So I annexed Russia and Germany when the wars ended and it's 1945 and I'm not sure what to do. Roleplay wise I don't think Poland would pick a fight with the Allies over the Middle East or Hungary or whatever. But on the other hand I kind of want to do it for the lulz...
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
So I annexed Russia and Germany when the wars ended and it's 1945 and I'm not sure what to do. Roleplay wise I don't think Poland would pick a fight with the Allies over the Middle East or Hungary or whatever. But on the other hand I kind of want to do it for the lulz...
Is the AI really bad or people (and you) pretty good at the game (maybe both)? Haven't gotten around to try it yet but read several posts of people steamrolling every other country no matter which starting nation they pick.
So I annexed Russia and Germany when the wars ended and it's 1945 and I'm not sure what to do. Roleplay wise I don't think Poland would pick a fight with the Allies over the Middle East or Hungary or whatever. But on the other hand I kind of want to do it for the lulz...
Is the AI really bad or people (and you) pretty good at the game (maybe both)? Haven't gotten around to try it yet but read several posts of people steamrolling every other country no matter which starting nation they pick.
The AI is pretty bad right now.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
So I annexed Russia and Germany when the wars ended and it's 1945 and I'm not sure what to do. Roleplay wise I don't think Poland would pick a fight with the Allies over the Middle East or Hungary or whatever. But on the other hand I kind of want to do it for the lulz...
Is the AI really bad or people (and you) pretty good at the game (maybe both)? Haven't gotten around to try it yet but read several posts of people steamrolling every other country no matter which starting nation they pick.
Like I said, I lost two games before I really figured out what to exploit, and those things are:
1) Winning an early war against a weak neighbor will get you far more factories than construction will. Being ahistorically aggressive pays off.
2) Infantry spam seems frankly overpowered, and I don't think the AI is programmed to just pour all of it's starting manpower into basic infantry divisions even if it can't equip them properly. But a player can do that and it works much better than I think it should.
3) I don't think the AI understands concentration of force. It will just deploy more or less evenly across the front and try to push. But I know that 2/3rds of my army will hold the line well enough, and taking the other third and throwing it at a small section of the front will actually push the line much better.
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Some things I learned from my ultimately doomed fascist Argentina game.
Making your own faction is pretty cool, just make sure you got some potential members first. Mine was a South American Coalition to free ourselves from unwanted and unneeded Americsn influence.
The AI is pretty predictable when it comes to amphibious landings. There were three locations (UND ONLY THREE!) that they would try to land on. Made defense pretty easy. Seriously during the entirety of my war (from like 39 to 45) I lost about 200k men. Allies lost at least several million men. I know the Americans themselves lost a little over 900k.
Tanks are fairly useless in large parts of South America. Coupled with the fact that I went with a heavy armor focus really limited my military's potential in the region.
Democracies are crazy susceptible to changing to Facist or Communist. Seriously just boost your party's popularity in a target democracy and sit back while your future ally gets their act together.
I feel like War Score gaining needs a tweak. As Argentina I conquered Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile. Brazil, Peru, and Venezuala were my fascist brothers in arms. We spent most of the 6 years just knocking Allied invasions back with minimal casualties on our part. Yet we were not even close to being able to make some sort of peace.
All in all though I'm loving the game. As with anything Paradox they'll be plenty of patches and DLC to keep the game fresh.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
So I annexed Russia and Germany when the wars ended and it's 1945 and I'm not sure what to do. Roleplay wise I don't think Poland would pick a fight with the Allies over the Middle East or Hungary or whatever. But on the other hand I kind of want to do it for the lulz...
Is the AI really bad or people (and you) pretty good at the game (maybe both)? Haven't gotten around to try it yet but read several posts of people steamrolling every other country no matter which starting nation they pick.
The AI is pretty bad right now.
Also they really cut the brakes on expansion so once you get going it's easy to keep going.
So I decided to play my new game as German with Historical Focuses turned off to see what kind of crazy alternate history I could create, and oh boy, the craziest thing just happened.
Some background, I decided to play super diplomatic Germany, trying to avoid a full on war as long as possible. So it is now Aug of 41 and the only war I have actually fought was a small quick one against Romania when they refused to cede Transylvania to Hungary (so Hungary just annexed them instead). I have dismantled Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, puppeted Greece, brought Italy into the Axis, and traded Poland Slovakia for Danzig. As a result of my friendship with Poland they flipped to Fascist, but they had already formed the Miedzymorze.
