Hearts of Iron II Doomsday

[ShadesWolf]

Looks like heart of iron just keeps getting better.


As the German war machine falls, two great nations rise to claim power. In the West, there is the United States, leader of the allied nations, and in the East lies the Soviet Union under communist rule. As both nations attempt to claim superiority, a new war is waiting around the corner; this time, the conflict will decide who will be the remaining superpower.

Play as the ruler of one of 175 countries through World Wars II and III. As the Allies and the Soviet Union clash in Europe, the fate of the world hangs in the balance.


Release: April 2006


Features


World War III scenario with an alternative historical outcome. Play the Soviet alliance, the United States or any country of your choice as new superpowers rise to power on the global stage.


Expanded tech trees with considerable detail in a new decade of warfare, allowing you to develop tactical nukes and other kinds of nuclear warfare as well as helicopter squads, Escort carriers and much more.


Improved Diplomatic/Intelligence System reflects the increased political tension of the 1950s.


Complete scenario editor.

[IrishMike]

I can't wait for it to come out. It'll be very satisfying to see the world covered in a sea of red.

[Crazed Rabbit]

Are you going to be able to play WWII, starting around 1936?

Crazed Rabbit

[Ianofsmeg16]

this looks so freakin good, is it an expansion pack or a new game?
and i have the same question as Crazed Rabbit, Are you still going to be able to play WWII, starting around 1936?

[discovery1]

Are you going to be able to play WWII, starting around 1936?

Crazed Rabbit

Yes, that's what Johan or whatever the devs name is told me.

GREY STORM RISING!

[ShadesWolf]

I dont know, but it does say


Play as the ruler of one of 175 countries through World Wars II and III

[Samurai Waki]

Well, like most of the expansion packs that Paradox has released, it will likely include the 1936-195(?) Scenario. Because in EU2, and the Oriental Conflict expansion pack both worked together. Paradox is quickly becoming one of my favorite Game Makers, not only are their games very good, but they are always working on patches and ways to make the game better.

[lancelot]

yep, their after sales service is much better than most. Other companies could do with taking a leaf out of their book.

[ShadesWolf]

Oriental Conflict expansion pack

where could one get this expansion pack from ?

[ShadesPanther]

yep, their after sales service is much better than most. Other companies could do with taking a leaf out of their book.

and their games are almost completely moddable, once you work out what certain things do.

[Samurai Waki]

where could one get this expansion pack from ?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Europa_Universalis#Europa_Universalis_II:_Asian_Chapters

Sorry I couldn't find any where were it could be bought...But it is called Europa Universalis II The Asian Chapters. I haven't played EU II in years, but I bought the game + Expansion at Best Buy, apparently it wasn't a very good seller or something.

[Lehesu]

The Expansion is extremely annoying because all the text becomes super-small. I went back to the original because the tool-tip texts were unreadable.

[ShadesWolf]

Interesting, no mention of it on the website.

What country u both from, I wonder if it had a limited release

[Samurai Waki]

I'm in the US. I also think it was mentioned that it was used to appeal people in Asia, my guess is it was probably released for Japan, China, and South West Asia and maybe India.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Must...save....more...money...should...not...have...spent...it...on...games...must...save...more...m oney...


:embarassed:

[ShadesPanther]

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/heartsofironiidoomsday/news.html?sid=6141306&mode=previews


looks good :2thumbsup:

[Butcher]

The addon will come with the original game, and all the new 'features' will be available from the off (i.e 1936 GC) and in all other scenarios.

[GoreBag]

Bump. Comes out next month. Excited I am.

Tachikaze, I know you have the game. Spill some beans!

[discovery1]

Woah, you mean the writer of Last Stand of he Eagle (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=237849&page=1&pp=25) is the same as our Tachikaze? News to me. Don't count on him talking though, there is the non-disclosure agreement, and he's in Frace for a week.

[discovery1]

DEMO!!!!! and I have midterms to study for (http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?t=239402&page=1&pp=25) :wall: :wall: :wall:

[lancelot]

If the buzz on the paradox site is anything to go by, this expansion is as buggy as hell....

but Im getting it anyway... :2thumbsup:

[Zalmoxis]

Maybe I'll get HoI, when it is really cheap.

[ShadesWolf]

Game came out today.

I tried to get it at my local GAME shop but they havent ordered any in. (Typical bunch of ####)

So i am downloading it from Paradox themselves.
I will let you know what I think after Ive had time to play a little. Looks like I might be busy over the next few days before I go away on my holidays.

[ShadesWolf]

Well ive had a little play - all last night about 6 hours work and Im still only in March 1937.

New things that have jumped out at me already

1/ New type of aircraft carrier called a 'light one'
2/ Unit leaders, ie generals etc now have a history of what has happened to them during conflicts (nice touch)
3/ Intelligence (still coming to terms with this one)
4/ Upgrade/ reinforce units - this was badly needed, you can now decide if you want a unit to be upgraded or reinforced. You can even set this as priority. (This was a much needed improvement - I always had problems with the way it always selected to upgrade all units. I would have prefered to have allowed some to just die out.)
5/ Tech tree for longer time period. I havent got that far yet so cant comment (I did notice that a new line has been added called hospital. I wonder how that will work)

At the moment this is all that jumps to mind.
Talk more later.

[JimBob]

I played the demo and noticed the escorts are now a brigade unit, is that change good, bad, or just different?

And I have heard rumblings about the new system for commanders gaining experience, have you noticed, do you care?

[discovery1]

I like the idea of escorts as brigades. Saves slots of another bomber. Also, the 1.1 DD patch ruined the xp system. Now only the leader of a battle gains xp, and bomber commanders never do, unless they run into fighters. 1.0 DD doesn't have this problem.

[ShadesWolf]

I like the idea of escorts as brigades. Saves slots of another bomber.

I havent developed the technology yet for escort fighter, so I will let u know tomorrow what I think. I will prob only get about 3 hours in tonight so hopefully that will take me up to 1938 ish.......

[discovery1]

I have played upto Nov 1 1939. Poland has been more costly then I remeber it being, and the French have advanced into the Saar. Also Nat Spain is on my side, and failed to take Gibralter with its lone garrison div:wall: now the south of spain is UK occupied while spanish armies arrive in tolouse. I have escort brgades attached to all my my bombers, but they take apreciable losses. It would probably be much morse without them. I hate how it is a range decrease of 150 across the board with the birgades though.

[ShadesWolf]

Ok I havent managed to get much playing in the last few days, with getting ready for holiday and all that.

Ive advanced uptul June 1938. Which I also did the night before. However, The game has crashed on me once and I lost the entire evenings play.

I have now installed the patch and am at the same position as on the previous night. The Anschluss event has just been proclaimed with Austria.

This means I have just over a year to build another 40 infatry divisions to be ready for the start of the war.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Shades, setting autosave to monthly will stop you losing information like that, as I find the game usually crashes at the beginning of the month more often.

[AntiochusIII]

Now, I was looking to enter the Paradox bandwagon (it is past time to redress this blasphemy to God!) so I downloaded the HOI2 demo (Ardennes offensive scenario) and found it to be impressive (got trounced as the Allies, but won impressively as the Nazis!?), though the building-up parts, which are disabled, interests me much more--and I am quite sufficiently excited. So now I want to get a Hearts of Iron game, but I'm in a situation that, to cut short, is called a limited budget situation: being a kid who unusually is not accustomed to paying full prices for games, and not accustomed to buying games often, either, in such a way that every purchase counts. So, here is the question:

Should I get Hearts of Iron for cheap, or Hearts of Iron II anyway?

I know it's not that relevant to the topic, but I don't want to dig the old HOI2 thread up.

[ShadesPanther]

HOI I is a really great game but I think it would be better to get HOI II as it has many fixes to some niggling problems of the first as well as more provinces and the Tech and building up is so much better

[AntiochusIII]

I've got Hearts of Iron II: Doomsday! Hurrah! Hooray! Yippie!

...wait, is it stand-alone or does it require the original one?

*shudders*

Edit: Thx, disco. Now I'm assured. :bow:

Can't wait to try it out 'till morning today. Nonstop.

[discovery1]

stand alone

[screwtype]

Wow, I think you guys must be incredible masochists.

I just bought my first Paradox Game today - the original Hearts of Iron, Version 1.08, for $9.95. I haven't bought a Paradox Game before because I've had a feeling their games look just a bit too complicated...

Well, now I've got it, played through the tutorials and had a look at the game, and I cannot BELIEVE how complex it is!

I started out playing Britain in 1936, the first thing I notice is that I've got ninety convoys to manage. Ninety. And ALL of them unescorted, which presumably means I am going to have to fiddle with my scads of destroyers to allocate an escort for each and every one of these convoys. And that is before I even THINK about looking at overall strategy!

Then I found out I've got military assets in India, Australia...all over the world in fact. But no apparent way of easily identifying which countries are allied to me even. I mean, this game is HUGE. TERRIFYINGLY HUGE. I've even got a list of hundreds of individual commanders to assign to various units!

I quickly got out of that scenario, and tried Germany '39, where at least I wouldn't have to fiddle with naval assets. So I tried attacking Poland. When I click on an army, I have to set the exact bloody time of attack! So I click on one army, and it tells me it will advance into the province on September 8th. Then I click on another army and it tells me the earliest date of attack is September 11th. Then another one and the earliest date of attack is September 16th. And each time this happens, I have to go and reset all the other attack dates in order to co-ordinate everything!

So eventually I got a few attacks organized, then unpaused the game. And suddenly I'm getting message boxes coming up, DOZENS AND DOZENS of the blasted things, one after the other, so fast I can hardly keep pace with clicking the "Okay" button to get rid of them all, let alone watch my attacks develop!

But finally after about ten minutes of clicking "Okay" buttons I do manage to watch a couple of my attacks. So somehow one huge army I sent ends up getting thrashed. And then I watch the second attack. In spite of starting with a big numerical advantage, I see that I have just a slight advantage of 900 points to 850 or so. But then, while I'm watching, suddenly the enemy points goes up to 1250 and I'm losing again.

This is not a game, it's a bleedin' monstrosity!

[SwordsMaster]

That ain't nothing. Try Victoria.

[screwtype]

After another foray into the German 1939 scenario, I find it hard to believe that *anyone* could play this game and enjoy it.

In spite of a really careful setup I still got smashed by the Poles, who seem to have an unlimited number of reinforcements to keep sending to battle. My own reinforcements, when I can scrape some up, take days to arrive at the battlefield.

I'm Germany, for goodness' sakes! The Poles should be a pushover!

And the controls are so finicky, it seems it's impossible to select only the units you want. I did read the tutorial on creating new units but even if you do create one, I can't figure out how to select just this unit and send it somewhere.

And while it takes all my attention to try and keep control of these battles, my fleets are being sunk all over the world by the British and French. This game is just crazy.

I guess I can try doing the tutorial again, but at this stage I'm about ready to chuck it in already.

[SwordsMaster]

Try playing the 1936 scenario with some country like Portugal or Turkey to get used to the mechanics. Don't dive into the deep end directly. Monsters like UK, Germany or USSR are a bit too much to handle for a first game.

[screwtype]

Thanks for the tip! Maybe I'll try that ~:)

[L'Impresario]

A terrible cliché of an advice would be to start checking the Paradox forums, after trying a bit the less complex factions. It would also have helped if you had started with simpler Paradox games, like CK or EU2, the interface has many similarities in all their grand strategy games.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Screwtype, HOI: II is WAY better. Less pop-ups, you can set the computer to auto-manage quite a few things efficiently, and it is overall more fun and less complex. It's also cheap, not much more then HOI: I.

[screwtype]

Screwtype, HOI: II is WAY better. Less pop-ups, you can set the computer to auto-manage quite a few things efficiently, and it is overall more fun and less complex. It's also cheap, not much more then HOI: I.

I was wondering about that. HOI certainly seems like a game that hasn't had enough development, especially in regards to the UI.

I think I've seen a copy of HOI 2 Platinum around for $29.95, which is still pretty cheap. Maybe it would be worth the extra...

[GoreBag]

Try playing the 1936 scenario with some country like Portugal or Turkey to get used to the mechanics. Don't dive into the deep end directly. Monsters like UK, Germany or USSR are a bit too much to handle for a first game.

He's right. My first game was as Peru, and when I'd finished, I still had a lot to learn, but I was getting the hang of things. Managed to get Ecuador and Colombia under my belt, too.

[screwtype]

He's right. My first game was as Peru, and when I'd finished, I still had a lot to learn, but I was getting the hang of things. Managed to get Ecuador and Colombia under my belt, too.

You wicked imperialist you :laugh4:

I've just been playing the HOI 2 Demo. I've found that switching to unit symbols rather than icons helps a bit, because you can see how many units are in a province.

I can also see that that the enemy troops are moving around a lot, changing their deployments from hour to hour, which I guess helps to explain why I couldn't break through the Poles before.

But I'm still having problems maneouvring my own units. I told them to attack but only a couple of them seemed to participate while the rest just got a "moving" symbol on them. Which meant that I didn't have enough strength in the attack and got beat again.

Yeah, it sure is hard to figure out how to win a battle in this game, LOL. When you're used to the instant results you get in most wargames, it's a big change to find yourself trying to manage a battlefield that is changing from hour to hour!

But hopefully if I stick with it I'll figure it out eventually...

[SwordsMaster]

The 2 basic rules of modern warfare: Encircle and move. If you fight, encircle the enemy, and never stop moving to stop the enemy from reinforcing, redeploying and beat him piecemeal. Other than that I think you should have a look at the forums, there are lots of useful tips there.

[AntiochusIII]

Yaa, I bought Doomsday (for only 20$, that's very nice of a deal for a brand new stand-alone expansion that, frankly, includes the original game too) and began with, as usual, UK. I almost killed myself with the details which are humongous, and the pains of the real British leaders as they tried to hold to their Empire was quickly appreciated. I quitted that game and started as Argentina. It was way more fun...and easier. I trounced Chile and Uruguay (or was it Paraguay? The small one near Buanos Aires...) and kept my profile low after that--too high a belligerence to dare provoke more of the US hostility. Ended the game as an Axis, though, barely victorious thanks to the apparently lucky stroke that the Japanese took all China early and managed to save the Germans from the Russian hordes...

And I've been playing all week. To 5 A.M. every day in this Spring Break...

[SwordsMaster]

Finally got the time to get the game, and have been playing for a couple of days. The addition of spyonage is nice although it reminds me of Trade Centers in EUII as far as micromanagement goes which is slightly annoying. I like the expansions to the tech tree although I find the "hospital" line to be plain stupid. Come on! It is not like medicine stopped being researched during the war anyway...

Other than that, it is basically HOI2, with some extra features I like (like commanders' history, or the option to not reinforce or upgrade - I'm starving out all my militias), and the game is going well, as Italy in '36, I've annexed Ethiopia, Albania, took the Balearic islands, Seville, Hualva and La Coruna during the Spanish Civil war, won a war against Portugal, annexing all of their European possessions except Lisbon and most of their colonies, and I'm building up now for an invasion of Republican Spain, weakened by the Civil war, and Greece, which is just nice to have. I' also building a new fleet and trying to restore my energy production which is under minimums. Its sometime late in 1937 and I'm enjoying the game.

[SwordsMaster]

A little update: I declared war on Greece thinking it would be asy pickings, as I'm allied to Bulgaria and between the 2 of us we can quickly destroy the greek resistance. I occupied Salonika, and after 3 months of tough fighting, managed to take Ianina. And, as my battered landing forces are moving into Ioanina, Yugoslavia declares war on me and occupies the former albanian provinces. The only forces I could throw at them were the 7 divisions stationed in Venecia, with heavy artillery which made them really slow too.

Thankfully, Greece offered peace giving me some of their energy-producing provinces, which I accepted as that allowed me to turn the 6 divisions faring in Greece up to the north. I managed a landind in Dubrovnik and Split, took Mostar and by then my northern forces were already in Yugoslavian territory.

In the south, though things were not going so smoothly. To retake my albanian provinces, 4 divisions and 2 tactical bomber groups spent 5 months, during which, Yugoslavia occupied Sofia, my allies' capital. Good thing is, while they were tied down there, my light landing forces occuped Belgrade, and waited there for the heavier artillery and tanks to surround the nearby enemy before attacking. The turning point of the war was the surrounding and annihilation of 14 Yugoslavian divisions in Dubrovnik by 4 indantry divisions and 3 mountaineers, with heavy fire from my batleships and frequent bombings (BTW, the bombers that wotked Yugoslavia are 5 star veterans now), a full combined arms asault, and 14 destroyed divisions. Then I took control of the bulgarian forces and surrounded and destroyed the 5 divisions in Sofia. And that was the end of the war. So now I control an uninterrupted strip of land from Genoa to Athens after the annexation of Yugoslavia and the re-annexation of Albania.

That was 1939-March 1938.

By now, my infantry had been upgraded to the '39 model, my cavalry became mechanised and I shipped my most experienced divisions to Spain, where, as I said, I was planning on campaigning before the Yugoslavian war broke out. It was a good moment: most of the treaties Repblican Spain had with other nations had just been outdated, but my spies confirmed that there were over 34 infantry divisions and 7 armoured in the Rep. Spanish army. While I only had 17 divisions, most of them veteran from Yugoslavia, Greece or Portugal, and 5 cavalry divisions which proved to be unvaluable. But nothing could prevent me from changing my plans: I needed that energy and those ICs (the building of a new navy meant, all other aspects of producing were under minimum), I had commisioned 3 new ships, 2 class 4 battleships, and a light aircraft carrier for patrolling purposes (I joined the light carrier with a few of my oldest light and heavy cruisers and destructors to get a smallish but ok-competent group), but there were still destructors and a couple of super-heavies waiting to be finished.

I waited until al my divisions were in place, my dissent under 5% and the declared war on Spain (Feb, 1939).The first few months were unexpected: my cavalry broke through much superior forces when they were only meant to act as a diversion, and my main attack groups struggled to maintain their positions and were even cutoff once during a particularly unexpected contraofensive by the spanish. All in all, my planes cotrolled the air, and another 2 tac bomber groups and escorts were brought over to help, and they proved unvaluable. Madrid fell after 3 months of war, but I was failing to advance my positions in the south, where my 4 Yugoslavian divisions were struggling to maintain at bay the 9 spanish divisions surrounding them.

It is now November of 1939, and my 17 divisions are in Huesca and Tarragona, surrounding the last 20 spanish divisions in Baecelona. all 3 of my bomber groups are on "ground attack" and there is constant shore bombardment missions for the heaviest of my ships. Still, and with the rest of Spain occupied, All 3 of my assaults have failed. I'll give them until Christmas of grinding them into the ground. And if I still can't win, I'm going to go for their colonies, until they can't even resupply from anywhere else and just starve.

[screwtype]

Wow, this game is a really tough slog isn't it? LOL.

I'm going to have to go back and fiddle with this HOI 2 demo again. I'm completely bamboozled by the combat system, but it sounds like too fun a game not to try and persevere with. I'm already bored with Homm5 after only 2 1/2 missions, LOL.

[GoreBag]

...my cavalry became mechanised...

Whoa, mechanised or motorized?


It is now November of 1939, and my 17 divisions are in Huesca and Tarragona, surrounding the last 20 spanish divisions in Baecelona. all 3 of my bomber groups are on "ground attack" and there is constant shore bombardment missions for the heaviest of my ships. Still, and with the rest of Spain occupied, All 3 of my assaults have failed. I'll give them until Christmas of grinding them into the ground. And if I still can't win, I'm going to go for their colonies, until they can't even resupply from anywhere else and just starve.

