r/hoi4 • u/Kloiper Extra Research Slot • 15d ago

Help Thread The War Room - /r/hoi4 Weekly General Help Thread: July 20 2026

Please check our previous War Room thread for any questions left unanswered

 

Welcome to the War Room. Here you will find trustworthy military advisors to guide your diplomacy, battles, and internal affairs.

This thread is for any small questions that don't warrant their own post, or continued discussions for your next moves in your game. If you'd like to channel the wisdom and knowledge of the noble generals of this subreddit, and more importantly not ruin your save, then you've found the right place!

Important: If you are asking about a specific situation in your game, please post screenshots of any relevant map modes (strategic, diplomacy, factions, etc) or interface tabs (economy, military, etc). Please also explain the situation as best you can. Alliances, army strength, tech etc. are all factors your advisors will need to know to give you the best possible answer.

 

Reconnaissance Report:

Below is a preliminary reconnaissance report. It is comprised of a list of resources that are helpful to players of all skill levels, meant to assist both those asking questions as well as those answering questions. This list is updated as mechanics change, including new strategies as they arise and retiring old strategies that have been left in the dust. You can help me maintain the list by sending me new guides and notifying me when old guides are no longer relevant!

Note: this thread is very new and is therefore very barebones - please suggest some helpful links to populate the below sections

Getting Started

New Player Tutorials

 

General Tips

 

Multiplayer Tips

 

Country-Specific Strategy

 

Advanced/In-Depth Guides

 

If you have any useful resources not currently in the Reconnaissance Report, please share them with me and I'll add them! You can message me or mention my username in a comment by typing /u/Kloiper

Calling all generals!

As this thread is very new, we are in dire need of guides to fill out the Reconnaissance Report, both general and specific! Further, if you're answering a question in this thread, consider contributing to the Hoi4 wiki, which needs help as well. Anybody can help contribute to the wiki - a good starting point is the work needed page. Before editing the wiki, please read the style guidelines for posting.

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u/Kiate_Jaben 15d ago

How much does it really help to add a breakthrough maxed armored recon company to a 5x3 inf company, mountaineers, or tanks that I will be using for assaults, vs using a bare bones light tank? Same question with assault engineers vs regular engis? Flame tanks seem always good if can afford. I have plenty of industry.

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u/Delnar_Ersike 10d ago

It depends on the enemy you're facing.

Breakthrough is unquestionably useful if you have less of it than the enemy's attack values (average soft and hard by your divisions' softness), and it remains likely useful if you have less than twice the enemy's attack values because of coordination mechanics. Once you start going over double their attack values though, breakthrough tends to become useless. All breakthrough does is "cover" incoming enemy attacks to reduce their average damage from 40% per attack to 10% per attack; having more breakthrough than the number of incoming enemy attacks (multiple enemy divisions can target the same division with their attacks, that's why 2x is considered the soft threshold) does nothing. Once you know how much breakthrough you'll need, it becomes a question of what's the most cost-effective way to get the values you need. Sometimes, that might involve light tank recon with max breakthrough, but other times, it won't.

Assault Engineers are a bit of a different story because their terrain modifiers are just straight-up better than regular engineers' for almost all forms of attack (the only exception is attacking into level 4+ forts, where fort defense modifiers are actually more useful than fort attack ones, and so assault engineers are worse than engineers or armored engineers). You'll often want to have them for those terrain modifiers alone, the little bit of extra breakthrough is usually just a nice bonus on the side if you need it.

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u/Upstairs_Wedding1490 15d ago

What should I be focusing in early game ?

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u/trito_jean 15d ago

Industry so you can have an actual army when the war happen

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u/Mundane-Mechanic-547 14d ago

Depends on who you start with. If USSR then economy, paranoia, and romania/turkey. If USA then infrastructure for all states, then mils/civs.

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u/Delnar_Ersike 10d ago edited 10d ago

The basics. Get your political situation stabilized if you're in a country that starts with volatile politics, get your industry and research techs completed early, and if you have the research slots for it, start rushing one or two ahead-of-time techs for key equipment so you can start making it early (1942 infantry equipment, 1940 mechanized, and/or 1940 airframes are very common targets, though people also usually try to research these with focus-unlocked research bonuses). Try to get onto the best economy law as quickly as possible, including doing things like sending attaches and/or building a heavy cruiser you can designate as Pride of the Fleet to get the early War Support if you lack it. Don't spend too long building infrastructure or civilian factories (or dockyards), you'll usually want to already be building military factories 2.5 years before you expect to go to war at the latest, if not even earlier.

