Can anyone for god's sake tell me how the fuck i play this? Seriously, i'm fucking tired of installing and uninstalling this shit because every time i try to play i give up because i don't know what i'm supposed to do. The game's tutorial is crappy and you can't deny that.
click on focus treebuild caswin
>>1799409Play Germany20 width infantry, 34 width medium tanksTank design:>Speed suspension>Welded or cast armor depending on economy size/potential>medium cannons which you will unlock by going down your arty tree anyway >3 man turret>Wet ammo storage>sloped armor>8km/h+>Couple points into armor >Template should be 9 tanks and 7 motorised with recon, arty and engineer supportFighters>No need for anything complicated as the ai does not know how to make good planes and just comes up with 1 shitty design and never produces enough anyway>Best possible engine>Heavy mgs>Self sealing fuel tankCas>Exact same as the fighters but swap 1 mg for bomb locks and the self sealing fuel tank for dive brakes. Upgrade both models only when you research better engines/model. you can even tick a box for the ai to automatically do this for youAll thats left is to take focuses to conquer nations on or around their historical datesNavy>Not as complicated as people make out. Subs raid, produce only submarines. You wont be able to dent the allies because of the stupid hidden advantages the ai gets but it beats not producing anything. Germany is the easiest nation to play. If you want a more exciting scenario with less to worry about go play kaiserreich as Romania or one of the Italy's where your explicit goal is to re-unify your country and you dont have the capacity to do it with anything other than infantry and your enemies are generally in the same boat. Vanilla hoi sucks balls
>>1799441Didn't the 20 width infantry meta change after the last patches? Shouldn't be 21 now?
>>1799409Uninstall.
>>1799449As far as I can tell there's no need to change from 20 width in singleplayer. Width matters more on attacking divisions, where 34 on tanks is the meta. The AI will either make shit divisions with good attacking width or good width divisions with shit in them so you don't need anything special on the defense. Small nations might benifit from 7/2's (7 inf 2 arty). especially when coupled with left side superior firepower and rangers with the soft attack buff. This is the division I go with in Kaiserreich when I play a small nation
>>1799409Play a better game.
>>1799409To be fair, HoI4 is the most complex and intricate strategy game ever made. It encompasses the entire genre and in great detailEverything from land, air, and sea warfare to politics, espionage, economics, and diplomacy is included in so much detail that they could be their own game.HoI4 is not just a wargame or a economic simulatior it is also a game of mindgames and deceit. You must be smart and fool your opponent and hide things from them or reveal false information.If you have not already had a "tutorial" from years of playing other games in these areas to train you then it will take at least a year to learn the basics of HoI4. You should watch expert players and take notes. Download the manual to a tablet and play with it at hand for constant reference because you will need it. Ideally, you need a mentor.
>>1799535Lmao
>>1799535this HAS to be bait, nobody is this stupid
>>1799535what am I reading
>>1799454Cool, thanks anon. I'll try this the next time I play.
>>1799537newfag
>>1799535Finally, the Rick & Morty IQ copypasta of Hearts of Iron 4.
>>1799535this is how I play graviteams games and I still don't understand anything
>>1799441Germany is so easy it's probably too easy and handheld, will also teach you bad habits and it's not really fast enough for you to figure things out and play properly.IMO play Poland until you beat Germany - holding off AI Germany is pretty easy since AI units always suck on attack but you need to actually win and if you can't just restart. It's nice, smaller scale, you have access to everything but you can absolutely ignore navy. After beating Germany you can finish off Italy and then go murder Soviets if you want or just do whatever alt-history bullshit.
>>1799409>Being filtered by the easiest paradox game of all time
>Uninstall>Grow some balls>Play EU4 or CK
>>1799824how the fuck is germany tutorial nation when they literally lost the war? how did parakike fuck up that badly? is navy still an absolutely ridiculous joke? evidently it is
>>1799830Because they're the most popular so they have been overbuffed since forever.
