Southeast Asia when?

Just look up any plane guide in the past 2 years. Thats all you need. The rest can be whatever basically. Just have good fighters and bombers and you win the game

How do people find this game fun? You just look up a division template and the AI can't do shit about it. Grats you won WWII, or at least made it 50% easier for you by doing this one step.
Retarded game design, but the power fantasy is the purpose of these games. The more capable the AI is, the less this shit sells because people stop playing if they actually lose a war. The AI isn't even intended to be able to use the systems the player has. It would just eat up development time, too.
Total War is the same, the recent AI developer blogpost confirmed it. There's no incentive to develop a good AI for games like these, quite the opposite.

>>1807119
The plight of paradox becoming a "balanced for multiplayer" development studio. The AI is just there to provide a stage upon which people play against one another and is not intended to be competitive.

>>1807191
are you implying other paracocks games have good AI and hoi4 is only bad cause of mp? LOL

>>1807119
You have to understand that this game is incredibly complicated. HoI4 is easily one of the most complex and nuanced games ever created and since launch it has only become more and more intricate.

To make an AI which would be able to effectively play HoI4 would be like making an AI for NASA. A small studio like Paradox does not have the resources to invest into such an effort.

>>1807280
Nor do they have any financial incentive to do so, because it would only slow down the DLC pump.
It wouldn't be that hard to make the AI use good division templates or to design a game that doesn't make the AI progress through focus trees that make it randomly declare war on countries without any other considerations.

>>1807119
>Total War is the same, the recent AI developer blogpost confirmed it.
I can't find a recent tw blogpost that talks about AI at all.
But you're wrong. AI being better is extremely in demand across the entire genre, ai mods are the most downloaded mods for virtually every strategy game in existence. People want to be able to choose their difficulty, if the ai is too smart they can always just play on an easier setting.

The issue is that these developers literally can't make a better ai and can't afford to onboard talent that could. hoi4s ai doesn't make shit divisions on purpose because the devs want the player to win. They just can't be fucked to keep changing the ais templates when their division balance is always in flux. At this point, old parts of yhe game's architecture may not even be safe to meddle with for fear of breaking something or encountering compatibility issues with new tools and an 8 year old codebase. They're still trickling on fixes for bugged tank/plane templates from BBA.

"Ai can't be good" is a laymen cope

>>1807284
https://medium.com/@julianmckinlay/total-war-rome-ii-and-creative-assembly-my-statement-ten-years-on-d964f65b0a8f
>AI being better is extremely in demand across the entire genre
Players say they want this, but developers have no actual incentives to provide it. The average player wants a power fantasy, and is liable to even stop playing if they lose a war. There are shitty AI mods for Total War, but are these a considerable reason for the success of those games? They would be popular anyway, and so would Paradox games.
Making sure the AI can actually use all the DLC bloat features they keep pumping out would just increase development times considerably, for no financial benefit. It's just not a worthwhile consideration for them.

>>1807280
Only a tiny fraction of the playerbase has ever even played the intended ironman mode before. Why bother spending real effort to placate the minority hardcore players when they can just create a bunch of stupid achievements like Liberian world conquest instead to keep them busy

>>1807119
I used to enjoy the game but rarely do now. The game has only gotten worse over time as more mechanics being added (but no ai tweaks to understand them)

>>1807307
>my evidence is a hitpiece by a disgruntled former employee
k
>games have no financial incentive to provide users what they want
This kind of attitude basically sank CA as a company, and they're treading water now only because they hard pivoted to pandering to their users and giving them exactly what they ask for. This is not the supporting evidence you seem to think it is.

>>1807329
They're not making the AI any better.
I don't know what exactly you're arguing against here. You said they can't afford to make better AI, which is basically what I'm saying.
The average consumer also doesn't actually want a competent AI that they could lose against, even if they think that they do. Otherwise these games wouldn't be popular the way they are, and the developers would be forced to provide good AI.

>>1807370
I'm telling you that your generalizations about what consumers want is completely wrong and based on nothing except a fantasy that you're denied the things you want because a mob of lesser men supercede you.
The article you linked describes a former Ai developer describing the systematic mismanagement within a company with a strict hierarchy in which incompetent and ill-informed auteurs were given near complete freedom to disregard feedback both within and without their company, leading to decades of design in a vacuum that didn't reflect the reality of either what the consumers actually wanted nor what more competent developers were telling them they could and couldn't do or needed to do. The author of this article outright accuses a production lead of misunderstanding the nature of AI so completely that they genuinely believed the code could just 'figure out' how to play the game without any additional development from the AI programmers.

But that aside, failure states exist in all games for a very good reason. A failure state exists to reinforce fun and engaging play patterns and encourage meaningful engagement with game mechanics. An AI in a strategy game exists for this purpose. It exists to be strong enough that the player needs to engage with the mechanics to overcome it--not to be an equal or superior substitute for a human adversary in some simulacra of multiplayer. The AI needs to be smart enough that you need to consider and plan for unpredictable eventualities and explore the game's mechanics. Failure states don't exist to make the player fail and be stuck and give up, they exist to be clear, understandable and avoidable conditions that structure play.

