Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah the battle planner in Hoi4 is pretty bad. I find it pretty hard to use and counterintuitive.

 

[Malakal]

What's really annoying about this is that despite looking simple, to actually play it well in mp (or as a difficult nation) requires more micro because you're constantly wrestling with the fronts and shit

In MP you dont use frontlines you use the bug with garrisoning Sweden or some other neutral nation to get the planning bonus and manually move every unit.

 

[Average Manatee]

What's really annoying about this is that despite looking simple, to actually play it well in mp (or as a difficult nation) requires more micro because you're constantly wrestling with the fronts and shit

In MP you dont use frontlines you use the bug with garrisoning Sweden or some other neutral nation to get the planning bonus and manually move every unit.

Lmao, wasn't aware of that exploit.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Fun fact, once in a hoi4 multiplayer game I was on team axis, playing hungary or romania someone small and I convinced our japan player who was a retarded american that I was a real life spy giving secrets away to the Chinese in exchange for an apartment in hong kong when the USA collapsed.

The average IQ of hoi4 multiplayer is literally like 80. Absolutely dire.

I played hoi4 multiplayer once, out of curiosity. I had my fill of listening to zoomerspeak from mutating voices for the rest of my life.

 

[Average Manatee]

I played hoi4 multiplayer once, out of curiosity. I had my fill of listening to zoomerspeak from mutating voices for the rest of my life.

I've played a number of times with close friends. I played once with an "open" game and before you could play you had to read a 20 page list of rules and you were relegated to some shithole nation like Hungary until you had 10+ successful MPs with the group, and you were only allowed to build planes (as hungary) because of some meme NF bonus.

I don't know of any other game that even approaches the level of autism that HoI4 MP has.

 

[Average Manatee]

Gave France a try. Total meme world:

Allies are UK, Poland, Netherlands. They are at war with the Soviets and Italy (but not Germany despite Italy being in the Axis).
Entente is France, Belgium, Czechoslovakia and Greece. Yes, Czechoslovakia is still alive. I guess because I was stronger than usual Germany had to send more to garrison my lines and couldn't win? Or maybe its just dumb luck. Germany isn't attacking them anymore thanks to level 7 forts.

Germany has been constantly attacking Belgium and you can see the casualties I've inflicted with just a bunch of 6 inf/1 art/1 sup eng/1 sup art/1 sup AA divisions. Adding in Italy and I've inflicted about 1.7M axis casualties while suffering 300k. If I had actual forts in Belgium I'd probably have lost less than half that number. I honestly have no idea how supply works so I had to pull back a bit on the italian front, while in africa I rushed the ports and italy collapsed due to lack of supply.

The "set divisions to defend sweden" thing does NOT work. I did it for like 3 years and later noticed that not only do I get no planning bonus, I wasn't even getting XP for my generals. So all this was done with no general leveling which is a huge drawback.

The amount of stupid shit in France is absurd. No mana and awful modifiers that you have to get to the end of multiple trees to remove. Thankfully I just got rid of disjointed government (mana malus), which let me get rid of victors of the great war (+50% doctrine cost) and let me use all my saved up XP to go for superior firepower.

I did get fucked hard in the air because I had no air XP pre-war and therefore couldn't design planes (lmao what a retarded system), meaning all my shit planes just got trashed. But I've got good planes now and am starting to clear the skies with good K:D ratios. Had tons of fun thinking about plane design in 1936 only to realize I couldn't actually design anything until 1939.

Production looks like this. I tried the meme of adding 1 tank to divisions but it seems the whole armor/piercing mechanic has been nerfed hard? I'm not sure if its worth it anymore.

EDIT: LMAO, didn't notice UK naval invaded the soviets to help poland. Unfortunately poland died so UK is gonna get fucked. Don't care, they deserve it, I'm pushing the Germans slowly with air superiority now. UK did get into war with Germany and at this point Germany seems to struggle to kill Netherlands they are so weak (I literally can't help them since we are separate factions.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Did you deny the Rhineland?
I noticed that if you get the UK's help for Rhineland you get thrown into the Allies, which screws up the Little Entente AND Buy Time because you can't invite the other Eastern European nations into the Entente since you aren't faction leader and you can't do Go With Britain or France Leads because you are in a faction.

France seems really poorly designed, what were they thinking?

 

[RobotSquirrel]

France seems really poorly designed, what were they thinking?

Bonapartist go Brrrr

 

[Average Manatee]

I didn't deny the rhineland because it really doesn't help at all (at most you walk in to take one or two provinces then stop). But it costs you a shit ton of PP which you really don't have

 

[Average Manatee]

Christ this is fucking stupid.

The Special Forces doctrines are stupidly OP and just give you outsized terrain modifiers, to the point where you can almost entirely negate both mountains and rivers at the same time.

Mountains -50% attack -> -12% attack
Hills -18% attack -> -2% attack
Minor river -30% attack -> +8.5% attack (not sure if you get a bonus)?
Major river -60% attack -> -21.5% attack

And those special support battalions? They aren't capped by special forces, so once you unlock them you can give ALL of your divisions stupidly good terrain modifiers along with +20% line artillery soft attack. Should probably throw one or two line artillery into the division above even if it slightly hurts terrain stats.

