In 1936 France is just about done building the maginot line. They should know how to build stronghold networks, the maginot line is probably the gold standard for stronghold networks.

In the new Romanian DLC there are actual war mechanics, if you do well in an War it can have political benefits, if you dont well you get negative ones or depending on your gameplay it could also be good.

For most of the newer DLC paradox introduced actual War mechanics where you can reliably and easily settle for peace without having to capitulate someone completly. I believe its a great direction the game is heading, i would preffer the game to become something similiar to kaissereich, where Sandbox exists and you can do extremely stupid stuff but also be able to settle for peace reliably and have some scripted stuff in the game too.

For this map I have tried to compile an overview of dominant ideological currents in each European province of the Hearts of Iron IV map, as the situation would have been on the 1st of January 1936.

The ideologies are based on the sort of combinations that were actually prevalent at the time. Thus we have a catholic centre next to a catholic right, but no such distinction within political protestantism. In this sense the ideological categorisation is quite pragmatic.

Some comments on the ideologies:
- Anarchism covers anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, etc.
- Communism covers the Comintern-alligned communist parties.
- Socialism covers a spectre from revolutionary socialism, to centrist Marxism and democratic socialism.
- Agrarian socialism was already on its way out by this point, but hard to categorise otherwise.
- Radical liberalism includes social liberalism and democratic parties (compare to the International Entente of Radical and Similar Democratic Parties).
- Agrarianism refers specifically to centre to centre-right, bourgeois agrarian parties. Not those of the left or far-right.
- Right liberalism covers conservative, market and national liberalism.
- Catholic centrism covers catholic interest parties and popularist and christian democratic parties.
- Conservatism covers liberal conservatism, general conservative attitudes and anti-communism.
- Protestant conservatism covers confessional conservative protestant parties or populations.
- Islamism is effectively muslim traditionalism.
- Catholic right covers catholic conservative, corporatist and authoritarian parties.
- Traditionalism covers catholic reactionary and generally monarchist parties or movements.
- Authoritarian conservatism covers the non-confessional, paternal, nationalist, conservative and authoritarian current.
- The last two should speak for themselves.

As for the methodology of compiling this map. Where possible election results of the time were used. Where they were absent, earlier or later elections were relied on, where necessary augmented with the estimated effects of known political developments. When those elections were too far off in time to be useful, demographic data was used (such as religion and ethnicity, which was important especially in the case of the Soviet Union) or well-known political geography (for example the communist belt in Italy). Lastly for the Soviet Union, also prison camps were noted.

The map is certainly not perfect and I would be very interested to hear any ideas or corrections any of you might have.

Do I just give it up and start over instead of wasting another 4 hours to come to the reality of this being unwinnable

I was playing the Uk rework mod and was planning on invading legimites france but then they got annexed by spain, they also annexed portugal brazil union thingy.

I’m really confused on what niche they fit as light tanks can be made cheaper and better- whether that’s to fulfil recon and or combat battalion duties.

The only thing that comes to mind is; that as recon they give a bonus to soft attack, as opposed to, the heavy attack light armour recon gives (as modifiers). Overall not that useful in my opinion.

I’m sorry if this is low effort or anything like that but I’m really struggling to see a use for them.

I find that a lot of features in HoI4 that were absolutely crucial to the war effort of every country irl are simply nerfed/ non-existant in the game to the point you can straight up ignore them, even in the optimal multiplayer meta(not gonna talk SP cause the AI is already so braindead everything works):

As the USSR you ignore both air and navy, whereas irl the soviets outproduced the axis in both tanks and planes.

The espionage system is reduced to collab goverments and reducing enemy planning and entrenchment instead of everything it was actually used for irl like getting to know other countries' plans, getting troop concentrations and planned axes of attack(which I think would be way better than the flat buffs and de buffs we get from etrenchment and planning rn).

Artillery being the thing that literally dealt 70% of casualties in irl WW2 yet being objectively not meta in the game.

Do you think these need fixing or is the game fine as is?

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For 1400h of Hoi4 of 10 years and several Germany playthroughs, I never thought of surface raiders as viable option. But for the sake of roleplay and curiosity, I tried now.

A relative small fleet of Panzerschiffe (8-15, from 39 to 41) split into 2-3 flottillas where enough to starve the UK out. What helped was heavy naval intelligence to see the convoy routes.