Spain only has one overseas factory, so shipments must be coming from that particular island in the canaries. Your options: set your navy to convoy raiding missions around the Barcelona and Canary sea zones; set your airforces to strategic bombardment missions in the Canaries (if you can reach) and in Barcelona (does Barcelona have any factories? I don't recall); hunker down your ground forces and prepare for an attempted breakthrough. Keeping their army out of supply will drain their strength and organisation, and the winter will cause attrition losses on their troops that can scarcely be reinforced.

Landing in the colonies isn't worth much, unless you're aiming for that single colony with the factory (which usually doesn't hold much of a garrison). The other colonies are worth nothing and bring you no closer to full annexation after being taken. I'd concentrate on eliminating their forces and capturing Barcelona - you have them in an excellent position.

[SwordsMaster]

Whoa, mechanised or motorized?


mechanised.




Spain only has one overseas factory, so shipments must be coming from that particular island in the canaries. Your options: set your navy to convoy raiding missions around the Barcelona and Canary sea zones; set your airforces to strategic bombardment missions in the Canaries (if you can reach) and in Barcelona (does Barcelona have any factories? I don't recall); hunker down your ground forces and prepare for an attempted breakthrough. Keeping their army out of supply will drain their strength and organisation, and the winter will cause attrition losses on their troops that can scarcely be reinforced.


That is my intention, yes. Barcelona has a factory and it's worth 2 VPs. I already have 2 fleets of subs patrolling the straits of Gibraltar and Barcelona, but they seem to have a decent amount of supplies...


Landing in the colonies isn't worth much, unless you're aiming for that single colony with the factory (which usually doesn't hold much of a garrison). The other colonies are worth nothing and bring you no closer to full annexation after being taken. I'd concentrate on eliminating their forces and capturing Barcelona - you have them in an excellent position.

Thats what makes it all the more annoying-I control the rest of the peninsula and have the better troops, but the bastards won't just surrender. Actually that should be included as an option

[screwtype]

there were still a whopping 70 Divisions of varying nationality holed up in London.

That sounds a bit unrealistic, how could so many divisions survive without supplies?

Also, I think the diplomatic model sounds a bit underdone - Germany ought to have a say in whether or not Italy gets to take major assets like Vichy France and Britain.

[ShadesPanther]

It's a problem with the game. The supplies come from the capital so if you encircle the capital the whole of the country loses supplies. But the frces in the capital can be supplied indefinately. Also any divisions deployed come from the capital and goes to lands connected to the capital. In this case all new divisions are put into London with supplies.

[SwordsMaster]

It's a problem with the game. The supplies come from the capital so if you encircle the capital the whole of the country loses supplies. But the frces in the capital can be supplied indefinately. Also any divisions deployed come from the capital and goes to lands connected to the capital. In this case all new divisions are put into London with supplies.


Except the garrison divisions that have the "Strategically redeploy" option. Very true though, I think the maximum numver of divs a province should be able to mantain when surrounded is the province's ICx3 or something like that. And maybe make that upgradeable with some technology.

[GoreBag]

mechanised.

Isn't that a little early for mechanised cavalry?

[SwordsMaster]

Isn't that a little early for mechanised cavalry?


sorry, you were right, its motorised.

[screwtype]

Hmmm, this isn't as easy as I thought.

I thought I'd take you guys' advice and play a smaller nation to learn the ropes, so I picked Turkey.

I tried to go to war with Greece but got a message that I can't just declare war on another country because I'm a democracy! And there isn't enough support for a war.

I looked at my diplomacy points to see if I could stir up some trouble that way and they are zero! I don't have any. And I get an extra 0.5 diplomacy points per...not sure, I thought it said per year?

So can someone tell me a way I can get more support from my people for a war? Or how I can up my diplomacy points? Can I change my form of government to dictatorship?

Or have I just made a bad choice of country, and should forget about Turkey and pick some other country to play instead?

Edit: Given up on Turkey, playing Brazil instead. Just got my very first tank - a 40mm light tank - in April 1938. Just wait till I spring it on unsuspecting, oil rich Venezuela. Whee-hee-hee!

[doc_bean]

What are the differences between HOI2 and HOI2 Doomsday ? I know the doomsday campaign last quite a bit longer and focusses somewhat more on the cold war, but does HOI2 have anything more than Doomsday ? Would there be any reason to get HOI2 instead of Doomsday ?





I'm going to have to go back and fiddle with this HOI 2 demo again. I'm completely bamboozled by the combat system, but it sounds like too fun a game not to try and persevere with. I'm already bored with Homm5 after only 2 1/2 missions, LOL.

You bought it ?

[discovery1]

I can't help you with your other stuff since its been a long time since I played HoI 1(why did you buy that? the combat system is far inferior...) The HoI2 demo oder of Battle, at least as the Germans, is pretty bad though. All their troops start with commanders over their limit and tanks chained to inf divisions......

anyway...


Edit: Given up on Turkey, playing Brazil instead. Just got my very first tank - a 40mm light tank - in April 1938. Just wait till I spring it on unsuspecting, oil rich Venezuela. Whee-hee-hee!

It probably won't do to well in the jungles of venezuela. Mountaineers or marines would be your best bet.



What are the differences between HOI2 and HOI2 Doomsday ? I know the doomsday campaign last quite a bit longer and focusses somewhat more on the cold war, but does HOI2 have anything more than Doomsday ? Would there be any reason to get HOI2 instead of Doomsday ?

It has a new intelligence tab, vastly improved AI, more techs, and an editor. The only reason would be mods already for HoI2, although they will switch over to Doomsday.

[screwtype]

You bought it ?

No, not yet. I bought HOI 1 because it was on special, then I thought I'd try the HOI 2 demo. But I haven't bought HOI 2 yet. Maybe I'll just skip it and buy Doomsday instead now?


I can't help you with your other stuff since its been a long time since I played HoI 1(why did you buy that? the combat system is far inferior...) The HoI2 demo oder of Battle, at least as the Germans, is pretty bad though. All their troops start with commanders over their limit and tanks chained to inf divisions......

anyway...

Actually I noticed that in the demo, you have to reorganize all your troops before you start because the commanders are over their limit.

I bought HOI because it was selling for $9.95 - my preferred price point :) I didn't want to pay more for a newer version because I didn't know if I'd like the game. I'm still not sure if I like it, but I do kind of like the idea of World War II at a high level of detail.


It probably won't do to well in the jungles of venezuela. Mountaineers or marines would be your best bet.

Yeah, actually I noticed that Venezuela is mostly jungle shortly after I posted that, so I didn't bother building any tank divisions after all. Just infantry.

I'll tell you what I'm really pissed about though. I played for several hours up until February 1940, building up my army, my tech and my industry, then declared war on Venezuela. So I try to march my troops into Venezuela and it turns out they won't get there until May!!! Not sure what happened there as I've got infrastructure up to 60 which ain't that bad.

But then, shortly before May, I'm scrolling the map and I notice a couple of US divisions where some French and British colonies used to be. Oh, wait a minute, the French and British colonies are still there. THE US DIVISIONS HAVE TAKEN ONE OF MY PROVINCES. I'M AT WAR WITH THE FRICKIN' USA!!!

The game tells me everything that's going on over the other side of the planet, that I couldn't care less about, right down to letting me know when Slovakia has merged a couple of Army Corps (really? I so needed to know that) and the STOOPID GAME DOESN'T EVEN BOTHER TELLING ME I'M AT WAR WITH THE US!!! Doesn't even bother telling me the US has invaded and taken one of my provinces! :furious3:

So it's an evening's work straight down the drain. And wouldn't you know it, just when I finished deploying all my divisions on the Venezuelan border where they don't have a hope of getting back in time to counterattack the Yanks. :wall:

[SwordsMaster]

That is because probably when you declared war on Venezuela, there was small print in the box saying somehing like: "The following nations are guaranteeing Venezuela's intependence and will fight alongside them in the war" or somethjing similar. Thats why, if you are planning to attack someone who's independence is being guaranteed by someone else, you should have very good relations and possibly a non aggressions pact with that someone else first.

[screwtype]

Hmmm, I didn't notice any such warning when I declared war Swordsmaster. But I might have missed it I guess.

Fortunately I did save the game just before declaring war on Ven., so I went back and tried declaring war on Uruguay instead. Sure enough, the US invaded again, and again I didn't get told either that the US had declared war or that it had invaded. But I did notice this time that when I went back into the diplomacy screen, it at least informed me there I was at war with both Uruguay and the US.

I guess what I'll have to do is either wait until the US is at war with Japan and then start invading my neighbours, or else build up my army to be bigger. I thought 17 divisions was pretty cool but the US has 130!

My biggest problem now though is trying to figure out how to trade goods. I've figured out most of the game for myself by now except trade, and wouldn't you know it, this is the one tutorial that invariably crashes, and right when it's telling me the bit I want to know.

Basically it tells you how to offer a deal on the world market and then crashes. I've tried offering a deal for essential goodies, basically 100 rubber for 100 coal, but when I go into the daily trade summary screen, it says I'm selling the 100 coal but only getting 12 coal in return! No wonder my economy's going down the tube. I don't suppose you could explain what I'm supposed to do after hitting the "offer deal" button?

[discovery1]

Look down in the message box. There probably was an alert, it just didn't come up in a message box. The default message box settings are not so good in default HoI. Did you patch your game? HoI2 also tells you if someone dows you in a message box by default.

[screwtype]

Thanks GL, I found a good way to get rid of messages you don't want is to right click on them, which brings up another box where you can set the priority.

It doesn't solve the problem of having war declared on you without warning though, but I've found that as a South American country basically all I need to do is join the allies once war is declared and then the US will leave me alone even if she is still isolationist.

One of the niggling little problems I have now is with allies trying to send me expeditionary corps every few days. I'm getting very sick of having to click "go to", "okay" and then "return to sender" every time.

Basically ATM I feel the game is kind of okay but there are so many things it could do that would make it better. Why the heck doesn't the game tell you how many units a province can support before you send them in? Why do you have to reinforce EVERY division individually instead of as a stack or globally? Why doesn't it tell you somewhere when you're building something how many resources and so on it's going to cost? Why doesn't the game update things without running time for a few days? Why is it so hard to find out how many resources you're consuming/about to consume (yes I know about the ledger page, but it's far from satisfactory, since it changes with numerous actions you make). Why is there no "undo" for some features when you make a mistake?

All in all, this a game that ought to be good but kind of isn't, because of all the omissions. I'm tempted to upgrade to HOI 2 and probably will, but something tells me they won't have fixed many of my central complaints in that either...

Oh and BTW, what the heck do you have an "upgrade unit" button for when all your units appear to upgrade automatically?

[AntiochusIII]

One of the niggling little problems I have now is with allies trying to send me expeditionary corps every few days. I'm getting very sick of having to click "go to", "okay" and then "return to sender" every time.HOI2 Doomsday still have that problem. But it is minor detail for me. At least, I take it as a sign of goodwill...

Basically ATM I feel the game is kind of okay but there are so many things it could do that would make it better. Why the heck doesn't the game tell you how many units a province can support before you send them in? Why do you have to reinforce EVERY division individually instead of as a stack or globally? Why doesn't it tell you somewhere when you're building something how many resources and so on it's going to cost? Why doesn't the game update things without running time for a few days? Why is it so hard to find out how many resources you're consuming/about to consume (yes I know about the ledger page, but it's far from satisfactory, since it changes with numerous actions you make). Why is there no "undo" for some features when you make a mistake?I don't understand some of the problems here because I never played HOI, but some would seem to be solved by HOI2, at least at the Doomsday level, and therefore no longer be an issue. Reinforcements automatically work now, taking your IC, unless you specifically choose to deny them to some of your divisions. Though the brigade-thing is still individual (if that is what you mean by reinforcing, i.e. adding stuff to your divisions). I don't think there's a unit limit on a province, though too much and it would (quite logically) be detrimental instead. See the London with 70 Divisions (Holy!) post above. Keeping tract of resources is a little hard, but I must say, despite my inexperience, that the logic is easy to grasp now. Sometimes when things seem to "not working properly" I'd find out that it's just a problem in my industrial capacity/allocation; and, if that would comfort you (probably not), they put warnings on every kind of diplomatic/espionage actions you are about to take along the lines of "all effects are immediate and cannot be undone", thus implicitly say "be careful with that dow button!"

[screwtype]

HOI2 Doomsday still have that problem. But it is minor detail for me. At least, I take it as a sign of goodwill...

I knew it. People who can't design a UI generally don't know how to fix one either in my experience. But I am still staggered that this problem exists after numerous patches and three major releases!


Reinforcements automatically work now, taking your IC, unless you specifically choose to deny them to some of your divisions.

Well that's at least one thing I won't have to worry about if I upgrade the game then.


I don't think there's a unit limit on a province, though too much and it would (quite logically) be detrimental instead.

There isn't strictly speaking a "unit limit" in HOI 1 either, but what I was referring to is the fact that your units start to perish if you leave them in a province with insufficient infrastructure! I mean, why not simply have a number in each province you can look at - why not, for example, have the number of units supportable displayed instead of the esoteric number for infrastructure they have now? I mean, how do I know how many divisions a province with an infrastructure of "19" or "34" can hold? But I suppose it would be too easy to do it that way, wouldn't it?


Keeping tract of resources is a little hard

Yes, it is hard, but the point is it doesn't need to be hard. The numbers could be displayed any number of ways. But apparently the clowns who designed these games think it's fun to spend half your time doing mental arithmetic instead of playing the game.


Sometimes when things seem to "not working properly" I'd find out that it's just a problem in my industrial capacity/allocation

Well, yeah. But you wouldn't experience these problems at all if the game was properly designed. In my current game as Argentina, I had to completely stop all research for years on end, because I ran out of certain types of resources. With a more accessible interface, I might have been able to manage things a bit better. I could certainly have done it with far less trouble. Having to tweak around the resource sliders every few turns gets a bit old after a while, especially when they're so tricky to position in the first place.

[SwordsMaster]

Well, yes, it does require micromanagement, but this is not a game like Civilisation 4. It requires micromanagement. You should still try out HOI2. The GUI is much improved, and many things are a lot clearer (the resource increase-decrease thing for example).

[GoreBag]

Indeed. Many of screwtypes' complaints are totally alien to me, since I've never played HoI. I can only assume that they fixed in the transition to the sequel. HoI2, also, has a tutorial mode (~D ) to clear up any misunderstandings.

[lancelot]

Oh and BTW, what the heck do you have an "upgrade unit" button for when all your units appear to upgrade automatically?

Its actually a do not upgarde button IIRC...so you can refuse to upgarde units if you need the resources elsewhere.

[screwtype]

Its actually a do not upgarde button IIRC...so you can refuse to upgarde units if you need the resources elsewhere.

That must be in HOI 2. I'm sure it's an upgrade button (that doesn't work) in HOI 1!

[discovery1]

The upgrade in HOI 1 send them back into the build queue. It will take a while for them to upgrade, and while they do you can't use them. And Units loose strength in provs with infra thats too low, I forgot the limit. 40? that doesn't happen in HoI2.

[screwtype]

Yeah I think the limit is 40. But sometimes I can't even leave a single unit in a province because it doesn't have the infrastructure - even at 34 or so.

Yes, when you click on the "Upgrade" button the unit is sent back into the build queue. But here's the weird thing. When it comes back, it still has the exact same stats as when you put in it. I find that just researching new techs, my units seem to get upgraded automatically. So the upgrade function is completely redundant.

Maybe Paradox decided to automate the feature in a patch, but didn't bother to deactivate the button.

BTW I went down to buy HOI 2 today, I rang my local EB store and they told me it was on sale in a two games for $50 deal. In fact I rang two EB stores and they told me the same thing. I didn't really want to buy it as a 2 for $50 deal but then I figured if I bought it direct from Paradox it wouldn't cost much less and I'd have to wait a week to get it.

So I went down to the EB store and rummaged through the 2 for $50 bin for fifteen minutes until I was satisfied the game wasn't there. So then I went over to the normal sales display and there it was, selling as a standalone title for $70 :furious3:

So I didn't buy it. But since I didn't want to leave empty handed, I ended up buying two games from the 2 for $50 bin anyhow, they were HOMM3 and Vampire Masquerades. I've heard good things about both games on this forum. But I loaded up HOMM3 and it looks really dated. Maybe Masquerades will be better.

Now I'll probably have to go down to the other EB store tomorrow and see if I can pick up HOI2 in the 2 for $50 deal there. The dang game is going to end up costing me $100, minimum. ~:(

[discovery1]

Dude, I paide 55 for it the week it was released, 25 of which was shipping was a Saturday arrival. You're getting ripped off. Just order direct from paradox.

You can buy the doomsday standalone expansion(it also includes the original campaign) for 20 bucks. HoI2 is 30 USD.

http://www.paradoxshop.com/

[SwordsMaster]

True, 30 is the most you should ever pay for pretty much any Paradox game.

[AntiochusIII]

[quote is too long to repeat]!!!

Screwtype, I got Doomsday for 20$USD at Fry's here in Vegas, just after it's out. And a week after they have a promotion reduce to 15$.

A freakin' bargain! AND it's stand-alone! I'm shocked and awed and overjoyed and right now my grades are spiralling downward and the lack of sleep is killing me for weeks. :sweatdrop:

Heck, the best first Paradox game ever.

[Samurai Waki]

I bought it for 19.99USD at Hastings, standalone package. Now I'm just really waiting for the 1.2 update and when Core Switches over.

[screwtype]

My prices were in Aussie dollars :) All the same, AU$70 is US$50, which is still far too much for the game IMO. Especially when I can get it direct from Paradox itself, including P&P from the US, for (from memory) US$28.

In fact, I think that's what I'll do, even though I'll have to wait a couple of weeks for delivery.

The one thing I can't work out though, is that although the DD FAQ says DD contains essentially the entire original game ie 36 to 47, they are selling DD for 19.99 and HOI 2 for 29.99! And even more confusing, they are selling a "two in one" package, where you get both HOI 2 and DD, for 39.99.

Now if DD is a standalone title that contains virtually the whole of HOI 2 already, why the heck is it *cheaper* than HOI 2 alone? I can't figure it out. And this makes me nervous about ordering it.

[discovery1]

Lower developement and production costs? And a patch ruined the xp system, but it's a patch.

[GoreBag]

Let them figure out that it's not just an expansion. If you're interested in getting Doomdsay, I'm fairly certain that there's a version of it available for electronic payment and download.

[discovery1]

There is. It's what I bought, rather then wait for it to come to EB or in the mail.

[screwtype]

I bought HOI 2 ~:)

I checked what it was going to cost me to order DD direct from Paradox, and in total it was going to cost $46. Since that was almost as much as my local store's 2 games for fifty bucks offer, I figured I was better off getting two games for 50 than one for 46.

The second game I bought along with HOI 2 was a Paradox compilation. So now I have HOI 2, EU II, Victoria, Two Thrones and Crown of the North, all for $50 ~:)

[SwordsMaster]

Nice one, thats 10 $ each. And Vicky is prolly worth 50$ just on its own.

[screwtype]

Nice one, thats 10 $ each. And Vicky is prolly worth 50$ just on its own.

Yeah, I could hardly believe that myself. I hope this is not some really early version of Vicky you can't upgrade or something, like HOI 1. It was actually bundled with HOI 1, but I haven't heard about a Vicky version 2.

