Post by alsadius on Jun 7, 2019 19:40:15 GMT -6
I'm in my first full game - I dabbled with the UK in the demo for a few years, but I wanted to play from the start. I've never played RTW1 before, so this is my first real game. I decided that I wanted a nation less powerful than the UK/US, so after poking around a bit I decided on Italy with non-historical budgets - it gives me a decent edge over Austria, lets me have a chance at competing with large powers, but doesn't give me too many advantages. 1900 start, very large fleets, and I think all other settings were default. My stated goal is to capture all capture-able colonies in the Mediterranean, and consider expanding to the Indian once the Suez is mine. But really, I also want to learn the ropes. (My next game is intended to be a map-painting exercise with the UK, so I want to get good at capturing stuff)
Because it's currently 1911, I won't give a blow-by-blow so far. But I'll take you through the fleet designs, because that's the fun part
Feel free to tell me all the things I'm doing wrong, BTW. Most of the reason I'm doing this is to show off my ships, but I know I'm a newbie, so I'm sure I've screwed some things up.
The Legacy Fleet
When creating my legacy fleet, I wanted to roleplay a bit. So I decided on two classes of each kind of ship (DD/CL/CA/B). One would be the "1890" design, with a lower-tech feel, and one would be the "1895" design, built to the same spec as my new ships. And because Italy starts with one colony outside the Med(Eritrea), I wanted to have a bit of a dispute between factions of my government over design philosophy. So for each class, one was the Mediterranean design(short/cramped), and one was the colonial design.
The Vittorio Emanuele was my "1890" design - smaller hull, smaller guns, casemated secondaries, and it's also short/cramped. They haven't had much of a battle history - the only time they spawned was a fleet battle where we never made contact. After the first war they were mothballed, and they spent the second war on trade protection. They've just recently been scrapped after the end of my second war.
The Regina Elena has been somewhat more successful. They've been rebuilt to 12"/0 quality with better fire control, though they're in mothballs now even so. They've seen a couple more fights, and performed reasonably well. No huge victories, but they got the job done.
The Carlo Alberto was my 1890, and my Mediterranean. These guys have seen a ton of battle, and been my heavy forces in probably a dozen cruiser and destroyer battles. Not an amazing design on paper, but they really have been performing well for me. A lot of enemy CLs have died under their guns. Only three of them, and un-modernized, but they seem to be in at least half my fights.
The Marco Polo was a bit more experimental, and is actually long-ranged in addition to colonial, which is why the stats are a bit lame. They only saw one battle, wherein they performed very badly - despite their fairly large size for the early 1900s, they're weak, and can't stand against more conventional CAs. Two of my then-three died. But the survivor, and the two built later, have been doing great work as raiders ever since. That first battle taught me a valuable lesson - it helps if I remember to actually set ships designed as raiders to the task of raiding. Two of three are in mothballs awaiting the next war(I get the impression that crew quality doesn't matter much for raiding), while the third covers my foreign service requirements.
These ships are quite similar, though as you can see the Amalfi is both smaller and better armed, so naturally it's the Mediterranean design. The Marsalas often wind up on trade protection duty in wartime, so the Amalfis have been carrying the brunt of the combat duty, and three have died. The six survivors have been in basically every single battle, though, and have done a ton of damage over time.
The Nembo was intended as an 1890-style torpedo boat. This was literally the maximum torpedo load that I could figure out how to fit on a DD hull in 1900. I've lost no less than 16 of these, but they've been instrumental in most of my big kills, crippling or killing many a cruiser, and even a few battleships. It's since been superseded by an even more balls-out insane torpedo boat, but the three survivors are still around in the reserve.
The Espero was a saner design. You can tell, because I've lost 6/15, instead of 16/19 Nembos. They're too slow for most purposes these days, so they typically wind up as trade protection ships in war. They're in reserve right now.
Actual Gameplay
I started out fairly quietly for a few years, gaining tech and growing my fleet - 2x B Regina Elena, 1x CA Marco Polo, and 4x CL Amalfi joined the fleet by the end of 1904.
