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[Oliolli]

The downsides with Darkest hour and Arseal of Democracy are that after playing them, basic HoI II seems... empty.

[ThtblovesDF]

I still prefer hoi II [with mods] over hoi III, maybe the political focus shift or something in the game feel...

Anyway, Soviet Union is dev. my favourit to play in MP games, since you are a bit of a wild card and the scrubby... get beat up if germany really really wants to, but you always come back, as a very big, angry thing.

Norway/finland are also great choices, since you can capture the countrys around you, while trying to strike a deal with the German or Soviet player, possibly playing them to get some time to prepare... your a huge hassel to attack and capture, but you can go nearly everywhere in europe.

[snelg]

I recommend Japan as a starter nation

I'm not sure I'd recommend Japan for new players (assuming that's what you mean by starting nation). The whole lack of resources and having to fight all kinds of navies while managing resources and the low infrastructure in asia causing trouble. Granted, the ai is really bad at managing their navies and even worse with invasions. There's also the bad terrain and slow movement speed (infrastructure again).

It would be easier to play Germany I think. Having all that leadership and being able to research whatever you want. The IC to build what you want and still do well. An easy war against Poland to start things of and then a bit trickier one in the west to learn how to get around defensive positions, rivers and the like. Then again switching over to the east and USSR. By the end you will have a really good idea of what you can improve for next time.

[LordSlowpoke]

The game just keeps crashing on me for reasons various. Took two expansions and a bunch of patches and they still didn't make the game stable. *shakes fist*

Though it's a nice game when I get to enjoy it for more than three months of play in a sitting. Weekly autosave helps, and I did manage to cut down on some crashes by counteracting symptoms. (don't enter the theatre menu right after declaring war... when graphics bug out, tab out instantly, tab back in, else it'll bug out... sigh. List goes on.) Tried 3.06, didn't help, so reverted to .05. Sure it isn't a RAM or CPU problem, too. Great stuff.

[Sirus]

Tried to play this for the first time today. Followed the tutorial with the weird little guy with a bad mustache, went back to single player, saw that playing as Germany would put me in control of just the military, letting the AI take care of everything else. I think "Hey, this must be the easy difficulty, letting me focus on combat and stuff".

Poland started kicking my ass all over the place. I can't help but think there should have been some tutorials on how to move your troops and other such important, basic things.

[WealthyRadish]

So, bit of a necro, but I bought this recently and started up my first game as Japan. From what I've picked up from guides, tutorials, playthoughs, etc, hopefully I'm not doing too stupidly, but it's still only January 1937.

I disbanded all the garrisons and cavalry units, because I figured they were useless... maybe not the best decision, I dunno how important manpower is. I also moved all of my units over to the border with Nationalist China and Shanxi, since they'll probably be the first war, and I don't want to fight the USSR. I immediately started producing carriers and artillery, and have been working towards getting most of the divisions to 3 infantry/1 artillery. Should I add engineers?

I haven't been pushing ahead of the times with research yet, but will probably focus on infantry and production/leadership first once the 1936/1937 stuff is done.

Most of my trading is with the US to stabilize resource consumption, but I've also used insignificant trade deals to build relations with the USSR in hopes of a non-aggression pact as I align myself toward with the Axis.

With the navies, I've divided into groups of 5 capital and 7 screen, and intend to focus on carriers and probably destroyers.

I've had the domestic spies working on supporting the ruling party, but I don't really understand what that means/does. I also replaced some of the ministers to get more Control Clique guys in (or ones with better modifiers). Foreign spies are working on raising threat with Nationalist China.

Any advice? I still don't really know what I'm doing wrong/right yet.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Alright, avoid war the US as long as possible. Secondly, do what you will with your navy: it massively outclasses any other asian nation's.

As far as politics goes, don't worry too much about modifiers unless they're really good/bad, just try to get your party members in office. That stabilizes things and makes the game a little easier. Now, this effects manpower, manpower IS important: it's what you use to recruit troops, which if you want to fight China you'll need.

Artillery + infantry is good, but try going for mechanized inf. and light tanks, speed and breakthrough advantages will give you an easier time in mainland asia.

EDIT: as for strategy advice, consider picking off the smaller island/peninsular nations around China proper before going to war with them for a slight increase in supplies and positioning. If you manage to subjugate most of Asia before the war is over and Germany is still going strong consider going to war with the soviets.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

What a good coincidence. I've had the complete pack for long but only recently started playing it as Finland with the ultimate goal of defending against USSR and possibly capturing several of their territories as Axis. I am also still learning the ropes but I can tell you this:

US and USSR are the best trade partners initially due to their proximity.

Since Japan is an island nation, you will need a lot of convoys as many of them will get intercepted during war times.

Infantry and navy are the backbone of Japanese military. They're too resource-constrained to produce armors.

Also for a beginner, Japan is a relatively hard nation to play. That's why I chose Finland. Canada and Australia are other good beginner's nations because of their isolation from the conflicts.

[snelg]

For Japan you probably won't have too much trouble with the manpower. Especially if you hold on to China after beating them. I haven't really played the un-modded version since two expansions back but your army and fleet compositions sound good. The cavalry could be useful in China since they're not that bad, move pretty fast and are already built. The garrison units can be used to hold on to islands or important cities or ports.

You probably won't need any armour for a while since there's a lot of bad terrain in Asia and most opponents won't field that large armies there. Except maybe the Soviets if things are going good for them.

I prefer trading with USSR if you don't plan to attack them. On the other hand, once you do go to war with the allies you can get a lot of resources pretty fast.

edit: Something useful if you're not used to the game and how the command structure affects things (the first few lines that is, don't think it's listed in-game anywhere). http://www.hoi3wiki.com/Command_structure

[Micro102]

Glad this was necro'd, as I have some questions as well.