The issue isn't that nobody wants good AI that can do these things, but that out of touch and incompetent production leads don't want to pay for it--or in some cases don't even understand what it is.

>>1807119
Install a mod that gives the AI competitive templates.

>>1807119
>>1807370
I don't know what you guys are talking about. I lose against the AI every single time. That's why I made the thread. I used to be able to figure it out and be just fine. Now I can't figure out what the magic combination of stuff is to win.
I'm afraid I'll just have to watch 90 hours of youtube but I was hoping someone here had a good guide.

HOI4 with good AI sound like a WW1 nightmare
I'd be nice if they used the designers, but them being intelligent would make them never push

>>1807454
"good" ai in the game design sense doesn't just mean the Ai is smart and makes all the correct decisions, but rather that it's designed in such a way that it encourages the player to use all the mechanics available to overcome it, and is always beatable given that those mechanics are used well.

The problem with the AI in HOI4 is not that it should be making the perfect decisions every time and playing like a meta multiplayer tournyfag or something. It's that it makes so many wrong choices, or fails so hard to encourage interacting with mechanics that all you need to do to beat it is use meta templates and battleplan forward. If the game can basically play itself then the opposition is failing to perform the necessary role of encouraging you to engage with the 'strategic' elements of a strategy game.

To put forward an example:
Imagine if the AI made a small number of templates with extremely high hard attack/piercing used specifically to counter tanks, and the AI was programmed to position these divisions to respond to attacks by the player's tank divisions. Now concealing the movement of your tank divisions to achieve surprise would be a way to overcome this and achieve localized success, and your tank offensives would have a functional time limit before the AI's counter could respond and contain it. You may even seek to outmaneuver these divisions, baiting them to engage your tanks and then pinning and encircling them with infantry to neutralize the threat. This would be the AI working not to make the game more difficult, but to encourage you to engage with the strategic decisionmaking the game is designed around and rewarding you for doing so.

>>1807449
Infantry divisions are simple. They just exist to hold the line. Poverty divisions are just doing to be ~20 width with support arty and AA and nothing else. If you can spare the industry you can add line artillery for more killing power, but these really just exist to sit entrenched on the frontline and not die. Your #1 industrial priority is getting enough infantry equipment that you can actually mobilize your population to hold a front. Support companies and extra arty are luxuries that you add if you can spare them or have nothing else to put industry towards
Air is your second priority.
Most of the work is done by air. Fighters want the light frame and as many HMGs as you can fit. If you have a good source of rubber, give them self-sealing fueltanks. Otherwise armour plates. Then a bit of extra fuel for range. This will outclass the AI's plane designs so hard you'll have like a 5-1 kd
CAS is also simple. Light frame with as many bomb locks as you can fit (or heavy bomb locks, once researched) and fuel for range.
CAS does all the work in ground battles, it will be 90% of your damage. CAS is king. Fighters exist to enable CAS and protect you from enemy CAS. Your divisions can literally be worthless dogshit and you'll still win wars just by having enough CAS. The only reason air isn't priority 1 is that you need SOMETHING on the ground to put into combat for your air to do its work, but that something on the ground doesn't need to be good.
The goal should be to research the 1940 light air frame and 1940 engine BEFORE 1940. This will be your main aiframe for 90% of the game so rush it and build a tonne of it. Focuses can provide research bonuses to help you get them.

3rd priority are tanks. Mediums are the most cost-effective. The AI can't really do tanks so you don't need to worry about hard attack or countering enemy vehicles. Stack Soft Attack and Breakthrough while keeping costs low and reliability high.

>>1807494
Overflow post:

Tank divisions should be around 50/50 tanks and mot or mech, around 35 combat width and roughly 8km/h speed (double the movement speed of inf). You want around 35 org give or take so you don't run out too fast while moving but you can fudge around with the ratio a bit to get there. More tanks = more stats but less org, more mech = more org but less stats. 35ish width will ensure you fill plains and hill tiles with 2 divisions, which is the only place tanks should be fighting. Use pairs of them to surgically break through where there's good terrain, and then use their speed to encircle enemy divisions on the frontline and/or quickly capture supply hubs while your shitter infantry flow in to hold the new tiles you take and kill the encirclement. Once again, your CAS will do most of the real work, and you don't need many tank divisions.

Navy can basically be ignored. Naval powers like the UK, US, Japan start with enough that they can win the naval war without any extra ships or player designs, because the AI is super shit at using navy. If you don't start with a navy the only reason to build one is to invade the US, UK or Japan but you can often just bypass needing to fight the naval war entirely because the AI is bad at protecting their home shores. For example, you can paradrop the UK from France, capture a port and just stream units in while the AI's fleet is too busy elsewhere to raid, and then once the UK capitulates you can just claim Canada in the peace conference and invade the US from there without ever fighting their navy.

