If you go Italy, you can always bring your colonial troops home before major shit goes down in europe and use what navy you have to patrol around the boot. Doesn't seem worth it to send extra troops to africa when you are surrounded by the British, French and Dutch there.
Germany has a big advantage in starting tech. Just make sure to keep training divisions and take a nice long look at the focus tree to plan out the course of the war. Don't be like me and end up in fights you weren't really ready for.
I made a mod! It's a really simple mod, but it was cool to actually upload something to the steam workshop. All it does is prevent nations from guaranteeing the independence of each other, and removes The Monroe Doctrine / Pax Americana from the US. I wouldn't recommend it for a first playthrough -- it's pretty fun once you've gone through a few times and want to mess around as one of the less practical minors though.
Its birth was kind of strange. There are two or three of these things on the workshop, but they all either don't work or break the game in terrible ways that aren't immediately apparent. I wound up recommending the one that definitely worked to a guy on reddit, only to discover after about a day on Saturday evening that it completely prevented the AI from launching any planes. I wound up drunkenly rooting through some of the files for the mod Saturday night, and woke on Sunday morning with the conviction to make the thing.
If you go a European Minor you best go Fascist if its your first go, other wise Germany will gobble you up.
I think Italy is a solid choice, especially if you go non-Axis. That way you can practice picking on smaller neighbors and ignore the Second World War.
If you do go Axis, just ignore Ethiopia and your colonies down there. You wont be able to hold them.
Maybe they've fixed this in the 8 months or so since I played, but the problem I had w/ Italy was there doesn't seem to be a limitation on moving/supplying troops through all of Africa (as existed in HOI3)...so not knowing this I joined the Axis and focused on winning the war in North Africa and securing the Mediterranean (taking Gibraltar, Suez Canal, etc). In older games if you succeeding in doing this Italy was pretty secure from the South at that point, as the only real points of entry for the Western Allies is landing in NW Africa and pushing in that way.
In HOI4, what happens is Britain/Allies just start landing troops in South Africa and central Africa and you get into this huge conflict spanning the entirety of the African continent, which is not even remotely realistic...in reality there was just no way to logistically operate armies in that terrain...the Sahara desert was the southern border of North Africa and the region is effectively cut off from the rest of the continent. Whats worse, AI Germany sees you in conflict there and pulls troops from the USSR invasion to come down and help you.
Maybe they've fixed this in the 8 months or so since I played, but the problem I had w/ Italy was there doesn't seem to be a limitation on moving/supplying troops through all of Africa (as existed in HOI3)...so not knowing this I joined the Axis and focused on winning the war in North Africa and securing the Mediterranean (taking Gibraltar, Suez Canal, etc). In older games if you succeeding in doing this Italy was pretty secure from the South at that point, as the only real points of entry for the Western Allies is landing in NW Africa and pushing in that way.
In HOI4, what happens is Britain/Allies just start landing troops in South Africa and central Africa and you get into this huge conflict spanning the entirety of the African continent, which is not even remotely realistic...in reality there was just no way to logistically operate armies in that terrain...the Sahara desert was the southern border of North Africa and the region is effectively cut off from the rest of the continent. Whats worse, AI Germany sees you in conflict there and pulls troops from the USSR invasion to come down and help you.
As long as you don't care about ironman achievements (the achievements are pretty vanilla), there's a mod that fixes this. I believe it's called No Man's Land -- it does exactly what you're asking for and makes the Sahara and a few other locations impassable. It's great if you plan on fighting in Africa at all.
I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to survive as Finland. Required turning fascist for the manpower boost, and essentially lining the eastern border of the country with bunkers and obscene amount of artillery, combined with the superior firepower doctrine.
Turned out pretty well, the soviet advance stalled despite massive differences in numbers, and my entire strategy turned out to be just a heavily fortified meatgrinder. At that point it just became a matter of trying to wait them out, since they got into a fight elsewhere and had to divert some resources from my front. This allowed me to use a few strike forces to gain ground, eventually shifting the front and conquering a sizable chunk of the western USSR.
