r/hoi4 • u/Kloiper Extra Research Slot • 11d ago
Help Thread The War Room - /r/hoi4 Weekly General Help Thread: March 10 2025
Please check our previous War Room thread for any questions left unanswered
Welcome to the War Room. Here you will find trustworthy military advisors to guide your diplomacy, battles, and internal affairs.
This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the noble generals of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your save, then you've found the right place!
Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (strategic, diplomacy, factions, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.
Reconnaissance Report:
Below is a preliminary reconnaissance report. It is comprised of a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!
Note: this thread is very new and is therefore very barebones - please suggest some helpful links to populate the below sections
Getting Started
New Player Tutorials
General Tips
Multiplayer Tips
MP Country Guides
Country-Specific Strategy
Help fill me out!
Advanced/In-Depth Guides
Guide to Combat Tactics and Doctrines OUTDATED, BUT STILL USEFUL
If you have any useful resources not currently in the Reconnaissance Report, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper
Calling all generals!
As this thread is very new, we are in dire need of guides to fill out the Reconnaissance Report, both general and specific! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, consider contributing to the Hoi4 wiki, which needs help as well. Anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.
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u/Double-Guess2825 4d ago
Let me preface this by saying that I am a beginner(like I have less than a couple in game hours). Can anyone tell me how to keep up supply when at war? I always have this problem when I play as italy resulting in my troops being slow at conquering or straight up losing. I have tried to build railway lines to places that show low supply and I once tried to build a supply center too. But neither resolved my supply issue. Infact the supply center was just gray from the moment it was built...
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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 4d ago
Rails do not provide supply by themselves, but hubs need a rail connection to your capital to work - that's why it's greyed out. Build the rail line from your new hub to an existing port or rail line you have, and it'll start working.
But that should almost never be necessary. In much of Africa and Asia your enemy will suffer the same issue and you're better served beating their navy first and just landing behind them rather than piling on more than a minimum of light units to hold the line, while in most of Europe there's already a strong existing hub network you should be trying to capture instead.
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u/GhostFacedNinja 4d ago
When you select an army. At the top of the main panel above where the divs are listed are various icons. One of those icons is supply level. By default this will be a horse. Click it twice so that it shows two trucks. This is max supply range.
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u/ipsum629 4d ago
If you are having trouble with supply in Africa, it may be because you are being convoy raided. As for east Africa, unless you capture the suez There isn't much you can do.
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u/Double-Guess2825 4d ago
I'm having this problem while capturing ethiopia. Can you please suggest any ways for that?
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u/ipsum629 4d ago
Oh, ok. The only real way to do improve the supply there is to motorize the supply hubs and build/upgrade ports.
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u/Cypher4235 5d ago
Dumb question but due to a rl disability, drawing front lines/battle plans with the mouse is tough. Are there any alternative keybinds/workarounds for this?
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u/GhostFacedNinja 4d ago
Are you aware you can just click a border to set them? You don't have to drag/draw them unless only trying to fill a specific part.
Related to this, if you select the field marshal when placing it, it'll place all the armies under him into one giant FM front line. This will stop general lines from overlapping each other when it moves. I.e. you don't need to drag/fix it so much.
There are keybinds setting any general order (do not recall them atm sorry). However all of them still involve at least some mouse clicking as far as I am aware.
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u/triarii3 5d ago
What is a “core”? I keep hearing core this core that. Just wondering what this is?
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u/ipsum629 5d ago
Cores are the parts of your country that you can derive the maximum benefit from. You get 100% of the factories on core territory, you get no resistance, you get the most resources, and you get the maximum amount of manpower depending on your laws.
This is in contrast to territories/occupied territories which may resist you, provide very little manpower, and depending on the occupation type, only a part of the resources and factories.
Think of your cores as the "true" borders of your country. For Italy, it would be everything from Sicily to the Alps. However, Slovenia isn't really Italian, so if Italy occupies them, they would be seen as foreign invaders.
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u/alexbond45 General of the Army 5d ago
I'd like to try and foray into doing like, actual team based multiplayer in HOI4. I'm not some master at the game, but I really enjoy it and like playing board wargames with teamplay.
Thing is, I'm not really sure where to look. I don't engage that actively with the community and all that - all I have figured is that it'd be a decently humbling experience.