So the Soviet Union declared war on Poland. I sent them what volunteers and lend lease I could, although it hasn't really been enough, but at least my 8 crack Panzer divisions prolonged the war quite a bit. So the Soviets are at the bridges to Warsaw and I'm desperately working on building as many troops as possible and completing the Anti-Soviet pact and befriending the Nordic states, and then the craziest thing happens. Poland enters into a civil war, splitting into Fascist and Communist Poland. But for some reason Communist Poland is the main one I guess because the volunteers I sent to fight for Fascist Poland are now fighting for Communist Poland, and Communist Poland is at war with the Soviet Union and Fascist Poland is not.
And then Communist Poland joined the Allies so now the Soviet Union is at war with the Allies and I'm stilling sitting here going "hey guys... I'm gonna conquer all of Europe k? ... Guys?"
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
I think I'm ready to bump up to normal difficulty for my next game, once I see how this facist Greece one finishes up. I've pushed up to stalingrad and Germany has taken Moscow, and the ussr is close to capitulation. The USA just joined in with the allies though, we'll see how that shakes out.
My friend is working on a roguelike game you can play if you want to. (It has free demo)
So I think I'm going to call it on my first game, as Japan:
This was the turning point in the slog that is the Chinese war. If what's been said above is true, and poorly supplied infantry is weirdly effective, that explains why this was such a pain. I would consistently push the Chinese back because my units were better but man it was slow going because they just had so many. I have no idea how they were able to keep supplying their units throughout the war, since at most they only ever had 20 military factories supplying 200+ infantry units.(no lend lease, either) To make matters worse, both the allies and the Comiterm got military access into China and wasted troops bolstering their line. What made the image you see above the turning point was I trapped about eighty divisions of Chinese and Soviet forces into a large pocket on the eastern coast and exterminated them. About half a year later China finally capitulated. I'm calling it quits because honestly there's not a lot for me to do. Invading Russia from the East seems pointless and Germany's beating them anyway. I could invade India or Australia but both are basically non issues. And the US has been so isolationist I don't have the heart to disturb them. (They never even embargoed me.)
Some final Japanese tips: (that I didn't learn until it was kind of a bit late)
1. Don't bother with tanks, at least not probably until very late game. The terrain in China, eastern Siberia, (Not that Siberia matters) and South-East Asia makes them really not worth it. Invest in marine and alpine units instead, you'll be better served.
2. If you attack China, all the Chinese minors including Communist China will all join into their own special Chinese United Front faction to fight you. (It doesn't tell you this anywhere. Which was frustrating.)
3. Think really carefully about if you really want to join the Axis. You don't actually gain a lot out of the deal (Germany and Italy are non-entities in the Pacific/Asia) and Germany will almost certainly makes thing more uncomfortable for you by forcing you into wars with both the UK and the USSR that you'll probably want to delay. Also I'm pretty sure the AI is currently too dumb to ever successfully invade the British Isles barring crazy shenanigans so if you do want to fight the UK as Japan... have fun basically doing it yourself.
Next game I'm thinking of going communist France, and creating my own faction. Nobody expects the Commune of France.
I've been playing a game as Iraq, which I democritized. It's slow going and you keep wanting to quit and start as a more exciting country until the early 40's and then all of a sudden you are up to your eyeballs in enemies from all sides. Part of that may be because I staged a democratic coup in Saudi Arabia who then joined the Allies, so the Arabian monarchists immediately joined the Axis. I take a hint and join the Allies as well in an effort to take a chunk of the peninsula and maybe some of Vichy occupied Syria. But now I've got the Nazi's fabricating against me and I only have 10 devisions and like 20 shit-tier planes. The toughest part is getting past your limited resources, and the fact that you are stuck with pretty minimal production capabilities. Iraq has 3 states and you start the game w/ access to 20 oil and a total of 7 factory slots.
nefffffffffff on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
edited June 2016
In my current Facisit Argentina game I've created my own faction. Got Brazil, Venezuela, Peru to join.
Got the USA to convert to fascism, however they immediately joined the Axis. So here is what happened with that.
Apparently Japan never joined the Axis. Shortly after the USA changed to fascist Japan attacked Hawaii. USA goes to war and Japan joins the Allies.
There's a three way fight going on between the Allies, Axis, and Commitern.
Oh also Novus Imperium Romana faction is in the mix along with my own South American Coalition. Though we've far less global plans, just carving up South and Central America.
Poland is fascist, but a member of the Allies.
Edit- oh and Paradox? Please, please, please change individual units being called "Divisions". At best they are Brigades. A collection of a bunch of units (tanks, infantry, mechanized) would be a Division.