The first new design was a showpiece to take advantage of my newly-expanded docks and a burst of new tech - the B Conte di Cavour, designed in 1902:
This is mostly a scaled-up Elena - the same main battery, but with bigger secondaries, an extra inch on the belt and turrets, an extra 4" on the tower (hey, Italian admirals like being able to sleep soundly on the bridge) and an extra two knots. The jump to 8" guns is because I got the tech for 8"/+1 really early - I can't remember if they started at /0 or /+1, but they got a rebuild in 1906 to give them central firing, and right now they have both 12"/+1 and 8"/+1 guns. I have four of these, all still active, and they've been effective the few times they've gotten a chance to fight.
I did a similar upgrade to my CAs, with the San Giorgio class:
Despite being smaller and having worse hard stats that the Carlo Alberto, these feel like more efficient ships to me due to the high-quality 8" guns - they provide almost the same punch as the 10"/-1, but the ship costs 10 mil less. Much as I like the ships overall, though, these were probably too slow for their generation - they aren't even any faster than my contemporaneous battleships. Only two of these got built, though both are still in active service.
Around this time, I also picked up Java as a colony from an event. It boosted my economy a bit, but it also meant I actually needed foreign service ships - for whatever reason, Eritrea's minimum tonnage is nil. Still, not exactly hard to scrape up 6000 tons for the task. Right now, one of my old Marco Polos is covering that.
The next design was something of a mess - the CL Rimini:
This wasn't the ship I wanted. But I got an event where the Navy Minister asked me for 10 new cruisers. With a bunch of Cavours and San Giorgios in production, I tried to talk him down to half, but apparently half of 10 is 9. So I needed a stopgap CL that was incredibly cheap. And these...well, they're cheap(12M each, compared to almost 30M for a San Giorgio). And they count towards my trade protection requirements, even despite their short/cramped design. We will speak no more of these.
However, the next in line is one I'm happy to talk about. The Andrea Doria is my first true battleship class.
Turbines allow her to keep the same speed as the Cavours, while adding an inch on the belt, half an inch on the deck, and a whole third turret. It's faster than most enemy battleships, armed with what may be the best heavy guns in active use, (12"/+1), and it has an immune zone the size of Texas even against her own shells. Sadly, because of the war that broke out, I only got to build two of these, but they've done extremely well in battle.
In AD21011906, War Was Beginning
While I'd originally intended my first war to be with the Austrians, rising tensions with France led to a war starting slightly after I laid down the two Dorias. The war lacked for decisive engagements - on the sea, a stream of cruiser/destroyer fights took place, roughly one per month. I came out on top in almost all of them - kill a CL for the loss of a couple DD, or kill a CA for the loss of a CL, that sort of thing. There was one nice little battle where I pinned his destroyers against the coast (just outside of Nice, amusingly - the AI tarded out a bit on the coast and couldn't figure out how to get back to base) and pounded several of them into scrap, but since they were just DDs it didn't matter a lot.
No invasions came off in the war, and the one time I got an event asking if I'd let the Army get some extra resources for a big offensive, it was a stalemate. So that was lame. There was one fleet battle, with all of my pre-dreads nicely on the field...and of course, no contact was made. (However, one of my subs did manage to sink a French pre-dread after the battle, so I won the battle fairly decisively in practice).
After about a year, we managed to sign a peace treaty that gave me +4 points, due to my successful naval action, which I used to take Tunisia.
Towards the end of the war, my destroyer forces were getting depleted, so I took action by designing the next generation of destroyers - the Lanciere:
This one was more gun-focused than the others, and was expected to do better work at fighting enemy DDs. This lacks the minesweeping gear of the Esperos, as subs get more important, but it's got roughly twice their firepower. These, much like my other DDs, have been used pretty hard in my wars. A total of 20 were built, and 3 died in my second war.
After the war, my tech had advanced to the point where I was looking for a couple new cruiser designs. These were to actually be fairly powerful ships of their class, unlike a certain stopgap CL. The result was the Civitavecchia and the Liguria:
Both of these have very similar weapons and only differ by a knot in speed, but the Civitavecchia does this on a much smaller hull, while the Liguria packs roughly twice the armour. I built 4 Civitavecchias, of which one has been sunk, and 2 Ligurias, both of which are still around. Those 8"/+1 guns really do pack a good punch, and they've been doing a lot of damage in combat - it's nice when your CL can hurt enemy CAs. The downside to only having one good gun in the size class (my only +1 guns are 3", 8", and 12") is that your designs are a bit samey, but the upside is that they work well.