Does HOI 2 have a bug? I tried to play Italy, it's got 64 IC's. I'm not building anything and the game says I have 64 IC's free, which is how it should be, but when I go to the statistics sheet, it says I'm using 128 energy, 64 metal and 32 raw materials, as if I'm already using my production capacity to the max! I've got a daily deficit of 37 energy and 18 metal, and I'm not even building anything yet!

Have I missed something, or is this a bug?

[AggonyDuck]

I think it's WAD, because noone ever thought that someone wouldn't use his production capabilities to their fullest.

[screwtype]

WAD, what's that?

Actually, I am already building a couple of ships, the campaign starts with those in the building queue. But they are only costing 6 IC's. But the game still says I have all my IC's free, but I'm using raw materials as if I'm using production capacity to the max!

This has surely got to be a major bug. Has anyone else heard of it?

[discovery1]

No. that's how it works.

wad = working as designed.

Its a bad idea to let ic idle, since it still uses up your resources. If anything, dump it in supplies or consumer goods. Remeber your economy never shuts down, even if you want it to.

[screwtype]

Oh great, so that means I'm stuck with these resource deficits and can only try and meet the problem by trading?

Heck, I'm sure the game wasn't working like this before. It was only counting the IC's I was using for production. I mean, it's got to work that way. If it didn't, why have an "available IC's" figure at all?

[SwordsMaster]

Oh great, so that means I'm stuck with these resource deficits and can only try and meet the problem by trading?

Heck, I'm sure the game wasn't working like this before. It was only counting the IC's I was using for production. I mean, it's got to work that way. If it didn't, why have an "available IC's" figure at all?


You can try conquering some provinces that produce those resources you want.

[discovery1]

Oh great, so that means I'm stuck with these resource deficits and can only try and meet the problem by trading?

Italy probably didn't have great resources in reality. Play as the USA if you don't want to worry about needing to trade.



Heck, I'm sure the game wasn't working like this before. It was only counting the IC's I was using for production. I mean, it's got to work that way. If it didn't, why have an "available IC's" figure at all?

Available ICs means the number of ICs you have enough resources to actually run. The game assumes you would want to maximize output, which you should if you want to wage war. Note that it goes full steam ahead until your resource stockpiles are empty.

About HoI 1, after loading up the toll tip says that I had enough resources to run n out of n. Not that that says anything.

[screwtype]

Oh well, people seem to think this is WAD! I guess I'll have to take your word for it.

Maybe I'm confused because I was playing HOI 1 before, and I think in that game you can cut your resource use by putting it into supplies. But regardless this strikes me as a pretty silly mechanic. You should be able to slow down production if you're outstripping your supplies. What this mechanic means is you have no choice, you have to keep going until that scarce resource hits zero, causing your entire production to go haywire.

It also means you have to think twice before increasing your production capacity, because once it's there it has to be fed regardless.

Why didn't they include an "idle production" slider, so you could reduce production to keep everything at sustainable levels?

Ugh, I don't like this game mechanic, at all.

[discovery1]

Factories are still running if they are making supplies like ammo and boots instead of equipment for a new division or cruiser.....

Why would you want to reduce your economic strength? In either case the end result would be you being weaker. And whats the point of that in a game based around one of the larger conflicts of the 20th century.

And yes it makes sense that your production goes haywire. The reason the Japanese attacked was that they were running out of resources.

Think of it this way: if you idled them then the workers wander off, the factories would fall into disrepair and those said workers would be unemployed thus increasing dissent. You'd have to start over from scratch(ie rebuild your IC).

Also, its REALLY easy to build up a massive prewar stockpile of resources from trade, so large that you can last the entire war on it.

[GoreBag]

You can save resources by setting up unused IC...minor powers (read: me) do it all the time because of their limited economies. Supplies don't count, though; what you need to do is put more IC into production, upgrades or reinforcements than you really need. Also, what version of the game are you using?

[discovery1]

Wow. I had no idea idleing IC left it used. See, even a long time veteren doesn't know everything.

Still seems like a bad idea to idle IC during times of peace anyway. Then you don't need to worry about blockaids stopping trades, thus you can run your economy as fast as it can go, thus you can produce as much as possible. And since you are Italy you will be facing the might of the British in Afirca, probably, including most of their ground I think.

[screwtype]

Why would you want to reduce your economic strength? In either case the end result would be you being weaker. And whats the point of that in a game based around one of the larger conflicts of the 20th century.

And yes it makes sense that your production goes haywire. The reason the Japanese attacked was that they were running out of resources.

The problem is that if you wait for the resources to run out, you lose control of the economy. And you have to keep going back to readjust sliders because the resources keep arriving in fits and starts. It just becomes a micromanagement nightmare. At least, that's how I found it in HOI 1.


Think of it this way: if you idled them then the workers wander off, the factories would fall into disrepair and those said workers would be unemployed thus increasing dissent. You'd have to start over from scratch(ie rebuild your IC).

Not at all. You don't completely shut down a factory, you just run it at 80% capacity instead. Real businesses do this sort of thing all the time. They don't wait until their cash flow hits zero and then start retrenching people! They plan ahead.

There should be an idle capacity slider. That way YOU would be in total control of where your available resources go and what gets built, instead of having to fiddle with the sliders all the time.


Also, its REALLY easy to build up a massive prewar stockpile of resources from trade, so large that you can last the entire war on it.

Hmm, not sure about that. Maybe it depends on what country you play ~:)

Anyhow, I stlll think this looks like a promising game. I mean, this is a real wargame, not some cheesy plaything for the kiddiebrats. I haven't played a real wargame for ages. I just hope the somewhat clunky UI doesn't end up spoiling the fun too much.

[GoreBag]

Yeah, generally speaking, you'll want to trade to keep your deficits up, but sometimes, everything is just in use in every other country, or you can get no real decent trade deal. A good idea, though, is to trade small amounts of supplies for larger amounts of IC resources. If you could get 2 energy for .3 supplies, you're definitely ahead of the game.

[screwtype]

You can save resources by setting up unused IC...minor powers (read: me) do it all the time because of their limited economies. Supplies don't count, though; what you need to do is put more IC into production, upgrades or reinforcements than you really need. Also, what version of the game are you using?

Hmm, you seem to be saying something different to the other guys. This is all starting to get a bit confusing.

What you're saying is how I thought HOI 1 was playing. I mean, I thought I found some slider that I could put excess production into that didn't use resources. But the other guys seem to be saying no, you can't do that. And they appear to be right, because when I was tweaking the sliders around in HOI 2 it didn't seem to be affecting the number of resources I was using.

BTW, I'm using version 1.10OOCO, as far as I can tell...

[discovery1]

Dump everything into reinforcements, then watch, just to be sure.


Tip about trading: Perferably only trade with countries you are already on good terms with, like Germany. They will give you better deals.

[GoreBag]

PATCH! (http://www.paradoxplaza.com/downloads.asp?Page=Downloads)

The unpatched version definitely doesn't work as well. You're right, though; you should be able to save resources by 'wasting' IC. The AI does it, I've done it, it's a wonderful thing.

Also, are you fiddling around with the sliders before the first day ends, or any other day, for that matter? Resource status is updated every day at 0:00.

[Boohugh]

Trading supplies for the raw materials is definitely the way to go in my opinion. Crank up your supply slider to use all your currently unused IC capacity and trade it for metal, oil, energy, etc. Supplies are considered very valuable and so you can get some very good deals when trading with other countries. With luck, you'll have a large supply stockpile to fight with when war breaks out too, meaning you can concentrate your IC on more important areas such as reinforcements when the time comes.

[screwtype]

Okay, looks like Gorebag was right, you can indeed idle production capacity just by putting the excess into the production slider. Using that method I've just been able to reduce my IC usage by more than two thirds.

I was pretty sure you could do it because I was doing it in HOI 1, but I guess I forgot what method I'd been using.

The other thing that I think confused me is Italy was converting 70 energy to oil at the start of the game for some reason, I don't really understand why, or why it's stopped converting now, but I'm glad it has because it was leaving me with an energy deficit in excess of 70 a day!

Anyhow, all seems to be well now, I just need to tweak my IC usage up to the appropriate level. Thanks everyone for your help ~:)

Oh and thanks LordHugh for the tip about supplies, I assumed they'd be pretty worthless to trade but it's good to hear they are not. Although I've also found money to be a pretty decent trade, which you can make from producing an excess of consumer goodies, but I haven't figured out which is the better trade commodity yet.

[screwtype]

Oh, pooh, the 1.3 patch has robbed Italy of a research slot ~:(

Oh well, never mind, you win some you lose some :laugh4:

[ShadesPanther]

Energy is converted to oil when you do not have enough oil as a stockpile. This can cause your industry to totally collapse as all your energy is used up. You can make the ratio better by researching in the industrial research part of it

[screwtype]

Energy is converted to oil when you do not have enough oil as a stockpile. This can cause your industry to totally collapse as all your energy is used up. You can make the ratio better by researching in the industrial research part of it

Is that what it is? The blasted game is converting 30 to 40 of my energy every day to make a thimbleful of oil, and I don't seem to be able to stop it ~:(

Not only that, but it looks like I spoke too soon on the idle IC question. The game is still using resources at maximum capacity, regardless of how little I'm actually building. So obviously the method I thought was working, isn't. :stupido2:

Hmm, more study required... :coffeenews:

[AntiochusIII]

Erm, can IC be idle? At all?

I thought the best (or worst, actually) you can do is to waste it on an idle area (production/upgrade/reinforcements beyond your true need) and still "pay" for it. I always put my excess on money (consumer) and supply. If I have any, that is. Money and supply helps a lot because you'll at least be getting something back which can be used, especially for trading to make up for resource deficits (pumping ICs up too much? Just put all the excess in supply and make a swaggering effort to create trade deals everywhere with your supply for their resources). Not to mention the fact that putting ICs in consumer goods reduce dissent. The more the better.

The value of trade goods, by the way, can be edited in the db folder. It's only affecting diplomatic deals, though.

By the way, I personally think Italy sucks big time for some reason. They lack major resources majorly. You have to strike out on your own and be quick about it.

Of course, fortunately Italy is one of the major-minor powers with the ability, tech teams, and military to fight on your own initiative at your own will and can expect to survive, as well as not being forced by events to engage in the mighty Great War if you really don't want to. Well, you ARE expected to strike out quickly if you take the role of Il Duce, anyway.

Again, this game is really amazing. In fact, some people are more amazing at this game than others... That Hungarian AAR over at Paradox is wicked. Oh how the CESA rises!

[AggonyDuck]

Is that what it is? The blasted game is converting 30 to 40 of my energy every day to make a thimbleful of oil, and I don't seem to be able to stop it ~:(

Not only that, but it looks like I spoke too soon on the idle IC question. The game is still using resources at maximum capacity, regardless of how little I'm actually building. So obviously the method I thought was working, isn't. :stupido2:

Hmm, more study required... :coffeenews:

It will automatically stop the conversion when you have less than a 3:1 ration in energy to oil. So oil conversion won't make you run out of energy, but it does make stockpiling it a rather horrible process. Also researching the conversion techs does help in making the process a lot more economical when it comes to energy.

[screwtype]

Erm, can IC be idle? At all?

Don't know. Still haven't figured it out ~:)



I thought the best (or worst, actually) you can do is to waste it on an idle area (production/upgrade/reinforcements beyond your true need) and still "pay" for it. I always put my excess on money (consumer) and supply. If I have any, that is. Money and supply helps a lot because you'll at least be getting something back which can be used, especially for trading to make up for resource deficits (pumping ICs up too much? Just put all the excess in supply and make a swaggering effort to create trade deals everywhere with your supply for their resources). Not to mention the fact that putting ICs in consumer goods reduce dissent. The more the better.

I made some great deals with Germany. 10 supply for 100 energy! That solved my energy problems real quick.

Now though I'm trying to build up my supply a bit, just in case I need them for war. I'm just coming to the end of '39 and reinforcing the Near East in case Britain tries to grab territory. And if she doesn't, I'll probably try and grab some of hers ~:)


I personally think Italy sucks big time for some reason. They lack major resources majorly. You have to strike out on your own and be quick about it.

I don't know, compared to the powers I've been playing up to now, Italy is a powerhouse!

I was playing Brazil and Argentina before and they've got so few IC's you can hardly do a thing.


Of course, fortunately Italy is one of the major-minor powers with the ability, tech teams, and military to fight on your own initiative at your own will and can expect to survive, as well as not being forced by events to engage in the mighty Great War if you really don't want to. Well, you ARE expected to strike out quickly if you take the role of Il Duce, anyway.

Yeah, I haven't figured out what strategy to adopt with Italy yet. I've taken Ethiopia and Albania already, but now I'm waiting for war to break out between the major powers so I can hopefully grab some more goodies while they're preoccupied with each other.

The big decision is whether to go into an alliance with a major faction or not. And if so, which faction?

I'll probably end up just doing the historical thing and making an alliance with Germany, but I don't know if it's the right strategy. What I'd really like to do is conquer Yugoslavia, but I'm not sure how to achieve that. If I ally with Germany, she might invade Yugoslavia when I declare war, which is not what I want at all!


Again, this game is really amazing. In fact, some people are more amazing at this game than others... That Hungarian AAR over at Paradox is wicked. Oh how the CESA rises!

ATM I'm finding it amazingly long, mostly ~:) I wish there was a way to speed up the game so you could go straight from one interesting event to another, having to go through the whole lot hour by hour gets a bit old after a while...

[SwordsMaster]

The trick with Italy is to be opportunistic. I.e. grab Ethiopia (its practically free anyway), grab Albania (ditto) and then ally with Bulgaria (usually you have a pretty god relationship with them) and try grabbing Greece as quickly as you can. You can't sustain long wars because you do not have a big surpulus of supplies at this early stage.

After you get a peace deal out of Greece or annex them (whatever the circumstances dictate), watch the Spanish civil war. Do NOT send reinforcements to any of the sides and when one of the sides controls more than 60 % of the territory, attack them. Usually your navy pwns theirs (even though it's still crap compared to France or UK) and so you have a clear landing pad. Grab as many ICs as possible, and naval bases and airfields (if you are a tac bomber maniac such as myself) and then just hold them until the other Spain finishes the job. Then I usually rebuild my economy and reinforce for 6-7 months, and then hit Portugal. You can take out most of their european posessions in no time and then they will offer you some sort of deal that will include some African posessions too.

By 1939 or so you can hit the Spain you "supported" (do not ever ally with them as if you do, they will take control of the territories you have claimed from the other Spain) which should be fairly crippled after you took a good few ICs from them.

After that your economy should be a good bit stronger and you have planty of opportunities.

What I like to do is ally with Germany after 41, give up Ethiopia and take out the Suez channel (which you will be fighting for for the rest of the war), and Gibraltar. That keeps the brits out of the mediterranean, and your crappy navy can take care of the rest of the navies in th area. Then You can hit the Middle East, and after that is secured, hit Vichy France. With German help, Vichy France should be a walk in Europe, fairly easy in N. Africa, and forget about the rest of the world. There is not point getting your marines to Saigon for a dubious fight for the colonies, that in all likelihood you want be able to hold...

That is my strategy. A few unexpected events happened though, such as Yugoslavia attacking me during my war in Greece, or Turkey attacking me while most of my forces were tied down in Iraq with the brits. But it is a very interesting game.

[discovery1]

If you are allied to germany when they invade yugoslavia then when they annex then you get the territory you have claims on, more if you occupy it.

[ShadesPanther]

The tip for Italy is to take the two northern Provinces connected to Germany and then advance down. Also try to get alot more quickly if you have balkan allies.

[GoreBag]

ATM I'm finding it amazingly long, mostly ~:) I wish there was a way to speed up the game so you could go straight from one interesting event to another, having to go through the whole lot hour by hour gets a bit old after a while...

You do know how to speed up the game, though, right?

[screwtype]

Hmm, some good tips there guys. It's too late for me to do the Spain thing because the civil war is already come and gone, but the others sound doable.

I want Yugoslavia because I figure I'll get all its IC's, it seems in this game if you have to transport stuff overseas in wartime it never turns up. Or is that only your trade deals? There's a lot I haven't figured out in this game yet. There's no shortage of stuff to learn in a game like this, LOL.

[screwtype]

You do know how to speed up the game, though, right?

I only know the Ctrl-+ key combo, but even at "extremely fast" it still runs a lot slower than I would like it to. Especially in the pre-war years when there is often nothing to do but wait for that next technology or for that piece of infrastructure to be built.

[AntiochusIII]

I want Yugoslavia because I figure I'll get all its IC's, it seems in this game if you have to transport stuff overseas in wartime it never turns up. Or is that only your trade deals? There's a lot I haven't figured out in this game yet. There's no shortage of stuff to learn in a game like this, LOL.Yugoslavia is often getting screwed in just about every game you play in their vicinity, except, of course, with you as Yugoslavia!

They're surrounded and don't have the German, or Allied blessing, for that matter. And their lands are large...and quite a good addition to any of the nations around the place, Italy included. Not to mention the fact that you can always liberate smaller nations out of their territory if you don't need them and need someone to free up the TC's used in occupying territories

But I would NOT strike them before all the "guarantee independence" (if any) and non-aggression pacts expire, about 40' if I can remember correctly. Doing so before that might bring on you the wrath of the major powers. They have a set of ties at the start of the game...

And quite frankly I agree that, as an RTS-RTW player, the game is bloody slow occasionally. It doesn't matter though once you achieve something amazing or succeed in a grand encirclement. Or beat up the Bigs on your own. Or, as the best experiences so far in this game, carve your own alliance that becomes just as powerful as the game's prime Three. The dry, old graphic-plain map was more beautiful than any graphic-filled game would ever be once I look over Europe and realize that all of them are either liberated by me or under my direct leadership. :2thumbsup:

I always loved to create an Italian-led alliance when I play them. Then again, I'm on a normal difficulty with the default aggression.

[discovery1]

I suggest you take all of greece before you take yugo. I know the ai does it all time. There are beaches in the Pelopenese.

I find it pretty fast, and I would suggest normal/above normal for war time. Don't forget to change to the slower times.

[screwtype]

Okay, I took Spain but the partisans are eating me alive! I'm losing 86 TC to partisan activity according to the tooltip.

What the heck do you do about partisans? I know you can assign divisions to anti-partisan activity but they're not that effective, and it's going to end up costing a heck of a lot of troops just to keep the natives down!

What do I do - build heaps of garrison divisions? Seems like an awful waste of resources, but these partisans are proving to be quite a nuisance.

BTW, why aren't I getting the IC I've captured from other nations? Am I supposed to assign convoys to ship it home or something?

[[DnC]]

Use garrisons with police brigades attached to them and assign them on anti-partisan duty. Spread them all over spain (one per province and not neccesarily every province) and when the revolt-chance starts to drop low enough you can assign some garrisons to other, newly conquered places.

About the IC, you will only be able to use a portion of enemy IC. I don't know how much however. There are ministers (diplomacy menu) that raise how much enemy IC you can use by the way.

[screwtype]

So, I really do have to churn out a whole bunch of garrison divs, huh?

There are no shortcuts in this blasted game, are there? LOL.

I just spent the last three years researching the '39 infantry division at agonizingly slow speed. Finally got there in April '38. I figured if I researched it early I could go straight from an 18 pattern div to a 39, thus saving me a whole heap of IC's on the 36 upgrade.

Nothing doing, the baskets make you upgrade to a 36 before you can upgrade to a 39. What a scam. All that time wasted, the cheats!