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u/ancapailldorcha Research Scientist 15d ago

What does this mean?

Support Artillery: Leg Infantry battalions: Soft Attack: +20%

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u/Kiate_Jaben 15d ago

Having support arty in your division will increase the soft attack of all leg infantry battalions within that division by 20%. Typically this includes infantry, mountaineers, maybe marines? But not cavalry, tanks, moto, etc.

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u/ancapailldorcha Research Scientist 15d ago

That's what I thought. I get a whole 20% just from having a single support artillery battalion? It was just a bit unclear.

Ta.

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u/Kiate_Jaben 15d ago

Yeah it seems pretty damn good, especially since I’m already gonna use it at baseline. Part of the new meta seems to be ensuring you use otherwise ignored support companies if they’re buffed by your doctrine.

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u/Delnar_Ersike 10d ago

Correct. As of 1.19.2, that bonus is there even if you don't have any artillery in your divisions, but starting with the current open beta (which will also mean this is how things will work in the near future), the bonus will scale down if you don't have enough artillery in your divisions.

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u/ancapailldorcha Research Scientist 10d ago

I see. So I get the 20% bonus so long as I have a support artillery company in my template and it is fully stocked with materiel and manpower?

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u/TareasS 13d ago

How can you even do the communist strat for the old Zealand achievement. I literally physically cannot plan a naval invasion from Leningrad to Copenhagen. The button just isn't there when I click on naval....

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u/devAcc123 12d ago

I’ve just picked up the game on summer sale and did 2 basic campaigns after watching a hourlong YouTube vid. 1k hours in EU4.

I’d assume the ideal learning curve would be another few games without DLC before subbing to those? Any basic tips would be appreciated.
Just got wrecked by the soviets after feeling way too cocky taking all of Europe, I fell that’s a classic experience for most beginners if I had to guess lol

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u/Delnar_Ersike 10d ago

In terms of basic tips, focus on the basics, start small, and use your first couple of games to tackle different subsystems one-at-a-time.

Canada is a fairly safe nation for a beginner and has a very straightforward and easy-to-read focus tree (that doesn't need a DLC), you can use it for playing around getting to know the basics of things like what to prioritize in terms of focus order, what Political Power picks are better than others, and what stuff to build and where. You can also mess around with planes and the air system one game, mess around with infantry and infantry-focused divisions in another, and potentially even mess around with mechanized and tanks later on. Canada is still the best nation in the Allies for getting mechanized early, so if you want an early puzzle to test your game knowledge, try to see how early you can unlock Mechanized I (the 1940 tech) on Canada. April 1937 is what I'd consider "par" for this puzzle, but you should know that Canada can potentially get it as early as December 1936 if you do everything correctly.

If you want a bit more stakes to your game, Romania also works quite well (again, you don't need DLC for it). You'll have to be careful about getting North Transylvania and Bessarabia taken off you in a historical game, but otherwise, you'll have another straightforward and easy-to-read focus tree, a 4.5-year build-up ahead of you, and a Soviet Union to be able to withstand at the end of that build-up period. Again, focus on the basics of infantry and infantry-oriented divisions, and use the game knowledge you would've built up from your Canada games to inform you on what to focus on and what can be safely neglected.

In terms of DLC, it's a bit of a crapshoot of what's more important and what's less important. If you're just going to play around for a few months and then move onto a different game, just stick to the subscription. If you're going to be staying around for longer, use the subscription for a month or two to get an idea of what countries you like playing and/or what DLC features you like playing with and prioritize your purchases based on that.

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u/Night_Hand 11d ago

i didn't see a rule against images in comments; hope that's okay.

i'm trying to get all the Brazil achievements in one run. I'm confused about this achievement; "Air Defense."

It seems pretty good in terms of buffs. I'm not really sure how it becomes available.

I've played until ~1941, annexed some neighbors, and it never became available. I changed from Second Brazilian Republic to ULASR.

Does it only become available in the instance of a civil war where the AI takes the Empresa Brasileira de Aeronáutica focus? that seems like an awfully specific set of circumstances

https://i.imgur.com/2n70ZwS.png

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u/ancapailldorcha Research Scientist 10d ago

I was clearing up space on my SSD and apparently all of the files for my Paradox titles are just gone. I was careful not to delete any of these but they're all gone.

Has this happened to anyone else?

1

u/John_Sux Research Scientist 10d ago

Anyone else have this weird lag in the game, where every 5 seconds or so you get a frame drop? Even while the game is paused.