In my current Facisit Argentina game I've created my own faction. Got Brazil, Venezuela, Peru to join.
Got the USA to convert to fascism, however they immediately joined the Axis. So here is what happened with that.
Apparently Japan never joined the Axis. Shortly after the USA changed to fascist Japan attacked Hawaii. USA goes to war and Japan joins the Allies.
There's a three way fight going on between the Allies, Axis, and Commitern.
Oh also Novus Imperium Romana faction is in the mix along with my own South American Coalition. Though we've far less global plans, just carving up South and Central America.
Poland is fascist, but a member of the Allies.
Edit- oh and Paradox? Please, please, please change individual units being called "Divisions". At best they are Brigades. A collection of a bunch of units (tanks, infantry, mechanized) would be a Division.
Except that divisions in HoI4 ARE a collection of a bunch of units, each division consisting of up to 5 brigades, and each of those consisting of up to 5 battalions.
Considering that we often see specialized brigades (artillery brigades, support brigades, engineering brigades) which are support units usually dispersed among the rest of the division...
...well, it's a fair thing to say "Yes, our smallest strategic unit will be the Division."
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
It seems way to small to me. I mean the US Army has, maybe, 10 divisions (not counting reserves). A division is huge and a single one is often responsible for a very sizable theatre of war.
Then again this is WWII, so I suppose I shouldn't hold numbers up to modern standards.
Right now I see it as Brigade>Battalions>Companies.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
The toughest part is getting past your limited resources, and the fact that you are stuck with pretty minimal production capabilities. Iraq has 3 states and you start the game w/ access to 20 oil and a total of 7 factory slots.
If you're going to start as a small nation you'll probably need to do lots of early wars to steal your way into a respectable industrial base. Which probably means playing as small democracies and hoping to get a lot done... isn't feasible excluding luck.
It seems way to small to me. I mean the US Army has, maybe, 10 divisions (not counting reserves). A division is huge and a single one is often responsible for a very sizable theatre of war.
Then again this is WWII, so I suppose I shouldn't hold numbers up to modern standards.
Right now I see it as Brigade>Battalions>Companies.
During WWII Germany had over 400 infantry divisions (adding 40+ panzer divisions, 10 airborne divisions and a handful of mountain and artillery divisions). During the height of the war their standing force numbered about 3.3-3.5 million men divided into ~200 divisions.
The US and GB had far fewer, with maybe 150-200 divisions between them.
Fiendishrabbit on
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
So this game is rough on the processor. Paradox games always have been but this especially. My rig has never had good cooling, and on a hot day I'm only able to run this for like 10 minutes on the higher speed settings before the thing overheats (CPU temp > 95C). I guess it's finally time to spring for a liquid cooler and get proper air flow through my case. The game was fine up until proper WW2 started.
I was playing as USA. Had no idea what to build and ended up way behind on building divisions. I didn't realize at first that you could build them before you had all the equipment for them and it wasn't the end of the world. I joined the Allies early but couldn't do much other than send France and UK all my old shit in Lend Lease. Germany did manage to take out Poland, Netherlands and Belgium pretty quickly. UK did a naval invasion of Italy in 1940 and I threw a measly 10 divisions into that before the game started acting up.
So I had to restart my French Commune game since the allies very early on decided I was the threat and completely ignored the axis. Gonna retry again but cheese war declarations so I can declare a bunch of wars one after the other so stupid Britain won't guarantee every nation around me while Germany takes the rest of Europe unopposed.
I've just had an utterly gruelling civil war, but after nearly an hour spent abusing the AI's inability to avoid being surrounded, the Communist States of America stand triumphant.
It's April 1938, and Britain still has a long way to go before they see the US intervene in Europe. When it does happen it'll be from the east, an endless wave of men and tanks hardened by ceaseless wars of conquest in the americas and asia.
Seems making Communism everywhere is a popular alt history
I've taken the French Commune, joined Comitern and then kick started WW2 by declaring war on Italy in defense of the People's Republic of Italy, a civil war faction I created. Currently I'm being super cautious with military and trying to drag the French into motorised/mechanised with medium armour set ups. Which means I can't be too agressive with what I have because it takes a good, long while to build up new divisions like that when you only have 8 military factories.
Seems making Communism everywhere is a popular alt history
I've taken the French Commune, joined Comitern and then kick started WW2 by declaring war on Italy in defense of the People's Republic of Italy, a civil war faction I created. Currently I'm being super cautious with military and trying to drag the French into motorised/mechanised with medium armour set ups. Which means I can't be too agressive with what I have because it takes a good, long while to build up new divisions like that when you only have 8 military factories.