[GoreBag]

Garrisons are indeed the way to go. I'm not sure if I should ruin the surprise surrounding their use, though. In any case, building MP brigades won't help so much on their own, either, unless you have something else in your homeland sitting around, waiting to be sent to Spain. To fight partisans without garrisons, you'll want to pay attention to your Authoritarian and Open vs Closed Society sliders.

On the issue of enemy IC's: You only get access to a fraction of your non-national factories. This can be modified by your diplomacy window, particularly your security minister. Ministers to consider are either the [+5% Foreign manpower, +5% Foreign IC use] or the [+10% Foreign IC use, +10% Consumer Goods Need]. The first is all-around better, obviously, since there are no real drawbacks, but the second may be more useful if you hold a considerable amount of foreign territory.

You do have a lot of questions, but are you enjoying the game?

[screwtype]

You do have a lot of questions, but are you enjoying the game?

I'm still playing it, so I guess I must be ~;p

I don't know how long I'll stick with it though. There are a lot of good ideas in the game, and there must have been a huge amount of research go into it, but the UI really stinks.

A few examples:

(a) I still haven't figured out a quick way to divide up armies in the same province, because the only obvious way is to merge everything and then de-merge into all the separate units you want. And I haven't found any way of merging air units except by flying them to a province empty of ground units. Perhaps another careful reading of the manual will reveal a method a bit less clunky.

(b) The naval system is really confusing. Missions are assigned to sea zones but the names on the map don't appear to correspond to the sea zones in the list. I find I just have to click on one of the names and hope for the best. It's pretty annoying.

(c) Assigning and re-assigning commanders to units is a pain. Does the list of alternative commanders you get include commanders already assigned to units? I can't tell. But either way, it's a problem, because if they're not, it means you're not looking at all your available commanders, and if they are, there's nothing there to tell you they are already assigned, at least not that I can see.

I'd swear the list of available commanders is constantly changing too. Does the game reassign divisional commanders back to the force pool when you merge into a larger unit? Maybe that's what's going on.

(d) I've been finding combat to be quite troublesome. Especially selecting the start time for an attack. I think maybe I've been confused because in HOI 2 combat seems to occur from the moment you start moving toward the province, whereas in HOI 1 it only occurs when you arrive in the province. But what the "sychronize attack" button does I have no idea, it might be hidden in the manual somewhere but it's not obvious in the game.

I guess I'll probably figure out most of these issues, but the point is their implementation is anything but user friendly. It's a pity, because for some reason lousy UI's seem to be the usual story with computer wargames, which IMO is a big reason why they don't sell better.

Really though, I just haven't had enough experience with the game to know whether it's going to become a favourite or not. There's a lot I like about it, but then again I have little patience with games that have a crap UI. Things that ought to take seconds in this game take minutes. I'm hoping that with more practice and knowledge I'll be able to do things quicker, if not the clunky UI might eventually drive me away. :juggle2:

But right now? I'm looking forward to getting back to it to teach those evil partisans a lesson or two :laugh4:

[discovery1]

syn attack = sync arrival

select an aircraft, then shift left click a box around the aircraft I think.





(b) The naval system is really confusing. Missions are assigned to sea zones but the names on the map don't appear to correspond to the sea zones in the list. I find I just have to click on one of the names and hope for the best. It's pretty annoying.

Note that some missions cover areas, which are alot larger and have different names. That might be the problem




(a) I still haven't figured out a quick way to divide up armies in the same province, because the only obvious way is to merge everything and then de-merge into all the separate units you want.

Yeah, this is a slight problem. Just divide up things the way you want them went they are built, and reorg your starting troops as you see fit. If you find yourself suffling troops around near the front lines, you probably poorly planned things out and your troops take an org hit. Don't let it happen.



(c) Assigning and re-assigning commanders to units is a pain. Does the list of alternative commanders you get include commanders already assigned to units? I can't tell. But either way, it's a problem, because if they're not, it means you're not looking at all your available commanders, and if they are, there's nothing there to tell you they are already assigned, at least not that I can see.
No commanders assigned to troops are seen in the select commander pool.

[screwtype]

No commanders assigned to troops are seen in the select commander pool.

Are they? But I haven't seen anything there that actually tells you they're already assigned. Which means you might be inadvertently stripping one of your armies of his commander!

Not good.

[discovery1]

No, no. They are jsut not there. If you attach a General to an army they are removed from the pool, then added back when you select remove.
Note that when strat deploying the generals of the divisions being moved end up back in the pool, but are reassigned to their old commands when they arrive usually. Sometime old commands get merged but not often.

Oh, and if you have auto assign commanders turned on, which is generally a good idea, then make sure you assign mj gens to your garrison divs manually otherwise the ai will assign good mj to there, which I imagine you don't want. Just assign your worst commanders to garrisons.

2nd edit: TO see what I mean start a game as GER, and pick out a field marshal(make sure you note who) and assign him a command. Then open put the command menu(be sure to arrange by rank) and look for him.

[screwtype]

Oh sorry, I completely misread your post. When you said: "No commanders assigned to troops are seen in the select commander pool" I thought you meant "No, commanders assigned to troops are seen in the select commander pool." ~:)

Do you happen to know if commanders are sent back to the force pool when you merge two or more led units? I haven't figured it out yet, but I think they are. (Which reminds me of another little UI gripe. There doesn't seem to be any way to select which commander leads the new group when you merge units, it just appears to be assigned randomly).

[discovery1]

Do you happen to know if commanders are sent back to the force pool when you merge two or more led units? I haven't figured it out yet, but I think they are. (Which reminds me of another little UI gripe. There doesn't seem to be any way to select which commander leads the new group when you merge units, it just appears to be assigned randomly).

One of them is yes. As for which gets the post, I think its based on skill. I generally don't merge corps and armys. Just pump out divisions in groups of 3, and get instant corps.

[Samurai Waki]

I've been trying a new strategy as Japan in Doomsday. Built 9 Light Tank Regiments, grouping them into three seperate Corps. Then I built A LOT of Infantry, and blitzed China from Japan held Manchukuo. It's February 1939 and I've managed to Push Nationalist China into Shanxi and Yunnan. Capitulating Communist China was a bit difficult at first, but the AI was dumb enough to focus all of their forces in their Capital, allowing me to ceal off entry from Every side. After I take total control of China (which I presume isn't too far off) I'll have enough forces to easily blitz India from Tibet.

My only problem in the beginning was that Japan has a relatively low IC. However after taking China my IC has improved very much. So now I can focus on building LOTS and LOTS of Marines for my conquests in the Pacific Rim. I plan on taking South East Asia as soon as I'm at war with the Allies. Quickly take down Indonesia, and puppet Australia/New Zealand. Then I'll shift my focus north and capture Far Eastern Russia. Thereby dooming the Soviets by cutting off their Lend-Lease with the Allies. If all goes according to plan and I continue appeasing the Americans, the Pacific Theater may never even happen. I would REALLY Really like to get my hands on Parts of Africa and the Middle East, thereby giving U-Boats valuable basing in Africa as part of my Greater plan to eventually invade America.

[screwtype]

Heh. I've spent all evening blasting those miserable partisan baskits down to zero. And I'm on the verge of getting dissent back to zero, so I can finally pull all those otherwise wasted IC's out of consumer goods (damn whingeing public!)

The problem now is - what to build? what to build? I've got enough garrison divs (24), I'm pumping out two infantry divisons every three months but I've already got 40 or so - gee, it's tough to decide what to go for!

I thought I'd create an assembly line for destroyers, since they're cheap to build, but apart from that I'm undecided. Planes are horrendously expensive, maybe I should build a few tank divisions now?

BTW does anybody know if you get the production line improvements on an already existing (ie geared) assembly line? Or do you have to start all over again to get the benefits? I thought I noticed when I got a tech to build forts 50% faster that it didn't affect the speed of forts I was already building, so it made me wonder.

[screwtype]

I generally don't merge corps and armys. Just pump out divisions in groups of 3, and get instant corps.

Yeah, I think that's a good strategy. If you make bigger groupings it tends to hamper your options on the battlefield a bit, doesn't it?

Hmm, now that you mention it, maybe I should add a third infantry division to my assembly line...


2nd edit: TO see what I mean start a game as GER, and pick out a field marshal(make sure you note who) and assign him a command. Then open put the command menu(be sure to arrange by rank) and look for him.

Actually this issue isn't as important as I thought since I found out you have a complete list of all your commanders, their rank, skills etc and which unit they're assigned to (if any) in the Statistics screen. And although you don't seem to able to go directly from there to the location of the relevant commander, you can make a note of the name of the unit and then just doubleclick on that unit in the unit statistic screen and the game will take you straight there. Not quite as straightforward as it might have been, but good enough ~:)

[SwordsMaster]

Heh. I've spent all evening blasting those miserable partisan baskits down to zero. And I'm on the verge of getting dissent back to zero, so I can finally pull all those otherwise wasted IC's out of consumer goods (damn whingeing public!)

The problem now is - what to build? what to build? I've got enough garrison divs (24), I'm pumping out two infantry divisons every three months but I've already got 40 or so - gee, it's tough to decide what to go for!

I thought I'd create an assembly line for destroyers, since they're cheap to build, but apart from that I'm undecided. Planes are horrendously expensive, maybe I should build a few tank divisions now?

BTW does anybody know if you get the production line improvements on an already existing (ie geared) assembly line? Or do you have to start all over again to get the benefits? I thought I noticed when I got a tech to build forts 50% faster that it didn't affect the speed of forts I was already building, so it made me wonder.


What to build? Well, it depends on your objectives: If you are going to just defend your borders, build infantry with different kinds of artillery brigades attached, if you are planning a war in N.Africa, research and build light tank divisions supported by motorised infantry, if planning to take out Turkey, you'll need Mountain troops...
Tanks and planes are usually expensive, ships are expensive too, but in time more than ICs, I always have a BB or 2 on a prodction line just because it takes me so long to build them.
You might also consider building HQ divisions for every "front". They add to the defence and improve the performance of nearby troops, so they come in handy.

BTW, planes are expensive, but they are great. I love the CAS + tac bomber combo. If you have 2-3 groups on "Ground attack" missions above your front lines, the enemy will be at half strength even before they reach your lines.

[lancelot]

I made some great deals with Germany. 10 supply for 100 energy! That solved my energy problems real quick.


I wouldnt actually say that is a good deal at all! Energy is the most abundant resource and probably the lowest resource in order of value.

Im sure you could get much better deals.

[GoreBag]

Screwtype, you can merge air units in provinces that are occupied by land forces by either de-selecting any forces currently selected, then right-clicking the land forces, an occupied port, or an occupied airbase icon (basically, right-click any military unit once you have nothing selected). A pop-up menu should appear. Select the 'select all air units' option and boom! Merge all you want. Keep in mind, though, that even though a general may be able to command more than 4 air divisions, 4 is the maximum to be under direct command (Air generals, who can command 8 divisions, only really come into play when two air groups are performing missions in the same province and stack with each other - more on this later if you want.)

Alternatively, hold the shift button and click on the airbase until you've selected them all (or only two groups, so you can use the 'exchange' button instead of the 'merge' button).

As for building stuff...well, once you go to war with Britain you can say goodbye to your fleet, and to North Africa. My suggestions would be to build a few destroyers, but not many, and to build some more infantry for immediate transport to North Africa. Allied planes will be on your ass hardcore once things get hairy, so interceptors/fighters will be needed...because you should build naval bombers and smash the British fleets out of existence (until you can capture Gibraltar and the Suez).

[screwtype]

Screwtype, you can merge air units in provinces that are occupied by land forces by either de-selecting any forces currently selected, then right-clicking the land forces, an occupied port, or an occupied airbase icon (basically, right-click any military unit once you have nothing selected). A pop-up menu should appear. Select the 'select all air units' option and boom! Merge all you want.

Hmm, I'm sure I tried that in my last war and it didn't work. I had my airbase in Madrid and every time I tried to click on the airbase, the dang ground units would come up instead.

Anyhow, thanks for the tip and the shift-click thing. I've been trying to use Ctrl-click to multi-select things, maybe that's one mistake I've been making.


As for building stuff...well, once you go to war with Britain you can say goodbye to your fleet, and to North Africa. My suggestions would be to build a few destroyers, but not many, and to build some more infantry for immediate transport to North Africa. Allied planes will be on your ass hardcore once things get hairy, so interceptors/fighters will be needed...because you should build naval bombers and smash the British fleets out of existence (until you can capture Gibraltar and the Suez).

What's the advantage in capturing Gibraltar exactly? And I'm a bit confused here. You seem to be saying both that I can't hang onto North Africa and I should put more troops in there.

As for the destroyers, I'm just building them because they're so cheap. Yeah, I should probably build a few fighters - but planes are so expensive, I can't bring myself to spend the IC. I'm afraid I'm a bit of a cheapskate when it comes to spending IC's ~:) I keep thinking of all those cool divisions I could be building instead ~;p

I'll probably only start building planes once it becomes obvious I need a few.

I'm not sure about the naval bombers though. Some folks over at the Paradox forums seem to think that naval bombers are a waste of IC's, you're better off building tacs because they are more versatile.

Oh - the other reason I'm reluctant to build these more expensive items like planes is because I'm not teched up enough yet, I want to wait until I get better techs so I don't have to spend more IC's upgrading them later. That's one of the reasons I went for the destroyers - the next best model is years away, and by the time I got one out of the shipyard the war would practically be over anyhow.

Speaking of which, upgrading is a bit of conundrum too. I mean, should I upgrade those 1918 Inf to pattern 39, or just build new pattern 39's and demobilize the 18's? I'm not sure, I think it is actually a tad cheaper to upgrade them, but after I get some of those production tech bonuses I'm not sure if upgrading them will be cost effective anymore.

BTW, have you had a look at the great combat bonuses you get with Mountain Divs? They use less supplies than Inf too. In my next game, I think I am going to be very tempted to build an uber-army of Mtn divs instead of Inf, I reckon my armies would be next to unstoppable! :idea2:

[screwtype]

I wouldnt actually say that is a good deal at all! Energy is the most abundant resource and probably the lowest resource in order of value.

Im sure you could get much better deals.

Hmm, well I did shop around before I settled on the German deal. I tried all the major powers and the Germans were way ahead on the offer, probably because we've got better relations.

Maybe I could have got a better deal with a minor power or two, but I tried quite a few minors too and they only had dribs and drabs of energy for sale, and none better than the 10 to 1 Germany deal anyhow.

[discovery1]

I'm not sure about the naval bombers though. Some folks over at the Paradox forums seem to think that naval bombers are a waste of IC's, you're better off building tacs because they are more versatile.

You're joking right? Nav bombers are rediculously overpowered....

And its actually cheaper to disband your armies, well it depends on your free market and standing army sliders. But then you are left w/o an army so....

And ships can't be upgraded.

And no they aren't unstoppable, and they probably are alot more expensive. Use normal inf in places other then mountains anre forests. Makes sense that they use less supplies, since they have much less if any heavy equipment.

[screwtype]

You're joking right? Nav bombers are ridiculously overpowered....

Maybe so, but they're aren't much good for attacking anything but ships, are they? Whereas tacs can be used in both roles (I think).


And its actually cheaper to disband your armies, well it depends on your free market and standing army sliders. But then you are left w/o an army so....

I don't think it is actually. It's taking me about 10 days to upgrade an Inf. That's 10 days at about 5 IC's per day. It's a lot cheaper than a new div, which costs 6 IC's for 60-90 days. Even with a couple of upgrades in a row, it's still probably not more than half the cost of a new division in most cases. At least that's how I've worked it out.


And no they aren't unstoppable, and they probably are alot more expensive. Use normal inf in places other then mountains anre forests. Makes sense that they use less supplies, since they have much less if any heavy equipment.

Not unstoppable maybe, but they get great bonuses in all types of weather and terrain, not just mountains. Have a look in the divisional statistics chart. Their only drawback is that they have 2 soft attack points less. But IMO that is more than offset by the extra 10% org and morale alone.

As for being "probably a lot more expensive", they are a fair bit more expensive, but you can eventually get them down to about 90 days at 7.5 IC, compared to Inf 60 days at 6 IC. And then with the assembly line tech you can get them down to 75 days. Mind you, you can get Inf down to about 40 days with the same tech I think, but still, 75 days ain't bad.

The trick is I think to get your production lines up in '36, so you are taking full advantage of gearing at the earliest possible date, because the first few that run off the production lines are really slow, around the 142 day mark which is only 2 1/2 per year.

[GoreBag]

Screwtype, I meant that if you don't reinforce North Africa now, you'll lose it because you won't be able to run ships in the Mediterranean to transport, since big bad Britain will be on your ass in short order.

Mountain troops also cost 15 manpower, as opposed to 10 for infantry and 8 for a garrison. However, screwtype, check out the later versions of Infantry and compare them to mountain troops. '45 infantry are more generally versatile, but I would still recommend mountain troops, if only for your elite home guard. They move more quickly than infantry in the mountains and hills, too, so capturing and recapturing territory will be less of an issue.

On the naval bomber issue, I wouldn't recommend using Tac bombers if you intend on causing any real damage to a fleet. Sure, they can deal with a few isolated ships, but against the 20+ ships in a single flotilla that Britain will have packing, I'd want, say, 8 nav bombers on them at all times. If you're unwilling to specialise your air force in this way, though, consider Close Air Support bombers. They come in second place for naval attack and pack a very mean punch on infantry and armour. They're very vulnerable against fighters, though.

The idea behind capturing Gibraltar has several motivations, but the biggest one is cutting off transport into the Med. from beyond the Pillars of Hercules. This goes for supplies as well, so if you can push for the Suez, you can trap any naval forces still in the Med. there and starve them to pieces. I caught about 30 ships in my last game as Germany and slowly (too slowly!) bombed them out with my Tactical bombers. Also, Gibraltar can't be invaded from the sea because there are no suitable beaches, and has a gigantic port sitting right there. It's kind of a nice prize.

[screwtype]

GAH. This STOOPID game!

Having taken all of Spain, and then mounted a suprise declaration of war on Britain to get my hands on Gibraltar, I then turned to France which had just started war with Germany. Gave her the old Italian stab-in-the-back special from the Spanish border.

The object was to grab a bunch of French provinces all along the coast so I wouldn't have to transport supplies by sea to my Spanish possessions anymore. However, scarcely had I captured a couple of provinces from France when she capitulated to Germany and established Vichy France. This was IDEAL because it meant I didn't have to compete with Germany for a whole stack of French provinces!

So then I got stuck into Vichy. It took me all evening to beat them down and capture their capital, I had the last few Vichy divisions bottled up around Vichy, and was about to deliver the coup-de-grace when up pops a window which tells me Syria is offering me peace in exchange for three of its provinces. Heck, I thought, why not? One less protagonist and I get three provinces for nothing.

So I hit "accept" and the next second all my divisions vanish from Vichy France! What the heck is going on, is this a bug???

Oh no, what the STOOPID game didn't tell me is that by making peace with Syria, I was also making peace with Vichy. A whole evening's work pissed away by a single mouseclick. YEEEEAAAAARRRRRGH.

:wall: :wall: :wall: :furious3: :furious3: :furious3: :wall: :wall: :wall:

[discovery1]

Dude, just release Nat spain as a puppet. They supply themselves and send you extra resources. Even better is to dow republican spain and ally with them I think, since it gives you a halfway decent ally. Course, all AIs are pansy so that you will have to station troops around gibralter if you want to take it, or mil control Spain, although that may or may not work. Believe me, you want to release them as a puppet. They use all of their ICs, and you don't have the TC burden of Spanish partisans.

