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[lastverb]

Yes but if an old plane gets upgraded the result is new plane, whereas if a new plane gets produced the result is old plane + new plane.  Since my old planes are still combat worthy, I'd like to keep them.  I believe you answered my question anyway.

I think the answer you are looking for is that there is no such thing as upgrading old equipment. When you see 'upgrading' on production/deploy screen it just means the production is going to exchange old fighters in your wings to new ones, while old one goes back to stockpile (going to be used if you run out of new planes).

But you can designate a wing not to use new planes.

How? As far as i see you can create wings using old planes but they are going to be upgraded as soon as new models are available. You can only control priority of the wing to upgrade.

[mainiac]

I must have been thinking about a land unit only mechanic.

[Sagal]

Just "finished" game as USSR and I have to say I like this a lot more than HoI3. Though there are a couple things

1. Historical outcomes
My ass. Germany attacked Finland who joined Allies and in my Germany game USSR promptly 1 month after signing Molotov - Ribbentrop said fuck it and stopped our no attack thingy. Japan declaring war against USA in 38-39 and stuff like that.

2. Air/Naval
UI is horseshit and it's so much work to move planes after your armies and I have no ideas what is good number of planes for wings so I've been using 100 and 200 plane wings.

3. Scores, they don't make any sense.
Number of fleets for navy, really?
Army score should be men on the field, NOT number of divisions. For example I had around 450 div as USSR at the end with like 4mil soldiers on the field while USA had over 700 div but just as many men.
Air score I have no idea what it means though except that UK had like 30k of it.

But on the other hand Japan annexed China and probably sent all their divisions to Germany as I was able to capture Japan with only like 10 divisions. Nat. Spain joined axis and went on rampage through Africa which was awesome and I sent accidentally over 4000 tanks, 5000 artillery, 30k Inf Equipment and 1500 Fighters to Finland in their fight against Germany. After the war Finland has couple states in Japan and China which is hilarious. Oh and I saw Australia controlling like half of Italy before they capitulated under my troops which was nice.

Time for a Netherlands game next.

[EnigmaticHat]

Why does everyone play as Netherlands?

[mainiac]

Why does everyone play as Netherlands?

Because they are the only minor nation on the border of France and Germany that has a coastline and isn't the disgusting belgians.

[Sagal]

I just want to try them out because everyone else is playing with them too

[EnigmaticHat]

Yeah unfortunately mistakes were made and I do not have nearly enough divisions to do that.  It sounds like a good strategy tho :/

I might be able to plug the gap if things go well for me, otherwise I'm in trouble.  Maybe I can give Germany a bloody nose before I go, they seem to not be bothering to defend their eastern borders and maybe that will give the USSR time to take advantage of their weakness.  Either way its 2 in the morning here so this will just have to wait.

Update: 3 months into the war and this are going better than expected.  I had two forces not immediately committed to the fighting; a partially armored mobile reserve to deal with enemy pushes, and a weak garrison force of infantry for the Spanish front (background: my volunteers tried to help the communist forces in the civil war win, but failed badly due to their incompetence and the addition of Axis volunteers.  Lost some good divisions and a lot of equipment to encirclement).  I realized early on that I didn't have enough forces to stop Italy, so I moved the garrison force away from the Spainish border and into the Alps.  That, plus the tireless effort of my air force to maintain superiority and provide ground support, stabilized that front while the Germans didn't even try to break the Maginote Line.  Then Spain joined the Axis.  They dragged their feet moving into my provinces for some reason.  The mobile reserve rushed across all of France to take up the duties of the garrison.  Its not what I had in mind, but the good news is they're massively elite compared to what Spain has (needlessly so) so that should halt them in the short term.

Everything is going okay and I believe that the USSR might make progress into German occupied Poland.  Now the newest fire I have to put out is that Belgium has joined the Allies and is now losing battles against the Germans.  I should be able to move some of my forces off of the Maginot Line to contribute on that front, but RL beckons so it will have to wait.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Why does everyone play as Netherlands?

They're incredibly fun, with a more challenging start than the Belgians. Also, they're in a unique position to basically play kingmaker for any faction.

EDIT: Belgium is probably better suited to a fascist run, as the extra manpower is a huge advantage.

[EnigmaticHat]

All fronts stabilized for the French Commune; Belgium lost territory but with French aid the German push ended at Brussels.  This continued for a few months until I thought to myself "the USSR is losing, it would be really nice to attack".  The problem is that I simply don't have enough divisions.  I need everything I have to stand a chance against Germany without the Maginot Line, yet I don't have enough spare divisions to attack along the decently large Spanish and Italian fronts.

Then I get to thinking.  The Italians have given up in the Alps, and I have air superiority everywhere.  The Spanish have transferred divisions away from their failed offensive against me to counter a UK invasion by sea and to try and take my holdings in Africa.  What I'm using as a garrison on the Spanish border is actually a powerful mobile force, with the benefit of fast light tanks that the Spainish don't have sufficient AT to counter.  The only reason I haven't overrun Spain is I literally don't have enough divisions to hold down territory that I take.  So I move all but the bare minimum of mountaineers away from Italy, and deploy some fully equipped but partially trained infantry divisions.  I then tell the entire Spanish front to attack at once.  Its immediately successful.  The understaffed and disorganized Spanish force retreats immediately.  My motorized somehow managed to pocket and then overrun 5 divisions of infantry, and then its all downhill from there.  They don't have enough forces to defend and they can't retreat fast enough to escape; they get pocketed in the mountains and in Barcelona; within a couple weeks half their force surrenders.  French motorized infantry run amok in the country side, putting up flags in villages and towns that aren't even garrisoned.  Madrid falls, what little of their army that remains is either surrounded or in a constant state of disorganized retreat.  They surrender, and I'm greated by this:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Excuse you, but it was not the Soviets that defeated you.  Not sure why it happened that way.  Equally puzzling, but 30 US infantry divisions have landed in Belgium and are just... waiting.  Is there some way I could coax them into waking up?