French Commune was actually the very first faction I played! I managed to conquer nationalist Spain, but once the actual world war started I was completely boxed in by Germany and Italy. The only real reasons I was even able to hold on (they each had 100 batallions at my border) were that I had a pretty big wall of forts and that Germany for some reason refused to invade Belgium. I gave up that campaign once I realised how badly the Soviets were getting slaughtered in the east, but it might have been interesting to see what would have happened once the states got involved.
My current conquest of the Americas is going pretty much as expected. Mexico was quite a tough nut to crack since my war industry was still in its infancy when I began that war, but pretty much everyone else is a complete pushover. My issue lies in the west.
I've ramped up my navy production enough that I feel pretty confident that I could match Japan at sea, but the prospect of fighting in that theatre is super intimidating. I don't have a lot of experience with naval forces at all, and copying the historical strategy used to win that war seems like it would involve dozens of amphibious assaults to even get to the point where an invasion of the Japanese islands would be possible. Does anyone have any advice on a good strategy?
Seems making Communism everywhere is a popular alt history
I've taken the French Commune, joined Comitern and then kick started WW2 by declaring war on Italy in defense of the People's Republic of Italy, a civil war faction I created. Currently I'm being super cautious with military and trying to drag the French into motorised/mechanised with medium armour set ups. Which means I can't be too agressive with what I have because it takes a good, long while to build up new divisions like that when you only have 8 military factories.
French Commune was actually the very first faction I played! I managed to conquer nationalist Spain, but once the actual world war started I was completely boxed in by Germany and Italy. The only real reasons I was even able to hold on (they each had 100 batallions at my border) were that I had a pretty big wall of forts and that Germany for some reason refused to invade Belgium. I gave up that campaign once I realised how badly the Soviets were getting slaughtered in the east, but it might have been interesting to see what would have happened once the states got involved.
My current conquest of the Americas is going pretty much as expected. Mexico was quite a tough nut to crack since my war industry was still in its infancy when I began that war, but pretty much everyone else is a complete pushover. My issue lies in the west.
I've ramped up my navy production enough that I feel pretty confident that I could match Japan at sea, but the prospect of fighting in that theatre is super intimidating. I don't have a lot of experience with naval forces at all, and copying the historical strategy used to win that war seems like it would involve dozens of amphibious assaults to even get to the point where an invasion of the Japanese islands would be possible. Does anyone have any advice on a good strategy?
How early can you start a war with Mexico if you are America? Can you jump in on a side if you trigger Mex civil war?
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
So I think I'm going to call it on my first game, as Japan:
<snip picture!>
This was the turning point in the slog that is the Chinese war. If what's been said above is true, and poorly supplied infantry is weirdly effective, that explains why this was such a pain. I would consistently push the Chinese back because my units were better but man it was slow going because they just had so many. I have no idea how they were able to keep supplying their units throughout the war, since at most they only ever had 20 military factories supplying 200+ infantry units.(no lend lease, either) To make matters worse, both the allies and the Comiterm got military access into China and wasted troops bolstering their line. What made the image you see above the turning point was I trapped about eighty divisions of Chinese and Soviet forces into a large pocket on the eastern coast and exterminated them. About half a year later China finally capitulated. I'm calling it quits because honestly there's not a lot for me to do. Invading Russia from the East seems pointless and Germany's beating them anyway. I could invade India or Australia but both are basically non issues. And the US has been so isolationist I don't have the heart to disturb them. (They never even embargoed me.)
Some final Japanese tips: (that I didn't learn until it was kind of a bit late)
1. Don't bother with tanks, at least not probably until very late game. The terrain in China, eastern Siberia, (Not that Siberia matters) and South-East Asia makes them really not worth it. Invest in marine and alpine units instead, you'll be better served.
2. If you attack China, all the Chinese minors including Communist China will all join into their own special Chinese United Front faction to fight you. (It doesn't tell you this anywhere. Which was frustrating.)
3. Think really carefully about if you really want to join the Axis. You don't actually gain a lot out of the deal (Germany and Italy are non-entities in the Pacific/Asia) and Germany will almost certainly makes thing more uncomfortable for you by forcing you into wars with both the UK and the USSR that you'll probably want to delay. Also I'm pretty sure the AI is currently too dumb to ever successfully invade the British Isles barring crazy shenanigans so if you do want to fight the UK as Japan... have fun basically doing it yourself.