And Syria is an ally of Vichy, so a peace with them should be a peace with the mother country.

And I'm surprised Vichy put up such a fight. They NEVER even have an army in the mother country when I play. Course, it might have something to do with the capital being in their American possession....

[screwtype]

I've got the whole of Spain, not just Nationalist Spain ~:)

I did consider making them a puppet but I couldn't figure out how. I was only given a choice to "Annex Nation" after I conquered them as I recall. Do you get as many resources from a puppet though?

And yeah, Vichy wasn't that strong, but then neither am I yet ~:) You just seem to need more divisions as you expand. Half of my divisions attacking Vichy were pattern 1918. Most of my good divisions are protecting beaches here there and everywhere from invasion. I'm not sure if that's necessary, but I don't want to get suprised by a British amphib op. In fact Vichy tried an amphibious invasion of Tripoli, with five divisions, which I managed to beat off with one.

BTW do you know if the AI can mount amphib attacks into port provinces? Or can they only mount them on beaches? Because if they can't mount them on ports that don't have a beach, I'm wasting quite a few troops in useless defence.

To tell the truth, it probably didn't take me all evening to conquer Vichy. It took about three hours I think. But I found it pretty hard work. Infantry divisions are really s-l-o-o-w. And even when you get them into place, you have to wait longer still while they recover org.

So now I can see the advantage of motorized troops. My three semi-motorised divisions got into position so much quicker.

[discovery1]

Click the diplo tab at the top. Then look in the upper right corner of the screen.


Only beach provs can be invaded.

Why are you using your best troops for BEACH DEFENSE? 1918 inf should be able to handle that.

[screwtype]

Click the diplo tab at the top. Then look in the upper right corner of the screen. Only beach provs can be invaded.

Thanks for the clarification. I thought maybe they could invade through major ports too. That will save me some worry. I had three divisions defending Gibraltar alone ~:)


Why are you using your best troops for BEACH DEFENSE? 1918 inf should be able to handle that.

Because when I was playing Brazil in HOI 1 my best troops invariably got creamed by US amphibious invasions.

But actually my use of the old divs against Vichy wasn't really planned that way. I started out the war against Britain/France by gathering all my best divisions for a suprise attack on Gibraltar. I haven't attacked a fort province before, and since G. has a level 6 fort, I thought maybe I'd need a heck of a lot of firepower to take it. So I had 15 of my best divisions on the job. As it turned out, the solitary militia div. defending it was quickly overcome in the first wave of attack, so the fort didn't seem to make a lot of difference.

I then had to redeploy these divisions to the French border, but in the meantime I had a bunch of six 1918 divisions already there. The French attacked along the Bordeaux side of Spain (closest to Britain) and I had to divert six of my divisions there. The other nine went on the offensive along the Marseilles coast, but since I already had those six 1918 divisions sitting there, they ended up being used in the attack as well ~:)

[screwtype]

Screwtype, I meant that if you don't reinforce North Africa now, you'll lose it because you won't be able to run ships in the Mediterranean to transport, since big bad Britain will be on your ass in short order.

Yeah, I just found that out ~:) Once war is declared, you really don't want to risk getting your good divisions sent to the bottom of the sea by the RN.


Mountain troops also cost 15 manpower, as opposed to 10 for infantry and 8 for a garrison. However, screwtype, check out the later versions of Infantry and compare them to mountain troops. '45 infantry are more generally versatile, but I would still recommend mountain troops, if only for your elite home guard. They move more quickly than infantry in the mountains and hills, too, so capturing and recapturing territory will be less of an issue.

Yeah, I didn't pay much attention to the '45 upgrade, because it's so far away, and I figured the war would probably be won or lost by then ~:) But since the game goes right through to 1947, I guess that final upgrade could turn out to be quite useful.


On the naval bomber issue, I wouldn't recommend using Tac bombers if you intend on causing any real damage to a fleet. Sure, they can deal with a few isolated ships, but against the 20+ ships in a single flotilla that Britain will have packing, I'd want, say, 8 nav bombers on them at all times. If you're unwilling to specialise your air force in this way, though, consider Close Air Support bombers. They come in second place for naval attack and pack a very mean punch on infantry and armour. They're very vulnerable against fighters, though.

Yeah, the CAS have some wicked stats, but I only have first gen. tech for them and with a lousy air defense rating of 1, figured they'd be too vulnerable. Maybe with a later tech.


The idea behind capturing Gibraltar has several motivations, but the biggest one is cutting off transport into the Med. from beyond the Pillars of Hercules. This goes for supplies as well, so if you can push for the Suez, you can trap any naval forces still in the Med. there and starve them to pieces. I caught about 30 ships in my last game as Germany and slowly (too slowly!) bombed them out with my Tactical bombers. Also, Gibraltar can't be invaded from the sea because there are no suitable beaches, and has a gigantic port sitting right there. It's kind of a nice prize.

I should probably ask you how to go about "cutting off transport to the Med", but if I get everything from you guys, I guess it will spoil the fun of figuring out these things for myself.

I'm not sure I want to bother too much with the naval war anyhow. Since I just lost most of last night's campaigning time, I'll be restarting the game before I declared war on Britain and France, and this time I think I'll just wait until Vichy is declared and then attack that. That way I won't have to fight the Brits too, at least not for a while longer.

I really just want to keep picking up continental countries without getting involved in the larger war with the major powers. I figure Vichy France, then Yugoslavia, then Greece, then maybe Portugal or Bulgaria or Turkey. Build up my IC's as much as possible before I join the big one. That's the scheme anyhow :eyebrows:

[discovery1]

You want to take out greece before Yugo. It can be done and it gives the yugo's a longer front to defend and you more places to attack. Oh, it would be a REALLY good idea to put some effort into marine divisions. They rock on land and are great for amphibious operations(unlike everything else), which you will find VERY useful as Italy. And don't neglect your navy. You will have to face down the RN in med, especially if things get bogged down in NA. And get the CAS level ones, just be sure to include fighter cover if operating in north africa. Against the RN I think they will be ok, at least if you take malta.

[GoreBag]

Even researching marines improves your ability to launch amphibious assaults with all troops.

Screwtype, to check out what I mean about trapping ships in the med., click on the sea zone directly south of Gibraltar. A little window on the left should pop up. The rest will all fall into place.

[screwtype]

Screwtype, to check out what I mean about trapping ships in the med., click on the sea zone directly south of Gibraltar. A little window on the left should pop up. The rest will all fall into place.

Ah, now I get it. Thanks for the tip ~:)

Vichy won't capitulate. I have to capture all its major provinces before it will, which presumably means all its provinces which have associated VP's. But they are scattered all over the world. Not that I couldn't do it I guess but I wonder if it's worth the bother. Do you think I should bother to capture them all, or just forget about Vichy and forge ahead anyhow?

[discovery1]

Leave Vichy alone. Not worth tracking down all their VPs.

[GoreBag]

Ah, now I get it. Thanks for the tip ~:)

Vichy won't capitulate. I have to capture all its major provinces before it will, which presumably means all its provinces which have associated VP's. But they are scattered all over the world. Not that I couldn't do it I guess but I wonder if it's worth the bother. Do you think I should bother to capture them all, or just forget about Vichy and forge ahead anyhow?

Patience. Slowly, but surely, France's colonies will rebel and join Free France's cause, and then, Vichy will be yours. You can always take Syria/Lebanon in the meantime, and if you're so inclined, Madagascar.

[[DnC]]

I ordered Doomsday at Bol.com on april 30th and the delivery date was between 2-4 days. 3 days later it changed to 2-3 weeks. Okay... a bit annoying. Then about a week later they cancelled the order because they couldn't get it anymore!?

I decide to order it elsewhere and today I got the game. 'Woohoo!' I thought. I slide the disk in my dvd drive. The loading takes ages! The disk is spinning, then stops and makes a clicking sound, starts spinning again, makes a clicking sound and continues doing this for a while. And then FINALLY the loading menu pops up. I click 'Install'..... AND MY PC FREEZES COMPLETELY!!! ARGH!!! It did this a everytime I tried until I gave up. Called the shop I ordered it from and now I have to sent it back and possibly having to wait a week or even longer until I can get my hands on this game! ARGH!!!

You guys who already have DD are so lucky!

I hope I don't get even more unlucky...

[screwtype]

BTW guys, I'm not playing right now because I have other things to do, but thanks for giving me a leg up with this game. You've cut the learning curve by about 90%, I might have given it away in frustration if not for the help I got here. Much appreciated ~:cheers:

[GoreBag]

']I ordered Doomsday at Bol.com on april 30th and the delivery date was between 2-4 days. 3 days later it changed to 2-3 weeks. Okay... a bit annoying. Then about a week later they cancelled the order because they couldn't get it anymore!?

I decide to order it elsewhere and today I got the game. 'Woohoo!' I thought. I slide the disk in my dvd drive. The loading takes ages! The disk is spinning, then stops and makes a clicking sound, starts spinning again, makes a clicking sound and continues doing this for a while. And then FINALLY the loading menu pops up. I click 'Install'..... AND MY PC FREEZES COMPLETELY!!! ARGH!!! It did this a everytime I tried until I gave up. Called the shop I ordered it from and now I have to sent it back and possibly having to wait a week or even longer until I can get my hands on this game! ARGH!!!

You guys who already have DD are so lucky!

I hope I don't get even more unlucky...

Harsh. Play the demo-downloadable version in the meantime?

Screwtype, no problem.

[screwtype]

What's with this screwy game? I started my campaign over, and this time I tried puppeting Republican Spain instead of annexing to see if it made any difference to the goodies I got. I made sure to tick both "puppet nation" and "allow military access" though.

Then I declared war on Nationalist Spain, and now the stupid game won't allow me to attack NS provinces! Whenever I try to attack, there's just a dull "thud" sound and nothing happens.

This can be quite a fun game, but geez, there are so many frickin' control problems and "undocumented features", it gets very frustrating. Why the heck won't it let me attack the Nationalists?

Oh and here's another funny thing. When I puppeted the Republic, I was given a whole bunch of provinces in the middle of the country - where they are most useless - and the Republicans get to retain control of all the coastal provinces??? Doesn't make much sense to me. Why couldn't I have been given a choice about which provinces came to me?

[screwtype]

Edit double post

[SwordsMaster]

What's with this screwy game? I started my campaign over, and this time I tried puppeting Republican Spain instead of annexing to see if it made any difference to the goodies I got. I made sure to tick both "puppet nation" and "allow military access" though.

Then I declared war on Nationalist Spain, and now the stupid game won't allow me to attack NS provinces! Whenever I try to attack, there's just a dull "thud" sound and nothing happens.

This can be quite a fun game, but geez, there are so many frickin' control problems and "undocumented features", it gets very frustrating. Why the heck won't it let me attack the Nationalists?

Oh and here's another funny thing. When I puppeted the Republic, I was given a whole bunch of provinces in the middle of the country - where they are most useless - and the Republicans get to retain control of all the coastal provinces??? Doesn't make much sense to me. Why couldn't I have been given a choice about which provinces came to me?


They get to keep all the provinces with VP that they claim as "national provinces".

[screwtype]

Yeah, but why won't the game let my attack Nationalist Spain from those provinces? I made sure that "allow military access" was one of the conditions, so there's no reason I can see why I can't attack it.

Is it a bug maybe?

[discovery1]

you can only attack from an allies provences, or your own. Mil access isn't enough. After all, if one nation lets another attack through it seems like it would be a casus beli. This case is a bit screw since you are co-beligerents. Just ask them to join your alliance.

[screwtype]

Hmm, tried offering them an alliance and it didn't work. My chance of allying with them is "0", LOL.

I know what I'll do. I'll just have to defeat Nationalist Spain before I make peace with Republican Spain, and then puppet both of them. Or maybe puppet R Spain and annex N Spain, since it's only got a couple of provinces.

But I'm not sure if I can be bothered with this puppeting business anyway. Do you get as many IC's puppeting a nation as you do annexing? Because it's not really *that* much trouble keeping the partisans down. And at least you get total freedom of movement, and don't have to rely on alliances and stuff to do what you want to do...

[mercian billman]

I bought Doomsday and began a campaign with Guatemala, it's now March 1940and I control Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, I've increased my original IC from 7 to 16 and am still in the process of upgrading my conquered territories. I've created an alliance with Germany and without the help of the Luftwaffe I wouldn't have been able to conquer Honduras and Nicaragua as easily as I did.

My only question is why the Axis alliance only includes Guatemala and Slovakia, Italy and Japan are missing from the alliance, but Japanese ships are patrolling off the coast of Guatemala. Does this mean that their supporting the Axis even though their not yet members? Also while help from the Luftwaffe is nice I'd like to be able to enlarge the size of my Air Force and Navy. Right now I only have 3 fighters and 2 Great War light cruisers, I'd like to increase that number to 16 fighters and 4 early cruisers and 4 submarines. I understand that even with these numbers I won't be able to hold off an American invasion without German support, especially if the Americans recieve military access through Mexico. At the very least these assets will allow me to dent American forces, and I doubt that they would be willing to commit to many assets to Central America once their engaged with Japan and Germany. I'm not really worried about the British right now since their occupied in Europe and will be for awhile.

My question is should continue my conquest of Central America and conquer Costa Rica and Panama after the US enters the war. Or should I begin to focus on British colonies in the Carribean and South America?

[ShadesPanther]

It would be easy to gain the British Caribean islands and the part of columbia the Allies own.
I think panama is a puppet of the USA though so DOWing them might bring the yanks into the war.

[Keba]

I bought Doomsday and began a campaign with Guatemala, it's now March 1940and I control Guatemala, Belize, Nicaragua, Honduras, and El Salvador, I've increased my original IC from 7 to 16 and am still in the process of upgrading my conquered territories. I've created an alliance with Germany and without the help of the Luftwaffe I wouldn't have been able to conquer Honduras and Nicaragua as easily as I did.

My only question is why the Axis alliance only includes Guatemala and Slovakia, Italy and Japan are missing from the alliance, but Japanese ships are patrolling off the coast of Guatemala. Does this mean that their supporting the Axis even though their not yet members? Also while help from the Luftwaffe is nice I'd like to be able to enlarge the size of my Air Force and Navy. Right now I only have 3 fighters and 2 Great War light cruisers, I'd like to increase that number to 16 fighters and 4 early cruisers and 4 submarines. I understand that even with these numbers I won't be able to hold off an American invasion without German support, especially if the Americans recieve military access through Mexico. At the very least these assets will allow me to dent American forces, and I doubt that they would be willing to commit to many assets to Central America once their engaged with Japan and Germany. I'm not really worried about the British right now since their occupied in Europe and will be for awhile.

My question is should continue my conquest of Central America and conquer Costa Rica and Panama after the US enters the war. Or should I begin to focus on British colonies in the Carribean and South America?

With 16 IC it will take you forever to build anything really. Ships take 100s of days to build. If you're going after the US, I'd recommend infantry with artillery brigades attached, deployed in mountainous, jungle, or river bordered terrain. Some armor divisions are good too. Airplanes won't do much good, except maybe interceptors and fighters. Conquest is out of the question, you'd need dozens of divisions, both motorized and mechanized, armored divisions and cavalry divisions (do not underestimate cavalry).

From my experience, Japan has it's own alliance, and is usually in a war with Germany's enemies, so they keep away from each other (fairly good relations, too). Italy and Hungary join the Axis after or around the Vichy event.

For learning, I'd reccomend a faction with more industry, and, by extension, more research. There's a reason why the flags are put over next to the scenario ... it's the recommended factions. Italy is a good start, they can avoid war as long as they wish.

Oh, and declaring war on a puppet state gets you into war with the master state, I'd avoid that if I were you.

As far as US entering the conflict, they sometimes don't. I'm playing Japan right now, and the US is keeping neutral (naturally, I didn't attact Pearl Harbor ... yet).

[mercian billman]

Thanks for the advice, I originally chose Guatemala because it was a small country in a relative good position for conquest and they were simple to play. I've heard that Italy is a good faction to start with, but I've also been thinking that in my next campaign I might play as Turkey, they seem to have a decent military and there's a possibility of allying with either the Axis or Allies.

The thing about the US is that I'm allied to Germany so after Pearl Harbor if the German's declare war on the US, Guatemala would be drawn into the conflict by default. Even if that were the case I doubt the US would send a large army to Central America, unless I attacked the Panama Canal. If the US were to go to war with Germany I wouldn't seize the Canal unless the Germans were winning and the US would have to make be using it alot.

Otherwise it would seem like a waste, why seize the canal if the US is hardly using it and if the Germans are losing it makes no sense to worsen my relations with the US.

[discovery1]

The US will kill you either way. There can be no peace, except by event, between alliance members. So just take the canal when war with the US happens.

[GoreBag]

Hmm, tried offering them an alliance and it didn't work. My chance of allying with them is "0", LOL.

I know what I'll do. I'll just have to defeat Nationalist Spain before I make peace with Republican Spain, and then puppet both of them. Or maybe puppet R Spain and annex N Spain, since it's only got a couple of provinces.

But I'm not sure if I can be bothered with this puppeting business anyway. Do you get as many IC's puppeting a nation as you do annexing? Because it's not really *that* much trouble keeping the partisans down. And at least you get total freedom of movement, and don't have to rely on alliances and stuff to do what you want to do...

You don't get IC's from puppet nations. They do, however, have a limit enforced on their resource stockpiles, so you should benefit from having more of what you need to support a greater economy anyhow, minus the factories which you can build yourself.

[mercian billman]

The US will kill you either way. There can be no peace, except by event, between alliance members. So just take the canal when war with the US happens.

Isn't that the truth, On November 12th 1942, US forces occupied Guatemala after driving my forces out of Nicaragua, Honduras, and San Salvador. Even though the size of the land forces was roughly even, the US had total air and naval superiority, in addition my forces were probably demoralized after numerous defeats. My 2 divisions in Belize were defeated by 2 corps of New Zealanders, basicaly I was wrong about the US not willing to commit a significant number of troops to Central America.

I found it to be a fun and challenging campaign, until the US got involved after which it was hopeless.

[screwtype]

I found it to be a fun and challenging campaign, until the US got involved after which it was hopeless.

I could have told you that. I've only been playing HOI for a few weeks myself, I started out playing Brazil in HOI 1 which is quite a powerful faction in that game with something like 114 IC's. But when I accidentally triggered a US declaration of war against me, the US just came and creamed me in no time flat. Although I had plenty of infantry divisions, they were no match for the US divisions which had far higher organization and were pretty much unstoppable.

The only thing I dug was that I was invaded by two US armies headed by MacArthur and Patton. I felt really flattered by all the attention ~;p

In HOI 2, Brazil is seriously nerfed compared to HOI 1 BTW, with only 34 or so IC's. In fact many of the smaller powers in HOI 2 have suprisingly few IC's. Italy is good though, she starts the game with 60 IC's and by conquest and building you can quickly get that up to 80 and thereby get your fifth research slot. For a "minor" nation, Italy is quite powerful, in fact about as powerful as France I believe (which seems wrong to me, but who knows). Anyhow if you play Italy you can learn from my mistakes by reading through this thread ~:)

I did try playing Turkey one time in HOI 1, but because they are a democracy the game wouldn't let me declare war on anybody. So I think that unless you ally with one or other belligerent, you won't get much action playing Turkey, at least early in the game until hostilities break out.