I started my first serious "i'm gonna learn this" game as brazil. I decided to rush industrial tech so I could start building infrastructure in my empty lands. I've been letting the AI run pretty much everything and in the production section they have been spamming infantry units mixed with AA and AT. Is this normal? I thought it would slow down after a while but I'm getting a pretty huge army now, I think I have 32 divisions already. Is there a limit to your army? Is this a good idea? The AI also stopped building infrastructure after the first wave it set up after I finished the tech. Should I ignore army and pour everything into infrastructure?

Also, I think it was the theater tab, but someone said "immediate needs" and asked for bombers. Why are these "needs" and how important are they to fulfill?

[RexMundi]

I've never gotten the hang of this like EU and CK (even vicky better in some ways). But I got complete 2 from a givaway on here, and wanted to master it, somehow. Q to ThtblovesDF, and others. What mods, for 3 or 2, are the better ones?

[Mictlantecuhtli]

Fallout mod for HOI2, incredibly good. This is arguably the reason to still play HOI2.

For normal overhauls HOI2 has quite a few that make it very deep and much more enjoyable to play as a non-superpower, like World In Flames and the ever-popular CORE


For HOI3 I'm not too up to date, but there's my favorite Black ICE and a few pre-WW1 overhauls as well. There's so many.

[Rakonas]

I've never gotten the hang of this like EU and CK (even vicky better in some ways). But I got complete 2 from a givaway on here, and wanted to master it, somehow. Q to ThtblovesDF, and others. What mods, for 3 or 2, are the better ones?

Kaiserreich for DH is a great alternate history. Mixed Mod for DH is a great vanilla plus. Fallout Doomsday is a very well done completely different scenario kind of mod (whatever you call those) if you love fallout.

[gimlet]

When I was playing HOI3, I liked Historical Plausibility Project mod.   But I recommend first learning HOI3 unmodded, so you can then decide what annoys you the most and pick the mod that addresses that - for me it was some of the gamey early war stuff, and being railroaded to almost exactly refight ww2 the same way every time.  HPP allowed for some "plausible" divergences, improved the AI, tweaked the map, retooled the tech trees, fixed the starting forces, etc.

There's a lot of stuff going on, so I really recommend learning combat by playing smaller nations - I ran through Poland starting in 1939 (so I didn't have to play the whole build-up years), Hungary, both sides in Spain, then Nationalist China a couple of times (AI Japan really roflstomped me a couple times before I got the hang of it) and France.  Starting with Germany is just WAY too much to learn at once, and toooo many units and fronts to manage.  Japan is kind of the same - I did a couple games as Japan and it's a bastard - you really have to learn how to blast through the massive (but crappy) Chinese waves while still building up tech and ships for a navy to challenge the US.  And/or some serious combined arms ground forces if you want to help Germany by invading the USSR.

Once you've kinda got a feel for most of the ground/air/naval mechanics, Italy isn't a bad choice for getting to use all 3 types of forces, having a lot of strategic choice, but still being a managable size without the huge forces of Germany/USSR or the worldwide attention you have to give the UK or USA.

For details on the mechanics, don't forget the HOI3 wiki:  http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi3wiki/Main_Page  There are country strategy guides too, helpful when you're getting stuck.

Also check out some of the AARs on the Paradox forums - some are more tutorial oriented (I remember a pretty good one on Poland, I think by Blue Emu), or at least gameplay oriented, which is really helpful.  And you can get a feel for the different countries and effects of different mods.

[snelg]

Glad this was necro'd, as I have some questions as well.

I started my first serious "i'm gonna learn this" game as brazil. I decided to rush industrial tech so I could start building infrastructure in my empty lands. I've been letting the AI run pretty much everything and in the production section they have been spamming infantry units mixed with AA and AT. Is this normal? I thought it would slow down after a while but I'm getting a pretty huge army now, I think I have 32 divisions already. Is there a limit to your army? Is this a good idea? The AI also stopped building infrastructure after the first wave it set up after I finished the tech. Should I ignore army and pour everything into infrastructure?

Also, I think it was the theater tab, but someone said "immediate needs" and asked for bombers. Why are these "needs" and how important are they to fulfill?

That's probably to be expected by the ai, generally IC and infrastructure aren't a big priority for it. Maybe it's even a bad idea since it takes a long time for it to be profitable building IC. And it's probably even worse for smaller counties with less base-IC and less industrial practical/theory. Because you can build less and it costs more, still if you're going to wait a long time before going to war it could be helpful. Infrastructure generally isn't necessary if you're not planning to move around your armies over there since it only really affects how fast your and enemy armies move and how much suppli you can get through there.

The only actual limit to your army size is your manpower and the supplies you're producing.

I'm personally not using the AI at all but it probably wants bombers because they're generally rather useful in beating up on someone with less air-power than you. I'm not sure how smart the ai is with the "needs" though.
I'm not sure if I answered your questions properly...

I've never gotten the hang of this like EU and CK (even vicky better in some ways). But I got complete 2 from a givaway on here, and wanted to master it, somehow. Q to ThtblovesDF, and others. What mods, for 3 or 2, are the better ones?

I like Black ICE a lot, it adds a lot of cool new things and is much harder than the regular game. But some of the difficulty is a bit artificial as it gives the ai a few bonuses compared to the player and territorial pride is a pain.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?467-BlackICE

TRP is another great mod (though I haven't played it for quite a while). It's closer to the regular game while still adding a lot of new things and the ai got a lot improvements. Lothos, who is the main developer behind the mod contributed a lot to the ai in both hoi2 and hoi3.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?470-TRP-(Total-Realism-Project)