Next game I'm thinking of going communist France, and creating my own faction. Nobody expects the Commune of France.
Gundi: I played as China, and if you turn off Historical AI it is possible that the pieces of China will NOT unite when Japan comes calling. I actually got it to happen when playing China, and it was not pretty, because I didn't know any better, and I'm obviously not an AI, historic or otherwise.
There's an event that fires fairly early (before the Marco Polo bridge incident), where USSR wants to negotiate between the PRC and non-aligned China. If China tells USSR "NO PEACE!", then when Japan invades, the United China Front never forms. I have no idea how Japan can tell that from outside, tho. From my reading of the events, if Historical AI is ON, China will always allow USSR to broker the peace, but I think there's a 20%(?) chance for a non-historic China to not agree.
Wait how's that historic? Both sides of the Chinese Civil War may have hated the Japanese invading force but they were definitely not allies, in fact they kept fighting all though-out the Japanese invasion, although less against each other once it became clear that neither could easily push the Japanese back.
Anyways, I've temporarily given up trying to play the French Commune, instead I'm playing a slightly ahistorical Italy.
Psst... I'm not part of the Axis. Land war has gone well, due in no small part to timing it so that a French civil war started right after I declared. (On Greece.) Bulgaria and Turkey are part of the Roman Alliance. I want Spain to be too, but I definitely need to take Gibraltar either way. My strategy naval-wise is at least for now to just to get an iron grip on the Mediterranean. I've managed to not get squished by the allied navies, but I can't guarantee that forever unless I take the Suez (done that) and Gibraltar (First attempt failed) Also the UK has an insane number of planes. Like, 8000 planes. It's bananas.
Gundi on
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
My most recent game I went Communist Turkey. Created a faction with the French Commune and proceeded to recreate the The People's Ottoman Empire.
In a random twist of fate one of my enemies (who weren't even Communist!) joined the Commitern and I found myself at war with the Soviets. Which terrified me. Until I found out that while their military is huge, it is largely a joke.
Just one of my standard infantry divisions could hold off ten of their combined arms divisions without breaking a sweat.
Once I realized that they had no hope of actually crossing my border I began testing how well their own defense was. Next thing I know my men are in Stalingrad!
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
So, fun stuff happening in my campaign. Which is pretty historical other than Communist France and a few minor things (like Poland signing up to Comitern just in time to get rolled over). However, the European theater's looking a little weird:
I mean christ, where are all the Brits rather than these minor pansies. I'm losing the line here. What on earth is going on.
Oh... OHH, Okay then, well, as you were my robotic allies.
I think I'm going to have to stop my Japan game. The Germans were so bad that I'm basically at war with everyone in the world at the end of 1942. Russia has just attacked and it doesn't look good. Otherwise I did pretty well, taking out Raj and everything in the far east except for Australia/NZ. UK is very strong though so now I'll have to deal with them and the USA on the southern front and USSR on northern one. I think maybe you need to run AI on historical to avoid Germany/Italy being total shite.
“Reject your sense of injury and the injury itself disappears.”
― Marcus Aurelius
I think I'm going to have to stop my Japan game. The Germans were so bad that I'm basically at war with everyone in the world at the end of 1942. Russia has just attacked and it doesn't look good. Otherwise I did pretty well, taking out Raj and everything in the far east except for Australia/NZ. UK is very strong though so now I'll have to deal with them and the USA on the southern front and USSR on northern one. I think maybe you need to run AI on historical to avoid Germany/Italy being total shite.
This is more or less what's happening to Japan right now as I clean up my game.
I got overrun and capitulated (not hard to make France back down) but the allies just steam rolled the shit out of everyone else so now I'm on full speed ahead watching Japan slowly but surely fall.
It seems way to small to me. I mean the US Army has, maybe, 10 divisions (not counting reserves). A division is huge and a single one is often responsible for a very sizable theatre of war.
Then again this is WWII, so I suppose I shouldn't hold numbers up to modern standards.
Right now I see it as Brigade>Battalions>Companies.
Bear in mind the US Army has ten or so divisions with contemporary technology and the support of equivalently-tech-wielding fellow branches of the military. Companies in the here and now are probably worth brigades in the Second World War, or even divisions if you're bringing things like armor into it in anything resembling advantageous terrain.
Divisions in the Second World War often only contested regions a few miles across, even in the (comparatively) widely-spaced western front. Overall they were roughly the same size as contemporary divisions in most armies - ten to twenty thousand men, usually. Modern US divisions are larger than WWII ones, but not dramatically so.