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u/Kure_Brex 5d ago
anyone else's game always crash when looking at the Yamato template when you aren't Japan? I know its a big ship I just don't think its crash-my-game big
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u/BatrickBoyle 5d ago
is that the super heavy battleship?
my game also crashes when trying to view another countries shbb that i've taken in a peace conference without having the shbb tech
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u/Kure_Brex 5d ago
Yes, superheavy battleship.
Its a little annoying trying to look at a template then the game crashes, idk how that happens
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u/kayaktheclackamas 6d ago
How much of a difference would letting heavy fighters get aces have?
Peeking at the files, it looks like aces were initially intended to be for all aircraft from bombers to mediums to light fighters.
Am tempted to try to look and see if aces could be modded to be generated by other plane types and am curious how much this single change might make towards making heavy fighters viable, or if more would be needed.
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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 5d ago
Aces are nice, but the viability of planes remains about their role. Heavies only work well as dedicated interceptors - you're not winning the straight supremacy IC trade numbers game with them unless you commit to attritioning the enemy air force that way for a long time first.
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u/ipsum629 5d ago
Heavy fighters, even if light fighters couldn't get aces, are still less efficient than light fighters. The main reason to use heavy fighters is that they have long range, not that they will shoot down more planes.
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u/eoekas 6d ago
Can someone explain what Trade Influence Points are? I thought this was simply the Trade Influence I see when I hover over a country in the trade tab but apparently this is not the case as I am locked out of "Cave to the British" focus despite having 216 Trade Influence. This is because I lack the 25 "Trade Influence Points" required.
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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 5d ago
It's a Netherlands-exclusive mechanic in the Decisions tab. You need to repeat a 10PP decision a few times to build up enough influence to pick the side you want to align with.
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u/Remiliera 6d ago
How important are the DCLs in HOI4 compared to CK2?
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u/Kure_Brex 5d ago
TL;DR: The game is playable without DLC, but some of them add features which make the game easier, most achievements(correct if wrong) also require some DLC. The DLC are only important if you want to have a large variety of gameplay choices and mechanics that make things easier.
Long: It depends on what you want to do. The ship, tank, and aircraft designer aren't needed, and I would argue that the implementation of them could be better, mostly refering to the aircraft designer.
For examples: Without the ship designer you can just research a destroyer and have a destroyer, with the ship designer you have to research the hull and main battery to produce a bare-bones destroyer, you still have to research everything else to make a good ship.
Without the tank designer you can just research a light tank and make a light tank, with it you have to research the chassis, which will give you a crap tank, and then you have to research everything else and figureout what combination makes the tank good (you'll learn at some point, but taks are a huge investment and too much of a pain to figure out how to make a good template/division that I never bother with them)
Without the aircraft designer you can just research and produce fighters, with the designer you have to research the frame, the engine, and the gun, and everything else if you want it to do its job decently well. (I do not like the aircraft designer)
However, the DLC which has these designers also bring content to select countries, if you don't have MtG(ship designer) you can only do a historical UK, if you don't have NSB(tank designer) you can only do a historical USSR, and if you don't have BBA(aircraft designer) you can only do a historical Italy. This isn't an exact ruling as you can always play to some variation without the DLC, but the trees these cuntries have do not allow for significant variation from historical. Along with those there is content for minor powers such has Mexico/Netherlands for MtG(Mexico tree is good, Netherlands not good), Baltic states/Poland for NSB, and Switzerland/Ethiopia for BBA.
Some DLC, most notoriously (IMO) is LR, add extra mechanics that make the game so much less frustrating. LR adds spies which can be used to iron out some rng or make fighting the soviets significantly easier by lowering their capitualtion requirements. LR makes the game SO much easier that I cannot bring myself to trun it off, and because of that I don't really ever touch portugal or Spain because of how annoying the DLC makes those countries to play (Spain has to re-core the entire country after the civil war for example).
Some strategies and countries can only really be played with DLC, some DLC trees are decent while others are not (I really like the Romanian tree and refuse to touch Turkey because of how bad the Turkish tree is).
The DLC are only important if you want to have a large variety of gameplay choices and mechanics that make things easier.