Damn the AI is dumb. If I'm not in charge of Italy or Germany the axis gets crushed by the end of 1941...which is a very bad thing if you happen to play Japan in a relatively historical manner.
Why? Because germany is completely unable to leverage its advantages against the more numerous USSR, and they're also incapable of stopping even mediocre naval invasions (instead they have 200 divisions rotting in low-supply hell).
Otherwise I'm pretty impressed by the game. The game interface is fairly smooth; it's nowhere near as management intensive as HoI3; I like its take on preparing battleplans; I like how they use XP.
I just wish that it was easier to see victory points.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Damn the AI is dumb. If I'm not in charge of Italy or Germany the axis gets crushed by the end of 1941...which is a very bad thing if you happen to play Japan in a relatively historical manner.
Why? Because germany is completely unable to leverage its advantages against the more numerous USSR, and they're also incapable of stopping even mediocre naval invasions (instead they have 200 divisions rotting in low-supply hell).
Otherwise I'm pretty impressed by the game. The game interface is fairly smooth; it's nowhere near as management intensive as HoI3; I like its take on preparing battleplans; I like how they use XP.
I just wish that it was easier to see victory points.
Are you playing with historical focuses on? That can really help the European Axis memebers I've found. Other wise Germany will (usually) end up in an early war with Russia or a two front war. Historical focus will give the ai time to build up.
I really enjoyed the challenge of trying to survive as Finland. Required turning fascist for the manpower boost, and essentially lining the eastern border of the country with bunkers and obscene amount of artillery, combined with the superior firepower doctrine.
Turned out pretty well, the soviet advance stalled despite massive differences in numbers, and my entire strategy turned out to be just a heavily fortified meatgrinder. At that point it just became a matter of trying to wait them out, since they got into a fight elsewhere and had to divert some resources from my front. This allowed me to use a few strike forces to gain ground, eventually shifting the front and conquering a sizable chunk of the western USSR.
Next step is to take over Sweden and Norway.
Part of me wants to try Democratic Finland and go allies.
Are you playing with historical focuses on? That can really help the European Axis memebers I've found. Other wise Germany will (usually) end up in an early war with Russia or a two front war. Historical focus will give the ai time to build up.
Historical focuses ON. Unless I'm playing them the Reich is still getting its heiny handed to them pretty early.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Damn the AI is dumb. If I'm not in charge of Italy or Germany the axis gets crushed by the end of 1941...which is a very bad thing if you happen to play Japan in a relatively historical manner.
Why? Because germany is completely unable to leverage its advantages against the more numerous USSR, and they're also incapable of stopping even mediocre naval invasions (instead they have 200 divisions rotting in low-supply hell).
Otherwise I'm pretty impressed by the game. The game interface is fairly smooth; it's nowhere near as management intensive as HoI3; I like its take on preparing battleplans; I like how they use XP.
I just wish that it was easier to see victory points.
This isn't a great example of the AI being bad -- my first game convinced me that the Soviets were overpowered and were going to roll always, theeen I saw them get completely crushed the next game and I basically did nothing of use in either game. My last two games have been as independent Communist countries that don't normally fight the Axis, and the Germans completely rolled in the first one and are getting wrecked in the second.
The AI may suck for other reasons! Lots of people say that a lot, but my experience thus far is that the winner is going to be pretty damn varied. When the beta patch for the most recent patch dropped you had tons of people saying that the Axis were suddenly wrecking in their games without intervention -- I've gotten a little of everything with it.
You can reload a save game and get completely different battle results (even on battles that were already in progress when the save was made) and a single battle can change the course of a war.
Looks like patch 1.3.3 dropped today. Tons of AI tweaks, as well as a pretty significant amount of balance changes. Production efficiency no longer scales linearly, and my glorious artillery has been nerfed pretty significantly.
I cannot even imagine how complicated the AI must be for this game. Hopefully by the time I get around to diving into this game it'll be pretty robust, I've heard it's fairly easy to take advantage of AI problems at the moment.
