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Can anyone recommend a good tutorial for this? I've played Darkest Hour quite a bit but never could quite understand the layout of the UI in Hearts of Iron III.
Hearts of Iron III
- Thread starter vadermath
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Mos def buy.
I never played any of the expansions. Vanilla has a lot of flaws, in particular when the AI conducts any operation other than a straightforward land offensive, but my campaign as the Commonwealth holding the line against Germany and Italy in western France and Republican Spain was one of the most intense strategic game experiences I ever had. Two years of see-saw warfare. I was constantly rushing half-exhausted divisions up and down the line to seize an opportunity or stave off a crisis.
Two bits of advice: use counters with NATO symbols, not the sprites. Makes it much easier to see what you have in a province. And micromanage your land battles.
I never played any of the expansions. Vanilla has a lot of flaws, in particular when the AI conducts any operation other than a straightforward land offensive, but my campaign as the Commonwealth holding the line against Germany and Italy in western France and Republican Spain was one of the most intense strategic game experiences I ever had. Two years of see-saw warfare. I was constantly rushing half-exhausted divisions up and down the line to seize an opportunity or stave off a crisis.
Two bits of advice: use counters with NATO symbols, not the sprites. Makes it much easier to see what you have in a province. And micromanage your land battles.
You absolutely need the expansions - SF, FTM and TFH. There'a an additional strategy guide available from GamersGate I think. Though it assumes you know the basics. The in-game tutorial handles GUI well enough and the wiki explains basic concepts.
WW1 mod is pretty great but it has an problem with the British AI, as it doesn't properly support the French AI on ground, making it far too easy for Germany to hold off Russians in the East while knocking France out of the war.
BICE is a massive collection crap rolled together. It's so big that it significantly expands the RAM requirements of vanilla HoI3. Basically, a handful of dudes wanted to revamp everything that is possible to change in HoI3. There's a ton of new units - units that the AI doesn't know how to properly build and utilize and a massive number of scripted events that attempt to make the game more challenging. I wouldn't recommend it.
What I would recommend is the DWI-VI combo as it allows you to build historically realistic divisions - Deutsche Wehrmacht Immersion with the Viva Italia sub-mod - but it's very hard to go back to normal after that! RPM2 is also very interesting, in that it takes HPP's new tech system, bolts it onto a realistic model progression but doesn't bring along all the new events that HPP brings.
Still, it's possible to have more than one mod installed at the same time. Also, I know I recommended the Wiki earlier but do be careful, as some articles haven't been updated for TFH which introduced two new mechanics into combat, meaning that division composition, for example, is now badly outdated and worthless. Ask here instead.
BICE is a massive collection crap rolled together. It's so big that it significantly expands the RAM requirements of vanilla HoI3. Basically, a handful of dudes wanted to revamp everything that is possible to change in HoI3. There's a ton of new units - units that the AI doesn't know how to properly build and utilize and a massive number of scripted events that attempt to make the game more challenging. I wouldn't recommend it.
What I would recommend is the DWI-VI combo as it allows you to build historically realistic divisions - Deutsche Wehrmacht Immersion with the Viva Italia sub-mod - but it's very hard to go back to normal after that! RPM2 is also very interesting, in that it takes HPP's new tech system, bolts it onto a realistic model progression but doesn't bring along all the new events that HPP brings.
Still, it's possible to have more than one mod installed at the same time. Also, I know I recommended the Wiki earlier but do be careful, as some articles haven't been updated for TFH which introduced two new mechanics into combat, meaning that division composition, for example, is now badly outdated and worthless. Ask here instead.
I had enjoyed HoI2 a lot but for some reason could never get into 3. Installed it several times and ended up looking blankly at the screen for a while right before I uninstalled it again.
Sure does. Perhaps I just need a pick a small country at first.
True that, though I've had some good game while playing as the British, even through the Germans managed to fully break through France and defeated them. Even though I had around +300,000 troops stationed in both Belgium and France.Jhessail said:
The Russian revolution is a pain though in that mod, just slows down the entire game.