>>1807449
Literally just make infantry divisions with artillery and even if you're playing as fucking Uruguay it should not be possible to actually lose a war to the AI.

>>1807494
>>1807500
Thanks this is exactly what I was looking for. You're a true hero

>>1807459
>"good" ai in the game design sense doesn't just mean the Ai is smart and makes all the correct decisions, but rather that it's designed in such a way that it encourages the player to use all the mechanics available to overcome it

100%. I wish more people would play battlebrothers, the AI in that game is extremely good but also themathic

I NEED HELP WITH PARANIGGERS!

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>>1807119
>the power fantasy is the purpose of these games
I disagree. WA is much more fun than vanilla, and if power fantasy was what people cared about they'd play with cheats which is just boring.
>>1807500
>because the AI is super shit at using navy
Unironically how would you fix navy?

>>1807273
How do you get that out of what I said?
The whole balanced for multiplayer meme started with stellaris afterall and spread out to their other games.

>>1809060
Navy is fine mechanically. The issue is that the ai is extremely slow to upgrade its ships (still building early destroyers in 1944), very slow to react to the player's presence (letting you slaughter convoys and escorts virtually uncontested), splits is navy into multiple smaller forces that proceed to suicide against a doom stack, send a whole fleer to sit repairing in a level 1 port for 2 years after a battle, and do stupid shit like send their whole navy across the world to raid you while their home island is left undefended.

It's just way too easy to either circumvent the AI's navy and naval invade them, or defeat them piecemeal with a smaller and weaker navy. It just needs to prioritize defense with its main navy, concentrate force, make better choices about repairs, respond better to the relative naval strength the player has in a region and prioritize researching the techs that gate their template ships so they aren't stuck with the same hulls all game.

What's best for an Italy campaign?
BBA dlc or LVN mod?

>>1809381
>splits is navy into multiple smaller forces that proceed to suicide against a doom stack,
navy is not fine mechanically because doom stacks should not be viable unless you're willing to take heavy losses just to win
a correctly sized navy should inflict disproportionate casualties on a doomfleet because of positioning stacking penalties
not to even mention how unbelievably retarded the air game is

>>1809432
Hoi has a problem with casualty calculations in general
There's no reason most battles should be a 10 to 1 k/d ratio for either side. A failed attack should still cause damage. Encirclements are one thing but there's no reason a head to head engagement should be like 12,000 KIA for one side and 30 + an airplane for the other

>>1809432
The UK literally doomstacked in WW1. They called it the "Grand Fleet." Doomstacking navy isn't just a gamey thing it's literally how navies operated. The only reason to split up your capital ships is for power projection to cover multiple theatres at once, for trade interdiction, to protect certain assets from a risky engagement or to group ships capable of a certain speed to maintain an advantage in mobility.

The Pacific War largely involved all of the above by both sides.

Mechanically, the game does more than enough to incentivize dividing forces for Trade Interdiction and power projection. A doomstack can't protect convoys so some ships need to be split off for convoy escort and ASW duties, but convoy escorts are vulnerable to light cruiser raiding groups, which are vulnerable to heavy cruisers and so on. The key problem is that the AI doesn't handle any of this well, so you can just throw out a few raiding ships and wait for a 3rd of the british navy to pounce on a submarine and get engaged by your whole fleet laying in wait. Doomstacking is rewarded because the AI engages piecemeal with insufficient force concentration and doesn't apply enough (or really, any) pressure via trade interdiction.
>>1809682
This is also pretty historically accurate. WW2 is full of suicidal charges and bad attacks where the attacking side barely got a chance to fire a shot. Attacking successfully into prepared positions required the right tools and the right tactics--which I think the game represents pretty well. If your attacking units have tonnes of breakthrough and/or soft attack (or enough planning) you'll be able to cause heavy damage to the defenders even if you don't win the battle. You start the game largely with ineffectual WW1 tactics and can choose to modernize your army by mechanizing, by stacking a tonne of soft attack on artillery, by developing infantry tactics or by doubling down and just throwing bodies at the problem.

>>1809722
>The UK literally doomstacked in WW1. They called it the "Grand Fleet."

And they technically lost Jutland because of it. They had terrible communication and coordination of their fleet maneuvers and lost more ships than the grossly numerically inferior High Seas fleet. No navy in WW2 operated this way, every single one realized all your eggs in one basket is a very bad idea.

>>1809722
I don't know if I agree. Maybe at small level but at division and above it's never the ridiculous state you see of like 48k dead vs 3 million dead which is really common. Whenever you look at the previous battles it's long lists of 0 casualties vs hundreds or thousands of kills. A one sided battle in HOI 3 would have like 500-800 kia vs 3600-4400 kia. In hoi4 a one sided battle is 0 kia to 15,000 kia.

