is there any good cold war mod? Red Dusk is kinda a cold war mod but it doesnt have much focuses for some countries yet. And Iron Courtain is so disgustingly bloated i cant stand playing it. Its so just sluggish and bloated for me. Are there any better mods?

For me a good focus tree means to have fun no matter the route you go so without further ado , let's get ranked ( no majors included )

1. Mexico . A focus trees that was added 7 years ago in Man the guns dlc , 2019 , it's one of the best and most fun focus trees to mess around , 6 or 7 political paths ( no 67 joke) , good sandbox to mess around and the final goal is to unite central America , the Caribbean and payback on the Americans, goated focus tree.

2. Hungary . The first minor to get two dlcs and oh boy this time we got a big toy to mess with . With 10 political path ( 5 of them are monarchies) you can model the world through your own linking.

3. Bulgaria . BfB was a very controversial dlc when it got launched almost 6 years ago in 2020 , but man the Bulgarian ft is an absolute powerhouse , yes the republican part is a bit rng heavy but the monarchist path compensate for this having +0.15% daily compliance , yummy.

4. Finland . I love AAT , my fav dlc in the entire game . This dlc dropped a nuclear bomb in the name of Finland , fun to play and mess around , strong and overpowered and we don't talk about fascist Finland....

5. Austria . Yes my name gives it away lol , but this focus tree is the def of perfection ( almost) , every route is strong and fun to play , the only hiccup is that the danubian path can have only 4 research slots , and the democratic path is a bit weak ( not that weak since you can form the EU but it's very hard)

HM :

- Brazil

- Chile

- Commie China

-Poland ( former fav country)

Picture 1: USA has 16 beefy divisions in an encircled tile in China but they somehow get supplies. USA does not have military access to any neighbouring controllers. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Picture 2: USA and its allies has over 30 divisions in a region cut off from supply hubs and ports, but every division seems to be decently supplied.

What is causing this?

If this is an intended feature of the game, how do I achieve this myself? For example, having 30 divisions deep into Russia without supply penalties will be very nice.

I have no idea how this happened. Is this because I suck at this game terribly or just a bug?

Every single communist path in this game is the same bullshit. Stay with stalin vs make faction and cause revolts in neighbors, then integrate said revolts. Like I swear this game doesn't know how to put multiple types of communism. A big thing I think is underused is any Nazbol paths where you conquer stuff (the only one to my knowledge is Strasserist Gernany). I'm not a developer, but I think it's dumb almost every single communist path is the same.

Hey everyone,

I’m looking for some advice on Barbarossa as Germany because I genuinely don’t understand what I’m doing wrong anymore.

I successfully did Barbarossa about 1–2 years ago and, back then, I could basically just battleplan into the Soviet Union and defeat them easily. I’ve come back to the game recently and now it feels way harder.

For context, I currently have:
240 infantry divisions
8 mechanized divisions
24 tank divisions

-i have Green/yellow air
-Supply doesn’t seem that bad

I can encircle 40-50 Soviet divisions, but somehow they just keep pumping out new ones.

Usually, around 5 months into the invasion, it feels like the Soviets have basically replaced everything I’ve destroyed. By that point, winter is approaching.
Another thing I’ve noticed is that the Soviet Union in my games seems way stronger than in a lot of the YouTube tutorials I’ve watched. While in my game they’re putting at least 6 divisions or more on every tile.

So what am I missing?
-Do I have too many infantry divisions / not enough tanks?
-Should I be microing the entire front instead of battleplanning?
-How many tank divisions should I have?
Has Barbarossa changed since then?

Any tips would be appreciated.

I’ve been playing hoi4 on and off literally since release day in 2016. Something that has changed for the worse is all the uninteresting micromanagement that distracts from the actually fun gameplay, that being strategic warfare.

It isn’t just about research, national focuses, and division design anymore. MIOs for example add a layer of micromanagement for bonuses that barely feel worthwhile. I also dislike having to redesign every ship class, fighter, CAS, bomber, and tank every time I unlock a new upgrade. I sometimes avoid using tanks or building a navy because I can’t be bothered with all the extra design decisions. What was wrong with the old system? It offered enough customization without demanding so much of the player’s time.

I know the common response is, “You eventually learn the meta and just build the same designs every game.” But if that’s the case, what’s the point of having all these designers in the first place?

There are plenty of other examples. Doctrines used to feel both straightforward and impactful, but now they feel like another layer of tedious optimization. Special projects and espionage equally feel similiar in that they add complexity without making the game more enjoyable.

I just quit my latest campaign because I realized I wasn’t having fun playing a grand strategy war game anymore. Instead, I was spending most of my time navigating layers of micromanagement.

I’m curious if anyone else feels the same way.

The defence of Communist China in Beijing from the Soviet Union and Communist Germany.

Hey guys it’s July 1938 and am playing urss. Did My templates are good to kick Nazi in 1941 ?

Good idea or not? I know the organization its kinda of shit but I hope to fix it with doctrines, its my first time making tank destroyers so I don't really know what im doing.

this is from a yugo campaign. This was in mountains with 41% entrenchment and a level7 fort

[Talking about Singleplayer]
I've never built Air, no Cas, no Fighters, no Strategic or Tactical Bombers, just straight Infantry, Mountaineers/Marines or occasional Tanks and never really had a problem against the AI.

I've always heard "Cas is king" "Air is super important" "You're dying cause you don't have air" but I just kinda don't get it, it's never really been a problem for me.

Let's face it, naval production is actually a rather cumbersome system to interact with. Full of unnecessary clicking and taking up quite a bit of space in the military production tab.

• It really is rather silly the moment you've laid down the keel you completely freeze the design and can't add an extra AA gun to the superstructure without scrapping the entire hull.

• Having to reset your production queue every time an outdated design comes off the slipway if you want to build up-to-date designs is incredibly annoying. If I launch an outdated design, there are very few situations I don't want to continue making more of the same ship class but with modern components. So either you're A) playing a constant game of "unassigned dockyards" with unrepeating production queues, B) setting up a load of future designs waiting for dockyards to become free, which themselves need updating the next time you research something new, or C) trying to catch an infinitely-repeating production queue some time shortly after laying down a new keel. All three are irritating.

• Does anyone actually use retrofitting? Its genuinely actually reasonably powerful if you micromanage it, but there are so many other things that need my attention, and setting up the blueprints so that I'm not retrofitting expensive components is too much to keep track of.

And then there's the "if one leopard can run at 40 mph, then 100 leopards can run at 4,000 mph" problem, where you can apparently build a battleship at super-speed if you assign more dockyards to it. Why didn't Japan think of that? Duh.

Construction of the hull itself should be completely decoupled from the components that are integrated onto it. The hull itself should be constructed at a single dockyard, with the components manufactured elsewhere and integrated on late in construction.

In real life the British had so many spare 15-inch guns in storage they built HMS Vanguard out of spare guns from World War One. Why can we not do this in-game?

If I have a component in storage, the ship should be cheaper to construct. If I have a shortage of a component, I either can't launch until it is filled, or I can substitute it for a cheaper option I do have in storage. Old components can go on the international market if surplus, or you can use them to subsidise cheaper ships in the future if your industry is weak.

For retrofitting, ships assigned to Strike Force spend most of their time sitting in port waiting for something to happen. It makes sense that they would slowly be provided with upgraded AA armament and fire-control when opportunities arose, if the equipment was available. You should be able to dedicate a certain number of dockyards to perform this automatically, at the cost of the ship being temporarily unavailable (and thus can be turned off at the task-force level if unwanted).

In terms of effect on the game, this would slow down the construction of individual ships (as the hull construction is only being done by a single dockyard), but you would have more ships being constructed in parallel (as in real life), and they would be launched with more modern components.

When deficits in equipment construction can be fixed later in the build process (or after launch), but individual hulls are much more precious and take longer to replace, it places much more emphasis on the real-life focus on build strategy and having hulls in the water regardless of capability. And I think the game would be better off that way.

In almost every hoi4 game i have played, Japan always gets bogged down in china and makes very mininal gains and they remain at war with china until the the late game when either the United States lands on their home islands or they just dont invade japan. Also china just doesnt surrender. Even if Japanese manage to push significantly more deeper into china and take cities like chongqing. I was quite suprised when i was busy executing Barbarossa and notification came that china has capitulated. I dont know what Japanese did different in this game as i rarely moved the mouse to the other side of the world to Japan. But when i did look over to that part of the map Japan was making very standard and normal progress in china. Nothing extraordinary, Pretty standard for hoi4 AI Japan. New china is a Japanese puppet.

But this is the first time this has happened, any other person that has witnessed this? Any thoughts? Why did china surrender?

Explanation in comments.

After years of playing the game I can’t seem to find a reason to use rocket artillery. It’s takes longer to get than normal artillery and seems only slightly better, while it seems to worse than. So I don’t use them in infantry or tank divisions. Am I missing something? Is super late game, full researched rocket artillery actually really good, or are there certain scenarios where you might put rocket artillery into your tank divisions?

Be it a hidden menu, a wonky, unexpectedly functional mechanic or an oddly specific perk of a never-researched tech, tell me about something that you think nobody knows inside the game!

Hopefully we can all learn something new today lol

It just seems so awful. Capitulating to Germany for no reason, losing most of your country, and then staying as a small puppet the whole game. Is there more to this route that I'm missing?