If you want an example of how the scale looked, here's a map of the opening of the Battle of the Bulge. You can see about about two dozen Allied divisions in contact with the German push (including the 101st and the other three actually inside it).
There's seven hundred thousand soldiers within earshot of that salient. You could walk it north to south in a well-paced afternoon.
Bear in mind that divisions may not be the same size.
A division with 3 infantry still counts as the same number of divisions as one with 10 infantry.
The AI in this really needs some work. There's evidence that they don't design and upgrade to new divisions as the game progresses which means they just build more and more and more divisions that are inferior in quality to anything a human player designs.
All you have to do to easily beat the AI is put a single armour regiment in your infantry divisions. The AI will never be able to pierce the division's armour value and you'll take 50% less damage.
Edit: it just occured to me that it would be better to add a tank destroyer regiment instead of armour. You still get the armour value but you'll get bonus piercing. You're not using the tank for hard damage anyway and it's also cheaper.
You can also just make tiny divisions of 2 infantry (for the organisation), 2 artillery with support artillery. The tiny combat width means you can pack a lot more support artillery into any given battle and your soft attack will be ludicrously high. You'll kill anything that isn't a tank before it kills you.
Basically spam artillery because it is too cheap for the soft attack it provides.
The bones are there. This will be a very good game when the AI gets sorted out.
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Is the AI really bad or people (and you) pretty good at the game (maybe both)? Haven't gotten around to try it yet but read several posts of people steamrolling every other country no matter which starting nation they pick.
The AI is pretty bad right now.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Like I said, I lost two games before I really figured out what to exploit, and those things are:
1) Winning an early war against a weak neighbor will get you far more factories than construction will. Being ahistorically aggressive pays off.
2) Infantry spam seems frankly overpowered, and I don't think the AI is programmed to just pour all of it's starting manpower into basic infantry divisions even if it can't equip them properly. But a player can do that and it works much better than I think it should.
3) I don't think the AI understands concentration of force. It will just deploy more or less evenly across the front and try to push. But I know that 2/3rds of my army will hold the line well enough, and taking the other third and throwing it at a small section of the front will actually push the line much better.
Making your own faction is pretty cool, just make sure you got some potential members first. Mine was a South American Coalition to free ourselves from unwanted and unneeded Americsn influence.
The AI is pretty predictable when it comes to amphibious landings. There were three locations (UND ONLY THREE!) that they would try to land on. Made defense pretty easy. Seriously during the entirety of my war (from like 39 to 45) I lost about 200k men. Allies lost at least several million men. I know the Americans themselves lost a little over 900k.
Tanks are fairly useless in large parts of South America. Coupled with the fact that I went with a heavy armor focus really limited my military's potential in the region.
Democracies are crazy susceptible to changing to Facist or Communist. Seriously just boost your party's popularity in a target democracy and sit back while your future ally gets their act together.
I feel like War Score gaining needs a tweak. As Argentina I conquered Uruguay, Paraguay, and Chile. Brazil, Peru, and Venezuala were my fascist brothers in arms. We spent most of the 6 years just knocking Allied invasions back with minimal casualties on our part. Yet we were not even close to being able to make some sort of peace.
All in all though I'm loving the game. As with anything Paradox they'll be plenty of patches and DLC to keep the game fresh.
Also they really cut the brakes on expansion so once you get going it's easy to keep going.
Just embrace the cheese.
Some background, I decided to play super diplomatic Germany, trying to avoid a full on war as long as possible. So it is now Aug of 41 and the only war I have actually fought was a small quick one against Romania when they refused to cede Transylvania to Hungary (so Hungary just annexed them instead). I have dismantled Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, puppeted Greece, brought Italy into the Axis, and traded Poland Slovakia for Danzig. As a result of my friendship with Poland they flipped to Fascist, but they had already formed the Miedzymorze.
So the Soviet Union declared war on Poland. I sent them what volunteers and lend lease I could, although it hasn't really been enough, but at least my 8 crack Panzer divisions prolonged the war quite a bit. So the Soviets are at the bridges to Warsaw and I'm desperately working on building as many troops as possible and completing the Anti-Soviet pact and befriending the Nordic states, and then the craziest thing happens. Poland enters into a civil war, splitting into Fascist and Communist Poland. But for some reason Communist Poland is the main one I guess because the volunteers I sent to fight for Fascist Poland are now fighting for Communist Poland, and Communist Poland is at war with the Soviet Union and Fascist Poland is not.
