War in Hoi4 is fought differently on each front. You need to be ready to fight not only on land but also in the air and at sea. For this, we wanted to prepare a Hoi4 naval guide for you. In our guide, we will talk about the best warships, the best technologies, and naval doctrines.
Especially if you like to play in countries with strong navies, such as the USA, England, and Japan, you can start our guide one step ahead. However, if you are going to play with countries with smaller navies, such as Germany, the Soviet Union, and Italy, your job will be a bit more difficult. Because producing ships takes a lot of time and requires a lot of consumption.
However, we have prepared a great guide for you to keep a certain balance. No matter which country you play, you will be able to use this information. If you are ready now, let’s get started and take a quick look at our guide.
If you want to get information about Paratroppers that will be a part of your operations together with the Hoi4 Haval guide, you can also browse our other articles.
First of all, you need to know that there are five different ships in total in Hoi4, meaning there are 5 different warship classes that you can craft. These are Carrier, Battleship, Cruisers, Destroyer, and Submarine, respectively. Each class has different usage areas, advantages, and disadvantages. Let’s take a quick look at them.
Carrier
Carrier is a floating airport, as we all know. Carriers, which can accommodate various amounts of warplanes, are very difficult to manufacture. For example, if you want to produce a simple Carrier in 1936 in a game you started with England, you have to spend 8460 production costs. To be honest, I am one of those who think that producing Carrier is unnecessary and rather useless. Because in Carrier, you can use 20 planes at first. It is possible to increase this to 120 over time, but who would want to waste time with this?
Battleship
Battleships are indispensable in a navy. Even a high-level battleship you produce will be the flagship of the navy. That’s why it’s always necessary to produce at least 3-4 wonderfully equipped battleships. Now we’re going to show you an average battleship design that will be in effect in 1940.
As you can see, we’ve added a lot of anti-aircraft, cannon, armor, and radar technology. It has maximum security against both submarine and airborne attacks. At the same time, we created a high firepower as there are many cannons.
Cruisers
At the beginning of our Hoi4 Naval guide article, we mentioned that there are five ships. However, when it comes to Cruisers, we come across 3 different ship types. These are Battle, Heavy, and Light Cruiser.
Cruisers are fast and extremely fast ships that are generally used in inland seas. Of course, there are some differences between them in terms of production. Therefore, we will show you 3 different templates. These templates that we will show are suitable for Hoi4 Naval meta, so you can always use them.
- Battlecruiser
Battlecruisers are generally lighter and faster than battleships. Of course, however, they have a little more power, yet they are still indispensable in the navy. You can see a meta template as an example below.
If you look at the base stats, you can see that the max speed is 34.9 km. This is an important advantage as it is fast compared to a classic battleship. However, we’ve added 3 level 1 cannons to the Battlecruiser. We also strengthened the defense with 3 level 3 anti-aircraft guns. While we haven’t turned it into a full-fledged war machine, you may still want to craft a few.
- Heavycruiser
Heavycruisers are the type of ship that countries with strong navies should never build because they neither have too much firepower nor are they fast. However, it is used by weak countries due to its extremely low production cost. If you are playing a country with a weak navy and production power, then you can try to build a Heavycruiser.
- Lightcruiser
Lightcruisers are generally used functionally in Hoi4. So we’re not going to show you a template here because it’s about how you want to fight. For example, you can create a Light Cruiser that only launches torpedoes, or you can create Light Cruiser that will be a defensive shield for your more defensive navy against air attacks. Here the choice completely depends on your country and your fighting style.
Destroyer
Destroyers are flexible to use and incredibly cheap to manufacture. Therefore, it is necessary to produce a large number of them, as it is very effective during the attack.
It is equipped with maximum speed, torpedo, radar and minesweeper systems as you can see from the picture. We could even say that they are almost the backbone of the navy. The template we showed above is an ideal design for 1940. As the years progress, you should definitely not forget to improve the technologies in design.
Submarine
Unfortunately, Submarines are no longer as useful as they used to be. If I was writing the Hoi4 Naval guide 1 year ago, then I would suggest producing a large amount of Submarine. However, with the latest patches, unfortunately, it was nerfed and became useless. Of course, they are not completely useless, they are especially useful for laying mines and making sudden raids.
As you can see here, we used 3 level 3 torpedoes to be functional in flash raids. At the same time, we created a Submarine suitable for 1940 with a 3-level engine by strengthening it with Basic Snorkel.
When you enter Naval Doctrine in Hoi4, 3 different options appear. These are “Fleet in Being“, “Trade Interdiction” and “Base Strike”. Again, before the meta changed in the game, most players would usually choose “Base Strike“. However, due to its Carrier focus and offering ideal bonuses only for strong countries, it has not been used much. Instead, as of 2023, most players are using the “Trade Interdiction” doctrine.
Because with this doctrine, you will get maximum efficiency from cheap and easy-to-produce ships, especially Submarine and Cruisers. For each doctrine research, you can get various buffs between 10% and 20% for your ships. If you are aiming to produce a Cruiser-oriented navy, be careful not to choose a doctrine other than “Trade Interdiction”.
Other than that, there is no need to mention Fleet in Being. This is also because it is useful for countries with a large number of navies and ports. So if you’re playing with America, Japan or England, then Fleet in Being can be of great use to you.
Conclusion
In today’s article, we gave you information about Hoi4 Naval guide. We talked about ships and doctrines in detail. We could go into much more detail if we wanted to, but unfortunately, Hoi4 has a meta-like reality. Using each ship as you wish means you’re just wasting your country’s resources. For this reason, we tried to tell you the most ideal ship templates and doctrines that can be used by every country without any problems. In our next Hoi4 article, we will talk about naval warfare, military landings, and screening efficiency. See you later!