I'm still trying to figure out division combat width. I see some folks on reddit saying 40 is the number to shoot for. Maybe the new patch confused things.
I'm still trying to figure out division combat width. I see some folks on reddit saying 40 is the number to shoot for. Maybe the new patch confused things.
The 40 stuff confuses me a bit -- I think there is a specific infantry heavy tank destroyer combo that works at 40 but not 20 because of the weights of the divisions it requires.
The stat I've seen most is multiples of 20, or 22 if you have an offensive field marshall (10% extra combat width). I can confirm that my 20 and 22 combat divisions don't incur a combat width penalty, which is what you want.
Even after all my time with the game I have no idea what stuff like combat width really means. I just try to make them 20 because that's what people on the internet say works.
This thread seems to be a pretty useful guide, and I've been using it a lot since I started playing. Multiples of 10 (11 with offensive field marhsall) is what you want -- 20 seems to be somewhat of a sweetspot between having enough support divisions and costing lots of XP and equipment to design/use.
Note that the most recent patch nerfed artillery pretty hard, and maintenance companies too. I would hope that they didn't nerf artillery to the point that the arty division designs he shows are terrible, as that would just mean artillery is worthless now.
20 width units have higher org than a 40 width unit. They can stay in a fight longer because of that. But a 40 has more hitting power than 2 20's.
Having more smaller divisions helps gain exp quicker as well. People seem to say go for 20 early game and 40 later. But even that varies depending on where the fighting is and how good the infrastructure is.
Prob a good thing I don't play on hard difficulty or mp since this is not stuff i'd have ever figured out on my own.
Reading up on the 20 vs. 40 stuff has convinced me that I definitely need to try the infantry with heavy tank destroyer thing. Apparently armor and piercing aren't a simple average, and adding one heavily armored high piercing unit to an infantry division will significantly bump both stats for the entire division.
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AxenMy avatar is Excalibur.Yes, the sword.Registered Userregular
Reading up on the 20 vs. 40 stuff has convinced me that I definitely need to try the infantry with heavy tank destroyer thing. Apparently armor and piercing aren't a simple average, and adding one heavily armored high piercing unit to an infantry division will significantly bump both stats for the entire division.
Yeah, not sure if it's been patched or not, but you used to be able to make divisions damn near invincible combining Arty, some infantry, and heavy tanks.
Oh also, you can customize your units. For example with tanks you can increase attack, armor, reliability, and speed. Increasing one decreases another, but with enough points you can make some very effective variants.
A Capellan's favorite sheath for any blade is your back.
Reading up on the 20 vs. 40 stuff has convinced me that I definitely need to try the infantry with heavy tank destroyer thing. Apparently armor and piercing aren't a simple average, and adding one heavily armored high piercing unit to an infantry division will significantly bump both stats for the entire division.
Yeah, not sure if it's been patched or not, but you used to be able to make divisions damn near invincible combining Arty, some infantry, and heavy tanks.
Oh also, you can customize your units. For example with tanks you can increase attack, armor, reliability, and speed. Increasing one decreases another, but with enough points you can make some very effective variants.
Yeah, most upgrades will allow you to just make all around better versions with enough experience points. Like upping speed may reduce reliability, but upping reliability doesn't decrease speed. I believe subs eventually allow you to offset all of their negatives and have everything be of equal or greater value than the base values were.
Well I got through WWII as the chi-coms but new wars broke out almost immediately, including the US against me. Was in no shape to continue after Japan.
I guess I should have been cranking out multiple divisions non-stop throughout the war. I stopped around 50 or so.
Now trying as Germany with some of the things I've learned/read - but I think I'll put a twist on things by befriending China and Poland.
Reading up on the 20 vs. 40 stuff has convinced me that I definitely need to try the infantry with heavy tank destroyer thing. Apparently armor and piercing aren't a simple average, and adding one heavily armored high piercing unit to an infantry division will significantly bump both stats for the entire division.
