you care at all about and to aim for adequate ships that can be built in reasonable numbers over supremely powerful ships that you can only build one or two of.

[oldpop2000]

Apr 30, 2018 22:04:04 GMT -6 rimbecano said:

Another thing that I haven't really tried, but is a good strategy when you're the little guy, is to build and train your fleet for night action, and avoid daytime engagements. Both the Germans in WWI, and the Japanese in WWII, did this.

The IJN did train extensively for night action to implement their interceptive operations which would lure the enemy as close to Japan as possible, then deliver him a concentrated blow from the full strength of the Japanese battle fleet. They would use the night operation to attrite the US fleet as a preliminary operation to the decisive battle. The main action in the decisive battle would take place during the daylight hours. The daylight operations by the main battle fleet would depend on the outcome of the night operations but they never avoided or plan to avoid daylight engagements. 

The High Seas Fleet did use the night for attacking and bombarding the British coast to avoid detection by the British coastal patrols and to return to Germany before being discovered. They did not, according to my source really train for this, it was as with all navies a part overall training.

The use of night action when playing the underdog is not a bad strategy, I use it successfully all the time however. 

[jma286]

Austria is one of my favorite countries because it forces you to build unconventionally. Like others have said, playing a Mediterranean game lets you get away with short range, cramped, low freeboard ships that allow you to pack more guns/armor/engine power than any given tonnage would normally support. You also produce oil domestically, which lets you save even more weight once you research oil firing (usually early 1910's). Your main rivals (France and Italy) have a lot of cheap possessions around the Mediterranean that can be conquered for bases and resources. Your budgetary disadvantage is real but is counteracted by the fact that you'll have your entire navy concentrated in a single theater. Choosing to build more smaller ships over fewer big ones also helps with this. Finally, the Adriatic is very narrow, so you should de-emphasize scouting ships and focus more on DDs that can pounce when the enemy fleet gets near the coast and has its movement inhibited.

[wknehring]

First of all- THANK YOU VERY MUCH FOR YOUR GOOD ADVICES! There are many things I used in my playthrough.

I finished in 1925 (regulary game end) with 3 won wars (2 times Italy, 1 time France) gaining West Congo, Eritrea, Tunesia, Sardinia and I think Corsica (but I am not shure about that).

My initial war against France was a full success in the end. After my post above, this war lasted 5 additional months (the 24 months were wrong- in the end this war lasted 37 months) and I managed to sink 6 of 10 French Bs (2B and 2 CA during a convoy defence were I had my last 2 Bs) and nearly all their cruisers were sunk or interned and they started declining battles, because they only had 3-4 Bs and a hand full of DDs and 1-2 AMC. At the end of this war I have finished my first Semi-Dreadnoughts (2x2 11" + 4x2 10" + 20 6", 10" Belt, 2,5" Deck, 20 knots) and I was glad I started them in time to have some replacements for my sunk Pre-Dreadnought.

After this war I modernised my entire fleet. Luckily I bought 13" Qu.-1 from Russia during the war against France, so I started to build my first 2 BCs (2x2 13", 10" Belt, 3" Deck, some secondaries, torpedo protection 1, 27 knots- that dropped to 26 knots, because designspeed reasons) and added a third after the Kaiser wanted a bigger battlefleet. I had to build 3 additional B/BC/BB (building requirement) and only added the third BC after 3 months of building of the initial two. I was ready to take the prestige hit, but the Kaiser was very satisfied (it seems currently built ships count to the building requirements).
I built 6 new 600ts DDs and sent my older 500ts to Western Africa. All ships got best firecontrol and my MS got some new paintjob (of course I build MS!). After improving my costal subs I started to build 20 of them in 2 batches 10 each.

The next war was against Italy in ~1911 and lasted only 7 months with gaining Sardinia. My BCs were the working horses and I would give everyone the advice to built BCs first and than BBs. You outrun everything (even with 26 knots) and you outgun every cruiser design. And the main enemy ships were 4 Italian BCs with 2x2 11" with only 8" of belt. Later there was a 4x2 12" (same design as historical "SMS von der Tann"- two wing turrets with cross deck fire) but with only 6" of armour. I think it was a fleet battle were I have sunk 3 Italian Pre Dreadnoughts and several CL and DDs, that broke their back. My 20 subs were quite effective (57/58% reliability) and I had 2 messages about food shortages in Italy. Unfortunately this war ended after 7 months.

Than there was peace for a long time with much retrofits and replacements. The Austrian folk collected money for 3 Battleships- I gave them 4 (3 as required and 8 months later 10% discount)- 4x3 14" Qu-1, 21knots, 11" belt, 3,5" turtleback, torpedo defence 2. All Pre Dreadnoughts were scrapped. My last CA was mothballed as a museum and replaced during a building requirement of 6 new cruisers (some politician read about cruiserwarfare in some books ) with 2 new CA (3x3 10") and 4 new CL (2x2+4x1 6", 2x3 deck TT), although 2 CL were scrapped after 1 month after fullfilling the requirement.
Later I had to build 15 new DDs- I had 1100ts designs, after 2 months of building them, I researched 1500ts designs (as always in this game). And in all this time I continuously started to build more and more submarines (2 parts coastal, 1 part medium range).

...

Than I researched quad turrets and shortly after that 15" Qu.0 guns. First I built 2 BC with 2x4 14", 10" belt, 4" deck (turtleback), oilfiring and 28 knots speed and than there was "battleship time" and I added my first superdreadnought, because the Kaiser wanted 3 new BB/BC. Luckily I had 2 BC building and I only had to add 1 BB to fulfill the requirement. 3 months later I was offered another BB with 10% discount (the game started to like me ). BB-Data: 2x4 + 1x3 15" Qu.0, 13" belt, 4" deck (turtleback), oilfiring, 21 knots, torpedo protection 2.
In late 1918 I had 1 15" BB, 4 14" BBs, 2 14" BCs, 3 13" BCs, 2 new CAs, 2 new CLs, 4 old CLs, ~25 DD of different types, 86 submarines (including 35 medium range, 70 with 76% reliability or better). Than Itlay wanted revenge.

First battle was a coastal bombardement (starting at 15:00h) in the Adriatic Sea with 1 13" BC, 2 new CL, 5 1100ts DDs vs 1 old BC, 3 CL and 6 DD. The Italian CL scouted in front of the BC (I guessed there would be 1-2 BC, because there was a screen of 3 CL) and were all heavily damaged in the first encounter (they all were sunk in this encounter by torpedos and heavy gunfire- it started to get dark at 16:30h). Than I avoided contact with the enemy BC and DDs, destroyed the bombardement target (luckily it was one of the better targets direct at the shore line) and searched for the BCs to sink it. Actually it was only one (one of the crapy ones with 2x2 11" and 8" belt armour) and I managed to hit it for heavy damage and as my torpedos were in the water, I received my first hit and my BC detonated In the meantime my secondaries and DDs stopped 3 enemy DDs. After the enemy BC receiving 3 torpedohits, I broke contact to rescue my fleet- 3 DDs were heavily damaged and 2 started to take heavy flooding. In the end I estimated to get a minor victory- I exchanged a slightly bigger BC and 3 sunk DD for 1 old BC, 3 CL and 3 DD- it was a major Italian victory. 2 Italian CL were modern ones with 28 knots speed and 4 single centerline 6" and 4x3 deck TT. The got a prestige hit and in terms of VP Italy was leading with 150! (I guess this was some miscalculating in the gamefiles or something. 150VP difference is a marginal victory or a minor victory, but never a major one).

I started with unrestricted submarine warfare and after my first month I have sunk 27 TR and 1 MS with 8 subs lost (all the older ones).

In 3 major encounters I managed to sink all of the Italian BC (5 or 6) and 3 BBs (stopped them from blockading me). Crippled their cruiser fleet and managed to sink many DDs. After 31 months of fighting I defeated them and gained Eritrea (10 points- Sicily costs 12). I lost 1 BC, 1 newer CL and 6 DDs (and some subs).

I started some modernization (better director firing for all capital ships, refiting secondary guns to better quality), replaced the sunk submarines (I was "down" at 54) with medium range subs and tried to build a new class of fast CL. For 24 monthas I tried to build a 4x2 AB/XY design, but I was not allowed to build this. I retrofitted older designs to double turrets fore and aft, but was not allowed to build new ones with them- how? I tried different armour designs but I could not build double turrets. This was strange!
In Late 1923 I started to build a new class of 2 BCs with 15" guns (2x3 + 1x2 AB/X design) to replace the older 13"ers. And I built larger bases in West Congo and Eritrea.
Until the end nothing sirious happened. I kept tensions relatively low (yellow to olive green) and so I finished the game at the end of 1925. In the meantime there was the thought to fight France again, but they had a third of my fleet in size, although their submarine fleet was very large (65 subs). And for a short time I wanted to fight Britain in the Mediterranian to get Egypt (Suez Canal in mind), but that would have been madness- so I finished the game.


Conclusions

Pre Dreadnoghts: 12" Qu.-1 is OK (actually there is nothing better at the start). And I think I can use them until the 1920 if I can manage to reasearch 12" Qu.0 or even Qu1- but that never happened. Because I bought 13" Qu.-1 from Russia I never researched any better 12" gun. I had a secondary battery of 20 6"- next time I try a maximum of 24 5" or 4" and some tertiary guns with a main armament of 10" or 11" all shoting HE in the early game- let´s start some barbeque!
Low freeboard, short range is totally enough for them, because a maximum of 21 knots is enough in the Adriatic Sea. Cramped accomodation I am not going to use, because you are prone to high unrest and that ruins your game.
I think pre dreadnoughts are very important to have any fleet values in your home area against blockading enemies, so you have to calculate the fleetpoints and evaluate at which point you can scrap them. As mentioned, I guess at ~1920 they become ineffective.

CA: I have a problem with CA in general. Once there are BCs lurking around, your CAs, no matter which punch they pack, become obsolete. In cruiser battles BCs seem to be prefered (thats my experience in most of my games), sometimes you get them in convoy raids and very unlikely in coastal bombardements and convoy defences. And the biggest problem is- both classes are matched against each other and seem to have a similar "match weight".
If you have in mind that a BC (once you have good 13" guns, or 14" in general) is capable of sinking a BB in a lucky gun duel, I ask myself, Why I should build any CA after 1910. Once I used 2 CA with 3x3 10" Qu.1 (it was a development out of a good protected treaty design with 3x2 10") in my first US playthrough and these (2 old ones, 2 new ones- same protection) had absolutely no chance against any enemy BC, even with 8 12" guns and paperthin 8" armour. The maxmimum was medium damage. The problem is, although you have the advantage in building speedy designs (compared to BC, which are relatively weight-expensive when building them faster than average), a BC can keep the speed and has the gun range advantage. And after 1-2 hits your engines are crippled and you are dead prey.
Honestly I start to build them once I have enough money to start doing shenannigans- (Mogami-class style 5x3 6", 33 knots, 4x4 TT after 1935 I built with Japan ), or at the beginning of the game, when they are still superior to CL. But once there are BC, I stop building them for 15-20 years, except there are events like "The Kaiser/president wants more cruisers" because the lack of CA in my navy.
What am I going to do in my next games with smaller Navies? I think I will build a few start CA after gaining some colonies, they become FS-cruisers. New CAs I will start to build once I have better engines and only for 2nd line duties (protect colonies from light enemy forces, support forcing landing operations in foreign colonies, or premium raiding).

CL: At the moment I am testing 5" CL in my US game. Perhaps these could be my new prefered CL in any game, except the Germans that have crap 5" guns at the start. I think 5" is the best compromise between damage and rate of fire. And because I am shoting 70-90% HE on CL, 5" are good enough.
As raiders I am testing a design of 2x1 4" + 8x1 3" + 2 TT, 23 knots, nearly unprotected. At the moment they give me 10-15 TR each month with 7 raiders in use. I start to like them, because they are cheap! (less than 750.000 each)

DD: Very important, because you have the advantage in torpedo technology. That has to be used extensively! And even with other smaller nations/navies it is important to use them, because the damage you deal is so massive! At the start 1 torpedo hit means 1 sunk ship! Later one torpedo hit means 2-3 months drydock (fleet values for blockades).

Submarines: All or nothing! At 1920 you should have 70 or more subs or stop building any. It doesn´t matter if they have a reliability of less than 70%. Use them in masses, than they are effective.

[fishy]

What I like to do in my games as Austria is building low freeboard short ranged ships that have lots of armor and big guns. I like to win fleet battles. It just feels good to see your capital ships land shots and deal damage to the enemy and ultimately sinking them. Winning with numbers through raiding and blockades, don't seem as much fun for me. So I generally build quality over quantity. For example, my legacy Battleships are 20kt, 2x(2x12"guns) with 9-10 inch armor. Having more armor means that your Battleships will stay relevant for a longer time. You can still scrap them. But should it become necessary, you can keep them around and they will be better than ships with less armor. I also build 22kt, 6" belt armor, 2x(2x12"guns), 16x6"secondary gun armored cruisers. The cost of a 2x(2x10"gun) armored cruiser is about 3 million less. But the AI does not build CAs with 12" guns. This results in your CAs with 12" guns completely dominating any cruiser fight and could even give Bs a run for their money. Not that you want to fight Battleships head on with a CA. But you always have the option to either run away or should you notice that the B is not landing shots (bad crew, short gun range), you can try to take it out. IMO, CAs with 12" guns are worth the cost. Unless I am playing Austria or Italy, I usually keep my legacy CAs all the way until 1925.

I don't use CLs with 8" guns as I did not have any luck with them. I usually go with 23kt CLs with 6" guns for my legacy fleet. But I think CLs with 5" guns are just as effective because they have a higher firing rate (I know I complained about taking more shots to sink an enemy CL with 5" guns but that I've come to think that this is actually not an issue). So if I get 5" quality 1 guns I will build CLs with 5" guns later on in the game. Otherwise, all my CLs use 6" guns.

At the beginning of the game, I also build very few DDs because they are basically fodder. Torpedoes are ineffective in the beginning and a single light/medium round landing in the right place can sink a DD. Later on in the game, I will generally build more DDs than any other nation. Having more DDs in fleet battles makes it easy for you to trade DDs for BBs and BCs. But you already know this.

You are right about CAs being a liability in Cruiser battles later in the game. For bigger nations CAs are good for colony defense. I like to use CLs with colonial service for Foreign stations. But just before a war starts, I send my CAs to sea zones with my colonies so that they can prevent invasions. Sometimes they help you invade enemy colonies. For Austria however, I would scrap them once you've managed to build a few BCs. I never take my ships out of the Mediterranean as Austria. There is no need. If I am playing as France or Germany, I build 8-12 CAs and move them out of the Northern Europe sea zone just before a war starts if I can help it. You can have 1 of your CAs set as a raider in your home sea zone to fish for a battle. That's what I do when all I get is a bunch of destroyer battles. What often happens is that an enemy CA or CL will intercept your raiding CA. The resulting battle (barring low visibility torpedo hits) will generally be in your favor.

The issue I have with using night battles as a smaller nation is that night battles are a double-edged sword. Sure you can easily blow up the enemy at close range or land some torpedo hits. But the same thing can happen to you. You can only hope that the RNG gods favor you. And more than likely, there will be trades. And trades are bad for any player nation; but especially bad for a small nation. What I mean by trades is where you may sink 2 enemy BCs at the expense of 1 of your BCs sinking. Because with the fog of war being everywhere and ships launching torpedoes left and right, there is no way you can avoid taking casualties. In day battles, you can strategically build superior ships and tactically use them to good effect where you basically trade your destroyers for the enemy's capital ships. Quite often you can trade 0 ships for a bunch of enemy capital ships and smaller craft. This is much more difficult to do in night battles.

Ultimately what one considers a successful Austria campaign is a matter of opinion. I have played more than 10 games as Austria. And I usually can get around 67 prestige by 1925 if the RNG gods are good to me. However, I often feel frustrated towards the end of the game playing as Austria because increasingly, your smaller budget leaves you far behind the major naval powers such as GB, USA, Germany, and France. The later the game goes the less you can do to win battles through strategy and tactics. So you will actually have to trade. A trade such as 4 capital ships for 1 of yours may seem favorable, but you have to remember that your opponents don't lose ships to other nations. You may end up fighting a war with GB, France, Germany, and Italy. And if you trade 1 to 4 its a losing trade.

[Spaghet Shipwright]

Build 4 of these bad boys, they've wrecked my Italian campaign against AH. They have so much firepower and decent armor that their speed matters little in the cramped Adriatic Sea.