>>1799830the UK AI is too retarded to prevent you from operation sealioning them
>>1799830If you do a true historical run and limit yourself from corndog behavior like capitulating the Brits before America shows up or using collab governments on the Soviets then Germany is honestly a bit of a challenge since the allies go from pushover to mongol hoard right when mid 1942 hits. If you try hard and sealion before 1940 than yeah it's a joke since the UK AI is particularly stupid and will leave its coasts vacant
>>1799870>>1800016didn't they dumb down the naval game into giant regions you assign ships to instead of actually requiring you to even command them? how can the ai fail to even do this? it should simply be impossible for germany to even supply any kind of invasion never mind get one going
>>1799830The real tutorial is actually italy since you play as them in the tutorial except italy also sucks dick.Best nation to play as for your first nation is the UK. 5 fucking entire nations that are your puppets to help you in war. France joins you to help fight germany on the mainland and later USA and Soviets. You are an island and germany can't fucking touch you thanks to your gigantic fucking navy.>>1800324The british AI in this game is legit hardcapped at how much ships it can assign to defend the mainland so retards can sealion britain as germany. I'm not kidding its a hidden ai modifier. I think the soviets have one to make them super shit until germany is close to winning in russia too.
>>1799535Based.
i have about a hundred hours and i still don't understand how to effectively use the tank/airplane/ship designer or how navy works in general.
I played Italy and Yugoslavia and always get stuck in fucking Greece. How the fuck do you capitulate those fuckers those mountains are impossible
>>1800555I think it's because otherwise the UK would instantly D-Day Germany if they were allowed to use their navy
>>1799409Have enough industry to spam 20 width infantry with engineers and support arty, then focus the rest on fighters and cas, with like 5 factories on naval bombers if you're fighting over water (nerfed but they still rape retarded ai). If you notice ai using tanks or you get past 1943ish put support AT in your divisions. Go right side grand battleplan or right side superior firepower. I usually go grand battleplan, normally it's shit but superior figherpower doesn't offer much for this braindead ai crush build.For a more powerful division do 34-37 width marines with like 4-5 arty and the rest marines, same support companies as the inf. You can make way better marines but these basic marines will annhilate anything the AI makes so I don't see a point.All dockyards on subs. Subs and navel bombers got nerfed but against AI spamming shitty subs to force navel engagements where your navel bombers fuck their fleet is still the best way to get superiority (assuming the AI even bothers to use their navy).Fighers should be best single engine, as many heavy machine guns as you can fit, self sealing fuel tanks, and you'll want drop tanks most of the time. If you don't have the thrust for a full set of 4x heavy mg's try lighter weapons.Cas are anti tank cannons if you have them and as many bomb locks as possible. The best single engine, and you'll probably want drop tanks. No need for defence modules as you shouldn't have cas up in contested air to begin, makes it do fuck all damage so just save the rubber.Navel bombers are cas except with the best torpedo possible, seriously do not give these things defence there's no point.Subs are either best hull with as as many best torpedos as you can fit and best engine or worst hull with 1 worst torpedo and worst engine. The later hull subs with good torpedos can actually do surprising well in fleet engagements against the shitty ai fleets and starting fleets so it's probably worth researching good subs.
Is italy still the tutorial country now? I know they updated their events and focus tree but steam tells me i haven't played the game in four years lmao
>>1801297New Italy tree is much more complicated then it used to be, which makes it a worse tutorial nation. The Ethiopia war in particular is gimmicky, if you don't finish it fast enough they won't peace out, only capitulate. You also need to be able to use all 3 of land, air, and naval forces.As other anons have said Germany is a better tutorial, you just need to build infantry and then planes, tanks as well if you want to larp. The focus tree is older and much less bloated
How noob friendly is UMCbN Germany?I haven't played the game in a while and I got a little confused by the shitload of decisions and stuff to keep an eye on there were.
the absolute state of retards nowadays. it literally holds your hand with tooltips and most mechanics are like 5 mins deep to understand. the UI is as dumbed down as can be. why does everyone act like hoi4 is some enigma that only the most genius motherfuckers can learn? almost like they'd fucking have a seizure from just looking at a screenshot of hoi3 or Vicky 2.
>>1799535hi Frederik
>>1801283in hoi3 you use mountaineers and aeroplanesin goi$ you use aeroplanes, the planning bonus, and the same generic army you use for everything but it's good to keep a theatre open to train your generals anyway
>>1801572To be fair, you might be thinking of base HOI4, which is a different beast from the DLC-ridden clusterfuck that the game is today. Also HOI4's tutorials are shit, and the game is hard to understand if it's your first parashit GSG no matter what you as someone who cut their teeth on Vic2 or EU3 might think. As a counter-example, look at how easy to understand the tutorials in Total War games are, then come back to Paradox games and look at how poorly done their tutorials are.
I've won several wars and I still don't know how to use plans
>>1799826CK2 is way easier and more fun.
