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Post by niall101 on Jun 13, 2019 6:47:45 GMT -6
I've noticed this situation when starting a 1900 game manual building of legacy fleet with the majority of AI nations ships were Battleships with next to no cruisers.
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Post by polyarmus on Jun 13, 2019 7:38:41 GMT -6
I've noticed this situation when starting a 1900 game manual building of legacy fleet with the majority of AI nations ships were Battleships with next to no cruisers. I had quite different experience during one game - at 1900 there was 1 battleship in the world. Everybody had lot of CAs. However by 1930, other navies had something like 5 CLs altogether...
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Post by ramjb on Jun 13, 2019 10:16:01 GMT -6
I'm aware people think AI is top heavy. HIstory would've been top heavy too. When the WT was signed the US had 10 massive capital ships in build, and no cruisers nor destroyers in queue. Japan was in a similar situation as their 8-8 plan forced them to invest almost everything in capital ships (japan did include some destroyers and very small CLs in their plan though). Britain was in very much the same place: they were about to nosedive in a huge capital ship buildup with their G3s and N3s that left them with very little resources to invest in cruisers.
The WT and subsequent treaties killed that trend, prohibited capital ship new building (with some exceptions like the nelsons), and caused cruiser construction to skyrocket (reason why the LT had to deal with cruisers). That's why in WW2 there were so many cruisers around, and that's why you can't compare a no-treaty RtW game with real life. Because without an intervening treaty, navies would've spent almost all of their budgets on ships that needed to be massive and expensive, leaving little or no money for cruisers. Just as they do in game.
What you see in game (AI topheaviness) is what would probably happened IRL too without treaties. If you really want to know if it's a bug or not, edit a savegame in 1921 to enforce a treaty that limits new construction to 10k tons and 8'' guns, and keep on playing (without wars) for at least 15 years. Then compare the AI results with those of real life.
You'll be surprised.
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jma286
Junior Member
Posts: 97
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Post by jma286 on Jun 13, 2019 10:25:28 GMT -6
It's 1920 in my current 1900 France game (very large fleets), and other navies definitely seem a little top heavy. With CLs, I have 25, the US has 22, and everyone else is lagging far behind. A-H and Germany lost some CLs to me in our wars but they didn't replace their losses. As far as DD's, me and the UK have 50-60 and everyone else is 25-30, which seems a bit low. I definitely think that the AI build priorities could use some rebalancing, as having more BCs than CLs is very odd.
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Post by seawolf on Jun 13, 2019 10:26:56 GMT -6
I'm aware people think AI is top heavy. HIstory would've been top heavy too. When the WT was signed the US had 10 massive capital ships in build, and no cruisers nor destroyers in queue. Japan was in a similar situation as their 8-8 plan forced them to invest almost everything in capital ships (japan did include some destroyers and very small CLs in their plan though). Britain was in very much the same place: they were about to nosedive in a huge capital ship buildup with their G3s and N3s that left them with very little resources to invest in cruisers. The WT and subsequent treaties killed that trend, prohibited capital ship new building (with some exceptions like the nelsons), and caused cruiser construction to skyrocket (reason why the LT had to deal with cruisers). That's why in WW2 there were so many cruisers around, and that's why you can't compare a no-treaty RtW game with real life. Because without an intervening treaty, navies would've spent almost all of their budgets on ships that needed to be massive and expensive, leaving little or no money for cruisers. Just as they do in game. What you see in game (AI topheaviness) is what would probably happened IRL too without treaties. If you really want to know if it's a bug or not, edit a savegame in 1921 to enforce a treaty that limits new construction to 10k tons and 8'' guns, and keep on playing (without wars) for at least 15 years. Then compare the AI results with those of real life. You'll be surprised. I get they should be top heavy but colonial nations should have at least light cruisers to meet foreign stations and there should not be more capital ships than destroyers
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Post by seawolf on Jun 13, 2019 10:30:09 GMT -6
Its also important to note that before the washington treaty the Us had 20 old cruisers, 12 modern cruisers, and over 100 destroyers
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Post by tortugapower on Jun 13, 2019 10:41:03 GMT -6
This is my first game as UK starting 1920 ... Wow, I hope that's not what I have to look forward to. There's no CLs anywhere!
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Post by mycophobia on Jun 13, 2019 10:42:14 GMT -6
I'd be more amiable to the fact that there isn't many cruisers. In absence of the Washington treaty and if the bb/bc spam went on, we probably see a lot less cruiser than we had irl. Destroyer numbers does feel too little but I haven't seen number as skewed as this in my games. Usually im looking at a 1:2 ratio between BB/BC and DDs. Also in my current games in the 40s, most country scrapped their early dreads in the 20s, and start building a lot of cruisers. I don't have the game with me rn, but I recall UK had something like 4 BB, 3 BC, 10+ heavy cruiser, 30ish DDs, 4 carriers, and a decent number of CLs
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Post by Antediluvian Monster on Jun 13, 2019 10:51:10 GMT -6
There were huge amounts of cruisers during the pre-treaty WW1 period, just saying.