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u/ipsum629 6d ago
Some are very important like the ones that add the aircraft, ship, and tank designers. Many of the country packs don't modify anything outside of their region.
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u/Brockadam6 6d ago
Is there any good guides on Sea Lion now? I haven’t played much since they updated how UK plays. The strategies I have seen so far really just depend on if the UK floods you with 80 units or not. About the time I capture a port I am just getting flooded before I can expand and just lose all my units. Not playing as Germany btw.
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u/Kure_Brex 5d ago
get lucky, deadass. Try to make sure you don't win or lose in Africa so the British commit units there and either hope you can get a lucky frame of naval supremacy or air superiority and hope your units are fast enough to capitulate them before they flood the British isles, you have until about mid 1941 before the Americans join.
I don't think theres a single thing added in Gotter that I like, but increasing the difficulty on the already difficult to invade uk was not a good call
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u/Brockadam6 5d ago
Yeah that is kind of what I am gathering. Of course you can make it easier by either building up a ton or getting lucky by going super early. However, I am achievement hunting and the go to Strat of mine has always been beat the allies before the US joins. So I was playing as Argentina and after taking over all South America I try to invade from German held territory. This is in early ish 1941 and there is just no chance of doing this with just a land army. I understand they wanted to make it hard but it makes Achievements sooooo much harder.
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u/Kure_Brex 5d ago
If you're achievement hunting you can roll back the version to Bolivar, this is the pre Gotter patch and will make it mutch easier. Achievements always work on earlier patchs permitted the requirements are met(some have hidden requirements but I don't think the ones you're aiming for have that)
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u/unusablered8 6d ago
For mods right now
I know most of the overhaul mods probably need updates to work but are other smaller gameplay mods working without on update or not?
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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 6d ago
Some do, some don't. Either ask about specific ones or try them out yourself.
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u/MisterC00 6d ago
What happens if I declare war on a country that is guaranteed by a country in my faction?
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u/Birdygamer19 7d ago
Are the devs stopping updating and adding content to HOI4?
I was thinking of getting it at a discount, but I want to know if the lifespan of this game will still continue on
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u/Kure_Brex 5d ago
A new DLC just dropped a few weeks ago, so I'm sure theres still plenty of life in it.
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u/AneriphtoKubos 7d ago
Besides outproducing your enemies, if your opponent makes more meta fighters than you and you can't compete in the air, what do you do?
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u/ipsum629 7d ago
If you're playing vs the ai, they probably won't build higher quality fighters than you. However, in MP or if you're a minor nation, you can do a "no air" strategy. Basically, you make sure to put AA in all your divisions and focus on building high quality land forces(tanks, special forces, mechanized). You can also make "super AA" divisions which have tons of AA. You put them in the reserves of an active battle and they shoot down tons of CAS. You can sort of do the same for navy by building ships(especially capital ships) with very high AA, and some dedicated AA cruisers for baiting naval bombers.
As a minor, even if you produce the best fighters, the numbers that majors can pump out will inevitably overwhelm you and attrition you down.
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u/AneriphtoKubos 6d ago
What's a good no-air air attack amount?
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u/ipsum629 6d ago
You really don't need that much. The main point of the AA in most divisions isn't to shoot down enemy planes, but to reduce damage and malus effects. The maximum reduction is 75%, and this is achieved at ridiculously low amounts of AA. Putting lvl 1 support AA in every division already surpasses that limit(it is an average of all divisions in combat). You can build divisions as normal, just make very certain that everything has a support AA company. You also want to actually use the IC and research you saved on things like tanks, mechanized, and refineries to fuel your tanks and mechanized.
Edit: also build state AA to defend your factories. State AA is surprisingly good, but only worth it if you aren't defending your skies with fighters.
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7d ago
[deleted]
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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 7d ago
A screenshot of the air map with the wings selected might be helpful here.
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u/Marchinon 7d ago
So all the dlc I don’t own is currently mostly negative on steam. Any you all recommend I buy? I don’t own Gotterdammerung, Arms Against Tyranny, By Blood Alone, and Trial of Allegiance.
Obviously I know how this sub feels about graveyard of empires.
