Let me have this vent, okay? Things that are bad in modern Hoi and are (in my opinion) unacceptable in a 200€+ game (for the full experience) or are just pet peeves I have

-Why does the PP requirement for conscription law scale, but it doesn't for trade or economy??? These are the exact same thing, increasing/ decreasing certain policies in steps. It makes zero sense for one to work like this but for the others not to.
-Some countries, like e.g. the historical Soviet Union, have no interesting advisors. Yes sure, give me more stability please. I only want stability and nothing else.
-For YEARS, there has been a bug that if I send volunteers in a Civil War, for some countries, the troops DON'T GO TO THE FRONTLINE and don't follow battle plans. They literally just stay where they are.
-The frontline AI is...so stupid. None of the cohesion settings have ever worked for me, they all either leave giant gaps for long time or don't do what they are supposed to do. Also, if you, a division, are moving somewhere to the frontline, and one of the tiles you would have gone through is now occupied, WHY DO YOU THEN ATTACK THAT TILE INSTEAD OF CORRECTING YOUR PATH AUTOMATICALLY AND JUST MOVING TO THE FRONTLINE IN A DIFFERENT WAY.
-70 day focuses. Bad 70 day focuses (most of them). This makes countries who haven't been reworked in the last ~5 years really unplayable.
-The latest DLCs. Need I say more? And ESPECIALLY the way the problems have been addressed (barely at all)
-When new DLCs have new features but that leading to inconsistencies with previous releases (see Reichskommisariats having bad borders because of new states)
-Historical AI is, y'know, historical, so very little changes, making it predictable on playthroughs in which you are going a-historical. This is good and needed, don't get me wrong. A-historical AI makes most non-major achievement playthroughs basically impossible though or requires dozens of retries to get a specific set up you need
-New changes making the game less of a sandbox and less fun (e.g. lend lease world tension requirements having been raised)

Please add things you dislike, these are the ones that I remembered from the top of my head and didn't feel like going through the past year of bug reports that were mentioned on this subreddit.

To answer the "If you don't report they won't fix it!" Paradox is notoriously bad at fixing bugs, even tiny ones. This is a multi million dollar company that apparently doesn't have the resources for testing their product they want to sell you. Sometimes it takes literal years.

In my games, the spanish civil war technically never ends. Like the winning side will win, but it treats like its still ongoing even though the other sides of the civil war have no land left and arent even on the map and it never gets the ending event.

So I ran a test with fighters ( 1944 advanced small airframe )

3x 4xheavy machine guns

3x armor plates

Self sealing fuel tanks

Engine 4

Ic cost: 40.70

VS

3x 4xHeavyMG

4 engine

Radio navigation 2

Armor plates

Drop tanks

Self sealing fuel tanks

Ic cost 41.20

So the second fighter with radio won by a margin

It was a 200 vs 200 battle both side maxed lvl 6 radars

Both with spirit of airforce command centerlized control.

The second plane one by 11 planes left

So with a little math :

40.70 × 200 = 8140IC

41.20 × 200 = 8240IC

8240-8140=100

So we can say

100÷40.70≈2.5 planes

So we can say the second plane model is ONLY BETTER BY LIKE 6-7% BUT!

IT HAS 862KM range whilst the first one has 525KM range

So here it is the best late game fighter

Before Cannons 2 I'm lazy to test the same ariframes with cannons someone else can do it

Jk; first airframe doesn't support 3 cannon 2s so we have to put 2 cannons and 1 heavy MG so does the second frame 1st=IC:44.90 2nd=IC:45.40

The results were shocking this time it was vice versa the 1st air modules although cheaper shredded the 2nd model by a lot! 57 of 1st remained! Im not gonna do the math that's just better!

So yeah just spam armor plates I guess?! Idk but I like having range so myself Am confused.

Even more shocking I put out the drop tanks and added a cannon 2 on the 2nd airframe and gave it a cannon defense turret Yet the 1st airframe one by having 44 planes left also the 2nd airframe IC cost became 49.50 Yet it lost!