These ships also mark a revolution in Italian ship-building - I finally remembered to include funnels on my designs. (An artist I am not...)
Realizing that my DD forces were still a bit under-staffed, and now having the tech for 900 ton DDs, I designed a more all-around ship than the other destroyers - better torpedoes than the Nembo, better speed than the Lanciere, and a reasonable gun battery. The Simone Schiaffino:
Not much to say about these. They're almost as insanely suicidal as the Nembo (4/12 dead in one war), but they do blow the crap out of enemy ships.
That brings us to the end of my ships in service, but I do have a new battle line under construction:
Much like the cruiser pair, these share some obvious similarities. The same 3x2x12" ABY battery, the same mass, and similar armour schemes. The Lepanto gives up a bit of armour (1.5" belt, 0.5" deck) and some secondary guns for those extra 4 knots. But their designs were intended differently. The Caio Duilio is a true battleship, intended to stand in the line of battle. The Lepanto is designed as a cruiser-killer and a raider - instead of a 10.5" belt designed to slow down battleship shells, the goal is for the 9" belt to be basically immune to cruiser guns, and to try to avoid engaging capital ships. It's not going to stop the really heavy guns, but it's fast enough to avoid fighting those. It's also long range and colonial, so that it can be used as a very scary raider in wartime and a good flag-shower in peacetime. Right now, there's four of the Caio Duilios nearing completion, and two Lepantos recently laid down. When the Caios finish, I'll probably put down another couple BCs, and then start a new generation of smaller ships again.
1910: Another Decade, Another War
Much to my surprise, my second war was also against France. This one was a bit more eventful than the first, though. For one, I pulled off an invasion - it took a few months to finish, but Corsica fell to my armies about halfway through the war.
For two, there was an actual battleship fight! And it even featured my nice new Dorias, not the old stuff. Two Dorias, supported by a handful of mixed cruisers and close to a dozen destroyers, took on a substantial French fleet in defence of an Italian convoy. The battle started with my fleet running across the scariest ship in the French fleet - the Charles Martel, with no less than six double 12" turrets (in a hex pattern, so 8-gun broadsides) and a 10.5" belt, doing 19 knots. It was supported by three older Bs of mixed classes (two double 12-13" with gobs of 7" secondaries, 9-9.5" belt, 17-21 knots), and a smattering of support ships. My fleet engaged fairly aggressively against the enemy force, and though I took some losses (a CL, a few DDs, and moderate damage to the rest of the fleet), my battleships dealt serious damage and distracted the enemy force long enough for my light forces to press home devastating torpedo attacks. All of them got crippled, and were sunk outright by follow-up attacks by the BBs and torpedoes. I was actually shocked at how easy it was to deal with such a big part of the French fleet, and was mopping up when I got a bit of a jolt - my cruisers had spotted a second French capital force. Weaker than the other - two Bs with strong escorts - but my torpedoes were all spent, and my BBs had come close to shooting themselves dry. This was south of Malta, but the enemy was south of me, so I tried to run home to Sardinia. The Andrea Doria made it, with intact engines, but sadly her sister ship the Beneditto Brin was not so lucky. Some damage earlier in the battle had led to progressive flooding that slowed the ship, and even the older French battleships could overtake it. It sank short of Malta, though its loss caused the enemy fleet to slow enough that the rest of my forces got away cleanly. Losing one BB to kill a BB and three Bs wasn't quite as lopsided a victory as I wanted, but it was still damn good, and the war ended shortly thereafter. A 6-point peace treaty was signed, giving me Algeria and two points worth of economic growth. And the Mediterranean was now down to two enemy nations holding colonies - Austria owning Dalmatia, and the British and their keystone bases at Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, and Egypt.
Total wartime kills and losses against the French:
BB: 1 killed, 1 lost.
B: 4 killed, 0 lost.
CA: 9 killed, 2 lost.
CL: 14 killed, 4 lost.
DD: 12 killed, 29 lost. (You can tell what my tactics look like here...)