It seems to be 30-40% of the value comes from the best unit and then 70-60% from the average.
Neat trick you might not have found yet. Up in the right corner of the division designer you can mark what kind of equipment a particular template will accept.
It's quite possible to make two versions of the same tank, a engine boosted version that travels 12km/h (keeping up with motorised) and one with heavy armor/gun that travels at the same speed as your mechanized. Make sure that only tanks with the right speed are checked and voila.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Well I got through WWII as the chi-coms but new wars broke out almost immediately, including the US against me. Was in no shape to continue after Japan.
I guess I should have been cranking out multiple divisions non-stop throughout the war. I stopped around 50 or so.
Now trying as Germany with some of the things I've learned/read - but I think I'll put a twist on things by befriending China and Poland.
Siding with China is tricky as theres no guarantee that they will beat Japan without massive help.
Can confirm that adding a heavy tank destroyer to a division of infantry/artillery is still ridiculous. I went with the 40 width division in my war against the US as Brazil, and the division did incredibly well. I'm using the 41 model in the same year, and very few of their divisions could pierce the units armor. Combine that with the ~600ish defense and it was over. Heavy tanks are slow, but still quite a bit faster than infantry. Because of that, you can pump reliability/armor/weapons and let the speed drop to 4 without any issues -- I did this just before the war was over and it would have made the results even more one sided.
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Kane Red RobeMaster of MagicArcanusRegistered Userregular
Well I got through WWII as the chi-coms but new wars broke out almost immediately, including the US against me. Was in no shape to continue after Japan.
I guess I should have been cranking out multiple divisions non-stop throughout the war. I stopped around 50 or so.
Now trying as Germany with some of the things I've learned/read - but I think I'll put a twist on things by befriending China and Poland.
Siding with China is tricky as theres no guarantee that they will beat Japan without massive help.
Massive tends to be around 12 divisions in my experience. Totally doable to send enough volunteers just by yourself.
Started a new game using the alt history Kaiserreich mod. Turning Russia into the last bastion of liberty that must aggressively liberate all these European monarchies... especially since the USA is now led by a military junta???
While racing light mechs, your Urbanmech comes in second place, but only because it ran out of ammo.
Is there a way to see how many items of X you need to upgrade all deployed divisions? Like I want to add SP-ART to something via the division designer. Can I see how many I need to add those? So I can ensure I have the necessary amount in storage?
Can confirm that adding a heavy tank destroyer to a division of infantry/artillery is still ridiculous. I went with the 40 width division in my war against the US as Brazil, and the division did incredibly well. I'm using the 41 model in the same year, and very few of their divisions could pierce the units armor. Combine that with the ~600ish defense and it was over. Heavy tanks are slow, but still quite a bit faster than infantry. Because of that, you can pump reliability/armor/weapons and let the speed drop to 4 without any issues -- I did this just before the war was over and it would have made the results even more one sided.
This always feels like the biggest issue the game has.
There's no real reason to engage in weird, experimental or tailored division designs when the answer is usually to make a cookie cutter division because it takes the same number of factories and they're way more efficient.
Can confirm that adding a heavy tank destroyer to a division of infantry/artillery is still ridiculous. I went with the 40 width division in my war against the US as Brazil, and the division did incredibly well. I'm using the 41 model in the same year, and very few of their divisions could pierce the units armor. Combine that with the ~600ish defense and it was over. Heavy tanks are slow, but still quite a bit faster than infantry. Because of that, you can pump reliability/armor/weapons and let the speed drop to 4 without any issues -- I did this just before the war was over and it would have made the results even more one sided.
This always feels like the biggest issue the game has.
There's no real reason to engage in weird, experimental or tailored division designs when the answer is usually to make a cookie cutter division because it takes the same number of factories and they're way more efficient.
Dunno. I had these S (for speed) divisions featuring specialized medium tank models with boosted speed (combined with rocket arty and motorized divisions). 20% more speed is nothing to sneeze at and they were invaluable for their hitting power when attacking the russian plain.
