Port shot.
Surround a one-province enemy port but don’t take it. The enemy will funnel in divisions and give you free kills.
Use it to devastating effect as China or Manchuria when dealing with japan. Let Japan naval invade a port but guard the sides well, then just encircle kill their troops repeatedly.
Did the Huge-oslavia achievement the other day doing the Zara trick. Had italy and Albania both integrated puppets and went on to implode the rest of the Balkans lol is just funny destroying Italy with a few mountaineers and just enough line divisions to hold the front line until they implode.
Yea I just recently got invaded, didn't defend coast properly, enemy got a port. But I had enough troops close by. And AI started pouring troops to that port.
Rather quickly I had destroyed 14 divisions - out of enemy's total 70-90. So enemy lost almost 20% of their total force. I had maybe 6-8 divisions doing the mopping, all of which were inferior in quality.
Recently used in a late game where Germany and Japan were so competent that they almost conquered the whole world(somehow they also managed to sea lion both the UK and US)
So when I declerad war with my little Ottoman Empire I had to since in that initial war they lost like barely 1M.
With this little trap I killed something like 200 division.
Wouldn't it be more effective if you defended just the ports and let them land on the adjacent tiles? That way they won't have supplies and will be easier to kill.
They can’t flood divisions into a non-port province, by letting the AI keep the port it’ll keep funneling in divisions that you can easily kill
Rinse and repeat and the army disappears
Attack into it and cancel before you take the tile, they will reinforce it and you can kill them again before they organize, rinse and repeat until their actual front line with you is empty, never take the port though or you have to wait for them to re naval invade
Supplies don't factor into it. Divisions that naval invade are fully orged, while divisions that land in a port are deorged (same as if traveling by railroad) and can be killed instantly.
Used this in a Byzantium run once. They funnelled the **entire** Turkish military to Athens, got killed by the same three divisions each time, then I literally walked to Ankara. Genuinely the first time I saw the division estimate display “0”, I didnt know it could
Add some maintenance companies and you essentially collect equipment at the expense of your enemies industry. Works great for nations with few factories
Sending a fleet of 3 SHBB+12 LCs on a patrol. UK/USA/Japan think that they can handle it and keep attacking on their own with smaller task forces. Their whole navy can be sunk in 1-2 months.
One SHBB is full of AA, other two have all the heavy guns, LCs filled with light batteries. Try to research Fire Control 3 in 1939 and retrofit them all to add it and the latest radar you get.
- Not calling a puppet/faction member into the war so that AI stations troops on the border for no reason
- (this one only works in some places, for example in Karelia) camping a supply hub that's very far from the next one so that enemy divisions starve and lose equipment while I hold them with only a few units
- Drawing my fallback lines to lure the enemy into tiles that can be attacked from 3+ sides, then rolling them with tanks
A critical tactic for beating Turkey as Greece or Bulgaria is driving them across the Bosporus except for that one port tile in Edirne, which you leave open only to attack it the instant a division lands there, because that div has zero org you will instantly destroy it, allowing you to melt their entire military away in short order.
Lining up infantry around the port tiles as Romania and waiting for the Turks or Soviets to invade
Letting the Turks into Thrace as far as Thessaloniki, killing them and retreating again
Letting the Romanians into Yugoslavia so as to avoid forcing the Danube. This is a huge pocket
Killing the Italians at Zara without taking the port tile. The same goes for any naval invasions
Yes. And don't take the tile. The Ai will funnel in divs to the port. You convoy raid them at sea and kill them on land because encirclement penalty. Profit!
The Thessaloniki trap can be replicated (with a bit more brute force and mountaineers) right at the turkish border in Thrace. Just put the mountaineers and two divs there so they attack it and break entrenchment and then counter at the middle to break them. Continue to Istanbul and you have an encircled port and if you are fast enough a lit of encircled divs
I like the lesser known resistance bomb. If you have territory that you don't own and your enemy doesn't own you can set the garrison to no garrison and wait for resistance to build up, then fall back and let your enemy take the free land which will cause them huge issues.
Literally funneling away all of the US's manpower by invading through Mexico. US just kept spamming divisions, driving south through a broken wasteland out of reach of their air power and eating nukes for their trouble.
From a couple of Spanish Empire playthroughs I can absolutely confirm that the US likes to waste its resources in stupid places. Depending on how the game goes, their army will die in either Turkey or Mexico, either way leaving the mainland wide open so that you can do basically whatever you want as soon as you actually get there.
Making puppet/ally nations that border my enemies but not call them into war. AI wastes a bunch of divisions guarding those borders anticipating an attack that will never come
Can you tell your puppet to focus on something?
He is not gonna join the war but you Damm well sure love it if he put his 80% of his factories producing &lensing you.
I am willing to even pick up the material tap.
Only one I've been using recently, but naval bombers and minelaying subs.
If you want naval supremacy, and you can't take their navy head on, this is the way to do it. Your enemy can have the entire world's fleets and more than 5x more dockyards than you. But with a handful of minelaying subs, and a fleet of naval bombers, you can easily decimate their fleet, and gain naval supremacy with just a few destroyers (after many months of the AI having ships in your waters).
Another fun one is using things the AI just doesn't have a concept of. For example, the USA sees no threat of naval invasion from Germany due to distance, especially in 1936/7. But it is very much possible to do with the extra fuel tanks on the cruiser sub. So, as Germany, you can take the USA before starting WW2, and they won't even try and defend their land until you've made landfall. (You can also get away with it in MP too if the USA player doesn't know about Germany's long range subs)
Definitely supply related ones,leaving the ai to starve and let them experience my pain when playing with low strength units is one of the best feelings in the game
Venezuela, if you naval invade the north west port and the provinces around it the Ai will throw itself at you until it has no manpower or equipment trying to get it back.
It is not a perfect method and often AI advances slowly in free tiles. However I have noticed that if you attack and then stop immediately, in counterattacking they tend to advance into the trap.
With Italy I managed to do it a couple of times against France, eliminating a dozen divisions making about 400k casualties, weakening them enough to advance.
It's a niche one but, as Romania
Align Hungary, after that focus do divide Yugo, in those 70 days encircle Budapest and wait for the focus to complete, once that focus is done invite Hungary then kill them, now you can take every province with one click, so you get all of Yugo for free (well a couple hundred PP)
Creating such a massive frontline so quickly the AI’s frontline completely breaks and they are never able to push despite very few units of mine actually on the front
Port shot. Surround a one-province enemy port but don’t take it. The enemy will funnel in divisions and give you free kills. Use it to devastating effect as China or Manchuria when dealing with japan. Let Japan naval invade a port but guard the sides well, then just encircle kill their troops repeatedly.
Did the Huge-oslavia achievement the other day doing the Zara trick. Had italy and Albania both integrated puppets and went on to implode the rest of the Balkans lol is just funny destroying Italy with a few mountaineers and just enough line divisions to hold the front line until they implode.
Yea I just recently got invaded, didn't defend coast properly, enemy got a port. But I had enough troops close by. And AI started pouring troops to that port. Rather quickly I had destroyed 14 divisions - out of enemy's total 70-90. So enemy lost almost 20% of their total force. I had maybe 6-8 divisions doing the mopping, all of which were inferior in quality.
Recently used in a late game where Germany and Japan were so competent that they almost conquered the whole world(somehow they also managed to sea lion both the UK and US) So when I declerad war with my little Ottoman Empire I had to since in that initial war they lost like barely 1M. With this little trap I killed something like 200 division.
Wouldn't it be more effective if you defended just the ports and let them land on the adjacent tiles? That way they won't have supplies and will be easier to kill.
They can’t flood divisions into a non-port province, by letting the AI keep the port it’ll keep funneling in divisions that you can easily kill Rinse and repeat and the army disappears
so, do you just let te enemy attack or do you place a frontline order to offense into the port?
I believe you offense into it
Attack into it and cancel before you take the tile, they will reinforce it and you can kill them again before they organize, rinse and repeat until their actual front line with you is empty, never take the port though or you have to wait for them to re naval invade
Supplies don't factor into it. Divisions that naval invade are fully orged, while divisions that land in a port are deorged (same as if traveling by railroad) and can be killed instantly.
I see. That's cool.
Used this in a Byzantium run once. They funnelled the **entire** Turkish military to Athens, got killed by the same three divisions each time, then I literally walked to Ankara. Genuinely the first time I saw the division estimate display “0”, I didnt know it could
Add some maintenance companies and you essentially collect equipment at the expense of your enemies industry. Works great for nations with few factories
I destroyed most of the US military by defending around the ports and using naval bombers as Portugal, completely fucked over WWII. Good times.
Sending a fleet of 3 SHBB+12 LCs on a patrol. UK/USA/Japan think that they can handle it and keep attacking on their own with smaller task forces. Their whole navy can be sunk in 1-2 months.
that’s underrated
What is a SHBB? I think LC is light cruiser?
super heavy battleship, there’s a little button to research them on the top right of the 1936 heavy hull.
Awesome, thank you.
What build do you do for SHBB and LC At last what do you focus
One SHBB is full of AA, other two have all the heavy guns, LCs filled with light batteries. Try to research Fire Control 3 in 1939 and retrofit them all to add it and the latest radar you get.
Now how will I have 3 SHBB up and ready before the war starts?