>try to form Austro-Hungary as Czechoslovakia >Brits guarantee Hungary, declare anyway >during the war the UK explodes into a civil war, the rebels aren't at war with me>due to this my war with Hungary and the UK civil war become combined >capitulate Hungary while the rebels win in the UK >get to steal half of the British Empire in the peace deal just by beating Hungary without even having sea accessI love HoI4
What is navy meta nowadays?
>>1799409This is the best utorial about HOI4 on youtube. That's how Ilearned.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tMSLt3_dqfs&list=PLIY632rOtuKBW7-K9PDZZeaIfLWej_7Ji&ab_channel=GameswithBrains
>>1803629no doubt some retarded bullshitif you aren’t playing multiplayer then don’t worry about it and if you are then lmao imagine playing goi$ multiplayer
>>1799441way to info dump technical bullshit without providing real solution to op's issue RETARD
>>1803629Still CA spam
>>1799409Start out with a major. It doesn't matter which one.You'll start out with problems in your country, the exact problems vary from country to country--like the US having the Great Depression or France being crippled by political turmoil. Your first priority is to fix these. Typically, fixing them will involve your National Focuses. Take a look through the focus tree, see which ones solve your problems and plan how to get there. Once the biggest problems are solved, you'll either want to look for focuses that help develop your industry, or focuses that help you build up and train your military or that give research boosts. Sometimes, your problems will require you spend political power on Decisions instead, but then you'll have focuses that dump political power on you to pay for those decisions.Next, you want to develop your industry. You start the game on Civilian Economy, which makes factories build very slowly. We want to advance off of Civilian Economy ASAP, which requires your war support to be high enough. War Support will raise naturally over time as bad things happen in the world, but you may also have Focuses or decisions that affect it. While you're stuck on Civ economy, build infrastructure in the states that have a lot of valuable resources. Then build Civilian Factories in those states. When you're roughly 2 years off from joining the war (so 1937 for the UK, 1939 for the USSR, etc.), switch to producing Military Factories and produce them basically for the rest of the game.Infantry is the backbone of the army. Cheap infantry only need a few bodies with support artillery and AA. All of these things are cheap and quick to produce in large numbers and will excel at defending the line. You want an absolute fuckload of these. The majority of your industry should be dedicated to air. Simple, cheap and durable fighters to win air superiority, and then expendable CAS that just carries as many bombs as possible. Fighters enable CAS, CAS wins wars.
>>1803629>you have a fleet capable of competing with the big boysDoomstack strike fleets>you can't compete with the big boysSubmarinesThe sad part of the naval game is it has the capacity to be really fun and deep but it ultimately doesn't matter much so effort expended in it beyond reaching a minimal goal is wasted. The timescale of the game also means if you take a big loss you are fucked for the rest of the game which removes any incentive for ballsy experimentation.
>>18058683rd priority are tanks. You only really need 2 well-equipped tank divisions, enough to max out any individual instance of combat. More pairs of tank divisions mean more instances of combat at once. Your tank divisions should be fast and have good stats but still be affordable, considering that you want most of your industry on air instead.Infantry is cheap and good at defending and crossing rough terrain but bad at attacking. Use them to hold the frontline. CAS will do most of the damage for them.Tanks are very good at attacking, but are expensive and struggle in rough terrain. Use them to breach the enemy line in favourable terrain and then with their speed, encircle the enemy. Your infantry can follow, consolidate and then kill the encirclement while the enemy is trapped. Winning at HOI4 is really just repeating this process over and over. The only other thing to watch for is supply:Units need supply to function and become extremely shitty if they're undersupplied. Supply comes from ports and supply hubs, which are networked back to your capital via trains and shipping convoys. A general rule of thumb is that a supply hub will support everything within 3-4 tiles of it. Good places like Europe will generally have lots of supply hubs within reach of each other, so you just have to hop from hub to hub and staying well-supplied is easy. Shitty places may have supply deserts that are just awful to push through and will usually require you to build up supply infrastructure to even make it possible to advance--you should seriously consider if the ground you take is worth the cost or if it's just better to go fight somewhere else.Where people struggle is just making poor economy/industry choices and then not having enough material to support their wars, or doing something silly like bashing tanks into mountains over and over, or attacking with infantry and just burning all their equipment on pointless, costly battles.
How good are Cruiser Submarines?