SSC: 1 killed, 0 lost.
Here's my fleet and my almanac:
My budget is now fourth-largest, and once those BBs come online, I'd happily match my forces against anyone except the UK and US. My goal is for my next war to be against the Austrians, and the UK to be a later-term goal (ideally, once I have a useful air force and can make the Med a death zone), but I want to own the Suez so that I can ensure communication with my bases to the east.
Here's my research:
Because it's currently 1911, I won't give a blow-by-blow so far. But I'll take you through the fleet designs, because that's the fun part
Feel free to tell me all the things I'm doing wrong, BTW. Most of the reason I'm doing this is to show off my ships, but I know I'm a newbie, so I'm sure I've screwed some things up.
The Legacy Fleet
When creating my legacy fleet, I wanted to roleplay a bit. So I decided on two classes of each kind of ship (DD/CL/CA/B). One would be the "1890" design, with a lower-tech feel, and one would be the "1895" design, built to the same spec as my new ships. And because Italy starts with one colony outside the Med(Eritrea), I wanted to have a bit of a dispute between factions of my government over design philosophy. So for each class, one was the Mediterranean design(short/cramped), and one was the colonial design.
The Vittorio Emanuele was my "1890" design - smaller hull, smaller guns, casemated secondaries, and it's also short/cramped. They haven't had much of a battle history - the only time they spawned was a fleet battle where we never made contact. After the first war they were mothballed, and they spent the second war on trade protection. They've just recently been scrapped after the end of my second war.
The Regina Elena has been somewhat more successful. They've been rebuilt to 12"/0 quality with better fire control, though they're in mothballs now even so. They've seen a couple more fights, and performed reasonably well. No huge victories, but they got the job done.
The Carlo Alberto was my 1890, and my Mediterranean. These guys have seen a ton of battle, and been my heavy forces in probably a dozen cruiser and destroyer battles. Not an amazing design on paper, but they really have been performing well for me. A lot of enemy CLs have died under their guns. Only three of them, and un-modernized, but they seem to be in at least half my fights.
The Marco Polo was a bit more experimental, and is actually long-ranged in addition to colonial, which is why the stats are a bit lame. They only saw one battle, wherein they performed very badly - despite their fairly large size for the early 1900s, they're weak, and can't stand against more conventional CAs. Two of my then-three died. But the survivor, and the two built later, have been doing great work as raiders ever since. That first battle taught me a valuable lesson - it helps if I remember to actually set ships designed as raiders to the task of raiding. Two of three are in mothballs awaiting the next war(I get the impression that crew quality doesn't matter much for raiding), while the third covers my foreign service requirements.
These ships are quite similar, though as you can see the Amalfi is both smaller and better armed, so naturally it's the Mediterranean design. The Marsalas often wind up on trade protection duty in wartime, so the Amalfis have been carrying the brunt of the combat duty, and three have died. The six survivors have been in basically every single battle, though, and have done a ton of damage over time.
The Nembo was intended as an 1890-style torpedo boat. This was literally the maximum torpedo load that I could figure out how to fit on a DD hull in 1900. I've lost no less than 16 of these, but they've been instrumental in most of my big kills, crippling or killing many a cruiser, and even a few battleships. It's since been superseded by an even more balls-out insane torpedo boat, but the three survivors are still around in the reserve.
The Espero was a saner design. You can tell, because I've lost 6/15, instead of 16/19 Nembos. They're too slow for most purposes these days, so they typically wind up as trade protection ships in war. They're in reserve right now.
Actual Gameplay
I started out fairly quietly for a few years, gaining tech and growing my fleet - 2x B Regina Elena, 1x CA Marco Polo, and 4x CL Amalfi joined the fleet by the end of 1904.
The first new design was a showpiece to take advantage of my newly-expanded docks and a burst of new tech - the B Conte di Cavour, designed in 1902:
This is mostly a scaled-up Elena - the same main battery, but with bigger secondaries, an extra inch on the belt and turrets, an extra 4" on the tower (hey, Italian admirals like being able to sleep soundly on the bridge) and an extra two knots. The jump to 8" guns is because I got the tech for 8"/+1 really early - I can't remember if they started at /0 or /+1, but they got a rebuild in 1906 to give them central firing, and right now they have both 12"/+1 and 8"/+1 guns. I have four of these, all still active, and they've been effective the few times they've gotten a chance to fight.
