I've played hundreds of hours of HoI3 and now a hundred of HoI4. I was holding small AMA's <here> and <here> and one person asked me for some tips for new players. I happened to write quite a few, so I thought that others may find them useful as well.
Forgive the stream of consciousness, but I barely slept and get to go to work in an hour.
For that reason I won't be able to answer any more questions, but if you want to see my know-how applied check out the recordings of my Germany playthrough stream on my YT channel (1st few parts have poor audio - I'm new to this) or tune in for a release stream later today. I explain my train of thought and 've been told I'm pretty informative.
Fighters. One of your first researches should be Fighters and you want to start building them very early on. You should expect between 1000 and 2000 fighters thrown against you when war breaks out in 1939. Less important for Japan or US.
1936 light tank models. That should also be one of your early researches and you should also start building them fairly early.
Moderate amount of early light tanks is much better than a few modern medium ones. Don't strangle your economy trying to get 1939 or 1941 models too early.
(Almost) all focus tree unlocks take 70 days. Use that to plan your first few years. Know where you want to be on the tree when war starts.
Extra research slots and extra factories (civilian > military >>>>>> dockyards) should be your first goals. Keep in mind that diplomatic focuses that allow you to annex other countries will often provide a lot of factories as well.
'Consumer Goods Factories - x%' basically gives you free civilian factories. Look up the tooltip for that after pressing 'T'.
Spending 1st year building only civilian factories is not a bad idea.
Do not neglect your Industry and Engineering research.
Changing what is produced by a production line will reset your efficiency to 10%.
Production lines that aren't getting enough resources will still produce things, but slower. Hover over to see details.
Upgrading our production line from lower tier of the same production (Infantry Weapons I to Infantry Weapons II; Light Tank 1934 to Light Tank 1936; Fighter I to Fighter II etc.) will only cut your production efficiency in half.
Switching production to an Exp modified variant of the same equipment will only lower your efficiency by 10%
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Naval production doesn't use efficiency.
Think on what do you want to use your research bonuses. They can be sometimes instrumental in getting a very important tech ahead of time on a cheap.
Some research bonuses are very specific. If you have something that cuts your Recon I and II research in half don't go researching those without it.
Synthetic Refineries are only worth it when you can't buy the resources. Civilian factories are cheaper, you can buy more of the resource using them and they have other uses as well.
You can mostly ignore higher levels of Syntetics techs, they just allow you to build more Synthetic Rafineries per state. Do not build those in occupied territories.
Try not to buy less than 8 resources/factory, especially early on.
You are exporting automatically. Nothing you can do there, just enjoy free civilian factories if they appear.
Resources are extremely important. Keep them in mind when planning your conquests.
Do not mess with your trade laws if you don't know what you're doing.
You can change your recruitment laws at any moment and your manpower pool will fill up in an instant. No point doing that ahead of time. Do keep in mind that it costs Political Power, tho.
Once World Tension reaches 25% democracies will start guaranteeing nations you justified wars on. Either do the invasions before that happens or be ready to face both France and the UK. At that point the invaded nation will (almost) always join one of the other factions. In some situations it may even mean bringing a new one into war against you.
Don't forget about your police forces. Use Cavalry units with Military Police brigades (you can add those later) and garrison them in occupied territory.
If conquered nation doesn't belong to an existing faction (like Allies or Comintern) there will be no resistance. That makes invasions before 25% tension and diplomatic annexations very powerful.
You first use of accumulated Political Power should be switching to War Economy, if possible.
Your second, in most cases, getting a guy that will increase a speed of Civilian Factory construction or increase Political Power gain.
Production companies are nice, but don't try to get them too early, other bonuses are usually more important.
Researched equipment will gain bonuses from production companies that are hired by you when the research ends. You don't have to have them when you start the research.
You should try to keep researching Land Doctrines, especially early on. They grant superb bonuses and its good to have as many of hem as you can when the war starts. It is, however, ok to switch to other techs is they seem more crucial at the moment.
Do not ignore encryption and decryption.
6 months ahead of time is a good moment to start thinking about researching some very important techs. Try to keep that to a minimum tho.
You can live without Self-Propelled Anti-Air/Anti-tank/Artillery.