"The western world sips from a poisonous cocktail: Polarisation, populism, protectionism and post-truth"
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Can confirm that adding a heavy tank destroyer to a division of infantry/artillery is still ridiculous. I went with the 40 width division in my war against the US as Brazil, and the division did incredibly well. I'm using the 41 model in the same year, and very few of their divisions could pierce the units armor. Combine that with the ~600ish defense and it was over. Heavy tanks are slow, but still quite a bit faster than infantry. Because of that, you can pump reliability/armor/weapons and let the speed drop to 4 without any issues -- I did this just before the war was over and it would have made the results even more one sided.
This always feels like the biggest issue the game has.
There's no real reason to engage in weird, experimental or tailored division designs when the answer is usually to make a cookie cutter division because it takes the same number of factories and they're way more efficient.
Dunno. I had these S (for speed) divisions featuring specialized medium tank models with boosted speed (combined with rocket arty and motorized divisions). 20% more speed is nothing to sneeze at and they were invaluable for their hitting power when attacking the russian plain.
Yeah, the division I listed is ridiculous against the AI as an infantry unit, but it can be countered if you're trying to. A more dedicated armor division would win against it -- this one does incredibly well against soft targets, but isn't anything special against hard targets if you're countering it with an armored division.
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Everything is concentrated in middle Europe and the focus tree will hold your hand through starting WW2.
Its birth was kind of strange. There are two or three of these things on the workshop, but they all either don't work or break the game in terrible ways that aren't immediately apparent. I wound up recommending the one that definitely worked to a guy on reddit, only to discover after about a day on Saturday evening that it completely prevented the AI from launching any planes. I wound up drunkenly rooting through some of the files for the mod Saturday night, and woke on Sunday morning with the conviction to make the thing.
I think Italy is a solid choice, especially if you go non-Axis. That way you can practice picking on smaller neighbors and ignore the Second World War.
If you do go Axis, just ignore Ethiopia and your colonies down there. You wont be able to hold them.
In HOI4, what happens is Britain/Allies just start landing troops in South Africa and central Africa and you get into this huge conflict spanning the entirety of the African continent, which is not even remotely realistic...in reality there was just no way to logistically operate armies in that terrain...the Sahara desert was the southern border of North Africa and the region is effectively cut off from the rest of the continent. Whats worse, AI Germany sees you in conflict there and pulls troops from the USSR invasion to come down and help you.
As long as you don't care about ironman achievements (the achievements are pretty vanilla), there's a mod that fixes this. I believe it's called No Man's Land -- it does exactly what you're asking for and makes the Sahara and a few other locations impassable. It's great if you plan on fighting in Africa at all.
Turned out pretty well, the soviet advance stalled despite massive differences in numbers, and my entire strategy turned out to be just a heavily fortified meatgrinder. At that point it just became a matter of trying to wait them out, since they got into a fight elsewhere and had to divert some resources from my front. This allowed me to use a few strike forces to gain ground, eventually shifting the front and conquering a sizable chunk of the western USSR.
Next step is to take over Sweden and Norway.
Damn the AI is dumb. If I'm not in charge of Italy or Germany the axis gets crushed by the end of 1941...which is a very bad thing if you happen to play Japan in a relatively historical manner.
Why? Because germany is completely unable to leverage its advantages against the more numerous USSR, and they're also incapable of stopping even mediocre naval invasions (instead they have 200 divisions rotting in low-supply hell).
Otherwise I'm pretty impressed by the game. The game interface is fairly smooth; it's nowhere near as management intensive as HoI3; I like its take on preparing battleplans; I like how they use XP.
I just wish that it was easier to see victory points.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Are you playing with historical focuses on? That can really help the European Axis memebers I've found. Other wise Germany will (usually) end up in an early war with Russia or a two front war. Historical focus will give the ai time to build up.
Part of me wants to try Democratic Finland and go allies.