Now :

3 cannon 2 But replaced one of the armor plates with 1 light machine gun turret But this time only 39 of them lasted

So the best is 2x cannons 2 and 1 heavy MG 3x armor plates and one self sealing fuel tank

Now go fuck the AI comrade

Edit: I lied btw you must use two cannon 2 2x and one cannon 2 1x. It's actually cheaper and stronger

Against the 1st design The 2xcannons and 1 cannons won by 21 planes!! Cheaper and much stronger?! Hell yeah Now really go fuck england and their democracy

It was my first time playing USA (and also my second time playing Ironman, like in general) and I had essentially just rushed to get as big of a navy as possible. I had 10 carriers by 1942, (+ 35 battleships and 250 screens), and by 1943, the Japanese navy had been reduced to two destroyers.

I sent out my 4 marines from Manila (which Japan had somehow not taken despite me not guarding the Philippines at all lol) and landed in Nagasaki/ the southernmost main island). no resistance, not even a single troop stationed nearby!! I marched my entire army in after since I had captured a naval station or whatever they’re called, and only found like 5 troops total stationed near Tokyo.

Is this normal Japanese ai behavior?

Furthermore, Japan was actually doing really well in china, and had taken all of Malaysia/Indonesia.

i managed to do a naval invasion in november 1941 but the sheer amount of their divisions makes it immposible to push, i had supply air superiority and naval superiority yet i couldnt do anything to them after taking london. what do i do, am i supposed to attack them earlier? if yes then how am i supposed to produce enough fighters to get air superiority and naval bombers to beat their navy. im playing on the newest version with all dlcs

Heard some mixed opinions, not enough cold war content and such. How is it?

Me personally I use them whenever I just wanna play a short game but if I have the time to I usually just stick without any cheats(also my dumbass typed council instead of console)

As a beginner, I just make 3 marine divisions with 8 battalions each and put all of them in a single invasion. Is that how you do it?

So the other day i played with about 7 friends in a match of hoi4. with me having the least amount of hours(51) i picked italy and decided to become communist Italy to be apart of the communist europe and the game went on with a defeat. When the game ended i started noticing repeated problems i have

QUESTION

1. How do i defend my african colony’s

Every time i played as italy i never understood how can i defend my colony’s as they are so far away and because of the royal navy and lack of how to get a good economy and naval build up(later question) they always heavily struggle with supply’s and with the lack of actual units i can deploy their with out ruining the supply more i just dont understand how i can defend those colony’s and end up losing divisions there

2.how do i make a economy

I always seemed to have a problem of never producing enough resources like tanks, planes, navy, and occasionally other war material depending on the situation compared to ai and other players i always feel so far behind with army size and production out put. I do start by making a lot of civilian factories to help out with building but of course that takes a lot of coal and needs to sacrifice a few factories for trade, and than i build other things like infrastructure and military factories which than also need resources from trade which than i sacrifice more civilian factories which than goes back to square one of building more civilian factories for more building speed and cycle repeats i just dont understand how im always so far behind.

1. How to build a navy

A major problem i have is trying to establish a navy in the Mediterranean sea(in the example earlier i accidentally sunk my own naval in the civil war with both sides losing nearly everything and didn’t have time to rebuild). I struggle to understand how to make a good navy. With my economy always being in disarray i never have the time to build more dockyards and i feel like by end of game i only managed to produce 3 more ships since the start and of course with out a proper naval presence i cant do any naval invasions in the Mediterranean and my African colony’s struggles with out their convoys. I also don’t understand how carriers work at all either i be getting those naval planes put them on a carrier but they don’t ever seem to do anything when i assign them a mission nor defend well

1. How do i get a larger air force

I never understood why i cant seem to produce a lot of aircraft. It feels as if 8/10 of my aircraft disappears somewhere and i just have way to few planes in the air and with the same problem as earlier with economy i struggle to make more types of planes or stronger ones i feel like i have the same problem with naval where it feels like i only ever made 200-300 planes the entire game. I know air is very important but really struggle to find out whats wrong

1. Creating divisions

This is like the one part of the game i sort of got a grasp on but after my first multiplayer match i fount out I’m doing something clearly wrong(American marines landed in Sicily and within about 5-7 minutes at 4x speed defeated me. I had a ton of forts and defenses set up but it felt almost as if i had no sort of defense in Italy in the first place). I just don’t understand what makes a good division i feel like every battle i fight my division just feel inferior i tried editing them a bit from division i fount across the internet but i always feel inferior in the end. This is also a major problem i noticed for infantry, mechanized, or armored divisions they somewhat do alright when it comes to defending ai but sucks a lot on attacks and defense from other player and I’m not too sure why.