>>1801857the tutorial at least teaches you the basics. the only real way you learn PDX games is actually playing, using the tooltips and trial and error. it's not rocket science. if you can't get the hang of any PDX game, you are a double digit IQ smoothbrain that need to an hero immediately
>>1803629Last I checked its still heavy cruiser spam and still completely pointless to invest anything into the navy if you aren't Italy or Japan
Play as Canada ( actual designated tutorial cuntree )
>>1807540Unironically>allies, so your side will win the war even if you don't do anything>isolated from every theatre by oceans so you're completely safe and never have to worry about getting attacked>just enough resources to do air and tanks without spending all your civs importing>enough eco to be a major factor in the war>can become a major relatively early instead of waiting until 1950 like most minors>but limited population forces you to actually handle your units wellAt this point they're basically the 2nd strongest minor in the game after China, but unlike China they don't need to deal with a huge invasion from a major in 1937.
>>1799824You know the game sucks when something as absurd as Poland defeating Germany is only a moderate challenge.
>>1805276I went in with the assumption that the player knows that right click will move a unit, and that moving a unit to a victory point will bring an enemy closer to capitulating. Not much more info is needed other than what to build and most noobs I see are on reddit posting their shitty 27 width infantry with medium tanks in it and asking whats going wrong, faggot
>>1800555Another point a bout UK ai, they will typically have 20+ divisions on the london tile for no reason
Designers unironically made the game worse. The kino way would be to decentralize tank/plane/ship design by emulating the real world. You set up an order for a vehicle that meets certain criteria, your companies then compete for the contract. You have to pick from the least shit option they give you.
>>1807763Defending strategic pubs from invading football hooligans
>>1807554>>1807540What exactly are you supposed to do operationally as Canada, especially insofar as a newbie is concerned?Can you station Canuck troops to help in France when Germany Fall Rot's their shit? Cuck Italy out of north africa?
>>1807829>AI-controlled manufacturers presenting you with AI-designed blueprintsmakes me think of capitalists in Vicky2
>>1807910Basically North Africa, Italy and D-Day, pretty much like was done historically.If you hyper minimax you can have 4 good tank divs ready for Africa but since the ai doesn't handle that front very well even just some basic troops are enough.You don't need to be in a hurry to join the fighting since the ai allies aren't under any real threat so you can take your time and build up until you're ready.
The game is deceptively easy once you figure it all out. There are about 6-7 things you need to understand and then you’re sorted. The challenge really is being able to do them all at once
>>1807829one of the best things in hoi2 were the tech companies and goi$ having them as +5% soft attack etc is shitthey've just utterly gutted nation diversity in hoi4 and now everybody plays in precisely the same way to cater for this awful multiplayer culturei think your idea is good and it would be a great way to imbue personality to countries
>try out soviet union for the first time>already played france, so I max buff germany/italy just to make sure they'll actually be a threat and not just outscaled by '39>max-buff germany successfully sealions and capitulates the UK in 1941, before the US joins the allies>germany takes all of southeast asia in the peace conference, cutting off my only source of rubber>now it's the even of barb and they have 700 factories, 500 infantry divisions and 65 tank divisionsI think I might've bit off more than I can chew here.
>>1808086It'd also make the espionage system actually important. You need intelligence on what sort of vehicles an opponent is building so you can actually counter them. It would be a big deal to know if you have to rush anti-tank guns to defeat whatever monstrosity porche decided to shit out, or if your fighters even have a chance in an air superiority battle.But the competitive multiplayer scene would throw a shitfit over such randomness.
i dont get why unit stats have to be so bloated and complicated, old school wargames have less stats and combat is still superior to hoi4
>>1808679Paradox uses mess math as a way if concealing how a thing works, so that players make choices based on roleplay vibes instead of number crunching. Combat in hoi4 is actually really simple but it's presented to the player in a deliberately misleading and overcomplicated way because solving for simple combat typically just means ruling out 90% of options as suboptimal.
>>1808571The buffs the AI gets from the slider is no joke. Even the shitalians are able to hold against me as India in Ethiopia for a full year and thats without The 30% core defence/attack they are given.
>Even the shitalians are able to hold against me as India>as though this is somehow supposed to be a surprise>still only for a yeari honestly don't know if this is a joke
>>1808715These days even the AI can crush Italy all over Africa in a month. Not so easy when they have as many medium tank divisions as they do inf because of the modifiers
>>1808733Ironically the uk won north africa against max buffed Italy and still had god knows how many Italian divisions encircled there when the capitulated from sealion.