Even if the attackers don't get a shot off on their rifles it doesn't matter too too much since artillery did and continues to account for most casualties, and almost every ai division is at least smart enough to have one kind of artillery.

>>1809722
Naval engagements in ww1 were an absolute shitshow and after Jutland nobody was willing to repeat them. Moreover, ww1 featured minimal air involvement which became a total game changer during ww2 and make battleships utterly obsolete.
Naval engagements in the pacific were absolutely no where near the same size and if you look at Midway, which was really the defining naval battle of the pacific, then you see how useless battleships had become. The only times the Americans massed their fleet were at the end of the war when they had total intelligence and command of the battle. Massing your ships is an incredibly risky move when you can't guarantee total air superiority and effective positioning which is why nobody sailed around the pacific as a doom stack. Leyte gulf had essentially the entire Japanese fleet cornered and it would only really be here and Okinawa, which were both major invasions, that they massed their fleet. For the majority of the war they would always sail around in modestly sized task forces to cover the most ground, minimize risk, and maximize maneuverability.

In GoI$ naval battles are consistently ridiculous giant battles comparable to Jutland which is just utterly ahistorical. The Solomon campaign was a long protracted engagement not defined by giant mega fleets smashing into each other once.
HoI3 naval battles, while far from perfect, were infinitely better. The stacking penalty meant that if you blobbed up you would see your ships more easily outpaced, more vulnerable, and less accurate but a massively superior force would still beat a smaller one and through doctrinal improvements and good leadership you could over-stack while maintaining good positioning. In GoI$ naval battles don't change over the entire course of the war despite the period being one in which naval doctrine was completely flipped on its head which makes it all the more laughable that you point to ww1. The Yamato was literally a joke.

>>1809722
nigger you have to be baiting

>>1809736
"Artillery amounts for most of the casualties" is a myth. This was literally only ever true in the first world war, which is where the phrase is coined from.
I understand the point you're trying to make but once again this comes down to AI. As a player you can make the right choices, use the right tools and repeatedly attack successfully with favourable casualty ratios. These mechanics exist within the game and game balance supports them. The issue is that the AI will not concentrate its armoured spearheads to break through plains tiles but instead smash headfirst into marshes until they run out of tanks, and will constantly bash its defensively-specced infantry into dug-in positions over and over until they drain their manpower and equipment pool. When the AI approaches every battle like Alligator Creek then one-sided engagements are unavoidable.
>>1809733
>technically lost
That's a very strange reading of history. The UK lost a skirmish in which a small element detached from the larger fleet was engaged and suffered heavy damage, followed by the joining of the full battle where the german navy suffered a decisive defeat and was forced on a near-suicidal nighttime escape back to port. The outcome of that battle was uncontested british control of the Jutland Peninsula and the atlantic coast of europe for the remainder of the war.
>terrible communication and coordination
Every navy did. This was before radio. Ships communicated via flags and light signals, which were obviously of little use at night. The inability to effectively communicate or identify targets allowed the german fleet to escape Jutland instead of being utterly destroyed after the larger british fleet outmaneuvered them and cut them off from their home port. But it was essentially sheer dumb luck that allowed them to run the blockade at night. The british fleet being larger didn't make it any more or less capable of coordinating.

>>1809767
>This was literally only ever true in the first world war, which is where the phrase is coined from.
It is quite literally true right now in Ukraine.

>This was before radio

>>1809769
That's more a reflection of russia's utter incompetence with every other aspect of warfare.
And if you sincerely meant this in good faith and not just a jab at [current thing] then consider the US invasion of Iraq and what the major sources of casualties there were. Artillery has its place but its importance tends to become inflated when other aspects of the military fail to perform and that can warp our perspective--much like how observers of the Iran-Iraq war speculated that a regression to Trench Warfare was the future only for the first gulf war to utterly shit on that.

>>1809758
I don't know why you spent half this post sperging about battleships when they weren't even a topic for discussion. Carriers are also capital ships, and were the primary capital ship for all sides in WW2.
The japanese massed their carriers for the strike on pearl harbour and subsequent strikes throughout the pacific. They massed virtually their entire surface fleet for Midway and supporting operations--which is part of what made it such a costly defeat. They massed their surface forces again (or what was left of them) in the battles for the Philippines. The US also massed its surface elements for Midway, but excluded its battleships specifically because their battleplan involved a carrier-based ambush and they didn't want to present those battleships as targets for the japanese--which goes back to
>to protect certain assets from a risky engagement or to group ships capable of a certain speed to maintain an advantage in mobility.
The US also 'doomstacked' in the battle for Leyte Gulf, forming the Fast Carrier Task Force with all of their fleet carriers and modern fast battleships. The formation of this task force is literally what HOI4 bases its navy design around.

The war also involves smaller engagements, because the Japanese were pressed for time and had to split escort elements to protect multiple amphibious landings in quick succession, while the US operated under an Interdiction doctrine to buy themselves time after Pearl Harbour. But the major engagements that decided the outcome war involved significant concentration of force from both sides. There is no such thing as too many ships in a battle, just difficult choices that naval planners have to make with how they distribute limited assets across multiple objectives.

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I wish there were more frontline and battleplan options. 1 idea on the top of my head would be a defense in depth frontline plan which allows you to set a depth to the defense (how many tiles back your divisions will be staggered). The divisions would be fewer up front and denser to the mid and rear lines. Idk, I think that would be cool. Trying to simulate defense in depth by tediously drawing and redrawing fallback lines is annoying. I wish they'd work on the core mechanics of the game instead of doing XD LMAO alt-his focus tree expansions. No step back was, ironically, a great step forward for that. The new supply system is awesome.

>>1810924
The best way to do defense in depth is to just draw fallback lines ahead of time (covering river lines, mountains, forests etc.) and then assign divs to the order as needed. It's a little frustrating but only because fallback lines have a lot of annoying limitations, but at least you can set up your defensive plan all at once ahead of time instead of fiddling with it in the middle of a war.

Why is everyone saying to make 20w infantry divisions for defense? Especially against AI, you should be using 15w infantry (6 inf, 1art, 1 supp art, 1 supp anti air, 1 supp engineer) which should exclusively be used to hold the line. 15w is significantly more efficient because it has universally better terrain advantages than 20w, costs less production to produce, and uses less supply. For an armored attack division, I usually use a 35w division (10 light tank, 6 mot inf, 1 mot art, 1 supp art, 1 supp anti air, 1 mot recon [swap this out for 1 armored car recon after you get the upgraded tech variant]). For naval invasions (and sometimes marsh fighting), I use a 35w marine division (10 marines, 5 art, 1 supp art, 1 supp anti air, 1 armored car recon). I then pour everything into fighters and cas. As for navy, the ai (in my experience) doesn’t invest into naval bombers very much and, as such, doesn’t port strike with them. Thus, the only thing that matters is the power projection of your navy for the strike force and naval invasion mode (I.e. build battleships, the more the better). The point of such a navy in this regard is to not actually engage in combat, but simply power project for naval superiority while sitting at dock. This, or you can just call Italy into the war AFTER you kill France, making Operation Sea Lion a breeze and easy as fuck. I use the aforementioned templates in the Soviet invasion as well. Attack as early as possible (never make deals with the Soviets, fuck Ribbentrop, fuck any non aggression pact, you don’t need it). I usually try to invade them right after I kill Britain. Their army will be so garbage that you’ll smoke them. While still at war with Britain, I also try to conquer the Baltic states before the Soviets can. Lastly, if you have the La Resistance dlc, ALWAYS build up max collaboration in the Soviet Union and France (it’ll make your life so much damn easier).

>>1809060
I don't know what mod that is, but just saying that it's personally more fun for you than vanilla doesn't prove anything about the average player not wanting a borderline power fantasy. Obviously they don't want to cheat their way into it either, most people want to feel like they're achieving it themselves.
Actually, that was just a retarded post.

Does plane surface detection do anything on land missions?

>>1812552
No it's purely for naval missions. Its detection against surface ships.

>>1810943
Several reasons.
15w will have much less org per div. Org matters, especially because you can get memed out of if a tile due to reinforce rng if your divisions don't have enough org to hold for a while
You will have less def per div, meaning easier for enemies to deal damage or even focus and crit you. This means not only losing org faster but also losing more strength and thus equipment (especially artillery and support equipment) and manpower per battle.
You will have less hp per div, which once again means more strength damage taken and more equipment and manpower lost.

You fit more divs into combat width, but in practice that only means a little more soft attack on the defense in exchange for all the downsides I just listed. All you're "saving" on is 3 slots of infantry, which is trivial in manpower and equipment but adds a lot of stats to your divisions, especially as higher tier equipment and doctrine makes infantry better. This gives you the option to attack successfully with these divisions later, as they can end up with 300+ breakthrough with planning.

Terrain penalties don't really matter because you only really want infantry fighting in forests, cities and other rough terrain where 20 is efficient. It's only bad on plains, hills and deserts, which is already where your armour should be.

If your aim is purely defensive infantry, the meta is 10w with 5 infantry groups plus support arty/aa. It gives you the highest org per combat width to stall with, letting CAS deal all of your damage and limits expensive equipment so your strength losses are just infantry equipment and manpower.

Does land equipment speed give hidden bonuses like naval?