 

[sser]

Yeah they're pretty overtuned, especially the Rangers. Because they tacked the Special Forces to the experience manas, it makes it very easy for some nations to really carve them out. Notably, the USA can have very strong Marines very quickly, at which point your Marines become total terminators, especially when you kit them with mechanized gear (which as USA is very easy to do). I think my last playthrough I tried a SpecOp focus for USA and when I pressed into Europe it was with 3 high-org paratrooper divisions + 12 extremely attack-heavy Marines zipping through the rivers. It is pretty fun to give them all the Medals to really enhance the Special Forces vibe.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

France seems really poorly designed, what were they thinking?

Bonapartist go Brrrr

Does La Resistance actually make France good? I do like the idea of going Monarchist, and plan to restablish the Grosse Deutschreich for my German run. I know you can do that for Germany if you have Waking the Tiger (which I have), but you can't make France monarchist because you need La Resistance (which I don't have)

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Ok so I was mistaken, if you deny the Rhineland and are in an alliance with Britain as a result of it, you can do Go With Britain. Or more specifically, you just outright bypass it and complete it instantly. The tool tip did not make that clear at all.

So basically, if you deny the Rhineland its better to do Buy time, if you don't do Deny the Rhineland its better to do Little Entente as you can just rush the focuses to have Romania, Yugo and Poland and just zerg rush Germany from all angles.
The odd part though is the British Entente focus; if I do it before the Munich Crisis, Britain pussies out anyway, I know that because I'm pretty sure I saw that happen. But what if I do that after? Will Britain just join the Entente during the war with Germany?

Alternatively I guess you can not deny the Rhineland, Buy Time and France Leads into Stresa Front and that would secure your Southern border. I don't know if the territories you give to Italy makes that worthwhile though.

 

[Average Manatee]

I was doing all the economic stuff and both of us were in our factions before I was able to get to the NFs to do faction stuff, so I'm pretty sure those were just wasted NFs I had to sit through for no purpose

 

[Malakal]

France is a top tier power, if you can win as Poland (and I can) you can as France with way more industry and resources and better situation overall.

Just buy time, build industry, build a solid modern army and win. Remove all the frog modifiers and you should do fine.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Is guard mode just useless or something? I had units guarding the forts but suddenly a couple of them left a fort unintended so the Germans just broke through my lines. Another restart. Even with all of the negative modifiers gone my units are shit.

 

[Average Manatee]

Guard mode is for quickly sending all your units to ports (e.g. Germany defending against D-Day). For defending a line use fallback line

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

France is a top tier power, if you can win as Poland (and I can) you can as France with way more industry and resources and better situation overall.

Just buy time, build industry, build a solid modern army and win. Remove all the frog modifiers and you should do fine.

How do you get the Little Entente to work? I found that the Reich just eats Yugoslavia and Romania, so you end up fighting an early war with Germany on your own without the British.

 

[Malakal]

France is a top tier power, if you can win as Poland (and I can) you can as France with way more industry and resources and better situation overall.

Just buy time, build industry, build a solid modern army and win. Remove all the frog modifiers and you should do fine.

How do you get the Little Entente to work? I found that the Reich just eats Yugoslavia and Romania, so you end up fighting an early war with Germany on your own without the British.

In early war you can rush Germany with minor allies, if the war starts ~1939 they just die unless you help them. Which you may consider since that extends German front line to be massive.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I discovered that if you get the British to join the Entente AND you don't surrender the Rhineland they won't back down from Munich. I guess that if you join the allies too early it really messes up the Little Entente path.
No idea how I'm going to push into the Rhineland though; the Germans already have a level 3 fort there, and I have barely any tanks.
I guess I could shift production to Heavy Tanks and make a combined arms heavy infantry thing, but I don't think I have time and I'm not even sure if combined arms is all that effective in Hoi4.

Is 14/4 still a thing? Apparently artillery got nerfed at some point?

 

[Average Manatee]

It certainly distracted a ton of Germans on the Czechs for me. Though the 1 or 2 unforted provinces in Belgium couldn't be attacked by more than like 10 divisions anyway

 

[Average Manatee]

Is 14/4 still a thing? Apparently artillery got nerfed at some point

Specific combat widths are no longer really needed. Smaller means more total org in a fight, more reinforce chances, and more support companies (especially good for sup firepower). Not too small though because that degrades your defensive stats. I think my division of 6 inf 1 art worked well.

Edit you may get more xp as well, wiki seems to say that all divisions above 8 brigades get the same xp but I'm not sure if that's just commanders or also national xp

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Hm, well my fortress guards have 6 inf and a support AA and Arty battery, so I guess that's good enough to hold the line? At least on the maginot. I don't think I'll be able to extend the fortresses for the free levels by the time Germany attacks Czech. I don't know how effective my guards will be on the level 4 forts I have on the alps or Belgian border.

No idea how to break the German lines with my proper divisions though. The light tanks I have seem pretty rubbish.

 

[AwesomeButton]

...

I had a pretty fun history larp with WW1 ("redux") mod as Britain. Learned a bit about fleets and their composition during the war. Blockaded Germany and held my part of the frontline.

 

[Average Manatee]

No idea how to break the German lines with my proper divisions though. The light tanks I have seem pretty rubbish.

Yeah you're basically gonna defend for a year or two until Germany is exhausted and stops attacking every 2 hours (which is where big divisions fail because they can't reinforce fast enough and get pushed back despite having org). Then you slowly ramp up enough fighters to take air superiority which will buff your ground combat stats and nerf theirs. Then you add CAS. Then you break through WW1 style with Marines/mountaineers with heavy armor. Though ideally I think the best place to break axis lines is through the Italian coastline, where you can also use shore bombardment