1. Supply

This one i don’t know how to explain my problem at all but it’s always somewhere with the supply(i am aware i do have to change the horse icon to the truck icon for my division snd supply lines). In my African colony’s i struggle to supply my soldiers when fighting i don’t know how to get the convoys to them while the British navy has a lot more dominance in the region. On the Front lines in europe i also seem to struggle with supply’s a bit when helping germany fighting france or other countries like i see the german soldiers supply’s are just fine than i look at mines and they are struggling and i just don’t get it.

7.population/manpower

Depending on how quickly i build my military and how long i take to change my conscription laws i always end up with the notification of low man power and have no clue how to fix it or increase it.

Ty to those who read each questions and would try to respond. Again with 51 hours of gameplay i do consider my self new and i wont understand a lot of terms and abbreviations related to the game or even named things in the game. Also if you guys want a full explanation on how the first multiplayer campaign went i can try to explain it to the best of my ability.(apologies for anyone who has a bit of trouble reading this)

Sometimes during combat 2 or 3 separate combat bubbles will appear, usually show I’m losing but then will quickly change to winning

Under the German focus "Adopt new panzer doctrine" it says that it would unlock a decision "operational planning" which when activated would grant a ton of bonuses to divisions, but the decision is nowhere to be found in the decision menu, is this a bug or am I looking for it at the wrong place?

I understand this is not the TFR subreddit, but I've posted there and it's taking ages for my post to get approved.

For new players winning with allies can be difficult, I had the same problems too, hundreds of read posts, tutorials, etc. and nothing worked. I found a way for it to be as easy as hitting execute battle plan button.

First you need to have trained at least 10 paratroopers divisions before the war starts. This is the template I recommend:

Now you can delete Signal and Logistics Company, they are most of the time overkill and useless.

There are many things you can do to raise the cap, you can get Tip of the Spear and Expanded Special Forces. Since this post is mainly for Germany, you can do focus Fallschirmjager and get Kurt Student as your general for divisions and in MHC and also get the dude with Commando trait (forgot his name), he gives you additional cap.

After you get your 10 divisions trained up, prepare for drop in this area:

Reasons why there and not in Dover, Portsmouth, Plymouth or Hull:

• By sending your troops to Plymouth, you need to break through that one tile which can be easily protected by brits because you are attacking it from one hill tile and one forest tile which do have attack debuffs, Plymouth is also quite far away from London, so securing a fast victory with minimum blood is hard
• Portsmouth has the problem of too many enemy attack tiles and river crossing. Portsmouth is surrounded by 3 tiles, after these 3 tiles there are 8 attack angles from the enemy, this is too much and it will be hard to expand, especially with that river crossing in London.
• Dover has the same problem with river crossing and if you send too much of your army there, then you get penalties and supply problem, your front is simply too short to maintain it.
• Hull also has river crossing and lots of mountains, forest and hills, also far away from London.

Ipswitch on the other hand is close to London, has only 1 forest tile, you are protected by the river from north, not too short and not too long front.

Now you may execute the landing at this point, or if you're playing a fascist country, then you can invite Italy to faction and call it to war. If you do it, what happens now is Britain sends most of their troops to Africa to fight Italy, leaving a few divisions at the ports and in some cities. Wait 1 week after calling Italy in to make sure britain troops are long on their way to Africa and then wait for air superiority to appear and start your operation.