Since Italy is a dictatorship you can declare war on anyone you choose. Early in the game you can attack all those countries which don't have their independence guaranteed by a major power, such as Ethiopia, Albania, and Spain. You can also probably attack Portugal, Yugoslavia and Greece etc before major hostilities break out. So Italy's got a lot of options, a good industrial base, and at the same time is not too big so it's an excellent country for learning the game IMO. My conquest skills have improved to the point that I was able to fight my entire last campaign against Spain on "Extremely Fast" speed (using the Pause button when appropriate of course), I used to have to slow it the game down to "Normal" to handle combat :juggle2: ~:)

[discovery1]

Brazil probably wasn't nerfed as much as you think. Note that there are simply less things to spend ICs on in HoI2. YOu don't pay for research using ICs for example. That and EVERYONE else had their ic amount cut.

[screwtype]

Actually, 34 IC's ain't bad in the context of HOI 2. Many other countries have a lot less. So "seriously nerfed" is probably a bit of an overstatement. All the same I think the minors *have* been nerfed compared to the majors in HOI 2. But I could be wrong about that, I'm hardly an expert on the game at this point.

[Keba]

How does one perform air assaults in Doomsday? I can't seem to figure this out ... six divisions of paratroopers, all loaded onto transports are just sitting around in one of my airbases because I can't figure out how to order them to perform an airdrop.

I mean, I know how to do it, I just don't have the option to perform the attack open. Air superiority is not a problem, since my enemy does not actually have any airplanes or any airbases, nor a navy, nor air defences.

[discovery1]

Load up the paras(make sure the transports have max possible org), select the transports, then control-right click. should see a menu.

[Keba]

Load up the paras(make sure the transports have max possible org), select the transports, then control-right click. should see a menu.

Thanks, turns out the organization was a problem, it seems.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

You also may need to research Battlefield Interdiction doctrine. On the tech overview you'll be able to see how effective an airborne assault (et al) will be, and if it's at 0% or with a -- through it, you won't be able to use that method at all.

[mercian billman]

I've started a new campaign with turkey and Germany just declared war on Poland, unfortunately I can't get involved because after Attaturks death Turkey becomes and isolationist democracy. I've managed to increase the size of my original Army from 10 Inf div to 22 (4 Garrison and 3 Militias) their all upgraded to 1936 standards and now my goal is to equip each div with a either a AT or AA Brigade. The majority of my forces are on my Soviet border, 11 Turkish divisions are arrayed against anywhere between 3-9 Soviet divisions. My Airforce and Navy are still weak so my plan is to improve upon that and hopefully by 1943 I'll be able to enter the war, I still haven't decided if I want to be the Axis or Allies yet, but I think it would be pretty interesting to see if Turkish involvement could change the outcome of the war in the East and the Mediterranean.

[AntiochusIII]

I've started a new campaign with turkey and Germany just declared war on Poland, unfortunately I can't get involved because after Attaturks death Turkey becomes and isolationist democracy. I've managed to increase the size of my original Army from 10 Inf div to 22 (4 Garrison and 3 Militias) their all upgraded to 1936 standards and now my goal is to equip each div with a either a AT or AA Brigade. The majority of my forces are on my Soviet border, 11 Turkish divisions are arrayed against anywhere between 3-9 Soviet divisions. My Airforce and Navy are still weak so my plan is to improve upon that and hopefully by 1943 I'll be able to enter the war, I still haven't decided if I want to be the Axis or Allies yet, but I think it would be pretty interesting to see if Turkish involvement could change the outcome of the war in the East and the Mediterranean.Allies all the way. By 1943 the Germans will be bogged down in Russia and fighting a war they can't win and can't get out, and you can avenge the defeat at Vienna centuries earlier and restore the Empire West!

Or you can take the harder route and rebuild the Caliphate, but that requires one to be an expert in using armies so the Axis can be saved. The key to successful minors are small, but highly optimized and highly effective army, supported by an equally highly effective airforce. Indeed, Mech Infs+SP Art are the best for the creation of said army. Use as few Inf as possible and as many specialized ones as possible. But, as said, that would require an expert in knowing to use what when and where, which I am not. Then you'll have to beat the USA in Africa and tie its forces down there to save Fortress Europa from a D-Day, and meanwhile you'll have to strike at the Russians and save the Germans. Which, of course, can be done.

By the way, screwtype, I for one wouldn't count Italy as a minor. It obviously was very powerful, able to stand up to other majors if properly led (aka by the human), and historically it was certainly more of a militarist nation than France was, fascist and all. Sadly, or may be for the best, its historical performance wasn't too good due to the general incompetence of the Italian officer corps, reflected probably in the low skills of the generals, and all those old guard craps, not as bad as France, though.

[SwordsMaster]

Yup, MEch+SP is very good, but I also like the old Mot+Heavy armoured, or mech+Heavy armoured combo. I kinda like marines+different artillery or engineers too, specially in the Mediterranean.

[Keba]

Allies all the way. By 1943 the Germans will be bogged down in Russia and fighting a war they can't win and can't get out, and you can avenge the defeat at Vienna centuries earlier and restore the Empire West!

Right, except for the situations when they don't ... like my campaign with Japan ... I decide to attack the Soviets the moment the Germans do, so I stack some 80 or so divisions (both my own and allied) on the borders ... and I wait.

It's 1944 and Germany still hasn't attacked the Soviets ... so I decide to go in alone. The moment I do so, however, the USA declares war on me. I still met with resounding success in Siberia and the Caucaus (I had taken Iraq and Persia) isolating and devastating a large number of Soviet divisions, but the USA's Navy (while not a match in a straight up fight, they operate in more smaller groups and have mobility) is giving me a headache ... they've retaken New Zealand, and are busily taking Australia.

And Germany is still doing nothing, except fighting the Battle of Britain (with a bunch of carriers on their side).

Oh, and what does a nuke precisely do? If I, say, nuke Washington DC and New York ... what do I get out of all the wasted resources on ICBMs and Nukes?

[screwtype]

By the way, screwtype, I for one wouldn't count Italy as a minor. It obviously was very powerful, able to stand up to other majors if properly led (aka by the human), and historically it was certainly more of a militarist nation than France was, fascist and all. Sadly, or may be for the best, its historical performance wasn't too good due to the general incompetence of the Italian officer corps, reflected probably in the low skills of the generals, and all those old guard craps, not as bad as France, though.

I just checked the CIA Factbook to compare the GDP of France and Italy and they are much closer than I thought - 2.06 Trillion to 1.7 Trillion.

I've always assumed that Italy was quite a bit smaller and more backward economically than the former "Great Powers" of Britain and France, but it turns out it is not far behind.

BTW, I think Italy's mediocre performance in WWII can probably be explained as much by the army's poor organization than anything else. Mussolini wanted to exaggerate Italy's strength by having lots of Divisions, but to do that he had to make the Divisions smaller, which meant they weren't a match for their Allied counterparts. This is not it seems reflected in the game, where Italy's Divisions seem to be organized pretty much the same as everyone else's.

[screwtype]

Yup, MEch+SP is very good, but I also like the old Mot+Heavy armoured, or mech+Heavy armoured combo. I kinda like marines+different artillery or engineers too, specially in the Mediterranean.

Don't motorized/mech units use a lot of fuel? I've been a bit discouraged to build such units because some guys on the Paradox forums say that air power gives far more bang for the buck, and that infantry divisions combined with air power are pretty much all you need.

[Samurai Waki]

Aside From Speed. And Air Power is relatively useless if an enemy is dug in.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Infantry and air power is probably better for your money then motorized and air power, unless you blitz often. But mechanized and air power, especially backed up with tanks, packs a huge punch, and is worth every barrel of oil, every spent IC, every carton of supplies, IMO.

[screwtype]

Oh that's good, because in spite of the advice I mentioned, I still find myself lusting after Panzer Divisions ~:)

[ShadesPanther]

Yes, You have to have Panzer divisions. I remember as Romania in HOI1 I decided to build a Navy and panzers (Panzers were cheaper back then) I got invaded by the British. A transport group with only 2 or threee destroyers got smashed by my Battleship and a few cruisers. Unfortunately, Their Home Fleet arrived and promptly sent my lovely fleet to the bottom. I felt like crying. :embarassed: :wall:

[GoreBag]

Oh that's good, because in spite of the advice I mentioned, I still find myself lusting after Panzer Divisions ~:)

Watch your TC, especially if you're not using the economic giants. Motorized and mechanised divisions require more TC (not sure of the ratio) than infantry, who require about 1 TC per division. Each Panzer division takes 3, unless I'm mistaken - this is all after modifiers for distance and offensive supplification. This may not seem too bad at first, but keep in mind the supply issues that you'll incur after leading a successful campaign, further bogged down through occupied territory maintence and the absolutely insane partisan activity. While tanks may seem nearly invincible, a large bunch of them off in foreign territory will drag down your supply efficiency. I learned this the hard way.

Did I mention that sub-optimal TC affects unit speed?

[AntiochusIII]

Yes, actually, the main reason for the minors to go this way is really not the actual combat performance, but manpower.

These guys eat less manpower than Infantry for the same amount of "success," per se.

Though their combat powers are very, very useful because they're fast. It's all about swift strikes and encirclements. As a minor, attritional war is your doom. Local superiority is everything. That's why the airforce is also crucial. Striking on dug-in divisions or long strategic bombing campaigns are pointless as minors: they need the best of CAS or TACs, guarded by skilled interceptors. Entire divisions will die even faster than encirclements if your planes can overwhelm the front and bomb them into Oblivion, and TACs on Logistical Strike can delay precious reinforcements from the enemy.

However, they will need more resources and TC per div. to be effective than Infantry.

And the reason for mechs is not because they're any better than the panzers--panzers are waaaay cooler anyway--but that they achieve roughly the same firepower with much less cost in research, production, and maintenance. Economics.

The Navy, though, is a sad state. Only a Great Power or a Great Power-to be (i.e. a brilliantly-played human minor) can produce navies that can challenge the existing superpowers. And even then they'll require local superiority like nothing else.

Keba: Nukes increase dissent on enemies. They also do significant, if sadly not permanent, damage on the static province assets of the province that got nuked. Some divisions will suffer too, though much less than one wants it to be.

Some players like to build up a nuclear arsenal of six or more and unleash them on the USA at once at the highest IC provinces (the more IC damaged in a shot, the higher the dissent) and see partisan uprisings scattering around the country. Funny and actually is quite effective if combined with invasions to exploit the opportunity, since dissent, as we must all remember, also reduce combat ability.

[screwtype]

Bah. I just lost my entire battle fleet - in a single battle!

I invaded Vichy, and had just about finished polishing them off on the mainland with a very neat, well conducted campaign when they started invading a couple of useless Italian provinces of mine in Africa. I decided to intervene to stop them because I wanted to keep one of those provinces to use as an invasion base for one of their African VP provinces - Oran, I think it was.

So I fired up my transport fleet - six transports carrying six elite divisions, escorted by my four battleships plus my two best cruisers and six destroyers. I only just got them out of Genoa when they ran into a Vichy fleet - sixteen ships including a flattop and four battleships.

My fleet started losing so I tried to extricate it but couldn't. (Are you able to break off contact in a naval battle? The game doesn't seem to let you). So I rushed my nav bombers, plus the rest of my navy to the rescue.

The result? The battle went on for about three days, they lost the flattop, I lost 45 ships! - my entire navy, along with six elite divisions and two good commanders, all to the bottom of the sea.

YEEEAAARGH. ~:mad ~:mad ~:mad

Now I'm going to have to replay the entire Vichy campaign over again. I bet it doesn't go as well this time!

But I can't help thinking something is seriously up with the naval combat system. It's just plain RIDICULOUS to lose 45 ships in one battle! You should be able to disengage if you're losing. Also, your transports should be able to disperse and get out of the way when they have escorts to cover their retreat. Did I do something wrong to have this happen, or is the naval combat system just screwed up?

Apart from which, don't those damn Vichies know they are supposed to be a pathetic bunch of cowardly collaborators and surrender monkeys? :furious3:


Watch your TC, especially if you're not using the economic giants. Motorized and mechanised divisions require more TC (not sure of the ratio) than infantry, who require about 1 TC per division. Each Panzer division takes 3, unless I'm mistaken - this is all after modifiers for distance and offensive supplification. This may not seem too bad at first, but keep in mind the supply issues that you'll incur after leading a successful campaign, further bogged down through occupied territory maintence and the absolutely insane partisan activity. While tanks may seem nearly invincible, a large bunch of them off in foreign territory will drag down your supply efficiency. I learned this the hard way.

Did I mention that sub-optimal TC affects unit speed?

Yeah, I know about the TC, I've had a lot of problems with that. I only plan to build maybe three Armoured Divisions at most. Italy doesn't really have a huge need for them, at least, not at this point in the game. Or maybe I'll go for the mech divs since Antiochus seems to think they're better value.

What I am wondering about is though whether I should build a rocket site. Actually, I'm already building it, but it's horrendously expensive and I'm not sure if it's worth it. I'm building it because I want to give myself the best possible chance of getting jet planes later in the game, but it isn't clear from the manual whether you actually need the rocket site to do this. Do I really need it, or will I get the jets anyhow?

[discovery1]

Now I'm going to have to replay the entire Vichy campaign over again. I bet it doesn't go as well this time!

But I can't help thinking something is seriously up with the naval combat system. It's just plain RIDICULOUS to lose 45 ships in one battle! You should be able to disengage if you're losing. Also, your transports should be able to disperse and get out of the way when they have escorts to cover their retreat. Did I do something wrong to have this happen, or is the naval combat system just screwed up?

YOur commander was probably terrible, plus bad doctrine. Result being terrible positioning values. And if that happens they will be EXTEREMLY hard to shake, the result being that your fleet is butchered. Also watch for stacking penalties. Also note that you can not run in the first 4 hours. You can tell your transports to run, but they at least need to be in their own fleet, not stacked with ships that you want to stay and fight. And your commanders aren't dead btw.

[screwtype]

Oh, the commanders somehow magically survived? They must be the only guys who did!

And the transports should have been in their own fleet? But will the two fleets stick together in movement? And what's to stop the enemy picking on my transport fleet instead of the supposed escort fleet?

But yeah, it's true I've completely neglected the naval doctrines. I doubt I could have advanced far in them anyhow, but not being able to disengage a battle for three entire days is just nuts!

And I don't know what was up with my supposedly uber-killer nav bombers. Their impact seemed to be negligible. In fact I couldn't even get them to fly for the last couple of days. It didn't seem to be bad weather, perhaps they were disorganized by AA fire or something.

And what about the rocket site? Do I need to build it?

[screwtype]

Yes, actually, the main reason for the minors to go this way is really not the actual combat performance, but manpower.

These guys eat less manpower than Infantry for the same amount of "success," per se.

I can't believe manpower could ever be a problem. I already have over 70 divisions, and I still have manpower of about 850. That's another what? 85 Infantry Divisions?


Though their combat powers are very, very useful because they're fast. It's all about swift strikes and encirclements. As a minor, attritional war is your doom. Local superiority is everything. That's why the airforce is also crucial. Striking on dug-in divisions or long strategic bombing campaigns are pointless as minors: they need the best of CAS or TACs, guarded by skilled interceptors. Entire divisions will die even faster than encirclements if your planes can overwhelm the front and bomb them into Oblivion, and TACs on Logistical Strike can delay precious reinforcements from the enemy.

Must say I haven't had much problem beating the other guys so far. Yugoslavia was probably the toughest so far and they weren't very tough. I just use my mountain divisions as my mobile force, they move faster than infantry divisions and can generally beat enemy divisions to the province they're trying to retreat to, which means effectively they get surrounded and destroyed. At least, that's how it seems to work.

As for bombers, I just put them on Interdiction and forget them. I can't be bothered trying to finesse with different attacks. Causing the enemy to lose org just keeps 'em retreating, so you can eventually corral them where you want and destroy them.

[quote=AntiochusIIIThe Navy, though, is a sad state. Only a Great Power or a Great Power-to be (i.e. a brilliantly-played human minor) can produce navies that can challenge the existing superpowers. And even then they'll require local superiority like nothing else.[/quote]

As I just found out. See my post about the big naval battle with Vichy above (Vichy! Bah).

[GoreBag]

And the transports should have been in their own fleet? But will the two fleets stick together in movement? And what's to stop the enemy picking on my transport fleet instead of the supposed escort fleet?

He meant that unless the fleet is warship-only, it cannot be made to flee the sea zone within the first four hours after contact is made.


But yeah, it's true I've completely neglected the naval doctrines. I doubt I could have advanced far in them anyhow, but not being able to disengage a battle for three entire days is just nuts!

The issue there is the carrier. It has a much greater range than the other ships around, since it counts the Carrier Air Group as being part of the ship's range. Your battleships will try their best to close, but the other fleet can simply maintain their distance and reign death upon you thanks to the attached planes.


And I don't know what was up with my supposedly uber-killer nav bombers. Their impact seemed to be negligible. In fact I couldn't even get them to fly for the last couple of days. It didn't seem to be bad weather, perhaps they were disorganized by AA fire or something.

If they're not flying, you should pay more attention to the mission parameter popup window. The game defaults delay of action when the planes are under 50% strength or organisation, but you can lower this yourself before you send them off. Also, their effect won't be so great on an entire assembled fleet at once, especially, if I understand properly, if the fleet has a CAG to fight off incoming planes. How many naval bombers do you have?


And what about the rocket site? Do I need to build it?

Well, are you intending on researching rocketry or building missiles? Having a rocket site speeds up research for the rocketry-oriented technologies, but seeing good results can involved a lot of waiting, sometimes.

[screwtype]

He meant that unless the fleet is warship-only, it cannot be made to flee the sea zone within the first four hours after contact is made.

Hmm, okay. But it still doesn't answer my question regarding why the enemy fleet might just not find my transport fleet instead and bomb that to hell.


The issue there is the carrier. It has a much greater range than the other ships around, since it counts the Carrier Air Group as being part of the ship's range. Your battleships will try their best to close, but the other fleet can simply maintain their distance and reign death upon you thanks to the attached planes.

Hmm, maybe that was the problem, but if so carriers must be pretty awesome. I lost 45 ships! And I actually sunk the carrier about two thirds of the way through the battle.


If they're not flying, you should pay more attention to the mission parameter popup window. The game defaults delay of action when the planes are under 50% strength or organisation, but you can lower this yourself before you send them off. Also, their effect won't be so great on an entire assembled fleet at once, especially, if I understand properly, if the fleet has a CAG to fight off incoming planes. How many naval bombers do you have?

I only had three level one nav bombers, each with a bomb factor of four. But I also threw my tacs into the fray, I had four of them with a bomb factor of 3 apiece. So I had seven bombers altogether. But after flying a few missions, they just stopped, and I couldn't figure out why. I'd order them to fly into the zone, and then they would just remain at their airports.


Well, are you intending on researching rocketry or building missiles? Having a rocket site speeds up research for the rocketry-oriented technologies, but seeing good results can involved a lot of waiting, sometimes.

I don't care about rockets. All I want is to make sure I get turbojet airplanes later in the war. I'm not sure if I can get them without a rocket station, that's all.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Oh, the commanders somehow magically survived? They must be the only guys who did!

And what about the rocket site? Do I need to build it?

A) Commanders go back to the commander selection pool when their command is destroyed.

B) You don't need to, but it will speed up research.

[discovery1]

I don't care about rockets. All I want is to make sure I get turbojet airplanes later in the war. I'm not sure if I can get them without a rocket station, that's all.