Anyway, I've got 18 free divisions that I used to conquer Spain, and I want to go on the offensive. Do you guys think I should go after Italy or Germany?  I'm feeling Italy, because I don't have the advantage of a Maginot line against them, but on the other hand someone has to weaken Germany before they conquer all of Russia.
Edit: Invaded Italy.  My multiple frontline plans are making viewing the battlefield, well... see for yourself...

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[EnigmaticHat]

Double posting cause shit has happened and no one else is posting.

The war has gone, shall we say, well:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm torn between starting a new run or seeing things through to the end.  There's not going to be much tension left in this game, but I could play long enough to see the final state of the world, maybe even get some carriers up and take the fight to the Japanese.  Or just build the MP brigades I am desperately, desperately needing.

I did pretty horribly getting ready for the war, for various reasons I had less divisions in 1940 than I did in 1936 (or about the same).  On the other hand, I did fine in terms of research; I chose to reform the French military into an aggressive force supported by large amounts of light vehicles.  That went swimmingly.  All things considered tho I should have gone the way of historical France, and would have too if not for the AI being a little... weak.  Seems to be in about the same place as HoI 3.

Spoiler:  AI Thoughts (click to show/hide)

I would identify 3 big problems with the AI:
1.  It doesn't build luxury units in any significant numbers.  Pretty much all of its production seems to go into infantry brigades (towed weapons included).  The German Reich seemed almost unaware that it was a major power, it built its forces the same way Romania did.
1a.  It doesn't build enough fighters; unless there's a huge power difference its unlikely the AI will ever gain air superiority over a human player. This is huge, and basically prevents it from effectively attacking.
1b.  Because it employs such little and such weak armor, self propelled artillery used properly absolutely EVISCERATES AI armies.  I used divisions of 2 light tank, 2 light SPA, and 6 motorized; on attack these divisions would be 3:1 or better as efficient at using combat width as the enemy would be even counting terrain/entrenchment bonuses.  This prevents the AI from defending effectively.
2.  It doesn't take action to prevent being encircled.  This isn't to say that encirclement shouldn't be effective at defeating entrenched infantry.  Rather, it means that offensive pushes that should result in the enemy retreating in relative safety instead result in them being cut off and surrendering to the last man.
3.  It correctly recognizes that it needs to place units next to all enemy provinces, but it doesn't understand why.  Often times it would ineffectually poke at defensive lines (notably the Maginot Line) that it had no real chance of beating with its local forces.  These defensive standoffs would result in it committing far more forces than it would need to dig its own trenches.  Meanwhile, in regions where it could plausibly make gains it doesn't commit any more forces than it normally would, resulting in a weak infantry attack that's easily repelled.  On the flip side, I could mass 20+ combined arms divisions for attack and the AI made no efforts to commit extra forces of its own to counter that.  To put it differently, it fails to recognize who has the local advantage in forces.

This being said, I'm still having a blast.  I'd say the one place where the AI well and truly breaks immersion is the massive uselessness of the US.  Anyway, looking forward to trying a weaker nation and having a more optimized build now that I have a much better understanding of production and combat.

[Orange Wizard]

Woooooah that's a pixellated map, what are you running the game on?

...

Anyway, I mentioned earlier that inf+art is basically godly statwise, the only exceptions being tanks for breakthrough. It might be less of an AI thing and more of a division balance thing.

[Bastus]

Another AI thing:
If it attacks on a front with no forts (Soviet - Germn border for example) it is kinda okay, it is not fast or anything but most of it moves seem sensible, I mean it never encircles or anything but the AI can push an advantage reliable. The most glaring problems come defensive wise, even worse when you manage to "delt" the main front. The AI is horrible at reinforcing vunerable positions for you to encircle, take the Spanish Civil War as an example, the AI can hold the line but it puts rouhgly the same amount of troops anywhere which means the curved front makes it way to easy for a human player to just force encirclements. And this can get out of control so fast, in my Germany game I got roughly 500k Soviet soldiers so early in the war that it was done after a few pushes as the front collapsed. All I did was pushing the mid hard and then make 2 huge circle towards the Black Sea and the Baltics the AI tried to pull out it's troops when I was only one or two provinces away from finishing my move. Now if I only could not be to supid to get Britain down...

Oh and can someone tell me any reason to not take the centralized econmy thingy. I mean it is worse if you get bombed a lot but as stated further up the AI can barely hold an advantage in the air, so why bother?

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Oh and can someone tell me any reason to not take the centralized econmy thingy. I mean it is worse if you get bombed a lot but as stated further up the AI can barely hold an advantage in the air, so why bother?

Mostly for increased factory output. Crucial for small Allied nations.

As you roflstomp your way through Europe, you may find it's more beneficial to close your economy so that you can use all your own resources. I.E. a great time to start building things.

[Rex_Nex]

I think he means dispersed vs concentrated industry, not free market vs closed market. There's no reason to use dispersed industry ATM, mostly because (from what I've heard) the flexibility bonus is bugged and actually makes you lose more efficiency when you swap goods than you would with Concentrated.

[Orange Wizard]

It's kinda worthwhile when you can't get air superiority and all your shit gets bombed. But the AI's bad at that, and there's a big investment, so there's no point.