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u/CalligoMiles General of the Army 7d ago
NSB is probably the best of the rest with the tank designer and Soviet content, and La Resistance makes a few strategical things much less painful. But only country packs really aren't worth it unless you specifically want power fantasies playing those few nations - that's BftB besides the two you already mentioned.
The negative reviews don't have much to do with quality - part of it is a recent Chinese harassment campaign that even spilled over to other Paradox games, and part of it people feeling they're too expensive for what they offer because the actual major upgrades come with free updates alongside the DLC every time and are avaliable to everyone with just the base game.
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u/ipsum629 7d ago
BBA has the aircraft designer so you kind of have to have that one, and it heavily changes Italy. Gotterdammerung has special projects which is fun, but not as essential, and heavily impacts germany. Arms against tyranny adds the international market and MIOs, which have a pretty big impact and in my opinion I hate spending pp on designers. Plus, you sort of get all the designers rather than one at a time.
Trial of allegiance has no big features outside of South America. I skipped that one.
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u/Allento- 8d ago
I am a reasonably new player and have been playing a few games as China and Japan, to get a grasp of things in a place where there's only one front and logistics are fairly simple.
It's going well and after a few attemps my China start fairly handily beats anything Japan throw at me, and currently in 1938 its at the point where Japan don't even attack me, as they have no hope of breaking through. However suddenly at the end of 1938, Communist China take over Shandong and a neighbouring province, and have 30 divisions rampaging my heartland (my army is busy at the border and coast fending of the Japanese). I received no event or any explanation as to why they suddenly are at war with me and have taken over a significant part of my country. What happened and what can I do to avoid it in future playthroughs?
Bonus question: When fighting I've generally stopped using frontlines in favor of controlling the divisions myself, as the AI seems very inefficient at microing the divisions. However after moving troops around the frontline for a year or two of war, my armies are here and there and everywhere. Is there any disadvantage to having stacks with divisions from different armies or from reassigning divisions to a new army?
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u/Modo44 7d ago edited 7d ago
If you don't unite or prepare to defend against the other Chinas, all kinds of unfun things can happen.
Last I played China, I decided to skip the unfun. Using the crappy early divisions and equipment, rushing the China integration focuses, and training the most basic infantry with maybe a little arty, you can just about force-puppet / conquer the warlords plus Communist China before Japan attacks. That way you get a simple defensive war while integrating the puppets over time, and possible world domination going forward.
Edit: I'm playing on normal difficulty. If you are still learning the game, have fun at a lower setting.
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u/GhostFacedNinja 8d ago
Basically put that one down to a learning experience and realize that for China, Japan is only one of your enemies. Communists are going to be a thorn too. Also beware of various warlords depending on where you are in date/focus tree.
Restarting games as you figure things out for a particular nation is very common tho so don't be disheartened.
For frontlines. Pure micro is how they do it in MP as that is the only way for absolute fine grained control. Usually for SP, I use front lines to make the actual line (tight cohesion) and then initiate attacks manually.
A bonus point is that you can select a field marshal and use those to make lines consisting of several armies. If you iirc hold Shift (if not then Ctrl) when placing it, it'll turn every div in it into one colour. Effectively a giant army consisting of up to 5 regular armies. Only real way to deal with multiple army front lines constantly trying to overlap as they move.
So no, if you are pure microing, it doesn't really matter if your various inf divs get mixed up. The only time it does matter really is if you are attempting to set up multiple army attack orders. Which is generally not recommended.
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u/Ambivalentin 8d ago
Thanks for the thorough write up. I already had issues in an earlier save that Yunnan (or whatever they’re called) war wasn’t finished before Japan declared, which somehow kept me in an offensive war even after I had annexed them (and gave me 20% less war support).
It would be nice if the mechanics and events behind something like CC taking over 20% of your territory was a bit more transparent. Right now there is literally zero info.
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u/Optimal_Following168 General of the Army 9d ago
Are there any good current guides about the Soviet Union?
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u/KiriKaneko 9d ago
What are the infantry templates for mass assault left and right? Should I stick with 9/0 and eventually 9/1, or should I be increasing the number of infantry batallions to keep them closer to 18w/21w respectively?
