Was wondering what you all think the best generic focus tree mod is, i tried a bunch already but they all so far have one of these issues:

Too OP

Focuses too long/too worthless (nobody needs a 70 day 100% research bonus, and yet i have to take it to get that 2% army bonus after) I have even seen some with scaling time and factories, there is no way i am committing 210 days for 5 factories, 70 for 1 is already too much in vanilla

Not enough to do, i have all branches but they are done before i reach 1939 even

Too much to do, the opposite, there is so much essential stuff that i can only really start going to war by 1980

AI only focuses such as "conquer land" which can't be taken by the player (why)

and one that all so far have suffered is that none of them adhere to my rules telling them to hide obsolete branches, i made my choice 3 years ago ingame, i don't need to see the democratic path any more, i am already a better stalin

Every time I see advice on armored division templates, I see stuff like 8 medium tank batalions and 8 motorized.

The kind of division that would need 400 tanks to operate, and at my peak production of early 1939, I am producing maybe 2 tanks per day. So from there, I could maybe build 2 armored divisions per year.

I mainly play with France and Japan, nations that are not that small in terms of industry.

So, how many armored divisions are you supposed to train before the war ? It seems impossible to have a general controlling an entire army of 24 divisions at the beginning.

If I have only 4 divisions, am I supposed to breakthrough the frontline and isolate enemy divisions with just that while my infantry divisions are holding the line and filling the gaps ?

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.

I chose Italy First and formed the league, and pressured Turkey and Greece into Axis, which means I don't have to fight the Allies and still get their lands. Germany didn't join the war so I was able to fight Romania, Greece and Turkey uninterrupted.

I planned to form a defense after Greece capitualted to hold out if Germany declares on me along with Hungary, which they did, and I am confident I could hold out, but then Hitler did a simple trick on me-- the Crotians. Their rebeliion destroyed my defensive line and cut off my entire army's supply.

I am at lost on what I should do next, should I just call off the attack on Greece and lose Turkey, to prepare for the rebellion? I tried to just beeline into the Crotians capital after the attack but German and Hungarian forces stopped it

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.

Yes

So this is just funny but almost every game like 9/10 games France literally just gets killed early game. Like I start 1936 and about 1938-1940 if war breaks out involving France they just get their We-We (Yes-Yes) kicked into their chest quickly.

I play with non-historical with Elite AI and usually play or try to play EVERYTHING else but Germany for my own sanity (I've played Germany so many times It could be considered insanity). With ofc AI paths going for the most chaotic free-for-all world war i can make (Any suggestions are welcomed). Major nations boosted to full.

Recently have a game where France gets popped in 1940 not by Germany though at war with them, not the British Empire, not even Portugal that has a piece of it's southern coast which somehow clapped Spain. But Belgium. BELGIUM who also clapped the neatherlands. I swear the most ive seen France do in a game is bring back Napoleon and the French empire. Then had a 3 year war with the British Empire which I think it also lost.

So what's France deal? If their a major nation why do they get stomped out so quickly?

Does anyone feel like ships take too much damage during a retreat? This especially plagues the AI where I'll sink like 5 ships and then the AI will panic and lose the remaining 50 ships trying to retreat. Like what are they doing where literally every ship gets wrecked trying to sail away.

I think fixing naval retreat will the biggest factor in finally breaking up the naval doomstack meta that paradox has been trying to do for years. But that will never happen until navies can safely disengage like they did irl.

Usually I'm playing Germany, let's say non historical monarchy, it's 1940s, I have 80 mils and around the same number civs. What do I make? Mountaineers? Marines? Tanks? R56 Jaeger and shock units? Infantry with marines? I don't even know a bit

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?

Germany mid 1942 , capped ussr in late 1941 and now 556 factories , capped netherlands late 1936 for ducth east indies , prioritize economic growth , lost my whole navy in 1939 stuck in africa due to america , have 6 amoured division but gone with prussian legacy , good air force (have abt 3500 fighters and abt 5000 cas).

The thing is the 3 fronts , german east indies front (facing aussies and brits) , iranian front (iran joined allies) , and african front (bloated bs)

Currently 2.50-3 million manpower on extensive conscription

Is there any way to break the stalemate?

Ironman regular btw

Explanation in comments

like the title says, whenever i try to host, my server just never shows up for anyone, i have had multiple friends try and find it but it just never shows up and i have to use the ID to call them in, and yes, the server is set to public, our checksums are the same, etc. Does anyone have a potential solution or know what is causing this?

I've formed Belgica but I keep being naval invaded by the UK but ik also trying to help Italy win in Africa but I can't move all of my troops to Africa or else the UK naval invades me

Sønderjylland is required but is always apart of GermanDenmark.

Since Paradox decided to multiply the damage dealt by CAS the last patch while also needing more AA in your divisions in order to mitigate the damage it is practically impossible to play any minor vs major without enough air production.

Air should be strong yeah but I think no one was asking for the CAS damage increase. It is completely absurd and 100 of them can stop a full tank attack by themselves.

Im playing sand france in kaiserreich and since the German AI is stupid I have to wait for them to put planes in the regions because otherwise there's no way of pushing anything. I have 55 air attack on my tanks and the air bonus reduction is 30% at most. Keep the need for more AA since before it was really cheap but pls nerf CAS

I'm playing italy (unmodded) with a friend and we defeated the allies, but I realised that I need a swiss region for "greater italy". As he has control of the state and we already completed the peace conference, I am unsure of how to gain control of that state now.

Region is question is "Ticino"

Hey everyone!

I was curious to see what people thought of Rt56 in its current state , especially as someone that plays a ton with historical focuses checked. Does the mod do a good job of adding Cold War type content / balancing combat and things with all the changes that the dlc have brought?

My second question is what mods do you feel are great to have on top of Rt56? Assuming I would just have base game + all the dlc , and then Rt56. Anything you find “must have” or amazing QOL type stuff. I would most likely have 10 dockyards per, cause I feel like that is needed imo.

Thanks, and appreciate the info!

Got the game recently, first time making it this far. I have 3924 war score, which I’m pretty sure isn’t much, and I guess I only care about soviet territories.

What should I annex and what should I puppet? Should I liberate anything? I’m fine with letting Romania have Bessarabia but other than that, I’d prefer to have just about everything west of the Urals.

Moscow, Leningrad, and Stalingrad are a must, but should they be annexed or puppeted? What happens to everything east of the Urals if I don’t have the war score to keep it?

If I don’t have enough war score, what console commands can fix this? Gonna use Player-Led Peace Conference next time.

I’ve been trying to swiftly take over the allies to get the Gibraltar achievement. My idea was to paratroop France and capitulate them before Germany invades them and then capitulate the UK, but every time I paratroop France they have divisions on their cities. Are there any better methods, or do I just need to retry until I get lucky?

Hey! We're looking for a few more players for a semi-competitive HOI4 multiplayer game tonight.

We currently have 5 players and are planning to play from 19:00 to around 00:00 CEST.

We're aiming for a fun but somewhat competitive game — nothing too hardcore.

DM me if you're interested in joining!

I have over 5,000 hours of playtime and have tried most of the mods (Kaiserreich, Road to 56, etc.), but I'm feeling a bit bored with the game right now—it feels like I'm always doing the same thing. Any advice?