Austria-Hungary advice?

[fifey]

I've tried a few runs with A-H but have not yet had much success, I'm wondering what you guys do to claw your way up into a respectable position?

[aeson]

This thread might be of interest to you, though it's for Rule the Waves 1. Some of the AARs for weaker powers in Rule the Waves 1 - I know there are AARs for at least China, the Ottoman Empire, and Portugal - might also give you some ideas about how to start out.

As general advice, choose what strategy you want to pursue and build heavily into it. Think about where you can cut corners to save costs without really hampering your ability to pursue your strategy, because you're not rich enough to afford everything and anything you could possibly want and might find your budget straining just to cover the needs of your core strategy, and tailor your research priorities to emphasize the things that actually matter for what you want to do - Damage Control, Guns, and Armor don't really need to be high priority research areas if you just want to sweep the enemy's merchant marine from the seas with submarines and raiding cruisers; developing advanced submarines is kind of a waste of effort if you're not going to build any. Consider what kinds of ships you actually need for the strategy you want to pursue - big, fast, powerful cruisers might be nice for fighting other cruisers, but they tend not to make very good stand-ins for battleships while less capable but more numerous cruisers might make for better raiders, for example.

Italy's probably your most viable target for early-game wars under a Mahanian sea control or decisive battle strategy - they're right on your doorstep so you don't need to worry about how to use all those short-ranged battleships that can't come anywhere near the American or German or Russian fleets that inconsiderately refuse to enter the Mediterranean, and their fleet probably isn't too much more powerful than your own (more so if you choose 'historical' budget during game setup than otherwise). France is probably too much stronger unless you're doing something a bit funny, and anyways it's difficult from Austria-Hungary to blockade France even if you wipe out their fleet since their build area is Northern Europe rather than the Mediterranean; Britain's usually a hard war early on even for the likes of the USA or Germany, let alone a bottom-rung naval power like Austria-Hungary.

Russia's probably your most viable target for early-game wars under a Jeune Ecole or sea denial strategy, followed by Germany and the USA - they don't have bases in the Mediterranean so they probably won't blockade you long-term and are unlikely to send a big fleet in to fight a big battle with your fleet, either, so you can fairly safely put heavy emphasis on big powerful cruisers or a lot of raiders without needing to worry too much if your battle line's composed of toy battleships and cardboard cutouts or only comprises a handful of ships.

Unless you want the bases or just want to paint the world red, prefer reparations to colonies at the peace table, at least after early wars - reparations boost your economy much more over the long run than colonies do, and unlike overseas colonies they don't come with potential foreign station tonnage requirements.

If you want more specific advice, what strategy would you like to pursue? How do you like to fight your wars?

[cabusha]

This is how I roll Austria Hungary. I play with Large Fleets - Historical Resources, let the AI generate the Legacy Fleet.

Once In, I invest in larger docks. I set research on Damage Control to High, Guns to High, and High Explosive to High. I look at my starting fleet. Odds are, the starting B's are crappy 9Kton designs with weak guns. This is fine, they're there for blockade points. If you get into a fleet engagement with them, I recommend sailing the other way. Early on, cheap B's are your thing just to keep yourself from being blockaded. Go into your Doctrines, and set HE for Long and Medium range for all calibers against BBs and Armored Cruisers. In Ammo Loadout %, set AP and HE to 50-50. I find a burn them with fire method highly effective, and early on, the enemy fleet lacks deck armor. As long as you get hits, your HE spam with shred their superstructure, throwing splinters into uptakes and fires eventually rendering the target ineffective. Works well for the first 7-10 years.

I lay down a couple of these bad boys overseas (pick someone friendly):


You can only build them in the first couple of years before ship development tech advances. They're a Proto-BC. Heavy armor, big guns, and fast. In a war, your goal is to destroy the enemy's (hopefully Italy's) escort fleet completely. They'll out-gun any heavy or light cruiser they come across until true BCs are laid down. In a 2-on-1 they can even take on enemy B's. You won't pen their belt, but the flame throwers on your sides should burn them out, while your main guns pen their extended belt locations, causing flooding and/or crippling hits.

From there, the biggest thing is pick a fight with Italy. They're weak, and you should be able to take them on. Just play cautious with your ships. In the peace treaty with Italy, DON'T TAKE POSSESSIONS.  They'll pay war reparations instead, which will directly improve your economy.  Economic growth is compounding, so the early money in pays off.  After the first war, your neighbors (France, GB, or USA) should have early Dreadnought tech, so build some BBs over there until your guns catch up. The Proto-BCs you built make good candidates for conversions to CVLs once the tech shows up.

Cheers and good luck!

[aeson]

Dec 10, 2019 1:43:23 GMT -6 cabusha said:

You can only build them in the first couple of years before ship development tech advances

You can build ships such as that whenever you want - even at the end of the game. The problem with the Tsukuba-type CA is that it's limited to 22 knots design speed with 4 to 7 main battery guns in two turrets - 23 knots if you reduce the main battery to three guns in two turrets or four guns in one, or any speed if it carries only one main battery gun - and 6" of belt armor (you can also get 8 guns in two turrets at 22 knots if you drop the belt to 3.5" or less), which means that the type fairly rapidly becomes obsolete since it cannot be made fast enough to keep pace with more conventional modern designs (especially problematic if they get drawn as part of a cruiser/battlecruiser force), starts to have protection issues against more conventional CA armaments by the mid-1910s or so, and probably won't be as well armed, as large, as well protected, or anywhere near as fast as a typical dreadnought battlecruiser.

[eaterofsuns]

I'm going to second most of what cabusha just said; I too am a huge fan of 16kton proto-BC's in the med, though I tend to go with 24x5" secondaries, 24x4" tertiary for max dakka. In fact, with gunnery training on, I will happily run a proto-BC against an early B on a one to one basis, especially some of the garbage that Italy builds. And god help the poor enemy if you manage to get one of those monsters into a convoy attack battle, even later on when BB's start emerging they can still obliterate typical escort options, and run away from the big guns that might kill them.

Broadly speaking, I find smaller powers benefit from smallish numbers of high quality builds. Essentially you need to start with enough decent B hulls to keep from worrying about a blockade when you inevitably go to war with Italy and France, and then try and get really good DD's and eventually BC's. A-H can avoid crappy colony builds completely if you are careful to only loot med territories. Always always always pick railroads when there is a budget windfall event. A-H's economy gets a few boost events as well, and you can eclipse Italy and France budget wise pretty quickly. I also try very hard to avoid wars with Great Britain early. By the 1930s or 40s you can turn the med into a unsinkable aircraft carrier and ensure that anyone foolish to bring capital ships into your sea never gets them out again. That is the time to fight GB.