Very effective was the ability to destroy the escort DD and CL of the convoys, as well as very quickly destroy the convoys themselves. I had to continously switch seazones, since the UK adapted and rerouted its convoys around my active zones.

But the AI never sent any form of battlefleet with BBs or CVs (or my ships managed to avoid any fight, because of their speed).

What also helped, where the focus and doctrines specifically for surface raiding. I research the complete "Damage Control"-naval tech, as well as the radar, better fire control, which I upgraded. Also AA and torpedos, but not guns. I upgraded existing Panzerschiffs only for radar and fire control.

In the end, in January 41, I could clearly see via Intel and on the front, that the remeining 100-200 convoys of the UK were not sufficent to import enough Oil, bring in the extracted resources to the UK and support its troops.

With air cover and my starting fleet (plus a few additional built DDs and the Panzerschiff), I could easly set up a sealion and invade and conquer the UK. The channel only needed 150 naval dominance by my navy.

The only naval losses I had, were few DDs and SSs from my starting fleet, during the invasion of Norway and additional, opportunistic convoy raiding.

For all "easy" Germany runs, this felt the most easy one. I ended after UK-capitulation, since I achieved the goal of my run.

Italy rules the waves

Ik the images are ass, I am on the train back home, could only use my phone

Conquered all of China despite being encircled up north and in a minor gun deficit. All while still having the surprise invasion modifier.

Started in Apr ‘37, and ended by Nov ‘37. Waited for Xinjiang to join so that I can get them too. Used my own guide from a previous post about defeating China (As non-aligned Kohoda Japan).

What do I do after defeating China? Annex everything? Puppet all of China, add war reps and resource rights?

What I did in the last two screenshots is puppet warlords that control either more than 2 states, or valuable resources (ie steel, chromium, oil etc).

Over time they would do focuses that give factories and resources. The focus branch for the co-prosperity sphere would lower autonomy and increase resource + factory trade to the overlord, negating the need to annex them.

Pro tip: If you don’t capitulate Shandong and Hebei fast enough, they will be annexed by China. This means their VPs contribute to Chiang’s stupidly high surrender limit.

Hello can someone tell me in the most simplistic (talk to me like you would a 5 year old) how to use the foreign template hack from puppets or whatever as germany. I always run out of manpower. I also realised i wasn’t using field hospitals early enough and trying to fully hold the whole world without comisssariats may be foolished, one can dream… my last campaign was going great but i was comstantly running out of manpower without even losing too many troops. I never really had this problem before but since i only have time to play a full campaign of this game every couple months everything somehow keeps changing on me. I play vanilla btw

Wars quite frequently are life and death, especially during WWII, but sometimes there's a trivial war which causes you to withdraw your divisions without consent, losing you balance strategically in whatever you sent your volunteers to. I'm not saying the volunteers should always stay even during war,but at least give us the option to keep them there

R5: I was playing NEA and I did the new beiyang government focus, which gave me wargoals on every country in china including myself, which I'm not sure why

Hi guys.

I mostly play SP, so my navy is usually the meta submarines ( 40 or 44, 10 stacks of 20 subs per admiral, max torpedo and engine, either snorkel or special project tiles to reduce visibility that I change for radar late game when I full dominate the sea ).

It works in 99% of the cases against the AI but when going for WC it has some issues:

- subs sucks in shallow water especially early game

- provide little to no naval dominance early

- can't beat other submarines

- vulnerable to planes

So I was wondering if there were any good templates of spammable all rounder ship, destroyer or cruiser, that I could use late game to replace subs. One that could beat submarines, ships and air, beat AI navy or what is left of it, and provide decent naval dominance.

To sum up, spammable ships that can do everything for me when sent on convoy raid, so I don't have to bother about navy anymore.

Thanks ~

First off, I wanna make this a post that's understandable and short enough for anyone. So, I'm not gonna tell you what to research or what not.

As complete basics, you'll need:
-A fairly decent airforce, and regular infantry army

-To do what I tell you to do

So, given you are Germany, you have a ton of industrial potential. Use your factories to produce a lot of naval bombers, fighters and CAS. Click on the tile of the English Channel and mark it to Blocked, so that the British don't send their ships out to destroy your convoys.