When researching stuff, look at the kinds of skills that are need to research it. Turbo jets will be some rocketry skill, and like was said before rocket research centers help speed rocketry research.

[screwtype]

When researching stuff, look at the kinds of skills that are need to research it. Turbo jets will be some rocketry skill, and like was said before rocket research centers help speed rocketry research.

Maybe I won't bother with it then. It takes 162 days to build and costs 40 IC, since I only want jet planes and won't be bothering with rockets, it's probably a waste of IC's.

[Keba]

Maybe I won't bother with it then. It takes 162 days to build and costs 40 IC, since I only want jet planes and won't be bothering with rockets, it's probably a waste of IC's.

Rockets beat strategic bombers any day ... you can cranck them out pretty fast (with the Rocket assembly line tech), they are fairly cheap and ruin industry like you wouldn't believe. As an added plus, little or no interception chance, unless the enemy waste resources on rocket interceptors.

As an added plus, the ICBM is exceptionally useful, you can hit an enemy a long way away without threat from retaliation. Add to that that you can mount nukes on those ... :dizzy2:

Personally, I always go for turbojet aircraft ... they can give you an exceptional edge if used early on (mostly because I almost never bother making a lot of aircraft ... I let my 'allies' handle that battlefield role mostly).

Keep in mind that the fact that you're not the biggest industrial power in your alliance actually takes away a lot of the need to shoulder the pressure. With, say, Germany or USA, you practically fight the war on your own, while your allies hold a support role (like holding a part of the front, or small-scale advances ... or just providing convenient aribases and ports).

[screwtype]

Rockets beat strategic bombers any day ... you can cranck them out pretty fast (with the Rocket assembly line tech), they are fairly cheap and ruin industry like you wouldn't believe. As an added plus, little or no interception chance, unless the enemy waste resources on rocket interceptors.

I'm only playing Italy ya know! :laugh4:

I haven't the resources to build everything. I think I'll leave the rockets to Germany...


As an added plus, the ICBM is exceptionally useful, you can hit an enemy a long way away without threat from retaliation. Add to that that you can mount nukes on those ... :dizzy2:

No hope of Italy getting nukes. Italy doesn't have a single nuclear research team. It would take forever to research.


Personally, I always go for turbojet aircraft ... they can give you an exceptional edge if used early on (mostly because I almost never bother making a lot of aircraft ... I let my 'allies' handle that battlefield role mostly).

Yeah, I'm keen on the jets, since standard aircraft research only has three levels (and I already have two of them, by 1941).


Keep in mind that the fact that you're not the biggest industrial power in your alliance actually takes away a lot of the need to shoulder the pressure. With, say, Germany or USA, you practically fight the war on your own, while your allies hold a support role (like holding a part of the front, or small-scale advances ... or just providing convenient aribases and ports).

I'm not actually in an alliance, yet ~:) I plan to try and stay out of the big war until I'm ready, which means when I've done all the conquest I want to in order to build up my strength to the max. Then, maybe I'll go into alliance with Germany and mount a suprise attack on Gibraltar and Suez, thus turning the entire Mediterranean into an Italian lake.

Or maybe just for fun, I'll throw my lot in with the Allies and mount a suprise invasion of Germany :eyebrows: I haven't decided yet.

I'm not sure what else I want to conquer yet. I've taken Spain, Albania, Yugoslavia and Greece (the latter puppeted) and I'm about to take Vichy, which I will probably annex. After that I might take Portugal and puppet that, and/or Bulgaria and Turkey. The US is not very happy with me already though, so I may not be able to take all these without triggering a US DoW.

The main disadvantage of not being in an alliance is - no help with research. But I think one is amply compensated by the fact that you're not wasting IC's defending yourself against the major powers...

[SwordsMaster]

About Vichy... They have VP provinces as far as Saigon. It is no enough to take out their european holdings , and Dakar, you will have to take out Asia too. So prepare for a long war. I did it once, shipping a single paratrooper to Saigon to finish them off, but it is hopeless, you can't hope to mantain order, and your TC will go through the roof.

[screwtype]

Maybe I should just puppet them then? I've almost got enough VP's to do it.

Somebody said something about being patient and waiting for their farflung provinces to go to Free France. I'm not too sure about this though - won't Free France want to declare war on me to get its Vichy territories back?

[SwordsMaster]

Maybe I should just puppet them then? I've almost got enough VP's to do it.

Somebody said something about being patient and waiting for their farflung provinces to go to Free France. I'm not too sure about this though - won't Free France want to declare war on me to get its Vichy territories back?


They will, if you start messing with the allies and generally get your belligerance too high. For some reason those damn democracies don't like you if your belligerance is high.

Those provinces might go to Free France because Vichy is weakened, but they won't necessarily depending on how the game progresses. I believe puppeting Vichy is the best option, but if you control Spain, you migh want to leave a land corridor between Spain and Italy to be able to deploy troops there if nothing else.

[screwtype]

They will, if you start messing with the allies and generally get your belligerance too high. For some reason those damn democracies don't like you if your belligerance is high.

Yeah, my popularity with the US is already -181, and I think they go to war with you at -200 don't they?

Oddly enough, I'm only at -139 with Britain. Maybe they're secretly happy to see their old enemy France get her come-uppance ~:)


Those provinces might go to Free France because Vichy is weakened, but they won't necessarily depending on how the game progresses. I believe puppeting Vichy is the best option, but if you control Spain, you migh want to leave a land corridor between Spain and Italy to be able to deploy troops there if nothing else.

How do I get a land corridor, you mean by demanding certain provinces from them? I hadn't really thought of that. My main purpose in fighting Vichy is to get that land corridor to Spain, so maybe that's the best shot. I was going to demand a puppet state plus military access, but demanding provinces instead of military access might make more sense, I guess. Might get me a few extra IC's, too.

[discovery1]

Yeah, my popularity with the US is already -181, and I think they go to war with you at -200 don't they?

Oddly enough, I'm only at -139 with Britain. Maybe they're secretly happy to see their old enemy France get her come-uppance

Beligerence, not your relations, determine when they can go to war with you. I'm not too sure how relations come into it. I know they do have to do with trading agreements(better relations = better deals).

[GoreBag]

The better your relations with another country, the better off most deals will be. Presuading them to join your fledgling alliance or to sign a non-aggression pact is much easier if you're on better terms with the country. They won't necessarily declare war if your relations have sunk to -200, but, in most cases, nations won't declare war on you if relations are at +200, even if you're very belligerent.

[screwtype]

I assumed belligerence fed into the relationship factor, and that it was ultimately relationship that caused you to go to war. But that was only my assumption.

I think my belligerence is around 70 or 80 right now.


The better your relations with another country, the better off most deals will be. Presuading them to join your fledgling alliance or to sign a non-aggression pact is much easier if you're on better terms with the country.

Yeah, I'm just beginning to realize the advantages of alliances. If you can get an alliance and then assume military control of its forces, it can make more sense than invading and annexing, because you effectively get the use of ALL that country's IC's instead of just a few. You also get their army for free, and you don't have to support it yourself. You can also get blueprints from them.

Probably the only downside of an alliance I think is that you can't actually control what that country builds or researches. Apart from that, alliances can be quite useful I think. I'm in an alliance with Bulgaria now. Now I will probably have to use my influence on it until it lets me get control of its military. Or maybe I will have to conduct a coup?

[Samurai Waki]

Ideally you want to keep your belligerance below 50. Played as Argentina took Chile, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, Uraguay, and Brazil. I fended off the US for quite awhile actually. Tanks and Mech Inf. Don't do so hot in the Jungles and we were at a Stand Still. Was going to take Venezuela, so I declared war, my Belligerance went over 50 and I was suddenly at War with the UK, Italy, France, and the USSR. then I got pwned.

[screwtype]

Yeah, I think next time I play Italy I'll try to take Republican Spain before the civil war breaks out. That's one less faction I'll get belligerence points for DoW'ing.

And then maybe I won't bother DoW'ing Albania either. Maybe I'll just try to coup and puppet or something. It only has a couple of pretty useless provinces, hardly worth the extra belligerence points you get for the DoW.

BTW, I've remained at war with Ethiopia right throughout this game because I've noticed that you only use half as many consumer goods when you're at war. I'm not sure if there's a downside to being permanently at war though, in terms of production I mean. I thought I read something about it in the manual but haven't been able to find it again. Is there any downside you know of, either in terms of production or diplomacy, to being at war?

[AntiochusIII]

I can't believe manpower could ever be a problem. I already have over 70 divisions, and I still have manpower of about 850. That's another what? 85 Infantry Divisions?The drain is not the division-building, mainly, since we can always calculate that. The true drain, however, is reinforcements. The divisions suffer strength losses in combat, and very high losses in heavy combat; you'll have to reinforce them with the ICs and manpower or have understrength divisions that can't perform properly.

Italy is not suffering much from that point, though, unlike, say, Japan in China, or an Axis Minor fighting in Russia.

Also, avoid offensives in winter if you want your troops to live. It's a huge bonus on the enemy, anyway.

Must say I haven't had much problem beating the other guys so far. Yugoslavia was probably the toughest so far and they weren't very tough. I just use my mountain divisions as my mobile force, they move faster than infantry divisions and can generally beat enemy divisions to the province they're trying to retreat to, which means effectively they get surrounded and destroyed. At least, that's how it seems to work.Hey, you're not facing anything like the Russian Bear yet. Or the African campaign; or something such. Those guys...you will be outnumbered eventually, if not locally, and you'll have to encircle and destroy them. Beating up the minors are easier: they don't have hundreds of divisions to throw against you.

Your way of destroying enemy divisions is similar to mine, but I have serious problems fighting the Russians that way. The traditional encirclements (taking provinces surrounding a province with enemy forces in, and destroy that pocket) works better.

As for bombers, I just put them on Interdiction and forget them. I can't be bothered trying to finesse with different attacks. Causing the enemy to lose org just keeps 'em retreating, so you can eventually corral them where you want and destroy them.Interdiction is useful in battles (they turn the tides, too) and against enemy positions. But you'll be better off with ground attack on those retreating divisions. When they're moving or retreating, divisions are awfully vulnerable to annihilation by a sufficiently persevere airbombing, even without direct groundfighting. And my God it's beautiful when that crazy Panzer division that beat the crap out of your infantry just evaporates into thin air thanks to your bombers' efforts.

As I just found out. See my post about the big naval battle with Vichy above (Vichy! Bah).Ouch. Be careful of carriers. I'm a traditionalist and love my BBs, but the carriers own me unless my fleet's made up of a crapload of destroyers.

Also, Italy's fleet, though large by anyone's (except the mightiest's) standard, is very old. It's like the French's, all class I, class II stuff. So though your Regia Marina looks mighty in numbers and might be able to just about survive the fight with the Royal Navy, it really is not, unless you strengthen it:

If you don't have the resources for the big ones (BBs, CVs), build a crapload of as modern destroyers as possible. They're the fastest-building of all the fighting surface ships, so it won't be years before your fleet can even do anything, and in numbers they can be surprisingly good. Even though they lack the weight of the big ones, you can afford their losses. Mix them with the old battleships and you just might stand a chance.

The way the Navy works is this way: the fleets detect each other. They close in. Those with longer range "fire" first, in which carriers benefit. The admirals will maneuver for the "best" fighting spot, the positioning value. If out of position they can't really fight. The doctrines mark your positioning value, as well as the skill of the Admiral. The ships have specific ranges where they can join combat. Carriers have 100+ km with cag brigades, while the next-longest one, the Battleship, is 32+km. That's why people fear carriers so much. Therefore, it is best to research better doctrines for your fleets if you want them to perform. And the carriers fight with airpower: only the smaller ships, CL or DD's, are truly capable of countering airpower, and only in numbers, except, of course, if you have carriers of your own...

One trick that people like to do in building up their navies is to focus on carriers, building level one carriers. It's quite an exploit, actually, since ships don't upgrade, but the cag brigades on carriers upgrade like other brigades, so the carriers won't be obsolete. Of course, Italy is not suited for carriers at all. Their doctrine is the Battleship one.

[screwtype]

The drain is not the division-building, mainly, since we can always calculate that. The true drain, however, is reinforcements. The divisions suffer strength losses in combat, and very high losses in heavy combat; you'll have to reinforce them with the ICs and manpower or have understrength divisions that can't perform properly.

Italy is not suffering much from that point, though, unlike, say, Japan in China, or an Axis Minor fighting in Russia.

Oh, of course, I didn't think of that. Obviously just beating up the minors isn't going to cause too many problems in that regard, is it? ~:)


Interdiction is useful in battles (they turn the tides, too) and against enemy positions. But you'll be better off with ground attack on those retreating divisions. When they're moving or retreating, divisions are awfully vulnerable to annihilation by a sufficiently persevere airbombing, even without direct groundfighting. And my God it's beautiful when that crazy Panzer division that beat the crap out of your infantry just evaporates into thin air thanks to your bombers' efforts.

Yeah, I should have realized that myself from a little battle I had yesterday. A couple of enemy divisions were taking so long to retreat out of a province of mine I decided to switch to ground attack just to try and get rid of them. Three sorties and poof! they were gone. I watched the battles - half the unit strength gone in a single attack!

This is one tactic I obviously must make more use of...


Ouch. Be careful of carriers. I'm a traditionalist and love my BBs, but the carriers own me unless my fleet's made up of a crapload of destroyers...


I'm deliberately neglecting my fleet because I figure that once I take Gibraltar and Suez the Med. will be an Italian lake anyhow. I will then just use Gorebag's trick of annihilating enemy shipping with navs, and then it won't make a lick of difference how ancient my ships and naval doctrine are (I hope).

My biggest problem at this stage is deciding who to go for next. I've got Albania, Yugoslavia, Greece and all the important bits of Vichy, I figure the next target should be either Portugal or Turkey. But since Portugal has VP provinces scattered all over it's another Vichy and I'm probably better off making an alliance with it.

That leaves Turkey. I figure I could take Turkey and then use it as a base to attack the Soviet oil producing provinces such as Baku and Grozny - in other words, try to help the Krauts beat the Soviets.

But then since my belligerence is already 116, just the attack on Turkey will probably trigger an Allied DoW so it probably makes more sense to secure my flank first. That means DoW'ing the Allies now by mounting a suprise attack on Gibraltar and Suez.

So even though I'm reluctant to enter the Big War against the Allies, logic seems to suggest that this is the sensible thing to do at this point. Alternatively though, I could sit tight for another year, maybe two, and just build up my strength so I'd be better prepared to defend myself when I do make the move. But then the Allies will be building up their strength too...hard choice to make :juggle2:

[Keba]

But then since my belligerence is already 116, just the attack on Turkey will probably trigger an Allied DoW so it probably makes more sense to secure my flank first. That means DoW'ing the Allies now by mounting a suprise attack on Gibraltar and Suez.

So even though I'm reluctant to enter the Big War against the Allies, logic seems to suggest that this is the sensible thing to do at this point. Alternatively though, I could sit tight for another year, maybe two, and just build up my strength so I'd be better prepared to defend myself when I do make the move. But then the Allies will be building up their strength too...hard choice to make :juggle2:

The problem is that one of the countries Guaranteeing the independence of Turkey is the Soviet Union, I learned that the hard way whent they declared war on me.

In africa, I'd advise you not to stretch yourself too thin. I had no problems taking out the Brits in Egypt and I've advanced as far as Somalia (and linked up with the troops in Ethiopia), but now the TC is over the top, and I've got too few units for too many provinces (and they take so long to get anywhere, and those are armored and motorized divisions). So, yes, I'd take Egypt and the Suez, but would not advance too far south, Ethiopia should be the lower end (maybe take out the Free French provinces).

[screwtype]

Yeah, I don't intend to go any further than the Med coast really. I just want to take all the main ports around the Med. coast and the rest I probably won't bother with. I don't really care what happens to Ethiopia either, it's got nothing in it and I just have four militia divs there to keep the natives under control.

I didn't notice a Soviet guarantee of independance for Turkey but I'll check that out before attacking. Thanks for reminding me.

[SwordsMaster]

In my las game, I puppeted Ethiopia and shipped all my troops there to N.Africa to take and hold Suez, Alexandria and all the other bits. For fighting in Africa, my motto is if a province has TC< 20 % it isn't worth taking unles is a VP province. Just because it takes so long to walk in and out, that if the enemy attacks those provinces, you'll be aware of that with enought ime to set up a defense or counterattack anyway.

You can DoW Portugal and take everything of theirs but Lisbon, which you can't take, and get some african territorise and islands off the deal too, if you want them (I did, and then puppeted them too, but the allies quickly occupied them in the conflict...) My navy still got thrashed once, even after taking Gibraltar and Suez, because I deprived Vichy from all their ports, so their huge fleet was just roaming around the med, and ran into my transports - which was a miserable sight - But I am killing them off one at a time with aviation and subs. Still cost me a lot of time and resources - those italian admirals are mostly worthless.

Turkey. If they DoW you, you can take Istanbul, and garrison with infantry and artillery, and take the mountain south provinces, garrison with your trusty mountain troops, and let the turks lose men and sleep trying to kick you out. Even better, if you are allied to Blgaria, use their troops to invade Turkey from sea and through Istanbul, which serves 2 purposes: weakens both Turkey and Bulgaria, and forces Bu;garia t spend ICs on refitting the troops, which means you are going to be more advanced than them technologicaly, should you wish to use that advantage. It also leaves the Bulgarian divisions and turkish territory between you and the russians, if they are guaranteeing independences or get into the war some other way.

One thing though: When the war with the brits breaks out, take Iraq ASAP and garrison it with strong divisions in strategic points, as the brits will try hard to get it back, and while their power is crumbling in the mediterranean and Africa because they are out of supplies, they will fight hard in Asia, because there is plenty of divisions in India, and Australia and New Zealand will help them.

[GoreBag]

One thing though: When the war with the brits breaks out, take Iraq ASAP and garrison it with strong divisions in strategic points, as the brits will try hard to get it back, and while their power is crumbling in the mediterranean and Africa because they are out of supplies, they will fight hard in Asia, because there is plenty of divisions in India, and Australia and New Zealand will help them.

Once defeat is imminent for British Iraq, a movement to turn on the British appears and peace is signed, as Iraq leaves the Allies. Of course, this might be limited to a German occupation being the event trigger, but I doubt it.

[SwordsMaster]

Once defeat is imminent for British Iraq, a movement to turn on the British appears and peace is signed, as Iraq leaves the Allies. Of course, this might be limited to a German occupation being the event trigger, but I doubt it.


Never happened in my game. I occupied and puppeted once, then the brits took it back when I had to move divisions to the turkish border, and then I retook it and annexed, but no event has been triggered.

[Keba]

It's an event for Germeny after the creation of Vichy event. The Germans are offered possibility of turning Iraq away from the Allies by sending troops to Syria. They lose supplies (I don't remember what else), Syria gains a squadron of German bombers, and Iraq leaves the Allies.

[Templar Knight]

After enjoying HOI 2 so much I bought DD :2thumbsup:

However what are the side effects of using nuclear weapons, apart from province damage? What about international relations... etc?

[discovery1]

Massive dissent increase and the VP value of the targeted provence falls to one, I think.

[GoreBag]

I believe the country that's done the nuking has an increase in belligerence as well, but I can't confirm it personally, since the rules pertaining to nukes have changed in DD.

[Avicenna]

bumping the topic about this great game ~:)

ANy tips for Italy?