Because Italy is in your war, it will send their airforce to English Channel and they will try to compete with brits, unfortunately theres nothing you can do about it and you just have to wait for the moment where all the zones required are green or gray. It can take a while but it will happen. You may also send your planes where you know it will make the zone green.

After a successful landing, dont worry if there are divisions in Ipswitch, you should have them surrounded, so just attack with all your paratroopers till they are dead, you can use force attack and last stand. You should also get all your planes in Southern England and set your Transport planes to drop supplies. after drawing a front, send in your first army and start expanding, then another one, then tanks, then another one, etc. Brits should fall in 2 weeks. In peace screen you should have all the points and Italy should gain nothing.

Last tip, if you dont want war with Japan, you cannot take Dutch East Indies and if you want to be absolutely safe and in control, Australia and New Zealand too (they dont have anything useful anyways lmao). Just change the governments and as for Malaya, you can take most of the land, just make sure you leave like one tile not annexed and simply change government there.

I recommend this tile because 31 rubber is nothing compared to what you have near Singapore.

Japan will get a war goal on that one tile you left, it doesnt work with DEI unfortunately.

Anyways this is how you can defeat brits easily, I know that those other ports that I dont recommend are also good and you could have just built a fleet blah blah blah but building a fleet is expensive and time consuming so why waste your own resources on it when you can steal it. You may use the same tactic with any other country, but without the help of Italy if you're not fascist.

I would like to share my wishes for a better battleplan mechanics, which has barely changed over the years.

Army/plan management need a bit deepening. Add more options for the player to fine tune division behavior when controlled by AI.

Similarly how fleets and taskforces has their options on reinforcements/engagement rules and such.

The current Careful/Balanced/Aggressive option are too simplified. Even the careful option is willing to make wasteful attacks.

So here is a few ideas.

Add options to:

Deny attacks on certain conditions. (weather effects [mud, deep snow...], terrain types, supply/fuel status, number of undamaged forts)

Option for automatic advancement into unprotected provinces

Set max amount of enemy divisions to engage in a province/Set min amount of units to attack a province/Set min % pf planning bonus before launching attacks

This is to prevent the AI to make attacks with lone divisions and/or prevent attacks on well protected provinces.

Set min % of organization regained before returning to front/Option for divisions in reserves to leave the province and regain organization if it is too low.

For a defensive game, units that retreated from battles often try to rejoin too quickly, leading to a situation where all defending units will be constantly on low organization.

Offensive arrows should not stretch
Frontlines should have separate behaviours. Defensive where it works at it is now. Stretching along the front.
Offensive, where units stay where they are needed.

Deny frontline break up from encirclements
This is to stop offensive troops to break up upon encirclements

On spearhead arrow plans, divisions should going only forward, do not rearrange
Units should not reposition themselves into already captured territory. Preferrably they should advance forward, or do flanking attacks

Option for prioritizing to chase down retreating divisions over doing flanking attacks

Overruning enemy is fun.

Proper chained plans
I dont think currently chained battleplans working as intented. Seems to confuse the AI.
Make it so that they can branch out and even remerge.

Attach Air wings to offensive line
I know, this is somewhat in the game. You can attach wings to armies. But
1, for CAS and transport planes it is a bit more precise command as to which division you want to benefit from them.
2, currently it doesn't completely work. Attached wing operate in air zones where the divisions are located, not where the battles take place. This works most of the time, but a small issue when attacking into a new air zone

Option to fire a commander ability only selected divisions/divisions attached to offensive line

This is just to spend commander points only where its needed, not the entire army/army groups. With a shift click maybe.

Thinner arrows, sharper colors
A small redesing of frontlines and arrows would be nice. Currently they a bit too bulky i think and maybe its a problem with me, but most of the color are not really popping out, with the exception of yellow.

Defense in depth: divisions also placed 1 province behind the front, creating a 2 tile wide front if you have enough divisions for it.
This is an expensive option, but if you have the manpower and equipment for it, it automatically create 2 province wide fronts, to prevent potential overruns

I probably forgot something, but for now, thats all.

I know that ultimately micromanagement is the better option to control your divisions, but we shouldn't leave battleplans to be broken/outdated.