I think it would be nice if the AI would give back core provinces if you're in a faction together.. Having to turn back on your own allies because they hold x is so annoying

>>1807119
this game is just fucking stupid by principle
>deploy hundreds of thousands of men supported by tanks and artillery on the border
>they get mowed down like paper
>what do you mean YOU DON'T KNOW THE BATTLEFIELD SIZE AND SOLDIER CAPACITY IS ACKSHUALLY DETERMINED BY AN INTEGER NUMBER WE MADE UP AND DON'T MENTION ANYWHERE IN THE GAME???????
>DON'T YOU KNOW WAR IS BASICALLY ARBITRARY MATH YOU MAKE UP ON THE GO??????
>that'll be $99999999999.99 + tip + utilities + sub + top + middle + cap + fr

>>1814141
Um no it is historical. Germany did not give back Italy South Tirol and The UK did not surrender Belize or Hong Kong.

>>1817122
Maybe not, but my existence as the player is non-historical
I should have decisions to ask for them

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>>1807119
I don't make gamey divisions.
For some reason Paradox never spends time on the AI. Every single DLC is actually a basic framework with them coding the AI to bypass the DLC in question

Why even make tanks? My dudes with zero AT power are fighting medium tanks and winning more often than not. I don't even need support AT groups with my infantry divs, let alone dedicated AT.

>>1818891
People say they are good in multiuplayers, but solo ive never had any reason to make any
If I wanna go fast motorized infantries just do it cheaper

>>1818891
AI tanks rarely have boosted armor or soft attack focused builds and the divisions themselves tend to barely have tanks in them at all if you check the templates. Give the AI production bonuses enough that they can field a bunch of them early on and you'll really feel the pain

>>1818896
What do I do against them? Make my own tanks or give my infantry AT

>>1818904
I'm usually playing shit ass minors so my only recourse is to just give up any time they show up or bait them into mountains where the attrition slowly shreds them

>French Guyana is fucking useless

>>1818891
The AI uses bad "historical" templates and usually manages its industry poorly, so they never have enough of a tank stockpile to sustain their strength and usually end up walking around with no stats.
The benefit of proper tank divisions is that they have a lot of armour and breakthrough. Having more armour than your foe has piercing halves the damage you take and doubles the damage you deal, and breakthrough protects you from damage while attacking. It makes tank divisions extremely good at attacking into favourable terrain, because even if your damage is mostly coming from CAS, the tanks will still be able to stay in an offensive battle longest, and take the fewest losses. Plus on their own tank divisions can stack a ridiculous amount of soft attack.
They're also the best source of hard attack and the only kind of unit that can stack enough piercing to reliably punch through the highest possible armour values--but these only matter in multiplayer since the AI can't field credible tanks.

>>1818969
>proper tank divisions [...] have a lot of armour and breakthrough
But nobody seems to use heavy tanks, let alone superheavies. Guess medium tanks, if properly done, can still have enough armor and breakthrough?
Also, what do I use armored cars or light tanks for?

>>1819324
Medium tanks are the most cost effective. The AI is bad at stacking piercing or hard attack and mostly fields infantry, so you don't need a tonne of armour and can mostly just design cheap tanks with lots of soft attack. Their natural armour will be enough. In multiplayer heavy tanks are more common but also multiplayer often used mods to fiddle with balance so it's a whole different ecosystem.
Light tanks are good early game, since many countries start with mid-tier ones researched. You can start producing them with little to no extra research or army xp and have a few cheap divisions ready very fast for early war strategies. Otherwise, their gimmick is speed, so you can add some extra stats to motorized divisions without slowing them down.

>>1809783
>The war also involves smaller engagements, because the Japanese were pressed for time and had to split escort elements to protect multiple amphibious landings in quick succession, while the US operated under an Interdiction doctrine to buy themselves time after Pearl Harbour. But the major engagements that decided the outcome war involved significant concentration of force from both sides. There is no such thing as too many ships in a battle, just difficult choices that naval planners have to make with how they distribute limited assets across multiple objectives.

Nice larp

>>1819324
Medium tanks are all you need but I like to use heavies on countries that either have lots of industrial capacity or not much. I like making 8 or so heavy tank divisions as the soviets that are just unbeatable because of the high armor, and the Soviets dont tend to need speed and also tend to struggle with getting air superiority. I also prefer to do heavies as the UK because you need fewer of them for a battalion than mediums and you can concentrate a lot of soft attack in 2-3 good heavy tank divisions. Italy is usually only 3-4 tiles wide so they're good there and by the time you do D-Day speed wont matter either.
Light tanks are good in low supply areas like North Africa so I sometimes use them as Italy (combined with a couple battalions of light SPGs to give them punch). Other than that your lights are probably more useful being sold for IC at the start of the game, particularly as France as you start with 2000 of them.
Armored cars provide the best kind of recon with the added bonus of matching the speed of most tanks. They also provide the best kind of suppression but honestly resistance isn't that big of a problem to justify the IC cost. There's a bit of a meme where you can put armored car recon in infantry divisions and it will give them just enough armor to benefit from the 50% reduction in damage. Good for China whether you are attacking or defending, but remember you need 12 per company which is quite expensive and it will fall off once your opponent gets better small arms (1938-39).
Something to keep in mind for armored car research, anti tank armored cars are a BIG piercing and armor value jump over Armored Car 3. Don't forget to grab them, they can be researched in about 50 days after getting the last AC tech.