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

Take out Ethopia if desired (I wouldn't really call it necessary), then build up enough forces (including most of your Ethiopian army), then start on Yugoslavia. Annex Albania as well, if you haven't had the events already. Then, when strong enough, invade Greece. You'll gain a foothold for the future invasion of Turkey, and, through that route (if you choose to align with the Axis especially), the oil fields in the Armenian/Azerbaijani area. Puppet as many provinces as you can that are unnecessary, as you don't want a huge load on your TC. Make sure you always have a route to the homeland as well. It might seem obvious, but you'll have a hell of a time using transports, especially when WWII starts.

Alternatively, you could go for Turkey right away, but I don't recommend it personally. Much better for your Generals (and Navy) to go by land, in my opinion.

[Avicenna]

What's your view on the Axis?

Out of your list, I'd say all the European countries must be annexed: Albania is just a waste of time if you don't, and Yugo and Greece cause you to go to war with Germany when they eventually (and it seems to always do if they exist, scripted) declare on Greece or Yugo and they're your puppet.

My game is a bit strange right now: I annexed Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Albania, Greece. Defeated both Spanish factions, Portugal, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria. Took my territory in Yugo, freed Ethiopia, Somalia, Angola, Saudi Arabia. Puppeted Spain (Rep), took La Coruna and Zaragoza. Took all of Portugal's European lands (apart from Lisbon) their W African lands, and East Timor + Macau. Bulgaria helped me against Yugoslavia, then turned on me when the script forced them to attack Yugo, my puppet. Germany didn't, somehow, which is good news. They did chop up Yugo with their buddies, though.

My belligerence is very high, I've got nice technology, very bad relations with the ALlies but no war, and very little troops aside from the originals: just a few tank divs.

ANy idea if the allies proceed with operation Husky if you're not at war yet?

[Keba]

You're Italy, right?

I'd suggest the Historical Stony Road to War as it is my mod of choice. It offers a great deal of events, and at least somewhat forces you to behive mildly historically. It also makes the game harder.

When playing Italy, the main objective is to set up a good navy, a good naval bombardment force, and a fast-moving army (mainly motorized, mechanized and armoured divisions, cavalry divisions with attached light armour are good too), then take North Africa by storm. Paras are also useful, especially if you can arrange for Military Access with Spain so you can take Gibraltar.

It is best that you go for Albania first (despite it's suckyness, it is a good base of operations), then get involved in the war (remember to stack sufficent troops in North Africa). Once at war, it is best to go Gibraltar, Malta, Suez. With those three in your hands, you are free to dominate. First, Yugoslavia, then Greece, then Iraq (for the oil), then maybe Turkey. Generally, you are not supposed to go after Spain ... but, it is a standard action when playing Italy.

It's been a while since I played vanilla, but the attacks are not scripts per se, but rather parts of AI behaviour modes, such as the Seelowe and Barbarossa behaviour modes for the Germans, etc. But, yes, they will happen, always. I don't know whether they will attack you when not at war, but remember, they can declare war, and they might do so, despite all assurances, as I've found out. And if you've got a high belligerence, it is even more likely. Sometimes the AI will declare war, sometimes it won't.

The Stony Road mod makes it more fun, and a lot more difficult playing various minor factions (especially Italy, you get a pretty big penalty to morale and organization when you get involved in the war), the AI is also better, actually building fleets (a big flaw of the vanilla AI), and recieving troops through events (the empty North Africa ceases to be empty).

[Avicenna]

Sounds pretty scary: my navy is getting ripped up as it is. Anyway, isn't this supposed to be alternate reality?

[AggonyDuck]

In my opinion Italy should concentrate on airpower. About 16 CAS squadrons should be enough to both negate the Allied airpower and destroy their land forces in the mobile battles of North Africa. I remember stopping a massive American advance from Marocco with only airpower, while my army was engaged in Sudan. I must have destroyed over a 100 divisions in about a year's battles. So I recommend investing heavily on airpower to dominate the Mediterranean.

[Avicenna]

But surely to destroy aircraft you want tacticals?

Personally I use TACs and those 7 damage to soft target ones.. Strategic bombers?

[GoreBag]

I'd actually suggest going for Gibraltar and then taking the Suez before shooting for Malta, especially if Crete is still in British hands. Cutting off the supply route to whatever forces left behind by the British (or other) navies is quite a victory, and generally, they'll sit at Malta, waiting to be bombed to pieces as they desperately try to repair the damage they sustain.

[AggonyDuck]

But surely to destroy aircraft you want tacticals?

Personally I use TACs and those 7 damage to soft target ones.. Strategic bombers?


Oops, I meant negating allied naval power. For air superiority Interceptors should do nicely. But overall a strong airforce is perhaps the most cost-effective way to project power with Italy. In cost-effectiveness a INT/CAS based force is both cost effective and insanelt powerful. ~:)

[GoreBag]

CAS units by themselves are insanely powerful. Route a unit, bomb them as they run, rinse, repeat. I won the second Sino-Japanese war with only infantry and CAS planes, not counting a few fighters for supremacy, before the US oil embargo...and I had half as many divisions as Nat China at the start of the war.

[Avicenna]

Well, to be fair, National China has units with something like 15 org.

By the way, does anyone have the 9 centuries long campaign? 1066-1953, Crusader Kings to Doomsday.

[Keba]

No ... that is insanely long.

Naturally, I have started one in CK, but had to format my hard-drive, and forgot to save the save-game file.

I'll get around to it, I just have to get Vicky.

I rarely use air units in HoI2, except naval bombers and interceptors. The interceptors mainly provide cover for my more vulnerable industrial areas, while the navals take out anything that floats and does not bear friendly colours. I had one bombardment group (4 squadrons) that took down 6 US carriers (light carriers, but carriers still) ... that was when I decided that I loved those things.

Except for that, I tend to advance too quickly for other air units to be of any use. Though I have yet to learn to keep a stable front, since my infantry is far too slow to keep up. I might experiment with a motorized holding infantry my next German campaign (I'm busy with an Italian and French one right now).

As a question, what are the combinations you use for breaking through? I mainly use tank armies (6 tank divisions, outfitted with additional batallions) and armies (2 tank divisions, 1 HQ, 6 mechanized infantry, all with additional batallions) ... I have to say, those things cost a lot to upkeep, but they kick ass.

[GoreBag]

Well, to be fair, National China has units with something like 15 org.

At the start, yes, but it increases as you go, of course. Besides, my CAS planes weren't bombing their org to pieces.

[Csargo]

As a question, what are the combinations you use for breaking through? I mainly use tank armies (6 tank divisions, outfitted with additional batallions) and armies (2 tank divisions, 1 HQ, 6 mechanized infantry, all with additional batallions) ... I have to say, those things cost a lot to upkeep, but they kick ass.

I usually use a combination of tank divisions and MI with Infantry as support.

[Samurai Waki]

At the start, yes, but it increases as you go, of course. Besides, my CAS planes weren't bombing their org to pieces.

This is because the CAS are mostly meant to destroy strength, and Tactical Bombers are used to Destroy Org.

I mostly rely on Tactical Bombers to work in coordination with my Army when attacking a province, and CAS when the enemy are retreating. Utterly Devastating.

Although I've never really used Strategic Bombers because they cost so **** much IC.

[GoreBag]

This is because the CAS are mostly meant to destroy strength, and Tactical Bombers are used to Destroy Org.

Uh...yeah. That's...why I said it.

[Samurai Waki]

Uh...yeah. That's...why I said it.

It sounded like your were implying that you were using your CAS to target their Org.

[AggonyDuck]

Well Soft/Hard Attack is used for determining org damage, so infact CAS is actually superior to TAC's in Interdiction.

[GoreBag]

It sounded like your were implying that you were using your CAS to target their Org.

It says above that I used the CAS meatgrinder tactic to cripple China. Can't happen if I interdict the troops.

[Samurai Waki]

haha. I realized that after rereading your post several times, I guess the information didn't quite compute in my brain. :laugh4:

[Avicenna]

Doesn't increase incredibly quickly though, I would think, since the research teams of China aren't exactly top-notch.

[GoreBag]

No, but once most of China's troops aren't '18 quality, a considerable difference is made.

[Avicenna]

Doesn't China start off with '36 armies? They're also pretty much invincible as well it seems.. I've annexed MengKuKuo without a loss yet.

By the way, would anyone recommend nuclear research?

[Keba]

IIRC; Nationalist China starts off with infantry model 1918, Japan starts with '36. Eventually, the Chinese become a nuisance, which is why an early rush is recommended. In the HSR mod which I lately play, China tends to be a major pain for the Japs, they get a fortification line in the mountains, making the conquest a major problem without massive resources, something which Japan tends to be short on.

Nuclear research. Oh, Gods, yes ... it swallows a lot of time and industry (the reactors cost some, 60 or more IC to build and take about six months, you need a lvl 6 to start building the bombs), but when you get them ... ouch. First off, it sends the enemy's dissent into the stratosphere ... also, in vanilla it causes partisans to form in enemy territory (about 10% per nuke dropped). I'd recommend research missiles also. Strap a nuke to a missile and bomb his city ... nothing can stop it. I'm rambling, back to the matter at hand. A nuke permanently destroys industry (a fairly random number, but over half, usually 2/3), as well as any installations present (such as ports, airfields, etc), or rather, it reduces them greatly, but they can be completely destroyed. However, the victory points of the bombed province (if is has any) is reduced to one. Best employed on the USA, several nuke attacks will devastate them, especially in close order. I don't think they affect units, but I'm not sure. Aircraft are a goner for sure, I'm not sure about ground or naval units.

[Evil_Maniac From Mars]

They usually take out a decent portion of a unit. The most I've seen is around half to three quarters strength gone plus a good amount of organization. That could have been from a tactical/dive bombing campaign earlier, so I'll need to check. They do effect units in some way, I'm fairly sure.

[AntiochusIII]

They do take out units; just not as effective as the scene of a mushroom cloud would appear to be.

Aircrafts are goner since they're the weakest, and usually the air bases are damaged too badly for them to survive. Land and navy won't suffer half as much, though.

My favorite anti-USA tactic is massing a nuclear arsenal and unleash them all at once on the industrial coastal cities. The USA goes down really quickly if you could get close enough to do that.

USSR, however, appears to be one of those nations where even a dozen nukes wouldn't cause The Revolution. Dunno why. Hate it.

[Avicenna]

Commie China starts off with '36 though, I believe. :thumbsup:

[GoreBag]

Indeed they do. China eventually swamps them too, unless bad things happen to China.

[Avicenna]

Does that happen even if I start in the 1944 scenario?

(ie Japs giving them a hard time while I clean up Japanese puppets, then start to push Japan off China.

[Keba]

In most of my campaigns, the CC get conquered by Japan, eventually. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

I've seen Japan fighting Nat. China in 1944 still, and in some games Japan had complete control of China by 1941.

It's fairly random. Much like the rest of the game ... there have been instances in which the German AI beats the British Navy on the sea (I have still to figure out where in the nine hells they got 8 Bismarck-class battleships).

Each game has different results. Although it can be easy to break it and cause it by yourself, just for fun. Start as, say, Greece and DoW Turkey ... last time I did that, Poland entered an alliance with Germany, Germany DoW'd the USSR in 1938, and the Allies joined in, at which point the USA DoW'd Britain. Totally random. :sweatdrop:

[Sjakihata]

Im interreste in a MP game

[AntiochusIII]

Commie China starts off with '36 though, I believe. :thumbsup:And a bunch of high xp divisions. It's the only way they can survive the Nationalists early on, I guess, apart from their mountain fortresses.

They aren't that relevant, though, usually, to the prospects of Japanese victory in China. Their most significant impact in an AI-vs-AI war is to stretch and slow down Japanese advance from Manchuria long enough for NatChi to regroup and tie them down. If the Japanese make steady progress anyway they'll come back to eliminate the commies eventually.

The reds just don't have the resources to sustain a general warfare.

Each game has different results. Although it can be easy to break it and cause it by yourself, just for fun. Start as, say, Greece and DoW Turkey ... last time I did that, Poland entered an alliance with Germany, Germany DoW'd the USSR in 1938, and the Allies joined in, at which point the USA DoW'd Britain. Totally random.That's half the fun. ~;)

The '36 start in Europe is all about gridlock. One declaration of war and say hello to World War II. My favorite has to be a Hungarian "get the Nazis to back us up" Eastern Europe rush I did some time ago.

[Avicenna]

I've had interesting results as Italy: DoW on Switzerland, and then the whole of Eastern Europe joined the Axis, as well as Nationalist Spain. Spain took Leningrad, as well. The Allies also got dragged in when I DoW'ed on Denmark (oops :sweatdrop:) then annexed Greece and proceeded to take all my colonies. Needless to say, with that being my first ever game, I quit right there.

Antiochus: In my current Italian campaign, WWII has started, but I'm not in it. I've taken all of Portugal (apart from Lisbon) and her West African colonies, La Coruna and Zaragoza from Republican Spain, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, Greece, Albania and Dalmatia from the recently annexed by Axis Yugoslavia. I've liberated a few countries (Angola, Somalia, Saudi and Ethiopia) but my belligerence is still at 82 or so. Not at war right now, though, and debating as to whether or not I should join the Axis.

Keba: In mine, the Japs have actually taken some lands from the Russkis. The Russkis have taken lots of the puppet states though. Interesting how apparently others have never seen Japan declare on Russia, and my first campaign that lasted over a year had it happen.

Is it a good idea to build ships by the way? Or should I focus on industrialising early in the game?

[Keba]

Japs going agains the USSR is something I've seen happen every now and then. They get an event in which they can declare war on them or sign a non-agression pact.

Sometimes in German campaigns I can drag the Japs into the war, they can do well in holding the USSR forces in the Far East busy. They usually take Vladivostok and proceed north until they reach the northern border of Machuko, after which they fight mainly to hold the Russians at bay.

You have all that and aren't in war ... how are the Germans doing? If you have sufficent troops, then you can get involved. Remember, as Italy, almost all you do will be in Africa. Also, once you get involved and the US is in, they have a habit of unloading in Africa. Those are easy to beat back, since they usually only take one province with one or two divisions, but if you let them, you'll be facing a lot of American troops, there are a lot of beaches in Africa.

As Italy, building ships is vital. They take a long time, but they don't cost that much IC. If you can spare it, build a few Super-battleships, they're plain better then normal ones, and are very useful. A few carriers are recommended (if only to keep enemy carriers at bay, carriers are murder on battleships if you don't have carriers), but Italy has the battleship naval tree, not the carrier one.

Usually, however, I spend the first two years pushing up the industry, then start building a fleet. The earliest you can join the war with Italy is 1940, which gives you time to build up a sizeable fleet to match the Brits.

However, I'd recommend that you always research the most modern ship models. They don't upgrade, but new ones are better, and the older ones are still useful as secondary fleets (fleets don't spend oil while docked, I'm not sure about supplies).

[Avicenna]

Hmm, apparently Carriers aren't good for Italy. But I've already spent all my time researching carriers and upgrading them, I think my carriers are the Third of Fourth tier and I'm building some. My navy's rubbish though, and I'm scared that it will get destroyed once I fight the Allies. I'm also not very good at the game, and somewhere in this thread I saw that even the GERMANS had trouble with taking Britain. On the subject of the navy, I've also not researched SBS.

My troops are practically my old ones.. ie the ones I started with. I've added a few tank divisions, and built a few marine divisions (which landed on the Peloponnese and got destroyed), and partisans to deal with Portugal, Macau and my Spanish lands.

My airforce is currently just playing around in Europe, with some TACs at three or four stars.

Germany has taken the whole of Europe: the only remaining non-German countries on the continent are me, my (former) ally Bulgaria (banished them to avoid the stupid scripting from making them DoWing on me when they attack Yugo, who was my puppet. Yugo was un-puppetised to avoid war with the Allies, Axis and Bulgaria), my puppet Republican Spain, the USSR's European land, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Axis (Hungary, Slovenia, Romania, maybe also various puppet states). Oh, and Vichy France. The French are down to two little bits of Africa. The UK is bombing Germany quite a bit, I think. The USA is neutral.

On armies: would you recommend having one commander per division? Or just lump them all under a General, to avoid the faster units (eg cavalry) being munched up and retreating?

I also wasted lots of time on building factories.. should I just cancel all factory orders now? It's 1942 or something.

[Keba]

That depends on your IC, but, yes, I'd say that you should cancel industry construction, or, at least, most of it, maybe continue with one IC/year.

Italy is all for battleships, carriers, however are very, very useful, even outdated ones can still have their CAG upgraded, making them, probably, one of the most useful naval units. However, their require a lot of research, industry, and upgrades. To handle the Brits, you need, one or two carriers, fully upgraded with the best CAG you can build, four of five battleships (at least Littorio-class, if you can do it, better), and as many smaller ships as you possibly can.

Once you enter the war, take Gibraltar immediately, it will force the Bris to go the long way around. To take the Suez, you'll need a quick strike group. Say, two Tank corps (6 divisions total), two motorzied corps (6 divisions total), one mechanized corps (3 divisions total) and two cavalry corps (6 division total, attach light armour brigades to all of them). With that force, you can take Egypt by storm, and reach Persia within a year (the advantage of fighting in Africa is that you can fight even in witner).

Additionally, marines for taking Malta are vital.

Once you have finished North Africa, you can toy with the Royal Navy, they will be out of supplies, and unable to repair, unlike you.

I've yet to see the German AI take Britian, however, when you play Germany, it is easy, really. Park about twelve transports in the Channel (dock them in one of the ports), assemble invasion troops, load four para divisions on transports and assault one of the Brit coastal areas, afterward, it's easy, take the transports, load them with as many troops as you can, and unload on the island ... then scram with the fleet. You can't match the RN on their ground. Once you have a foothold, it's easy.

Commaders, well, corps (units of three divisions or more) must always come with a commander (if three, Lt. General, if more, General, if more than six, Field Marshall). Smaller units you need not bother with. At least, not when playing Italy, Germany has so many commanders that you can put a Mj. General to every garrison division you have.

[Avicenna]

righty-ho.

Problem is.. I have absolutely no carriers, or anywhere near the amount of troops you said in the Suez taking. My marines were destroyed. Also, I'm not particarly good buddies with der Fuehrer, as I've chosen the isolationist things like not signing the anti Comintern pact, in hopes of staying out of the war or at least going on a non-German side. I'm still undecided.. Germany seems easier to take out than either the USSR or USA+GB.

About the generals: a major pain is that I've 'groomed' two major ones: Graziani and Balbo. Then, history is unavoidable and Balbo dies in a mysterious accident. Yippee.

[Keba]

Those troops are for taking all of Africa ... half of those would be enough, though I would start the war at Gibraltar ... you can trade territory in Africa for time, but keep a couple of divisions in each of the port provinces in Libya. IIRC, two tank corps are enough to take all of North Africa.

Germany may seem to be an easy target, but you have little to gain, you'll probably end at war with all of their allies, and the Germans have so many troops that they can hold you off and then hit with a hundred divisions.

Carriers aren't vital, if you hold the Med, since you can eventually rip apart the Brits at your leisure ... later you will, however, need them, when you venture out of the Med (if only to support the Germans or even to invade the British isles).

You will however, need a lot of transports, and you need to take either the Gib or the Suez immediately after entering the war ... once you are at war with England, all your troops on the other side of the passages will become cut off from supplies. Once you have the passages, your transports will alow you to manouver, take out South Africa, and take territories of the Free French and British in the war. Once you have Africa, then you can get involved in the rest of the war. Turkey, for one, or even the British isles.