True, it's quite demanding and for me even crashes quite often making it sometimes just unplayable. Though I do like all the historical events that include special units etc. A lot of these events are being missed out in the Vanilla.Jhessail said:
Even though it goes a bit off historical (I think?), been playing a game with the Soviets. Having a total of +7 Mil. troops on the frontline. (Even though like a milion of then are equal to militia - spawned in with some events) is quite enjoying. Even though the management is quite a pain. Also, even with that overweight. I couldn't even smash the Germans, it was only when some decision spawned in partisans behind the germans lines what screwed up their frontline. I could push in from the south with various armored and guard divisions.
Oh yeah, TFH includes a bunch of map fixes.
On the other hand, playing as USA will keep you out of the war for many years and you don't have to worry about much as USA has enough leadership to research everything while still dabbling with espionage and you can pretty much just ignore the trading aspects as you have more than enough of all resources. And you don't have a massive Order-Of-Battle to organize at game start.
I would recommend Hungary. Small enough to start and you can get neutrality down quickly enough to have a little Balkans romp before the big war starts. Alternatively, play as Yugoslavia and swallow all of Balkans. Then you can decide which alliance to support. Finland is ****ed thanks to low MP and leadership making it almost impossible to survive Winter War (I am very butthurt about this) and most other European minors are just speedbumps for Germany or Soviet Union and non-European minors are either unplayable or totally boring.Goker said:
On the other hand, playing as USA will keep you out of the war for many years and you don't have to worry about much as USA has enough leadership to research everything while still dabbling with espionage and you can pretty much just ignore the trading aspects as you have more than enough of all resources. And you don't have a massive Order-Of-Battle to organize at game start.
I was thinking of picking something close by, like Turkey, which managed to avoid fighting for the whole war in reality. It probably wouldn't be easy to get İsmet İnönü to stave off from his isolationist view. I remember playing as Turkey would get really boring in HoI2 as after Atatürk died, you could not declare wars on anyone.
But thanks for the suggestions anyways. I'll have some time to play this next week hopefully and I'll give your suggestions a go.
But thanks for the suggestions anyways. I'll have some time to play this next week hopefully and I'll give your suggestions a go.
Turkey has quite some options when it comes to expansion. Could also be well a good first country to play and try around with.
If you are fast enough with getting your neutrality down, you could easily manage to get a hold over the Balkans. Also, to the East you have Persia. A country that has barely any militairy power. Just a vew divisions. Afghanistan beyond that.
Once you think that you're settled, you can easily just pick a side. Fighting the Germans should be rather easy considering you only have to hold the bridge between Europe and Asia.
But like Jhessail said, if you really want to start up easy to get through all the stuff. The USA is a great option.
If you are fast enough with getting your neutrality down, you could easily manage to get a hold over the Balkans. Also, to the East you have Persia. A country that has barely any militairy power. Just a vew divisions. Afghanistan beyond that.
Once you think that you're settled, you can easily just pick a side. Fighting the Germans should be rather easy considering you only have to hold the bridge between Europe and Asia.
But like Jhessail said, if you really want to start up easy to get through all the stuff. The USA is a great option.
I tried Bulgaria. Setting up production, cabinet, intel and research before unpausing. Two minutes later my game crashed.
Is it this unstable with major non-Balkan powers too?
Is it this unstable with major non-Balkan powers too?
I bought HOI3 when it first came out, but haven't played in ages until very recently, when a friend bought it and started up a multiplayer game with me. For his first "learning game" I'm playing the USA and he's playing Canada, but I can't remember how to reduce my neutrality in order to help the Allies, who are getting stomped quite badly.
The war kicked off a little early, when the Czechs refused Germany's demands in the final partition event and signed on with the Allies (as did Poland). The Germans took 100% of both Poland and Czechoslovakia, since the events for Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and independent Slovakia never happened. My friend actually overbuilt his army quite a bit as Canada, ending up with something like 180k men I think he said, and subsequently had a really low officer ratio. Still, he was able to turn around the initial Italian push into Egypt, and subsequently move westward until he was just a bit past Benghazi. At that point more expeditionary forces from Germany showed up, including some heavy armor, and his army ended up being completely eliminated before he could withdraw. He pretty much fought the North African campaign by himself, too, since he said the UK never had more than a small sprinkling of 2-regiment infantry divisions and HQ's.