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Post by tortugapower on Jun 13, 2019 11:00:57 GMT -6
<snip> What you see in game (AI topheaviness) is what would probably happened IRL too without treaties. If you really want to know if it's a bug or not, edit a savegame in 1921 to enforce a treaty that limits new construction to 10k tons and 8'' guns, and keep on playing (without wars) for at least 15 years. Then compare the AI results with those of real life. You'll be surprised. Nobody knows what would have happened without the WNT, but feel free to speculate. I think that nations would still have built cruisers and destroyers.
I don't know of anyone who planned for the doctrine of less escorts than capital ships, but maybe there was a plan to completely abandon convoy escorts and/or fleet escorts and/or minesweeping/minelaying that I'm unaware of. In any case, I don't think that was common, and it's not something good for the game [edit: at least not as a norm].
Have you or has anyone else done this naval treaty savegame edit? I'm curious the results.
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Post by dorn on Jun 13, 2019 11:09:49 GMT -6
This is my first game as UK starting 1920 ... Wow, I hope that's not what I have to look forward to. There's no CLs anywhere! Take CL and CA together as it was before CL was allowed up to 12000 tons. All AI build "CLs" (4x3x12" style) ends classified as CA. Still they do not build any smaller cruisers which I found to be main workhorse and still pretty useful.
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Post by ramjb on Jun 13, 2019 11:10:11 GMT -6
I think that nations would still have built cruisers and destroyers
I think that too. Just not in big numbers. There's only a limited ammount of stuff you can afford while you're essentially bankrupting your country by building an insane ammount of capital ships.
Japan's 8-8 program would've needed an astonishing % of it's own PIB to be completed, the UK wasn't that behind in being bankrupt after WWI and the prospect of having to go with the N3/G3 building program was really problematic for them, and even the US were scared at the scale of investment demanded by the huge capital ship construction program they were chasing. Yet all of them had the determination to go through it because bankrupcy was preferable than "losing the race". They only stopped themselves from doing it because everyone else also agreed to do so.
If all your money is spent on big ships, and everyone else is building big ships so you'll have to keep on build even bigger in the future to remain in the race, very few money will be left for things as cruisers. Will they be built?. At some point, yeah, but in very small scale, and certainly nowhere near the numbers they were, because those numbers happened because cruisers were the biggest things navies of the time could build.
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Post by dorn on Jun 13, 2019 11:12:37 GMT -6
<snip> What you see in game (AI topheaviness) is what would probably happened IRL too without treaties. If you really want to know if it's a bug or not, edit a savegame in 1921 to enforce a treaty that limits new construction to 10k tons and 8'' guns, and keep on playing (without wars) for at least 15 years. Then compare the AI results with those of real life. You'll be surprised. Nobody knows what would have happened without the WNT, but feel free to speculate. I think that nations would still have built cruisers and destroyers.
I don't know of anyone who planned for the doctrine of less escorts than capital ships, but maybe there was a plan to completely abandon convoy escorts and/or fleet escorts and/or minesweeping/minelaying that I'm unaware of. In any case, I don't think that was common, and it's not something good for the game [edit: at least not as a norm].
Have you or has anyone else done this naval treaty savegame edit? I'm curious the results.
Royal Navy would build a lot of cruisers. I am not sure but I remember reading somewhere that Admiralty has clear idea how much cruisers they need - I think it was 50 or 60. Cruisers are much cheaper than capital ships and much more versatile. They would be still build.
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Post by ramjb on Jun 13, 2019 11:19:16 GMT -6
Royal Navy would build a lot of cruisers.
Assuming no WT, with what money?. The RN was stripped of money as it was after the war ended, and the G3/N3 proposed buildup program would've taken all their resources to get going (not to mention completed, many historians are highly doubtful the UK could build what they stated they were going to build).
As it was, with the WT in force and the UK building just two Nelsons, building only two BBs tolled them so hard that their CL buildup program completely stopped since 1918 to 1927, they only completed cruisers already begun in WWI (at very slow pace) until the Emerald class was ordered...which was already several years into the treaty itself. Meanwhile the Hawkins class of 5 ships were all ordered in WWI and completed at a very slow pace because the RN simply had no resources to build them faster.
Again, that happened while all they built were 2 small and much cheaper Nelsons than the numbers they intended to build of G3 and N3 monsters. So I ask again, with what money would the RN build those cruisers?. As it was they were so stripped of money that the Hawkins cruisers which were started in 1916, didn't enter service until well into the 20s.
You can't build anything if you don't have money to do it. And the 50-60 cruiser estimation was given AFTER the washington treaty, btw, when nobody else was building battleships or battlecruisers anymore.
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Post by alsadius on Jun 13, 2019 11:21:17 GMT -6
The WNT existed to save all involved money. If it didn't exist, presumably they'd have spent more money. Just like they had done a decade prior to ensure they stayed dominant.
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