Historical focuses ON. Unless I'm playing them the Reich is still getting its heiny handed to them pretty early.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
This isn't a great example of the AI being bad -- my first game convinced me that the Soviets were overpowered and were going to roll always, theeen I saw them get completely crushed the next game and I basically did nothing of use in either game. My last two games have been as independent Communist countries that don't normally fight the Axis, and the Germans completely rolled in the first one and are getting wrecked in the second.
The AI may suck for other reasons! Lots of people say that a lot, but my experience thus far is that the winner is going to be pretty damn varied. When the beta patch for the most recent patch dropped you had tons of people saying that the Axis were suddenly wrecking in their games without intervention -- I've gotten a little of everything with it.
The 40 stuff confuses me a bit -- I think there is a specific infantry heavy tank destroyer combo that works at 40 but not 20 because of the weights of the divisions it requires.
The stat I've seen most is multiples of 20, or 22 if you have an offensive field marshall (10% extra combat width). I can confirm that my 20 and 22 combat divisions don't incur a combat width penalty, which is what you want.
Note that the most recent patch nerfed artillery pretty hard, and maintenance companies too. I would hope that they didn't nerf artillery to the point that the arty division designs he shows are terrible, as that would just mean artillery is worthless now.
20 width units have higher org than a 40 width unit. They can stay in a fight longer because of that. But a 40 has more hitting power than 2 20's.
Having more smaller divisions helps gain exp quicker as well. People seem to say go for 20 early game and 40 later. But even that varies depending on where the fighting is and how good the infrastructure is.
Prob a good thing I don't play on hard difficulty or mp since this is not stuff i'd have ever figured out on my own.
EDIT: NVM I see now, there is a little parachute icon on anything that can be paradropped.
Yeah, not sure if it's been patched or not, but you used to be able to make divisions damn near invincible combining Arty, some infantry, and heavy tanks.
Oh also, you can customize your units. For example with tanks you can increase attack, armor, reliability, and speed. Increasing one decreases another, but with enough points you can make some very effective variants.
Yeah, most upgrades will allow you to just make all around better versions with enough experience points. Like upping speed may reduce reliability, but upping reliability doesn't decrease speed. I believe subs eventually allow you to offset all of their negatives and have everything be of equal or greater value than the base values were.
I guess I should have been cranking out multiple divisions non-stop throughout the war. I stopped around 50 or so.
Now trying as Germany with some of the things I've learned/read - but I think I'll put a twist on things by befriending China and Poland.
Built up border forts and got as many divisions up asap.
Forgot that Germany takes part of Czechoslovakia.
By the time I noticed the german units on the southern border it was too late. My forts held up but they encircled me fast.
The soviets didn't jump in until I was knocked out. Haven't gone back to watch it play out yet
It seems to be 30-40% of the value comes from the best unit and then 70-60% from the average.
Neat trick you might not have found yet. Up in the right corner of the division designer you can mark what kind of equipment a particular template will accept.
It's quite possible to make two versions of the same tank, a engine boosted version that travels 12km/h (keeping up with motorised) and one with heavy armor/gun that travels at the same speed as your mechanized. Make sure that only tanks with the right speed are checked and voila.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Siding with China is tricky as theres no guarantee that they will beat Japan without massive help.
Massive tends to be around 12 divisions in my experience. Totally doable to send enough volunteers just by yourself.
This always feels like the biggest issue the game has.
There's no real reason to engage in weird, experimental or tailored division designs when the answer is usually to make a cookie cutter division because it takes the same number of factories and they're way more efficient.
Dunno. I had these S (for speed) divisions featuring specialized medium tank models with boosted speed (combined with rocket arty and motorized divisions). 20% more speed is nothing to sneeze at and they were invaluable for their hitting power when attacking the russian plain.
-Antje Jackelén, Archbishop of the Church of Sweden
Yeah, the division I listed is ridiculous against the AI as an infantry unit, but it can be countered if you're trying to. A more dedicated armor division would win against it -- this one does incredibly well against soft targets, but isn't anything special against hard targets if you're countering it with an armored division.