And that's apparently been the story for elsewhere in the world as well: Japan has conquered Australia and virtually all Allied territory in Asia (I noticed two mountain provinces in the southern tip of India that were still British, but that's about it). They even pushed into Egypt (after conquering Iraq), and took significant portions of it before Italy managed to meet up with them. They've also taken Auckland in New Zealand, but since that country didn't join the Allies until fairly late, I think most of their troops that conquered Australia had already been moved out, thus the Japanese have kinda stalled there. Italy also managed to take Gibraltar, which wasn't really as impressive as it should have been considering 1) the Brits never had more than 1 Garrison brigade defending it, and 2) how badly the British navy has been trashed in our game (according to my buddy they still show as having something like 5 carriers and 3 light carriers in the statistics screen, but I think they're down to 1 battleship now, and their escort-level ships sounded a bit thin as well). It took until early'ish 1942 for the Soviets to declare war on Germany, and thus far that has also been in the Axis' favor, in both Europe and Asia (though we haven't played for very long past the start of that part of the conflict).
Meanwhile, I'm stuck at something like 48-49 neutrality, and am not having any luck getting it to go down. I wanna say that you could reduce it through "raising threat" on another nation in the espionage screen, but that didn't seem to be doing all that much; I lost something like 15 spies over the course of Japan's threat-to-me going from 29.1 to 29.3, and my neutrality not perceptibly moving. I've been feeding my friend as much IC as I can (with a small amount going to the British, who seem to be content keeping almost their entire army chilling in the home islands), but there's really nothing else substantial that I can do to help with the war right now. My buddy's manpower also pretty much got bottomed out by the disaster in North Africa, so even with all the extra IC he's pretty limited.
Also, the politics for America can be a little strange in HOI3. The Republican Party won the 1936 election, with Douglas MacArthur taking over as president (in 1936!?!) A few of the cabinet members were also Republicans during that term, and various "internal factors" and whatnot contributed to the party having a huge popularity lead over the Democrats in 1940, at which point the Republicans won again. This time, however, Wendell Willkie took over as President (which is odd, since the same party retained power), despite the fact that he - and literally none of the other politicians - show up as being in the Republican Party. I think this is why the party popularity has started to reverse itself; my Foreign Minister is an "Iron-Fisted Brute" with the Democratic Party, and appears to be giving it a pretty sizable "drift due to internal factors" bonus (the tooltip says it's for the ruling party, though).
On the technical side of things, I haven't experienced any crashes whatsoever, but my friend crashes somewhat frequently (not a huge deal for multiplayer since he can let me know over Skype right away, and I can pause/save/rehost).
The war kicked off a little early, when the Czechs refused Germany's demands in the final partition event and signed on with the Allies (as did Poland). The Germans took 100% of both Poland and Czechoslovakia, since the events for Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and independent Slovakia never happened. My friend actually overbuilt his army quite a bit as Canada, ending up with something like 180k men I think he said, and subsequently had a really low officer ratio. Still, he was able to turn around the initial Italian push into Egypt, and subsequently move westward until he was just a bit past Benghazi. At that point more expeditionary forces from Germany showed up, including some heavy armor, and his army ended up being completely eliminated before he could withdraw. He pretty much fought the North African campaign by himself, too, since he said the UK never had more than a small sprinkling of 2-regiment infantry divisions and HQ's.