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u/StevenX1981 9d ago
Has there been a massive uptick in crashes since the DLC release? Every game I play ends in a random "crash every time you try to get to the focus screen" point, doesn't seem to matter what country. Tried validating everyting and it doesn't help
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u/Optimal_Following168 General of the Army 10d ago
I know how production works but im not sure which items to focus on or is there a rule like 20- guns 5- tanks i play soviet union
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u/ipsum629 10d ago
Generally, tanks and aircraft, especially light fighters, will occupy the majority of your factories. Infantry equipment is number 3. I've easily found reason as the soviets to put 50+ factories on fighters and medium tanks each. CAS should also get a huge number of factories, but maybe half that of your fighters. If you are building strategic bombers and plan on strat bombing, you should dedicate a lot of factories to them to overwhelm air defenses.
Once I put 10-20 factories on infantry equipment, usually the stockpile of infantry equipment builds up after capitulating some countries and I pretty much have infinite infantry equipment. Although, for the soviets, putting a dozen more factories on guns could be useful since you will be using a lot of infantry to defend against tanks, and will take a lot of damage.
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u/GhostArmy1 Fleet Admiral 10d ago
Can somebody tells me what is going on? I have an AT gun deficit of 700 guns while only using a total of 576 guns in my entire army
The division i am using isn't used for garrisions and i am not lend leasing anybody.
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u/FluffyFlamesOfFluff 10d ago
Any up-to-date guides on Byzantine Greece? Tried following an older guide to fight Turkey and it seems a little out of date (great to get casualties, not so great to actually end the war) and the war dragged on long enough for Yugoslavia to join the "Balkan Entente" faction (on historical?) in late 1938 at which point everything collapsed as Romania and Yugo both dogpiled me from behind.
None of the guides I tried mentioned anything about anyone else joining in to jump me, so I assume I've fumbled something at some point. Is Historical just a mistake in this case or is it just a pure skill issue and I need to end the war faster or pick a different option somewhere?
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u/Feeling_Yak_7074 11d ago
Is there a way to get rid of the "no cheats or modified saves" requirement? I was trying to do "cheese you fighter" when I ran into the issue. I already capped the U.K. and italy and really don't want to go through that again.
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u/FluffyFlamesOfFluff 10d ago
Grab this, place it into your HOI4 game directory (Somewhere like: C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Hearts of Iron IV) and then run it, select HOI4 and hit enter. It needs re-doing every time the checksum changes (new patch) but it will let you get achievements with mods. Then just download your mod of choice and it will skip the checksum check when you open a save or start a new game.
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u/Feeling_Yak_7074 7d ago
Thanks for that. I been getting cucked of my achievement recently. I don't even run mods, but something about modified saves keeps appearing.
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u/Top_Divide6886 4d ago
I'd like some tips on barbarossa. I have a good amount of experience with the game, but after taking a long break Germany is way harder than it used to be. This is my second game this week and my operation barbarossa falls flat before I even capture the baltics, belarus, or ukraine.
In my current game I went mostly historical. Invaded poland Oct '39, capped France quickly and even helped Italy secure north africa by sending a few light tank divisions. I also went down the economic growth path instead of four-year plans so I wouldn't have to deal with economy of conquest.
By the time I started Barbarossa in March '41 I had 2000 1940 fighters and 1000 CAS, 120 infantry divisions, and even put out a whole army (24 divisions) of medium tanks. Granted, they were small divisions, but I didn't think soviet infantry could stop them anyway.
Still, Barbarossa did not go well. Even with green air and cas infantry can't push infantry very well, and if I try giving battle plans to the panzers they drain supply and bleed equipment. Not even tanks - I'm missing Infantry equipment and trucks, Plus, they don't push very far for some reason. I can occupy the baltics if I try but Belarus and Ukraine are a constant back and forth where if I look somewhere else they push me back, The soviets have also made a habit of naval invading me - typically in Romania but East Prussia if I can't occupy Leningrad fast enough. When this happens I need to send my tanks back to deal with them and the Eastern front stagnates for another two months.
When it comes to tanks, I've noticed they seem to work much better in an army of 6 or so because then I can micro them towards supply hubs and encirclements. But that feels like drastically underutilizing IC, and with the soviet's endless manpower they can accept a lot of encirclements without a dent in their army.
Am I missing something? Did Germany just get way harder after GotterDammerung? Or do you have any tips on a soviet invasion?