>>1819324
Heavy tanks are a must for multiplayer because everything else can be pierced only heavy tanks can pierce other very heavy tanks.

Are historical mixed tank divisions a complete waste over homogenous divisions?

>>1806939
For my historical German playthroughs I start heavy fighters in 36 after the initial research and Rudolf Hess as adviser with the other 15% pp guy then Halmar. The heavy fighter will get 4 factories and they will provide range in USSR North Africa. I also get artillery AA light tanks and add them to the Gerbirgs division along with support companies. They each get 2 factories and are upgraded for reliability. 2 gerbirgs at 21 width infantry then the tanks for 25 with recon tank, artilery, med tents, get sent to China to grind along with basic infantry that have medical tents. The elite infantry become heavy tank units later for Barbarossa or medium tanks to push France. Just before invading Poland switch them to medic infantry and get your paratroopers. This gives alot of army exp with Manstein's river crossing buff look to encircle Chinese divisions. 17 divisions at a time is not uncommon. The heavy tank division is 3 heavy tanks 7 mechanized armored recon artillery engineer. The medium tank division for Poland is 3 medium tank 7 trucks armored recon artillery engineer. The truck division is 6 trucks with arty truck recon. Use division copy from the mechanized division to save army exp points. The 6 truck template you can get for free from a late Anchluss. The 6 truck will become a stuka unit with motorized rocket artillery for Barbarossa but is fine for rushing victory points in Poland and France then North Africa. Himmler will give medium tank and mechanized templates for political power since army exp is so needed. I try to get the movement army commander in 36 as well to get his trickle of exp coming in. I balance factories at 4 then push fighters to 25 med tanks to 8-10, heavy to 6 mech to 20 rocket truck to 20 then reduced to 5. Infantry stays at 10 then goes to 30 once Barbarossa begins. Cas and bombers go from 4 to 8 then 12. Heavy tanks can get artillery and antitank like the Gerbirgs. 4 for the art 7 for the Elephant. '42 win.

>>1807119
This is true
The AI is literally braindead in basically every 4x/map-painter but even then you still have people complaining that easy mode is too hard for them.

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>an unit with no hard attack/piercing can still do 50% of its damage against an armored unit regardless of how much armor it has

>want planes and mechanized and tank divs
Easy to say, hard to do when my entire manpower pool could fit in a high school gym.

>>1826622
a unit with 10% softness will only take 10% damage from soft attacks and 90% from hard attacks

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2714213712
Are these templates and designs ok for single player or are they overkill?
I made the terrible mistake of getting BBA and NSB dlcs and now I basically have to relearn the game.

>>1828639
Barely looked at the templates specifically, but skimming through the guide as a whole I can say it's outdated, has weird methodology and sometimes is just wrong.

>>1831045
After wasting a day trying to play a game using these designs and templates I agree with you, it was a waste of time.
Where do I have to look to get up to date meta templates and navy/air/tank designs? Youtubers, parafox forum, reddit rveryone seems to have their own different strategy.

I haven't played in a while. In a historic game with the current patch, does Germany beat the Soviets or no if the player does not intervene on any side?

>>1818891
AI does not design good divisions and runs into strategy issues.
When I played Greece->Byzantium I managed to stop most of the axis divisions with 20 width infantry. Then I used those same divisions, that had no artillery, to push them out of the Balkans.

I would argue that AT is even a bigger meme.
Tanks at least get breakthrough and speed but the AI will usually not have armored divisions that won't get pierced by AA.

>>1825894
Yes.

>>1832382
Germany will always lose WW2 right now. They would have the upper hand against the soviets alone but tend to get bogged down fighting the UK in some obscure corner of the world and attritioning their equipment away, then collapse in both fronts once the D-Days happen. Italy will also always get decisively crushed in Africa and frequently capitulate to the UK before D-Day, which tends to create an early and large front in the alps that saps away germany's force in the eastern front.

You need to give Germany 2-3 handicap levels before they can actually start winning the war sans player intervention, but at max handicap they will reliably sealion the UK before 1942 and trigger the peace conference--which is just a testament to how badly AI UK handles navy

>>1809775
>consider the US invasion of Iraq
White men against Zulus with isnt exactly the best example of warfare. Especially not when those Zulus had their 1960s-tier Air Defense thoroughly compromised.

>when other aspects of the military fail to perform
Or perform too well. When recce performs too well (such as WW1 planes or drones today), maneuver sucks and you have to bruteforce your way through with fire.

Artillery is just the most effective delivery of fire on tactical level.

>trying to play a competent italy game
>almost figured out how navy works
>wait for germany to cap belgium
>join the war
>paris ALWAYS falls a month after
>barely manage to take savoy, corsica and half tunisia
>reload earlier save, join war when germany invades belgium
>nothing changes because france moves troops away from the border with germany to the alps
I hate the french AI so much. How the fuck am I supposed to take provence and tunisia before the germs reach paris, without paratroopers?