And that's apparently been the story for elsewhere in the world as well: Japan has conquered Australia and virtually all Allied territory in Asia (I noticed two mountain provinces in the southern tip of India that were still British, but that's about it). They even pushed into Egypt (after conquering Iraq), and took significant portions of it before Italy managed to meet up with them. They've also taken Auckland in New Zealand, but since that country didn't join the Allies until fairly late, I think most of their troops that conquered Australia had already been moved out, thus the Japanese have kinda stalled there. Italy also managed to take Gibraltar, which wasn't really as impressive as it should have been considering 1) the Brits never had more than 1 Garrison brigade defending it, and 2) how badly the British navy has been trashed in our game (according to my buddy they still show as having something like 5 carriers and 3 light carriers in the statistics screen, but I think they're down to 1 battleship now, and their escort-level ships sounded a bit thin as well). It took until early'ish 1942 for the Soviets to declare war on Germany, and thus far that has also been in the Axis' favor, in both Europe and Asia (though we haven't played for very long past the start of that part of the conflict).
Meanwhile, I'm stuck at something like 48-49 neutrality, and am not having any luck getting it to go down. I wanna say that you could reduce it through "raising threat" on another nation in the espionage screen, but that didn't seem to be doing all that much; I lost something like 15 spies over the course of Japan's threat-to-me going from 29.1 to 29.3, and my neutrality not perceptibly moving. I've been feeding my friend as much IC as I can (with a small amount going to the British, who seem to be content keeping almost their entire army chilling in the home islands), but there's really nothing else substantial that I can do to help with the war right now. My buddy's manpower also pretty much got bottomed out by the disaster in North Africa, so even with all the extra IC he's pretty limited.
Also, the politics for America can be a little strange in HOI3. The Republican Party won the 1936 election, with Douglas MacArthur taking over as president (in 1936!?!) A few of the cabinet members were also Republicans during that term, and various "internal factors" and whatnot contributed to the party having a huge popularity lead over the Democrats in 1940, at which point the Republicans won again. This time, however, Wendell Willkie took over as President (which is odd, since the same party retained power), despite the fact that he - and literally none of the other politicians - show up as being in the Republican Party. I think this is why the party popularity has started to reverse itself; my Foreign Minister is an "Iron-Fisted Brute" with the Democratic Party, and appears to be giving it a pretty sizable "drift due to internal factors" bonus (the tooltip says it's for the ruling party, though).
On the technical side of things, I haven't experienced any crashes whatsoever, but my friend crashes somewhat frequently (not a huge deal for multiplayer since he can let me know over Skype right away, and I can pause/save/rehost).
Get the expansions. It sounds like you're playing vanilla.
There should be a diplomatic option called "Gear for War" that reduces your neutrality. Also, Germany should have highest threat to you - increase their threat even further. USA relies on events, though, so the early war is probably crippling your style.
There should be a diplomatic option called "Gear for War" that reduces your neutrality. Also, Germany should have highest threat to you - increase their threat even further. USA relies on events, though, so the early war is probably crippling your style.
USA joined Comintern, 1943.
That's what you get with those commie healthcare laws.
Also Germony is being crushed from 2 sides, Hungary is falling apart and Polan and Czechoslovakia have been liberated by the Red army. My Romanian armies keep the Red army on their side of the Dniestr river, while Çernauti is being taken, lost and retaken every week. I am holding them at bay rather well.
When Hungary falls I will have no flanks left though.
Edit: Hungary conquered by the Reds, me starting to evacuate the whole of Moldavia because the Reds are all over Transsylvania already. Game crashes.
That's what you get with those commie healthcare laws.
Also Germony is being crushed from 2 sides, Hungary is falling apart and Polan and Czechoslovakia have been liberated by the Red army. My Romanian armies keep the Red army on their side of the Dniestr river, while Çernauti is being taken, lost and retaken every week. I am holding them at bay rather well.
When Hungary falls I will have no flanks left though.
Edit: Hungary conquered by the Reds, me starting to evacuate the whole of Moldavia because the Reds are all over Transsylvania already. Game crashes.
We're using all the expansions, and Japan had the highest threat to me at the time (due to the crazy amount of conquering I assume). I think the problem there was the early war preventing multiple different events from happening, which could have lowered my neutrality. Some things triggered, allowing me to get neutrality low enough to start doing lend-lease, but after that it was just twiddling my thumbs.Jhessail said:
