Hearts of Iron IV - The Ultimate WWII Strategy Game

[Thor Kaufman]

thanks, and normal tanks?

 

[Average Manatee]

Same as TD. Tanks and TD basically serve the same overall purpose (penetrate enemy armor and raise your armor to hopefully above their penetration). TD is cheaper with more Piercing, Tanks are more expensive but with breakthrough to decrease damage taken while attacking.

 

[XenomorphII]

Depends on industry. If you have the production for it, heavy tanks and their associated sp art are hilarious in single player (normal will serve fine).

 

[Space Satan]

Depends if you use maint.company or not. And whether you wish to go full retard with speed and MOT.

 

[Thor Kaufman]

I dunno, I think mot fits light tanks better speedwise and mech for med/heavy

 

[Space Satan]

Lights got outclassed very quickly and can'\t cope with meds and meds can outrun almost everyone.

 

[Average Manatee]

The cost increase for Light->Med is almost nothing and brings substantial improvements in everywhere but speed, and you can't really take advantage of LARM speed anyway because MOT is slower, almost as slow as MARM is anyway.

Meds->Heavies almost double the cost for almost no advantage in SP since the primary HARM advantage over MARM is armor, but since the AI doesn't make AT/TD to pierce Meds anyway the Heavy advantage goes completely to waste.

 

[Space Satan]

Heavies are only seldom worth it, for example, if you are performing Soviet tech jump to get modern tanks in 40-41. Yet also, Heavy TD is created right to be added to INF because it moves just like INF and can pierce ANYTHING in the game until moderns, providing huge hardness at the same time.

 

[Average Manatee]

Med TD with +Piercing modifiers does basically the same thing. It takes a really, really HARM-heavy composition to get armor above a single Med TD. And you can almost make 2 MTDs for the price of 1 HTD.

Modern tanks aren't even worth the cost. The last level of MARMs are where you should stop (maybe HARMs if you are in MP or something where people deploy TD).

 

[Space Satan]

Moderns with 98% hardness and top piercing is insanely good for their price

 

[Average Manatee]

Hardness is averaged anyway. If you made a 100% modern division it would be completely impossible to build more than a few divisions of them. In reality Armor isn't going to be more than around 10% of your companies and you'll be around half MOT. The net effect of the 98% hardness on your armor will be to drop your overall hardness from 50% to 45% or something.

Also over-piercing or over-armoring does nothing. Since the AI doesn't exactly make high armor or high piercing divisions even medium armor will pierce and be un-pierced fine against the vast majority of divisions you face, so you'll do better overall with MARM (which you can build far, far more of).

 

[Raghar]

Hardness is averaged anyway. If you made a 100% modern division it would be completely impossible to build more than a few divisions of them. In reality Armor isn't going to be more than around 10% of your companies and you'll be around half MOT. The net effect of the 98% hardness on your armor will be to drop your overall hardness from 50% to 45% or something.

I had 92. But it's creazily expensive for comchi. The main problem of comchi is not enough factories for even small arms production.

 

[Space Satan]

Usual strategy is gradually replace mot with mech in med/modern divisions and then armor stats begin to matter. Piercing is very important as other division pierce got averaged as well. So you are still dealing with high armor and that means take 50% less damage AND deal 50% more damage.

 

[Average Manatee]

Mech is horribly, horribly expensive and basically not worth it. Indeed even improved infantry weapons are fairly cost-inefficient, it's better to make outdated MOT with WW1 or 1936 weapons.

Piercing isn't entirely averaged. 1 MTD is enough to pierce 95% of all AI divisions and be unpierced yourself, so anything more is irrelevant.

 

[Destroid]

If you are playing a manpower starved nation you need all those goodies to keep your losses to a minimum.

 

[Space Satan]

Vs AI - yes, vs human player - not so. While in single pretty standart is 7 Inf 2 Art in Mp it's more like 6INF\MNT-2 ART-1 AT\TD or you are in a heap of shit very soon

 

[Average Manatee]

If you are playing a manpower starved nation you need all those goodies to keep your losses to a minimum.

Basically none of the majors or even regional powers can be said to be manpower starved. Even at medium manpower laws you have enough manpower to fill your whole front with max frontage several times over, and higher manpower laws give even more absurd amounts of manpower compared to an almost irrelevant production penalty.

 

[IHaveHugeNick]

If you are playing a manpower starved nation you need all those goodies to keep your losses to a minimum.

Basically none of the majors or even regional powers can be said to be manpower starved. Even at medium manpower laws you have enough manpower to fill your whole front with max frontage several times over, and higher manpower laws give even more absurd amounts of manpower compared to an almost irrelevant production penalty.

Pretty much. Most of the advanced weaponry is a complete and utter waste of time, given that 7/2 infantry divisions roll over everything just fine for
majority of the war. Even smaller countries can usually pump out a 100 divisions like that, with a bit of agressive play and appropriate laws. So why bother with anything else.

The only deviation from that formula that I make ,is for heavy self-propelled artillery. And that's only for countries with very good industry. It sucks at first, mind. But in the long run, once you can start producing versions upgraded with xp, and support it with the superior firepower doctrine, the soft damage becomes off the charts high.

 

[Average Manatee]

Heavy SPART is a complete waste. Medium gives the best Soft Attack per IC. Better even than regular Artillery once you factor in variants that improve Soft Attack. Ideal ground divisions end up being something like 5 INF/4 MSPART or 10 INF/8 MSPART. Mechanically 40/44 width divisions are stronger than 20/22.

The only reason to make a Heavy for anything is as a tank or a tank destroyer, because their advantage over Medium is armor or Piercing. Heavy SPART just gets a very mediocre Soft Attack advantage for a huge cost increase. If you are going to use Heavies then the ideal would be Heavy TD/Armor + Medium SPART.

 

[Arcks]

I laugh at people trying to minmax against AI's. I'd love to see how all these "efficient" strategies would work against human players.

 

[Average Manatee]

PvP is inherently fucked because the attacker automatically wins any remotely even fight due to the huge impact of the planning bonus. Combat devolves into seeing who can click quicker to start their attack first, and if they both do so on the same hour then its a tossup. Even relatively shitty divisions defeat strong ones if the former gain an over 100% increase to all of their stats.

 

[Thor Kaufman]

men, quick question. Who do I have to purge/what do I have to do to get Beria as Soviet Union. And is there a safe way to trigger Trotsky or is it still a crapshoot?

 

[Raghar]

EU.

People republic of Japan has Manchuria. And I have -26000 infantry weapons, and -3500 artillery, and Russia would be conquering its north city second time.

BTW when I started wining as comchi in India and siam. UK moved troops to crimea and started totally BRUTAL three thrust attack into Russia, result of which you can see. That small cut off is because MAO was moving

 

[Space Satan]

AI is totally retarded now - Germany can take their entire army from Soviet front and move it to africa...by the sea.

 

[Arcks]

PvP is inherently fucked because the attacker automatically wins any remotely even fight due to the huge impact of the planning bonus. Combat devolves into seeing who can click quicker to start their attack first, and if they both do so on the same hour then its a tossup. Even relatively shitty divisions defeat strong ones if the former gain an over 100% increase to all of their stats.

You've actually seen this done in practice, not just theorycrafting? Because you seem to disregard pretty much every bonus defenders can get, which can certainly be much higher than any kind of planning bonus. And planning bonus doesn't last forever.