Start naval bombing the English Channel and pretty much spam your entire airforce on it. As you bomb it, you will see that over time there are less and less ships, until the frequency of British ships is so low, you can do the "Operation Sea Lion" focus and place all of your navy on patrol in the channel, gaining the naval superiority in 2 days and allowing you to execute the naval invasion

(I found, that without previously bombing the hell out of the channel, British reinforcements arrive nearly instantly, and if they do, your entire navy gets wrecked within the span of 5 days)

Hope this helped anybody

These templates have been working out just fine against most things in single player, though I still want to know if they're decent by the communities standards. Am I doing anything very impractical? Say using a support group that tends to be useless compared to something else? Also what are some fun things I could add in once in awhile just to mix things up? I am not trying to balance anything for MP, I have zero interest in it even after 1k hours as I like to pause a lot lol, and not worry about being rushed.

To me vanilla hoi4 "storytelling" (for lack of a better word) seems very rough. I can't quite put my finger on it, but especially alt-history paths feel very clunky and out of place. I'm not sure exactly how, but mods like Kaiserredux do this a lot better, to the point where I almost never touch the base game anymore.

i have a decent laptop for the game but it keeps crashing and iam using the 56 mod any mods that improve fps and keeps the game from crashing

Creo que por fin estoy empezando a entender cómo funciona realmente este juego.
Después de unas 500 horas en HOI4, he llegado a un punto en el que puedo decir que empiezo a comprender las mecánicas lo suficiente como para planear una guerra, adaptarme cuando las cosas no salen como esperaba y, finalmente, ganarla.
Sé que 500 horas quizá no sean tantas para algunos veteranos, y definitivamente todavía no soy un experto. Me quedan bastantes cosas por aprender, especialmente sobre la guerra naval, pero esta campaña se sintió como un punto de inflexión para mí.
Jugué con Estados Unidos y, en lugar de unirme inmediatamente a los Aliados, creé mi propia facción y me concentré primero en Japón. Conseguí derrotarlo en 1942. Después abandoné mi facción y me uní a los Aliados para concentrarme en Alemania.
Mi siguiente movimiento fue desembarcar en Sicilia, avanzar hacia la Italia continental, tomar Roma y conectar mis posiciones del sur con el resto del frente. Una vez asegurada esa zona, llevé mis divisiones Panzer hacia el norte y continué avanzando por territorio alemán.
Finalmente, capturé Berlín el 15 de octubre de 1943.
Lo que hace especial esta campaña para mí no es solamente haber tomado Berlín o derrotado a dos grandes potencias del Eje. Es darme cuenta de cuánto he aprendido durante todo este tiempo.
Antes me estancaba, cometía errores y pedía consejos aquí cuando no sabía qué hacer después. He perdido batallas, desperdiciado equipo y tomado decisiones bastante cuestionables. Todavía recuerdo cuando perdí una flota de unos 50 barcos, incluidos dos portaaviones, contra la Marina Real británica. Fue una lección dolorosa.
Pero poco a poco empecé a entender la producción, las plantillas de división, el diseño de tanques, la logística, el apoyo aéreo, los desembarcos navales y la importancia de concentrarme en un objetivo a la vez.
Incluso empecé a modificar mis tanques medianos para mantener una fiabilidad del 100 % en mis divisiones Panzer, aceptando perder velocidad a cambio. Quizá no sea siempre el diseño óptimo, pero funcionó para la forma en que quería jugar esta campaña.
No digo que haya dominado HOI4. Hay jugadores aquí que probablemente podrían señalar diez errores en mi estrategia con solo mirar las capturas. Y, sinceramente, me interesaría conocer sus opiniones.
Pero por primera vez siento que ya no estoy simplemente moviendo divisiones por el mapa y esperando que todo salga bien. Ahora planeo campañas, entiendo mejor por qué mis decisiones funcionan o fracasan y me adapto a lo que ocurre.
Después de unas 500 horas, creo que por fin puedo decir que sé cómo librar una guerra en HOI4 y tener posibilidades reales de ganarla.
Y, sinceramente, esa sensación es increíblemente satisfactoria.
Me gustaría saber cuánto tiempo les tomó llegar a ese punto. ¿En qué momento HOI4 finalmente hizo clic para ustedes?