And then Communist Poland joined the Allies so now the Soviet Union is at war with the Allies and I'm stilling sitting here going "hey guys... I'm gonna conquer all of Europe k? ... Guys?"
This was the turning point in the slog that is the Chinese war. If what's been said above is true, and poorly supplied infantry is weirdly effective, that explains why this was such a pain. I would consistently push the Chinese back because my units were better but man it was slow going because they just had so many. I have no idea how they were able to keep supplying their units throughout the war, since at most they only ever had 20 military factories supplying 200+ infantry units.(no lend lease, either) To make matters worse, both the allies and the Comiterm got military access into China and wasted troops bolstering their line. What made the image you see above the turning point was I trapped about eighty divisions of Chinese and Soviet forces into a large pocket on the eastern coast and exterminated them. About half a year later China finally capitulated. I'm calling it quits because honestly there's not a lot for me to do. Invading Russia from the East seems pointless and Germany's beating them anyway. I could invade India or Australia but both are basically non issues. And the US has been so isolationist I don't have the heart to disturb them. (They never even embargoed me.)
Some final Japanese tips: (that I didn't learn until it was kind of a bit late)
1. Don't bother with tanks, at least not probably until very late game. The terrain in China, eastern Siberia, (Not that Siberia matters) and South-East Asia makes them really not worth it. Invest in marine and alpine units instead, you'll be better served.
2. If you attack China, all the Chinese minors including Communist China will all join into their own special Chinese United Front faction to fight you. (It doesn't tell you this anywhere. Which was frustrating.)
3. Think really carefully about if you really want to join the Axis. You don't actually gain a lot out of the deal (Germany and Italy are non-entities in the Pacific/Asia) and Germany will almost certainly makes thing more uncomfortable for you by forcing you into wars with both the UK and the USSR that you'll probably want to delay. Also I'm pretty sure the AI is currently too dumb to ever successfully invade the British Isles barring crazy shenanigans so if you do want to fight the UK as Japan... have fun basically doing it yourself.
Next game I'm thinking of going communist France, and creating my own faction. Nobody expects the Commune of France.
Got the USA to convert to fascism, however they immediately joined the Axis. So here is what happened with that.
Apparently Japan never joined the Axis. Shortly after the USA changed to fascist Japan attacked Hawaii. USA goes to war and Japan joins the Allies.
There's a three way fight going on between the Allies, Axis, and Commitern.
Oh also Novus Imperium Romana faction is in the mix along with my own South American Coalition. Though we've far less global plans, just carving up South and Central America.
Poland is fascist, but a member of the Allies.
Edit- oh and Paradox? Please, please, please change individual units being called "Divisions". At best they are Brigades. A collection of a bunch of units (tanks, infantry, mechanized) would be a Division.
Except that divisions in HoI4 ARE a collection of a bunch of units, each division consisting of up to 5 brigades, and each of those consisting of up to 5 battalions.
Considering that we often see specialized brigades (artillery brigades, support brigades, engineering brigades) which are support units usually dispersed among the rest of the division...
...well, it's a fair thing to say "Yes, our smallest strategic unit will be the Division."
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Then again this is WWII, so I suppose I shouldn't hold numbers up to modern standards.
Right now I see it as Brigade>Battalions>Companies.
During WWII Germany had over 400 infantry divisions (adding 40+ panzer divisions, 10 airborne divisions and a handful of mountain and artillery divisions). During the height of the war their standing force numbered about 3.3-3.5 million men divided into ~200 divisions.
The US and GB had far fewer, with maybe 150-200 divisions between them.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
I was playing as USA. Had no idea what to build and ended up way behind on building divisions. I didn't realize at first that you could build them before you had all the equipment for them and it wasn't the end of the world. I joined the Allies early but couldn't do much other than send France and UK all my old shit in Lend Lease. Germany did manage to take out Poland, Netherlands and Belgium pretty quickly. UK did a naval invasion of Italy in 1940 and I threw a measly 10 divisions into that before the game started acting up.
The $40 is the base version, the other ones just come with cosmetic dlc and other shit you don't need.
Good to know, thank you!
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
It's April 1938, and Britain still has a long way to go before they see the US intervene in Europe. When it does happen it'll be from the east, an endless wave of men and tanks hardened by ceaseless wars of conquest in the americas and asia.
What I'm trying to say is that this game rules.
I've taken the French Commune, joined Comitern and then kick started WW2 by declaring war on Italy in defense of the People's Republic of Italy, a civil war faction I created. Currently I'm being super cautious with military and trying to drag the French into motorised/mechanised with medium armour set ups. Which means I can't be too agressive with what I have because it takes a good, long while to build up new divisions like that when you only have 8 military factories.