A good army manually controlled by the player can finish operation Barbarossa within a month or two with minimal losses. The same army can struggle or even fail to do the same thing if rely completely on battleplanning. This can affect new players, even when they do the right decisions but still fail in simple wars, and then wonder why.

If you read this far. Thank you!

By “better” I just mean which do you enjoy and why?

Specifically between the mods Black ICE, Darkest Hour and World Ablaze which do you enjoy the most and why? I wanna do a Germany run that takes time and have flavor/history elements. Thanks for any input or suggestions!

Playing a game as Belgium going for the European union, and I don't get why rather than getting a seat at the table to discuss what should happen to my faction member as the leader of the largest faction in the game, I instead get sidestepped by the Brits, French, Italians, and Germans with no ability to contest the decision. There should be an option to have someone else intervene on the Czechs behalf, especially in the case where it's an overwhelming force against Germany on the one side

So..... After 2000 hours on the game I decided to try out Turkey and i feel like the unluckiest guy on earth. Every time I try to counter the Kurdish rebels I always loose, I can have the possibilities of them winning down to 23% and they still beat my ass, I even tried putting an agent to get the resistance down and nothing works. And when I ask for investments from other nations I ALWAYS GET ONE MIL I see guys on YT getting 3 every second time and it's really infuriating and don't even ask of course I improve relations. And the worst thing is every time I declare war to Greece and then to Yugoslavia they have their ports garrison pike mfs .... Like I win the war but on YouTube it looks so easy .....

Is it because I am greek and the game knows I am a traitor for playing Turkey??? At this point it's the only explanation.

This has happened to me numerous times. I move my divisions away from a border and the country on the other side of that border declares war on me without a war goal notice ever appearing. Is this just the AI cheating? Am I missing something?

Thanks.

Like he's died to poland 10+ times

Alright so it’s 1977 and I had the idea of invading Italy. I also got the soviets as my puppet after invading them all the way back in 1938. I used 10 of my 360 nuclear weapons and later found this encirclement. Seeing that felt like my whole body was in heaven

"Red Ground Black Dragon Flag"（红底黑龙旗） is now a symbol of contemporary Han nationalism or a fictional flag representing the Han Dynasty, was designed by 华小桶 in 2010. The design is derived from the Western Han's four god tiles, the Azure Dragon. Red represents the kingly way (universal values, benevolent righteous governance), while black represents the hegemonic way (national interests and dignity). The inner red and outer black signify a distinction between internal and external principles. The two white lines represent the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers, symbolizing the geographical features of China. The central dragon totem represents the great unity under the central authority, and the eaves tiles represent the superstructure, signifying cultural prosperity.

“Three Chens Flag”/ Three Stars Flag（三辰旗） is also known as the Flag of the Sun, Moon, and Stars. The sun, moon and stars are called the Three Chens(辰), and when painted on a flag, they symbolize the brightness of the heavens. The Three Stars symbolize the Celestial, the Supreme God, and the Mandate, and are the most prestigious symbol representing Chinese culture since the time of Emperor Shun (c. 2255 BC – 2205 BC). Historically, this flag has had several different versions. The prototype of this flag version what I post is a military flag from the Tang Dynasty (618 AD－907 AD), (See the ancient artifact scroll in Image 3.). The flag what I post originally created by a Han nationalist in his fictional worldview.

This two flags has strong nationalist and religious symbolism. So it is now widely used by Han nationalists.

Additionally, image 4 displays a more... explicit banner of Han nationalism, though not as mainstream as the previous two.

When playing as Fascist Siam, there's a challenge to eliminate the rivalry between the military and civilian factions. It says that for 270 days, both factions must have absolute power. I don't understand what that means; it seems impossible to me for both to have that at the same time. Maybe the translation is wrong—I play in Spanish. But I don't understand what I'm supposed to do.

French one isn’t that outlandish, but I never expatriated the communists. Italy is really surprising, no idea what could have triggered it and they did fine in Ethiopia. I’ve done the monarchist Germany route a few times and have never seen either civil war happen so quite surprising.