What do you think next dlc will be ? Maybe china rework with southeast asia countries ? There is not much to do in Europe except maybe germany rework.

Newest update to the launcher finally fucked creamapi, how idea where to put the files now

>>1807459
the problem is that things that favors retarded minmax like tank and plane designers shouldn't even exist to begin with. doesn't matter that the AI decided to make anti tank to counter if you can literally melt them with a meta design. also they need to make it so the AI can't cheat on noticeable things, like still having high org after being surrounded for a year or fucking magic naval invasions through 15 sea tiles with 0% control and 2 enemy straits.

>>1831166
to what purpose? literally the only somewhat fun part of the game is to figure out what works by yourself.

>>1832796
i might be wrong but i think it doesn't even matter what you take. the entire sequence is scripted by events and decisions.

>>1806939
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0N6ih8JCxg
explain yourselves

>>1834782
Good. Pirate scum like you are a cancer on the video game industry. Kill yourself, criminal.

>>1834782
try putting it in the game folder as well as the launcher folder

>>1837562
Please have sex, your mother is worried about you

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>>1837562
dlcs should be free and be part of the base game

>>1835048
It does matter. If you don't control them when France capitulates they go to Vichy France instead of you.

I thought naval bombers were the meta for defeating enemy navies, then why do they get shot down en masse?
>early 1940
>meta 1936 naval bombers (torpedo I + engine II + extra fuel tank + floats)
>300 on naval bomb task and 300 on naval patrol pask in the sea tile between Sicily and Libya
>they barely damage the english fleet while getting shot down up to a dozen each battle
How does this work? Don't tell me I need thousands of them on the same tile, please.
>

>>1838923
They need green air to function. If your enemy has air up, put your own fighters up and they'll escort the torpedo bombers so fewer get disrupted or shot down.

>>1838930
Odd, I had around 200 fighters active on that tile. I'm fairly sure I had green air, but it's totally possible the AI briefly stacked some fighters as well while I wasn't looking.
Do I just need green air or do I also to put in the tile more fighters than bombers?

>>1838946
You need green air + essentially as many fighters as you have bombers or as they have fighters (whichever is higher). The game has an obscure and esoteric escort system where planes on Air Superiority will automatically protect bombers in the air zone. Unprotected bombers will be intercepted and either disrupted (forced to rtb without completing mission) or killed depending on their relative air defense to the interceptor's air attack (so '36 models with fuel tanks are very likely to die if intercepted).
As long as all your bombers are escorted and you have green air, you should lose relatively few bombers to interception. Also remember that your fighters need enough range to maintain high mission efficiency in the air zone.

Ship anti-air is rng but won't cause dozens of casualties per encounter outside of pvp memers creating pure AA cruisers with top-tier tech. The AI basically never updates its ship designs (and rarely builds new ones) and the starter designs they use forever have piddly AA.

>>1807119
Trvthnvke

>>1838963
2200 hours in and I had no idea this was a thing, lmao. I put a few hundred more fighters on air superiority task alongside the bombers and it worked wonders.
Thanks anon, great explanation.

>>1807119
>increasing difficulty only adds certain resources to the AI and increases the rate it gets them instead of making the AI more capable of using what it has
>it also reduces the amount of resources you have and the rate you get them
I hate when that happens.

>>1807119
Learning all the shit mechanics and designers paradox stuffed in the game over the years is already bad, if there even was a competent AI the game overall would be a torture.
Maybe play as some minor or weak major. I'm doing an Italy game right now, it's been years since I last played vanilla and I basically had to relearn the game.

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Peacefully annexing countries should give you their generals.

>the entire Royal Navy is operating in the Mediterranean leaving the channel unguarded
>France stacking troops in the Alps leaving the northern front unguarded, causing me to struggle with even taking Nice while the germans reach Paris in two weeks after capping Belgium
Is the AI coded like this to fuck specifically with the player or is it Paradox's way to make WW2 follows historical events?

>>1839972
It's coded to fuck over Italy and Northern France

My favorite thing about France is how only the Orléanists have any stability
The French earn for a new sun king

I wish you could toggle off tank/plane/ship designers without disabling the dlc. Their presence adds nothing to the game other than more busywork

>>1840304
I just think we should begin the game with 5 army, naval, air exp

Am I the only one that thinks that it takes an outrageously long time to complete the new italian focus tree? I swear at least half of all the trees are composed of 70 days focuses.

>Argentine Navy
ARA ARA, what do we have here?

>>1842054
I knew I wasn't the only retard naming one of my battlecruisers as ARA Ara

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>France: wargoals for the French focus ""Secure the Crown"" target all Spains.
It only took 10 years

>>1846444
Never mind, carlist spain still need to exist
USELESS TREE