French Commune was actually the very first faction I played! I managed to conquer nationalist Spain, but once the actual world war started I was completely boxed in by Germany and Italy. The only real reasons I was even able to hold on (they each had 100 batallions at my border) were that I had a pretty big wall of forts and that Germany for some reason refused to invade Belgium. I gave up that campaign once I realised how badly the Soviets were getting slaughtered in the east, but it might have been interesting to see what would have happened once the states got involved.
My current conquest of the Americas is going pretty much as expected. Mexico was quite a tough nut to crack since my war industry was still in its infancy when I began that war, but pretty much everyone else is a complete pushover. My issue lies in the west.
I've ramped up my navy production enough that I feel pretty confident that I could match Japan at sea, but the prospect of fighting in that theatre is super intimidating. I don't have a lot of experience with naval forces at all, and copying the historical strategy used to win that war seems like it would involve dozens of amphibious assaults to even get to the point where an invasion of the Japanese islands would be possible. Does anyone have any advice on a good strategy?
How early can you start a war with Mexico if you are America? Can you jump in on a side if you trigger Mex civil war?
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
Gundi: I played as China, and if you turn off Historical AI it is possible that the pieces of China will NOT unite when Japan comes calling. I actually got it to happen when playing China, and it was not pretty, because I didn't know any better, and I'm obviously not an AI, historic or otherwise.
There's an event that fires fairly early (before the Marco Polo bridge incident), where USSR wants to negotiate between the PRC and non-aligned China. If China tells USSR "NO PEACE!", then when Japan invades, the United China Front never forms. I have no idea how Japan can tell that from outside, tho. From my reading of the events, if Historical AI is ON, China will always allow USSR to broker the peace, but I think there's a 20%(?) chance for a non-historic China to not agree.
Anyways, I've temporarily given up trying to play the French Commune, instead I'm playing a slightly ahistorical Italy.
In a random twist of fate one of my enemies (who weren't even Communist!) joined the Commitern and I found myself at war with the Soviets. Which terrified me. Until I found out that while their military is huge, it is largely a joke.
Just one of my standard infantry divisions could hold off ten of their combined arms divisions without breaking a sweat.
Once I realized that they had no hope of actually crossing my border I began testing how well their own defense was. Next thing I know my men are in Stalingrad!
I mean christ, where are all the Brits rather than these minor pansies. I'm losing the line here. What on earth is going on.
Oh... OHH, Okay then, well, as you were my robotic allies.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
― Marcus Aurelius
Path of Exile: themightypuck
This is more or less what's happening to Japan right now as I clean up my game.
I got overrun and capitulated (not hard to make France back down) but the allies just steam rolled the shit out of everyone else so now I'm on full speed ahead watching Japan slowly but surely fall.
Bear in mind the US Army has ten or so divisions with contemporary technology and the support of equivalently-tech-wielding fellow branches of the military. Companies in the here and now are probably worth brigades in the Second World War, or even divisions if you're bringing things like armor into it in anything resembling advantageous terrain.
Divisions in the Second World War often only contested regions a few miles across, even in the (comparatively) widely-spaced western front. Overall they were roughly the same size as contemporary divisions in most armies - ten to twenty thousand men, usually. Modern US divisions are larger than WWII ones, but not dramatically so.
If you want an example of how the scale looked, here's a map of the opening of the Battle of the Bulge. You can see about about two dozen Allied divisions in contact with the German push (including the 101st and the other three actually inside it).
There's seven hundred thousand soldiers within earshot of that salient. You could walk it north to south in a well-paced afternoon.
A division with 3 infantry still counts as the same number of divisions as one with 10 infantry.
The AI in this really needs some work. There's evidence that they don't design and upgrade to new divisions as the game progresses which means they just build more and more and more divisions that are inferior in quality to anything a human player designs.
All you have to do to easily beat the AI is put a single armour regiment in your infantry divisions. The AI will never be able to pierce the division's armour value and you'll take 50% less damage.
Edit: it just occured to me that it would be better to add a tank destroyer regiment instead of armour. You still get the armour value but you'll get bonus piercing. You're not using the tank for hard damage anyway and it's also cheaper.
Couple of days of good reviews because of an ego stroking ai?
Possible.
Basically spam artillery because it is too cheap for the soft attack it provides.
The bones are there. This will be a very good game when the AI gets sorted out.