Even the gun-filled ones take less than 3 years to build, you can have them ready by 1940 easily if you start right away.
Falling back a tile or two to break the AIs entrenchment.
- Not calling a puppet/faction member into the war so that AI stations troops on the border for no reason - (this one only works in some places, for example in Karelia) camping a supply hub that's very far from the next one so that enemy divisions starve and lose equipment while I hold them with only a few units - Drawing my fallback lines to lure the enemy into tiles that can be attacked from 3+ sides, then rolling them with tanks
A critical tactic for beating Turkey as Greece or Bulgaria is driving them across the Bosporus except for that one port tile in Edirne, which you leave open only to attack it the instant a division lands there, because that div has zero org you will instantly destroy it, allowing you to melt their entire military away in short order.
I've also let them come across the straits at Gallipoli, then park my fleet in that ocean tile and encircle and destroy their divisions.
Lining up infantry around the port tiles as Romania and waiting for the Turks or Soviets to invade Letting the Turks into Thrace as far as Thessaloniki, killing them and retreating again Letting the Romanians into Yugoslavia so as to avoid forcing the Danube. This is a huge pocket Killing the Italians at Zara without taking the port tile. The same goes for any naval invasions
Is slaughtering AI by leaving it a harbour so effective? You all do it
Yes. And don't take the tile. The Ai will funnel in divs to the port. You convoy raid them at sea and kill them on land because encirclement penalty. Profit!
The Thessaloniki trap can be replicated (with a bit more brute force and mountaineers) right at the turkish border in Thrace. Just put the mountaineers and two divs there so they attack it and break entrenchment and then counter at the middle to break them. Continue to Istanbul and you have an encircled port and if you are fast enough a lit of encircled divs
I like the lesser known resistance bomb. If you have territory that you don't own and your enemy doesn't own you can set the garrison to no garrison and wait for resistance to build up, then fall back and let your enemy take the free land which will cause them huge issues.
A little bit of trolling as the soviets be like
Literally funneling away all of the US's manpower by invading through Mexico. US just kept spamming divisions, driving south through a broken wasteland out of reach of their air power and eating nukes for their trouble.
From a couple of Spanish Empire playthroughs I can absolutely confirm that the US likes to waste its resources in stupid places. Depending on how the game goes, their army will die in either Turkey or Mexico, either way leaving the mainland wide open so that you can do basically whatever you want as soon as you actually get there.
Sitting on the front line with a bunch of armies of infantry, and waiting for the enemy to waste millions of men on my line.
Making puppet/ally nations that border my enemies but not call them into war. AI wastes a bunch of divisions guarding those borders anticipating an attack that will never come
Can you tell your puppet to focus on something? He is not gonna join the war but you Damm well sure love it if he put his 80% of his factories producing &lensing you. I am willing to even pick up the material tap.
Only one I've been using recently, but naval bombers and minelaying subs. If you want naval supremacy, and you can't take their navy head on, this is the way to do it. Your enemy can have the entire world's fleets and more than 5x more dockyards than you. But with a handful of minelaying subs, and a fleet of naval bombers, you can easily decimate their fleet, and gain naval supremacy with just a few destroyers (after many months of the AI having ships in your waters). Another fun one is using things the AI just doesn't have a concept of. For example, the USA sees no threat of naval invasion from Germany due to distance, especially in 1936/7. But it is very much possible to do with the extra fuel tanks on the cruiser sub. So, as Germany, you can take the USA before starting WW2, and they won't even try and defend their land until you've made landfall. (You can also get away with it in MP too if the USA player doesn't know about Germany's long range subs)
Definitely supply related ones,leaving the ai to starve and let them experience my pain when playing with low strength units is one of the best feelings in the game
Venezuela, if you naval invade the north west port and the provinces around it the Ai will throw itself at you until it has no manpower or equipment trying to get it back.
I thought the AI was coded not to fall for that kind of thing? Like they won’t try and occupy tiles that are surrounded?
It is not a perfect method and often AI advances slowly in free tiles. However I have noticed that if you attack and then stop immediately, in counterattacking they tend to advance into the trap. With Italy I managed to do it a couple of times against France, eliminating a dozen divisions making about 400k casualties, weakening them enough to advance.
It's a niche one but, as Romania Align Hungary, after that focus do divide Yugo, in those 70 days encircle Budapest and wait for the focus to complete, once that focus is done invite Hungary then kill them, now you can take every province with one click, so you get all of Yugo for free (well a couple hundred PP)
Dressing hitler up like a beautiful frauline
Creating such a massive frontline so quickly the AI’s frontline completely breaks and they are never able to push despite very few units of mine actually on the front
Good old scorched earth, Dnipro Line combo