I did a similar upgrade to my CAs, with the San Giorgio class:
Despite being smaller and having worse hard stats that the Carlo Alberto, these feel like more efficient ships to me due to the high-quality 8" guns - they provide almost the same punch as the 10"/-1, but the ship costs 10 mil less. Much as I like the ships overall, though, these were probably too slow for their generation - they aren't even any faster than my contemporaneous battleships. Only two of these got built, though both are still in active service.
Around this time, I also picked up Java as a colony from an event. It boosted my economy a bit, but it also meant I actually needed foreign service ships - for whatever reason, Eritrea's minimum tonnage is nil. Still, not exactly hard to scrape up 6000 tons for the task. Right now, one of my old Marco Polos is covering that.
The next design was something of a mess - the CL Rimini:
This wasn't the ship I wanted. But I got an event where the Navy Minister asked me for 10 new cruisers. With a bunch of Cavours and San Giorgios in production, I tried to talk him down to half, but apparently half of 10 is 9. So I needed a stopgap CL that was incredibly cheap. And these...well, they're cheap(12M each, compared to almost 30M for a San Giorgio). And they count towards my trade protection requirements, even despite their short/cramped design. We will speak no more of these.
However, the next in line is one I'm happy to talk about. The Andrea Doria is my first true battleship class.
Turbines allow her to keep the same speed as the Cavours, while adding an inch on the belt, half an inch on the deck, and a whole third turret. It's faster than most enemy battleships, armed with what may be the best heavy guns in active use, (12"/+1), and it has an immune zone the size of Texas even against her own shells. Sadly, because of the war that broke out, I only got to build two of these, but they've done extremely well in battle.
In AD
While I'd originally intended my first war to be with the Austrians, rising tensions with France led to a war starting slightly after I laid down the two Dorias. The war lacked for decisive engagements - on the sea, a stream of cruiser/destroyer fights took place, roughly one per month. I came out on top in almost all of them - kill a CL for the loss of a couple DD, or kill a CA for the loss of a CL, that sort of thing. There was one nice little battle where I pinned his destroyers against the coast (just outside of Nice, amusingly - the AI tarded out a bit on the coast and couldn't figure out how to get back to base) and pounded several of them into scrap, but since they were just DDs it didn't matter a lot.
No invasions came off in the war, and the one time I got an event asking if I'd let the Army get some extra resources for a big offensive, it was a stalemate. So that was lame. There was one fleet battle, with all of my pre-dreads nicely on the field...and of course, no contact was made. (However, one of my subs did manage to sink a French pre-dread after the battle, so I won the battle fairly decisively in practice).
After about a year, we managed to sign a peace treaty that gave me +4 points, due to my successful naval action, which I used to take Tunisia.
Towards the end of the war, my destroyer forces were getting depleted, so I took action by designing the next generation of destroyers - the Lanciere:
This one was more gun-focused than the others, and was expected to do better work at fighting enemy DDs. This lacks the minesweeping gear of the Esperos, as subs get more important, but it's got roughly twice their firepower. These, much like my other DDs, have been used pretty hard in my wars. A total of 20 were built, and 3 died in my second war.
After the war, my tech had advanced to the point where I was looking for a couple new cruiser designs. These were to actually be fairly powerful ships of their class, unlike a certain stopgap CL. The result was the Civitavecchia and the Liguria:
Both of these have very similar weapons and only differ by a knot in speed, but the Civitavecchia does this on a much smaller hull, while the Liguria packs roughly twice the armour. I built 4 Civitavecchias, of which one has been sunk, and 2 Ligurias, both of which are still around. Those 8"/+1 guns really do pack a good punch, and they've been doing a lot of damage in combat - it's nice when your CL can hurt enemy CAs. The downside to only having one good gun in the size class (my only +1 guns are 3", 8", and 12") is that your designs are a bit samey, but the upside is that they work well.
These ships also mark a revolution in Italian ship-building - I finally remembered to include funnels on my designs. (An artist I am not...)
