Yup, that’s what they said on the forum. Tried it on my two previous games and they refused on Fate of Yugoslavia both times. This last game was particularly ugly. The commies won the SCW. Czech refused to give up anything, despite my entire army surround their country. Poland and Romania are allied. France has guaranteed everything. Hungary won’t join the Axis yet. Italy and Bulgaria formed their own alliance. Italy ignored China, and looks like they are going to ignore Russia also. I’m feeling really boxed in.
I still think the early france invasion can be the hardest part of a Germany campaign. Its relatively early so you have to be super organised about your research and production to be able to launch a reasonable blitzkreig, you’re unlikely to be able to manage historical air superiority, and even the AI cannot simulate the ineptitude and lack of coordination of the french general staff.
The trick for me has always been making sure I have a fair few proper medium armor divisions (which historically the Germans barely had in 1940). Use these in small envelopments to quickly reduce the french forces, and bottle up the english and dutch in the north to deal with later - once you’ve cut them off holding them in place is the job of your infantry, your armor should all be focussed on getting France to surrender. Use your air to stop the enemy having air superiority in the criticial areas, at least, but don’t spread them out. You should pretty rapidly reach a point where the French cannot hold the line and you can apply the coup de grace.
Thanks for the tips! I was just starting to get some Panzer III’s into my divisions. I gave up on the game. It was summer of 40 and my losses were horrendous. I might come back to it sometime and see if I can save it. I am still learning tricks even after all this time. I just figured out that the Panzer I can be upgraded into SPA Wespe. So I am trying to get that into my divisions from the start.
I was playing historical and I was really surprised at how built up the French and British Air Forces were in the late Fall of 39. I might start adding an AA support company to some of my infantry divisions.
I have to say that I enjoy the spy game stuff even if it is a considerable cost in civilian factories. I wonder if it shouldn’t have some mechanic to make you have to spread it out though. Having god level decryption so early seems a bit off even if you were devoting 5-15 factories the whole time. But it does add some nice flavor.
Any specific metrics aside, playing as Germany the three things you ought to have before invading Poland are the fifth research slot, Panzer IV’s (and the soft attack variant) and Fighter II’s. The more the better.
So what do you do for factories/infrastructure usually?
I’ve been doing Civ Factories at first, autobahn and infrastructure up to at least 70% and then 4 or 5 synthetic refineries and followed by all military factories. I need more civilian factories now though to do the intel upgrades so I feel short on those.
I do Rhineland, then the 4 year branch. Most often I do the right side to get the extra civilian factories, and then the extra research slot. The left side puppet Hungry and Romania you get an extra 16 mil factories plus have access to lots of Romania oil is great when it works. The safer branch Autarky/ReichsAutobahn branch nets you 6 mil factories plus a free switch to war economy. You have to get Goebbels as an adviser to get the war support to do make that switch early.
Panzer III are pretty useless, I typically only have 1 or 2 PZ III tank factories. You want to rush reasonable fast to Panzer IVs… I like to have them researched a bit before I invade Poland that way all my captured factories are start making PZ IV, but you really don’t need medium tanks to take out France. Wespe (LTSPART II) are actually one of the biggest bargains, so over produce them and still use them in my medium tank division for a long time.
However, a big force of Panzer IV is essential for taking out Russia
It is actually better to trade for oil and rubber with civilian factors while you are peace… I do like have 4 refineries right before I go to war so that’s 8 rubber I don’t need to import and then as my refinery tech increase build a lot more synth plans. I use captured factories to build Panzer IV, and FW190s, while spending roughly 1/2 my civilian factories to make refineries.
If you can keep war tension, reasonably low and use the focus trees to capture as much territory as possible without going to war it worth doing. France and England are running a early mobilization which is considerable worse than war economy.
For me the jury is still out on value of the spy network, because of the MEFO laws and the 25% bonus for building military factories German civilian factories are worth a lot pre war. I’m pretty sure that new resistance laws are going to make military conquests much less valuable. Something to keep in mind in the future.
This has bugged me & I was hoping someone could tell me I’m doing it wrong/if there is a fix:
In the National Decisions screen, it kills me that there is no way to scroll left to right except by grabbing the little “scroll circle” at the bottom of the window. Google tells me I can use Pg Up and Pg Dn to zoom in and out… is there a better way to scroll side-to-side? My mouse only scrolls up and down and the arrow keys don’t seem to do much…
@Scotten, can you try, when you are in the National Decision Screen, to click on a blank area and drag your mouse left or right?
Oh yes! My wrist and elbow thank you.
Cool! I’m glad to hear that.
I guess everybody has moved on (including myself more or less).
But I found this tweet by Podcast interesting.
The TL:DR is the frontline system from HOI IV and production system moved to other Paradox games
and the EU IV war score peace conference moved to HOI IV.
Both of which I agree with.
this game is on my “figure out how to play” list for the week.
There are some pretty smart folks here that should be able to answer some of your questions if you should have them.
Exciting! Keep us updated and ask away with any questions you might have. Any thoughts on what country you’ll start out as?
Probably Germany.
I will need to watch some tutorials. The in-game tutorial I am lost on the first step (drop civilian factory).
Germany has all the pieces and at least isn’t boring! Take it easy and don’t worry if it doesn’t go so well the first time.
I think the notices that pile up at the top of the screen do a decent job of notifying you when there is something to do. If you have spare civilian factories with which to build something, there will be a notification you can click on for that.
I find the economic and equipment model for the game is quite elegant for the most part, but the abstractions can be a bit weird. E.g., you have “free civilian factories” where in another game you might have money to build stuff with.
I agree that the economic model is elegant but the consumer goods aspect sort of annoyed me. I’m the Fuhrer and you will eat more soup and less steak!
Well, if you’re the Fuhrer you can more easily implement economic policies to do just that compared to democracies. :)
I am watching Quill18’s excellent tutorial. I haven’t really played it other than following along with him in game, but I can tell I think this game will get its hooks in me.
Do Germany, then take it democratic, for a build in peace simulator and perhaps war later.