Best Anti-air equipment (on installation) is few hundered Fighter planes.
2-3 levels of Radar instalations in your frontline (air-wise) provinces will help you win air superiority.
Agility and speed are two most important stats for fighters followed by range.
Motorized and Support Equipment never get old. When in doubt produce some of those.
Bombers are nice, but Fighters are nicer.
Take your time to familiarize yourself with the airforce interface. It gets better.
I find using only airwings of 100 planes optimal.
You can delete all the airwings and remake them without losing anything.
Naval Bombardment is broken. AI can't deal with it.
You can stop units than embarked on a boat by pressing 'H' or a 'Hold divisions' button. pressing on a port province they are moving out from doesn't work (in press version).
Ports are considered a part of land province. Keep your navy out of range from enemy bombers or keep air superiority in their port region.
Battleplan system starts to make a lot of sense ~80 hours into the game.
4 tank battalions and 2 motorized infantry battalions make a good panzer division.
recon is the most important support battalion
That's it for now. If you want more check my YT channel for some informative gameplay. I'll start another playthrough (probably on Veteran difficulty with Japan) in a few days, this time with higher production quality, so stay tuned.
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6-14-16 Titans guide to Germany A step by step guide. 1936 start, Normal, Ironman, Historical AI.
Please note, this guide will assume that the reader knows the basic operations of the game.
Start the game, doughnut un-pause as we have a lot of work to do. First select all ground troops, you should have 30 in total. Make a new army group and assign everyone to that group. I rename this army to 'training camp' and set them to garrison somewhere, it doesnt matter where we just need to give them an order to make things easier later on. I set this units reinforcement priority to low. Set them to exercise to gain XP and gain army experience.
Now separate all your tanks, you should have 3 divisions, place these in another new army. I like to name this one Panzer group, or Tank group. so I can keep track of all my tanks. I assign Rommel here. Now separate out the one division of motorized and (you guessed it) set them to a new army named motorized. Now I can easily keep track of how many and what kind of tanks and motorized divisions I have. I put Fedor Von bock here since he doesnt have any special bonus like Rommel so his panzer leader isnt wasted. Set these to high priority.
We are done for the moment with the army units, now for the navy. Move and rebase all your naval units to the same base, I like to use something away from the UK and France so they dont get wrecked by port strikes while repairing. Mass all your navy under two leaders when it gets to port. One for subs and one for surface. Put the surface fleet on patrol in the baltic and send the subs to convoy raid around the UK.
I dont do anything with the air forces yet so now we are done with the right side of the screen. Now I start at the top left and work to the right.
Where to download game of thrones. Focus is now Rhineland, I have never personally seen it get challenge but it can happen. If it does I just restart, no big loss.
Research, basic tools, Construction 1, EM engineering and support weapons. Skip to trade, trade for OIl from the soviet union and rubber from Netherlands.
Now for construction, this is where you as the player need to decide how you want to play. Do you want to balance an ok surface fleet with your army or do you want to focus on your army to make it the best you can. Eventually you will need some sort of navy incase you need to invade the U.S. I have done both and in this guide I am going to try and strike a balance, if you want to focus on your army then just skip the naval focus I take and take something else, instead of building naval bases build more military factories.
I line up max factories in Ostmark, Niederschlesin and oberschlesin. (5/6/6) and (4-3-6) naval yards Hinterpommern (main navel base for me) Pommern and Ostpreussen.
Now I set up two lines of Infantry equipment, the first gets 10 factories, the second gets 1. Then two lines of support equipment, 2 motorized and the single artillery rounds out my top 7. Factories get assigned as they come up in the order you have things. Light tank II gets position 8 and I assign 5 factories to it for now. Assign two lines of BF 109 with 5 factories each and priority 9 and 10. We want to have 2,000 to 3,000 fighters before we go to war, but more is better. Assign 3 factories to JU87 and replace tactical bomber with naval bomber and assign 3 factories. Now for naval production. Assign maximum docks to each line, as one gets finished they start producing the next thing in line. This is how we will grow a fleet quickly, by working on several large ships at the same time. Reduce the sub line to 1 unit and leave the others alone. Set the spawn point to Hinterpommern. I like to manual set all ships to Hinterpommern as is mostly out of the way of any major airforce.
Start a new line for Battleship (1), Battle crusier (2), Light cruiser (5) and destroyer (15). Assign all factories and spawn in Hinterpommern.
Now for the recruit and deploy tab. I like to rename my current three major units to, Basic infantry, Light panzer and Morotized. This makes it easier to see what I am producing, and what these units are at a glance.
Now train 10 units of infantry in parallel, 2 light panzers and 2 motorized. Remember when I told you to set the training camp group to garrison? We are going to set the spawn point of the new infantry to the area we selected for the training camp and set them to join the training camp when they are produced. This reduces travel time and places them directly into training.
Open the logistics tab. If you take nothing else away from this guide TAKE THIS TO HEART and you will be better for it. Wasting production on things you are not using is a good way to loose the game, or at least not be as strong as you could be. The Ui easily tells you how many things you are making and how many surplus you have per day. I like to have a small surplus to stockpile things, but I dont like wasting production stockpiling massive amounts of equipment that gets replaced with new and better equipment when instead I could be building something else I need/want to stock (fighters for example) or producing something else before I get ready to use it, for example when I unlock Panzer III I may not start training them right away but still produce them ahead of time.
Logistics, in my opinion is the single most important screen in the game. It gives you a wealth of extremely useful information that may otherwise go overlooked. From total production, surplus per day, stockpile and even usage of factories and goods at the bottom. Learn to love this screen and be thankful how easy to read and use it is. Like I said, what good is having a surplus of 8,000 motorized equipment, guns or tanks if you can never use it or replaced it with something better? That is 8,000 units of wasted production. This screen is useful regardless of what nation you play.
Set game to max speed and un-pause (finally!)
Focus #2 Autobahn. First change of government, war economy. Second government change, Walther Funk for the speed bonus to building military factories and docks. First new research, Electronic engi finished, get mech computing next. Focus #3 Westwall. Support weapons and basic tools should be finished soon, grab paratroopers and concentrated indy. Modify government, add Krupp under indy concern for the 10% bonus to research time.
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Dont forget to sort your navy out, one surface fleet and one sub fleet with proper leaders, assign them to the areas above if you are producing naval units. If not ignore this. Replace construction I with improved tools as it should be done next. Keep on top of your trade needs so you dont run short, always try to trade with the SU as much as you can as I always put off war with them as long as I can.
Replace west wall with both indy 1 and then indy 2. They give free civilian factories and we are going to gain more from conquest or from focus. Force deploy any infantry you can then assign all the level 3 (they cant get any higher from training) to a new army. I place this one on the eastern front and name it simply eastern front. Assign a field marshal here, and place them on a front with Poland. Take about 7 units and assign them to north eastern front (the part cut off from the rest of Germany. I put them under a level 1 general to help clean things up. The Spanish civil war should start soon (or already). I am not going to help them as it raises too much world tension and doesnt really help us. Sure it might help italy but I am not worried about them. I am gaming the world tension to try and keep it as low as I can so that I can keep France and the UK from allying, that happens at 25% tension every time for me.
If you want to help them, deploy 2 tanks under Rommel and line drive to Madrid, take it and then send your tanks to take one port each, then use one to drive up the coast and one down to take the ports and cities. The war should end in under 2 months. This worked for me every time I tried it.
Now add Rheinmetall for materiel design for the 10% boost in arty research time. I now add Heinz Guderian to Theorist for the land research time and armor speed. Replace concentrated indy I with II for the next research. Mech computing and paratroops should be done, grab construction II (50% bonus) and interwar arty.
I started force deploying units, set my panzer and motorized divisions to guard and set new units to auto deploy to the respective army. I start training the panzer and motorized division at this point.
Now I forced deployed units so I can prepare to take Anschluss as it has a manpower requirement, I look and see what Austria is doing and what focus they have, if they are taking construction effort I or II I then take Naval rearmament. If you are not going for a navy you can take Army or air innovations.
I keep my eye on my logi tab, check on how my navy is coming and move any level 3 units out of training and into (yet another) new army. I place this one on the front with France and title it Western front and Western army 1. These fronts are small so I place a general in charge. I will eventually have a front the other three nations nations to the north of France.
I replace improved tools with the MP support unit and add Henschelfor the tank designer for the research bonus and I like the speed and reliability boost. I line up maintenance company I as my next research.
For me its Feb 18th, 1937 and I have free Mil factories and now is a good time to check and see where I need to adjust my production.
I am way behind on infantry equipment, and a little behind on everything else. My line up is now #1 inf equipment 10 factories. #2 inf equipment 2 on 5 assigned. I assign 2/5 on my second line of support equipment, 1/5 on my second motorized and 4/5 on arty. 5/7 on light tank I assign 5/10 on both my BF109 lines and 5/5 on CAS/Naval bombers. Naval focus is done for me so I replace it with Anschluss. World tension is at 1%. I want to keep it under 25% as long as I can.
Keep filling out your government, at this point IMO its mostly flavor and swapping for the research bonus to make things go faster. I go for radio as my next research, followed by logi company with Army innovations as my next I start training 2 paratroopers and add them to the training army. I sort the new units from Austria and change them to basic infantry and put them to training.
I put all my planes in reserve and start resorting them starting with fighters. I want to have control of the air over Germany. I like to have several 100 strength units as opposed to a few larger ones. Change to extensive conscription. Pick up Demand sudetenland, line up research on land doctrine with the 50% bonus. I take support weapons II, delay, Improved Infantry equipment I and appoint Rommel to high command. World tension has dropped to 3% but Japan will likely start raising it soon in late 37 early 38. Demand Slovenia and shuffle around the construction line up, I need more military construction at this point so I push the docks down the list and add more factories. If you are not worried about a navy shove the docks to the bottom (or dont build any) and keep making factories. Make sure you are not overproducing anything and see what you are short on and adjust production as needed. If nothing else at this point fill up your BF109 factory to 15/15 on both lines and try to fill it out soon. I like to have 2-3K fighters sitting around AFTER I stock my air bases.
At this point Japan screws me by putting world tension to 22% and my current focus is going to raise it by 2%, hoping that I dont hit 25% I want to keep the Uk and France from becoming BFF for a bit longer.
I shuffle some units out of training, at this point I have 55 civy factories and 64 military. I now have 9 motorized. I force deploy all the infantry I can and cut my production of infantry units to 5 from 10. This should let me balance out my equipment. Since paratroops are small and dont take much equipment I increase them from 2 to 5.
Get elastic defense and field hospital, I pickup air innovations and luckily world tension stays under 25%.
In early January 1938 I am starting to build up a lot of extra infantry equipment so I adjust production to shift it where its needed, also ill have to adjust support equipment soon. If you haven't been building docks you should have already starting having surplus and should have been adjusting your production. Personally I have 124.X surplus a day of infantry equipment so I cut that in half. I cut my lines from 10/10 to 5/5
I take dive bombing (50% bonus) next along with concentrated indy III and treaty with the USSR. I readjust infantry equipment again (see i told you the logi tab was awesome) as I have a 59.X surplus a day and already have 1.5K surplus of weapons. I add two lines of basic infantry to eat the surplus.
My first trained units of paratroopers are ready so I made another army just for them. I assign Kurt Student to them and now its time to decide where I want to go from this point. I feel pretty good about invading Poland in late 39 or early 40 so I have a little list of short term goals to fill. I need 2-3K fighters sitting in reserve after I set my air bases up. I want to control the air of Germany, the English channel, Poland and north France along with the alps. I am going to prep the air drop into Paris and its vitally important that I have total air control. I need air control of the English channel to put my naval bombers to work and I want to stop or at least hinder any naval invasion force. I need to plan the invasion of Poland, I will use my panzer division in the south and my motorized division in the north to pincer the front lines and maybe grab a few cities. If France joins I need to air drop forces ASAP on Paris and knock them out quickly. I want to (hopefully) avoid bothering the Netherlands so I can keep trading for rubber.
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I also need to prep for a London air drop to knock them out quickly as well, but only after France and Poland are down.
I want to try and annex as much as I can without pushing world tension to more than 25%. Again I readjust my construction priority and drop docks down, I want to grab the next naval focus and research medium tanks. At this point you should have a fairly good grasp on the early game and I will leave the next few years and final build up to war.