Realizing that my DD forces were still a bit under-staffed, and now having the tech for 900 ton DDs, I designed a more all-around ship than the other destroyers - better torpedoes than the Nembo, better speed than the Lanciere, and a reasonable gun battery. The Simone Schiaffino:
Not much to say about these. They're almost as insanely suicidal as the Nembo (4/12 dead in one war), but they do blow the crap out of enemy ships.
That brings us to the end of my ships in service, but I do have a new battle line under construction:
Much like the cruiser pair, these share some obvious similarities. The same 3x2x12" ABY battery, the same mass, and similar armour schemes. The Lepanto gives up a bit of armour (1.5" belt, 0.5" deck) and some secondary guns for those extra 4 knots. But their designs were intended differently. The Caio Duilio is a true battleship, intended to stand in the line of battle. The Lepanto is designed as a cruiser-killer and a raider - instead of a 10.5" belt designed to slow down battleship shells, the goal is for the 9" belt to be basically immune to cruiser guns, and to try to avoid engaging capital ships. It's not going to stop the really heavy guns, but it's fast enough to avoid fighting those. It's also long range and colonial, so that it can be used as a very scary raider in wartime and a good flag-shower in peacetime. Right now, there's four of the Caio Duilios nearing completion, and two Lepantos recently laid down. When the Caios finish, I'll probably put down another couple BCs, and then start a new generation of smaller ships again.
1910: Another Decade, Another War
Much to my surprise, my second war was also against France. This one was a bit more eventful than the first, though. For one, I pulled off an invasion - it took a few months to finish, but Corsica fell to my armies about halfway through the war.
For two, there was an actual battleship fight! And it even featured my nice new Dorias, not the old stuff. Two Dorias, supported by a handful of mixed cruisers and close to a dozen destroyers, took on a substantial French fleet in defence of an Italian convoy. The battle started with my fleet running across the scariest ship in the French fleet - the Charles Martel, with no less than six double 12" turrets (in a hex pattern, so 8-gun broadsides) and a 10.5" belt, doing 19 knots. It was supported by three older Bs of mixed classes (two double 12-13" with gobs of 7" secondaries, 9-9.5" belt, 17-21 knots), and a smattering of support ships. My fleet engaged fairly aggressively against the enemy force, and though I took some losses (a CL, a few DDs, and moderate damage to the rest of the fleet), my battleships dealt serious damage and distracted the enemy force long enough for my light forces to press home devastating torpedo attacks. All of them got crippled, and were sunk outright by follow-up attacks by the BBs and torpedoes. I was actually shocked at how easy it was to deal with such a big part of the French fleet, and was mopping up when I got a bit of a jolt - my cruisers had spotted a second French capital force. Weaker than the other - two Bs with strong escorts - but my torpedoes were all spent, and my BBs had come close to shooting themselves dry. This was south of Malta, but the enemy was south of me, so I tried to run home to Sardinia. The Andrea Doria made it, with intact engines, but sadly her sister ship the Beneditto Brin was not so lucky. Some damage earlier in the battle had led to progressive flooding that slowed the ship, and even the older French battleships could overtake it. It sank short of Malta, though its loss caused the enemy fleet to slow enough that the rest of my forces got away cleanly. Losing one BB to kill a BB and three Bs wasn't quite as lopsided a victory as I wanted, but it was still damn good, and the war ended shortly thereafter. A 6-point peace treaty was signed, giving me Algeria and two points worth of economic growth. And the Mediterranean was now down to two enemy nations holding colonies - Austria owning Dalmatia, and the British and their keystone bases at Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, and Egypt.
Total wartime kills and losses against the French:
BB: 1 killed, 1 lost.
B: 4 killed, 0 lost.
CA: 9 killed, 2 lost.
CL: 14 killed, 4 lost.
DD: 12 killed, 29 lost. (You can tell what my tactics look like here...)
SSC: 1 killed, 0 lost.
Here's my fleet and my almanac:
My budget is now fourth-largest, and once those BBs come online, I'd happily match my forces against anyone except the UK and US. My goal is for my next war to be against the Austrians, and the UK to be a later-term goal (ideally, once I have a useful air force and can make the Med a death zone), but I want to own the Suez so that I can ensure communication with my bases to the east.
Here's my research: